A smile crossed my lips as my defenses settled down. “You want to have more sex with me?”
“That is a definite possibility,” she said, licking her lips. “But before we do, I think we should get to know each other a little better.”
Shit. There it was. The nail in the coffin of our brief affair. Once she got to know me better, she wouldn’t want anything to do with me. Emily hadn’t, but I couldn’t blame her. Hell, I could barely stand my own company.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Audrey
“I can’t have a serious conversation with you sitting there naked,” Chase said. He was looking at my tits and smiling, but I could tell the smile was forced by the look in his eyes.
It was as if the prospect of getting to know me better was scaring the hell out of him.
Or was it the prospect of me getting to know him that frightened him so?
“Fine. Hang on,” I said, pushing up from the table. I trotted into the bedroom to get my T-shirt and his sweat pants. I pulled the T-shirt over my head and tossed the sweats at him.
“Put those on,” I said, giving him a seductive look. “If I can’t sit here naked, then neither can you.”
Chase continued to smile as he tugged the sweats up his legs and over his cock. The smile seemed to be stuck to his face like a mask. He picked up the breakfast dishes and set them atop the heap of dirty dishes already in the sink.
He leaned back against the sink and crossed his arms over his hairy chest. “So, how does this work?” he asked. “This whole getting to know each other better thing.”
I wasn’t sure myself. This was new ground for me to plow as well. So, I went back to the topic that brought us together in the first place.
I said, “Tell me why you gave everyone in the class an F.”
He wrinkled his nose at me. “Haven’t we been through that already?”
“You said you were drunk, but that doesn’t explain why you’d do such a thing.” I studied his face as he stared at the dirty kitchen floor, as if the dust bunnies dancing over the linoleum held the answers. His eyes filled with tears and he tried to wipe them away without me noticing.
“Chase, what is it?” My heart suddenly ached for him. I got up from the table and put my arms around his neck. I pulled him close and rested my cheek on his chest. I knew he had a heart. I could hear it beating inside his chest.
“Tell me why you’re so sad,” I said. “You helped me. Now let me help you.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Chase
Floodgates.
I didn’t know why, but having Audrey’s arms around me and her head resting on my chest opened the floodgates, releasing the emotions and rage I had been harboring for so long.
We went to sit on the couch and I told her all about my pathetic, miserable life. I knew that it would drive her away, but that was okay. She’d given me the greatest gift a woman could offer a man. I was her first, but she was under no obligation to stick around to deal with an asshole like me.
“Emily and I were married right out of college,” I said, exhaling the words. I spied the pack of cigarettes on the coffee table but tried to ignore them. I had to do this sober or I wouldn’t do it at all. “We had Kiley, our little girl, a few years later.”
“Do you have a picture of her?” Audrey asked, looking around the living room, which was cluttered with clothes, trash, cigarette butts, and empty beer bottles.
“I put all of her pictures away,” I said quietly. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”
It was a silly notion, that my dead daughter couldn’t see me if I stored her photos away. My head seemed to be full of silly notions these days. Silly or not, god forbid she see the pitiful asshole her daddy had become.
I felt Audrey’s fingers gently stroking the back of my neck. Her fingers felt cool and comforting on my skin. She said, “Tell me about Kiley.”
I took a deep breath, and for the next hour I told her everything there was to tell about Kiley.
What a hard labor Emily had.
What a pretty baby she was.
What a happy toddler she became.
How wonderful and infectious her laugh was.
How she loved to hold my hands and stand on my toes and dance with me.
How I read her Winnie the Pooh each night at bedtime.
How we had to watch hours of Barney & Friends.
How I called her “My Angel” and bought her little angel figurines to set around her room.
How my heart grew ten sizes each time she smiled at me.
And how she died one afternoon as we drove home from school.
I never saw the other driver coming.
I saw lights.
I heard brakes.
I smelled smoke and felt the heat of a fire.
I heard my angel scream for her daddy.