Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

What If

I had to wait until Liam was back at his dad’s to hold the meeting.

I sensed it wasn’t going to go well when my sister strutted in, eyes on me, asking, “So, you’re talking to me again?”

But it was Toni, who was stretched out on my couch with a martini in her hand, who answered.

“She might be, but I’m not. Everyone knows, it’s sisters before misters.”

“Spend two seconds with that man when he’s with his son and get back to me,” she retorted.

Toni rolled her eyes and sipped her drink, after which she mumbled, “Whatever.”

“Not whatever. I did the right thing!” Lena cried.

I cut in. “We’re not here to talk about that.”

“So I’m not here to hear your apology?” Lena asked me. “Then I’m out.”

“Lena, please sit down,” I requested.

“I lied to you, babe, but you also lied to me,” she declared.

“Yes, I did. I had my reasons. You had your reasons. I forgive you. If you forgive me, we can move past this and you can help me figure out how to win Darius back.”

Lena’s eyes went huge.

Toni took her legs from the couch and sat up. Such was her haste in doing this, she sloshed martini on her blouse. And such was her absorption in what I just said, she didn’t go for one of the cute cocktail napkins I’d laid out to dab at the wet.

“Say what?” Toni asked.

“Pour me a martini.” Lena was snapping at Toni. “I gotta catch up.”

Toni’s chin went into her neck. “When did I become your bartender?”

“The pitcher is right there.” Lena pointed to the glass martini pitcher that was resting in a bucket of ice and the empty glass I’d set out for Lena with two fat olives on the silver toothpick with its kick-butt swirly end already set into it. All of this was sitting on the coffee table right in front of Toni.

Yes.

Seriously.

Darius had set me and Liam up.

I had fancy silver toothpicks for my drinks.

And a sophisticated martini pitcher and ice bucket.

And no, I hadn’t blinked before buying either of them.

“Holy hell, I’ll pour your damned drink,” I muttered, moving to do that.

Lena sunk into an armchair and accepted the glass I poured with a loaded, “Thank you,” and a side eye to Toni.

“Please, you two, let’s get along while I use you to hash all of this out,” I begged.

“You’re going to try to get him back?” Toni asked.

“That’ll take two seconds,” Lena said into her drink before taking a sip.

“I don’t think you’re right,” I told Lena as I sunk into my own armchair.

“Girl, he’s crazy for you,” Lena told me.

“I had occasion to be in his presence just a few days ago, and he ordered me out of his truck when I tried to talk to him.”

Lena and her false eyelashes blinked rapidly.

I needed to get an appointment for those semi-permanent falsies. They looked great. Mine were always detaching mid-day so I either had to rip them off or do a re-glue over the basin in the employee bathroom.

Not optimal.

“Where do you get your lashes done?” I asked my sister.

“There’s this place in Cherry Creek—”

“Hold up, hold up,” Toni interrupted. “Are we talking about lashes now? And not the Great and Twisted and Entirely Fucked Up Love Affair of Darius Tucker and Malia Clark, who all of us thought had an unhappy ending, which turns out might not be the end?”

“I don’t know,” I said nervously, rubbing my hands on my slacks and then reaching for my own martini.

“I say you go for it,” Lena chimed in.

“Liam told me that he was trying to get Darius to come clean and make a family out of us, but Darius refused to do it because, and this is Liam’s word, he thought he was unworthy of me…or something.”

“Huh,” Toni said.

Lena’s attention cut to her.

“He’s not unworthy of anything,” she snapped.

One could say, now that I was over The Great Deception (another such Great Deception I had committed myself, but we wouldn’t get into that), I was glad I didn’t have to clear the hurdle of talking Mom, Dad, Lena, not to mention Dorothea into not being mad at Darius and me for our, well, Great and Twisted and Entirely Fucked Up Love Affair.

“Calm down, sis. I didn’t say he was,” Toni replied to Lena. “I said ‘huh.’ That’s got a lot of meanings. And in this particular instance, my meaning was, ‘oh yeah, that tracks as to why he had his head up his ass for a long, long, long fucking time.’”

Lena sat back, crossed her arm along her belly, rested her drink elbow on it, and murmured, “Well, all right then.”

I put my drink down and clapped. “Can we focus ladies?”

Toni looked at Lena. “Did she just clap at me?”

Lena looked at Toni. “She did. And she clapped at me too.”

Oh my God!

Someone kill me!

I collapsed back in my chair.

“The drama, Malia,” Lena grouched. “Really, just tell the guy you want to work things out. I don’t know what happened in his truck, but he’s head over heels for you.”

Still in a slouch, I tried to reach my martini.

I should have put it on the side table.

I had to curl up, grab it, but then I slouched right back.

“I’m not sure he’s over his father’s murder,” I noted.

“Well, duh,” Lena said. “You never get over that. But I bet if he finally had his woman and his son under his roof, that’d help.”

I bet the same thing.

“What’s holding you back, sis?” Toni asked the pertinent question.

She didn’t let me bat it away either. She kept at me.

“You love him. He loves you. You both love Liam. All that was keeping you apart isn’t there anymore. He lied to you. Clearly, you’re over it.”

“As she should be,” Lena cut in.

Toni threw her a look and came back to me. “So why the hesitation and the big show of martinis with the girls when you already know what you’ve got to do?”

“Because what if…”

I couldn’t finish it.

“What if, without the obstacles and the danger and the history and the bullshit, you two can’t hack it together?” Toni asked.

“Yeah, that,” I said weakly.

She looked to Lena. “I see she forgot her big speech to me on my wedding day.”

“I still don’t know what she said,” Lena replied.

“In a nutshell, woman up,” Toni told her. “I was being a wuss. Go be with the man I love and make a life with him.”

Lena turned her attention to me. “Right. Do that.”

“Easier said than done,” I muttered and sucked back some martini.

“You know, I know you all think Kenneth’s touched,” Lena declared.

Toni ducked her eyes.

I grew fascinated by a plant in the corner.

News: Lena married Kenneth.

Surprising news: they were still thick as thieves, loved each other bunches and had just started trying to make a baby.

Not surprising news: we all still thought Kenneth was touched, but he loved our girl, wanted to lay the world at her feet, so we found ways to get over it.

“And I didn’t care,” she continued. “I knew what I wanted, and it was him. So even though I respect all you all, and I can’t say it didn’t give me pause, I made the right decision for me. You don’t have just you to think about, Malia. You have Liam. But I can testify that those two are two peas in a pod. They get along like a house on fire. Darius loves his son to his bones, and Liam feels the same way for his daddy. So yeah. I agree. Darius took a long damned time getting his head out of his ass. But now, I don’t mean to be a bitch or anything, but it’s you with your head in your ass, Malia.”

Toni didn’t say anything, which was tacit agreement with what Lena said.

“Okay then, how do I go about doing that?” I asked. “Because Liam can’t be around. He caught his dad dropping me off, and it was all kinds of uncomfortable. I don’t want his hopes up if things go south.”

Lena shrugged. “No probs. Kenneth and me’ll take him to a movie or something.”

“Or Tony can ask him for a game of one-on-one.”

“Or Dad can tell him he needs his help with one of his projects.”

“Or we can ask him to babysit Talia while Tony and I have a date night.”

“I see we’ve got the covert part of this operation covered,” I mumbled before taking another sip of my drink.

“You say the when, we’ll do the how,” Lena declared.

She exchanged a fist-bump glance with Toni, them being too far away from each other for an actual fist bump.

I felt my belly being tied up in knots with nerves.

Could I be close to getting everything I wanted, everything I wanted for my son?

Could we be close to making a family with Darius?

“You hold a mean grudge,” Lena noted. “What snapped you out of it?”

I shook myself out of my happy-terrifying thoughts and shared, “Darius told me to get out of his truck, but before that, he had a lot of other words to say that made me put myself in his shoes and see the truth of it.”

“Glad that happened,” Lena said quietly.

Toni shot me a small smile.

“He also told me about some guy who got angry with him for firing him, or whatever they do in that life, who found out about Liam and me somehow, and he was going to hurt us. Darius put a stop to it, but obviously, it really tweaked him. So I understood pretty well why he went to such lengths to keep us safe.”

I was talking into my martini, wondering how I was going to finagle a meeting with Darius that he couldn’t shut down, at the same time wondering if I needed another olive.

So when Toni said a vibrating, “Lena,” I looked to my sister.

She was swirling her olives in her martini with acute precision and attention.

“You didn’t,” Toni whispered, her words still vibrating, now with fury.

Lena dropped the olives and looked to me. “He put it together, I didn’t tell him.”

Cold washed over my skin.

“Who?” I asked.

“Who do you think?” Toni ground out. “Michael.”

My gaze flew back to my sister.

“I didn’t tell him!” she exclaimed. “I swear. I was talking to you on the phone, I mentioned Liam. He asked who Liam was. I didn’t think. I didn’t know. So I said he was your son. He said, ‘She’s kinda young to have a son.’ And since I didn’t realize it was supposed to be secret, I told him you got knocked up in high school. That was it. He put together the rest. And seriously, it’s a surprise other people didn’t too. But saying that, you disappeared to Fort Fun, and this was around the time Mister Morris was killed, so I can see people not making the connection. Darius and you were well through before you vanished, and you weren’t showing yet. And then you came back, and Darius found out, and then Eddie Chavez was everywhere, covering for you guys, laying it down to anyone who would listen that you met some asshole in Fort Collins, and he’d done a runner and what a dick guys could be, because you’re a great gal and deserved better.”

Eddie again, looking after his brother.

I had a feeling I owed those boys a lot.

“Whatever happened to Michael?” I asked.

“I know what’s gonna happen to Michael if Darius knows he was the one who gave up the goods to that guy who wanted to go after you and his boy,” Toni said by way of answer.

“He’s not in that business anymore, and it’s no longer a secret,” I said.

“Tony isn’t into any of this shit, but you know he’s got friends who are. And I don’t have to ask his input to tell you, beefs like that do not just disappear because you found the righteous path,” Toni shot back.

“Well…shit!” I swore, because damn it, I did not need to be trying to figure things out with my man and for my family and have to keep something this huge from the man part of that.

“Maybe you can talk him out of whacking Michael,” Toni suggested.

I gave her big eyes.

Did she miss the last fourteen years of our lives where he knocked himself out and scored his own soul to keep his woman and kid safe?

“Or, just tell Lee or Eddie,” Lena put in. “They’ll handle it,” she snapped her fingers, “no sweat.”

I slouched further in my chair.

“Sis, one thing at a time,” Toni advised. “Go see him. Talk to him. Tell us a day, and make that day soon, so your chickenshit ass doesn’t chicken out, and we’ll see to Liam.”

I sighed.

Then I sucked back my entire drink.

After that, I gagged.

Once I was done gagging, I ate both olives off my toothpick.

Then I got up to pour myself another martini.

When I was done with that, and speared two more olives from the bowl I’d thankfully made handy, I looked between my two sisters.

Then, before my chickenshit ass could chicken out, I said, “Wednesday.”

Toni’s smile was slow.

But Lena’s was fast and bright.