Old Flames

Old Flames: Chapter 23

Old Flames: Chapter 23

The kids began to stir in his lap, and Aaron glanced at the clock above his television.  Lainie said she needed to run over to her house and gather some clean clothes for herself, but that had been almost an hour ago.  She still wasn’t back.  Concerned that she had gotten sick again, visions of her splayed out on the bathroom floor, unable to move, got to him.  Aaron nudged Chris and Chloe, who both blinked sleepily at him.

“Hey, you two.  I need to go check on your mama,” he said to them.  “Ya’ll want to play with Bowser for a while?”

“Where’s Mama?” Chloe asked.

“She went over to your house to get some things.  How about we go see what’s taking so long, and you can play with Bowser in your backyard for a bit?”

“Okay,” they said, scrambling off his lap.  Aaron immediately felt empty.  He could hug and hold them and love on them all day and never get tired.

“Oomph,” he grumped as a sharp elbow caught him in the stomach.  Okay, maybe without the squirming.  For two shrimps, they sure had some spiky joints.  

The twins raced off to find the dog in the spare bedroom, squealing and laughing to get his lazy mutt up from his own nap.  Aaron stood and stretched and thought about the woman who was either debilitated with more upset stomach issues or avoiding him to be gone so long.  He’d never seen her fresh up from a nap or arising in the morning.  When she came out of his bedroom earlier, she looked rumbled and replenished and so damn sweet his back teeth hurt.  Then she smiled at him, and he almost abandoned the kids in his recliner to take her back to bed.

Being around her so much lately had started to take its toll on him.  He wanted her.  All the damn time.  But he loved her too much to go any faster than she was ready for.  Knowing that she’d only be a room away from him tonight was going to keep him awake all night.  

The two -- sorry, three kids rushed back into the living room.  Bowser shook with just as much excitement as the two human children, enjoying the attention he was getting.  Chris and Chloe were arguing over who got to hold his leash, so Aaron settled the matter by attaching another one to Bowser’s collar.  

They left his house together, crossed the street, and Aaron directed them to the backyard before searching for Lainie.  She wasn’t in the bathroom, and he was glad for that...until he finally saw her.  In her room, she sat on her bed, a pile of clothes and her laptop stuffed into a duffel bag, and she was staring at a framed photo in her hands.  Fat drops littered the glass of the frame, and he knew she’d been crying.  He had no idea what was wrong and was about to surge in there and comfort her, but he stopped just inside the door because upon closer inspection, he saw that the photo was of their family -- Chris, Chloe, Lainie, and a dark-haired, serious-looking man that Aaron assumed was the twins’ father, Gary.

Talk about a blow to his ego.  Lainie rarely talked about her late husband, but whenever she did, she was always honest about him, yet in a nice way.  And Aaron assumed that Lainie was finally getting over him and thinking of moving on with her life...preferably with him.

Not now.  He didn’t think that now.  She must miss and love Gary terribly to cry like this, silently and alone.

First, he considered leaving her to mourn so he could fume about it, but he just didn’t have the heart.  If he could never be anything more to her than a friend, then a friend he’d be.  And a friend would help her through this.  Aaron straightened his spine and knocked softly on the open door.

She jerked and hastily swiped at her cheeks.  “Hey,” he said softly, moving cautiously to her side.  “You okay?”

She gave him a shaky smile.  “Sorry,” she apologized.  “Are the kids alright?”

Aaron pushed aside her bag to sit next to her.  “They’re fine.  They’re out back with Bowser.”

Lainie nodded and dropped her eyes to the picture again.  After a second, she handed it to him.  That was all the strength he needed.  She trusted him to share this time with him, and he loved her all the more for it.

“That was taken back in May,” she explained, drawing in a deep breath.  “I talked Gary into take all of us down to Murfreesboro so the kids could dig for diamonds.”

Aaron studied the photo.  Lainie and her children were covered in dust, dirt, and speckles of dried mud, and both Chris and Chloe proudly held up tiny rock of a yellowish color.  Gary, on the other hand, didn’t have a speck of dirt on him.  He sat a little over to the side of his family, barely smiling.  

Lainie laughed quietly, but the sound wasn’t a happy one.  “Gary didn’t want to get out in the field with us.  He sat in the cafe the whole time.  I spent six hours with my children alone, squelching fights half the time and explaining why their father wasn’t down there with us the other half.”

Aaron gave the photo back to her, examining her sad expression, yet kept quiet because he knew she needed to say this.  Lainie looked at the picture one last time before sticking it in a drawer in her bedside cabinet.

“That’s the story of their life,” she went on.  “They loved him, and he...he loved them, in his way, but I know they wished for more.”  She clasped her hands together, studying them and avoiding his gaze.  “I thought that they would have more time with him, and maybe when they got older and not so needy, he’d spend more time doing things with them.”  Lainie drew in another ragged breath.  “I had hoped, anyway, and now...”

With her head bent like so, her hair fell across her shoulder, hiding her face from him.  Aaron reached up, tucked a strand behind her ear to see her better.  What was he supposed to say?  Was he supposed to say anything at all, or let her get this all out?  As she remained silent with her chin trembling viciously, he couldn’t not say anything.

“Lainie, the kids...they’ll be fine.  I know they will,” he said.  She still didn’t look at him.  “Chris, he’s upset, but Chloe’s helping him understand all this.  You daughter has a very mature way about her.  Last night, she said--”

Lainie’s sharp glance stopped him.  “They talked to you about Gary?”

Aaron wasn’t sure if he like the way she looked at him or the sting in her question.  He felt like he’d just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.  “Um...yeah.  Is that okay?”

“What did they say?”

“Well...”  He didn’t know if telling her would break some kind of silent vow with the children, but he did know that Lainie should hear what Chloe told him.  “Chris said that his father didn’t love them--”

Lainie gasped.

Aaron winced, but it was too late to go back now.  “But Chloe explained that Gary was their ‘Angel Daddy’, and it was okay, because now they can have an ‘Angel Daddy’ and a ‘Real Daddy’.”

Her hazel eyes filled up.  “Chloe said that?”  Aaron nodded, keeping his arms by his side when he’d rather scoop her up and crush her to him.  “And what did Chris say?” she asked.

Aaron smiled at what Chris had asked him last night.  “He wanted to know if I knew how to build a tree house.”

Lainie blinked rapidly, her mouth parting as though to say something, but she didn’t.  Her face screwed up painfully, and she lowered her head into her hands.  Her shoulders shook as she cried again.  Aaron was at a loss.

After a few moments of listening to her cry, he began to shift uncomfortably and finally placed a hand on her back, rubbing gently to soothe her.  In an attempt to lighten the mood in the room, he asked, “Was it something I said?”

Lainie wailed louder.  “He won’t let me go,” she finally said, muffling the words through her fingers.

Aaron frowned.  “Who?”

Lainie raised her face to him, and his breath caught.  God, she was so beautiful.  Even blotchy from crying, her eyes shone bewitchingly and she looked at him as though he could solve all her problem.  “Gary,” she whispered.  “He won’t let me go.  I have these dreams where he’s angry at me, and I get this guilty feeling because I’m trying to move on, but he won’t let me.”

“Lainie, he’s the one who left you.  Why should you feel guilty because you have a life and two children to care for?”

“Oh, Aaron, what if they grow up hating me because I killed their father?”

Aaron reared back.  Was there more to this story than he thought?  “Lainie,” he said softly, “you didn’t kill him.  He died in an accident, right?”  Right?

“But I pushed him away,” she defended her husband.  “I spent so much time with the kids that I didn’t love him the way he wanted.  If I’d just paid more attention to him, he wouldn’t have left us.  He wouldn’t have bought that motorcycle and filed for a divorce and died.”

Aaron relaxed a little.  “That wasn’t your fault,” he argued.  “How could you blame yourself for loving your children before anyone else?  That’s what mothers do.”

She scowled.  “Like my mother did for me today?”

“Let’s leave your mother out of this,” Aaron insisted angrily.  That woman didn’t deserve the title Mother.  “I don’t want you getting mad at me for insulting her.”

She laughed at that.  It was only a tiny laugh, but it was sweet music to Aaron.  “I guess I’m just tired,” she said, laying back on her bed and looking up at the ceiling fan.  “But I can’t help thinking what if I got involved with another man and the kids end up hating me for betraying their father.”

Aaron stretched out beside her, resting on his side with his elbow bent, propping up his head so he could gaze down at her.  “First of all, let’s get one thing straight.  There will be only one man who gets to be their daddy, and he would do everything in the world to keep Chris and Chloe from hating you.  He’d make their life so wonderful and fulfilling that one day they’d wonder why he wasn’t their father from the beginning.”

Lainie shifted her eyes to him and smiled.  Aaron smiled back, drinking her in.  A comfortable silence filled the room as they regarded each other.  The pleasant sounds of children playing in the backyard filtered into the room, accompanied by Bowser’s happy barking.  She reached up and caressed the underside of his jaw.

“You would, wouldn’t you?” she murmured.  Aaron captured her fingers with his free hand and gave each tip a small kiss.  With her hand secured in his, she traced the shape of his mouth with a soft fingertip, and the comfortable silence grew into one of strained tension.

He released her hand and moved to hover over her, one palm flat on the bedspread on either side of her head.  Her hand moved with him, cupping the side of his face as she watched him draw closer.  “Lainie,” he whispered.  “I’m going to kiss you now.”

She blinked languidly.  “Yes...please kiss me, Aaron.”

His eyes closed as their lips met...a soft, tame, barely-there touch, testing her on how far she allowed this kiss to go.  As he lifted up leisurely, their lips clung to one another and Lainie’s tongue darted out to taste him, pulling him back.  And back, he went.  He fused himself to her, manipulating those twin slices of perfection, nibbling and caressing, licking and tasting, glazing her mouth with every drop of passion he felt for her.  Lainie met his kiss with eagerness, wrapping her arms around his neck, clinging to him.

Aaron scooped her up and rotated on the bed so she lay on top of him, her belly compressing down on his groin and her breasts trapped against his chest.  She kissed him deeply, and he allowed his hands free reign on every curve between her shoulders and her thighs, squeezing at the best places.  

Needing to taste more than her mouth, he eventually flipped her back over and trailed down her chin and neck...just getting to the dip of her vee-neck shirt when the back door slammed shut.
Laughter and barking bounced off the walls of the house.  With a groan, Aaron quickly got off the kids’ mother before they could see them.  Lainie sat up just as fast, and Aaron felt his pants drop about an inch off his hips.  When he looked down, he noticed that his button and zipper were undone.

His gaze shot to Lainie, and the surprise at how she’d done that without him realizing it was the understatement of the century.  She blushed prettily and winked at him.  “Sorry,” she said just as the kids ran into the bedroom.  Aaron turned his back and swiftly -- if a bit clumsily because his hands shook -- fixed his clothing.

Sweet Heaven, he needed a brick wall to bang his head against.  If she’d done that, then what else would she be willing to do?  

The kids captured Lainie’s attention, giving him time to cool his blood and form rational thinking once again.  “Mama, it’s raining!”

“And we got all wet!”

Lainie laughed, “Yes, I can see that,” and Aaron glanced over his shoulder.  The two kids were nearly soaked, and his dog shook his body, spraying minuscule drops of water everywhere.  Lainie shielded herself the best she could and glared at Aaron.

“Hey, don’t look at me that way,” he scoffed, turning back around.  “I didn’t make it rain.”

“No, but you’ll be cleaning it up,” she told him with a smile and a covert glance at his pants to see if he managed alright.  Aaron turned bright red, and Lainie laughed again.  The little minx.

“I’m getting hungry,” Chloe announced, and Chris’ face lit up.  “Can we have spaghetti?”

“I’m sure we can work something out,” Lainie said, shooing her kids into their bedroom for some dry clothes and their raincoats.  She came back with a towel, tossing it Aaron and pointing a stern finger at Bowser.  “Sit!  Stay!”  Bowser, who was very well trained, immediately did as she commanded, gazing up at her penitently.  Lainie gave his dog a superior nod, and then directed that finger at Aaron.  Like canine, like owner, Aaron promptly got down on all fours and wiped up his dog’s mess, wondering how she managed to get everyone -- the kids, the dog, and him -- to obey so easily.

He chuckled at his thoughts as he ran the towel up the side of Lainie’s dresser.  More photos covered the top, mostly of her and her children, and a few with their father in them, but one caught his eye.  A young, teenage Lainie and a man -- barely a man -- smiled at the camera.  Aaron had never seen the man before but he looked vaguely familiar.

“Who’s this?” he asked, holding the frame up to Lainie.  She frowned at it.

“That’s Levi, my brother.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” Aaron replied, studying Levi in the picture.  Now he realized why he looked familiar.  He had Lainie’s eyes.

“You’ve never met him.  He’s older than me...five years, and well...we don’t see each other very much.”

The forlorn and confusion in her voice told Aaron that there was more to that story, but he didn’t want to pry.  He set the frame back in its place.  Lainie picked it up and pursed her lips.  “The last time I saw him was when the kids were born.  He popped in, handed over a teddy bear for each of them and popped back out.”

Aaron dropped the towel in a nearby laundry basket and put his hands on his hips, watching her.  There was so much he didn’t know about her.  However, she was still reeling from her emotional overload about Gary, so Aaron wasn’t really willing to press this subject into the open.  “He sounds...interesting.”

Lainie looked up.  There was angst in her face.  “I don’t know the whole story, and my parents never wanted to talk about it.  I was only fourteen when he left home.”

If she was willing to talk, he was willing to listen.  “What happened to him?”

She dropped the picture back to the dresser and gathered up her bag.  Aaron assumed that was the end of the discussion,  but she said, “His senior year in high school, he got a girl pregnant.”

“Oh...so you have a niece or nephew?”

Lainie’s hands tightened on the bag’s straps.  “No...they were supposed to get married, but she lost the baby during the fourth or fifth month.”  She startled Aaron by shooting her hand out and slapping the frame down on its front in anger.  “She killed herself after that,” Lainie said bitterly.  “Levi took off and since then, we’ve only seen bits and pieces of him.  That was fifteen, sixteen years ago.”  A sour laugh escaped her throat.  “Some family I have, right?  It seems that every time I turn around, there’s another man in my life abandoning my mom and me and the kids...Levi, my own father, Gary...”

Ah.  Aaron was starting to understand a little more about this woman before him.  What she didn’t say, though the words clearly hung between them, was that he’d abandoned her once before, too.

Lainie raised her eyes to him, stabbing him with the silent insinuation.  “This is what I’m afraid of, Aaron.  Will Chris grow up to be like them, and will Chloe grow up to make excuses and live a life alone because there’s no man there to turn to when she needs him?”

Aaron stood still.  Apparently, he had a lot of pain to make up to her.  And not just the pain he personally caused her.  There was the pain from her brother, her father and her dead husband.  That was enough pressure to send stronger men running.  Aaron wasn’t strong, but he was patient.

Making his feet move, he walked over to her.  “Chloe will have me when she needs someone,” he told her.  “And Chris will never abandon you or her.  I promise you that.”

“I know you will, Aaron,” she said, staring right into his eyes.  “But that doesn’t make the fear any less.”  She pivoted on her heel and went to hustle the children along.  Aaron was left, wondering what to do now.

Bowser stared up at him and growled.  “What?” Aaron asked him.  Bowser woofed and rolled his eyes.  Aaron could just swear that dog could read minds sometimes.

Back into Aaron’s house, the mood lightened considerably, thank goodness.  He offered to make spaghetti for dinner and made Lainie giggle as she watched him dump everything -- frozen meatballs, sauce, and uncooked noodles -- into a crockpot so it could simmer for an hour.  

“Don’t knock it until you try it,” he said, grinning at them.  Chloe and Chris stood on a chair by the counter, wide-eyed and puzzled at this new way of cooking one of their favorite meals.

Dinner time was full of laughter and teasing.  Aaron hadn’t laughed this much in a long time, and whenever he looked across the table at Lainie, his heart soared to see her so much happier now.  The sadness and fear from earlier that afternoon was gone from her eyes, and he knew this was what she needed.  To see how a family should be.  A mother and a determined father eating together with two mischievous kids and a dog that licked up the spaghetti and meatballs off the floor.

Afterward, they watched a movie -- something about an old man in a flying house with a boy scout and this dog that resembled Bowser’s behavior sometimes that Aaron wonder if his canine had some kind of secret life he didn’t know about -- and Aaron realized that he’d have to catch up on his kiddie movies.  Maybe he could run to Target this week and stock up on some.  He envisioned himself, pouring through a stack of DVD’s like a college student cramming for a semester final.  There was so much about being a parent that he couldn’t fathom.  

Like the markers that only colored on this special paper and didn’t get ink all over his carpet and walls.  That was just pure genius.  Then there was this little handheld device that looked like a video game player, and Aaron almost frowned at it, thinking Chris could be doing something more than playing games all day...until, he got a better look and realized that it was teaching the kid how to spell and problem solve.  Amazing.  

And Chloe...Aaron thought for sure she’d rather spend her time playing with her dolls and dress-up clothes, but the little girl was just as interested in board games, and she kicked Aaron’s bootie in a round of Connect 4.  He sat back in his chair at the dining room table, staring at the trap she set up for him, utterly stunned that no matter what he did, Chloe had three winning moves.  Chloe just giggled and said, “I’ll let you win next time, Mr. Aaron.”

Lainie called from across the house, “Don’t believe it!”  And Chris said, “Yeah, she never lets me win!”

As bedtime came around -- a lot later than normally, but Lainie let it slide for tonight -- Aaron gathered up every available bed sheet and blanket he could find and fashioned a make-shift tent in the living room for the kids to sleep in.  He insisted that Lainie take his bed, after arguing under their breaths for ten minutes about it, and he bedded down with Bowser in the spare room, unrolling a freshly laundered sleeping bag for himself.

And there he lay, wide awake and staring up at the dark ceiling with his arms folded under his head.  The rain had been relentless all evening, yet as midnight approached, thunder and lightening built up.  A resounding boom rattled the house, and within seconds, Chris and Chloe were screaming.  He jumped up, only to hear Lainie in the other room, calming her kids and offering to let them sleep with her.  Aaron stood in the dark room, feeling left out.  He’d like to curl up with them, too, but Lainie probably wouldn't allow that.  

Bowser lifted his head to stare sagaciously at him, as though to say, “Stop being a dummy.  Get in there, you idiot.”

Aaron glared at his dog.  “You and I are going to have a talk one of these days.”

Bowser rolled his eyes again and dropped his head to his paws.  Aaron shuffled his feet on the bare floor and hitched up his pajama bottoms.  Normally, he liked to sleep in just his boxers, but with two kids running around, he couldn’t do that.  However, he refused to put on a shirt.  He felt like he was choking when he slept with shirts on.  

As Aaron hemmed and hawed over his decision, Bowser growled softly in his sleep, letting Aaron know that he’d either have to go join the others or sleep on the couch, because idiots weren’t allowed in his room.  Aaron considered kicking his dog as he left the bedroom.  I’ll just go check and see if everyone’s okay, he said to himself.

Thunder crashed again as he pushed open his own bedroom’s door.  Lainie reclined in the middle of his bed as two forms huddled on either side of her under the covers.  “Ya’ll okay?” he asked.  Lainie smiled.

“We’re fine.”

Chloe’s eyes peeked at him through the darkness as she lowered the blanket just enough to uncover the upper half of her face.  “Are you scared of the storm, Mr. Aaron?  You want to sleep with Mama, too?”

His and Lainie’s eyes clashed.  She tipped her mouth up in a half-smirk.  “Yeah, Mr. Aaron,” Lainie cooed teasingly.  “You want to sleep with...us?”

Like the lightening that flashed outside, he glimpsed a scene on what it would be like to be married to that pixie in his bed.  Both wanting more from each other at that moment, but playing around the issue because Chris and Chloe were nearby.  

And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Sure,” he replied, gifting her with a devilish grin of his own.  Chloe scooted over, and Aaron crawled under the blankets next to her, Lainie and Chris.  At first, with Chloe between them, chattering away, and Chris dozing peacefully off on the far side, he and Lainie bantered suggestively through their gazes and smiles.  But as the storm passed and Chloe snuggled on top of his chest and eventually on his other side, they found themselves pressed together and kicked in the backs by tiny feet and knees.

“So,” he said quietly so as to not wake the twins, “this is what it’s like to have children.”

“And this isn’t even the fun part,” Lainie said just as quietly with a gleam in her smile.

“It gets better?” he asked, loving this side of her.

“Oh, yes,” she breathed.  “The fun part is making the children.”

At that point, he was very glad he chose to wear pajamas to bed.  “Maybe one day you can show me how that’s done,” he suggested.

“Maybe,” she replied, yawning afterward.  Aaron kissed her forehead and gathered her into his arms, letting her know that he had no other plans for tonight.  She cuddled closer and murmured, “Thank you, Aaron.  I needed this,” and they both dropped off to sleep.