Soaring (Magdalene #2)(106)
Author: Kristen Ashley

That, just that, was all I needed.

I melted into him, glided my hand to his jaw and slid my thumb along his lower lip, replying, “All I can ask, honey.”

He pulled me even closer, touched his lips to mine and then pushed me an inch away.

“Clean up,” he ordered quietly. “Get in one of your nighties and come back to me. Need sleep.”

“Okay, Mickey.”

I bent and gave him my own touch before I lifted up and again glided my thumb over his lower lip. After that, I rolled off, cleaned up, donned a nightgown and went back to him.

Mickey turned out the lights and tangled himself up in me.

I was almost asleep when Mickey mumbled, “My heiress thinks men compare dicks.”

My eyes shot open and I snapped drowsily at his throat, “Stop teasing me when I’m half-asleep.”

He gathered me closer. “You got it, baby.”

I sighed loudly, closed my eyes, snuggled into his heat and fell asleep tangled up in Mickey.

Chapter Twenty-One

Stamp Me Approved

“Truth be told!” Mrs. Porter shrieked at the TV.

“Jesus, what is that?” Lawrie asked in my ear as I moved away from the lounge at Dove House with my phone.

“Mrs. Porter. Wheel of Fortune.” I shared. “She got it on only the r.”

“Impressive,” he replied. “But are your ears bleeding?”

I grinned. “Since they got a TV they can actually see, Wheel of Fortune gets extreme. And you don’t want to be anywhere near the lounge during Jeopardy.”

I heard Lawrie chuckling.

My grin turned into a smile as I got into a much quieter hall, leaned against a wall between two residents’ rooms and gave him my attention.

“Why are you calling, big brother?”

“The invitation still stands, I’m coming for Thanksgiving.”

I felt joy.

Then I felt fear.

“Mariel?” I asked.

“Only me.”

I felt more fear. “Not the boys?”

“It’s time they got used not having me around, even on special occasions.”

Oh no.

“Lawrie,” I whispered. “Marriage counselling isn’t working?”

“Our counselor never touches us,” he told me. “Never even looks like she’s going to. Last session, she grabbed Mariel’s hand for no purpose except, my guess, to see if she had a pulse.”

I didn’t laugh. His words were funny but the tone he delivered them in was not amusing.

I pushed away from the wall and wandered further down the hall saying, “I’m so sorry.”

“I wanted to know.”

I stopped and braced because now he was being quiet but fierce.

“Wanted to know what, honey?” I asked softly.

“What went wrong,” he answered instantly. “What I was doing that took her away from me. I wanted to know. I didn’t care what it was. How big. How small. How petty. If she’d mentioned some bracelet she had to have that I didn’t notice she’d asked for and I didn’t get her. If she was hurt I stopped telling her she was beautiful. I wanted to know so I could change it. I wanted to know what took away the girl I fell in love with so I could get her back. The girl who made me laugh. The girl who’d ruin a complicated soufflé and toss it in the trash without giving that first shit and pull out Chips Ahoy and slather them in Cool Whip for dessert. Rather than that being something that heralded an ice storm the boys and me would have to endure for a week. The girl who wanted nothing more than to stay in bed naked all day with me. I wanted to know how she became our mother. I wanted to know why she surpassed that until we had nothing.”

I closed my eyes and leaned a shoulder against the wall at hearing my brother’s pain.

“During your counselling, she gave you nothing?” I asked.

“Once the dread sock situation was outed, she’s hardly said anything in our sessions. Once a week she sits there barely moving with her arms crossed on her chest and her eyes to her knees. Her expression doesn’t even change. I lay it out. I even throw out the ugly just to see if I can get her to react to something. Nothing, MeeMee. It’s so bad even our counselor suggested a trial separation, and I think she did in an effort to put me out of my misery. The fuck of that is it’s humiliating. In fact, the whole fucking thing is humiliating.”

I hated that.

I hated that for my glorious big brother Lawrie.

He was not short like me. He was tall and straight and lean and commanding, like my dad.

But he had great, thick, dark hair that now had silver in it that was attractive (which was like mine, without the dye job and highlights, obviously).

And we shared our hazel eyes.

He got my father’s cut, angular, masculine bone structure that started forming and defining when he was fifteen. So since then, to when he met Mariel, he’d had to beat them off with a stick.

He loved his sons.

He was the youngest attorney in the history of his firm to make partner.

He made a ton of money and just had a ton of money.

He was smart. He had a great sense of humor.

And I remembered. I remembered the way he used to be with her. How she’d walk into the room and everything about him would change. The way he told her she was beautiful, and it wasn’t a throwaway compliment she could settle into, but he did it, each time I heard it, like he meant it and he wanted it to mean something to her.

I also remembered the way he stood at the altar at the church and watched her walk to him with this look of happy, expectant certainty like he just knew their lives would be beauty from that day until they left the earth.

This was why I hated her.

Because she became my mother when he did not become our father, and then she became worse than my mother and doing it, proved him wrong.

“You’re welcome, with the boys, without them, with her, or without,” I assured him. “You’re welcome anytime, Lawrie.”

“Thanks, MeeMee.”

“And I’m so sorry,” I repeated.

“I lived for years stupidly hoping she’d snap out of it or just snap. Let fly what was causing her to be the way she was being. And maybe I should give it longer. But I’m not twenty-five. It isn’t that I didn’t try to talk to her. Take her away for the weekend. Adjust things I was doing in case I hit on the right one. She gives no indication it’s anything but over. The boys are old enough to get it and the fuck of that is, I think for them it’ll be a relief. They love their mother but she isn’t what I want for them because she gives them less than Mom gave you and me. And that’s my biggest fuck up, MeeMee. I should have gotten them away from that a long time ago.”