Lady Luck (Colorado Mountain #3)(120)
But under all that was always clean and eventually she’d get to tidying.
Clearly, six weeks of build up was about five and a half weeks too much.
He chewed, he swallowed then he spoke. “Fill the dishwasher, mama, and I’ll empty it. I’ll take out the trash. I will not vacuum. I will not clean a f**kin’ toilet. And, on the inside, I had enough of sweepin’ and moppin’ for a lifetime. So, I will kick in in the ways I just said. Other than that, it’s up to you to decide if you can hack it or if we gotta find a cleaning lady.”
The first words he spoke, her eyes came to him.
When he was done she asked, “You’ll fill the dishwasher and empty it, did you actually do that while I was away?”
Even though he sensed she was teasing him, his gut tightened at her tone.
He’d just got finished f**king her in the shower. Before that, she made a show that she was taking them forward, with him all the way to their next step of building a family. And after she did that, she’d grinned at him.
But, since their shower, he got that tone and that tone matched the set of her frame. Quiet, pensive, borderline uncertain.
He’d bought that, being a dumb f**k, treating her like a dick, saying shit to her he shouldn’t have said, comparing her to Misty, a woman he hated and she hated and, it was arguable, but he got the sense his wife hated Misty at least as much as he did. On some level, it could be worse, seeing as Misty was a sister and Misty strapped the sisterhood with the shit he piled on Lexie, shit she didn’t deserve. Misty perpetrated a betrayal to that sisterhood, an unforgiveable one.
But Lexie was treading cautiously, probably not even knowing she was doing it. Twice, he f**ked up, twice he was a dick, twice he lashed out and mouthed off. The first time, she didn’t do shit to deserve it, the second time, she did but his response was way the f**k over the line. Now, he could see, she was going to do everything she could so she didn’t buy a third time.
Ty would take that tone over the one she spoke to him with when she was on the beach, her voice void, dead, remote. He never wanted to hear her talk like that again, feel the darkness that shrouded her, experience her being so far gone, he knew he could run flat out every day for the rest of his life and never reach her. He never wanted that back, for him or for her, that was so agonizing, he’d take anything else from her, even this.
That said, he still didn’t like it.
So he put his spoon in the bowl, set it aside and ordered gently, “Mama, come here.”
Lexie, being Lexie, came direct to him.
He wound an arm around her waist, pulling her body to his and her hands came up, flat on his chest, not to hold him back, just to rest them there as her head tipped way back to look at him and his other hand wrapped around her neck, his thumb moving on her jaw.
“It’s gonna take time for you to trust me again –” he started but she cut him off swiftly.
“I trust you.”
His thumb stopped stroking and his fingers gave her a light squeeze as he dipped his face closer. “Baby, you don’t.”
“I do.”
He shook his head and asked quietly, “Can you shut up a minute so I can talk?”
She pressed her lips together but her eyes flared.
Now that, he liked.
He beat back a grin and talked. “Drama over, we’re back to us and I didn’t just f**k up, I did it huge, I said nasty shit that shouldn’t have been said and I can’t take that back. The wounds I inflicted went deep and I can only hope to Christ one day they heal over. Until that day, mama, all I can promise you is that I’ll do all I can do to beat that shit back and never do that to you again. But we got a rocky road ahead of us and I don’t know where it’s gonna lead before we get to the other side. The only thing I can give you is, that shit comes outta my mouth and cuts you, you gotta understand that shit was planted in me and I gotta get it out. I’ll try to do it in a way that doesn’t harm you but I obviously am not battin’ a thousand with that so I can make no promises except I’ll try. What you need to give me is to know it is not about you, it’s about me, you gotta suck it up and stand by me, you gotta know, in the end, I’ll work my ass off to make it all worth it to you and you gotta always remember I love you and I have never, not once, said those words to any breathing soul so you also gotta know what that means.”
She blinked.
Then she asked, “You’ve never told anyone you love them?”
He shook his head and answered, “Loved one person in my life, Tuku, he died without me sayin’ those words to him and, to this day, even though he was not a man prone to that kind of shit, I wished I’d said it and I wished he’d died knowin’ what he gave me and all he meant to me.”
She nodded, her face understanding in a way that made the wound he had from what they went through, a wound still raw, a gaping wound torn open in the left side of his chest, pulsate because he knew from her look she’d learned that lesson the day before.
He didn’t do that to her but what he did forced Julius’s hand so he had that to make up for too.
“I can give you that, Ty,” she whispered, her hands pressing into his chest.
“Thanks, baby,” he whispered back then still spoke soft but firm when he ordered, “Now, I took that shadow out of your life but this mornin’, I see it’s over you. Get rid of it. This is you and me, people live through this shit and if they manage to do it together, it makes them stronger. Power through, mama, and get to that other side with me.”