I headed to her room, the light coming through the door which was opened a crack.

I stopped at the door and knocked softly.

“Yeah, Mom,” she called and I pushed the door open and stood in its frame, my arms wrapped around my belly.

“Hey baby, have a good time?”

She was texting someone and I knew it was Dane even though he just dropped her off. Her head came up from her phone and she grinned at me.

“Yeah,” she said softly, her face just as soft.

Oh fuck.

“Dane have fun?” I asked.

She nodded and looked back down at her phone. She hit send, slid it shut and tossed it on her nightstand.

“I like him, Kate, he’s a good kid,” I told her, her head twisted to me and she studied me a second before she dealt a blow she didn’t know she was dealing and, if she did, it would cut her to the quick. Kate felt. She felt everything but she felt other people’s pain far more than her own, one of the few things she got from me.

“You think Dad would have liked him?”

I hid my flinch at her question and I did it by thinking about her question.

I’d made a pact with Tim early on that we’d always be open and honest with our girls. A pact that he regularly broke as they grew older and he found he had trouble with the facts of life and relaying them to his daughters, seeing as they were female. A pact, since I was female, I was able to keep.

“No,” I told her, her face fell and I went on. “But only because you’re his little girl and you always will be. He wouldn’t like him, not now, but he’d come around because Dane’s a good kid.”

Her face brightened, just slightly, and she asked, “You think?”

I walked in, got close to her, wrapped my hand around her head and pulled her temple to my mouth.

“I know,” I whispered and kissed her before finishing. “Get some sleep, honey.”

Her body had leaned into mine with my embrace but she pulled away when she replied, “All right, Mom.”

“Sleep tight.”

“You too.”

I walked to the side kitchen door, locked it, armed the alarm and then moved back to my room and got in bed wearing Tim’s robe, thinking that sleeping tight was an impossibility with what happened that night.

I was right.

* * *

“Home for dinner!” I shouted my order to my girls from my room as I heard them preparing to go to the mall and I finished preparing to go into work.

It was late morning after the Joe Incident. Bobbie had called and asked me to put in a few hours. She might have gotten a good full-time worker when Sabrina quit but that still meant she was down a part-time worker and hadn’t found anyone she liked to replace me and since Bobbie didn’t like many people that would probably take awhile. Overtime was beginning to be a regular thing but I wasn’t complaining.

“When are you done?” Keira shouted back.

“I’ll be home after five,” I answered, again on a shout.

“Cool! Later Momalicious,” Keira shouted.

“Bye Mawdy!” Kate yelled.

“Be careful!” I yelled back, flicking the covers over my bed and a small, white business card flew up into the air.

I stilled and stared at the card as I heard the door slam in the other room.

The card had settled back on my bed. I saw the print on it and it was blurry because I was not focusing as I stared at it. I was feeling the bitterness and humiliation that leached into my bones last night, bitterness and humiliation I’d made a huge effort to ignore all morning, start burning.

My breath started coming fast and shame bled into the acid that had taken root in my marrow.

Last night I wasn’t so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t so drunk I had a hangover. I wasn’t so fucking drunk I shouldn’t have stopped it.

But I didn’t. I not only let it happen, I participated and I’d begged.

Not thinking (I never did when I got angry), I snatched up the card and then went to my jeans which were still on the floor. I pulled the fifty out of the pocket then I dropped the jeans on the bed and marched out of my room. Then I marched through the house out the side door.

Joe’s truck was in the drive.

I had no intention of facing him but I had every intention of making a point.

I was heading toward his mailbox when I heard the music and I switched directions, walking up his yard to his drive, instantly changing my mind about facing him. I saw the garage door open, the music coming from there. Black Sabbath, not Kenzie Elise loud, just loud enough to hear.

There was a car in the garage, the hood up. I couldn’t see what kind of car it was, all I could see was Joe bent over it, working on the engine.

I walked right up to him and when I got close, his head turned to me but his torso stayed bent over the engine. When it did, before he could say a word, not that he was going to, I stopped and tossed the card and fifty in his direction. They fluttered through the air but I didn’t wait to see his reaction, didn’t say a word, didn’t watch where the card and bill landed, I turned and walked away.

I didn’t get very far. A firm hand curled around my upper arm and I was yanked back.

“What –?” I snapped not finishing because he whirled me around and pulled me into the garage. “Let me go!” I demanded as he reached up and, with a violent wrench, he pulled on a cord causing the apparently well-oiled garage door to rumble on its rails and crash down.

There we were, alone in his dark garage with his car and Black Sabbath.

Me and my stupid temper.

“Take your hand off me!” I bit out, twisting my arm and he did, he let me go.

He took his hand off me but only to lift it and, as he did the night before, exactly the same, his fingers fisted in my hair and his other arm wound around my hips, pulling me into his body.

“What are you –?” I started but his mouth came down on mine in a punishing kiss that surprised me, scared me and excited me, the last one far, far more than the first two.

I didn’t want it to happen, didn’t expect it would happen, not in a million years. In fact, looking back at it later, which I did a lot, too much, I didn’t know how it did happen. But one second he was kissing me, the next second he was shuffling me to his car, he yanked the rod out that was holding the hood up and it came crashing down. The sound jolted me but not with fear or surprise, with excitement as Joe pulled my jeans skirt up to my waist, yanked my panties down and they fell to his garage floor then, his hands at my ass, he lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his hips and he planted me on the hood of the car, his hand between us, working his fly, my hands in his t-shirt, roaming his skin.

Then he was inside me, fucking me on the hood of his car, fucking me like the night before, hard, deep, rough, violent and I loved it. I lifted my hips to greet it, my hands curled on his ass to encourage it, my tongue tangled with his in my mouth to build it.

Then I came, not as hard as the night before but different, sharper, shorter, not better, but just as fucking good.

His hips bucked into mine long after I came. He was still kissing me and I locked him tight in my limbs as I took his thrusts until he buried himself to the hilt, growled in my mouth and the taste of that growl nearly made me climax again.

He stayed planted inside me as it hit me I’d done it again, on his car, in his garage no less. I turned my head away but he didn’t seem to mind. He just used this opportunity to glide his tongue along my neck which, it killed me to admit, felt so fucking good it made me shiver.

Then he pulled out and yanked me to my feet.

I was looking to the side and down at the floor but I wobbled, my knees weak from my orgasm and his big hands spanned my hips to steady me. There was something about this, something tender, something so un-Joe that I couldn’t hack it. I yanked free, stepping away, pulling my hair out of my face, beyond humiliated. So far beyond it, I didn’t know what that was. At the same time I felt fucking great, I felt electrified, alive and I hated myself for that but I hated him more.

I leaned down and snatched my panties from the floor, clearing my mind, thinking of nothing but getting the fuck out of there. I yanked them on, shimmied my skirt down and, without looking at him, walked swiftly to the side door.

I didn’t make it. His arm hooked at my belly, his other one wrapped around my chest and he yanked me back into his body.

His lips at my ear, he murmured, “I want you in my bed tonight, buddy.”

I shook my head once, a terse, angry shake even as his words slid through me like a different kind of burn, hardening my nipples, tickling between my legs, bringing back that feeling I had last night, that hollow feeling, that hunger, even though I’d just had him not five minutes before.

I pulled out of his arms, reached out, yanked open the door and ran straight to my house.

* * *

I lay on my side, curled into a ball which was my seven hundred and fifty-fifth position of the night.

The room was dark, it was the dead of night and even though I barely slept the night before, I was wide awake.

Not comfortable, I turned and looked at the clock.

One forty-seven in the morning.

I closed my eyes and whispered, “Fuck.”

Joe was next door in his bed, maybe waiting for me.

This was all I could think of from ten o’clock, when I slid into bed with a book I couldn’t focus on, to now.

I shouldn’t go, couldn’t go, I shouldn’t even want to go.

Even knowing this, I threw back the covers and went to my closet. I pulled out a long cardigan, my brain battling itself as I shrugged on the sweater and walked out of the room.