Chapter Nineteen
Chapter
Nineteen
Big Events
I was in a conference room at work, surrounded by
boxes and stacks of files, working with two other paralegals and highlighting
and taking notes like a highlighting-and-taking-notes fool.
We’d just received the discovery on a huge case that the
judge for some reason refused to give us a continuance on, so we had tons to
get through and about two months less time than we needed to get through it.
It was exactly three weeks since Darius and I brought our
family together.
And it had been three weeks heavy with big events.
First, within days of our drama at Miss Dorothea’s, I came
home to two fully-kitted-out guest bedrooms upstairs, seeing as Darius called
“his guy” who went and packed up all my bedroom furniture, and all Liam’s, and
moved mine into the guest suite, Liam’s into the Jack side of the Jack and
Jill.
Liam and I had already done a cursory packing of all our
most personal items the Sunday before we went to dinner with Darius’s family,
but we headed back the next Saturday after Liam was done watching films with
the team. We carted over boxes of books, picture frames and other essential
items, including packing up all the food in the kitchen.
The next day, Darius and I went back and got all the sheets
and towels and bathroom accessories to stock up the guest spaces.
By this time, I’d done a full perusal of what Darius had and
found there was nothing of mine I needed to fill the gaps. There was also
nothing I needed to make the space mine.
Liam was thriving in Darius’s lair. It suited him, like it
suited his dad.
And after not having Darius for so long, being surrounded by
him at every turn, well, that totally worked for me.
Darius was surprised I didn’t want to make my mark on our
place, but when I explained why, we had to take a break from putting away
towels so we could fuck on my old bed in the guest room.
Thankfully, Liam was out with some friends seeing a movie.
At that juncture, Darius called “his guy” again, and he went
and packed everything else up—dishes and pots and pans and knickknacks—and
stacked those boxes in Darius’s storage room downstairs.
Darius then called a cleaning crew to go in, and after that,
a management company to ready it for the market. We dropped some cash on some
nice, middle-of-the-road bedroom furniture, and got word a few days ago it had
rented, furnished.
In the meantime, I’d extended an olive branch to Danni and
Gabby by explaining I did need someplace to put my books, as well as new frames
for my pictures that would work in Darius’s space.
They took hold of that olive branch like their life depended
on it (they really did love their brother, and actually me, not to mention
Liam), and now we had three new handsome shelving units, one in the living
room, another in the family room and the last in the study, where I put my
books and arranged my newly framed pictures.
And with that, I was good.
Liam and I were firmly in Darius’s home, so it was no longer
just his.
It was ours.
In that time, Ally called to confirm that Jeffrey was indeed
hiding assets, not extorting them from the firm, and advised that was the last
she’d report to me about the situation. She was going to “take care of it,” and
she felt the less I knew, the better.
She said that, considering it was a high probability that
the only people who knew about it were me, Jeffrey and our network
administrator, who was the one who probably mislaid the file on my desk, I
should act like handing it over to Jeffrey was the last I’d thought about it.
Especially since his shit was soon to hit the fan.
I thought this was good advice, so I took it and asked her
to send me an invoice for her time.
“Chickie, Rock Chicks get my services for free,” was her
response before she hung up on me.
I wondered how often the Rock Chicks needed investigative
services, then decided I didn’t want to know.
Toni met with Tod and Stevie for martinis and wedding
discussion, and I let them have at it…for the preliminaries. I’d butt in as
soon as things heated up (that being, when Darius put a ring on my finger).
I was busy with work, catching up with my man, solidifying
my family, and picking and choosing from the whirlwind of invitations that
swirled around the Rock Chicks (we’d all had brunch this past Saturday, I’d
been to Daisy’s castle for a facial with Ava and Roxie (and it was a castle,
in the middle of Englewood, Colorado, for goodness sake, complete with moat),
we’d pimped ourselves out and gone to watch Tod perform (he was one of Denver’s
premier drag queens) the Saturday before (Lena getting initiated that night,
Toni was already there when I got there), and select Rock Chicks and Hot Bunch
were always at Liam’s games, even the away ones, with Indy and Lee, Jet and
Eddie coming to every one of them).
And in quiet times, in fits and starts, Darius shared with
me about his years away from us.
He did this like he was confessing, and I couldn’t say it
was fun to hear, nor could I say he shared it all, or ever would.
What I knew from how he told it was that, even if Shirleen
was always there, throughout that time, he felt very alone and very lost, and
the shame he carried was extreme.
However, he explained that shame was tempered by an epiphany
of redemption he felt when he’d saved Ally from certain dangers that, if she’d
survived them, would haunt her for the rest of her life.
He didn’t seem to realize he was on the periphery, helping
where he could, having the Rock Chicks’ backs through all their trials and
tribulations. Not to mention, he did, indeed, work with Eddie on keeping the
underbelly of Denver organized and controlled, weeding out “players” who didn’t
know the game and made things messy so people who didn’t choose that life
wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire. On top of that, he often worked on the
sly with Lee on jobs he was doing.
But it was Ally’s situation that he felt washed him clean.
Which meant he felt he was finally free to come to me.
I could see that. Lee was his brother, so Ally was his
sister. It didn’t happen, thank the Good Lord, but he was willing to sacrifice
his life for hers.
He almost did.
And she came away from it unscathed, while he had puckered
scars in the skin of both of his thighs, and jagged ones on the left side of
his head under his twists and up his right side.
These, I could tell, he carried like badges of pride. And
although I didn’t like them all that much (say, at all), for Darius,
they were the marks that signified the life he felt he had to live, but had
always hated, was a life that was no longer his.
He still carried some baggage from that, and as much as it
hurt my heart, he was that man, so he always would.
But when he’d saved Ally, the weight had grown a whole lot
less heavy.
As for me, I’d been to the grocery store only twice since I
moved in with Darius, and I didn’t carry the bags in from the car.
I paid my mortgage, but Darius switched the utilities at my
old house to his name (though he’d soon lose those expenditures when our
tenants moved in). He paid all the other bills and said we’d discuss it “later”
how I would contribute. And I knew the way he said this that “later” would
never happen. I also knew how important it was for him to take care of us, so I
determined to find my ways to spoil him (evening out our closet was part of
that), and I’d let him.
He also cooked most nights, but if I did, he helped, and so
did Liam (Liam also helped his dad, but Darius didn’t let me when he was
cooking, I could tell he got off on me sitting with them and drinking wine
while they provided for me, and I got off on it too). The same with doing the
dishes.
And he had a cleaning lady, so I no longer had to clean the
house.
He and Liam took care of raking the leaves in the yard one
Sunday while I stood in the window sipping tea and watched father and son
working side by side, doing something mundane and normal, feeling my fluffy
cloud of happy goodness shroud me.
I sometimes had to work late and loved the fact that I had a
family text string where I’d tap in that info and send it to my boys so they’d
know where I was and when I’d be home.
And Darius never said a word about me arriving an hour or
two after I normally did. He knew I loved my work. He also warned me that Lee
was keeping him on jobs where his work hours were normal so we could all settle
in. But eventually, his hours could be anything.
I encouraged him to tell Lee he could remove those barriers.
Because Darius also loved his job. And although it was very clear that team
would move mountains to give one member what he needed (because, from what I’d
heard, they’d done a lot of that in their time together), I got how Darius
didn’t want to be someone who would slack.
But the bottom line was, my life had changed significantly,
and it wasn’t just that I came home to a different house and slept every night
beside the man of my dreams.
It was because I’d discovered Mister Morris lived on in his
son. And the way Darius was guiding Liam, he’d live on in his grandson.
This meant I had time to bake my molasses cookies, just
because.
I had time to curl in the club chair in the study and read,
because I didn’t have groceries to buy or bathrooms to clean or bills to pay.
After a sweater of mine turned up four sizes smaller than it
used to be, I firmly set the boundaries around laundry. But I’d long since
taught Liam how to do his own. It was just Darius who needed to stay well away
from the laundry room. So that was my only big job.
I didn’t just have the family I always wanted. I had a
partner who more than shouldered his share of life’s burdens.
I was living the dream.
The only gray edge on the silver lining of the cloud I
resided in was the fact that I hadn’t found the time to share with Darius that