“What’s the rest?”
I had no effing idea.
I decided not to sugarcoat that either. “I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go along.”
She laughed quietly and it sounded like a pretty song. “That doesn’t sound like a very good plan.”
I smiled at the phone again. “It isn’t.” I leaned back in the chair and put my heels up on its edge then I shared, “But I have to do something. He takes good care of me. It’s time someone took care of him. And this, all of this… with his Dad, Caitlin, well, it has to stop.”
Silence again but I felt her warmth coming at me from the phone line.
Then she said, “Stella, you should know, he loved Caitlin more than anything else in this world. She didn’t have a Dad, neither of them did, not really. Kai did everything he could so she wouldn’t feel that loss, not the way he felt it. When she was taken –”
“Lana –” I cut in.
“No, sweetie, let me finish.”
I shut up mainly because her calling me “sweetie” felt nice. My mother or father never called me anything like that. It was one of the reasons why I liked Mace calling me “Kitten” so much.
I wondered if she called Mace “sweetie”.
Lana went on, “When she was taken, I watched my son die.”
I sucked in breath, my body got tight, I felt my throat close and my eyes flew to Hector as she continued.
“Kai disappeared. This Mace person has taken his place. You need to understand that he might not want me there. Caitlin, her Mom, Chloe, Kai and I used to do holidays together. We even did vacations together. We made a family out of what Preston left behind. We all got along great, even if at first, Chloe and I…” She stopped then started again, “Kai did that. Kai built our family. Kai wanted that for Caitlin and for Chloe and for me.”
“And for himself,” I cut in.
“And for himself,” she agreed softly. “But that’s gone now. He wants it gone. And he might not want it back. Not without Caitlin.”
“You’re his mother,” I told her.
“I am but –”
“And Chloe is all that’s left of Caitlin.”
“Stella, sweetie –”
“I need to call her too,” I said, a half-baked plan forming in my head.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Lana replied quickly.
“He can’t go on like this.”
“My son’s a pretty strong guy. He always was. He can do whatever he wants. He’s always done that too,” Lana told me and she sounded resigned to that.
I wasn’t resigned.
“That’s true. But now, he has to do whatever Caitlin wants. And I don’t know Caitlin but I can’t imagine that she would want this. Not for Mace, not for you and not for Chloe. You need to be a family again.”
Lana was silent.
“Can you give me Chloe’s number?” I asked into the silence.
There was a pause, I heard a deep breath and then, hesitantly, “I’ll phone her.”
My eyes came up and I smiled at Hector. “That’d be good,” I said into the phone.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” I heard Lana say.
“I don’t,” I admitted then, since I was admitting things, I went for the gusto. “But I love him and I have to try.”
Another pause then with warmth, “I’m looking forward to meeting you, Stella Gunn.”
I smiled again. “Me too.”
I asked Hector for the cell number, gave it to Lana, we said our good-byes and then we disconnected.
My eyes found Hector’s were still on me.
“Am I doing the right thing?” I asked him.
“Absolutely,” he replied immediately, sounding certain.
“You’re sure?” I wasn’t so certain.
He got up and walked to me. I sat in silent surprise as he bent down, wrapped his hand around the back of my head, kissed the top of it and when I tilted my face to look at him, his gaze locked on mine.
“I’m sure,” he whispered.
“I hope you’re right,” I whispered back.
He let me go and straightened. “Mace is a lucky guy.”
I felt a weird, happy warmth flow through me at his approval.
I smiled up at Hector. “Thanks.”
Hector smiled back and my breath took a hike through the trails of the Rocky Mountain National Forest.
Hector Chavez had a fucking great smile.
Shortly after, Hector took off, leaving me the cell. I used it to phone Floyd and make sure he and Buzz were okay. Linnie’s funeral was the next morning (and I was cheesed off I couldn’t go but, for obvious reasons, I couldn’t) then they were coming back so they could make the gig on Thursday.
I shared a few things with Floyd while we talked. He strangely sounded both worried and relieved.
Then he passed the phone to Buzz and I shared a few things with him.
“Linnie would be so happy,” Buzz told me.
I knew she would and that made me happy but it also made me sad. I wished that she could be around to see it all unfold and believe in it and maybe believe in herself again.
But my luck hadn’t changed that much.
Once I hung up, I made the set list for Thursday’s gig and it was going to be a humdinger, designed both for Dixon Jones and Kai Mason and then I played guitar. Then Juno and I went to bed and I planned.
The bathroom door opened and I heard Mace moving through the room. I saw his shadow at the side of the bed, the covers went back and then he was in, stretching out beside me and pulling the covers up to his waist.
For some reason, I stayed where I was, waiting for him to reach out to me.
He didn’t. He was on his back, he put his hands behind his head and I saw his profile facing the ceiling. I was on my side, facing him.
“Lee told me about the fight in the head shop,” he said.
Oh dear.
“Pong and Leo got a little out-of-control,” I replied.
Mace didn’t respond. There was nothing to say. Pong and Leo had a habit of getting out-of-control on a routine basis.
“Daisy and Hector have set a meeting on Thursday with the A&R guy from Black Fat Records,” I told him.
“You gonna take the meet?”
I took in a breath then said, “Yeah.”
He took his hands from behind his head, turned to his side to face me and murmured, “Good.”
“I’m scared,” I shared.
“I know,” he returned.
Well, there you go. Nothing else to say on that subject.
“I swung by to see Monk today,” Mace told me. “Got your money, it’s on the kitchen counter. I’ll give Floyd, Hugo, Pong and Leo their take tomorrow.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know that too.”
Well, there you go again. Nothing else to say on that either.
“I didn’t call my Mom today,” I told him.
“Good,” he surprised me by replying. “I want to be there when you do it.”
My heart skipped a beat.
God, I loved him.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Again, he didn’t respond.
“How was your day?” I asked, feeling weird.
We’d never done this, laying in bed, talking, sharing, even, one could say, processing.
It was kind of freaking me out (but in a good way).
“There’s been progress. George, the guy from the offices today, is an assistant DA. He’s giving us trouble with Sid’s case. Hank went over George’s head. Presented the evidence to his boss. The boss disagreed with George. He told Hank and Eddie to bring Sid in. The warrant for his arrest went out tonight.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, on the face of it. Sid’s gonna be hard to find. He’s also gonna retaliate, mobilize his army.”
“I thought his army was already mobilized.”
“Defensive tactics. He’l
l go offensive now.”
That didn’t sound good. In fact, that sounded way not good.
“George is pissed,” Mace went on. “Hank made him look like a fool.”
“Is that gonna be bad?”
“We don’t know yet. George doesn’t like looking like a fool. He’d go after Hank but there’s nothing to get on Hank. Instead, he’ll likely go after Lee and Shirleen as retribution.”
“How?”
“Lee’ll be okay. He doesn’t play by the rules but he covers his tracks. But Shirleen used to deal drugs.” I gasped at this news but Mace talked through it. “Now she’s fostering two runaways and Jules and another social worker at the Shelter pulled some strings to place Roam and Sniff with her. Roam and Sniff might be moved out. Jules might lose her job.”
“Fuck,” I whispered.
“It’ll be okay,” Mace told me.
“It doesn’t sound okay.”
“Don’t worry about it, Kitten.” And he didn’t sound worried. Not at all. And I trusted him to be right so I let it go.
“Shirleen used to deal drugs?” I asked.
“Yeah, she was never busted and she’s been clean awhile.”
“I can’t believe that of Shirleen.” And I couldn’t.
“Even good people do bad things, Stella. Shirleen’s good people. She just did bad things. Now, she doesn’t. She’s a good foster carer, she loves those kids. Would lay down her life for them, proved it this morning. She’s also a good friend. That’s all you need to know. End of story.”
It was my turn to fall silent because I trusted him to be right about that too. And, with what I experienced of Shirleen, I knew he was right.
Then I shared, “This is weird.”
“What?”
“You. Me. Talking.”
I heard the smile in his voice when he said, “I like it.”
You could hear my smile in my voice when I said, “Me too.”
Then I decided it was time to start beating back those demons. I had to start right away because I didn’t like him living with them and I wasn’t going to let him do it one second longer than he had to.
“I like you coming home to me,” I told him softly.
The minute I stopped talking, the air in the room changed. It felt like it became heavy, close but warmer.
Mace didn’t respond but he did move, finally touching me, his fingers, whisper-soft, at my waist.
I went on, “I like making breakfast for you. I like you in my kitchen. I like that henley you wore today, it looks great on you.”
“Kitten,” he murmured and his fingers shifted down the small of my back. He leaned his body into me and pulled me closer.
My hands hit his hard chest, one slid up and my fingers curled around his neck. “I like to hear Juno’s tags jingle when you give her a rubdown. I like hearing your clothes hitting the furniture.”
After I said that, his lips hit my neck then slid up to behind my ear.
I turned my head so my lips were at his ear and I wrapped my arms tight around his middle. “I’m sorry I fought you, Mace,” I whispered. “But now that your mine again, I’m never going to let you go.”
He turned his head and I could swear he was looking at me in the dark. I felt my face grow warm under his gaze, my soft body already warming from his hard one pressing into mine.
Then he kissed me.
Then we used our mouths, tongues, fingers and other parts of our body to process everything else that needed processing.
When we were done processing, when I’d finished purring and we were breathing steady again, when Mace had rolled me and pressed my back into his front, when Juno had come back to bed and settled at our feet, I whispered, “Thank you.”
“What’re you thankin’ me for, Kitten?” Mace said into the back of my neck and he sounded amused.
“I’m the Queen of Super Shitty Bad Luck. All my life, my luck has been bad. Not just bad, super shitty bad,” I shared. “But not anymore. Now it’s good. It’s always good when you’re around. So I’m thanking you for being my good luck charm.”
For a beat, I felt his body go solid as a rock.
Then his arm around my waist got super tight. So tight, it squeezed the breath out of me and, again to the back of my neck, he muttered, “Jesus.”
The way he said it, the way he held me close, made me hope that in my first battle, I’d kicked some demon ass.
I considered telling him I loved him but I didn’t want to push too hard, too fast.
My war against his demons was going to take awhile. I needed to be patient and strong and not fuck it up.
I could wait.
Chapter Twenty
Demon Scum
Stella
The next morning, I made Mace apple streusel coffee cake which, unfortunately, as I was under house arrest (in a way) this necessitated Mace making an early morning trip to the grocery store to buy ingredients but he didn’t seem to mind (as he never did, and anyway, my apple streusel coffee cake was one of his favorites).
While it was baking in the oven, I tried not to make a big deal out of putting Mace’s clothes in the closet and the stuff in his boxes around the house.
I wanted him to notice me doing it but I wanted to make it seem like it was perfectly natural. Like a daily chore, rinsing dishes or feeding Juno.
It was another battle in my War with the Demons, making him feel welcome, settled and at home at my place (okay, so maybe it was more like a minor skirmish but it was still something).
At first, it didn’t seem he noticed anything since he was sitting on the couch, talking on his cell, leaned forward and writing notes on a tablet on the coffee table.
Considering, even for a normal couple, this would be a huge deal, me moving his stuff into my space, the fact that he treated it like it was perfectly natural, like a daily chore, began to piss me off. So instead of doing it like I didn’t want him to notice it, I started banging around while I did it, like he could bloody well get up and help me.
I got down to the bottom of the last box; it was filled with about thirty CDs. When Mace flipped his phone closed, I picked up the box, lugged it to the coffee table and dumped it on his writing tablet.
His head came up immediately, he looked at me and said, “Babe.”
I put my hands to my hips and told him, “You need to mark your CDs.”
His eyes went to my hips as his brows snapped together.
Then he looked back at me and asked, “Why?”
“Because if you don’t mark your CDs, they’ll get all mixed up with mine,” I reached in and pulled one out. It was Journey’s, “Evolution” (which, by the way, featured one of my favorite Journey songs, “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” and I wondered, briefly, if I could fit that song in the next night’s set list and decided quickly to do so).
For your information, I had that same CD.
Everyone knew what that meant.
“Who cares?” Mace asked, interrupting my mental set list restructuring, lifted up the box and set it aside so he could see the tablet.
Obviously, he didn’t know what doubled CDs meant.
“I care,” I told him. “I have this same CD. How will we know which one’s yours and which one’s mine?”
Mace sat back and put the sole of his foot against the edge of my coffee table.
“Who cares which one’s yours and which one’s mine?”
My eyes bugged out right before I said, “I care.”
“Why?”
“Because I do. Because it’s a CD. Because CDs are sacred.”
“It’s the same CD,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but I bought mine at Twist and Shout during my Journey phase and Twist and Shout is gone now. I was with my old band when I bought it. At my demand, we played ‘Wheel in the Sky’ like, every night. I loved everything Journey. Even their power ballads. I hate power ballads. But Journey’s power ballads kick… fucking… ass. ‘Faithfully’, ‘Open Arms’. Those ballads rock.??
?
“So, if we find we’re doubled up on CDs, we’ll sell mine on eBay.”
I made a choking noise then spluttered, “What?”
Mace was watching me closely perhaps wondering if I needed an intervention.
Then he repeated, saying the words slowly this time, “We’ve got any of the same CDs, we’ll sell mine on eBay.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “You can’t just sell your CDs on eBay, especially if we’ve doubled up. If we’re doubled up then they serve a dual purpose. First, they’re backup CDs in case something goes wrong with one and second, they’re material evidence that we should be together because we like the same music. Everyone knows that!”
He shook his head, the expression on his face looking like he didn’t know whether to smile or to scowl.
Then he suggested, “If you want to mark the CDs, mark your CDs.”
I gasped then said, “I’m not marking my CDs. I don’t want marks on my CDs. The covers either.” I put in the last as an important afterthought.
He took in a deep breath and I could tell this was an effort at patience before he tried, “Then mark mine.”
“You mark yours.”
“Kitten, I don’t have time to mark my CDs and I don’t have any fuckin’ desire to fight with you about this.”
Uh-oh.
Were we fighting?
Fighting didn’t factor in with my War against Mace’s Demons. In fact, fighting would be highly detrimental to my overall Strategy.
“We’re not fighting. We’re discussing,” I told him.
“Discussions between a man and a woman don’t include the woman putting her hands on her hips. The minute that happens, it’s a fight. And you started this with your hands on your hips,” Mace told me.
“I did not,” I snapped but I was worried that I did.
“You did,” he returned.
I glared at him. “Well, I was putting your shit away. You could help.”
“Brody was briefing me on what he’s finding on my father. He’s coasting on the fumes of seventeen six packs of Red Bull and no sleep for forty-two hours. He’s doin’ deep hacks, all of them highly illegal and some of what he’s finding pretty fuckin’ useful. Sorry I couldn’t interrupt the brief to help you hang clothes.”
Oh dear.
This wasn’t going very well.