Dream On (Stories of Serendipity #2) (20 page)

“For what?”
 Alyssa was confused, and trying not to feel hurt.

“I didn’t come over here for that.”
 He pulled up his pants, and zipped them.  She realized they were the same ones from last night. Seeing he had apparently regained his control, she took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“Did you sleep last night?”
 Needing something to do, and realizing she was naked, she grabbed her shirt off the floor and put it on, then reached for her pants.  

“A little.”

“Is it your dad?”

“He died last night.
 While I was over here.”

She sat down next to him, where
he was leaning against the wall and took his hand in hers.  “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Silently, they sat like that, until their breathing became more regular.  Finally, Dalton broke the silence.  “I don’t want our first time to be on your living room floor.  I want you to have something different.  I’m sorry I mauled you like that.”

“It’s okay.” She reached up to his face, unable to resist the stubble.
 She ran her knuckles across his cheek.  “Is there something I can do for you?”

He looked deep into her eyes, his molten steel caressing her face with warmth.
 She opened her arms for him, and he buried himself in her warmth.  As she enfolded him in her arms, he reminded her of Cayden, when he was sad and she held him like this.  She looked down at him, his eyes closed, nuzzled above her breasts.  A warm feeling overtook her, not a sexual one, but an almost maternal feeling, like she wanted to be there for Dalton, to help him.

“I can hear your heartbeat.”
 He mumbled.  “It’s nice.”  Soon, his breathing slowed, and Alyssa realized he had gone to sleep.  She stretched out her legs, trying to find a comfortable position.  She didn’t want to move.  She wanted to hold him like this forever.

Unfortunately, life didn’t work that way.
 She had just gotten relatively comfortable and was enjoying the experience when a knock at the door interrupted her.

“Dalton.
 I have to get up.  There’s someone at the door.”  She gently nudged him awake.  She hated to do that, he was sleeping so peacefully.  He sat up, groggily, rubbing his face awake.  She stood, and he followed.

When she opened the door this time, it was to Steven and the kids.

“You’re early.  I wasn’t expecting you until this afternoon sometime.”

“Yeah, well I wasn’t expecting the kids to start puking their guts out either.”
 He stepped past her into the house.  “I don’t have any medicine for that, and I don’t want to catch it, whatever it is.”  He spied Dalton and froze, eyeing him warily.  “I didn’t realize you had company.  I guess the motorcycle outside belongs to him?”  He looked at Alyssa with a shocked expression on his face.

“Yes.
 Steven, this is Dalton.”  Dalton held out a hand, which Steven ignored.

Turning to her, Steven eyed Alyssa’s outfit with disdain.
 “If you’re not finished, I can take the kids to Mother’s house.”  

Alyssa looked down at herself and immediately realized what Steven was thinking.
 Her shirt was inside out, she looked mussed, and what little sleep Dalton had gotten, he’d obviously done in his clothes.  Steven was assuming Dalton had spent the night with her, and as much as Alyssa wished that had actually happened, it hadn’t.  But she wasn’t going to explain anything to Steven.  Her personal life was no longer his business.

Dalton spoke up.
 “I was just fixing to leave.”  He kissed Alyssa on the forehead, and whispered “Thanks” in her ear before walking out the door.

Alyssa herded the kids into their bedroom, where they eagerly went, climbing into bed without having to be told.

“When did they start throwing up?”  She turned to Steven.

“Who was that guy?”

“My boyfriend.  Not that it’s any of your business.  When did the kids start throwing up?”

“This morning.
 And yes, it is my business.  If you’re going to be having bootie calls with my children in the house, I’ll revisit my lawyer.  I can’t have you corrupting my kids.”

“He didn’t spend the night.
 His dad died last night.  He came by this morning to tell me.  Again, not that it’s any of your business.”

“That is where we differ.
 If he drives a motorcycle, then I’m sure he does other unsavory things.  Bikers all do.  I’m not sure he’s a good influence on you.”
She rolled her eyes at his small-mindedness.  “Steven, what you think doesn’t matter.  I’m sorry, but this is none of your business.  This is my life.”  Alyssa was getting angry.  This was one of the reasons she divorced him in the first place, his incessant need to dictate her life.

“We’ll see about that.
 I’m watching you.  Don’t forget that.”

“Steven, go home.
 I’ve got to take care of the children, which apparently you are totally incapable of doing.  Good bye.”  She shut the door in his face.

Both of the children had a temperature, and after changing
to their pajamas and tucking them into bed, she went to get them some ginger ale.  When she brought it to them, she saw they were both asleep.  Putting the glasses next to their bed, she stood and watched them sleep for a little while before leaving them to sleep it off.

She continued on her never-ending quest for completed laundry, getting angry at Steven.
 Who did he think he was?  The kids have a stomach virus.  There is no medicine for that.  They just had to get it out of their system.  That’s the way it worked.  She laughed to herself at the knowledge he probably would get sick.  And it would serve him right.  Asshole.

She was in the laundry room stuffing clothes into the washer when she heard, “Mommy!”
 She ran to the kids’ room and saw Cayden had thrown up in the bed.  Picking him up, gently, she shushed and cooed to him, while he cried weakly.  In the bathroom, she took off his soiled pajamas and held his little body over the toilet while he retched into it.  Fixing him a cool wet cloth, she took him back into his room and laid him on the floor.  She had to rouse Sierra to change the sheets, adding a cool wet cloth to Sierra’s side for her and tucked them back in to rest some more.

The rest of the day was spent on laundry, interspersed with nursing her children.
 By evening time, the virus had mostly run its course, and the kids were exhausted.  She woke them up to drink some chicken broth she had made them before settling them down for the night.

Later, in the bathtub, her mind replayed the morning’s events, from Dalton coming over, to getting twisted up on the floor, to holding him while he slept.
 She also remembered Steven’s threats, and she dwelled on those.  Could he really take her kids away based on an assumption?  She supposed he could, she had heard of things like that happening, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe a man she had once been married to, the father of her children, could do something like that.  Still, she had a hard time quelling the shaky fear that overtook her.  Hurrying out of the bathtub, she stole into the children’s room again, and lay down in the bed between them.  She set her alarm on her cell phone and stayed with her kids all night long.

Chapter 16

The fog of grief had settled on Dalton Saturday night, and still hadn’t totally lifted.
 He had felt some semblance of normalcy when he was with Alyssa at her house, but he had almost taken it too far.  

He knew he was using sex as a grieving tool.
 Ever since he had first had sex, and experienced the rush of it, he had used it for all of the emotions he had since he was seventeen.  Lonely?  Have sex.  Happy?  Have sex.  Drunk?  Have sex.  Celebrating?  Have sex.  And so on...He didn’t want to share his grief with Alyssa through sex.  She deserved more than his twistedness.  In fact, this was the first time in his adult life he had dealt with something without having sex.  What did that say about him?

Alyssa had made him feel better than any other woman had, and she had just held him close.
 That was all he had needed.  

And then Steven had shown up and ruined it with his accusatory glares.
 God knows what kind of grief he had given Alyssa when Dalton had left.  He had been too tired to deal with him and was afraid if he confronted him, he would just make matters worse.  He wanted nothing more than to bash the son-of-a-bitch’s face in, but he knew he was sleep deprived and Alyssa wouldn’t want him to do something like that, especially in front of the children.  So he had left.  Like a pussy.

Dalton shook his head, trying to clear it while he fastened his tie.
 A knock at his bedroom door turned him around.  Renae stood there.  

“How you holding up, Dobby?”
 She hadn’t called him that since Kelly was little and just learning to say his name.

“I’m fine, but I’m struggling with this stupid tie.”
 Renae walked over and undid his tangled mess.

“Will Alyssa be at the funeral?”
 She asked.

“I’m not sure.
 I called her yesterday, and told her about it.  She said she would try to make it to the luncheon afterwards.  She’s taking the afternoon off of school.”

“Are you doing okay, Dalton?”
 She had finished with his tie, and was brushing imaginary lint off his brand-new shirt.

“Yeah, Renae.
 How are you holding up?”  He looked into her gray eyes, a mirror image of his own.

“I’ll be okay.
 I’m gonna miss Dad, but we knew this was gonna happen eventually.  I mean, he’s our Dad.  We’re supposed to outlive him.  That’s the way it works.  We just have to figure out a way to deal with it.”

“How’s Kelly?”

“Surrounded by her friends.  She’ll be fine.  The teenager’s addiction to drama is keeping her morose, but she’ll find something else to dramatize next week.”

“I gotta say, Renae, I’m on autopilot.
 You’ll tell me if there’s something you or Mom need that I’m not seeing, won’t you?”

“Of course.
 I love you Dalton.”

“Love you, too.”
 They hugged and walked out of the room to find their mother.

The funeral was interminably long.  Hymns, a long-winded pastor, and his mother’s silent tears next to him, turned Dalton’s thoughts inward.  He put his arm around his mother, and squeezed gently, lending her support.  He knew this was his job now, for the rest of her life.  The old clichés were in place.  He had to step up to the plate and fill his dad’s shoes.  He wasn’t sure if he was ready or not, but here it was.

He had already decided to move back home and take over the ranch, whether or not Dad got better.
 He had the education to do it, and he had the desire.  Now he had Alyssa, and that was another reason to come home.  He sorely wished his dad had stuck around long enough to meet her.  At the thought, hot tears built up behind his eyes, but he managed to sniff them back.  Now was not the time.  

The tears threatened to come back at the graveside service, when the pastor threw the handful of dirt on his father’s casket.
 Some childish part of him wanted to jump into the deep hole and wipe the dirt off the casket, yell at the pastor for throwing dirt on his dad, and tell all of these people to stop staring at the shiny box in the deep, deep hole in the ground.  But the moment passed, and his mother had led his sister, him and Kelly in pinching a flower off the casket spray and tossing it into the hole.  The rest of the mourners followed suit, and as the man of the family now, Dalton announced that everyone was invited to a luncheon at the family home, in honor of Richard.  They stuck around a little while, shaking hands, before heading home.

He fixed a plate of food for his mother, and took it to the corner of the living room, where she was perched in her chair, shaking hands and smiling through a veil of tears.

“Here, Mom.  You need to eat,” he said emptily, feeling ridiculous.  She knew she needed to eat.  She didn’t have any more intentions of eating than he did.  They were just going through the motions until all of these people left.

Going out to the back porch, he found a cooler of beer somebody had brought.
 Thankful, he opened one up and took a deep swig, looking out at the barn beyond the backyard.  His childhood memories overwhelmed him, taking his breath away, as he remembered his Dad in the backyard playing catch with him, teaching him how to pitch a baseball, stringing lights up for Christmas, simply because Dalton and Renae had pleaded.  He could see the .410 hole in the tree where Dad had shot the snake, he could see Dad had repainted the shed recently.  

A soft, warm hand entwined in his, breaking his meditations.
 “Want to go for a walk?”

He looked over to see Alyssa standing next to him, and a beam of sunshine found a chink in his fog.
 “Sure.”  He smiled at her, gratefully.

Hand in hand, they walked to the barn in silence.
 Finally, Alyssa said, “I like the barn.”