Dream & Dare (12 page)

“I need to know it for myself. Inside. Give me time to know it.”

He sighed and dropped his head. “Okay, baby. Okay.”

~oOo~

“Hey, Mom.” Connor came into the room and closed the door.

“Hi, honey.” She moved to stand, but he laid his hand on her shoulder.

“No, sit.” He kissed her cheek and then frowned over at his father, who was sleeping. Or just had his eyes closed. Not moving, either way. “No better?”

“No,” she sighed. “I think he might really be gone now.”

“Don’t say that. It’s not true. He’s just going through a bad patch.”

“Connor…”

“No, Mom. Don’t you give up. He was doing better. This is just a bad patch. He needs some time, that’s all.”

How much time was left to them?

She reached out and grabbed her son’s hand, strong and hard like his father’s. “Okay, honey. Okay.”

SEVEN

Connor had been right. Another set of scans had revealed a minuscule bleed in Hoosier’s brain, so small that they hadn’t been able to detect it right away. His agitation had most likely been due to pain. Pain he hadn’t been able to communicate.

They’d taken him to the hospital that very day. Dr. Philpott had repaired the bleed and restored Hoosier’s skull.

And now, again, they were waiting. Waiting for Hoosier to wake, waiting to see if there was anything left behind his eyes. Bibi was exhausted.

The hospital was full of Horde, and Connor and Bart had all but physically shoved her out of the room on the third day, demanding that she get some rest, some decent food, a shower. Demon had taken her home.

She’d showered, and she’d picked at dinner. As for sleep? No. Maybe she’d dozed a few minutes here and there, but otherwise, her head had been full of all the memories she’d been reliving with Hoosier for nearly two months. She wanted the chance to make more.

And sweet Lord, she wanted to hear him again tell her he loved her.

The next morning, she refueled with coffee, and Demon took charge of the kids so Faith could drive her to the hospital. They rode most of the way in silence. When Faith pulled off the freeway and stopped at the bottom of the ramp, Bibi reached out and laid her hand on Faith’s arm.

“Turn right, honey.”

“What?”

“I want to see your mama first.”

Faith blanched. “Bibi, no. You know I need to get my head straight before I see her. I can’t today.” Margot almost never remembered anymore that she had two daughters. In some ways, that was a blessing for her and Faith both. But Faith still hurt over so much. Bibi understood how difficult it was.

“I know. I just need to sit with my friend for a minute before I go back to the hospital. Drop me, and I’ll call a cab when I’m ready to go.”

Faith turned right and headed to the San Gabriel Center. “Connor would kill me if I just ‘dropped you.’ I’ll hang out in the lobby and wait for you. It’ll give me a few minutes to myself, anyway.

“Thank you.”

Faith reached over and gave her hand a squeeze.

~oOo~

“Oh, my God, Beebs! What happened to you? Oh, honey, you’re hurt!”

Margot was having a good day, which meant that she was living in the late Eighties/early Nineties, when they were young and beautiful, and their friendship was new. She rarely remembered any later than the early Nineties any longer, but she increasingly lived in the world of her childhood and didn’t remember Bibi at all. More and more, Margot was just a confused little girl.

When she remembered Bibi, she always expressed shock at her appearance. Bibi was in her sixties. Margot remembered her in her twenties. “I’m just tired, Margie.” She brushed her hand over the burn scars on her arm and up to her neck. They could have been much worse—Hoosier’s were much worse—but the skin had come back discolored, looking like the scars they were. “And this ain’t nothin’. Don’t hurt at all.” She sat down next to the dearest friend she’d ever had. “What you been up to?”

“Oh, you know. Getting the house in order. And Blue’s taking me to San Diego this weekend.”

“Is he now?” Bibi held Margot’s hand and sat back to listen to her story and remember the days when it would have been true.

~oOo~

“Leave it to Blue to get serious with a
porn star
.” Bibi capped her eyeliner and got up from the antique vanity Hoosier had brought home one day. He was always dragging home oddball gifts like that. This one had been an abomination, covered in about thirty coats of chipped paint, but she’d stripped it and stained it, and now she loved it. It was like something Joan Crawford would have sat at to do her makeup.

As she adjusted the laces on her red leather bustier and then settled her tits to their peak advantage, Hoosier walked up behind her and kissed her bare shoulder. “This is beautiful. But wear a jacket. And be nice. He’s gone for this girl.”

“Her name is Goldie Swallows. Hooj, come on!
Goldie Swallows
?”

“I knew I shouldn’t’ve told you that. Her name is Margot. She doesn’t actually answer to Goldie. And you
be nice
.” His tone was firm, but he laughed.

“I’m always nice. It’s all those Southern manners I got steeped in growin’ up. I’m the nicest bitch in the state of California.” She turned and looked up at him. When his eyes dropped to her cleavage, she lifted his chin with the tip of her index finger. “You met her. Prep me.”

She hadn’t had a real friend in the five years they’d been married. But Hoosier had Blue, and she guessed he was as close to a friend as she herself had. He was around enough—he spent half his life drinking their booze and passing out on their sofa. And now he wanted to put his mark on a woman. He hadn’t asked her to take it yet, but he wanted to do it.

Blue. Who about the worst hound she’d ever known. Had found himself a woman.

And he wanted Bibi to like her.

Hoosier hooked his finger into her bustier, between her tits, and pulled her up against him. “She’s real pretty.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna need more’n that.”

“I don’t know. She’s young. Blonde. Big blue eyes. Nice smile.” As he talked, his fingers danced over her skin. “How’s this come off?”

She slapped his hand away and stepped back. “It took forever to get it on, so you can just keep your cock in storage till I can get naked and stay that way. Did she just stand there and pose the whole time? Or maybe she spoke once or twice? Anythin’ you can give me about, I don’t know, her
personality
?”

He gave her a sheepish grin and a shrug.

“Sweet Lord, Jerome Elliott, you are such a
man
. You honestly didn’t notice anythin’ but her porn-star tits, did you?”

Another shrug. “But your tits are better. And they’re mine. How about we leave that thing on and I just pull down your jeans and bend you over the dresser?”

“Such a man,” she scoffed.

“You love it.” He opened her jeans, and she didn’t stop him.

She turned around, rubbing her ass against him as she went, and bent over to lean on the vanity. “I do. I love you.”

“I love you better.”

~oOo~

“Blue takes his pool serious. Do you play?” Bibi nodded toward Hoosier and Blue, hustling a couple of drunk good ol’ boys at the pool table.

Margot smiled and sipped her whiskey sour. “No. Blue said he’d teach me, but every time he tries, we end up fucking.”

“Sounds about right,” Bibi laughed.

“Do you play?”

“Nah. Hooj mostly plays at the clubhouse, and I don’t spend much time there.” Even as he’d climbed in the ranks, becoming VP, Bibi kept her distance from the Blades’ clubhouse. That place was nasty, and practically a brothel. She was still the only old lady, and the girls they kept for their fun were…difficult. Bibi could be nice to almost anyone. But those women had too much self-regard and not nearly enough self-respect.

At the thought, she considered her companion. Margot Taylor, known to men all over as Goldie Swallows. She really was pretty, in a sweet, wide-eyed, Precious Moments way. The girl next door, in the flesh. All the flesh. She was young; Hoosier had said she was about twenty. And she did hardcore porn. Apparently her specialty was what Hooj had called ‘airtight,’ meaning three men filling up her holes—mouth, pussy, and ass—at once.

Bibi herself was fond of double penetration—with Hooj and a toy—so the idea of Margot taking it every which way at once didn’t make her morals flutter. Truth be told, she was a little impressed and a little curious. But there was still too much of a good Southern girl in her heart to come out and ask such a question of a woman she’d just met.

Margot sipped at her drink and considered Bibi right back. “I’m no threat to you.”

“Pardon?”

“If you’re worried. Women get worried around me. I’m no threat.”

That statement could have come off as astoundingly arrogant, but said in a sweet voice, from a face with those wide figurine eyes, Bibi heard it as simple reassurance. And she realized it must have been a hard thing to be a woman who was so often judged, and with such exuberance. She thought about what she’d said to Hoosier earlier, in their bedroom, and she felt herself blush.

“I know you’re not. Hooj’s eye wanders, but his cock stays put.”

“You don’t mind him looking?”

“Why should I? I look, too. And if Mel Gibson ever shows up and wants to sweep me away, I might have to think long and hard about that offer.”

Margot set her glass down and laughed, a sincere, open, musical sound. “Mad Max Mel or Lethal Weapon Mel?”

“Mad Max, definitely.”

“Definitely.” She looked over at their boys, and her smile was positively dewy. “I think Blue looks like Mel, you know?”

Blue was a gorgeous man. A brute, and an asshole more than half the time, but a gorgeous specimen of male flesh. “Yeah, I think he does.”

Bibi felt a little worried for this girl, who seemed much more naïve than her job suggested.

~oOo~

Margot picked up a contouring brush and ran it over her fingers. Bibi snatched it out of her hand and put it back in its slot in her kit.

“Keep your grabby hands to yourself. Everythin’s clean. I swear, Margie, you’re like a toddler.”

“What’s the job?”

“Some high school dance. Doin’ a buncha girlfriends for their big night.”

“You know, when
I
say that sentence, it means something else entirely,” Margot giggled.

Bibi answered with a laugh of her own, but then she got serious. “Blue still kickin’ up a stink about that?” Margot wasn’t willing to stop working, and it was making Blue crazy.

The real thing making Blue crazy was that he was in love with this girl, so much that he couldn’t turn his back, even when she defied him. Bibi was enjoying the show, watching that man, with his prehistoric ideas about women, twist and writhe on the hook of love.