What I wasn’t doing was seeing, speaking to or sleeping with Hixon Drake.
This regardless of the fact that he’d called on Sunday after the funeral, a call for obvious reasons I did not take, however he’d left a message in his lovely, deep voice that said simply, “Greta, we need to talk.”
I had not replied.
I’d blocked his number too.
I was learning.
I was learning I didn’t need my mother’s malicious antics and I didn’t need some man I barely knew treating me like dirt.
So I wasn’t going to have either.
I was going to have Andy. Lou. Her girls. My work. My singing.
And the rest could go to hell.
Now I had Andy for the weekend. When I’d told Gemini my brother wanted to catch a Raiders game, he’d found an act to take my place.
I’d also cleared my client schedule for Saturday.
So I had a full weekend with my brother to look forward to and the Raiders winning to start that off was indication it was going to be a good one.
“Race you to the car?” Snow asked Andy.
“Yeah!” Andy yelled.
She took off.
Maple let him go and took off too.
Andy, knowing he could beat them by a mile, shot another grin over his shoulder at me, this a goofy one. He gave it a few beats to give them a head start, then he took off after them at a sedate lope.
“He’s da bomb,” Lou said from her place striding beside me as we walked out with the rest of the town from Raider Field.
She was right.
I looked up to her then back to where we were heading, watching the girls and Andy weave through the crowd, the girls just going for it, Andy stopping every once in a while to say, “Hey, sorry,” and “pardon,” and “gotta keep up with the girls.”
In other words, they were going to beat him by a mile.
I watched them start to pull away in a break in the crowd and did it noting, “It’s weird, you know. I get so pissed . . . I still . . .” I shook my head. “I grieve for the life he could have had. Then, I realize, if he’d had that, I wouldn’t have this Andy and I don’t know whether it’s right or wrong to feel blessed I have this Andy when he could have had so much more.”
“It’s never wrong to love someone just as they come,” Lou told me.
I glanced at her before again looking ahead. “You’re right. I know that. But I’m not sure it’s healthy I’m still holding on to some of that, Lou. It happened nearly a decade ago.”
“My grandma died when my mom was twenty-two. And to this day, on Grandma’s birthday and the anniversary of her death, you handle Mom with care and don’t mention her red eyes. That was over four decades ago, Greta. I think what would be unhealthy is if you tried to stop yourself from feeling grief. The life he could have had that your mom took from him will always be something he lost. So it’ll always be something you wished he had. Just feel what you feel, babe. And . . . shit.”
I looked up to her after she said that last word to see her gaze narrowed on something in the distance.
“What?” I asked.
“Hixon,” she hissed.
My eyes flew to where she was looking and there he was. Standing talking to a bunch of people just inside the chain link fence that ran around the field, wearing a navy V-neck sweater with a T-shirt under it and faded jeans—making that simplicity look awesome. His younger daughter was not too far from him looking like she was doing a pirouette with two other girls who were doing the same.
Shit!
“We have to get by him without him seeing me,” I said under my breath like he was standing one foot away, not thirty, doing this grabbing Lou’s arm and getting close to her. I gave it a yank. “Move to my other side.”
“Why?” she asked. “He should see you. You look fine. You always look fine. But with that pink in your cheeks and that cute jacket and those jeans that make your awesome ass look even more awesome, he should get a load of what he’s missing.”
“Lou,” I snapped.
“No,” she returned calmly, moving a half step away, forcing my hand to fall from her arm. “Screw Hixon Drake.”
Fabulous.
I kept walking, giving in, but ordered, “Don’t look at him.”
She said nothing.
We carried on and I hazarded a glance up at her.
She was looking right in his direction and I knew by the way she was skewering something with her eyes, it was him.
“You’re not helping,” I told her.
“He’s not looking at me. He doesn’t even know I’m here.” Her attention came to me. “He’s looking at you. And I’m glad. Because right about now he’s probably missing a little of that action and I’m not just talking about the fact you are fine and he was tapping that. I’m talking about the fact pretty much everyone knows he now knows Hope is a spoiled-rotten bitch and pretty much everyone knows, after he escaped a full lifetime of that, he let a great thing slip right through his fingers.”
It felt like my heart skipped a beat after the first part of what she said, and that skip was more like a walloping thump so I kinda didn’t hear the rest of it.
“How lame would it be if I raced you to the car?” I asked.
“Super, double, extra lame,” she answered.
Ugh.
We made it through the gate without incident, and then I stepped it up in my high-heeled boots to get to the car.
I didn’t run. I didn’t dilly-dally.
I wanted to be able to say this was because I wanted to make sure Andy and the girls had made it safely to the car.
But it totally wasn’t.
It was the pounding that woke me up.
But when I was awake, I heard the rain.
Shit!
Rain.
I tossed back the covers and raced out of my room, across the hall, to the room I thought of as Andy’s, even though he didn’t sleep there very often.
I threw open the door, heard the source of the noise but didn’t see Andy, so I closed it, and there he was on the opposite side of the door, standing, hands to the wall, slamming his head against it.
“Sweetie,” I whispered, rushing to him, putting my hands on him. “Shh, just rain. It’s just rain,” I soothed.
Fingers curled tight around his biceps, I pulled back.
He kept slamming his head against the wall.
“Andy, darlin’, please, stop doing that.” I pulled harder. “Come away from the wall.”
He didn’t stop even as he resisted my pull.
“Andrew!” I snapped. “Come away from the wall!”
I tightened my hold and gave his arms a yank, only for him to give my hands a powerful shirk at the same time his body jerked forcefully to the side.
I lost hold, falling back a step, and when I went to move forward and regain it, he lifted an elbow and drew it back sharply, catching me in the eye.
I cried out and fell backward. Tripping on the edge of the rug under the bed, I fell further, hitting the end of the bed, sliding down it and falling to my ass on the floor.
“Ta-Ta.”
I blinked the stars out of my eyes and looked up at him.