What if I eventually had clothes here, doubled up on the toiletries, litter box and kitty bowls so I didn’t have to cart them back and forth?
What if Vance’s jeans hung in my closet and I had to shift my nightgowns so he could have space for his t-shirts?
What if I got used to that, what if I liked it then it was all swept away?
My cute pug was chewing on my fingers, baby-dog teething.
Did pugs go bad?
I started to breathe heavily and I realized I was close to hyperventilating.
Shit!
“For fuck’s sake,” Vance muttered. He’d been staring at me the whole time I was processing and obviously lost patience.
He put down his book and hauled me across the bed and into his arms, right on top of him.
Even though this was a loving gesture and the words he next spoke were in a tone that was both sweet and tender, a tone I’d never heard him use before and I liked it a lot, the actual words were not loving, sweet or tender.
“Girl, it’s a good thing you’re so fuckin’ beautiful or you’d be a serious pain in the ass.”
I rested my forearms on his chest and my head snapped up to look at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m thinkin’ you didn’t get it. When you still your body, you also got to still your mind.”
“What if you can’t?”
“You can.”
“What if you can’t?”
“You can.”
I made a “huh” noise in the back of my throat.
Vance burst out laughing.
Well then.
Whatever.
I slid off him but he kept an arm around my waist, holding me to his side. I held my body tense, deciding to hold a grudge even as I rested my cheek on his shoulder.
He picked up his book and continued reading.
I decided tomorrow I was going to break up with him and I started to enumerate the reasons for doing so in my mind. He was too good-looking. I’d have to keep my head crackin’ mamma jamma skills honed to beat off all the bitches who wanted a piece of him. He was too arrogant, lying there, not paying any attention to my negative-body-language grudge (regardless of my cheek on his shoulder and my arm which had snaked around his waist) and reading like he didn’t have a care in the world. He told me what to do all the time, in macho-speak no less, and in front of other people.
While I was mentally enumerating, his fingers pulled up my nightie, his hand slid inside my panties over the cheek of my ass, to come to rest flat against my hip.
That felt nice.
As in way nice.
So nice, my body relaxed, giving up the grudge.
Okay, then I’d break up with him the day after tomorrow.
Or maybe sometime next week.
When I made that decision, I fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Home
“Meeeeooow!”
My eyes opened and I saw smooth brown skin.
My head turned and I realized I was partially on my side, partially on Vance. I was pressed up against Vance’s side and back, he was on his stomach. My cheek had been resting on his shoulder, my arms cocked, one hand against his side, the other flat on his back. My hips and legs were in full contact, my top leg thrown over his thigh.
Major cuddle action.
Um.
Serious yikes.
Boo was standing on my shoulder staring down at me, each of his kitty paws pressing into me like they weighed a ton even though Boo himself weighed less than twelve pounds.
He was confused at his unprecedented new location and thinking he was four hours ahead, perhaps in Boston (even though it was doubtful he knew Boston existed), rather than outside Golden and in the same time zone as always. Therefore he’d decided he wanted an early breakfast.
“Meeeeeeeooooooooow!”
Jeez.
I moved away from Vance trying to do it gently so as not to wake him if Boo hadn’t already.
“Hush, Boo,” I whispered, my voice sounding hoarse with sleep. I was a heavy sleeper. I knew it was early and I was not happy to have my sleep and my warm cuddle interrupted.
Vance moved, coming up on his forearms and looking toward me. “I got him,” Vance’s voice was sleepy too, husky-sleepy, sexy-husky-sleepy.
“That’s okay,” I said.
Then I stopped talking, stopped breathing and my belly fluttered in deep Grade Eight followed by a roller-coaster plummet when I looked at him.
His voice wasn’t the only thing that was sexy-husky-sleepy. His eyes were soft, warm and unguarded and he was looking at me with that “mine” possessive look but also that other look too, the one I could never figure out but I knew I remembered. This time, early in the morning, dawn not even a promise, the room dim and Vance unguarded, the look was magnified.
And I finally remembered where I’d seen that look before.
No one had ever looked at me that way.
No, I’d seen someone else looking at someone else that way.
Nick used to look at Auntie Reba that way.
Like she was breath.
Like she was necessity.
Like she was life.
That was the way Vance was looking at me.
Right then, in the dim room, his eyes half-sleepy and half-full… of me.
Oh… my… God.
“I got him,” Vance repeated not realizing I’d frozen. He leaned toward me, touched his lips to mine and got out of bed. He pulled on his jeans, did up all the buttons but two, rifled through my bag until he found Boo’s food and he walked out of the bedroom, Boo prancing in his wake, tail straight up.
I collapsed on the pillows and then turned my back to the door.
“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap,” I whispered to myself again and again, holding the pillow to me. Then I stopped when I thought maybe Vance could hear.
Something was stealing over me, over my skin, through my insides, both places it felt like velvet. Then it was all around me like a cocoon, warm and sweet and safe.
Then Auntie Reba’s voice came to me, the first time in years.
After she died I’d hear it a lot, sometimes memories, sometimes like she was talking to me. I used to think I was a little insane so I kept it to myself. I didn’t even tell Nick. It was my secret and I didn’t want anyone to talk me out of having her voice with me. The months passed and it went away but now it was back. I heard her voice, soft and wise, just like it had been the day she said the words.
Nick was in danger of getting transferred to Springfield, Illinois. I didn’t want to go to Springfield. Nick didn’t want to go to Springfield. Auntie Reba didn’t want to go to Springfield. We were in the kitchen and I was pitching a teenaged fit. Denver was all I knew, it was home.
Auntie Reba, on the other hand, seemed totally at peace.
“How can you be so calm?” I’d shouted.
She turned to me, a small smile on her lips. “Jules, sweetheart, home isn’t a place. Home is anywhere, just as long as the people you love are there.”
Nick never got transferred and a few months later Auntie Reba died.
And home was torn away from us. We’d been homeless ever since.
Or we thought we were.
The tears hit my chest with a weight so hard it shoved itself up my throat and I could do nothing about it. It hurt too much to hold them back, they sprang from my eyes.
I was finally, finally back home.
But having Nick all these years I realized I’d never left.
“I’m so stupid,” I told the pillow.
“Jules?”
I turned in the bed, flat on my back and looked at Vance standing in the doorway, tears streaming from my eyes.
“I… I’m so f… fucking stupid,” I sobbed.
“Jesus,” he whispered, took two long strides and then I was in his arms.
“She left and sh… she was… ho… ho… home,” I said against his neck, somehow I was in his lap and holding on
tight. “And N… N… Nick and now this. I’m so stupid.”
I was making no sense. I knew it but I couldn’t help it.
Vance had an arm tight around my waist, the other hand stroking my back.
“She died twelve years ago. When is it going to stop hurting!” I screamed over his shoulder.
“I don’t know, Princess,” Vance murmured into my neck.
I sat in his lap holding on to him and then all of a sudden I shouted, “I’m a freak!”
I was bouncing from subject to subject, my mind unable to hold a thought.
He pulled away and looked at me. “Sorry?”
“I’m twenty-seven years old and I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’m a total, fucking freak. I don’t know what to do with you. Even though I’ve semi-gotten over the whole Vance Crowe, badass, super-cool, macho-man, danger-seeker gig, that still, like, flips me out, by the way, now I don’t know how to be normal. I don’t know what to do. Auntie Reba would tell me.”
Vance was staring at me like he didn’t know what to do either but was leaning towards a call to the doctor.
“I need to call Nick,” I announced, “I have to tell him I love him.”
“It’s barely six o’clock in the morning.”
“He’s an early riser.”
“Jules, I think he knows you love him.”
I stared at him and narrowed my eyes. “Are you sure?”
He grinned at me. “Pretty much.”
I nodded my head decisively once. “Okay then,” I said.
Vance kept watching me closely.
Finally he asked, “Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not all right. I’m stupid. I’m totally clueless. I’m a mess. I’m a freak. I thought we’d already established that.”
His grin faded and the atmosphere in the room went electric. I’d been relaxed even though I was crying; my body was using his for strength and warmth. I tensed when the room changed because he’d tensed in fact he went solid as a rock.
His arms went from around me and he pulled the ponytail holder out of the mess of hair at the top of my head and then twisted, tossing it on the nightstand.
The he came back to me.
When he did even in the dim light I saw his eyes were intense, more intense than usual, burning into me. His hands slid through my hair at the sides of my head, his fingers combing through it all the way down my back. His hands came up again, to either side of my head, holding it in position to look at him, his thumbs coming forward and wiping away my tears. I got the impression he did all this as an effort at control. What he was trying to control, I did not know but I was about to find out.
“You’re a woman who lost her family, all of her family, and did what she had to do to keep going. There’s not one fuckin’ thing stupid or clueless about that.”
“Crowe –”
He interrupted me. “I hear you call yourself that again, it’s gonna piss me off.”
Um.
Yikes.
He already sounded pissed off.
“Are you angry with me?” I whispered.
He ignored my question and carried on. “If you’d given yourself to someone else, you wouldn’t be mine. And that would seriously piss me off.”
Okay, now he sounded seriously pissed off.
“Crowe –” I tried again.
“Far as I can see with the time she had, your aunt did a fuckin’ great job with you and left you in the hands of a man who handled you with care. I can understand you miss her but if she was alive, she’d be proud of who you’ve become.”
Oh my God.
That velvet feeling was back and it wasn’t only enshrouding me, it had Vance wrapped up in it too.
“Crowe, stop talking,” I whispered.
“You want to know more about me?” he offered and at that moment I didn’t. I couldn’t take anymore.
I didn’t have the choice.
“My life has been shit. I’d never been touched with gentleness, never understood it until I saw you handle Roam in Fortnum’s. Then that night watchin’ football with Nick, you showed it to me by runnin’ your fingers along my jaw after I told you the worst in me. I was once Roam, Jules. You might not think it but it isn’t the kids who have two parents and a stable home who are the luckiest ones. It’s the kids who know the taste of shit because they’ve been eatin’ it all their lives and then someone finds them and offers them a taste of somethin’ sweeter and they learn that life can be good. They learn to trust. They learn that if you care about someone you put your ass on the line to keep them safe. They learn that love doesn’t come with conditions. Roam and Sniff are the luckiest kids alive. I never had that. No one gave a shit enough to see it through. No one ever offered me that, until you.”
It was my turn to hold his face. I put both hands up and kept them there.
“Vance –” I started but he interrupted me again.
“I’ve been playin’ this cool so I wouldn’t scare the shit out of you because you’re jumpy as a fuckin’ jackrabbit but I’m done with that now. I won’t listen to you call yourself a freak and I’ll let you know something else and I don’t give a fuck if it flips you out. If you ever think of takin’ off, if you ever get scared enough at what I do for a living that you decide you can’t hack it, then you best think again because unless what we have turns shit like everything else in my life, I’m not ever letting you go.”
“Listen to me –”
“Do you understand what I just said to you?”
“Vance, please listen –”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said softly.
He stared at me or more to the point glared at me.
I decided it was time to come clean too. “Well then, maybe you should also be aware of the fact that I know you have a reputation as a player and I know a lot of other people know that. If any woman tries to cut into my action, I’m taking her down.”
I thought I sounded relatively badass and super-cool, for a girl.
Vance just kept staring at me a beat, still tense then his body relaxed and his lips turned up at the ends in an amused mini-smile.
Um.
No.
“This isn’t funny. I’m serious. I’m a head crackin’ mamma jamma. You’re too handsome for your own good. I’ll have to deck most of the single female population of Denver.”
Even though I was, indeed, being perfectly serious, his body started moving and it felt a lot like laughter. He twisted and we went down, me on my back, him on top of me. By the time he came over me, I knew it was laughter mainly because it had become audible.
I was offended.
“Excuse me! This is not funny. How come you can make intense, macho man statements and I can’t?”
His lips touched mine. He was still laughing.
“Shut up, Jules,” he said there.
“Do not tell me to shut up,” I snapped.
So he didn’t. Using hands, mouth, tongue and other parts of his anatomy, he shut me up a different way.
* * * * *
Vance made love to me, he did it slow, took his time and it was beyond beautiful.
We took a quick shower, got dressed and went back into town.
In a morning of significant moments, two more were still to come.
First, he told me to leave my stuff in the bathroom.
“I can’t, I need it,” I told him.
“Buy more,” he replied then walked into the kitchen to make toast (or, remake toast, I’d had a go and I’d burned it, twice).
I added a trip to the mall on my mental agenda for the day and I had no problem with it whatsoever. In fact my pug had never been to the mall and he was all excited to go (something else about my pug, his fur and face and little wet nose felt like velvet too).
Second, Vance followed me on his Harley all the way into Denver. I saw him in my rearview mirror and I didn’t lose sight of him until I turned my car into the garage behind the duplex. I knew this took him out o
f his way. His offices were in LoDo (lower downtown). He’d gone ten, fifteen minutes out of his way.
I could not explain why this was significant but it was. I’d been on my own a long time and knowing someone had my back as it were, was just, plain nice.
I dropped off Boo and his litter and my bag and went to King’s.
May descended the minute I came through the door.
I took one look at her stormy face and asked, “What?”
“You still together with Crowe?”
What now?
“Why?” I asked.
“Tell me,” she snapped.
“Yes. Why?” I snapped back.
Her face melted and she was all smiles. “Just checkin’,” she said, storm cloud gone, all bouncy and happy. “You want a pudding cup?”
“May, it’s eight thirty in the morning.”
“There’s no time limit on pudding cups.”
Jeez.
She was grinning at me, pleased as punch that I was getting it regular.
I looked at her.
Home, the word came into my head in Auntie Reba’s voice and a warm shiver ran along my skin.
“Love you, May,” I said softly.
May blinked at me. “What’d you say, hon?”
I walked the step of distance between us, put my hands on either side of her neck, bent at the waist and laid my forehead against hers.
“Love you,” I whispered.
I watched close up as tears filled her eyes.
She tried to pull away. It wouldn’t be cool for the kids to see us like this but I didn’t care and I held on tight. Maybe they should see.
“I think Vance loves me,” I whispered as I lifted my forehead from hers but kept looking in her teary eyes. “He looked at me this morning in a way, May, you wouldn’t believe. And he told me he’d never let me go.”
May was still staring at me. She’d never heard me share information about myself freely, certainly not something important, without her having to drag it out of me.
I let her go but put an arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the office. The whole time my head was bent to hers and I told her about my morning.
“Praise be to Jesus!” she shouted right before we disappeared into the hall.