Something Worth Saving (2 page)

It wasn’t like I wanted to stop him. It had been just as long for me since we last had sex. I wanted nothing more than to ride this shit out of him, but reality was weighing in on that decision.

That damn dog started in with his howling, waking up Jayden, and then we had both kids at the door, crying and wondering why their parents weren’t around.

Who was next, Child Protective Services?

Don’t even think that, Aubrey!

“Come on baby . . . stay in the moment,” Jace grunted, moving the hand that was at the side down my body, over my ribs and lower until it was at my knee. Gripping my leg tightly, he angled my legs farther apart, his hips moving at a steady pace.

He was determined to finish. “You like that, don’t you?” he asked when he saw my eyes close, the sensations overwhelming me. “You feel so good.”

I did like that. In fact, I loved it.

Just as I was beginning to relax and finally be in the moment, I heard the sounds I hated in times like this.

“Mommy!” our daughter Gracie yelled, pounding her tiny fists against the door. “Open the door!”

Jace didn’t stop — no, instead he sped up his movements as a growl emerged from deep in his throat.

That was until the dog burst through the wooden door of the bathroom and into our room, and began to hump the bedpost, and the kids continued to beat against the door. It wasn’t looking like we were going to be able to finish. At least, it didn’t seem right to me.

“I want to play Candy Crush!” Gracie shouted again.

“Use my phone. It’s on the table,” Jace yelled back, his mouth only parting from mine for a moment before he went back to work.

At that point, I just lay there. My concentration and desire seemed lost – if not from the kids screaming and yelling – but from the dog humping the bedpost by my head.

Who can relax like this?

Most mothers have been here before, and I know you have. Don’t lie. It doesn’t make you any less of a mother to wish for some alone time for yourself.

Yes, we love our children, but when they start impinging on our sex life, it becomes a problem.

That’s a shitty thing for me to say, isn’t it?

It was quiet for about a half a second when Gracie, still outside our door, asked, “What’s that noise?”

Jace stopped for about a half a second and then continued despite the squeaking bed springs. “Nothing. Go play your game.” By the irritation in his voice and his tightened grip, I knew how this was going to end.

“Jace . . . maybe—”

His hands twisted gently in my hair, pulling me into every strong-minded thrust. “Hold on honey . . . please . . . ” he whispered. “I’m so close.”

If only I was that close.

Like I said, I knew how this was going to end. It was going to end with the kids screaming and Jace getting frustrated and storming off. Same shit every day. I could already feel the mood changing.

“I can’t, Daddy!” she pouted. I could almost hear her bottom lip coming out. “I’m stuck on this level.”

Somehow the phone ended up under the locked door with both Jayden and Gracie screaming and both beating against the door.

And there was the moment it changed. He got frustrated.

“Fuck . . . ” Jace sighed, rolling to the side, and I knew the moment was gone. With his arms resting over his stomach, he moved them to his face as he breathed heavily. Scrubbing his hands over his tired eyes, he kicked at the dog, pushing him away from the bedpost. “Knock it off, Smoke.”

I laughed. It was all I could do. This had happened to us so often that now it was hard not to be frustrated.

Jace got up after that. Barely lifting my head from the pillow, I watched his naked ass.

Such a shame.

Perfect. Muscular. Amazing.

When he reached the bathroom door he looked back at me, his hand on the knob, and then sighed. Turning away, he slammed the bathroom door shut behind him as he mumbled something about it being four weeks soon. The door, being broken, sprung open again so he used the laundry hamper to keep it closed.

This wasn’t the first time we had been interrupted, and nor would it be the last. But it was in fact getting frustrating that, because he worked nights, we found basically no time alone.

When I heard the shower turn on and the metal of the shower door rattle, I removed myself from our bed and got dressed.

Straightening out the sheets, I coaxed Smokey out with me and found my two kids pressed against the door, watching me.

The dog jumped over the kids, his nails scraping against the mahogany floors as he scrambled to get to his food dish. I didn’t know why he was in such a hurry. It was empty.

“What were you doing?” Gracie asked, looking around me. Refusing to move, she put her tiny hands on her hips and scrunched her nose. “Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s in the shower.” Immediately her wide blue eyes searched the room. Whenever a door was closed, it was if she thought for sure she was missing out on something good.

Looking back into the room at the light coming from under the bathroom door, steam rolling from the small crack, I knew I was missing out. Briefly I started to imagine what he must look like in there. Hard body covered in soap, water dripping from every hard-cut line of his sculpted body.

Stop now. You’re only tormenting yourself.

Such a shame.

“I want to take a shower with Daddy,” She announced, trying to remove her shirt by wiggling her body around. At four years old, she still hadn’t mastered taking her clothes off. I didn’t know what it was about her, but she had so many problems getting her shirt off. Pants were easy, but getting her to pull something over her head just wasn’t happening. “Please, I really want to take a shower with him!”

You and me both, kid.

“No. You can’t take showers with him anymore.”

Coed showering ended when Gracie was just over a year old and tried to put a certain body part in her mouth. As you can imagine, Jace was horrified, and outlawed showers with his daughter after that. He wouldn’t even take a shower with Jayden, either.

I couldn’t blame him.

While I was attempting to herd them down the hall, Gracie was quicker than I and went running toward the door, pounding her fists against it. “Daaaaaddy, let me in!”

I heard Jace chuckle, but he said nothing. Part of me was jealous he was in the shower alone. I never got to take showers alone, or baths. Fuck that. Any time my kids heard the water turn on, they came running as though me taking a bath was some kind of family water park adventure.

Picking up Jayden, I got the kids into the kitchen and started getting breakfast ready.

We had just finished our toaster waffles when Jace appeared in the hallway.

“Daddy!” Gracie squealed when she saw him come into the kitchen. He kissed the top of her head. I noticed he was dressed in his dark blue Seattle Fire Department sweatshirt, the one he wore to and from the firehouse. That could only mean one thing: he’d gotten called in on his day off.

“Morning, sweetie,” he said, winking in my direction and then reaching for Jayden in his high chair. The boy was frantically trying to remove himself to get to his hero.

There was nothing that excited our little boy more than his daddy. Nothing. Sure, I fed him, bathed, changed, and cuddled him, but I had nothing on the man who was the epitome of perfection in his eyes. The first time Jayden saw Jace in his bunker gear ready to go to a fire, you would have thought he’d seen a superhero.

With our just over two-years-old son securely in his arms, Jace moved closer to me. “I picked up an extra shift today.” He smiled gently, as if I should know by his sweatshirt he had been called in.

“But you just came off a twenty-four-hour shift.” Jace was a firefighter and usually worked twenty-four-hour shifts with forty-eight hours off, then another twenty-four-hour shift and ninety-six hours off. Lately, though, he’d been volunteering for overtime and Special Teams on the fireboat down at the pier.

Jace shrugged, holding Jayden over his shoulders with one arm and pouring black coffee with the other into his stainless steel coffee mug. “I know.” He moved to sit at the table, both kids crawling on him now.

I didn’t mind the extra money the overtime brought with it, even though we had separate accounts, but it was the simple fact that he was never here. And when he wasn’t working, he was out with the boys, playing hockey or softball. At times I just wanted him to be home for more than a day.

I didn’t push the issue of overtime. To me it was an argument we didn’t need to have, because if you knew Jace, you understood if you pushed him into an argument, he’d shut down.

Nodding, I poured my own cup of coffee. We sat there listening to Gracie talk about
Bubble Guppies
and how she wanted her very own Bubble Puppy – whatever that was.

With a smile of utter amusement at our daughter, Jace took one hand and wrapped it around my waist, pulling all four of us together.

It always worried me when he came off a shift and went right back on duty. Never mind the fact that he was already tired. If he was feeling the effects of the job, he wouldn’t lead on.

Keeping his eyes low on the kids, he whispered, “Call my mom and see if the kids can spend the night tomorrow.”

He didn’t have to ask me twice. Ask any parent out there, and they’ll tell you when the kids make a trip to the grandparents, two things happen: sleep and sex. I planned on doing both.

“Okay,” I agreed with a nod, inwardly smiling.

Jace leaned forward to kiss my forehead. “I’ll drop the kids off with Lauren on my way to the station.”

Lauren was my younger sister. She graciously watched our crazy brood while I was at work. She had a five-year-old son of her own, and I had absolutely no idea how exactly she managed this without drugging them during the day.

I loved my kids dearly, but dropping them off at daycare sucked ass.

Having never been very clingy to me, they always were when it came to dropping them off. That activity was full of screaming and crying and snot . . . and then there were their reactions, which were very similar. Most of the time you couldn’t drop them off without bribery.

Kissing the kids and their chubby little cheeks with maple syrup all over them, I wrapped my arms around Jace’s shoulders, leaning my chest into his back.

I whispered into his neck, “Be safe.”

The hardest part for me was not knowing if he was going to return home to us. I found myself memorizing his smile, his eyes, and the last words he said, wondering if it would be our last.

I didn’t like to think that way, but it happened, and was a reality of this life.

“Always,” he whispered, turning his head toward mine.

I maneuvered my way to the front door of our apartment and took one last look at my little family.

Jace sat down with both kids now in his lap. His tousled black hair, which matched Gracie’s, fell against his forehead and shadowed his eyes nicely. As if he could never really tame it, the front kicked out at an odd angle. Not quite a cowlick, but just messy. Usually he kept it short and cut close, but lately he’d let it grow.

As Jace held our son, my beautiful little boy grabbed at him when he reached for his coffee, trying desperately not to be put down but instead in his daddy’s lap where he wanted to be. He loved to be held.

And our daughter, bouncing thick dark curls that cascaded down her tiny frame, laughing, her arms locked around his shoulders, enjoying her time with him.

It was days like this when I wanted to stay there with them.

If only, right?

The reality was quite a bit different, because there’s this thing called money. And everyone needs it in order to live.

It was also days like this that I worried where our relationship was heading. Like this morning, the interruptions we had, they came often these days. Back when we first started dating, it didn’t matter if we had time. We made time. And being interrupted didn’t matter because it made life that much more exciting.

Sometimes I missed the newness that came with those first few months. Where did it go? I missed the butterflies and the teasing. I missed the “can’t wait to see you” and the part where we ripped our clothes off at the door.

Where did it go? Oh, right. We had kids.

Part of me didn’t think it was all that.

After a while you get comfortable, words and motions get familiar, and before you know you assume that they know and feel the same way, and you stop saying what needs to be said.

I could tell you a story here about a couple and what they went through in a matter of just a few months. But those few months were a small fraction of what our life really was.

Station 10 to dispatch.

Station 10 . . . go ahead.

Ladder 1 en route.

Engine 10 responded.

Engine 10 on location.

Aubrey

I
RAN
my own business, Wicked Wonders, something I loved. There’s just something about owning your own business that makes you feel independent, and for once, I enjoyed going to work because I felt like I was creating something special.