Games of the Heart

Chapter Five Strike Three

Saturday, a week later, 2:00 p.m.

I walked up to Mike’s house a bundle of nerves.

I didn’t remember the last time I felt nervous. I didn’t get nervous. That just wasn’t me.

But I was nervous.

True to his word, Mike and I didn’t speak for the last week. We exchanged a few texts to decide a time and for him to give me his address. That was it.

So it was two o’clock on Saturday and I was there, seeing Mike for the first time since our weekend together even though I arrived back home again yesterday afternoon.

I’d left two weeks earlier never thinking if I was in town Mike would delay it an entire day before making some time to see me. Even if he had his kids.

But there it was.

I didn’t take the time Mike suggested we meet as a good sign. Two o’clock meant it was nowhere near lunch so he wouldn’t feel courtesy bound to suggest having a meal with me. Ditto for dinner. But, even though it was late January and the days were short, there was plenty of time for me to get home in the daylight after our chat. So if I was crying my eyes out while driving, I’d still have more visibility and thus less of a chance to die in a fiery ball of flame caused by a heartbroken car accident.

I didn’t have to drive seeing as Mike lived next door to the family farm. But I didn’t know which of the gates in the long fence that ran the length of the townhouses was his. So I drove.

But by the time I got up his walk and to his door, I lost my nerves and started to get pissed.

I didn’t know what all the drama was about. And I wasn’t a big fan of someone telling me they were going to lay bad news on me and making me wait for it until they were ready to tell me.

I didn’t think Mike would be like this. Ever. And it sucked he was.

So when I knocked, I knocked sharply.

He wanted to talk face-to-face, fine. I’d do that. I’d do that for the Mike who was a good friend to my brother for years. I’d do that for the Mike who gave me some unbelievably fantastic orgasms. And I’d do that for the Mike I once knew him to be who I adored.

But this shit was not going to be drawn out. Rhonda was even more skittish and freaked out than normal. Fin and Kirb were both handling her like a piece of fragile glass. Mom and Dad had clearly tried everything in their parenting arsenal to help out, as had Rhonda’s parents who still lived close and reportedly had been hovering daily, and no one knew what to do. So I had shit to see to.

Mike opened the door and I looked right him. First, I noted he hadn’t grown grotesque in the two weeks we’d been separated which was unfortunate. Second, I noticed that he had a gentle look on his face that wasn’t sweet, warm and openly gentle but cautious and distantly gentle.

This already wasn’t starting good.

He stepped back, opening the door wider saying, “Hey, Dusty.”

No “Angel”. Yep, not starting good.

“Hey,” I muttered, moving in as he clearly intended me to do and taking two steps in before stopping.

I didn’t look around. I was curious but damned if I was going to give into it. Mike was not in my future, this much I’d figured out. I didn’t need an in-my-face view of what I was going to be missing.

He closed the door and turned to me. I was already turned to him.

“You want a drink?” he asked.

“No, I want to get whatever this is done so I can get back to my family,” I answered.

He flinched and didn’t hide it.

Whatever. Mike obviously could be more than one kind of dick. Since he had awesome command of the real one on his body and he was gorgeous, this shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was my vast experience beautiful men who were good in bed tended to be total assholes. If he was decent enough to feel guilt about that, that was not my problem.

“Go straight down the hall, Dusty. We’ll talk in the living room,” Mike invited.

“How long’s this going to take?” I asked and his eyes leveled on mine.

“I’m asking you, please, go down the hall, Dusty,” he said firmly. I figured that was how he talked to his kids but he probably took the jerk out of it when he spoke to his kids that way.

I sighed, turned and walked down the hall.

Being even more pissed, I forgot to keep my blinders up and through the windowed backdoors I saw a gorgeous, clearly spunky golden retriever outside bouncing around on Mike’s deck.

Damn, I loved dogs and she was beautiful.

I pulled my eyes away from the dog and turned to Mike.

“So, what is it?” I asked.

“Sit down.”

“No, Mike. Just tell me.”

“Dusty, please sit down.”

“I think I answered that,” I snapped, his gaze held mine then he gave in, crossing his arms on his unfairly wide and attractive chest (yes, even in clothes and unfortunately I knew how good that chest looked out of them).

He took in a breath and started, “Honey, you’re a beautiful woman.”

Oh my God, was he serious?

I rolled my eyes.

“Dusty, eyes to me and listen to me,” he clipped, suddenly sounding angry and I looked at him. Boy, did I look at him and I did it hard.

Then I invited, “Say what you have to say to make you feel better for whatever it is you feel shit about, Mike, so I can get on with my day. But, do me a favor, cut out the meaningless, flowery compliments and do it quick-like. I’ve got shit to do.”

“I need you to understand why I’ve come to the decision I’ve made.”

I tipped my head to the side and asked, “Does it matter if I don’t want to understand?”

“It matters to me,” he said, his voice softer and quieter.

I threw out a hand magnanimously. “Well, by all means, Mike. Sock it to me.”

He held my eyes and kept talking in that soft, quiet but reserved voice, “This is hard enough, sweetheart.”

Well, poor you, I thought but kept my mouth shut. Me speaking was prolonging this farce.

He correctly ascertained I was not going to reply so he kept speaking.

“We didn’t have the time for me to explain what happened in my marriage. And we didn’t have the time for me to share about Violet. I did tell you that those experiences meant I knew what I wanted and what I didn’t.”

That hurt and I didn’t even know what he was talking about. That was exactly how much I liked him. That was exactly how much I wanted to believe that dream I had two weeks ago, the impossible dream happening at the impossible time after my brother fucking died was real. I liked him so much that he could say nothing and it still cut like a knife.

“There are other things too,” he carried on. “You mentioned you want children. I have two and I don’t want more. You live in Texas. I live here. You have a good life there, good friends and you do something you love. There is no way, if this was to work out, I could join you there. Then there’s Debbie –”

At my sister’s name, my back went straight and I interrupted, “Debbie?”

“Yeah, Debbie.”

“What does she have to do with this?”

“Honey, I took her virginity. We were teenagers but we were lovers for a year and a half and she’s your sister.”

“You didn’t mind that two weeks ago,” I reminded him.

“I’ve had time to think about it and other shit has come up.”

“Right, well get on with the other shit, Mike,” I encouraged cuttingly.

His eyes got softer, warmer but they were still remote, “Honey, this doesn’t have to be ugly.”

He was wrong about that. It already was.

I didn’t reply.

He held my gaze. Then he took in a visibly massive breath.

Then he started, “She did it for the right reasons. I can see you’re pissed but I’d like to ask that you don’t take that out on her.”

I felt my eyebrows draw together. “What are you talking about?”

I hoped like hell it wasn’t Debbie. If my bitchface sister got hold of Mike and filled his head with shit to take him away from me, I would not be responsible for what I would do.

He again held my gaze and he was warring with something. I could see it plain as day on his face.

Then he moved and I watched as he rounded the couch. It didn’t hit me until he bent and picked up two books that were sitting on his coffee table. And it didn’t even really hit me as I stared at those books that were vaguely familiar as he walked back to the place he’d stood before, five feet away from me.

Then I remembered those books and every inch of my body froze.

“Rhonda found them,” he said gently and my eyes moved to his face to see there was pain in it. Not a little bit of it either. And even as angry as I was, I had to admit, it hurt to see. “She brought them to me asking me to help you. I know and she knows about Denny Lowe.”

I stared at him, speechless.

Mike wasn’t speechless.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart, but Darrin found these and he knew too.”

I continued to stare at him silently.

Mike kept talking.

“I loved reading how you felt about me. It’s beautiful and straight up, Angel, I’ll treasure it. Swear to God, I will. But I hated reading what Denny did to you and I’m sorry, so sorry I can’t say, you went through that. And, if you’ve got issues about Denny, you can always get help. I know time has passed but even demons that have dug deep can be pulled out. And after we’re done talking, if you still want my help, I can give you names of people you can talk to that might help you deal.”

That was when I spoke.

“You read them?”

Mike nodded.

“You read my journals?” I asked again just to confirm.

“I did, Dusty. It killed me to read a lot of what I read but I read it. And now Rhonda is worried because, without sharing your secret, Darrin told her repeatedly he was worried that you weren’t making good decisions about men because of what happened with Lowe. And LeBrec could be a prime example of that. You need to think about that and what you’re going to do to make smarter choices before more of your life slides by.”

“So you’re breaking up with me because you found out a guy who turned out to be a serial killer felt me up.”

He blinked, his chin jerking back with his blink and hesitated a moment before he said, “It’s more complicated than that.”

“No, it isn’t,” I shot back.

“Yes, it is,” he returned immediately and firmly.

I suddenly leaned in and hissed, “Bullshit.” Then I took five steps to him, snatched the books out of his hand and shook them in the air at my side. “You know why Darrin had these? Because I gave them to him.”

Mike blinked with the chin jerk again.

“Yeah,” I snapped. “I was leaving town and was going to throw them away and Darrin thought the shit I drew in them was too pretty just to throw away so he asked if he could have them and I said sure.”

Mike stared at me.

I kept going.

“I also told him about Denny, like, the night it happened. He was pissed as all hell, got a bunch of his buddies together, found Denny and messed him up.”

Mike continued to stare at me.

“I don’t have any demons, Mike,” I kept snapping. “Darrin took me to Father Phillip and Father Phillip took me to visit Thelma Whitehouse. She’d been attacked a few years earlier and talked at some self-help group in Indianapolis. We got together a dozen times, maybe more. She was cool. So cool, only a few of the times we talked about Denny and then I was over it so we talked about a whole load of other shit because she was into music like I was and she introduced me to pottery making. She still sends me Christmas cards and those funny emails you pass around all the time and I do the same.”

“Dusty –” Mike started but I talked right over him, taking two steps back as I did.

“And Beau wasn’t a psycho dick when I met him, Mike. Dicks never are dicks until they think they have their hooks in you and you can’t get away so only then do they show you the dick within. He’s handsome and he could be really sweet and he was great in bed. He just can’t wrap his head around the fact that I’m the only woman in his forty years who kicked his ass out. Yes, he’s that conceited but that’s on him, not on me. And it’s totally uncool for you to suggest that me getting felt up by a lunatic when I was in high school is the reason why I make poor choices in men. It isn’t. I don’t bring that shit on myself. I don’t search that shit out. There are just a lot of dicks out there. And them being dicks isn’t on me either. They’re just dicks. Darrin was worried about the men in my life because Darrin is my big brother. That’s what big brothers do. They worry. He was settled and happy with his family. He wanted me to have that too. It wasn’t only Rhonda he told that shit to. He told me all the time he wanted that for me.”

“You changed,” he reminded me gently. “You became not you.”

“Uh…yeah,” I replied. “I was a girl. I was fifteen. I got my period, my hormones were all over the place and my sister was a complete and total bitch who seemed to exist to make my life a misery and some of that time she wasn’t even around anymore because she was at college. Still, she’s smart and she was committed to the task so she found ways to do it. My parents didn’t get the music I listened to and talked to me about it constantly, certain I was going to commit suicide or some stupid shit like that. I mean, what the fuck? So I liked Nirvana and Kurt Cobain blew off his head off with a shotgun. That didn’t mean Dad had to hide his which he did. They just didn’t get me. Nobody got me. I didn’t even get me. And this was because I was fifteen, I was artistic and I wanted my life to fucking start. Not tomorrow, not in three years, yesterday. I was young, stupid and impatient. I get that now. I get that then I was a little bitch and acted like one. I’m not proud of the way I was then and I know my behavior was ludicrous. I look at pictures of me back then and cringe. But, since then, I’ve been through more phases because that’s just me. I’m a woman. We do that shit. Hell, I’ll take my grunge phase over my Shania phase. Black leather pants and all that hair? Crazy.”

“Honey –” he began again and moved toward me but I leaned into him and snapped, “Don’t you fucking get near me,” and he stopped dead.

I stared at him.

Then I told him, “I’ll give you this. When Denny Lowe went on a rampage, that freaked me out. But only because I felt fortunate he didn’t snap when he was trying his thing with me. It sucked, that coming back up but it was way over, he didn’t get very far, I got away and I survived. I was even surprised he turned out to be as whacked as he was because, seriously? He was kind of charming before he got all handsy. That creeped me way the hell out but I guess they can be like that, people who are loop-di-loo in their brains. When Denny did his thing, wreaking mayhem all over The United States, Darrin and I talked about it a lot. But not because I needed him to comfort me. Because he was way more freaked about it than me thinking what could have happened to his baby sister at the hands of that madman. So it was me comforting my brother not the other way around.”

“Sweetheart –”

“I’m not done,” I snapped.

He closed his mouth and held my eyes.

I let him do that for a while then I whispered, “Thanks, Mike. It’s good to know early you’re an asshole. I’m glad to know that now before I gave my heart to you because I had one day with you and I was all set to wrap it up in a tidy bow and hand it right over. I’m glad to know you don’t want kids but I do so even if you weren’t an asshole, we’d be wrong. And I’m glad to know you know straight up you wouldn’t make a move for me seeing as it would suck to be with a guy who I spent one weekend with and got excited about the possibility that Hilligoss would be a ten minute drive away every day rather than a six month wait. I actually got excited about being home again and watching Fin and Kirb finish growing up and going to their football games on Friday nights. So it’s good to know I’m not with a man who didn’t give enough of a shit about me to consider that same thing.”

“Dusty, give me a chance to speak,” he said softly.

“No, you’ve said enough,” I returned immediately and then kept right on talking. “You know, I don’t know what went down with your wife or that Violet woman. What I do know is I’m not them. And I also know that twice, you jumped to conclusions about me, this time making it three. And I’ll mention that not one of those times did you actually take the time to speak to me like an adult about the shit going on in your head. So, I’ll add to things I’m glad about and that is that I don’t have to endure a lifetime or however long we might have lasted of your tests. Me proving I’m good enough for the super hot, gorgeous Mike Haines. Because frankly, that would be exhausting.”

He didn’t speak and I noticed his face had gone blank.

So be it. It was time for me to finish up.

So I did.

Speaking softly, I told him with complete honesty, “What I’m not glad about is that you showed me something amazing and then you yanked it right away from me. I’m so sick of men toying with me like that, playing games with my heart. So the last thing you get from me, Mike, is that I’m really, really not glad after caring about you and thinking the world of you for decades that you turned out to be a man like that.”

Then I turned, tossed the fucking teenage angst bullshit journals I wrote twenty years ago on his couch and started to move through the room so I could get the fuck out of there.

I didn’t make it and this was because Mike caught my upper arm as I tried to pass him.

My head snapped back and I hissed, “Take your hand off me.”

“You laid it out, Angel, and I deserved it now you give me a chance to explain.”

“Take your hand off me.”

He pulled me gently in front of his body and dipped his head closer to me, whispering, “Give me a chance to explain.”

I stared up at his face.

God, I wished he wasn’t so beautiful.

“Take your hand off me.”

“Honey, give me a chance –”

I went up on my toes and in his face, screamed, “Take your hand off me!”

Then I didn’t give him the opportunity to comply. I wrenched my arm free, took two quick steps past him then whirled.

“No more chances, Mike, this,” I pointed to the floor, “is strike three.”

Then I ran out of his house.

Luckily, he didn’t follow me.

And luckily I made it home safely even though my visibility was limited due to me crying my fucking eyes out.

Saturday, 9:36 p.m.

Mike stood in the cold on the balcony off his bedroom staring at the Holliday Farm lit up in the not so distant distance and holding his phone to his ear.

Not surprisingly, he got voicemail.

“Sweetheart, don’t leave without phoning me. There’s more to say. I’ll meet you wherever you want. But we need to talk, Dusty. Please, honey, don’t leave without seeing me.”

He took the phone from his ear, hit the button to disconnect and continued to stare through the cold dark.

Then he put the phone on the railing of the balcony, picked up the glass of bourbon also sitting on the railing, lifted it and threw it back.

Then he put the glass to the railing and trained his eyes back on the farm.

“Fuck, I’m such a fucking dick,” he whispered.

Then he grabbed his phone and the glass, turned around and walked back into his house to get more bourbon.

Tuesday, 9:49 a.m.

I got on the plane carrying a white bakery box filled with fresh Hilligoss donuts for Jerra and Hunter.

I’d turned in my rental by myself.

I didn’t look back after I got through security.

And after the plane leveled out, I couldn’t help but think I couldn’t wait to be home.