It couldn’t be said his girl skimped on cheese.
Another reason to love her.
He waited until she had hers, before he went in for his and shared, “Auggie makes pork rind nachos. After having those, we declared him winner since they’re better than Mag’s pancakes, Boone’s mac and cheese, and my deviled eggs.”
She was blinking at him.
Rapidly.
“Deviled eggs?” she asked, still blinking. “What deviled eggs?”
He went for more chips and cheese, saying, “Got a variety of options, but the front-runners are Mexican street corn, Cajun crab and pimento cheese and bacon.”
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“You’ve had my cooking.”
“So tell me, Axl Pantera, why we’re eating nuked cheese on tortilla chips when you can make Mexican street corn deviled eggs?”
He grinned at her.
“I’ve gotta spread out the goodness to keep you hooked. I don’t want to burn through it too soon, so you take off and find a guy who has new tricks up his sleeve.”
When he said that, it was Hattie who was laughing.
He didn’t want to, but seeing all that pretty in his bed, his eyes strayed to the flag on his dresser.
Jordan was a connoisseur of a nice ass, and he always could appreciate a great set of tits.
But he’d be all about Axl finding a woman who wanted to spend their Sundays in bed, eating, fucking and laughing.
More.
A woman who didn’t want him to give up hope about his irredeemable dad, wishing for Axl that his father would find his way to be redeemed so one day Axl’d have a dad.
When his attention went back to her, she was studiously chewing on a triangle of cheese-coated chip.
She’d seen where his eyes had gone.
“You can ask about him, you know,” he said.
“I know,” she replied.
And then she didn’t ask about him.
“Hattie, I fucked up being a dick about him to you. And the first person who would tell me I did is Jordan. You can ask about him,” he reiterated.
She gave him her gaze. “You need to be in that space, and you’ve had a bad couple of days.”
“I need to get to a place where he can be with me in memory and it not hurt.”
She gave him a look that he read.
It said that was impossible and he shouldn’t expect that.
So he added, “As much. So I need to quit burying him under the pain of losing him and talk about how good it was to have him while I had him.”
That got him another look.
Agreement.
“Do you have pictures of him?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Someday, I’d like to see.”
“Someday … soon …I’ll find ’em and pull ’em out.”
“Cool,” she said, carefully nonchalant, going for another chip.
After she was done, he did too, telling her, “Something you said in your studio made me think.”
She munched and tipped her head to the side. “About what?”
“About art being pain. I got that piece in the living room, and from the minute I bought it, I wondered what I was thinking. Since it’s been sitting there, every time I see it, I wonder if having it isn’t a little off. Even disrespectful, that a depiction of what took Jordan out was what I have sitting in my living room.”
“And?” she prompted quietly when he stopped talking.
“And then you offered me ‘After,’ and I already knew I was gonna buy it in your show. I didn’t care how much it cost. I wanted it from the minute I saw it. Because it was you. And I wanted you. I didn’t have any of you back then, so even little pieces would work, I wanted you that bad. But in the end, I knew, I wanted all of you.”
She had nothing to say to that.
But now he was getting another look.
Lots of warmth.
Axl kept talking.
“Then, after I was a dick to you about Jordan, I talked with Mo. He has issues. We all do. We look out for each other, but we can’t be there twenty-four seven. So, he told me, when he has his moments, Lottie looks after him and I knew that gutted him, because you don’t want to lay that kind of heavy on someone you love. Which was what I was trying to protect you from. I didn’t want you to shoulder that heavy. But then Mo told me Lottie doesn’t mind. She’s all over it. Because she loves him and that’s a part of him and she wants it all.”
Now Hattie was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read.
But it looked like surprise.
So he kept explaining.
“Now I get that’s why I have that piece in the living room. To remind me of the pain of losing Jordan. Which is something I didn’t want, but it’s the last thing I got from him. Even as much as that sucks, it’s still precious because it means I had him in the first place. I loved the guy, and I was at his back when he died. And when that happened to him, there was no other place I’d want to be. And ‘After’ is the girl you were, folded in on herself. But you had the nerve and mental toughness to unfold and fly high. That was my girl then, and that’s my girl now. But I didn’t have you then. Though, when ‘After’ is here, I’ll have you. Then and now. I’ll have all of you, even your pain, which is what I need.”