Page 69 of It's Going to Be a Chrome Christmas
Trixie laughed. “They do serve a purpose, you know.”
He nodded, “Yes. There’d be a hell of a lot more rugrats running around if they didn’t exist. However, I never realized just how good sex could feel without them. Hence, your mission of getting on birth control. The sooner I can get back inside you without them, the better.”
He tossed her onto the bed. She bounced, never losing eye contact with him. “Your mission is to come back to me. Whatever it takes.” He crawled up the bed towards her. Trixie grabbed his face. “Do you understand me, Cayden?Whateverit takes. You come back to me.”
He nodded. “Whatever it takes.”
“Good,” she smiled. “Now get the stupid-ass condom.”
“What do you mean you aren’t going back to the house? What about curfew?”
“Baby,” Cayden kissed her bare shoulder, “the plan was for me to break parole tomorrow, so tonight won’t matter. I’m not going back there when I could be here with you. I don’t know how long until I’ll be done with your brother and I need to be here with you tonight.”
“Won’t they come looking for you? I mean, they know you’re here now, don’t they?”
Cayden shook his head. “I left this morning before anyone else was up. They don’t know I’m here unless they tracked down the taxi I took.” Lee had taken Cayden’s phone with him, the sly bastard. It wasn’t like Cayden needed it anymore, but he had good pictures of Trixie on it. He hoped Lee had just turned it off and hadn’t destroyed it. On the plus side, though, it meant that his phone couldn’t be tracked to Trixie’s and his house now. “The last thing I said to the Wynns was that you and I had a fight. If you tell them I’m not here, they’ll likely think I’ve run.”
She made a face. “I don’t like it. Peggy and Greg have been good to you.”
“They’ve beenverygood to me,” he emphasized. “I don’t like it any more than you do but we can’t tell them anything. No one can know I’m working with your brother. For all intents and purposes, you and I are broken up and I’m going back to my former life of crime. No one can know any different or you risk the wrong person overhearing.”
Trixie wrinkled her nose. “Iknowthat. I’m just saying that I don’t like it.”
“Come here.” He gathered her up into his arms. They had yet to leave the bed. It was approaching eight that night, which was why she’d brought up the question of curfew. “As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you and I had a massive fight yesterday and it drove me back to my life of crime. I’m going to have to sell the bit tomorrow at Romero’s so no one knows it’s a set up.Youneed to sell it. No one can know.”
She nodded into his chest. “I get it. I know. I just feel…” She looked around the bedroom. “I feel like I did all this prematurely, you know. I feel like if I had waited?—”
“Don’t,” he stopped her with a kiss. “Do you have any idea what this house means to me? I’ve never had a home. Not onelike this. I grew up in a crappy apartment with my grandmother who smokes like a chimney. Now, she did what she could, there’s no fault with her, but I’ve never had ahome. Four walls that feel likemine. This,” he looked around just as she had, “this ishome. This is the home I am coming back to, the home that will keep me going when things get rough. I mean to come back here. I mean to comehome.”
Trixie touched his jaw. “It’s not a home without you, Cayden. It’s not my home without you.”
He rolled her over and made love to her again. They’d napped on and off throughout the day, neither one having gotten a good night’s rest the night before. Cayden had no intention of sleeping this night either. He couldn’t waste a single minute with her. Every second spent in her arms was another reason to come back to her.
Around eleven-thirty, Mrs. Wynn called her cell phone. Cayden listened in silence as Trixie lied and told Mrs. Wynn that Cayden hadn’t come to the house today. She repeated the story he’d given the night before about their fight. Trixie’s voice cracked at just the right places and her tears starting to fall made the fable all the more believable.
Mrs. Wynn told Trix that they had no choice but to call the police. If Cayden came to work the next day, she was to call too.
Just after midnight, a knock sounded on her front door. Trixie threw clothes on to find two police officers on her front steps. She invited them into the foyer and gave them the same story she’d given Mrs. Wynn as Cayden hid against the wall out of sight. He hated that she was involved at all. Couldn’t Lee have gotten to Cayden without involving Trixie? It wasn’t right that she had to lie.
“You’re welcome to check the house, officers, but I promise you, he’s not here. I haven’t seen him since yesterday when he left in an Uber. Or, Saturday, I guess since it’s after midnight.”
The officers gave her their card and told her to call if she saw Cayden. She promised.
As she shut the door, Cayden realized how fast his heart was pounding. It was official; he’d broken parole. There was no turning back. He either went with Lee or he went back to jail for violating his parole. He honestly wasn’t sure which was the better option, since they both took him away from Trixie. But his resolve was set, and he knew, no matter what, that he’d made the right decision.
Trixie was late driving in to work. She wasn’t used to a commute and had judged the traffic incorrectly. In addition, her morning routine was slower in the new setting. She’d lived in the same apartment for six years. Moving back into her childhood home was going to take some getting used to.
There was also Cayden, who was currently stuffed in her trunk like a suitcase. His odd claim that it wasn’t his first time in the trunk of a car had spiked her curiosity, but she hadn’t asked. She was late enough as it was.
Trixie had lost count of the number of times they’d made love the day before and through the night. She honestly was trying her hardest not to count. She couldn’t get her heart to stop running a million miles per minute and she felt like there was never enough air in her lungs.
She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t know how to do this.
To make her reactions more genuine, Cayden refused to tell her what he was about to do. He simply asked that she remember, no matter what he said, he loved her with all his heart and he would do his damnedest to come home to her.
Trixie had refused to have a clichéd last kiss or a long goodbye. She wasn’t sure if she was going to regret that decision, but she knew that her heart wouldn’t have been able to handle letting him go if there was even a possibility that it would be their actuallast kiss. Maybe it was cowardly of her, but saying goodbye just seemed too real. Cayden was leaving for who knew how long and doing only God-knows what. Her sanity was walking on thin ice as it was. She wouldn’t have been able to handle putting a label on their last kiss as being theirlastkiss.
Trixie did acknowledge that, though they were the same words, they sounded different in her head and had separate meanings.
