11. Rick
Chapter eleven
Rick
I don’t know what in the mooney loomy mooing cow I was thinking last night.
I suppose I wasn’t. My brain was pretty much cooked from lack of sleep. I can see how it’s a thing they use as torture and how it would be mighty effective. Not that I’ve ever been tortured. I haven’t. I’m just saying.
I expect Aspen to be cuddled up to me, soft and warm and full of pity that I know I’m not going to be able to even pretend to stand when I wake up, but the bed is empty.
She’s not here.
But I’m here, wrapped up snugly in sheets and a comforter that smells like Aspen. Fresh and airy. All flowers and clouds, honey and citrus.
I find my clothes once I make my way out of my cocoon. They’re not scattered on the floor like they should be but folded neatly at the end of the bed. It makes my face burn to think about Aspen tucking me in like a toddler, finding my clothes, and folding them. It makes me mortified beyond anything to think I came close to some kind of breakdown last night. I was just so, so, sooooo tired. Fuck me, I need to start sleeping more often.
When I don’t, lapses in judgment happen, apparently.
I don’t want her to take care of me. I don’t want to be a burden.
I’ve never had anyone care for me like that. Jace might have been like a brother, but he didn’t pick up after me. The closest he ever came to nursing me was stitching up my various injuries over the years, and I liked to pretend those never happened. I’m not one of the take-a-break or rest-and-recover types. We certainly didn’t do the sharing-with-tears thing. Yes, we told each other stuff. But no, it wasn’t anything like what happened with Aspen last night.
I’m a red hot mess. I’m heading to my room to shower and get fresh clothes. My dresser is still in there. I figured I needed it until I could get some boxes for my things, and then it could go too. I stop dead at the top of the stairs. I’ve gone in the wrong direction without even noticing it. I hear humming. It’s a pretty sound. A happy sound.
I might as well go and try to salvage some of the disaster of last night. If I get it over with, I won’t have to think about it. Then I can shower and freshen my beautiful ass up. Ha freaking ha. Believe me, I know I’m the furthest thing from anything that could be called beautiful.
Except when Aspen looked at me last night, she looked at me like she thought I was.
My chest feels like someone just cut a deep wound through it. As I descend the stairs, it tugs and pulls like there’s a tidy line of stitches holding me together. The gaping space in the wall where the huge painting was makes me grin. I can’t help it. It’s so satisfying that it’s gone.
Aspen is at the island, stirring something in a huge stainless steel bowl. Her hips shake with every turn of the spoon. She’s wearing the world’s cutest dress—white and pink plaid with strawberries and large white buttons. It’s all frilly and girly. Her long blonde hair is pulled back in a braid, and she looks like the real, vintage salt of the earth. The truest kind.
Just like her brother was.
Even if he never wore white and pink plaid and strawberries.
Jesus, I know he was only her half-brother, but she looks just like him sometimes. It’s more than their shared genetics. It’s their expressions.
Like now, when she hears me step in, and she stops stirring. Her eyes sweep over me, and they’re immediately hard, as though she has no time for whatever apologies I might have come in here to make. They soften just slightly, the blue thawing out, and I know if I need to collapse into a chair and just talk, she’ll listen.
“Patrick McDonald,” she says, her voice sharp because it needs to be sharp. I have zero shields or walls or neutrality going for me, and she can tell. “You can always talk to me. It’s okay to not be okay. Someone needs to darn well tell you that and mean it and get you to believe it, but it’s not okay to say things that are cruel about yourself. I’m not here for that, and I’m not going to let you be either.”
She has my number. This woman has had it since the day she showed up on my doorstep, fearless and chasing down her brother’s last wishes. It makes my legs weak to hear her say my full name like she always has. Just like Jace used to. I doubt he ever told her he did that.
I scrape a hand over my face and grainy eyes, down past the facial hair that should just come off already. “I’m fucking embarrassed.”
She starts stirring again, but her eyes never leave me. I’ve been in unthinkably dangerous situations before, yet I’m still frozen in place. This feels a hundred times worse than getting chased down or shot at. At least I know what to do in those situations. Right now, I feel completely lost.
“Why should you be embarrassed? Are you not a human being? Shouldn’t you have regular emotions, ones you need to have in order to be healthy? Don’t you deserve to be able to grieve?”
“Men don’t…uh…men don’t break down like that.”
“Yeah,” she scoffs. “Yeah, right. That’s the oldest lie I think I’ve ever heard.” She gives whatever she’s mixing another hard stir. “Debunked. That’s straight-up debunked by basic science. Men can cry. They should. They need to. There is zero wrong with it.” She taps the bowl with the side of her free hand, making her fingernails clink against the metal. “And don’t you dare say it’s a weakness because I personally know a ton of strong men who cry. It’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I just…lost it. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep like that.”
“If you’re blushing about me tucking you in and making sure you were okay, please don’t. I’m just sorry for all the nights you’ve spent where you didn’t have that. The little kid version of you, the big kid version, and even the teenage version. You’re never too old to need to be taken care of once in a while.”
I feel like I could die, and there she is, just putting it out there so matter-of-factly.
“I know you’re not used to it, and I’m sorry for that too.” She points at the table. “Sit down. I’m going to have blueberry pancakes ready right away.”
Blueberry pancakes. That might as well be a bullet straight to my chest. Jace’s favorite. Not that we ever had them out there, wherever out there might have been. Out there meant a lot of places for us, but he talked about how good they were back home and how his mom used to make them. His stepmom too. He had two moms, and they both loved him. He had two, and I had none. I remember how I used to be so madly jealous of him and would then hate myself for it because a grown man should be over shit like that. It wasn’t the kind of jealousy that made me hate him. Just the kind that made me wish I knew even a fraction of the love that glowed on his face when he talked about home.
For me, home was as cold as the ground we often slept on. As strange and foreign as some of the places we first ventured to. It was unforgiving and lean, and the more wits and walls you had about you, the better.
“I should shower,” I tell her.
She looks up at me and never breaks her stirring stride. She doesn’t flinch or smile or give herself away. “I thought we could do that after breakfast.”
I’m floored. What in the ever-loving crispy yam fries? “I— we ?”
“Yes. We.” She stops stirring. Finally. But only to take a step back, lean against the island, and look up at me with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Her pupils are fucking huge, and my dick is rock-hard in my jeans. It’s so hard that it almost causes trauma with the seams and zipper again because they can’t get out of the way fast enough. “You were tired last night, and there were things that needed to be said. I appreciate and respect it, and I’m glad it happened. I think you’re feeling better, and your brain is doing better. I’m going to feed you delicious pancakes, and your body will be happy too. I wouldn’t be me if I weren’t honest, though, so I have to say that on a sexy scale of one to ten, I’m about a solid seven, which means I’m still hot and super bothered . I was thinking a lot about it before last night, and well, basically all night too.”
“What? You were thinking about—”
“Not about that.” She finally goes scarlet. Now. She blushes now . “About the marriage. I don’t care if it has an expiration date. My body needs you. I think I might need you too. Maybe it’s just until two weeks are up, and maybe it’s after. I don’t know how it’s going to go. I got a letter, quit my job, upended my whole life, and stumbled into you. I was completely unprepared. I’m basically just winging it, and I know that’s a great recipe for ultra-disaster, but I’ve lived a very careful life up until now, and it was incredibly dissatisfying. So, even if you wreck me, and it hurts my heart a little, I’m a big girl, and I’ll get over it. We can still have sex and be friends. We can look out for each other, even if we’re in separate places. I’m sorry that I found every reason on earth not to like you when we first met. I’m incredibly sorry if you ever felt like what you said last night was true. That I wanted Jace instead of you. I definitely don’t wish I could replace you. Do I want my brother here? Yes. I’ll always want him here. But I don’t want that to be at any cost to you or anyone else.”
Fuck me with the chainsaw we never had to use. I have zero clue what I’m supposed to say to all that.
Zero. Clue.
But my dick knows. He’s all yes please, yes, dear lord, yessssss in my jeans. She’s already picked him for her team. He wants to hear her say dirty things like the word horny again, which sounds so incredibly old school that it’s just so much more taboo and so much hotter. And yes, I know she didn’t actually say it, but hot and bothered is pretty much the same.
I’m so fucking turned on that I feel like a livewire about to burn the place down. At the same time, I can feel my eyes burning again. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m normally all about careful observation and strategic planning. That’s how I stay alive. By being careful, not taking unnecessary risks, and not putting myself headlong into bodily harm. But Aspen is different. This double-tree-named woman…she’s different from anyone I’ve ever met. She’s so present and so here in my life that I can’t uproot her. Haha. Tree joke. I’ve never felt this out of control. I’m rushing, alright. Straight into it. Heading for the danger.
So I do the only thing I can do at the moment and sit my ass down at the table. I put distance between us and act broody, so I’m less approachable. I wait, I try to process, and I watch Aspen make magic happen in this kitchen that I normally just ghost through. Food is for sustenance. It’s for staying alive. It’s never tasted…
The first bite I take of the pancakes she sets in front of me when they’re done makes me want to embarrass myself all over again because it fucks with my emotions. Emotions . Yes, good lord, I have them. I admit it. I do. And this? These pancakes don’t taste like sawdust and grit. They taste like heaven. They taste like fluffy, buttery goodness. Like tart and sweet berries. Like a whole lot of the tangy syrup that she’s made by boiling down other berries.
She sits down across from me and smiles at me like she knows. Like she just gets it.
Everything she’s made since she’s been here has been good, but these? I think she just broke me with these.
I think last night broke me too. It broke my brain and wrecked me. The me I thought I knew my entire life. That person is just…he just evaporated. I’m broken up, and there’s this being at the center of me that feels new and innocent and hopeful, and I know how to deal with all that even less than whatever happened last night or this morning so far.
What did she say about being wrecked? Because I think I’m going to be. I think I am. And maybe it’s not horrible.
Aspen takes far longer to eat than I do since I basically scarf everything down at a record pace. And when she’s finished, we both sit there in silence. It feels a little bit strained but not as awkward as it should be. She finally looks up at me, and the intensity of her gaze is like a one-two knockout.
“If you legitimately don’t want this, then please say so. I don’t want to hurt you,” she says.
I want to tell her that the idea of her hurting me is ludicrous, but I can’t say it. I might be a surly asshole at times, but I’ve never been known to lie. If I can’t say something, I just straight up say so or avoid the topic altogether. The fact is, it’s not that ludicrous. I’ve shown her the tiniest of cracks in my armor, and I know she could very well pierce through them if she desired. I know it would be painful in ways my previous injuries have done nothing to prepare me for.
It would hurt a lot, like how it used to hurt when everyone went home for Christmas or Easter or other holidays when I was at boarding school, but not me. It would hurt like being shuffled from one summer camp to another, so I was never around my grandfather either. It was agonizing before I finally learned to stop expecting it to be anything less and then desensitized myself to it. Before I got myself under control and shut myself down. I was doing that long before I ever made it to the military. My childhood was basically a battleground, and sometimes I was just fighting myself, but the shit that went on inside me made the real battles I endured later in life feel like a playground.
At least that enemy could be systematically overcome. Problems could be solved with tangible strategies. But the shit that was going on inside me? That was basically a war with hope, and you can never win one of those. Hope is the deadliest enemy of all.
“It’s not that I don’t want it.” She has no idea how hard it is for me to say those words.
She lets me off easy, smiling at me with real happiness. “Good. Because I’m a grown woman. I’m my own person. I told you that last night, but I want it to sink in. I also want you to know that if I want to please you, or at least try to please you, then it’s our business, and it’s going to be good for both of us if we want it to be good.”
“Aspen…”
“Patrick.”
She looks like a bulldog right now. The cutest, most lovely bulldog. What can I do to fight against her and win? Do I even want to fight against her? Do I want to win? Do I want to keep pushing and shoving and fighting my way away from everything and everyone? She’s in my life for good now. That’s already been established. I do think she means what she says. That if we do this, it doesn’t mean we have to stay married for real. It doesn’t mean we’re dating. It might change things, but she’s mature and emotionally stable enough to handle that.
I’m the unstable one. I’m the one who might not be able to handle it when she leaves. That’s the cold. Hard. Fecking. Truth.
“With those kinds of arguing skills, you should have been a lawyer,” I say with a sigh.
“If by arguing skills you mean, dang it, Aspen, put your mouth to better use, then yes. Yes, I’ll accept that.” If I thought her eyes were wide and lit up before, I was wrong. “If by skills you mean that you would like to take me to the shower now and have me give it my all, then yes. I’ll accept that too. And if you—”
I’m out of my chair and scooping her out of hers before she can say anything else. I’m too ferocious. I want her too badly. I need to tone it down, or I’m going to scare her.
She grabs my shoulders and wraps her legs around my waist like she’s not afraid at all. She also claims my mouth like she’s not afraid of this kind of battle either. She’s okay with my level of intensity.
By the time we get to the bathroom upstairs, her dress is puddled at her waist, and my shirt is gone. Her bra has been yanked down, exposing her beautiful breasts, and her legs are locked so tightly around my waist that I’m not even sure I can feel my dick anymore. I’m kidding. He’s too painfully hard not to feel. He wants to be freed. He doesn’t want to be trapped between us with all these clothes on. He wants to be slippery and wet, with her hand wrapped around him. He wants to be inside her, with her walls clenching around him.
Jesus, if I keep thinking this way, I’m not going to last any decent amount of time. If I thought last night was embarrassing, this would be a new level. It’s been a long time for me. Definitely not since I got back to the States this time. I’ve been motivated enough to use my hand in the shower a few times over the past year and a half, but not really. It’s kind of been like sleeping. I do it only when it feels atrociously necessary.
I set her down and start the shower. By the time I turn around, her dress is fully off. She’s stripping out of her bra and panties, and heaven help anyone who gets in her way. She looks like a furious goddess who has one objective in mind. And that one objective is me .
Technically, I’ve always had a home. I’ve always had family, or at least I did until my grandpa died. But I know there are others out there. His brothers and his sister. Two of them are still alive. His sister is still alive. They’re all over the world. My dad was an only child, and my mom’s parents are dead now, but I have an aunt, though she’s never reached out. However, I don’t know that for sure. She might have at first, but if my grandpa continuously rebuffed her, and she didn’t know where I was, then maybe she just gave up. It has been a long time since I was a kid. More than thirty years.
I’ve traveled extensively, but I felt like I half belonged where I was at the time, with the people who surrounded me. A team. My brothers.
I do know this place has never felt like home. My grandfather never felt like any family I could know or love. And even if I had brothers, I didn’t belong to them the way Aspen has claimed me. Right now, even before this moment, ever since she first showed up on my doorstep, she was determined I shouldn’t have to face the rest of this life alone.
She didn’t have to do this.
She didn’t have to know me, want me, or upend and reorganize her life for me. She didn’t have to care about me or befriend me.
She didn’t have to show me how to belong to someone.
But she did.