AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I gritted my teeth as I slowly climbed the old oak tree. I perched on the limb that faced the living room window, and took out the candy bar I’d stolen at the subway kiosk.
Then I waited for her.
And slowly, the tension in my body eased and the darkness filtered away.
Macayla
“Jack-o-bite, I have to run up to Vic’s. There’s no hot water. Will you be okay a couple minutes?”
“Yeah,” he said, not glancing up from his workbook. Jackson took after me and loved doing homework, and I never had to ask him if he had schoolwork to do because he just did it.
I dragged my sweatshirt over my head as I hurried to the door. “I’ll make you something to eat when I get back.”
He made a sort of grunting noise, which I’d learned meant he’d heard me, and was already scrunching his nose as he went back to his spelling.
I ran down the porch steps and cut around the back of the cabin, then through the trees and up the hill. I’d gone for a jog this morning while Jackson was at school, and I needed to shower before my afternoon shift. I’d picked Jackson up at noon because his class was going on a field trip to the fire station, and as cool as that sounded, he didn’t want to go, and I wasn’t going to make him.
The small pebbles from the gravel driveway embedded in the treads of my running shoes as I passed his black truck with Raptor embossed on the back.
I climbed up the new steps I’d seen him working on last week, my foot landing on the sisal mat in front of the door that read, “I’m an asshole. Go away.”
Vic was gruff and uncommunicative, and when communicative, abruptly honest. But I was fast discovering that those things didn’t make him an asshole.
I hadn’t seen or heard from Vic in a couple days. Not since I told him about Jackson. I don’t know why, but I was feeling more nervous than usual to see him. Maybe because a part of me was scared that I’d see condemnation in his eyes for giving up my son.
I raised my fist to knock on the door. But before it made contact, the door swung open.
Holy shit. My heart lodged in my throat and my belly didn’t just drop—it slingshot into the air, then plummeted and smashed through the floorboards.
Because Vic stood in the doorway half naked, his tatted, bronzed shoulders dripping with sweat or water—I wasn’t sure which, but it didn’t matter. A shirt was slung over his left shoulder as if he’d grabbed it before opening the door.
My eyes slid over the mountains and valleys of his chest, then to his eight-pack. There was a jagged scar that slashed diagonally from his mid ab to his right side and disappeared beneath the band of his jeans.
Not cargos, but jeans. Snug jeans hanging low on his hips with the top button of his fly undone as if he’d just tugged them on. And judging by the glistening wetness trickling down his naked chest, he probably had.
He pulled the charcoal-colored T-shirt off his shoulder and let the material dangle from his hand before casually tugging it over his head.
I swallowed as I watched him, trying hard not to stare, but failing miserably.
He propped his shoulder against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest as if waiting for me to say something.
Because I was mute. I was standing there staring at his magnificence, speechless and completely forgetting why I was here.
“Macayla.”
My breath caught in my throat. Shit. Every time Vic said my name in his graveled, marble-crushing voice, goose bumps bounced across my skin, and I wanted to stomp on each one of them, and at the same time, nurture them.
“The, uh, hot water. There isn’t any. In the cabin.” Gahh, speak in normal, full sentences, Mac. “I didn’t use it all. I mean, the tank is full or should be full. I haven’t used hot water since this morning and uh, now I have to go to work and need a shower, so do you think you could check it?” Jesus. It was verbal diarrhea, and it was spewing all over his beautiful, half-naked, towering body. “If you’re not busy,” I added.
“Shower’s upstairs.”
“Huh?”
“Haven’t finished the downstairs shower yet.”
“Upstairs?”
“Off the bedroom.”
