Making It Last - A Novella (Camelot Series) (3 page)

For Amber, it was just like being at home, except more difficult, with Caleb’s wedding in the middle and the blossoming romance of Katie and Sean on display.

Three sexless, exhausting days that had been the furthest possible thing from a vacation.

And still, she couldn’t accept that she deserved what he was offering.

“But you’ve got work,” she said. “And the flight—I can’t leave you with the boys. Who will pick them up from school? Or do the laundry? And somebody’s got to get the dog from the
kennel and take her to obedience training tomorrow, because I already think she’s going to be backsliding, considering the way they spoil her. I think—”

“Your mom and Jamila said they would handle it. I’m sure they can take care of the dog, too.”

“I don’t know, Tony. This kind of spur-of-the-moment stuff …”

“Makes you crazy. Yeah, I know. You never say yes to anything like this. I bought you that spa gift certificate, and you left it in the kitchen drawer for four years. So I’m not even going to ask. I’m just telling you, you’re staying here. I’ll change your ticket to Friday and let you know when you have to get on the plane.”

He pulled her toward the back of the van, where he unloaded her suitcase and set it on the curb. Amber watched him. Mute. Stunned.

She wanted to clutch his arm.

Don’t leave me here. I don’t know how to be alone anymore
.

I want you to stay with me. I want you to
want
to stay
.

I want everything to be different
.

Tony leaned down and kissed her.

It wasn’t a perfunctory kiss or a sex kiss. Not a kiss like Sean and Katie’s, either.

It was a very Tony kiss, forceful and direct and unexpected. Bewildering, the way it pushed heat right down through her, right out here where anyone could see.

It was exactly what she needed.

“Okay,” she said, when she’d caught her breath.

Tony smiled. “We’ll miss you. I’ll explain to the boys. All you need to do is wave as we drive away.”

“Won’t that—”

“It’ll be fine, bun.” For one long second, he cupped her face in his hand and looked in her eyes. For one long second, she felt like she still knew him, and he still knew her.

“Have fun,” he said.

And then he climbed into the van and left her standing there with her suitcase.

No kids. No husband. No family.

Just Paradise, for a few more days.

Tony couldn’t get Jacob to stop crying.

He sat in the cramped window seat of the airplane, parked on the tarmac, with Jake wrapped around him like a baby monkey. Ant was to his left in the aisle seat, and across the way Clark had his own seat.

Beside Clark, there was nobody. An absence where Amber was supposed to be.

Jake had cried most of the way to the airport, unconvinced by Tony’s reassurances. He’d thrown himself onto the floor when it was time to move to the front of the security line and then, when that nightmare was over, had sobbed so hard Tony thought the kid might throw up as he dragged him onto the moving walkway toward the gate.

I want Mom
, he said again and again.
When is she coming? Why did you
leave
her there?

Clark remained sullen and silent, refusing to speak to Tony ever since he’d made him go sit in the van. Ant wouldn’t shut up, wouldn’t stop hopping around like someone had slipped him a hit of some really good drug that made it vitally important for at least one part of his body to remain in motion at all times.

And his mother-in-law kept
looking
at him. She had this beady eagle gaze—exactly how she’d looked at him eleven years ago when she found out Tony had gotten Amber pregnant with Clark. Like she was considering shackling him to a rock, ripping open his torso, and leaving him there for the birds to eat his entrails.

She was doing it now, staring at him with bright eyes and tight lips as she approached along the narrow aisle of the airplane.

“We should switch seats,” she said. “I’ll take him, and you can sit by Derek.”

You suck at this
, was what she meant.
Only my daughter and I know how to calm your kids down, because you are never home. You’re no kind of father at all
.

“I’m fine here,” he said.

Jacob wailed, “My head hurts!”

Amber always made Jake drink a Coke after he threw up, but they’d had to rush through security and right onto the plane, and Tony hadn’t been able to buy one yet.

“Did you give him ibuprofen?” Janet asked.

It was hard to hear over the wailing. Tony had to shout. “I don’t have any.”

Probably Amber had ibuprofen in her purse. She carried everything—tissues, medicine, Band-Aids, snacks, water, Super Glue, batteries. He teased her sometimes that her bag was like a magician’s hat.
You got a meatball sub in there?

Janet sighed dramatically.

“What, and you do?” he asked.

Her mouth tightened, the frown lines creasing up.

Fuck. Now he was pissing off his mother-in-law.

Better to make her feel useful than to get on her bad side. Last time it happened, he’d stayed there for a couple years.

“Can you do me a favor and ask one of the flight attendants for a can of Coke?”

“You’re going to reward him for throwing this fit?”

“The caffeine makes his head feel better.”

“Oh.” Her eyes flicked down the aisle. “Derek! Don’t put the bag in like that. You have to
turn
it.”

“I need a Coke!” Jacob howled.

“Can I have one, too?” Ant asked.

“Give Grandma one minute.” To her grandsons, she was soothing. Almost sweet. “We’ll get you sorted out.”

She moved off down the aisle, and Tony dropped his head against the back of the seat, closing his eyes, smoothing his hand up and down Jacob’s back.

“Dad?” Ant asked. “Can I have one?”

“Sure.”

The wrong answer according to Amber’s rules, but the right one in the sense that it might shut Ant up for the three or four minutes it took him to suck the drink down.

Jake’s breath turned jerky and ragged—worse instead of better. He could make himself hyperventilate this way. It had been a while since he did it, but Tony didn’t want a repeat show.

“Breathe, buddy,” he said quietly. “Breathe in. Breathe out. Take it slow.”

“Why—didn’t—you—tell me?” Jake asked, and on every word his breath hitched and his panic dialed up another notch. “You—said—to—get—in—the
—van
—but—not—that—she—wasn’t—coming!”

“I know. I didn’t mean to spring it on you that way. It was just that we were in a big hurry, and we didn’t make this new plan until the last second. But it’s okay, I swear. Take a deep breath. Please. Breathe through a straw, remember? You’re gonna pass out if you don’t.”

After a few seconds, Jake sucked in a lungful of air.

“Good. Now blow it out. See? That’s better. Do that again.”

Tony breathed with his son, in and out, and waited for the galloping of his own heart to ease up.

He’d often thought, curled around Jake on his son’s twin bed in the darkest hours of the night, that he’d cursed the boy before he was even born. Talked Amber into having a third baby when she wasn’t sure, promised her a daughter, only to give her a son whose fears went as deep as Tony’s own. Whose heart beat in Tony’s body.

They’d done this so many times, the two of them. This synchronized breathing. This backing off from the sharpest edge of fear.

“Your mom’s coming home,” he said. “It’s only a few days.”

Jake lifted his tear-streaked face, fixing Tony with those big brown eyes, so dark. So exactly like his mother’s. Amber’s eyes, Amber’s cheeks. The same flawless skin that tanned with a few hours’ exposure to sunlight. The same straight, dark hair.

But everything inside this kid was Tony, through and through. The milk intolerance. The fear of the dark, the screwed-up sleep patterns.

The irrational terror that he would lose everything he cared about.

He forgets to breathe
, Amber had said once, a few weeks after they had him home from the hospital.
Just like you, Tony
.

“What d-did I
d-do
?” Jake asked.

The question rose and broke, and the fear in his son’s eyes filled Tony with more pain than he could deal with.

He didn’t know what he’d done or not done. He had no fucking idea.

All he knew was they’d pulled away from the curb and left Amber there, jeans and tall boots and a bright magenta splash of T-shirt, and even before the van turned onto the road he hadn’t been able to recognize her as his wife.

She’d looked like she was lost, and even though it didn’t make any sense, he knew it was
because he’d lost her.

He should have stayed with her, like Jamila suggested. But he had work. Five days off was already pushing it.

He couldn’t stay, so he’d compromised and made it so
Amber
could stay.

It felt wrong, though. It felt like shit.

“You didn’t do anything, buddy. It’s not your fault. It’s not even anything bad. Your mom needs a break, that’s all. She works really hard, you know?”

Jake braced his palm against Tony’s chest, drawing back. “She says
yuh-you
work hard.”

“That’s because I work outside the house, building stuff. But your mom works at home, with you guys, and she doesn’t get half as many breaks as me.”

“Weren’t we good?”

“Of course you were good,” Tony said, right as Ant piped up from the aisle seat, “It’s because you ate the chocolate bar, doofus.”

Jacob’s face went blank, then broke. He dropped his head and started to cry all over again. “I didn’t
mean
to eat the chocolate, Dad! I was trying to be good. I was really
trying
.”

“I know, Jake. You’re a good boy. Your mom loves you. She isn’t staying in Jamaica because you did anything wrong.”

Over Jake’s head, Tony shot Ant a look that said,
Pipe down, or you’re in a world of hurt
.

Ant smiled evilly and turned his attention back to the game on his DS.

He wasn’t supposed to have the DS today.

Bigger fish to fry.

Tony lifted his free hand to brace his small son’s back between his palms. Framing him, pressing slightly, trying to tell him with the pressure that the world wasn’t coming apart, even if it felt like it must be.

He’d realized in the van—Jake had never been apart from his mother overnight.

Six years old.

Which meant that not only was this really super
extra
hard for Jake, but also, Amber hadn’t spent a single night apart from the kids in six years.

He’d never thought of it before. She’d never said.

They used to get away sometimes. Leave Clark with his mom or hers, or with one of his
sisters, and drive up to Columbus to stay in some swanky hotel and split a bottle of wine. Go dancing, if she made him. Have noisy, tipsy sex with the lights on, all their clothes off, on top of the goddamn sheets for a change, and not give a damn who heard them.

One year they’d gone to Oktoberfest at the fairgrounds, and for some reason he couldn’t remember, Amber had been waitressing at one of the booths for a shift. She’d worn one of those German outfits, like the chick on the St. Pauli Girl bottle. A white shirt cut low, and those suspender things over a big flouncy skirt.

The outfit had plumped up her breasts, and he’d eye-fucked her all night. After she got off her shift, they’d clinked together their giant plastic steins of beer and laughed because they were free of the work, free of the kids. Together. They’d taken a cab back to the hotel and she’d worked the heel of her hand along the fly his jeans, outlining his cock, smiling at him with her hair loose and her eyes so happy.

And God, when they got in the room, he’d had his hand up her skirt and his mouth on her breasts before the door was even closed all the way. They’d been like animals, rutting against the wall, sliding down to the floor. On the carpet. Sitting up on the bed. On all fours. He’d been drunk enough that he didn’t come for forever, and they kept laughing and grabbing at each other, her hand slick sliding over his balls, his nose in her neck, in her armpit, her shirt a little ripped, askew, then gone, her mouth sucking him until finally he came, and every single piece of that whole night had felt good. Every second.

She’d been there. Right with him.

He remembered, on those trips, how they used to plan to sleep in late but always woke up early instead, listening for phantom baby cries. They’d head home at dawn, grab breakfast at a diner, hold hands in the car.

Even after Ant was born, they’d done that sometimes. Once when she was pregnant with Jake. At
least
once when she was pregnant.

Since then …

Jake had been a tough baby. And they were dead broke.

Still. He should’ve taken her somewhere. Six fucking years.

“Wuh-was it Ant?” Jake asked, too loudly. Tony could see the flight attendant making her way down the aisle, her forehead furrowed with concern. She had two cans of Coke in her hands. Thank Christ.

“Because Ant and Clark were getting on her last nerve,” Jake said. “She told Grandma at the reception.”

“It wasn’t Ant. It was just …”

But Tony didn’t know any way to tell Jake what Jamila had told him. That Amber had disappeared after the wedding ceremony so that she could cry. That she’d cried herself incoherent, her throat hoarse, and her mother had been frightened to find her that way.

He’d been on the phone the whole time. The interior paint job in Dublin had gotten all fucked up, and the owner had called him, furious, accusing Tony of trying to cut corners because he’d lowballed the bid, which he
had
, but he’d thought the painter had enough sense to be able to spray the goddamn walls without getting paint all over the window trim and the countertops.

It took him two hours to calm the guy down, a promise that he would personally fix anything the owner had a problem with, and by then Amber had seemed fine.

A little distant, but fine.

Distant was nothing new.