Raid

“Yeah. Just now. You.”

I was his “reward”. I gave him whatever it was he needed to feel like he might begin to battle the burn.

I loved that. I loved it a lot.

But I was no miracle worker.

“I was thinking more like one of your buddies,” I suggested.

“That’s not gonna f**kin’ happen.”

I went silent.

Macho man, too strong to share, to release, to let go.

Darn.

“I’ll get a handle on it,” he told me.

I stayed silent.

He lifted up, his arms closed around me and he moved us to our sides, face to face.

“With you, it’s goin’ away,” he assured me.

“Okay,” I replied.

“Give it time, they’ll be gone.”

“Okay, honey.”

His lips found mine in the dark for a touch before he rolled to his back taking me with him so I was tucked to his side. Then he lifted a hand and sifted it through my hair again and again, and as he did this, I felt the tension ebb from his body. So I lay there with him, cuddled close, holding him tight.

Eventually, his hand stopped sifting through my hair and his arm wrapped around me. Minutes later, it went slack and I knew he was asleep.

I didn’t sleep.

I prayed Raiden Miller found it in himself to get a handle on his dreams.

Because if he hadn’t come to after he reared back to strike me it would absolutely not be good.

It was a useful reminder to me that hellfires burned all the time.

Even in sleep.

And I was no miracle worker, but if Raid didn’t get a handle on these dreams I was going to have to find a way to learn to be.

For him and for me.

* * * * *

In the last six weeks I also had time to check in with KC and fill her in. I didn’t go for the gusto, but I did share that things were good in a way they’d be that way for what could be ever.

She was beside herself with glee.

But I waited until Raid was away on a job before I went to her house for dinner and laid it out.

KC had been at her stove, stirring while I sat at her kitchen table with her baby girl, Samantha. Samantha’s feet were planted in my thighs, her chubby fingers gripping mine and her plump legs were bouncing when I shared what I could. That was to say, not much of anything, including Raid’s dreams, but I shared my concerns about Raiden being scary bossy, and adding getting physical to that scary.

This got me a weird response.

KC burst out laughing.

I turned to look at my friend with her shining, to-the-shoulder light brown hair, her bright, wide hazel eyes and seven months pregnant belly and I said quietly but with meaning, “KC, seriously. It freaks me.”

She trained those hazel eyes on me, still smiling. “Okay, babe. But get over that.”

“Sorry?” I asked.

“Uh… with your, mine and the female half of Willow’s citizenry avid contemplation, I don’t think it’s lost on any of us that Raiden Ulysses Miller has got a big dick.”

He did, this was true. I had seen the physical evidence up close (and felt it, sucked it, stroked it, etc.), but I was hoping the female half of Willow’s citizenry had not.

“You might want to explain that,” I suggested as Sam lunged forward and giggled, so I wrapped my arms around her and took over the bouncing.

KC’s eyes moved to her daughter then took in her daughter with me and her face got soft.

Then she spoke.

“Right. The dudes you picked in the past,” she shook her head, “not all that. Except Pete was okay, but he was no Raiden Miller.”

“You’re telling me something I know already,” I pointed out.

She put the spoon in a spoon holder, turned down the burner on the stove and her attention to me.

“What I’m saying is, you don’t have experience of men who are men. I know you have issues with Mark, and I love you more than I already loved you that you’ve kept those to yourself. I hope it’s because you understand I’m not an idiot and I wouldn’t put up with his shit if it wasn’t worth putting up with. And he gives me shit, Hanna. He’s arrogant, and that can sometimes, not often, lean toward him being a jackass. But he loves me. He loves Sam. He finds ways to show us that every day. No, that isn’t right. He doesn’t find them. He just does it, no effort. He gives it naturally. And I know he’d die before he let anything harm either of us,” she put a hand to her protruding belly, “any of us.”

That was huge.

And beautiful.

And something I never knew because I never brought it up.

“Holy Moses, KC,” was all I could think to reply.

“So,” she went on brightly, grinning at me, “when he’s an arrogant ass, tells me what to do or whatever, acting totally like we’d been hurtled back to the 1500’s and I was his chattel, I smile, nod and do whatever I want.”

I thought about doing this with Raiden and it didn’t give me the warm fuzzies.

KC read my face, wagged a finger at me and kept talking.

“This is what you have to learn. Don’t backtalk. Don’t explain. Don’t protest. Don’t fight it out. Just say, ‘All right, honey,’ and do whatever the hell you want. For example, just this morning, Mark said, ‘Make tacos tonight, babe,’ before he kissed me good-bye. No ‘please’. No, ‘are you feeling like tacos?’ Just ‘make them.’” She tipped her head to the side. “Now, are we having tacos?” She shook her head. “Hell no. We had tacos two days ago. I get he loves my tacos, but eff that. My friend is coming over and I just had tacos. Furthermore, I have to make the damn things. So we’re having a roast. You serve company a good roast. Not freaking tacos.”

She moved to the fridge while I asked, “Isn’t he going to be ticked?”

She yanked something out of the fridge as Sam slurped at my neck and I cuddled her closer.

KC turned to me and closed the fridge. “Do I care? If he wants tacos, he can come home and make them.”

“So he doesn’t get ticked?” I pushed.

“If he does, he keeps it to himself. Usually he just shakes his head and grins at me then gets a beer. I’ve decided to take that as him accepting the woman whose ring he slid his finger on. If he’s storing this shit up to list it out in the divorce papers, so be it. His loss.”

If Mark was doing that, it would be his loss.

Absolutely.

But I was getting the feeling Mark would never do that.

KC moved back to the stove as I asked cautiously, “But does he get physical?”