Chapter 11 - Diana
“Should I be worried?” Nana says, leaning against my bedroom door.
I glance at her as I lean down to look in the dresser mirror as I put my earrings on. “About what?”
She shrugs. “About how serious things are getting.”
“Oh, Nana.” I roll my eyes as I move to the attached bathroom and start putting on my makeup. “We’ve only gone out a few times.”
“Try every night this week,” she yells from the other room.
Nana never has been one to follow me into the bathroom, preferring to stay in the common areas of the house. Her opinion is that she doesn’t need to invade my space, and I don’t need to invade hers. Even though this is her home, she treats it as ours.
“That doesn’t count. We just went on rides. Nothing lasted long, and there was no food involved.” I apply some concealer under my eyes. I wasn’t lying about being tired. This week was tough, but my mind is wide awake. It’s my body that doesn’t want to move.
“You saying if there’s no food, then there’s no date?”
I think on her words as I grab my brush and look at myself in the mirror, questioning if that makes sense. With a nod to myself, I answer, “Exactly.”
“And tonight? What’s the plan?”
“Movies.” I apply a light bronzer and some blush, then move on to the pale pink eyeshadow. More makeup than I usually wear, but I want him to know I put in more effort tonight and that this isn’t just like every other night he sees me.
“So, no food?”
Her tone has me pausing while putting on mascara.
I shrug. “I guess popcorn.”
“So, then it is a date.”
I roll my eyes, not that she can see me, then shake my head at the triumph in her words. Like she just won something.
“Whatever, Nana.”
We both hear the telltale sign of his bike coming down the road, and I jump with the desire to go and see him. Or more like catch him before Nana gets to talking to him. She’s in one of her moods again, and you never know what will come out of her mouth. But as soon as I jump, I smear my mascara.
“Shit.”
Nana’s laughter comes in clear. “Sounds like you still need a minute. Don’t worry, I’ll go keep your man entertained. Might even ask him what his grand intentions with you are.”
“Nana!” I cry out, but it’s too late. I already hear the creaking of the stairs as she makes her way down, and there’s no way I can finish up and save myself from her interrogating my… boyfriend?
What are Karter and I? It’s been about half a month since he left the hospital.
Shorter than that, if you only count us seeing each other outside my job.
But each day has felt better than the last. This is our second official date, but it seems as if we’ve been going out for weeks, since he’s found a way to see me or talk with me every day since the first date.
I know I should be worried about this going too fast or how his past is going to take all this once he remembers, but I can’t seem to care. I like how I feel. I like who I am when I’m with Karter. And I like kissing him.
More than like.
He makes me feel like more than just me each time. Like I’m the only girl in the world he sees. And after a lifetime of not having a steady man in my life, a father or a boyfriend, it’s nice to have that kind of attention.
Look, I know I have issues. Tons of them.
Abandonment issues, from both my dad and even my mom to a point.
I never use sex as anything more than being intimate with someone, but I’ve never felt the need to hide away my special flower for Mr. Perfect when I wasn’t sure he was ever more than something people made up to write about.
And Karter isn’t perfect. He has issues of his own.
He can be stubborn. He can even be mean.
But with me? He’s none of that. I’ve only seen the sweet side, the desirable side.
The one that makes me weak in the knees when he looks at me or calls me “Babygirl.” He might be a big bad biker, but with me, he’s the sweetest teddy bear, and I feel safe with him in everything we do.
There’s not a single ounce of worry when I’m with him.
Which is beyond freeing. My mom tried her best, but I still helped with things that most kids don’t even think about till they move out.
I was making the grocery list by eight and doing the family budget by ten.
I had a good childhood, but I was also helping take care of Mom and myself.
I was never just being taken care of. It was like that all my life, but I have no grudges toward anyone for it.
I don’t regret a second of my life or wish for any changes at all.
Everything led me to where I am, even Mom dying.
I found my true joy through her death. A parting gift she gave me.
But with Karter? I don’t think anyone can understand how it feels to just let go unless they’ve dealt with it themselves. To just be and not have to decide, but still have the option to decide if I want to.
My feminist teacher in college would have a cow if she could hear me now. I probably sound like a nightmare to her, liking the idea of a man making choices for me so I can just be here and not think.
I shut my eyes and take a deep breath, then count to five—because three never works—and roughly shake my head four times to get the negative thoughts away.
It was something Mom taught me when I was young.
When I started to overthink things, and it was nothing positive, she’d say I just needed to take a moment, accept that the thoughts were there, then shake them out and move on. Live in the moment.
That was huge for her, to live in the here and now. And that’s one thing I plan to continue to do for Mom. I’ll live life to the fullest every minute without second-guessing all the time. Just sometimes.
But now I need to live and make sure Karter is still alive, too, and not sticking a pen in his eye to get out of whatever questions Nana might be asking him.
I grab my purse, throwing it across my body because it’ll be easier to ride his bike with a crossbody than a small, dainty one, and head down the stairs—only to stop dead in my tracks when I see him. I can’t help it. He’s the sexiest man I’ve ever laid eyes on.
He might be older, but the look works for him. And the way he fits in a pair of jeans? Fuck if it doesn’t make me think things that make my panties wet. The guy is hard all over, and the idea of a certain part being just as hard makes my face heat.
“Babygirl,” he says in a warning tone with a small smirk. He always knows when my mind is in the gutter because of my damn blush.
I googled how to stop it the other day. I’m supposed to “manage my thoughts” and “embrace the situation”—neither of which will help me at all.
No way can I stop thinking about Karter in a sexual way unless I never see him again, which isn’t happening anytime soon if I can help it.
And I’m all for embracing something, but knowing that he might not have had sex since his wife, I really don’t want to push the matter.
Or worse, trigger something mid-act and be compared to a dead woman he loved longer than he’s even known me.
“Hmmm.” Nana eyes us both, and I look away guiltily first. Not that I’ve done anything wrong. We’re both consenting adults. And if we both happen to be thinking things that aren’t entirely appropriate, especially in front of my nana, then so be it.
“Ready?” he asks, holding his hand out for me as I finish descending the stairs and come to stand beside him.
“Big plans tonight?” Nana asks with a raised eyebrow, and I shake my head at her. Damn old woman. I love her, but she’s always trying to get a rise out of me.
“Just a movie,” I say at the same time he says, “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” I look up at him with wide eyes, not expecting his response, and he gives me a wink before looking back at Nana.
“Give me a few days to get the supplies and I can help on the garage.” He gives her a chin lift and then opens the door, releasing my hand only to guide me through the door first before shutting it.
I note that he locked it from the other side, and he checks it’s secure before we head down the front steps to his bike.
“What does she have you working on now?” I swear, half the time he stops by, Nana is asking him to do one chore after another. He even comes over when I’m at work to do small things here and there.
If she were just a little younger, I’d be worried she was trying to sneak in on my territory, but Nana has never been one to play those types of games with men besides getting them to do things for her.
I once came home to find she had somehow convinced all the neighborhood kids to organize her supplies for the vending machines in the garage.
A task that usually takes days took them a few hours.
And their reward? One soda. One! She’s a charmer for sure, that one is.
“She’s wanting access to the room above from the outside so she can just go in from the stairs and not have to open the garage and have her car be burdened by nature.”
“God forbid her car actually get sun damage or be gusted with wind,” I mock as I sit on the back of his bike and put on my helmet.
He chuckles as he starts it up, and I wrap myself around him and close my eyes. It won’t be a long ride to the movie theater, but I plan to enjoy the entire trip with him in my arms and not be distracted by the world around us.
Before long, the traffic noise dies, and we slow. I open my eyes, smiling, only to still as I look around.
“Where are we?”
He turns off his bike and gets off first. Something he hasn’t ever done before.
“My place.”
My stomach drops and I blink. Once. Twice. “Your place?”
He smiles and laughs softly at me, but I take no offense. I sound like a parrot repeating him. “Yes. Figured we can watch a movie here.”
I look behind him at his big house. The picture-perfect house with two stories, a wraparound porch, and even a white picket fence.
Flowers have sprouted under the windows, and the grass is neatly trimmed.
There’s even a freaking tire swing on one of the two trees standing guard on either side of the house like sentinels.
“Your place?”
He keeps the smile but not the laughter as he steps closer to me. I’m still straddling his bike as I take in everything before me.
He unstraps my helmet and brushes my hair back. “We can go somewhere else if you want. I just figured you would be more comfortable here, on my couch, as opposed to a sticky movie theater seat.”
I blink again as I look at the house behind him. Memories must be hidden in the walls, and secrets are waiting to be told.
“Babygirl,” he whispers as he pushes hair behind my ear. He bends down to get closer to me and bring my eyes back to him rather than what’s behind him. “It’s just a house.”
“But it’s your house.” The house with your family in it. The one we don’t talk about because you don’t remember but everyone who knows you does. The one place that your daughter would probably skin me alive for even seeing, much less stepping inside.
“And I want you to come into it with me. Please.”
The please is what gets me, and I nod, even as my eyes trace back to the place beyond him.
“Good girl.” He kisses my lips, just a peck, but enough for me to remember that Karter likes me. He wouldn’t want me here if he didn’t. He wouldn’t be talking to me if he weren’t okay with this.
If he’s okay with me coming in, then I need to be okay with it too.
And if he somehow starts convulsing the second I step over the threshold because his dead wife’s ghost comes up and starts plotting my death and it triggers all his memories? Well, at least he’ll have remembered then.
I get off the bike, and he grabs my hand.
I have half a thought that he’s making sure I don’t bolt.
Which, to be fair, is an idea, but I was the stupid idiot who closed her eyes on the ride over and had no idea where she was.
If this were a horror movie, I would be the first to go.
I would be introduced as the nurse, and everyone would expect me to be one who lasts the longest to help the hero or heroine, then ends up dead at the end or maybe even lives through it all.
But no. I’m the first-act death scene. Blindly trusting a hot older man and willingly going into what could be a house of torture.
All because he called me nice names and his lips on me make my heart beat twice as fast.
“If you’re planning on killing me, can you at least feed me first?”
He opens the door and lets me in, then smacks my ass as he walks ahead of me. “No killing tonight unless it’s from the movie we watch. Promise. Now move your ass. I’ve got a roast to check.”
Shit.
This is horrible. He’s going to not only make me watch an action movie but feed me yummy food he’s cooked himself too?
Kill me now. Because if I don’t die, I might do something he’ll regret. Like jump him and force him to make love to me all night long.