Dream & Dare (10 page)

If it ever would happen again.

She kicked that awful thought to the curb. “You did ruin me for anybody else, you know. I’ve never even been tempted to stray. You’ve been all I need, all I want, since the first night.”

It was time for her to go. She hated leaving, every day she hated it, but she made a point to be home with Faith and Demon and the kids in time to have dinner and spend some time with them. She was a guest in their house, even though they both yelled at her for saying it. She had nothing, until Hoosier came back to her she would have nothing, and she wanted to be more to the people who loved her and had taken her in than just a boarder.

“I gotta go, baby.” She took the photo from him. He held on for a second, long enough for her to think about letting him keep it, but then he let go. When she had the photo in her own hands, she could see the rest of Hoosier’s body, which had been obstructed by the picture.

He was hard.

Noticeably, impressively hard. Other than occasional, half-staff reflex erections, Hoosier hadn’t been hard since the fire.

“Oh, Hooj,” Bibi whispered. “Baby, you
are
there. You’re so close to me. Come on, baby. Come on. Come back.” She moved her hand down. Over the covers, she caressed this beloved part of his beloved body. She ran the length of him with her hand. He grunted, and her eyes flew to his.

Sad and lonely eyes looked back at her. The same look he always had. He was with her but not, close but far. Desperate and lost. She curled her hand around him, and she saw his eyes flare.

“Hooj…please.”

His hand went to hers and knocked her clumsily away.

SIX

Bibi set Lana in the baby swing and strapped her in. The sweet little girl grinned up at her and kicked her legs happily.

Demon had built an elaborate swing set behind the house, under a scruffy live oak. Swing set wasn’t even the right term—playland was better. A row of three swings—a sling, a baby swing, and a double glider—connected to a raised platform with a climbing wall on one side, a rope net on another, and a slide and a ladder on a third. At the top of the platform was a little play cottage, painted pale grey with white trim and a red shingle roof, with a split door, and little flower boxes under paned windows. A wee kitchen and table and chairs were arranged inside.

Seeing Demon come into his fullness as a father, Bibi was often struck with a proud melancholy. He was so good with his children, so patient and loving, but not a pushover at all. And it was blazingly obvious that he was, every day, in everything he did, making the life for them that he had never had himself. Their childhood was the definition of idyllic.

Tucker’s had not always been so. But he had been rescued from a childhood like his father’s, and now, not even three years later, he barely remembered the trauma of his first years. He was a happy little boy who’d caught up with his peers, and the only reminders of his start in life were a few scars that still made Bibi’s heart sour to see.

This evening wasn’t as idyllic as usual, and as Bibi pushed Lana in the swing, listening to her sing her nonsense toddler song, she looked over and studied Tucker. He was standing at the rope net, one hand around a rope and one foot on a cross piece. He stared at the house. Virgil sat nearby, his hound eyes steady on his boy.

“C’mon, Tuck. You want to push Lana for a while?” He liked to push her, and she giggled when he did.

He didn’t respond.

“Tucker, honey. It’s okay. Come help Granny. Tucker, I’m talkin’ to you.” Finally he turned, and she sent him an encouraging smile. “It’s okay. I promise.”

“Pa yelled at Mommy.”

Mommy had yelled first, and they were still yelling even now. But Bibi didn’t point either of those tidbits out. “I know. Sometimes people yell.”

He shook his head. His eyes were wide and afraid, and she wondered whether he truly had forgotten all about those first years. Demon had never hurt him or even threatened him. It had been Tucker’s birth mother causing him harm. But Demon had had trouble controlling his emotions, and he used to make what Tucker had then called ‘bad noise’—yelling and raving. It hadn’t happened in a long time, though. Not since they’d moved out here to the desert. Before that, even.

The truth was that Demon and Faith did
not
yell, not at each other, and not at or around their kids. Bibi couldn’t think of a time they’d ever even argued. There had been that day at Bart and Riley’s, when Demon had lost his shit and gone for Hoosier, but that was different. Anything bad between Demon and Faith had been pain laid on them, not bad feelings between them. Never that.

Until tonight, it seemed.

Bibi was a little concerned herself. She’d made a point not to overhear the shouting and to get the kids out of the house as quickly as she could, so she didn’t know what the fight was about. But she couldn’t believe it wasn’t something that wouldn’t blow over. So she focused on the kids and waited for the wind to take the fight away.

“C’mon, Tuck. Swing with us.”

As Tucker finally headed over, two hens got scrappy with each other on their way back to the coop. This little flock of hens were the world’s most compliant birds. In the morning, they were lined up at the coop door like workers waiting to clock in, and when the sun set, they all clucked their way back inside. During the day, they roamed happily around the yard, mixing with the cats and the goats and the dog.

Virgil saw his job as people minder, and he could not have cared less what the chickens did. He let Sly, their mean old tom, herd chickens. Which he was doing now, more or less. Bibi thought that cat—who, hell, must’ve been fifteen, sixteen, maybe older—was finally starting to slow down. For a long time, he just glared at the two hens flapping and squawking.

Tucker, a caretaker himself, called out, “No, Penny! No, Francie! No!” and trotted over to split up the bout. Then, Sly got off his furry butt and chased them toward the open coop door.

Bibi watched all that play out, absentmindedly pushing Lana in the swing.

“No!”

Bibi’s head swiveled back to the baby. “Lana?”

“NO!” Lana screamed and then giggled and clapped her hands.

“Did you just say ‘no,’ honeypot?”

“No! No! Nononono! No!” She giggled and clapped, kicking her chubby little legs in the swing. “NO!”

She was ten months old, and that was her first word. “No” was her first word. And the previously quiet little miss had shrieked it at the top of her voice. Oh, Lord save them all.

“Lala’s yelling, Granny!” Tucker ran over and peered hard at his sister. He patted her head. “Shh, Lala. It’s okay.”

Bibi laughed. “It is okay, Tuck. She’s just excited. That’s the first word she ever said. We should go in and tell Pa and Mommy.”

“Are they done yelling?”

She listened, and the house was quiet at that moment. “If they’re not, they will be when we tell them this.”

~oOo~

News of Lana’s new achievement indeed derailed the fight, but not the tension. They made happy with their kids for the rest of the evening, but after Tucker and Lana were in bed, Faith said that she needed ‘some time,’ and she left the house, pulling off in Dante, her ancient El Camino, which rarely got driven anymore. These days, Faith usually drove a van.

A morose Demon went out to the garage, and Bibi was alone in the house. She cleaned up the kitchen and tried to watch a little television, but the atmosphere in the whole house was still off, and she was restless. Part of that was because things had been off with Hoosier the past couple of days, too. More off than usual, anyway. He was getting frustrated with his therapy, and he’d had a violent meltdown a couple of days before. Though they were normally careful and conservative about giving him sedatives, they’d had him on Thorazine since, and she’d found there was no point at all in trying to tell him the story of them. He was barely aware she was in the room with him at all.

She needed Demon and Faith to be good. This little slice of Eden, she needed it perfect. Connor was doing okay, making his way, planning a wedding, and a life, with Pilar. They were happy, and they gave Bibi hope, too. But they were still new and wrapped up together, and she didn’t want to get in the middle of that. They were figuring out their life together, and Bibi knew it wouldn’t be a life like this, or like the one she and Hoosier had built together over decades.

This little family, which had overcome so much to even be—she needed them to be good. The best thing about staying here, relying on the love and kindness of these two young people who were as dear to her as if they were her own children, was the daily reminder that joy could in fact rise up out of utter destruction. It was a reminder she needed every day.

She went out the back door. Virgil whined, unhappy that the last grownup was walking out of the house while the kids were asleep. But she was only going a few feet, and Demon had a monitor in the garage. Virgil could keep an eye on things for a few minutes. She left the door open, so he could come out if he needed to.

Demon and his Horde brothers had built an enormous garage, big enough for Dante, and the van, and Demon’s truck and bikes, and a workspace for him, too. That last overhead door was rolled up, and he had all the lights on and music playing low. He was working again on Hoosier’s bike.

Bibi didn’t come out here much; she never had been interested in the bikes, except for riding bitch with her man. She’d unwillingly picked up more than she ever wanted to know about Harleys, simply because anytime two or more bikers landed within ten feet of each other, most all they could talk about was bikes.

But she knew Hoosier’s chopper. It hadn’t been his main bike for years, but she knew that bike. She’d done thousands of miles on that saddle with him over the years, and she felt the loss of it as keenly as Hoosier would have, if he’d known.

As she walked toward the garage, she pulled up short. It was almost done. No seat or handlebars yet, but Demon was just then attaching the extended fork to the frame. It was Hoosier’s bike she was seeing. His bike, the one she’d ridden with him the night they’d met. His bike, reborn.

Shaking, she finished her walk to the garage. Demon heard her coming and looked up. She didn’t like to see him so stressed again.

“Hey, Mama. Sorry about…sorry.” He walked to his worktable, and she followed after him and put her hand on his back. When he turned to her, she pulled him into an embrace.

“What’s goin’ on, darlin’?”

“She left,” he said, his face on her shoulder.

“Just for a little while, Deme. She’s takin’ a timeout.”

He stood straight and stepped back. “She never needed one before.”

“So tell me what’s goin’ on.” Maybe she was meddling, but these two were her family, and they clearly needed somebody to meddle. “You had Tuck all stirred up.”

He dropped his tool on the table and raked his hand over his head. “I know. I talked to him. But fuck. I screwed up.”

“What, Deme?”

“I…I want another kid. I guess I’ve been pushing. Too hard.”

A surprised laugh escaped Bibi’s lips before she could stop it. He really was trying to fill his life as full as he could, as fast as he could. “Lana’s only ten months old, Deme. That’s pretty fast.”

“That’s what Faith says. But we lost so much time. I just feel…I don’t know what I feel. Like we need to hurry.”

“You can’t make up that time, hon. The past is gone, and there’s nothin’ to do about it. That’s good, too. There’s shit in the back window you don’t want to have to see again. You’re both young. Faith’s not even thirty. You got lots of time.”

“She’s so mad. I didn’t mean to make her mad. I don’t know how I did.”