Chapter 2
LETHAL BEAVER
Heath Moriarty, aka a single dad who was already at the end of his rope
I’m not a let’s stay in bed and hide from the world all day kind of guy, but if I were and if I could, I would be today.
I woke up to my cat yowling after getting stuck in her cat door to the porch.
My six-year-old was kicked out of her summer camp program yesterday.
And now I’ve been sucker-punched by a woman who’s not supposed to be here.
Gonna have a black eye from this one.
She got me good.
Also, she’s a lefty.
And now I need to reattach the shower curtain rod while I’m here today.
I blink rapidly against the blurring and pain in my right eye as I block my daughter from seeing any more of what’s in here.
Today, my little agent of chaos is dressed like a cat, complete with whiskers that she drew on herself with a Sharpie while I wasn’t looking. “Lavender, can you please text Mabel?”
“No phones!” the naked woman in the tub shrieks. “Get out!”
She reaches for the shower curtain that’s fallen to the side of the tub, but her whole face pinches in pain as she gives a little gasp and arches her back, thrusting her breasts out, which she immediately tries to cover with her hands, but then she winces again.
Probably lumbar strain from the fall.
“I’m not—” I start, but she cuts me off again with a banshee impression.
“No phones! No internet! No cameras! No phones! Get out!”
“Okay. Okay.” I slip my daughter my phone. “Lav, text Mabel from the bedroom. Do not leave the bedroom.”
“Meow meow meow hissssssss,” she replies.
“Oh, shucks, I forgot my kitty translator.”
“We’re not supposed to walk in on people in the shower, Daddy.”
No shit, kid. “We didn’t know she was in here. Please go text Mabel.”
The woman rolls toward the shower wall with an audible gasp, bending her leg to cover her pubic region and throwing an arm over her breasts while she pants out a breath.
Her towel is sliding down her forehead.
Shit.
I turned off the house’s water supply since I know the shut-off valve at the toilet is broken. Supposed to replace that today too.
Bubbles are leaking from under the towel and down her neck and shoulders.
She’s gonna get soap in her eyes, and we’ll have one good eye between the two of us.
“Meow meow?” Lav says in the other room.
“Mabel doesn’t know she needs the kitty translator either.” I taught Lav to send voice messages over text before she learned to read, and it’s still easier for her than spelling long messages.
“Mabel, there’s a funny naked woman in the bathroom with Daddy and there’s a lot of screaming. Can you come?” Lav says.
I need several deep breaths.
And an ice pack.
And the luxury of being able to drown myself in hard liquor every once in a while without worrying about what my kid will get into next.
But since none of those are options, I briefly squeeze my eyes shut. The ladies here will know what she means, but we’re still working on some of our communication skills.
“Go away,” the woman in the tub says again.
Love to, lady.
I have my own injury to tend to, and I need to figure out what the hell I’m doing about summer care for Lav now that camp’s no longer an option.
But it’s not in my nature to walk away from someone injured.
So I grab the robe behind the door, drape it over this woman’s naked body, and channel the very last bits of patience that I have left with this day to focus my attention on the woman’s face.
She has round cheeks. Plump lips. I registered brown eyes in the split second before her fist connected with my eye socket.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
Say yes so I can leave.
“Go away,” she repeats, a tremor in her voice.
“You hit your head.”
“Done worse. Go away.”
“I spent ten years as an EMT. Promise, all I want to do is make sure we don’t need to call for more help.”
“You’re a hallucination.” Her eyes pinch tighter.
Lav’s voice drifts in from the bedroom again. “Meow meow me—Ginny, do you have a kitty translator so you can understand me? Daddy’s in the bathroom with a naked woman. Meow. Meow puuuuurrrrrrr.”
The good news?
That’ll get Ginny’s attention.
The bad news?
That’ll get Ginny’s attention.
My parents made patience look so easy.
I try—I do—and I managed it well in my EMT days, but I’m about to lose my shit right now. It takes a Herculean effort to keep my voice calm and steady. “I’m real, and I’d like for you to open your eyes, please.”
She doesn’t.
But I don’t miss the little bead of moisture that leaks out the corner of one of her eyes.
I’ve been here for over three years.
Keep to myself as much as I can—being the only dude at a commune of women who’ve gone viral for one thing or another presents a variety of challenges.
And fuck knows I leaned on Mabel so much in those first two years that I still feel like I’ll never repay her, especially since she’s given me the same thing she gives the women who rotate in and out of here while recovering from their five minutes of fame.
A safe place to recover.
And there’s been plenty to handle and recover from since Ava died.
“What’s your name?” I ask the woman while keeping half an ear open for Lav in the next room.
She snorts. “You’re the one person on earth who doesn’t know?”
“I’m Heath. Live in the manager’s quarters across the vineyard and fix things up when they break. Here to replace the toilet. It’s been leaking. I didn’t know you were here. Don’t know who you are. Don’t know why you went viral, but I’d like to help, please.”
She squints one eye open the barest amount.
I keep my eyes trained on her face while I lower into a squat in the midst of a pile of clothes and the broken shower curtain, holding my body loosely to communicate that I’m not a threat.
“Well, now you’ve seen everything the internet’s seen,” she grumbles.
Shit.
Nudity on the internet is about the worst that it gets for women who show up here.
“I don’t go online unless I need to research how to fix something or check messages from Lav’s teachers,” I tell her.
“Are you married? I was told this place is women-only.”
“My wife was Ava Benton. Heard of her?”
Her brows furrow in that way most people’s do when they hear a familiar name. “Maybe.”
“She had a popular social media channel on healthy living.”
“Oh, fuck,” she whispers.
Yeah.
She knows who Ava was.
That’s why I came here initially.
When my wife publicly announced she’d been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer at thirty-four, she became—well, what most women who arrive at this compound are when they get here.
Overwhelmed by and out of their element from the sheer volume of attention that they suddenly have from the world.
Usually negative attention.
In our case, we had a massive outpouring of support too, but even that became problematic when our supporters went to internet war with our haters.
All while Ava was dying.
“Mabel let Lavender and me stay on the property after Ava passed.” It’s not often I say the words out loud.
Mabel usually preps visitors for who I am and why I’m here before I meet them.
A lot of my scars have healed, but I still struggle with the looks I get for being a widowed dad.
“Lav’s pretty attached to the crew around here. ”
“I— I’m sorry,” she murmurs.
“Life does its thing. Now. You have a name?”
“Cricket. Cricket The Epic Failure. Full name. All caps.”
I did not have enough coffee for this today. Or sleep. Or alone time.
But I keep my tone even and patient while I reach for the flashlight in my bag of spilled tools. “Nice to meet you, Cricket. May I please check your head?”
She winces while I aim my flashlight in her eyes.
“Do you have to?” she says.
“Pupils look good. Follow my finger with just your eyes, please.”
I move my hand, watching her track my finger with big brown doe eyes under dark, feathered eyebrows.
Her lashes are thick, standing out against her pale skin.
“Good,” I murmur. “Can I feel your head?”
After the briefest hesitation, she lifts her head away from the tile wall.
I take that as implicit permission and slide my fingers into her wet, soapy hair, prodding her scalp beneath the towel as gently as I can to feel for any bumps.
“Ow!” she yelps.
“No immediate bump. How’s your neck feel? Any pain when you move it?”
She twists her neck this way and that, which can’t be easy with the towel still piled on her head, then shakes it no, then winces. “Only where I hit my head.”
She sounds like Lavender when I’m pulling out a splinter, sullen and cranky and unhappy about being kept from her own plans.
Speaking of my daughter—I glance into the bedroom as she meows a few more times. Her feet are sticking out from under the bed.
So she’s contained.
For the moment.
“Good,” I say to Cricket. “Sharp pain? Dull pain? Any vision problems?”
“Just that I can see you.”
“Can you sit up?”
“Not without flashing you again.”
“Seen it all before.” I have. Many, many, many times.
But my backstabbing brain decides now is the time to remember her round, perky breasts, and the notch of dark hair between her thighs, and the tattoo I couldn’t read scrolled beneath her ribs.
“I’m trying to show mine a little less right now,” she says.
The robe isn’t covering everything. Her legs are still sticking out, and she’s probably right that she’d flash me again if she moves.
So I shove off the tub and head to the bedroom.
“Finding monsters?” I murmur to my daughter.
“Meow.”
“Good. Scare them.”
“No, Daddy. That meant there’s furry bracelets and a dog bone under here.”
Furry bracelets and a dog bone.
Likely actually fuzzy handcuffs and a dildo.
And I know exactly who those would’ve come from, which is a mental image I did not need today. Or any day.
“What’s the rule?” I say to her.
“Puuuuuurrrrrrr.”
“Lavender.”
“We leave things where we find them if they’re not ours.”
“Exactly. Did Mabel or Ginny text back?”
She shows me the phone.
Mabel’s voice text shows as read.
Ginny’s does not.