Chapter Fourteen #2
it fly. It went true and struck the heart of the target.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve still got it.”
“Damn,” came the all-too-familiar voice behind her. “That’s incredible.”
“My throw? You’ve seen me do it before.”
She didn’t even turn. Because she knew it was him. No question about it.
“This place,” he said. “It still looks like the old gaming hall, but it looks like an axe throwing bar too. Pretty damned
impressive.”
“Well, since I had a surplus of sick days, I can’t really take credit for it.”
“I did some work over here while you were down and out.”
She lifted a brow. “Really?”
“Yes,” he said. “It needed the manpower.”
“So you aren’t really all that surprised to see it like this?”
“I am,” he said. “Some of this is new since I was last here a couple of days ago. They’re really working fast.”
“I didn’t sleep with Manny, you know.” She didn’t know why that mattered. Except that he was helping her, and they were sleeping
together, and she just didn’t want it to seem like she went out of her way to have sex with men so that they would do favors
for her. She didn’t keep contact with the men she had sex with so that was impossible.
“I know you didn’t,” he said. “Not that it matters.”
“How come you know that I didn’t.”
“Because you said you didn’t.”
“You don’t really know me, or if I’m a liar.”
“I know you’re not a liar,” he said.
“He used to get picked on at school. He was a quiet kid. He was just trying to go to school, get an education. And people
called him all kinds of racist shit. It made me mad. I punched somebody one day. I got punched back. After that, we were friends.
And nobody messed with him again. Not that he couldn’t have defended himself, it’s just that he . . . he was afraid to. Afraid
of what would happen to him. To his family.”
“That makes sense,” he said. “That he looks out for you now too.”
“He always did. He’s a good guy. And believe me, there were a lot of guys who were not good. I was a really lonely girl, and
I was always the kind of pretty that attracted . . . whatever attention I wanted. So you know. I took that attention. It made
me feel good. Why not? The men could be judgmental about it, even though they were also there. Somehow I was a slut, but they
never were.”
“Yeah. Well. That’s very boring and predictable, isn’t it?”
“In my experience, people tend to be boring and predictable. Manny is a notable exception to that. And that’s why he’s been in my life all this time.”
“You’re not predictable,” Denver said. “Or boring.”
“I don’t know. I’m feeling like challenging you to an axe throwing competition. Which in the grand scheme of our relationship
actually feels a bit predictable.”
Something to shift the conversation away from getting too deep.
Except she looked at him, and saw that he had a deeply contemplative look on his face that suggested she was not going to
get her way on that score. “All right,” he said. “Let’s throw.”
He went to the end of the lane, and cocked back his weapon, before sending it flying. He was much improved from when he had
thrown with her the first time off the edge of that embankment. Though, in fairness, a flat throwing lane that was actually
made for this was much easier.
She watched, hungrily, as he easily lifted the axe back out of the target. Why was everything he did so damned sexy?
Rhetorical. He was sexy. So, what other option was there?
“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you defend everybody?” he asked.
“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you wiped everybody’s fevered brow?”
“I guess we are who we are,” he said.
She chuckled. “Neither of us are really as badass as we pretend to be, are we?”
“Speak for yourself,” he said. “I think I’m pretty badass.”
“I’ve never heard any of you talk about your mom,” she said. “In fact, I’ve never even heard anyone in town talk about your
mom.”
Denver paused, and let the axe fly. “That’s because there’s not much to say.
I meant what I said earlier. She was kind of a nonentity in our lives.
Our dad was in control of everything. Every narrative that ran through the house, that belonged to him.
And there was a point where she just couldn’t deal with it.
And I think the prospect of being in a custodial disagreement with a full-on narcissist who had quite a bit of money and power just didn’t appeal to her. So she decided to leave us.”
“That’s . . . It’s awful,” she said.
“You know, I didn’t really notice a difference when she was gone. Because she let Dad do whatever he wanted. She didn’t protect
us. She didn’t sweep in and take care of us when he failed to do so. Dad was the present parent in our lives. That’s what's
so hard about the whole thing. Honestly. I bought into his lies completely and totally. Because he was the one that was there
for me. He was the one who taught me how to ride a horse. How to shoot a gun. He was the one who was proud of me. Who spent
time with me. And yeah, there was a lot of stuff that wasn’t ideal. Sometimes you could go away from talking to him and feel
all kinds of bad about yourself, because at the end of the day my dad was a master manipulator. But as a kid, you don’t see
any of that. All you see is the parent that shows up for you. The one who teaches you to do things. Even as far as dinner
went . . . my dad was the grill master. Where do you think I learned it?”
“Denver . . . I’m sorry.”
“I know I keep saying that to you, and I keep telling you to just accept it. Why is it so annoying when you do it to me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because it’s always annoying when somebody tries to apply sympathy to a wound you just want to be left
alone.” She threw the axe, and it went wide. She winced. “I don’t really remember my mom either, she left when I was so young.
I understand what you’re saying.”
“Your sisters are a lot younger than you.”
“They have a different mother.”
“Did she live with you?”
“Yeah, she was my stepmom for a while.”
“What did you think of her?”
She frowned. She didn’t think about Tonya very often. “I don’t know. It was clear that I wasn’t supposed to think about her
as a mom. She made that really clear. She wanted me to help out, with the babies and such. With the house. But she made me
call her by her first name. She wasn’t bad, don’t get me wrong, I actually like her in a lot of ways. But she wasn’t a mom.
You know? And she wasn’t really a mom to the kid she gave birth to either. She had Abby and Whitney and Sarah in short succession,
and it was like she could never quite find her footing with it. She and my dad broke up, and I think she thought that she
would go get a job somewhere else, and that would be fine with the girls because he already had me when they met. But of course,
her visits became fewer and further between . . .”
“When your dad died she didn’t come back.”
“No. At that point she wasn’t visiting anymore. She wasn’t keeping in touch. At that point, we were all on our own. I started
to hate her then. But I never did before. She was a tough woman, and in that way, she was a decent influence on me. But the
leaving . . . I can’t forgive her for that. Except I used to worry that she was going to take the girls away from me. Because
the only thing that scared me more than having to raise them by myself, was having to live without them.”
Which sometimes felt like what she was doing now.
Navigating this world that had centered around those girls without them there every day.
“It’s just not even surprising,” he said. “That’s just how it is. For both of us.”
“Yeah. Our lives are littered with disappointing adults. And when I was a kid it made a lot less sense. I thought adults were supposed to have it all together. I think I held a lot of resentment in my chest over that for a number of years. But I don’t now.
I mean, not about some things. Because I’m the same age as they were when they were navigating all this stuff, and I don’t feel like I know it all. Or even half.”
“You also would never leave innocent girls to fend for themselves. I know that, because you didn’t.”
“Neither did you,” she said.
“I guess not.”
She beat him soundly at axe throwing, and they both walked out of the gaming hall.
“Where’s your truck?”
“I walked over.”
“Well. You want me to give you a ride back to the house?”
“I was fixing to come home with you,” he said.
“You . . . you were?”
“Yes. I was.”
“Yes,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her in for a kiss. Until that moment she hadn’t realized just
how starving she was for that. She wanted to strip all his clothes off then, but he slowed it down, made it just about their
mouths meeting, his hand gliding over her cheek, his tongue sliding against hers.
She shivered.
“Denver,” she whispered.
It was like he had bewitched her. Like he had turned her into something she had never been before.
A creature made entirely of need and flame.
One who was ready to melt at any given opportunity.
When they finally parted, she was breathing hard. And in no fit position to argue with him.
“Okay. Get in the car then.”
“Sure,” he said, chuckling.
“How old were you when your mom left?” he asked.
“I’m not entirely sure. Maybe around two? Something like that. I genuinely don’t remember her. And honestly, you can’t miss
what you never knew.”
“I feel the same. I mean, I was a lot older when our mom left. Eleven? Maybe? But she was kind of a ghost in the house. I
guess, on some level I can feel some sympathy for her. Sympathy for what she must’ve been going through, because I know that
our dad was a twisted son of a bitch. He was probably gaslighting her, and making her feel like she was a bad mother, I don’t
know. He probably strong-armed himself into the position of being world’s best dad, right? Because he was basically building
a small army of his own sons. He never had much use for Arizona.”
“Poor Arizona,” said Sheena. “Good thing she’s a badass bitch.”