Chapter 10
TEN
AUGUST
I took the fort down this time before I left. I made sure every pillow and blanket was folded and put back in its place.
Trent had an unexpected work thing in San Antonio the last couple days and Priscilla asked if I could take over Owen duty so she could go with him. I said yes before she finished the sentence. I always say yes to extra time with my son.
And because honestly after the disastrous morning at the cabin with Lennon and my mother showing up, I needed something to do with my hands and my head that wasn’t running that awful parting on replay.
Owen was the right answer for that.
Owen is usually the right answer, for most things.
We made the fort again, smaller this time. Just the couch cushions and the big blanket from the hall closet.
I let him win every dragon fight because he’s four and because watching him feel triumphant is one of the better things I know how to do with an afternoon.
We ate pancakes for dinner because he asked and I couldn’t think of a single reason not to.
We watched Airbender again. It’s his current obsession, which I may have slightly influenced, as in…
I put it on because I love to watch it in my free time, and he fell asleep on my chest during the episode where Zuko and his uncle are just sitting in a tea shop being quiet together, which felt meaningful in a way I try not to look at too closely.
Yesterday after school I took him to the park.
And this morning I dropped him at school and went back to clean a house that didn’t have him in it, which is always the worst part of the custody rotation. Not the cleaning part. Just the part where I know I won’t see him again for a handful of days.
But I’m regulated.
That’s the thing. Two days with Owen and I’m back to something functional. The noise is at a manageable level.
At my Tuesday appointment, Dr. Delaney asked me if I was proud of myself and begrudgingly, I said, I guess, sure.
I have three bookings this week and a back piece that’s going to take a fourth session to finish. I have a plan and routine, and I’m working it.
I’m back to being fine.
I shift the duffel on my shoulder and come through the RV park gate.
Which is when I freeze in my tracks.
Because… she’s there.
Lennon is in a hoodie sitting on a lounger by the pool with a laptop propped on her knees. I see her before she sees me, which seems to be a pattern with us.
She’s got a drink in her hand that’s the color of a margarita and she’s laughing. Just to herself, quietly, with some internal amusement. Fuck, I find that incredibly charming. Plus she’s so goddamn gorgeous.
People are generally miserable, in my experience.
They’re always performing fun because they’re so desperate to be having it. They post pics online like they’re proving to everybody else that fun was had, as if maybe they need it to prove it to themselves, too.
But if someone can constantly amuse themselves while they’re all alone with no cameras around?
It means they’re the good time.
It’s incredibly sexy.
And all the sudden I’m flashing vividly back to our night together.
She asked me to distract her.
And I’d thought, hey, I can do distraction. Distraction is easy, temporary, and over before anyone has to admit it meant something.
But then she laughed against my mouth. She grabbed my hair and told me exactly what she wanted without making herself quieter or sweeter or easier to handle.
And I realized somewhere in the past couple days, I don’t want to help her forget herself.
What would it be like to be the man she never has to disappear for again?
A much more dangerous thing to want.
And foolish, considering she’s still legally married to my brother.
Fuck, did I comb my hair after I got out of the shower this morning? I run my fingers through it.
I was so sure she’d be gone by the time I got back. She’d have figured out her next move and be staying with a friend or at a hotel and she’d be gone.
So I just stand there at the gate with my duffel a little stunned, watching her laughing at something on her laptop in the afternoon light and I think: walk to the RV. Walk directly to the RV.
But then she looks up.
Our eyes connect across the plaza.
For a second neither of us does anything. Like she wasn’t expecting to see me any more than I was her, and we’re both recalibrating in real time.
I should wave and keep walking.
Instead, I walk over.
She’s Jake’s wife, says the voice that has been saying this at increasing volume since approximately six in the morning two days ago.
Jake’s wife. Hands off.
This is the part where I walk straight to my RV.
“August,” she says and pops up to sit ramrod straight. “Hi. Hey, oh my god. I’m sorry for what I said when your mom was there. It was totally just a coincidence. I mean.” She waves a hand rapidly. “Not actually. Jake told my mom this was a good place to rent an RV and that’s why—”
Then she pauses, wincing, maybe at saying Jake’s name aloud.
She’s cute when she’s embarrassed.
And then suddenly I remember what it felt like when she was clenching, absolutely unrestrained and moaning around my cock.
Fuck.
Not helpful.
Hands off.
Somewhat desperately, she nods at the duffel. “Going somewhere?”
“Coming back,” I say, equally awkwardly, considering where my thoughts just went.
Then we both just stand there, staring at each other.
I don’t elaborate and she doesn’t push. I set the duffel down because it’s heavy and because I’m apparently staying for a minute.
“Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have stopped,” I say, immediately second-guessing the action. “I just saw you out here and—” I take a step back and reach for the duffel. “I don’t want to make things awkward.”
“No!” The word comes out with more heat than she probably intended because she quickly follows it up with, “No, it’s not— I mean.”
She breathes out hard and glances at the laptop.
“I’m just trying to figure out how to divorce someone when they’ve locked you out of all your accounts including your business accounts.
Which apparently is something he can do because he set up my LLC, which felt fine at the time because I never imagined he would—”
She stops and closes her eyes briefly. “Sorry. Is it weird for me to be talking about him? Because of the whole—” She makes a vague gesture that I understand to mean because of the whole him being your brother thing.
Because she’s Jake’s wife, chimes in the voice in the back of my head at the reminder. Future ex-wife. Hands off.
But the rest of what she said is echoing louder.
“Wait, he did what?” I sit down on the lounger beside hers. “He shut you out of your business accounts?”
“Every account, really. Credit cards, bank, personal and business.” She ticks them off on her fingers with the efficiency of someone who has been through the list too many times in the past few days.
“All of it. I’m locked completely out. The only money I have to my name is the cash in a tube sock I snatched when I went back for some of my things. ”
That fucking manipulative bastard.
This is such a Jake move.
Really, it’s the Kathy special, but Jake learned at her knee, slurping it up like the good little mama’s boy he’s always been.
The Kathy special: gut your opponent from beneath and behind, after you’ve lulled them into a sense of safety.
As if it’s your right to control another person’s life so you can force them into the behavior of your choosing.
Diabolical as a mother going to the lengths Mom did to bring a “troubled” child to heel, but equally fucked when it’s a husband trying to control a woman who wants away from you.
“I always thought he was a bitch,” I say, and it comes out flat. “But goddamn.”
Lennon laughs, surprised. “Yeah.”
“Sorry. He’s still your—”
“No more apologizing,” she says. “And I’d really rather not talk about Jake.”
“Fine by me.”
I can tell she means it. I sure mean it. We’re both quiet for another moment, that comfortable quiet that I didn’t expect from her the first night and have been thinking about, on and off, for two days in the margins of pancakes for dinner and dragon battles.
“So are you staying with your mom?” I ask, curious.
“No.” She waves a hand. “It’s too full in her RV with her and Patrick. Do you know Raven? She, sorry, they, said I could bunk with them for $250 a month. I was sold.” She laughs self-deprecatingly.
A gust of wind moves across the plaza and the sketchpad that I didn’t realize fell from the outer pocket of my duffel when I set it down flutters open, pages flying.
Lennon reaches for it before it can escape.
“Can I?” she asks, fingers hovering just above it. She’s already looking and her eyes have already gone wide with that expression of excited awe that any artist would be flattered by.
“Sure,” I manage, because what else do I say?
She picks it up.
She goes through it slowly. Not flipping and barely glancing like most people do with my book at the shop. But actually looking. Giving each page the kind of attention that makes the back of my neck start getting a little hot.
I have bookcases full of sketchpads, but in this one I was trying to get down ideas that could actually be finished pieces, besides the occasional thought noodles and sketches of Owen that wouldn’t leave my head until I got them down on paper.
The early pages are my harder stuff. Demons and serpents and gargoyles. Imagery that’s been in my head since I was a teenager who had a lot of feelings and zero other outlet for them. Dr. Delaney encourages me to work out my feelings through art, so I go with it.
I’m a little worried it will freak Lennon out, but she doesn’t flinch. She just gives each piece that deep attention. Sometimes she does a little inhale of surprise and I have to bite back grilling her on what she’s reacting to in the image.
She turns a page. Then turns another, never hurrying.
Which is when I realize she’s getting close to the back.
Oh no.