The Solitude of Passion (39 page)

Candi and Kat go over the finer points of cravings and nausea while I busy myself examining Mitch, who’s examining me. He’s just standing there sandwiched between Colt and Hudson. Odd. It’s strange because I’m used to those men in different combinations and not necessarily together all at the same time. I’ve slept with all but Hudson and have no plans to in the future, real or imagined, to complete that little circle of fornication. Max catches my eye from the far left. With Max it’s always been spontaneous combustion when we’re together—with Mitch, too, but, dear God, I’d miss Max if I lost him. Suddenly it feels like I’m at his funeral.

“Earth to Lee.” Kat fans her hand in front of my face. “You keep the placentas?”

“Oh, right.” It takes all my strength to drag my eyes back to my sister. “Ate them for breakfast. They’re great with eggs. Tastes like chicken.”

They both echo a chorus of disgust
.

“No, I didn’t keep them,” I say. “They’re either in the landfill or the incinerator. I kept the kids. That’s what counts, right?” I give a brief smile.

They continue on with the chatter about all things maternal, and I freeze for a moment as my brain clouds itself with menstrual mathematics. Holy shit. I was supposed to start, wasn’t I?

“Watch out Lee, you’re next!” Candi’s teeth light up like lanterns.

Kat and I exchange looks. It’s like she knows something I don’t.

Colton whistles at me from across the yard. A dark-haired woman with bronze skin appears by his side, and two others, just as stunning, linger next to her. He motions me over, so I excuse myself.

From the corner of my eye I spot Janice helping Stella and Eli ladle punch from an oversized crystal bowl. We’ll have to peel the kids off the ceiling tonight after she gets through pumping them full of sugar. Better yet, they can spend the night here. Then we’ll see how easily the punch flows the next time we’re together.

I step in close to Mitch, and our shoulders bump.

“Hello.” I hold my hand out to Colton’s flavor of the month. “I’m Lee.”

“Hekili.” She smiles. Her fingers clasp around mine, cold and light as a feather.

She’s pretty, honey brown skin, long, dark hair with lots of body. Her friends say hello in unison like a matching set of speakers. The one with a crooked smile eyes Mitch as if he were dessert. Mitch is obnoxiously gorgeous, so I try to let it slide, but, in truth, it makes my stomach turn. It was as if all my hatred was pouring into this one gorgeous girl, ten years my junior—her milk white teeth, her glazed eyes that won’t stop openly yearning for my Mitch.

I sling an arm over his shoulder and feel the heft of her gaze shift from him to me.

Colton clears his throat. “Maybe now’s a good time for cake?”

Mitch

Lee places her arm around my shoulder, so I one up her and circle her waist. It feels like I’m finally breathing again, holding Lee out in the open. Colton leads his harem to the patio where Mom has a three-tiered cake decked out with a bouquet of frosted balloons. We make our way over, still interlinked, and stand off to the side.

“Is this what’s been going on while I’ve been away?” I whisper into Lee like I’m blowing a kiss in her ear. “Throwing Colton birthday parties complete with ponies, clowns, and balloon animals? Although, technically, it was Colton making the balloon animals, and he’s sort of a clown all in one—on second thought, the party works.”

“If only this were the worst of it.” Lee lets out a laugh. “Colt actually—”

Max comes up along side us, stopping Lee in her tracks before she can get another word out. He traces out our bodies, linked like a real couple, and his features drip into an honest to God state of depression. Hell, I almost feel sorry for the guy. Almost.

“What’s got you going?” I ask as my smile expands. “Oh, right, the arm thing. I guess you should get used to it sooner or later.”

“
Mitch
.” Lee tries to push me away, but I won’t let her. “What are you—thirteen? Max has feelings.”

“Sorry.” Shit. “I just wanted to let him know you were free to hold me. I don’t want him making you feel bad,” I say, pulling her in and tightening my grip.

I catch a glimpse of my mother and choose to ignore the worried expression on her face. I bet she danced at their wedding—right after Colt pushed Lee in front of Shepherd like an oncoming train. I wonder which lovely night that was for me? Isolation? Bring your whips and chains to work day? Maybe it was the time I was hogtied to a wall until I pissed myself?

Good times.

Mom starts in on a slow and dreadful version of
Happy Birthday
.

“Hands off my wife,” Max barks.

“
My
wife,” it comes out a growl, and Lee steps away.

Guess we’re done playing nice for the night.

Max gets in my face like a juiced up gorilla—shoulders stretched back, nose to nose.

“Get the fuck away,” I hiss lower than a whisper before propelling him back a good three feet. Max bumps the table and launches the cake off its stand. It does a cartwheel in the air, and half of it lands on Stella’s dress, the other half on her toes.

“Squishy!” Stella screams as she and Eli proceed to stomp it out like a fire, their feet quickly transforming into a distressed rainbow of color.

Max comes at me with a series of violent shoves until I stumble onto the lawn. His fist flies in my direction, and I manage to duck before he knocks my teeth into my esophagus.

“Missed.” I kick his feet from under him and land him flat on his ass. He lets out a hard groan, and his lungs deflate like a bad tire. In one swift move he knocks me over like a domino. We tumble like bear cubs until he pins me beneath him. He gives a swift knee to my balls and repeats the effort until I wish my head would explode.

China comes back in snatches—the inky darkness—the surprise of pain. Maybe this is all some twisted hallucination. Maybe Max Shepherd only exists in my worst nightmare, and I’ll wake up in that cold sterile bunk—a bowl of food waiting for me on the floor, crawling with maggots. Isolation never felt so good.

He kicks my nuts in until they wish they could invert.

“
Fuck
,” I shout into the night as my legs cinch up.

Screaming and chaos ensue. An army of legs prattle over in a frantic circle. Hudson and Colton pluck Max off while I roll around the lawn clutching my crotch, hoping to die.

“What the hell are you thinking?” Mom snaps at Max—at least I think so until she kicks me in the shin.

Shit.

“Busy dying.” I recover enough to get up on my elbows. I’ll feel this nagging pain in my balls until my deathbed. The bushes to the right look like a good place to sign off in peace.

“It’s like a powder keg with you two.” My mother shrills it out like an opera singer. “I saw you with your arm around Lee—
everybody
did. Apologize.” She helps me up. Honest to God, I’m bracing for a slap in the face.

“Apologize?” Is she kidding? “I’m not apologizing.” I’m not even entertaining the idea. “In the event you forgot, Lee is
my
wife.”

Her eyes soften into perfect circles of apprehension. “Mitch”—she lays her head on my chest and whispers so the crowd won’t hear—“oh, honey, Max feels the same way.”

“I don’t really care what Max is
feeling,
what bothers me is the fact he gets so much damn compassion from my own mother.”

Colt makes his way over. He stands in front of the lights, and his face is swallowed up in a shadow.

“Free entertainment.” He socks me in the arm. “Boys okay?”

“Super.” I lie. They’re still busy rioting like someone ripped the skin off and squeezed in a lemon.

I watch as Max wrangles the kids together, hosing the cake off their bare feet. Lee pops up behind me unexpected.

“Can I talk to Mitch?” She sounds curt—good and pissed for Max just like Mom.

Colton shuttles Mom off until it’s just Lee and me here in the shadowed portion of the yard. I back up until we’re hidden from the spectators, alone in the dark, with the whites of Lee’s eyes glowing like flames.

“Sorry.” My hands fly in the air defensively. “I’m crap. I handled everything like shit. Swear to God it won’t happen again.” I ramble out apologies for the next several minutes, taking the blame for third world hunger while I’m at it, the fact the moon is so damn hazy tonight, oil spills, ozone depletion, until finally Lee lands her cool finger over my lips to silence me.

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” She presses out an easy smile and my insides swim with relief.

Something in me loosens. “Thank you.” I pull her in, brush my lips over hers and this time I don’t give a flying fuck who witnesses the event.

“Come home,” she says it soft, so achingly sweet my insides melt. “I’ll calm him down.” There’s a genuine sadness in her eyes. It hurts to look. We used to be so happy, so full of life—enraptured. We walked on air for so long we forgot how to touch the ground—how cold and hard it might feel if everything came crashing down.

“You gotta tell him, Lee,” I plead. A part of me wants to get on my knees like some sort of perverse proposal and pray to God she’ll accept.

“You’re making it hard,” she says it a little more angry than I bargained for. “You’re pushing us backward. Do whatever the hell Dr. Van Guard tells you. Do not veer left or right. You got it? There’s a lot at stake—Max and his sanity—both of which I happen to care about, deeply.” Her face pinches with grief. “That man would die for me—
kill
. You used to care about him. He talked about you, Mitch. He really missed those times. He’s baffled about what happened. Just do us all a favor—open up and heal this wound already.”

Here she is, begging me to breathe life into a relationship I chopped up and burned to ashes so long ago—one that I would happily trade for table salt because of the horrible truths I thought I buried with it.

Max calls out for Lee. His voice rises through the night like a war drum, taunting me in the process.

“I gotta go,” she whispers. “Come home, kay? But make an effort. Do this for everybody—for
us
.”

Lee takes off. She scoops up Eli on the way out before glancing back.

Do this for us.

She’s right. I need to shore this up and fast. I need to be the bigger man. I knew holding Lee would set him off, and, at the time, I wasn’t really interested in the consequences—just like I wasn’t in high school when I cut him out of my life for good.

Max would die for Lee—
kill
for her. What makes her think I wouldn’t do the same? Wouldn’t that be the real kicker? If I came back from the dead just to have Max Shepherd send me off into eternity once and for all—so he can continue on with the rest of my life.

I think she’s got it wrong.

I don’t think he missed me one fucking bit.

Max

Hudson slaps my shoulder on the way to the car. “You want me to call the clean-up committee?”

I don’t make any eye contact with him, just watch as Lee struggles to get Eli into his car seat after the disaster that ensued. “I don’t care what you do.”

“Cool. I got your back, bro.” He gives a quick sock to my arm.

“Stay away from the chips. I’m all out of cash, can’t bail you out anymore. Clean up your life for me, will you?” I try to disinfect my mind of the insinuation he’s flushed through it. The last thing I need or want is Mitch Townsend’s blood on my hands. “Spend some time in the fields. We’ve got a big investors meeting coming up. Cut your fucking hair. That’s what you can do. And stop knocking up chicks with a propensity for video cameras.”

“Not a problem. I’ll get you a copy. Autographed.”

Perfect. It confirms the theory he hears all my words out of turn.

I get in the car and start the engine. Eli’s eyes are already rolling to the back of his head. But Stella has her arms crossed tight over her chest, a pissed look on her face, and I hope to God it has to do with leaving before the gifts were opened and not with me.

“You hate Picture Daddy,” she pouts. And there it is. I glance up at her in the rearview mirror as I get my belt on, her face streaked with purple and orange frosting.

“Do not.” I don’t put much inflection into it as I rev the engine. The last thing I need is for my wife and daughter ganging up on me. Thankfully, Lee doesn’t offer her two cents. Then again, she’s probably holding out until we get the kids to sleep—letting the tension percolate while she polarizes further away from me emotionally.

We hit the open road, and I feel like I can breathe again.

“You do hate him!” Stella insists. “You hurt him in his area.”

His
area
? Is that what we’re calling it these days?

“And, I’m very sorry I did that.” Not really, but for the sake of family unity I’ll say just about anything. Truthfully, I’d like to destroy his
area
, incapacitate it until he’s incapable of employing it in my wife’s vagina. That ought to take all thoughts of copulating with Lee’s ‘area’ off the table.

“You’re not sorry,” she continues. “You don’t like, Picture Daddy. You wish he would leave and never come back!”

Great. Now I’ve got a mind reader on my hands. “Not true. In fact, I’m betting he’ll show up tonight just in time to tuck you in.” Because I can’t catch a fucking break.

“Will you ‘pologize to him?” Her eyes enlarge the same way Lee’s do when she’s upset.

“You bet. On all fours if it makes your mommy happy.”

“
Max
.” Lee shoves me in the arm, and I swerve momentarily. “You
should
apologize, and I think he owes you one, too. It wouldn’t kill either of you to amp up the civility.”

Grief from Lee is the last thing I need tonight. Getting back into her good graces should be a cakewalk—cake full of razor blades—bloody delicious. Maybe when Mitch gets home tonight they can take turns beating me with a baseball bat—twist my balls off and feed them to me for breakfast. It feels like that’s been happening on a rotating basis since he’s stepped back into the picture.