Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Bax
Sweetie drove me back to the house and dropped me off, and as I watched her drive away, my attraction to her slapped me across the face. It surprised me that I didn’t have a black eye after all the reality knockouts I’d had lately.
I’d thought admitting to myself that I was attracted to anyone would feel weird.
I hadn’t really felt it since Candy, or I thought I hadn’t, but now, fuzzy memories of the night I’d met Sweetie flashed in my head, her piercing green eyes, sexy smile, and big attitude like a wake-up call I didn’t ask for.
There was no denying I’d felt a pull to her when she parked in front of my house tonight and stepped out of her Chevy in tight jeans and an oversized sweatshirt.
I wanted her.
That in itself was some kind of revelation.
That I could want something again, other than time to move backward.
Athena got older and more independent every second of every day, and Candy and the baby became hazier and further away with every breath I took.
I was afraid that soon I wouldn’t be able to remember them at all.
But Sweetie was sexy in a different way than Candy had been.
Candy was my first and only love. I knew her body because we’d grown up learning each other together.
And she was the mother of my kid. To me, Candy’s body had been a holy shrine.
Even fourteen years later, I was still in awe of what it had been capable of.
Until it betrayed us all.
Sweetie tempted me in a completely different way, a more seductive way. Vaguely, I remembered feeling something similar when I first met her up in Sheridan, but grief had me trapped in its heavy haze back then. The gin had a pretty good hold on me that night too.
Seeing Sweetie again wasn’t the first sign that the haze had passed, but until tonight, I hadn’t wanted to admit it was true. What an odd thing, to know I’d been holding onto pain just because it was familiar. It kept me company. How messed up was that?
And what did it mean that I’d finally let some of it go?
Sweetie’s much smaller size made me feel protective of her.
Maybe it was just the possibility of grizzly bears “circling her cabin like hungry sharks in the sea.” She seemed not to realize she’d said it out loud.
It was cute, and hilarious, to hear the thoughts she meant to keep to herself, and it fought against the hard-ass persona she tried so hard to project.
But it was clear she didn’t want or need my protection. Or my company, which made it really inconvenient that, in some fucked-up way, her movements and the way her body seemed to ground her with every step she took only made me want her more.
Her confidence was sexy.
Her deep, dark brown hair and the way it fell down her back had my hands itching to touch, to caress and wrap around my fist. Her pink lips and the habit she had of rolling them together when she was thinking about what she wanted to say had me imagining how good it’d feel to slip my cock between them, for her to suck and roll those soft lips over my hardness.
I’d never had that particular urge with someone I didn’t even know. It felt a little dark, but exciting. And different.
As I hobbled through my kitchen to the living room, not even bothering to turn off lights as I went, I thought, different’s good .
Not like it mattered though. Sweetie had been clear that she was here to work. She wanted to be left alone.
And, like, what was I planning to do anyway?
If I had any notions of getting her in my bed, those flew out the window real quick when I realized Athena would be around, and I couldn’t even bend my knee.
How exactly did I think I’d take Sweetie if I had to rely on crutches to keep me standing upright?
I mean, if you really want her, you could get creative.
Whoa . My mind had gone straight to sex. That hadn’t happened in years.
It was good, though, that Sweetie seemed focused on her job and couldn’t have cared less about me, because being in a relationship with anyone, or even just having sex with someone, would feel like a betrayal.
I couldn’t do that to Candy. I wasn’t ready. Maybe I never would be.
Turning on the TV with the volume set low so I wouldn’t wake Athena, I fell onto my couch and flipped channels till I found a familiar motorcycle show with a bunch of gruff-looking guys in leather cuts fighting each other in a parking lot in California, and my mind began to drift.
My eyelids grew heavier as I imagined Sweetie bent over my kitchen table, her long hair tumbling over her naked back, ass at just the right height for me to pound into her from behind.
The eerie, thin consciousness of a dream settled around me.
I wasn’t sure when I’d fallen asleep, but static showed on my TV, which was how I knew with certainty I was dreaming because TVs didn’t show static anymore.
It wasn’t 1994. If the show had ended, the next episode would’ve played, or the TVs screensaver would’ve popped up from inactivity.
The static was loud, though, and I startled. My eyes popped open, and immediately I felt a presence. When I looked to my left, my dead wife was sitting next to me on the couch. I covered my mouth with my hand so Athena wouldn’t hear me scream.
“I’m not really here,” Candy said.
But the heartache and surprise seizing my breath rendered me speechless. And the guilt I felt for wanting someone other than my wife threatened to swallow me whole.
“It’s okay, Bax,” Candy said. “You’re just dreamin’. You know that.”
Trying to slow my racing pulse through force of will alone, I sat up. “Yeah, I know. Dead people don’t come back to life just to watch TV.”
“That’s not why I’m here,” Candy said, “but I mean, that Jax guy is hot.”
“Hey now.” I scoffed. She’d been gone three years but decided to haunt my dreams from the beyond just to lust after some other man?
Her tinkling laugh soothed the pit in my stomach I’d been feeling since she left me. I knew she was only a manifestation of my imagination or subconscious, but I was so relieved I hadn’t forgotten the sound.
“But there is a reason I’m here, Bax.”
“What is it?” I asked. “Is it Athena?”
Candy shook her head. She wasn’t pregnant anymore in my dreams. She looked like she had when we were eighteen and full of hope for our future, and I wanted to reach over to touch her, run my fingers through her hair like I used to, but I was too scared to feel the emptiness when she disappeared if I tried.
“Athena’s good,” she said. “She doesn’t dream about me anymore. Not like she used to.” Sadness crossed Candy’s face quickly, but then it disappeared. “She’s movin’ on as much as a young woman can from losin’ her mama.”
“Is the baby with you?” I whispered.
She didn’t answer, but she smiled softly, and I hoped the answer was yes. Every time she came to me in my dreams, I asked her, and she always smiled. Sometimes she’d nod. But she never actually said it. Not with words, but something told me he was safe wherever he was.
“I miss you both.”
God, she looked so real as tears filled her eyes, but abruptly she said, “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
She shook her head quickly. “Stop it.”
“Candy? Stop what?”
“Just stop,” she said, but this was the worst part of my dreams. She had already begun to fade away.
“Please stay,” I begged, but she had already gone.
All that remained was her quiet voice in my head. “Stop changin’ the channel. There’s a good show on.”
I felt hollow when she left, and just like every time she’d appeared to me, I wondered why she didn’t bring our son with her. Why wouldn’t she let me see him?
Athena’s shrieking voice ripped me right out of the fog. “Daddy! Stop that. You’re layin’ on the remote. It’s so loud!”
When I opened my eyes, squinting against the lights I hadn’t turned off last night, Athena stood in front of the couch in her koala pajamas with her hands pressed tightly over her ears.
I’d passed out with the TV remote in my lap, which was now under my butt, and it seemed my ass cheeks couldn’t hear the bikers on TV so they turned the volume up as loud as it would go, except now the SAMCRO guys were in a shootout with the Mayans, and it sounded like it was taking place in my living room.
“Shit, sorry.”
I pulled the remote out from my under my ass and turned off the TV just as there was a knock on the kitchen door.
Athena rolled her eyes at me. “I’ll get it.”
“Thanks, Road Trip. Sorry about the noise. What time is it?”
Over her shoulder, she called, “It’s not even five yet.”
Groaning, I fell back into the permanent indentation my lazy bones had recently made on my couch, but when I heard Athena opening the door, I remembered that the person knocking would probably be Sweetie looking for coffee.
I’d forgotten to set the machine on a timer.
Not thinking, I tried to jump up, but I touched my foot to the floor, and pain shot up through my right leg like a flash of furious lightning. I yelped and fell back on my ass.
“Shit!”
The patter of Athena’s slippers and a set of boots filled my ears.
“Daddy,” Athena said, “what in the world?—”
Sweetie’s low chuckle made me open my eyes. “Put too much pressure on that leg?”
I nodded. Damn . I’d fallen asleep before I brushed my teeth last night, and it had been two days since my last self-inflicted sponge bath.
“Don’t get up,” Sweetie said to me. To Athena, she asked, “What time do you need to leave for school?”
“Seven.”
“Do you need a ride?”
“No, Aunt Abey’s pickin’ me up.”
“Cool. We’ve got time then. Go upstairs,” she told Athena. “Do whatcha gotta do, shower, finish homework or whatever. I’ll start some coffee and see what y’all have for breakfast.”
Surprise washed across Athena’s face. Probably mine too.
“I usually make breakfast,” Athena said.
“Well”—Sweetie shrugged—“today you get the day off.”
“No, no,” I interrupted, “you don’t have to do that. I can?—”
Both women turned my way and broke out in giggles.