20. April 13, 2023 #2
He repeated the hitch and push he’d been using. “You mean that? Those are surfer moves, fireball.”
She wrinkled her nose and squinted at him. “All you do is jump up and stand on a board. It’s all about balance.”
“And part of balance is hip movement. I’m not standing still out there, you know. My hips help me redistribute my weight so I stay upright. They help me steer the board. My moves are pretty slick.”
With a snort, she pushed at him, this time rolling him over easily and sliding herself out of the bed.
As she rounded the corner, his chuckle caused her to pause at the foot.
She looked back at him. He’d pushed himself to a sitting position, a pillow tucked between his lower back and the padded headboard of the bed, one arm thrown up over his head, resting bent atop it.
His fingers absently played with the decorative buttons on the padding as he stared at her.
The other hand rested loosely in his lap, where the thick, gray comforter bunched around his waist. Damn, if he didn’t look like he’d just spent the night giving some woman the time of her life.
“No bullshit, Cherry.” He winked. “But… I bet I could rock a male strip show if I had to. Want to find one and see?”
Shaking her head with laughter, she muttered, “Oh, Mary Magdalene…” Yeah. That image was both funny and swoony at the sa me time. “Far be it from me to bust your Magic Mike moves, but I think we can keep that off the honeymoon list.”
He shrugged. “Your loss.” The teasing smile remained on his face for a moment, but as the moment stretched between them, it slowly faded. “Why do you use religious phrases when you curse?”
“Huh?”
“You always use religious references when you curse. Isn’t that actually worse with people than actual swearing?”
She wondered how to answer the question. No one had asked her about it before, and religion was often a touchy subject for people. She knew her methods of cursing bothered some people, but she didn’t let it bother her. “It’s…”
He said nothing. He simply lowered his arm to his lap and waited.
“It’s related to my mom.” All of her energy drained out of her, as it usually did when thinking about her mother.
Sharing this with him would be more than she’d ever shared with anyone about her mother’s passing.
“My mother died when I was six. She developed an aggressive form of lung cancer. Dad said smoking was her one bad habit, and she gave it up when she got pregnant with me, but apparently, that didn’t matter in the long run. ”
She sat back down on the bed, twisting her fingers in her lap.
“At the end, she’d been in the hospital for two days when suddenly she just…
I don’t know how to describe it. It was like she became a zombie.
There was no recognition that people were in the room.
She obviously didn’t eat or drink because she was unconscious.
The situation forced my father to decide whether to take her off life support.
“I’m sure he struggled with the decision.
He wouldn’t have wanted to give up, but he also knew she wouldn’t have wanted us to see her like that, and I guess her living will said that after three days, she wanted to be released, so…
that’s what he did. He took me to see her one last time, and I had to say goodbye to this shell of a woman.
I still remember how scary it was. How awful.
Her eyes were halfway open, but they had rolled up into her eye sockets so that all you could se e was the white portion.
It was like those creepy Annie comic strips.
“She was taking these overexaggerated breaths, probably because the machines were breathing for her, but back then, I just knew what was lying in that bed was no longer my mom. Dad did, too, so he took me home and then went back to the hospital to be with her when they shut the machines off.”
A tear fell. Even all these years later, the pain was still there, just as harsh as it had been when she was a child.
She recognized that she never talked about it after that; it was probably why the pain was still so raw.
But instinctively, she’d known how hard it had been for her father to take, and she didn’t want to bring him more pain over it.
The only time he’d ever mentioned her was on her graduation day, which, looking back, seemed terribly prophetic.
“I was so angry,” she admitted. “My mother was a religious woman, but not obsessively. We went to church on the bigger holidays. For weddings and funerals. My family expected me to take my First Communion and be confirmed, and as a child, I never questioned it. It was just what we did.
“But even at six, I understood the difference between good and evil, and I couldn’t understand why God was punishing her when there were so many bad people in the world. Abusers. Murderers. Rapists. Terrorists. My mother was good. She wasn’t like those bad people,” she whispered.
Wiping away another tear, she sat up straight, steeling herself against what she perceived as weakness.
Mourning wasn’t productive. “My father and I continued going to church after she died. I went without complaint. Again, I didn’t want to make him upset over it.
But I lost my faith the day she died, and I guess the cursing habit became my way of getting back at the entity that took my mom from me.
I just never stopped, and it’s become so ingrained, I don’t even think about it. ”
He brushed back her hair and kissed her shoulder.
At some point, he’d slid behind her to comfort her.
“Thank you for sharing something so personal with me. That couldn’t have been easy.
By all rights, you could have told me to feck off for asking and ignored me.
Instead, you trusted me with something I’m pretty sure no one else knows.
” He reached to grasp her chin and turned it toward him.
“I’m sorry, a chuisle . I know it was long ago, but no child should be left without a parent. Especially a good one.”
Without thinking, she reached across her body and laid a hand on his cheek. “Thank you.”
Eyes connected, they sat in the quiet, the soft sounds of the staff walking up and down the halls, putting the final touches on the rooms, the occasional instruction or comment being exchanged between them. The moment ended when a door slammed too hard.
Cherry shook herself, finally remembering his mission last night. “What happened last night? Any news or theatrics?”
“Only theatrics were the thirty minutes I spent being circled by hungry sharks a mile offshore.”
The hand she’d had on his cheek punched him in the shoulder.
He smirked. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist. As for news, I shared with them what you and I saw last night.
They’re going to have Midas look into Howard and the other guy I saw.
Steel was going to talk to Waters about doing a little breaking and entering to get ears in that meeting today.
No idea if he approved that. They said it was too risky for me to try.
Depending on what happens today on the excursion, we’ll try to meet with them tomorrow to see what Midas digs up.
In the meantime, we’re going to keep our eyes open and see if we find any additional S buttons. ”
She nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” Standing, she turned to face him directly. “Thank you. For listening about my mom.”
He rose from the bed as fluidly as if he were rising from the water like Poseidon.
He showed absolutely no self-consciousness about standing in front of her in his form-fitting boxers, the skeleton bunny on the waistband.
And why should he? He was freaking perfect.
He had the lean build of a powerful swimmer.
His abdominal muscles were ridiculous, and his waist tapered to those V-shaped hips that women always went so stupid over.
She was in danger of losing more than a few IQ points herself.
Brushing her hair back from her forehead and behind her shoulders, the smile he gave her caused her to lose a few more brain cells.
On the rare occasions he did smile, it was more of a smirk or even derision.
But this smile? She’d never seen one so soft, so gentle.
It made his sharp features even more gorgeous. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?” he asked.
“Stop being so beautiful.”
One eyebrow went up, but the heartfelt smile stayed on his face. “You think I’m beautiful, fireball?” He shook his head. “You should see my view. Now that’s beautiful.”
With that oxygen-sucking comment, he gently turned her and gave her ass a gentle slap. “Go. Get even more gorgeous for the trip today. I’m going to call Rayon and order us some breakfast on our patio.”
She swallowed tightly, nodded, and began the walk to the bathroom. His voice rang out again. “And, fireball?”
She turned in profile and looked over her shoulder.
“You may not realize it, but I’m always listening. And paying attention, even when you’re not speaking.”
Afraid to respond, even with a nod, she turned and fled into the bathroom.
Holy Moses!