Chapter 20
Twenty
Maverick
Holding my hand out to Mabel to help her up, I feel the electricity run through my hand at her touch as she takes my hand, pulling her back to her feet.
I watched from the sidelines as she helped her daughter attack my brother in a tickling session that he’d lost miserably. I find myself remembering all the time that we used to do that, with our parents and with each other.
Mabel lets go of my hand and I notice her top pulled up against her stomach and my eyes on impact dart to the area of her stomach, now on show.
Tiger strips line her stomach, and it reminds me of how powerful and beautiful a woman’s body is.
I’m hit with the thought of running my lips over them, lining each one with kisses and running my tongue across them, moving my body down lower to find the beginning of her pussy, worshipping her over and over again for bringing one life into this world.
The blood rushes down and my dick hardens automatically in my jeans. My eyes lock back onto Mabel’s face as she dusts herself down before the sheer look of panic sprawls across her face as she aggressively pulls her top down over the part of her stomach, that my dick’s now throbbing at.
My dick calms as I watch her pull her top down further than it should go before I realise what she is doing, and my face automatically softens. Women only do that when they hate something about themselves.
“Mabel, you don’t...” I start, leaning towards her to comfort her when I hear Jane shout from behind us.
“Hey, honey, could you give us a hand?” She calls from the porch. Mabels eyes look at her mom and then back at me.
I want to ask her to stay. I want to comfort her and make all the bad things go away. My heart aches at the thought.
“Sorry, duty calls.” She says before moving quickly beside me and up towards the porch where her mama and mine are standing.
Double fuck.
The sinking realisation that Mabel’s self-conscious of her stomach hits my heart with force. The girl I remember never cared about stuff like that, because she knew that no matter how she looked she was always beautiful to me.
As I watch her walk away, I rub my fingers alongside my hands, trying so hard not to reach out to her and pull her back, feeling the usual clamminess that happens just before a panic attack.
I take deep breathes to try and calm myself down at the anger that is boiling within me.
The anger is purely directed at myself; at the fact my girl doesn’t love herself anymore. I continue taking deep breaths in and out, trying to calm the panic attack, when I feel both my arms being lifted over two sets of shoulders.
“Hey, Mav,” Iris says, sneaking under my left arm. My vision goes back to normal looking down at the girls who have snuck under my arms, and I start to feel better.
“Someone’s a bit sweaty.” Hope winks at me, implying I’m hot because of a certain someone.
She isn’t wrong, just not for the reasons that she’s automatically thinking.
Lifting my head up from looking at the girls either side of me I catch sight of Mabel, up on the porch, laughing with her mama as she takes the coverings off the food that’s been lovingly prepared by her and her family; like they’d once done all the years that I spent here.
My memory flickers back to when I’d grab her by the waist and hide her around any corner that I was close to, stealing kisses any way that I could whilst she was busy helping host this mighty task every year.
Holding onto the girls that’d attached themselves to the side of me, steading myself from the panic attack that was about to hit me in front of the people who I left behind, I walk up the path alongside them, rubbing my fingers along the palms of my hands. Urging the pain in my chest away.
Looking up from the grass below me, I spot Luke standing alongside Colter, who’s nursing his glass of whiskey. “Glad to see you made it, Mav’,” Luke winks at me, raising his beer in a salute towards me.
I extend my arm from over Iris’s shoulder and hold it towards him which he takes with a firm hold, shaking it back and pulls me into an embrace, slapping his hand on my back.
“Missed too many of these.” I shift my stance. “I didn’t need to miss anymore,” I say as he pulls away from the embrace.
I see Colter’s teethy grin in the corner of my eye as I pull away from Luke. Gripping tighter onto my glass of whiskey, I finish off the final mouthful.
“Top up?” I asked my group of childhood best friends. “No, all good,” each one replies, holding up their full bottles and glasses. I nod at them before turning on my heels and heading straight to the porch where the drinks and food are being put out on display by my girl and our mom’s.
Climbing the steps to the porch, leaning one hand on the fence, I pull my face to look in Mabel’s direction. She’s on one knee, both hands on her daughters elbow’s, smiling deep into her eyes as she speaks before pulling her into an embrace and letting her go again.
Reaching the drinks table, Mabel stands up from the position on one knee that she was in. Her gaze meets mine and her eyes soften. Studying her even more, I can’t help myself but lose my breath at the beauty that’s standing in front of me.
It reminds me of all those nights she’d hold my hand, walking through the fields between my land and hers.
Back when I could walk over to her any time I wanted, hold her head and dip her body back into a deep, meaningful kiss, where our tongues would dance against each other in perfect harmony, her hair tangled up in-between my fingers as she lost herself in my touch.
“You good, bro?” I hear my brother say, snapping me back into today’s reality. Blinking back into the moment, I notice Mabel is gone from the spot that I drifted away from.
“All good,” I reply back to him, shaking my head and reaching for the bottle of whiskey.
Jake leans into me, bumping his hip with mine and giving me another one of his famous shit-eating grins. “Good.” He nods back at me with his one-word response before turning his attention back to the little girl holding onto his leg for dear life.
“Hi, Mr Maverick,” Ellie gets out, gripping onto my brothers leg tighter as he places his arm around her shoulders.
“Hi, Ellie,” I smile down at her, tightening the cap on the bottle after pouring my poison into the glass. “You’re looking beautiful today,” I smile down at her, and I watch her cheeks turn the brightest shade of pink.
Ellie covers her embarrassed face in my brothers leg even more than she was before I decided to give her such a simple compliment.
My brother looks at me with admiration written over his face before turning his attention back to her. “So, baby girl, heard you met my brother.” Jake holds his grip around her shoulders; eyes still locked on my face never moving them from his gaze.
“Sure have, Uncle Jake!” she squeals out, looking up at my brothers face, releasing herself from her own tight grip around his leg, cheeks still glowing.
I watch my brother, in awe at the man he’s become right before my eyes with this little girl, who anyone could see that captures his world.
"And, what ya’ think?” He asks, looking down at her.
Ellie turns her eye line away from my brother and slightly releases her grip against his leg before turning her gaze and locking her eyes on mine. I’m already looking down at her, smirking at her with amusement ready for her answer.
I watch Ellie’s eyes flicker up and down me before answering him. “Well...” she starts, nervousness in her voice. “He looks a lot like you,” she says, before regaining her grip on his leg.
I let out a laugh at the same time as my brother.
She’s not wrong. However, she’s got it the wrong way around; it’s Jake that looks a lot like me, not the other way round.
Ellie’s eyes stay on my brother, looking at him with the sparkle in her eye; the same one her mama had all those years ago.
“Did you bring your guitar?” she asks sheepishly at my brother. Jake looks down at her and then takes to one knee in front of her, causing Ellie to let go.
“You know I have, girlie.” My brother looks at her with admiration, ruffling her hair as he answered.
“Can you sing, Mr Maverick?” Ellie asks, looking up at me where I stand. Jake snorts at the question which makes my mouth curl upwards.
“I don’t know, Ellie...” I start, taking a sip of my drink. “I guess you’ll have to find out.” I wink down at her and Jake laughs, running a hand through his hair as he stands back to his normal height.
Ellie regains her ability to cling to my brothers thigh before noticing the girls standing in the place that I’d just left them.
“Aunties!” She screams before letting go of my brother and running straight in the direction of Hope and Iris, who have their arms outstretched awaiting the embrace. Jake snickers from the spot he stays in before taking a sip of his beer.
“She’s something, isn’t she?” He sighs, primarily to himself but also to me.
“She certainly is.” I agree with him, shifting myself awkwardly.
I see my brother in the corner of my eye as I watch Ellie jump into Hope and Iris’s arms as Luke ruffles her hair before dropping onto one knee, holding open his arms for an embrace.
“What?” I give my brother a side eye, letting out the breath I was unintentionally holding.
“Nothing,” he says, lips lifting up towards his right eye before bringing his drink to his lips.
I slant my brows at him, looking confused at what he was thinking at this moment. He’s not letting on to whatever it could be as he just grins back at me.
Letting out a scoff, I give up on the conversation and leave him to his thought process.
Mabel comes back into my eye line as she bends over the table, removing the last food coverings.
My eyes divert to her full ass and how well it looks in the denim shorts she’s decided to wear for today’s events; I bite my lower lip in some efforts to restrain the growl I can feel bubbling inside of me.
Wyatt comes into view with my dad trailing along behind him carrying trays of different types of meat. Steak, ribs and brisket fills the air with its aroma and my mouth waters at the scent.
“Grubs up y’all,” Wyatt says as he places a tray down then wraps his arm around his daughter, placing a kiss against her cheek,
I hang back, as I watch everyone at the party line up to dish up their own plates of delicious buffet styled food, only moving from my spot to fill up my glass of whiskey once I empty it.
Feeling satisfied when the queue goes quiet, I move towards the end of the line, leaning into the tower of plates, going to take one when I feel a small hand brush against mine.
I look down to find Ellie by my side and my eyes soften. I hand my plate to her and smile.
“Thank you, Mr Maverick.” She smiles sweetly at me.
“No trouble, Ellie, do you need some help?” I offer, without thinking about what I’m doing before offering up my services. Ellie blushes at my offer but doesn’t reply.
“Where’s your Mama?” I ask her, whilst looking around for Mabel in the small crowd of people. “Uh... I’m not sure,” Ellie replies, as she looks around for her mama.
“Here, let me help you. What would you like?” I divert my eyes back to the bowls of food.
Ellie takes her time when picking out food for me to scrape onto her plate, becoming less shy with me as she confidently tells me about her horse and I return the favour by telling her about my girl, Storm.
Deciding she’s got enough food on her plate, she offers for me to come and sit next to her once I get my own plate of food which I accept with a whole heartedness I haven’t felt in a long time.
Taking a seat next to her, Ellie rambles on about her interests, not letting me get a word in edgeways but I don’t mind, I’m hanging on every word this nine-year-old says to me.
Before I know it, both me and Ellie finish our plates but neither of us make a move to get up and walk away.
Still incredibly involved in our conversation, I’m learning so much about this little girl who upon impact I know that I could lose another part of my heart too, not only because she’s Mabel’s, but because she’s utterly adorable.
I see why everyone looks at her like she hung the moon in their worlds and how this tiny girl openly is letting me in and wants to get to know me. Even though she has no clue what I’d done to her favourite people, or that I’d broken her mama’s heart.
“You okay, baby?” My head snaps up in the direction of my own mom, who’s taking a seat next to Ellie, pulling her into a tight embrace. Unsure of whether my mom is talking to me, or Ellie I hang back on my response.
“All good, Nanna Kay,” Ellie responds, holding tightly onto my mama.
“Nanna Kay?” I question; eyebrows raising at my mom with a huge grin on my face at the name. My mom slaps my arm with the back of her hand.
“Yes, Maverick! Jane is Mamaw – and I am Nanna Kay,” she says with such offense that I can only but grin in her direction before tossing back my glass of whiskey down my throat.
My mom continues to hold onto Ellie, whilst Ellie recites our whole conversation to her, my mom giving me subtle looks during, like she thinks she knows something.
I decide that I should get another drink and try and socialise with other people in the group instead of my girls daughter.
“Ladies,” I say, tilting my hat down to them before making an escape towards the liquor table and pouring myself yet another needed drink.
Looking back towards the direction of Ellie, who’s happily telling my mom a story that she had already told me; I avert my gaze back out towards the others who are surrounding us.
I start to wonder two things at the sight that greets me with my nearest and most dear.
Who on earth is her daddy?
And where in the hell is he?