“Sure.”
“So are you two done or do I need to close some doors?”
“No, we’re done.” L.C. drained his soda.
Zack snorted. “So that’s it? Discussion over?”
“Shi— Shoot, Zack,” L.C. corrected. “We’ve talked this one to death. Look, Mercedes won’t let you go anyway, so yeah, the discussion’s over.”
Zack shifted his gaze to her. “I want to take an extra day next weekend and go home for a family thing. Is that all right with you?”
Mercedes licked her lips. “Maybe you two should work this out yourselves.”
“Is it?” Zack repeated.
She thought it over a moment, glancing at L.C. while she did. He was trying to look bored, but she sensed defensiveness beneath his stony expression.
“If it’s really important to you, Zack, of course I don’t mind. But if you want to know what I’d prefer, I’d like to see you make a dent in that list I gave you. It would reflect better on both of us if you applied yourself to your community hours without asking for time off right away.”
“About that list.” L.C. placed his hand behind hers, so he angled his wide chest toward her. “Are you familiar with the term ‘exploitation?’“
About to sling something snarky right back, she noticed Zack’s narrowed eyes and paused. He wasn’t about to be put off.
“Aren’t you going to be out of school in a few weeks anyway?” she asked him. “And home for the summer?”
Zack’s gaze swung back to his father with such challenge, she could practically see the testosterone rising with the flush beneath his skin. “Will you come home then?”
“No.” L.C. didn’t hesitate or explain.
Zack’s nostrils flared. “You really don’t care, do you?”
L.C. crushed the can on the wall and leapt to his feet, rushing Zack.
Mercedes caught her breath.
The younger man fell back a step, but L.C. only swept past him, moving inside, leaving Zack staring after him.
Mercedes pressed her gritty hand to her chest, where her heart pounded a mile a minute. “I thought he was going to hit you or something.”
“No,” Zack dismissed with a snort, and seemed unable to decide whether to follow his father or let him cool off. He chose to move closer to her on the patio and give his dad some room. “No, he’d never hit me.” He scratched the back of his head. “But he’s pretty mad. Sorry about the swearing.”
“The kids can fine you a dollar. Do you want to tell me what this is about?”
“I’d rather live, thanks.”
She tilted her head, smiling because she realized he wasn’t afraid of L.C., but there was obviously high emotion going on here. “Why—”
L.C. came back, a cellphone pressed to his ear. “Zack wants me to come with him this weekend. Do you want me there?”
He held the phone out, letting both of them hear the dead silence. Bringing it back to his ear, he said, “That’s what I thought. Do me a favor and explain that to him.” L.C. didn’t give the person on the other end a chance to respond, just ended the call and lowered the phone.
“Satisfied?” he asked Zack.
“She hates it when you talk to her like that.”
“And she would love it if I showed up. You haven’t even talked to her about it, have you? I just stunned the hell out of her.”
“I wanted you to say yes first. I’ll talk to her about it now.” Zack grabbed his own phone out of his pocket and shoved past L.C. into the house.
“I’m still not going,” L.C. called to his back.
No answer.
L.C. rubbed his face.
“You two have a lot of angry energy.” Mercedes turned so she could see the kids, but drifted her weight back until her hips rested on the wall.
L.C. did the same, facing the other way, so they stood offset, side by side, shoulder to shoulder. He smelled good.
“That was his mother, I assume?”
“Ex-wife, ex-life. He just doesn’t get it.”
“Was your breakup horrible?” Mercedes told herself she was offering a friendly ear, but there was more to it. She wanted to know more about him. Way more.
L.C. shrugged. “We did it often enough to get good at it. The last one was pretty efficient.”
So there’d been some backsliding. “She’s remarried now?” She recalled him saying something about a new husband.
“Yeah.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No.” The dismissing scoff in his tone made her believe it.
“Does it bother Zack? How old was he when you two started having trouble?”
“Still in the womb.”
“Really?” She turned her head to look at his profile. “Why did you marry?”
He lifted his inked shoulder. “I told you she’s my sister’s best friend? Brit grew up across the street. One day she gets her braces off and comes running over to show Paige. I’m the only one home and I say, ‘That deserves a kiss.’ Next thing I know, I’m quitting high school to support a wife and baby.”
“Ah.” She fingered a depression in a brick where fine sand had gathered. “You tried at least.”
“Zack was six when we said ‘enough’ to the trying and meant it. It wasn’t too bad after that. My sister mediated. She’s the kind that takes care of everyone.”
“Mmm.” Mercedes glanced in to see Ayjia pulling a corner of the blanket into her lap. She tried to tug some over Dayton’s legs, but he pushed it off. “If it’s been so long since the divorce, why is she still holding a grudge? I mean, it’s a free country. If you want to go back to your hometown, why are you letting her hold you back?”
“I’m not. It’s...” He met her gaze for a long minute, seeming about to say something then shaking his head. “It’s a long story.”
“I like stories.”
“Not this one.” He smiled without humor, then even that died. “It’s a hard story.”
She liked his mouth, so masculine yet so expressive, even when he held it so flat and tight her lungs hurt. He had a small scar on his cheekbone, hadn’t shaved, and his nose had obviously been broken more than once, but he was so ruggedly beautiful. Rough and yet with such a promise of appreciation in those midnight eyes of his as he turned his gaze on her.
He slid his gaze to her mouth.
She swallowed, knowing what he wanted. A similar want rose in her while theme music from How To Train Your Dragon drifted from the living room.
“Maybe tell me the US Weekly version,” she said in a low tone.
He glanced away, spoke without inflection. “My dad moved out of town, I lost my job, my house burned down, my sister married, and my ex—” A small wince, then that tightness around his mouth again. “She flat out told me she wanted me gone. Zack was finishing high school and leaving for college, so I left, too.”
“Your house burned down?”
He shrugged. “I was living a life I wouldn’t have left, so that was a bit of a silver lining. The man I was there... I’m different now. Looking at school. At the future. I don’t want to go back.”
She could hear the layers in that statement. The resolve. It came across like a vow.
“I understand about not wanting to revisit the past, but... There are people who would like to see the better man you’ve become, aren’t there? Your sister?” she guessed.
“I didn’t say better.” He snorted and pushed away from the wall. “I said different. You want help with the paint?”
Chapter 11
“I know I’m late. I had to see the principal.” Mercedes spit out the words as she climbed into the passenger side of L.C.’s truck and immediately rolled down her window.
He eased out of the parking lot and onto the road. “Get caught smoking?”
“I wish. No, they want to put Dayton on the juvenile tranquilizer du jour. Apparently, he’s too restless to learn how to read. Where am I going to find the money to have him assessed? What about the prescriptions? My benefits only cover fifty percent and when my sister finally shows up to take them back, she won’t have any money at all. How is she going to keep him on pills? And damn this frigging traffic! Hit your horn.”
“Take a breath, Mercedes.”
“Fuck you.”
“Save that for the school and take a breath.”
She did and rubbed the tension out of her temples. She wore a pale yellow button shirt tied off over a snug blue tank. It gaped, giving him an eyeful of her freckled upper chest and a hint of cleavage.
“I’m sorry. But he’s not learning to read, L.C. What am I going to do? Porsha should have put him in kindergarten, but she didn’t. Now he’s behind everyone else and that makes him frustrated—”
“He’s six, not sixteen. They don’t always get it right away. Or want to try.” He hadn’t. That’s why he needed a refresher to pass the equivalency.
“But he can’t even recognize half the alphabet. Ayjia knows all the letters and reads little words all the time.”
“So did my sister. She loved books. I loved smashing toy cars with the biggest rock I could find.”
“Don’t make fun of this. Turn left here. Sometimes— Oh, great!”