Colorado 02 Sweet Dreams (49 page)

He slid the door open, closed it behind him, turned right and disappeared.

I looked to Jonas to see he was no longer eating his cake like it was the best thing he’d ever tasted like he’d done his entire dinner. He was shoving it around and slopping melted ice cream on it.

“You okay, Jonas?” I asked, his head came up and he straightened.

“Yup,” he answered, the lightness of his tone forced.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Sure I’m sure,” he answered.

“You want more cake?”

“Nah.”

“You want to help me with the dishes?”

He looked at the kitchen as if it and any activity you could do in it was foreign to him then at me. “All right,” he agreed uncertainly.

We got up and took the plates to the kitchen. I rinsed, Jonas loaded the dishwasher. I did this while looking out the window to the deck about seven hundred times. I couldn’t see Tate and I also couldn’t hear him.

“She does this,” Jonas stated and my eyes went from the window to him.

“Sorry, honey?”

“Mom, she calls Dad when I’m here. Rags on him.”

Oh.

My.

God.

He knew that? How?

The only way was for her to tell him (because I knew Tate wouldn’t) or for him to figure it out (which I knew Jonas could, he was a smart kid and kids noticed a lot more than adults gave them credit for, or at least that was what I heard).

“Um…” I mumbled.

“It’s okay, he’s used to it.”

It was
not
okay. Of course, this was not my place to say so I kept my mouth shut.

“I’ll tell the judge I wanna live here,” Jonas announced unexpectedly and my eyes shot to him.

“Sorry?”

“Can you tell Dad that?” he asked.

I took in a breath and wondered what to do in this situation. Then I decided most parents probably wondered what to do in a variety of situations that occurred daily and they went with their gut. So I decided to go with my gut, grabbed a kitchen towel, wiped my hands, tossed the towel on the counter, leaned down and shoved the drawer into the dishwasher then closed the door. Then I curled my fingers around his shoulder and moved us both so we were leaning sideways against the counter.

“Do you know –?” I started.

“About the papers?” he asked and I nodded. “Yeah, she talks about it all the time. She’s pretty pi… I mean, upset.”

I bit my lip.

Then I went with my gut again and cupped the underside of his jaw with my hand, tipping his head up to me and leaning slightly down to get close to him.

“Yes, baby, I’ll tell him,” I spoke gently. “What I’d like to know is, why won’t you?”

Jonas stared up at me, his eyes wide, his lips parted and something about his astonished look set me on edge. He acted old for his age, held intelligent conversations (when he wasn’t talking about milfs that was). He was young but he wasn’t stupid or childlike.

He looked like a child right then, vulnerable with a hint of innocent wonder.

Then I figured out what set me on edge.

I guessed that Neeta didn’t talk gently to her son and she didn’t touch him gently either. He’d never felt it, at least not from a woman or, at least, not on any kind of normal basis. The other night, when she referred to him, she called him her “kid”. I’d thought nothing of it at the time but now it seemed detached. She didn’t call him “my son” or “my boy”. Just “my kid”.

This beautiful child was just her kid.

My heart turned over again as my stomach clenched and I had to take a cautious breath so he wouldn’t hear it and I could still control the tears that threatened.

He recovered and whispered, “She finds out, she’ll freak.”

“Finds out you want to live with your Dad?”

He nodded.

Of its own accord, though I didn’t do a thing to stop it, my hand slid from his jaw, across his soft cheek, over his thick hair and then down to curve around the side of his neck.

“And she’ll freak if she knows you’re willing to talk to the judge?”

“That and that I told Dad. But if she finds out and I say I didn’t say it to him, she’ll believe me.”

“She will?”

“I don’t lie to her.”

I thought this was likely because she lit into him if he did.

Still, I asked, “You don’t?”

“No. She’s not… she’s… Blake… she’s used to getting lied to. She knows when someone’s lyin’. She told me that Dad and me, Grandpop, Uncle Wood, we were the only ones never lied to her. She always believes me. I just gotta let Dad know and I gotta do it so I don’t hafta lie to her.”

I studied him.

Then I nodded. “Okay, honey, I’ll tell your Dad.”

He looked visibly relieved and I instantly wished I’d gotten into a catfight with his mother so I had a chance to get my licks in.

“Thanks, Lauren,” he said quietly.

“Laurie,” I corrected.

“Laurie?”

“What your Dad and my friends call me.”

He smiled a small smile. “Okay. Laurie.”

“All right, baby,” I whispered. “And Jonas?”

“Yeah?”

“Before you leave, I’ll give you my number. You have anything you need, anytime, call me. And if you have anything you need to keep from your Mom but you need your Dad to know and you feel you can’t tell him, you let me know and I’ll tell him for you. We got a deal?”

His smile got a bit bigger. It wasn’t his normal, broad, confident smile but it was better.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Now, one more chance, you want more cake?”

The smile came back full force.

“Yeah.”

“I rinsed your plate, honey, get me another one.”

I was cutting Jonas’s second slice of cake when Tate came in. Both Jonas and I looked at him and I noted his face wasn’t hard anymore but he didn’t look happy.

“Jonas is having more cake, honey. You want another piece?”

“No, Ace. Thanks,” Tate answered and I lifted my brows to him. His answer was to close his eyes slowly, tilt his chin in a subtle negative then open them and look at Jonas.

I wouldn’t find out what had happened on the deck until after Jonas ate his cake, after Jonas and I finished the dishes and after we watched a movie that was so gory, I spent the vast majority of it with my face in Tate’s chest which Jonas thought was amusing, considering he’d seen that movie
a gazillion
(his words) times and he thought the gore factor was average (again his words). It was also after Jonas went downstairs to his bedroom (one of the rooms to which I didn’t open the door when Tate first went away but had since seen and cleaned).

When Jonas was off, Tate went straight to the fridge and got a beer. I followed him to the kitchen, his hand came out of the fridge and he lifted up a bottle in silent question. I shook my head. He twisted off the cap, tossed it into the garbage and then led me out to the back patio where we sat in wrought iron chairs. I suspected he took me here because the front deck was just over Jonas’s room and, if he had his windows open, he could hear.

“Well?” I asked when we’d settled.

“She’s off on one,” he told me, taking a pull of his beer.

“What does that mean?”

“Said she was comin’ tomorrow to get him.”

“Why?”

In the dark, I saw his head turned to me. “You.”

“Me?”

“You’re here. She’s got one of her posse spyin’ and they said you’re still here. So she says she doesn’t want him here if you’re here.”

“I’ll go to the hotel,” I offered. “I’ll do it tonight.”

“The fuck you will, babe.”

“Tate –”

“She doesn’t control your life. She doesn’t control my life. And, when my son is with me, she doesn’t control
his
life.”

He sounded pretty angry, in fact, his voice was vibrating so I said softly, “Okay, honey.”

“You went to the hotel last night, Laurie and one of those bitches saw you with Ned and Betty. She thought you were out.”

Darn, darn and double darn.

How could Neeta have a posse? Who could even like her? And why did I lose it and walk out on Tate?

So
stupid.

I stopped mentally kicking myself and asked, “Would she have given him to you if she knew I was still here?”

“Nope,” he replied then took another pull of his beer. “She wasn’t home when I got there anyway. Neither was Jonas. But Blake sure was. She rolled in half an hour late. That whole time I sat in my truck at the curb.”

“Oh Tate,” I whispered.

He shook his head and said, “I called Pop after I hung up on her. He’s gonna see what he can do.”

“What if she comes?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“You can’t have Jonas see a scene like last week.”

He sighed. Then he tilted his head back and took in more beer.

“Jonas and I talked,” I told him and his head turned to me.

“Yeah?”

“He knows about the papers,” I started but stopped when that scary energy started to flash off Tate.

“Christ,” he whispered then repeated, “Christ.” He shook his head. “Can she once act like a goddamned Mom and shield him from shit? He’s fuckin’ ten. We started this shit when he was born and since he could understand words, she told him we were battlin’ every time we were doin’ it. Is it that hard to let him be a kid and let his parents deal with their own shit?”

I thought this was a good question but I didn’t have an answer to it.

“Sympathy?” I guessed.

“Damn straight, Ace. She’s been tryin’ to turn him since I could remember. Hell, she probably talked trash about me when he was in the womb.”

“You weren’t together then?”

“Fuck no,” he answered.

This surprised me. “You weren’t?”

“No, babe,” he answered firmly.

“But, don’t you kind of have to be together to
make
a baby?”

“Yeah, and you have to be together to
trap
a man into marrying you.”

I gasped. Tate nodded.

“She pushed the marriage card the minute after she skipped her first period. The bitch has been on the pill since she was fourteen. Not even a scare. Religious about it. All of a sudden, she’s knocked up. All of a sudden, that is, after she’d been naggin’ me about gettin’ hitched.”

“Why didn’t you?” I asked gently.

“Unconscious self-preservation,” he muttered, took a sip of his beer, swallowed and finished, “thank fuck.”

I drew in a soft breath. Then I sat back, looked into the night and let it go.

Then I told Tate, “Jonas wants to live with you.”

I felt rather than saw Tate’s head turn and his eyes lock on me.

“He tell you that?”

“Says he wants you to know but he can’t tell you. Says he’ll talk to the judge.”

“She finds out, she’ll give him shit. He can deny it technically without lyin’,” Tate mumbled.

“That’s what he said,” I affirmed.

“Throwin’ you under the bus.”

My head turned to him. “Sorry?”

“Someone’s gotta have told me. He said it, he meant it, he’d do it, it gets to that. She’ll know it, she’ll know he didn’t tell
me
but he told
someone
who told me and she’ll be pissed at me and that someone who told me. You’ve seen her pissed, Ace. So has Jonas. There it is. That’s you under the bus.”

“He didn’t mean –”

Tate leaned into me and the movement was sharp and angry. “I know he didn’t, Laurie but that’s what she made him do. My ten year old son is playin’ people. At ten... years… old. This is what she does to people. He didn’t like it but he needed me to know and he knew he was throwin’ you under the bus and he had to make that play. Fuck.” He sat back and repeated, “Fuck.”

“Tate, you’re doing what you can do,” I assured him.

“Right,” he bit off.

I reached out a hand and wrapped it around his forearm. “It’s all you can do. Do it. Get him home. He wants to be here. That says a lot. You have support. You just have to be patient.”

Tate looked at me and I knew he was going to mouth off. Then he turned away, took a sip of his beer, swallowed, pulled in an audible breath and on the exhale repeated, “Right.”

I stood and bent over him, my fingers sliding into his hair and he tipped his head back to look up at me.

“I’m going to go take my makeup off. You want me to come back out?”

“I’ll be in in a second.”

“You okay?”

“No.”

I aimed at his mouth in the dark and hit it, brushing my lips against his.

“I’ll be in bed when you get there,” I whispered when I was done.

His voice was less harsh when he said, “That makes me feel better, Ace.”

“What does Jonas like for breakfast?”

“Considering his breakfast is usually sugar clogged cereal or fast food, you make him a home cooked breakfast, he’ll like anything.”

“French toast it is,” I whispered, brushed his mouth again then lifted up and kissed him on the forehead.

I had straightened and started to move away when he caught my wrist, detaining me.

I looked back.

“You let on you knew he was playin’ you?” he asked.

“No. I told him I’d give him my number and if he ever had anything he needed you to know, he could tell me and I’d let you know.”

“Threw yourself under the bus,” he muttered.

“I didn’t think he was playing me, Captain,” I replied. “But even if I did, I’d do it again.”

He didn’t speak but he also didn’t let go of my wrist. Then he lifted it, turned it inwards and kissed the inside. His beard tickled the sensitive skin there. The gesture and how he did it touched a sensitive part of me you couldn’t see because it was deep on the inside.

He let my wrist go and said softly, “Meet you in bed, baby.”

“Okay,” I whispered and left him to finish his beer.

Chapter Twenty

Rollin’ in Her Grave

The next morning, Tate and I were out on the deck drinking coffee.

My chair was close beside his, his legs were up on the railing and he’d reached down and wrapped an arm around the backs of my knees and pulled my legs up on his. As we sat, silent and sipping our coffee bathed in the morning sun, my legs naturally and comfortably tangled with his.