Page 39 of CowSex
His head is resting on the back of the sofa, but his face is turned in my direction, his eyes dancing over my features. I position my head the same and watch him watching me.
“You’ll need another drink for this one, Essex.”
“Top me up then, Cowboy.”
“Oh, I plan to.” I lick my lips at the prospect, only too aware that boundaries are being pushed.
He scoops the last of the remaining ice out of the glass that’s been sitting on the coffee table and drops it into mine. My eyes are locked onto the way his fingers curl around what’s left of each cube, the way he straightens them, allowing them to fall into my glass. I hold my breath as he lifts each finger to his mouth, slides it in, and sucks it dry. I have to make a conscious effort to keep my toes nice and straight inside my UGGs as I observe all of this.
He tops up both of our glasses with bourbon, which, I note, in the firelight is almost the exact same colour as his eyes.
I release my held breath slowly as he hands me my glass, but I don’t make eye contact with him. My toes aren’t in fact, double jointed, and I’m afraid I might snap my bones if they react the way I fear they might if I look into those amber pools of his.
“Kai was born the night before my nineteenth birthday.” He starts talking while settling himself back on the sofa. “The instant I held him in my arms for the first time I knew that no matter whether I was eighteen, nineteen, or ninety-nine, I’d lay down my life for him.”
He gets up and places another couple of logs on the fire. Once he’s seated again, he continues. “Things between Danielle and me, they weren’t the best. We had no clue what we were doing, I worked long hours during the week and was out playing in the band most Friday and Saturday nights, so she was on her own a lot. I felt bad for that, but we needed the money.”
“That’s understandable.”
“Not to her. She seemed to be under the impression that I liked being away from home so much, which couldn’t be further from the truth. All I wanted was to be at home with my son, but that wasn’t an option. We needed the money, so I kept working.
“When I was at home, all we did was argue. It wasn’t just arguing, either. Danielle has a mean temper, and when she doesn’t get her way, she likes to lash out, not just verbally, physically, too. It had me worried.”
He licks his lips and sips his drink as I watch, totally mesmerised.
“When she tried to raise her hand, or even her fist, at me, I was strong enough to stop her. My son wasn’t. What if his crying got on her nerves? What if he pissed her off one day?”
I’m barely moving as I listen to him talk. My heart gallops in my chest, my blood rushes through my ears as I wait for him to go on.
“Told her straight, she didn’t put an end to that shit, I was leaving. Warned her, I’d take my boy and go live with my mom in Montana. It’s not what I wanted, not for one minute. I was doing well in my dad’s company, and the band was going great. We were playing covers as well as writing our own stuff and were filling bigger and bigger venues, but most of all, I wanted my boy to grow up with both his mom and dad around.”
He pauses, and a thousand and one thoughts are rushing through my head. How could you leave your child at home all day with someone you couldn’t trust to keep them safe being the one that’s screaming loudest at me. But how do I ask him that without sounding judgmental?
“She seemed to listen, to take it on board. Things settled down. No more fighting and arguing. Then, when Kai was five months old, she told me she was pregnant again. I was so pissed. Once, yeah, I could accept it as accidental, but twice? Both times right after I told her I was leaving? I knew she’d done it on purpose.”
He draws in a deep breath and lets it out slowly, his hair moving with the force as it escapes from between his lips.
“I all but stopped coming home. On the weekends the band wasn’t playing, I’d collect Kai, and we’d go spend time with my mom and Bill. During the week, I’d either eat at a diner or at Mo’s, the bar in town.
Mutual friends of ours used to tell me about how they would see her out at bars here in Addison as well as in Aspen whenever I wasn’t around. It didn’t matter that she was pregnant. She would leave Kai with a sitter and go out drinking. So, in the end, I took Kai to my mom’s, and I never brought him back.”
He sips his drink and then gives a small laugh, “Course, she and her daddy got the lawyers involved, and she got him back. Meanwhile, as I was dealing with the cluster fuck that was my personal life, things started to really take off for the band. Someone from a big record label had been out to hear us play, liked what they heard, and offered us a recording deal.”
He sits forward, elbows resting on his knees, glass held loosely in his right hand as it hangs between his legs.
“The studio was in Nashville. When I told them it was my son’s birthday, they offered up the private jet to bring me home so I could spend it with him.”
He turns and looks at me, his eyes haemorrhaging emotion. My skin prickles and my scalp feels tight. Fear crawls up my spine at what might come next.
“She was six months pregnant by that stage and had told me we were having a little girl. When I got off the plane in Denver, the police were waiting for me. Danielle had wrapped her car around a tree.”
My blood felt as if it had tiny shards of ice floating in it. They froze my veins as they were pumped around my body, making my skin feel itchy.
“I was taken straight to the hospital. Kai was in a medically-induced coma. He’d been asleep in the back seat. He hadn’t been in his car seat, she hadn’t even put a fucking seatbelt around him. He had a broken arm and a severe concussion, which had caused swelling in his brain. They hadn’t thought it was life-threatening, but said they wouldn’t know what the long-term implications would be until the swelling went down and they brought him around.”
He drains the contents of his glass and without even thinking I lean forward and top him up.
“Thank you,” he says so quietly I almost miss it.
