9. Rick
Chapter nine
Rick
I ’m an impossible idiot. Impossible because I didn’t think it was a thing for me to break down and say all the shit I said out loud at the park. It was a slip-up, a spill, but then it kept spilling. It was like the crap bottled up inside me could no longer be contained. It just flowed and flowed and flowed, which makes me a royal numbskull. A total toad. A fried-up fart.
I’ve been thinking about it all night.
After I made sure Aspen got to bed, I listened from my office down the hall. Not in a creepy way, but just to make sure she was okay. The park was heavy . I wanted to make sure what I’d said didn’t give her nightmares. I wanted to make sure she didn’t cry herself to sleep thinking about her brother. She didn’t.
Despite the caffeine, she settled right in, and within moments, she was asleep.
I kept listening. I kept watch. I sat in my office for the remainder of the night and made lists of charities and places where I could donate the remaining artwork and then the larger furniture pieces. I was serious about that. Everything. I wanted everything out.
I made lists and more lists and researched until my eyes felt like they were going to fall out from staring at a phone screen and my laptop screen in the dark. Then, I sat some more with my head tucked into my hands, staring at the desktop, staring at my knees, seeing nothing at all.
I thought about family.
That word. It always meant less than nothing.
It was something I never had. Something I was never going to have. The only family I had was the one I’d been adopted into when I joined the military and then when I went further. Jace was family because he was like a brother. They were all like my brothers.
We didn’t talk about it much, but Jace knew how broken I was. He knew the basics of me because he pulled it out of me, night after night, week after week, year after year. Maybe it was only a word here or there, a memory shared over cards, or something whispered when we were crouched down in the dark, thinking we might not get out of the shit we were in alive. We shared the good and the bad, and in the end, he knew enough about me to have a timeline and the facts of my life pretty straight in his head. I knew about his life too. That’s how he’d get me. By being more open than a body ever possibly could or should be. He wasn’t like anyone else, and maybe that’s why I felt safe enough to let him coax and extract information from me. He was always gentle. He would have never used it to hurt me.
And now?
He tried to give me the one thing I never had.
Someone.
Someone who cares.
Aspen is trying so hard. She’s trying because Jace asked her to. I know even after she leaves, that won’t be the end of it. She’ll keep trying and trying, and fuck, she shouldn’t have to. This isn’t fair to her. It’s not fair that someone like me got dumped on someone like her. When she saved me, hauling me over the railing with every ounce of brute strength in her body, and in the park, when she refused to let me be, trying to save me all over again, she proved she’s more than just pretty and sweet, innocent and young. There’s something under all of it that I didn’t see at first. She’s strong like Jace was strong, even if they were born more than a decade apart and took totally different paths in life.
I’ve been all over the place all night, my brain rapid fire firing off endless shit in every which way. It’s not cool. It’s not fun. If I could shut it down, I would.
Sleep. Yeah, that’s not going to happen.
I’m still sitting here as the sky slowly lightened. And then past that. I’m still sitting here when I hear Aspen get up, hear the shower crank on, and hear her soft footsteps going downstairs. I’m still sitting here, listening as she hums downstairs in the kitchen. She’s making breakfast, and she’s going to try and feed me.
Shower.
I need a shower and a fresh set of clothes. I need to convince her that I’m fine, even if I only look like it, and the rest of me is my usual grumpy grunts.
I do both, and by the time I’m done, I almost look human. I spin around in the mirror and check for bruising on my ass. There aren’t any marks. No fingerprints on my butt cheeks and nothing across my stomach, where I slammed against the railing.
I tug my jeans on and pull my shirt down.
On the stairs, I nearly run straight into Aspen. She smiles up at me like she’s just swallowed the sun, and it’s emitting straight out of her body. I’ve never seen anyone look that good at any time of day. Her eyes are so soft and blue. And the rest of her is equally soft. Golden. Shiny. Beautiful . She smells like honey and fried bananas.
“Oh! I was just coming to get you. Breakfast is ready.”
In the kitchen, I find that I’m hungry, which is a surprise and a mystery every time it happens. The past years of my life didn’t include regular meals, and they were always very industrial. No, that’s not right. We didn’t eat nuts and bolts. They were just meant to fill a void and give enough nutrition. Sometimes, they were good, but they never smelled like this.
“I made crepes.” There’s that glowing sunshine smile again.
She passes me a plate with at least eight rolled-up crepes topped with real whipped cream that she made fresh, fried bananas, a drizzle of melted chocolate sauce, and ribbons of maple syrup. My stomach growls, the acids tingling long after the noise it makes.
We sit down at the table that I can’t wait to get rid of. It’s modern and angular, and the chairs are made of chrome. They’re industrial . I’d rather eat off the floor.
I wolf two crepes down, which I basically inhale without being able to stop myself because they’re undeniably a mouth orgasm if I’ve ever had a mouth orgasm before. And I haven’t, at least not until I met Aspen, which sounds straight-up wrong, so I need to think of another word. The word delicious does her food no justice.
“I want you to tell me about Jace,” she suddenly says.
I swallow half of the third crepe completely wrong but get it down without choking or coughing. I didn’t make coffee, so now I don’t have a drink. I force myself to breathe shallowly, sucking in air so I can keep my regular neutral expression in place.
“You know about your brother,” I reply.
“I know you can’t tell me much, but…” She shifts, crossing her legs.
Today, she has on black leggings and a T-shirt that looks vintage with an old rat rod car on the front made crinkly by age and washing. I don’t notice anything about her clothes, the way they fit, or how she somehow makes wearing a T-shirt look like an art form. I don’t notice her curves or anything else. I don’t because I force myself not to. It clearly doesn’t even register in my brain. Yeah. Clearly .
“Can you tell me the things you are allowed to talk about?” she adds.
Nope. I’m not going to fall into the trap of those blue eyes getting all liquid and huge and imploring me. I’m not going to get sucked in. I’m not.
“Like what?”
Fuck .
“Like what you guys did in your downtime. You had to have fun sometimes when you weren’t always working. Or was life just constantly shitty and dangerous? Did you ever go to a place you liked? A country? Did you laugh together?” She smears a chunk of banana in chocolate and puts it in her mouth. Slowly.
For the love of bananas, I’m rock hard under the table from watching her eat, and then her tongue sweeps out and gathers a smear of chocolate off her bottom lip.
“Yeah, we laughed. Your brother was a good poker player. He always looked so soft and nice, and he never seemed to take it seriously, but then bam! He could bluff the pants off anyone, and when he needed a decent hand, he always got one. We did that sometimes in our downtime.” The way her glow gets brighter and her eyes get shinier makes me want to keep going. It makes me want to pull out more. More memories we can share together. Things she doesn’t know about.
It’s not me. Clearly.
Because I lift up my Henley. My whole closet consists of black jeans and black Henleys, black socks and black boxers, and black boots of different weights and sturdiness. It makes getting dressed easy. Laundry is easy. I’m not the kind of guy who needs a suit. I will never need a suit. I’m already married—ha freaking ha—and they can bury me in this get-up if they have to. Why deviate when black is a great color, one style of jeans is as good as the next, and a Henley is pretty much the softest, most comfortable invention known to shirtkind?
I brush my fingers over the puckered scar on my side. Aspen doesn’t gasp, but she does bite down hard on her bottom lip. Her fingers thrum against the table like she wants to reach out and trace the same path my fingers just took. Her cheeks flush, and I quickly lower my shirt. That was not the reaction I expected. She wasn’t horrified. Instead, she looks…well, whatever it is, I have to look away because my body is reacting to how she looks.
“I was unlucky one night and caught the business end of a knife.” The use of the word knife would imply something small, but it was more the size of a sword. “We were far from any medical base or anything that passed as a hospital. Jace was the one who sterilized me, stitched me up, and bandaged it all together. Without him, I probably would have bled out. It’s hard to close up a wound like that on your own.” I hadn’t passed out, and I still have very distinct memories of holding my torn flesh together while Jace sewed with steady hands.
“Jace received amazing marks in his home economics class. They had to design their own article of clothing and sew it, but he used his mom’s machine. She still has the dress he made her. She wore it a few times because he always got a kick out of it, but now, I’m sure she doesn’t. It’s too special. She wouldn’t want to wreck it,” Aspen says.
“We were taught more than basic first aid.”
“Right, yeah.”
“Although, he had the steadiest hands I’ve ever seen. Doing everything,” I tell her.
“He was a good cook too. Did you know that?”
“He liked to talk about cooking. Desserts, especially. He’d list off these crazy things I’d never even heard of.” Most nights, he did it when we were hungry and aching and cramped from holding our position. Starving but trying to ignore it. It was torture, the way he’d go into detail about that stuff, but no one ever asked him to stop.
“Did you ever jump out of a plane together?” Aspen asks.
“Aspen!” I pick up my fork again. I never let food go to waste. Not because I starved when I was a kid—the boarding schools I went to were strict and lonely, but they always fed us and never applied physical punishments or anything like that—but because it’s just not in my nature. Especially not after years of rudimentary, tasteless food.
“Well?” She wiggles her eyebrows. “Did you?”
“You know we did,” I mutter.
“I don’t know. Jace never said. I can only assume. Did you ever have to fly a plane?”
“No.”
“Did he?” she probes.
“No.”
“How close are all those movies and video games to—”
“This conversation has to be over,” I say levelly, without heat or anger. I’m not trying to be mean or to hurt her.
She accepts that by waving around another chunk of banana on her fork. “Okay, Patrick McDonald. Okay.”
I grind my teeth. I’m way too well trained to rise to anything, but I’ve gone a while without sleep, and I’m so exhausted , whether I want to admit it or not. It’s going to have to happen sooner or later, and it’s going to be more than just a quick nap. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to remember that I’m safe here, or at least relatively safe. The house has security. The neighborhood does too. No one is going to bust down my door with guns in hand. Nothing is going to land on the house and obliterate it.
“Okay, Mrs . McDonald . Okay.”
Aspen’s eyes burst into wide spheres, and she drops her fork. “Not funny,” she grumbles, picking it up quickly. “I might have married you, but I’m keeping my maiden name. Even if I am double tree named.”
God, she’s a good sport. She’s not afraid to smile at me and really mean it. I’m not entirely convinced she’s afraid of anything except me being too hard on myself. She didn’t like what I said last night. She looked like she wanted to prove to me that my soul wasn’t black and dirty. And if it were damned, she’d swim down into the underworld, fish it out, and give it a good long bubble bath before stitching it back into me and paddling me to get my heart going again.
I shouldn’t picture her that way. I shouldn’t be thinking about her in any way other than shutting her out and counting down the days until she leaves.
“When we divorce, I’ll make sure you get a good chunk of my assets. It’s only fair.”
Her smile fades like she can’t tell if I’m joking or not. “I don’t need that, Rick,” she whispers. “I don’t need your stuff or your money.”
“I’m going to take care of you,” I insist. “You and your family. I have lots of money. Let me do it.”
“We’ve talked about this. That’s not how I want to be taken care of. Money doesn’t make anyone happy. Obviously. Everyone says so.”
“But it can make a lot of things easier and better.”
“I had a job. And I do have a degree. I mean…well, it might not be what I truly wanted to do, but I had to do something, and business was as good as anything.”
“What did you truly want to do?”
“Play with kittens and puppies all day, write stories, sing songs, open a vintage store, antiquing, paint, travel the world, sell fancy real estate. Have my own vineyard. Garden. Maybe farm a little too. Rescue possums and porcupines because they’re just so darn cute, open a greenhouse that only sells cactuses, crochet super cute and strange little alien creatures and then sell them at craft shows, volunteer with senior citizens, plant trees, build houses, protest, make a difference, and help people.”
“I’m serious.”
She laughs. Her fork gets set down on the side of her plate. “Me too. I don’t really know what I want to do. I want to do everything, but I know I can’t just bounce around from job to job. I’m all over the place pretty often. I like to do lots of things. I like to be busy. I feel a little contained here, and I want to see everything and try everything. I live in reality, but my dreams? That’s different. I’m not like Jace that way. I know you’re thinking that.”
“I’m not.” I scowl because, honestly, I am, and I don’t like how easily she can read me.
“Jace was seriously dedicated. He joined the military when he was still seventeen, as soon as he could. He always knew what he wanted to do. But I’m not that way. I never knew what I wanted. I’ll probably still not know when I’m ninety. Is that wrong?”
I don’t know what I want either, so thank goodness she doesn’t ask me. This morning I’m lacking the usual bracing steel I layer myself in. For the past eighteen months, I’ve done nothing but ghost around here. I’m a soldier with nothing and no one to fight. Yesterday, Aspen said I wasn’t a weapon, but she was wrong. I’m still a weapon. I’m always going to be a weapon. I’m just sitting here, waiting to be used, and if I’m not used, then what am I good for?
I grunt rudely. We need a little distance between us. I need the distance. Aspen was far too close last night. That can’t happen again. And I’m still hard under the table, which also can’t happen. It shouldn’t be happening right now. Fuck.
Aspen snorts, ignoring me. “What does that mean? You’ll have to help me. I don’t speak fluent caveman.”
I’m not going to smile. I’m not. It’s not even funny.
“I’m going to clear out the rest of the furniture from the house today.” I cram three crepes into my mouth in rapid succession, chew, and then swallow. They’re still amazing, even when I’m trying not to taste them.
“Oh. That should help you sleep. Not having a bed.”
She knows. Damn it, she knows I didn’t go to bed last night. Her eyes blaze with something I can’t decode, and she looks at me like worrying about me is more than her job. Like it’s more than something that’s been forced on her.
“I’ll get a new one,” I say.
She studies me like she doesn’t believe me, but she’s more like Jace in just looks than I thought because she grunts right back at me. “Okay, Patrick McDonald. I believe you.”