AllFreeNovel
Share Us
KAT
Connor comes to pick me up at Choppa and Reenie’s place later that evening. His face is drawn and he looks preoccupied when he shows up. He’s distracted by something he won’t talk about.
Choppa and Reenie convince him to stay for dinner. Reenie calls her son and convinces him to come over and join us. Reenie announces she is going to make her famous chicken pot pie casserole. She leads me into the kitchen and pours us each a glass of wine, which we drink while she’s busy with preparations. When I protest that she’s not letting me help, she sets me to work making a big tossed salad for the table.
“Ah, it’s good to have family here for dinner,” Reenie sighs as she checks the casserole in the oven. “It gets kinda lonely when it’s just me and Chop.”
“It’s so nice to be here, Reenie. I don’t get a lot of home-cooked food unless I make it.” I inhale deeply, half-closing my eyes in pleasure at the delicious aromas filling the kitchen.
When Mack has arrived and dinner is ready, we sit at their table, the five of us laughing and talking about old times. Mack gives Connor a ton of shit, and Connor tosses it right back at him. They’ve had the same easy banter since high school, and it makes my heart glad to see it again. I can’t help but notice how much Connor’s mood lightens the longer he’s here. Several times during the evening, he reaches over and squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back, feeling like all is right with the world. Being here with all of them, for the first time in forever it’s like I actuallybelongsomewhere. It’s the best night I can remember having in a long, long time.
Even though it’s summer, the atmosphere in Reenie and Choppa’s warm, comfortable home is like what I imagine Christmas would be, in a family full of love and laughter. That’s not something I’ve ever really experienced for myself. I find myself not wanting the evening to end.
In the midst of all this happiness, my mind drifts unbidden to my brother, and to our family, such as it was, when we were growing up. Quad is actually my half-brother. We have the same mom, but his dad was my mom’s first husband, who dumped her for a younger model a couple of years after he was born. My father was apparently a rebound relationship, an unsuccessful attempt by Mom to make Quad’s dad jealous. When Mom found out she was pregnant with me, she tried to get my father to marry her. He strung her along for months, until a couple of months before my birth, at which time he went AWOL. She never heard from him again.
I know all of this because my mother told me the story about a million times when I was a kid. She always told me how much getting pregnant with me ruined her life, saying that my father wouldn’t have left her if I hadn’t come along. So I grew up knowing that my mother resented my presence in her life.
Quad, Mom, and I led mostly separate lives in our house, hidden away in our own bedrooms, with the doors closed. Quad was decent enough to me when we were little, I guess. Then he hit his teenage years. After that, I was just the pain in the ass little sister that Mom made him babysit when she wanted to go out to the bars, which was often. He started leaving me by myself when I was ten, making me swear not to tell our mom about it. I didn’t, of course. I knew I was just as likely to catch hell for it as he was if she found out. Besides, the only times I ever truly felt comfortable in the house was when I was alone with no one else there.
When I entered my teens myself, Mom took very little notice of my comings and goings, as long as I kept the house clean and left her alone. Unlike other mothers, she never worried about me getting involved with the wrong crowd, or getting myself in trouble.
When Connor and I started going out later in my teens, she barely noticed, except to tell me that she wasn’t gonna pay for an abortion for me and if I got pregnant I was on my own. When Connor broke things off with me, I spent a couple weeks in my room crying my eyes out. Not once did she come in and ask what was wrong.
The week after I moved to Wisconsin to start nursing school, Mom packed up and moved to Branson, Missouri. I haven’t heard from her much since then. The last birthday card I mailed to her came back markedreturn to sender.
I’ve always wanted to feel like I was part of a family that actually wanted to be with each other. I gave up hope on my mom a long time ago, and mostly on my brother, too. I’d never tell Quad this, part of the reason I decided to come back to Minneapolis was because I found out he’d gotten Carla pregnant. I thought — I hoped — that he and Carla might stay together. I told myself that maybe once the baby was born, I’d have a role to play in his or her life as an auntie. I had these fantasies that Quad would take to being a dad and a partner. I hoped that maybe having a child with Carla would create a stable little family unit. And that maybe I could find some happiness existing in their orbit.
Well, that didn’t happen. Not only did Quad and Carla’s relationship implode before the baby was even born, now they can’t stand each other. Carla has to hound Quad for any help at all, financial or otherwise. Worse, her absolute contempt for him extends to me, as well. So now I’m the auntie to a niece who will probably never know me at all.
The way Reenie and Choppa greeted me today is a contrast so stark that it’s hard to believe. They make me feel like a long-lost daughter. The warmth of their family unit makes my heart ache. More than once during the evening, I wonder why I can’t have this for myself. Why I don’t even know where my mother is. Why she could never get past her anger at my father to love me.
Connor squeezes my hand again, and I look over to see him giving me a questioning look. I flash him a reassuring smile and squeeze back.
It doesn’t matter,I tell myself.Right now, I’m happy.
At the end of the evening, Connor, Mack, and I leave at the same time. We walk out to their bikes, and Mack gives us a one-finger wave as he drives off. I get on the back of Connor’s bike, knowing he’s going to take me back to his place instead of mine. We ride through the night, with me snuggled up close to his back against the cool of the air.
“Home sweet home,” Connor murmurs to me as he pulls me inside, not bothering to turn on the lights as he picks me up and carries me to the bedroom.Home. It’s a word I’ve been thinking about all night. Likefamily. Connor is making me want things I’m afraid of hoping for. I start to fret, start to think maybe we need to talk about what’s happening between us, but then Connor puts me on the bed, strips off my clothes, moves between my legs, and starts to tease me with his mouth. “God, it’s torture bein’ next to you all night like that for hours and not be able to touch you. To taste you,” he says hoarsely. His tongue grazes my swollen nub, and I cry out. I’m so sensitive, so close already. Only he does that to me. Only him.
“My beautiful Kat. I can’t get enough of you. You taste like honey and sunshine. You bring the light back into my life.” He thrusts his tongue inside me, tasting me, then licks me long and slow, until I’m shaking, my fingers digging into the mattress. His beard rubs my thighs, and I thrust my hips toward him greedily.
“Connor, please. Give me what I need.”
He chuckles, low and sexy. “What do you need, baby?”
I need to feel.“Make me come,” I beg. “I need to come.”
He pauses, moving his mouth off me just long enough that I think I’m going to go mad with frustration. Then, dipping back down between my thighs, he takes my clit between his hot lips and starts to suck, slowly and sensually. A buzzing starts inside my head, turning to fire as it licks down my body, finally erupting between my legs in an explosion that turns me inside out. I’m screaming his name over and over, coming in waves, and then he’s inside me, thrusting deep and hard, stretching me wide, filling me with him. His body rocks into mine, speeding up, and I hang onto him for dear life as he bottoms out inside me. I lift my hips to meet his thrusts, and then I’m climbing again, with him this time. “Baby, I’m almost there, I’m almost there,” he chants. “Come with me, Kat. Come with me now.”
“Connor,” I moan, my thighs shaking. My muscles clamp down on him, and he goes rigid inside me. Time stands still for a moment, and then both of us let go, Connor shouting as he releases deep inside me and I contract around him, riding out our orgasms together, holding each other like it’s the end of the world.
“My Kat,” he whispers against my neck as I tremble in his arms. “My gorgeous Kat.”
In the hazy afterglow, when my brain starts to be able to think straight again, my eyes land on the cat on his bicep. “I noticed you kept the tattoo.” I run my finger over the design. “I didn’t expect to see it still on your arm.”
He looks down at it, almost like he’s surprised. “Shit, ‘course I did, Katrina. We might not have been together anymore, but Christ. You never left my mind. I was the one who fucked things up between us, I know. I’m not gonna lie, I thought about covering the tat up. But that was because lookin’ at it reminded me of how I screwed up the best thing that ever happened to me.” He leans down and gives me a deep, passionate kiss that leaves me a little dizzy. “It woulda felt even worse if I’d erased the memory of you.”
I never realized how much I’ve wanted to hear hims say those words. Connor’s self-confidence and self-assurance were always qualities I admired and envied when we were younger. But at the same time, his cockiness made me feel like he would always care more about himself than me.
