I was seeing his point and realizing my decision of earlier that day wasn’t a good one. We hadn’t even started and I was making the same mistakes I made with my kids but now with Mickey’s.
So I started, “You’re right. I should have—”
He again didn’t let me finish.
“I had one woman who I wasn’t enough for her. The family we made wasn’t enough for her. She needed somethin’ else, found it, fell into it and it became more important than all of us. Now, you move in across the street and here I am again thinkin’ about startin’ something with another woman, no way in fuck I can give her what she needs because she doesn’t fuckin’ need anything, because she can get whatever the fuck she wants bankrolled by her family.”
He was four feet away.
He’d still just slapped me across the face.
“So thanks for the shit you gave my kid,” he clipped ungraciously. “Made his night. He’s over there dressed in paintball gear, playin’ games on his Xbox, havin’ the time of his life, totally forgettin’ his drunk of a mom is off somewhere drowning in a bottle and hasn’t even been around to drop off his present. But this is not happening.” He flipped his hand between us again. “I don’t need that shit again and my kids sure as fuck don’t need it.”
“You’re right,” I whispered. “This shit isn’t happening.”
He nodded in agreement, slicing right into me, making me bleed.
“It’d be good you don’t come over,” he told me.
I stepped out of the way of the door. “It’d be good you returned that favor.”
He nodded again, once, moved to the door, yanked it open and prowled through it.
I moved behind him, grabbed the edge of the door and called his name.
He turned back to me.
I looked right into his beautiful blue eyes.
“You have absolutely no idea what I need,” I whispered. “And the sad part about that is that you didn’t notice you’d already given me everything I’d ever need just letting me sit at your dinner table with your family.”
And on that, I closed and locked the door.
* * * * *
Mickey
Mickey stood at his back deck, staring at the shadows of the trees, his house quiet and dark behind him.
He sucked back a pull off his beer.
You’d already given me everything I’d ever need just letting me sit at your dinner table with your family.
He felt his jaw get tight.
She hadn’t been lying.
He knew by the wounded look in her big hazel eyes, Amy said those words and she hadn’t been lying.
His gaze dropped and through the dark he saw the light of one of Cill’s Frisbees lying in the backyard.
The Calway Petroleum heiress lived right next door and she spent her days with an old lady who thought she was a Nazi and came over to his house, ran around the backyard and played Frisbee with his kids.
Rhiannon had not pulled her shit together enough to bring her son a present.
Amy had hustled her ass to a store she probably had no clue existed until she had to find it so she could rain goodness down on his boy.
Before he kicked her out, Mickey had not had sex with his wife for eight months because at night she’d be passed out before he could try, and he didn’t have the stomach to touch her any other time just remembering that shit.
He’d kissed Amy once and she’d been so hot for him, he knew he could have yanked up the skirt of that amazing dress, yanked down her panties, fucked her against the wall and they both would have got off on it.
Huge.
And something was up with his girl and when he’d phoned Rhiannon months ago to see if she’d noticed anything or could find a time to sit down and talk to her, Rhiannon had told him she had no idea what he was talking about. And when Mickey pushed it and his ex made a lame attempt to see if there was anything there, she’d reported to Mickey that all was fine and they had nothing to worry about.
Amy studied Ash in a way Mickey knew she saw it too; it just wasn’t her place to do anything about it.
“Fucking shit, I fucked that up,” he murmured.
Mickey had no idea why Amy didn’t have her kids.
But he knew not having them was bringing a slow death and she was fighting with all she had to stay alive and kicking.
And she was into him; she’d made that clear from almost the start.
And fuck, he was into her. Those eyes, Jesus, they said everything. He could look into them for hours and know every thought that crossed her brain and better than that, the woman she was, he’d be interested in it.
And going head to head with her surprisingly did not suck. It got his blood pumping. It pissed him off. It made him feel.
He’d been going through the motions of life for so fucking long—covering Rhiannon’s ass, getting shot of her, doing what he could to look out for his kids—he forgot what it was like. He forgot how it felt to be so into a woman, when she was quiet and sweet, he had to fight the urge to pull her in his arms and kiss her. When he saw her in pain, he had to fight the urge to curl her close and do what he could to take it away. And when she was stubborn and a pain in the ass, he had to fight the urge to shove her against the wall and fuck her senseless.
Not to mention Amy’s tits, that ass, those legs.
But his head was so far up his own ass because the woman was fucking loaded and he’d been burned so bad, he’d protected himself by putting her off then lost control and backed her against a wall in a hall when she was on a date, for Christ’s sakes, then demanded she get shot of his ass.
And she did.
For him.
For a shot at them.
Then she’d gone all out for his son and he’d walked over there and kicked her in the teeth.
“Fucking shit, I fucked that up,” he bit out.
You’d already given me everything I’d ever need just letting me sit at your dinner table with your family.
She hadn’t lied.
That was all Amelia Hathaway needed.
“Fucking shit,” he whispered to the trees. “I fucked that shit up.”
He downed the rest of his beer, walked into his house, slid the sliding glass door shut, locked it, put the pole in the tracks, dumped his bottle in the recycling bin and walked through the dark house to his empty bed.
Chapter Thirteen
Wreck You
I walked toward the security door at Dove House, hand in my purse, looking for my phone.
“Amelia.”
I looked left and saw Mr. Dennison in an armchair, hand up, finger crooked to me.