Page 27 of Malibu Rising

Afterward, as he smoothed his hair and prepared to leave the bathroom, Carol fixed her skirt and made herself presentable. Then she said, “I’m pregnant. It’s yours.”

He looked up at her, hoping she was joking. It was clear she wasn’t. And before Mick could say anything, she left him there alone.

He closed his eyes and then opened them up to see his slack-jawed face staring back at him in the mirror.You fucking idiot.In an instant, he punched his own reflection, shattering the glass and cutting his hand open.

He did not see Carol again after that night. He’d sent her money but stopped calling her, forced himself to stop thinking of her, and he had not bedded another woman since then.

Now here he was, nearly a year later, barricaded from his own house. But he’d known from the very moment he punched the mirror that this was looming. Maybe he’d known long before that, too. Maybe he’d always known he couldn’t escape himself.

• • •

“Junie, I’m so sorry,” Mick said, starting to cry. It was so unbearable, to hate yourself the way he hated himself just then. “I tried to do the right thing, I swear.”

June refused to be moved by the weak sound of his voice.

It was not difficult for her to maintain her anger, but whenever she feared she might falter, she would think of herself being pregnant and retroactively change the memory, shading it with the knowledge that there had been another woman nearby, carrying another one of her husband’s children, almost as far along as she. How sad to not be the only one carrying your husband’s child at that very moment. It seemed to June that privilege was the very least you could ask of a man.

“I was weak,” Mick said, pleading with her. “It was a moment of weakness. I just couldn’t stop myself. But I am stronger now.”

“I don’t want you here,” June said, undeterred. “I don’t want you around these kids. I’d hate for these boys to grow up to be anything like you.”

She’d said “boys.” Notboy.Boys.

“Sweetheart,” Mick said. He saw it now. The way he could convince her to let him fix everything for all of them. “I’m Hudson’s father. If you want him, you have to take me, too.”

June and Mick were silent for a while after this, June unsure what to do. Mick waited with bated breath. There was no way she was going to allow a baby to be handed over to Mick. He didn’t even know how to change a diaper. That baby needed June. That boy needed a mother. They both knew that.

June opened the door. Mick fell into the house.

“Thank you,” he said, as if she had granted him clemency. “I will make this up to you. I will do right by you every moment from this day forward.”

At just that moment, Mick looked up to see that Nina had woken and found them there.

“Hi, honey,” he said to her.

From the bedroom, Jay and Hud started crying at the same time. June scooped up Nina and went to tend to her babies. Mick peeked over her shoulder, looking at the newborn son he was meeting for the first time.

June was unable to bear it, witnessing Mick’s connection to this child. She swatted him away and he backed off.

When she was done with the children, she went to the bedroom and saw that Mick had lain down on the far edge of the bed, as if the left side of it was still his.

“Junie, I love you,” he said.

She said nothing in return.

But as June looked at him, she felt fatigue take her down. He was not going to make it easy on her. He wasn’t going to leave of his own will. He was going to make her scream it and shout it and force him to go. She was going to have to rage against him and even then, she might not win.

Anger extracts such a toll and suddenly, June was so tired. She sighed, giving her body over to her breath. She could not fight him now because she could not fight him now and win.

And so, she lay down next to him, saving her indignation for daylight, when she could think straight. All of this would still be there to fight in the morning.

But in the morning, her anger had lost its edges. It had morphed into sorrow. She was now overtaken by the dull ache of grief, expansive and tender like a whole-body bruise. She had lost the life she had believed she’d been granted. She was in mourning.

So when Mick turned over and put his arm around her, she could not summon the energy to shrug it off.

“I promise you all of that is over,” Mick whispered, tears forming in his eyes. “I will never do anything to hurt you again. I love you, Junie. With all of my heart. I’m so sorry.”

And because June had not shrugged off his arm, Mick felt confident enough to kiss her neck. And because she had not shrugged off the small request, she did not know how to shrug off the larger one. And on and on it went. Small boundaries broken, snapped like tiny twigs, so many that June barely noticed he was coming for the whole tree.

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