Page 53 of Don't Leave Me
Sitting on the front porch, another glass of wine in my hand, I was listening to the monitor as Marc was putting Danny down for bed.
“Are we buds now?”
Marc’s question came through the static of the monitor.
“Because if you were my buddy, you’d make this easy on me so I can go spend time with your mom.”
I smiled and listened to Danny whine a bit.
“I promise. I have only good intentions. Mostly.”
Rolling my eyes, I took a sip of wine and turned off the monitor. No doubt Marc knew I was listening.
Ten minutes later, he joined me on the porch with a beer in hand. I turned the monitor on again, and we settled into comfortable silence.
“How did it feel spending the whole day with him?”
He turned to look at me. “Amazing. He doesn’t care about any of it. Not the past, not the future. Not any of our baggage. He just wants to eat things he likes, and play with his trains, and not have his teeth hurt him. Today, I was the person who made a few of those things possible, so he was perfectly fine to embrace my presence. I don’t know that I’ve ever been accepted by anyone like that before. Maybe you. When you brought me a grape soda.”
I smiled. So much of it was true and some of it wasn’t. Danny didn’t let just anyone hold him. Even if they fed him broccoli tots, which, traitor that he was, he now loved.
“How was your surveillance trip?”
“Interesting. A lot of times I’m sitting around, waiting outside some hotel to click a few pictures. This was more about keeping a tail on the person, and it wasn’t easy. Sorry if that brings up a bad memory.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t. You need to be clever to do that job. You were always smart.”
“Unless Entwhistle comes through and gets my record expunged, it’s not really a future. I checked, and the state of Florida won’t issue a private investigator’s license to someone with a felony conviction.”
“Is that a possibility?” I asked, feeling hopeful. If that happened, if his conviction was overturned, it wouldn’t bring back the time he lost, but it would mean he no longer had to carry around the label of felon.
He shrugged. “Benfield thinks it might be, given the circumstances. I spoke with him recently and told him I wanted to pay for Entwhistle’s time on it. He laughed in my face. Fucking billionaires. I’m kind of glad I didn’t become one. I might have turned into an asshole just like him.”
“You’re your own special brand of asshole. Don’t ruin that.”
He looked at me, and, in that moment, it felt a little like how we used to be. I wondered if he felt it, too.
“I don’t want to talk about this stuff anymore, Ash.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
He sighed. The sigh of an old man, not someone in his twenties. Life had been so hard for him already, and, while there wasn’t anything I could do to change that, it didn’t make my heart ache for him any less.
“I want you to come over here and sit in my lap. So I can collect on that kiss you bet me. But also, because I want to remember what it feels like to have you in my arms. Then I want to take it from there.”
So stupid. Or so weak. Or way too needy when it came to him. I didn’t know what it was that drove me out of my seat and onto his lap. Why I circled my arms around his neck and let my fingers stroke his sensitive skin there.
“You feel good,” he said softly into my neck.
“I remember you not liking it when I sat on your lap,” I reminded him.
“I didn’t not like it. You just…”
“Scared you. I know.” I was always scaring Marc with my emotions, my closeness. With my love, really. I wasn’t sure if fifteen months in prison and one fake death would change that. But, sitting on his lap, listening to our son snore gently through the baby monitor, it was hard not to think about all the things that hadn’t changed between us.
I rested my hand on his cheek, trying to see inside his brain. “What are you thinking about?”
He tilted his head back and laughed. “I’m thinking about how I’m likely going to come after a couple of quick pumps inside you, and how utterly disappointed you’re going to be in me. It’s been a while. Since Vegas.”
