Page 149 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Emmie laughed, and sprawled sideways against his chest. Shot him a raised-brow look when they were face-to-face again. “Are you serious?” she asked, laughing all over again at the sight of his expression, which was so veryhimin a way it hadn’t been for…a while. Slack with relaxation, but his eyes the bright, glittering blue of Caribbean waters, sparking with the same excitement he’d worn when he woke her up with a string of kisses pressed like pearls down the slope of her throat in the predawn darkness.

“You know I believe in you,” she said, “but, in my experience, your record is twice within one hour.” She held uptwo fingers. “It’s not that I’m doubting you…hey!” She giggled when he nipped at her chin. “I’m just saying! Again?”

He pulled back, brows furrowing in a show of deep contemplation. He twisted his hips, so he lay between her legs, where she could feel him damp and soft from round two. “Give me…twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.”

“How optimistic of you.” She leaned up to kiss him, a quick peck that he deepened, and which she pulled back from with real regret. “But I have lessons to teach and you have church to attend.”

He sighed, but sat back, and let her up.

As she slipped out of bed, and donned her robe, she reflected on the change in her husband. It was a return, really. A return to the way he’d been after they were first married, once they’dsettled. He was always going to be quiet and subdued – that was just his nature – but it had been startlingly easy to see, when she and Violet stepped off the plane and back onto Knoxville soil two weeks ago, how the stress in Walsh had built, and built, and built, until he was no longer quiet, but stewing. Brow constantly furrowed, gaze constantly flitting between half-lidded with fatigue and razor-sharp with apprehension. He’d been waiting for them on the tarmac, and he’d looked peaceful, and the sudden reversion to the husband who was content with his lot in life had hurried her along until she was almost running by the time she reached him.

They’d had more sex in the past two weeks than in the past two years. It made sitting firmly in the saddle during schooling sessions a little tender, sometimes, but it was a willing sacrifice on her part.

Today, though, she thought he was trying to use sex as a delaying tactic.

Emmie belted her robe, and turned back to the bed. Walsh was sitting up now, covers pooled around his waist, scrubbingboth hands through his hair so it stuck straight up like he’d put his finger in an electrical socket.

She’d meant to ask him, once more,are you sure?But instead, watched him scratch at his stubbly face, watched him swing his legs over the side of the mattress and reach for the rings he’d left on the nightstand; watched him slide them on one by one, save his plain wedding band, which he never took off. She knew that he was sure. There was a lightness to his wiry shoulders, and a quickness to his movements, and his face, when she said, “Babe?” lifted and revealed naked affection. Bright relief.

Instead, she asked, “You excited about today?”

He snorted, but a true smile played across his lips as his gaze dropped, and he adjusted the small, skull-adorned ring he wore on his left pinky. “Little kids get ‘excited.’”

“And apparently husbands do, too, at five-thirty in the morning.”

He smirked, and a cute flush of pink spread across the bridge of his nose and both cheeks. “Okay, okay. That was exciting. This is…” He spread his fingers, inspected both hands, and then set them on his knees and met her gaze. “This is a change. For the better.”

“Yeah?”

“Definitely.”

~*~

“Daddy? Daddy!”

Aidan blinked, and realized he was caught in an unconscious staring contest with the blue Froot Loops toucan. Didn’t that fucker have a name? Dim, childhood memories floated back to him, Saturday mornings with cereal and cartoons, and Dad sleeping off a hangover on the sofa behind him. He was ninety-nine percent sure the toucan had a name.

Not that it mattered.

“Oh, yeah, here, baby, sorry.” He grabbed the box and passed it down to Lainie, who scampered back to the table with a fast “thank you!”

Behind the Froot Loops there was…

“Special K?” he asked, dismayed.

“It’s the chocolate kind,” Sam said from behind him, at the counter.

He wrinkled his nose, picked up the box, and turned it around to read the back, well aware that he could stop at Waffle House and choke down something greasy if he wanted to, but that eating here at home was a means of delaying the inevitable. “There’s a lot of talk about fiber here,” he said, and put the box back. “My dad needs fiber. I need something that won’t make me gag.”

“I’m having egg whites and avocado toast. Want some?” she offered, and he could hear the smile in her voice; knew she was trying to get him to pull a disgusted face.

But all he wanted was to go back to bed, pull the covers up over his head, and when he woke, the church meeting, and its inevitable decision, would be behind him. A coward’s thinking, and he wasn’t proud of it.

Sam drifted up to stand beside him at the open cabinet. “I think…” She reached past him, and shuffled boxes around. “Aha, here we go.” She pulled down a fresh, unopened box of Cookie Crisp from the top shelf, and offered it with a smile that said she knew exactly where his head was right now.

He lifted his brows. “I thought you drew the line at Froot Loops? That this was way too much sugar for breakfast.”

“For her.” She tipped her head Lainie’s direction. “I bought this for you.”

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