Kristen Ashley - Fire Inside

I just knew by the look on her face it would not be now.

Even so, Tyra had looked askance at that frame of Elliott and me tons of times. I even once caught her giving Tack eyes about it, jerking her head toward it, whereupon he shook his head. She bugged out her eyes. He rolled his to the ceiling. She crossed her arms on her chest and glared at him. As for me, I pretended I missed all this when I didn’t.

Suffice it to say, Elliott wasn’t her favorite person. He got me kidnapped. He got her kidnapped, twice. He got me shot, repeatedly. He got her stabbed, repeatedly.

So Elliott, even dead, was persona non grata .

As he should be.

For years, Ty-Ty had simply looked askance at the photo but ignored it and didn’t mention Elliott. I knew this was partially because, even though he was dead, she was pissed at him for getting me hurt, not to mention getting her hurt. This was also because her husband was loyal and he adored her and Elliott got her hurt. Even if Elliott was still breathing, it was pretty clear that Tack would make sure he wasn’t doing that for much longer. The breathing part, that was.

As for me, I didn’t mention Elliott. Not ever. My fiancé nearly got my best friend dead. Once we found out about his dealings with the Mob, Tyra advised me strongly to break it off with him. I stuck by his side. She was right. I was wrong. But we both paid for me being wrong and I didn’t go there. I didn’t go there because all I had in me was the ability to rejoice that she didn’t turn her back on me after I nearly got her killed. I held onto that like the lifeline it was. Like I was never going to let it go and no way I was going to bring him up, my decision to stay with him, and rock that boat.

So, obviously, it being an unspoken bone of contention, she wouldn’t miss the photo being gone.

And equally obviously, I was not going to share that I’d thrown it against a wall, shattering the glass. I also was not going to share that I then obsessively listened to Bob Seger singing “We’ve Got Tonight” because every word in that song was true even as I wouldn’t allow myself to admit that it was. I was further not going to share that I’d had my “night”. That night was with Hop (as were the thirteen before—and I was not going to share that either) and, at the time, it hadn’t even been a day but I was already jonesing for a drug I had to get off cold turkey.

No rehab to help me deal with losing my high.

I had to get through it on my own.

And I damned well would.

So the frame and glass and the stupid picture of me and my dead fiancé had long since been taken away by the garbage man. As had all the other pictures I had in albums upstairs. As had my wedding gown that I didn’t get to wear that I kept for some ridiculous reason, that cost a mint but I didn’t even give it to Goodwill or anything.

No one needed that bad juju.

So the garbage man took it to where it belonged. The dump.

At my fake-innocent question as to what frame they were referring to, Ty-Ty’s eyes slid to Tack. Mine did too.

He was looking at his boots.

In the years I’d known Tack Allen, I’d learned all the meanings of him looking at his boots. These were threefold.

One, he didn’t want Ty-Ty to see he found her amusing and this was solely when she was ticked at him which she would not find amusing that he found amusing but he mostly always did.

Two, he was ticked at one of his kids—the older two, Rush and Tabby, that he’d had with another woman—not Cutter and Rider, the boys he had with Tyra. As an older dad on his second time around, he had all the patience in the world with Cut and Rider. This was good, seeing as they were still little boys, but they were also total hooligans (and thus why they weren’t with us right then, ruining a relaxing dinner, but with Big Petey, a vintage member of the MC, likely destroying his house). Tack being ticked at Rush and Tab came rarer now, as they were older, and he looked at his boots when he was trying to stop himself from shouting or, maybe, strangling them.

Three, he was with Tyra and me and—for whatever reason we were squabbling, gossiping or giggling—he was not going to get involved.

Luckily, my eyes went back to Tyra before hers came to me.

I tried to come up with an answer to anything she might say.

Surprisingly, she didn’t say anything. Not about the frame or my lie.

Instead, she said, “Nothing, honey,” as she walked to me, wrapped her arms around me, tighter than usual, and gave me a long hug. “Thanks for dinner,” she said in my ear.

“Yeah, babe, good food,” Tack called to me from his place at the door, and my eyes moved over Tyra’s shoulder to him.

I smiled.

Tack did not.

He tipped up his chin but his gaze stayed glued to mine, intense. Somewhat like how Hop looked at me, minus the admiration and, obviously, the sex or foreplay, but adding open contemplation I had a really bad feeling about.

Tyra let me go and I tore my eyes from Tack to smile into hers.

“Thanks for coming,” I said to her and I chanced looking back at her husband.

“Don’t have to thank me for sittin’ down at a table with two beautiful women and good, bona fide, Southern cooking,” Tack replied and, finally, I smiled a genuine smile.

One thing my mom didn’t try to leave behind in Tennessee was her cooking. She did it all the time and she taught me and Elissa how to do it like her momma did with her and Mamaw’s mom did with her and so on.

She did this because she often tried to be a good mom. She also did this because it was tradition. But it stunk because I knew she did this mostly because Dad loved her cooking. Or, more aptly, he loved that whenever they had dinner parties, people would shower him (yes, him ) with glowing compliments about how he was smart enough to marry a woman who knew how to make honest-to-goodness, down-home meals.

Needless to say, learning to cook in the Southern tradition, I grew up in Connecticut but I didn’t know you could steam vegetables until I moved to Denver. As far as I knew, they were either fried in an iron skillet with butter or breaded or battered and dropped in hot fat.

Luckily, I had the metabolism of a sixteen-year-old high school point guard.

Also luckily, my cooking was good enough for Tack to mention it (again) and get everyone’s mind off the frame.

“Anytime, anything you want, Tack. Just call and your wish is my command,” I offered as Tyra and I walked to him at the door.

“Don’t offer that. He does most of the cooking. He’ll be over three times a week to get a break,” Tyra told me, a smile in her voice.

I kept my mouth shut mostly because having them come over three times a week would be fine by me, and I didn’t want them to know that. It would expose too much. But the truth was, I’d run an advertising agency and I’d rush home and fry chicken and make a pecan pie from scratch all the way down to the crust if it meant three nights of not being alone, watching TV or worse, what I’d been doing lately: listening to Bob Seger’s slow songs with candles burning and doing everything to ignore the gaping void in my belly, which meant I did nothing but think of the gaping void in my belly.

“Next time, my turn,” Tack rumbled, bending to touch his lips to my cheek.

His goatee tickled my skin.

At the feel of it, the memories it invoked, that gaping void I could never stop thinking about widened, consuming vast areas of my body, making me feel empty from throat to toes.

I hid this as his head came up and I smiled into his eyes.

He stared into mine even as his hand came out, and his fingers curled around mine tight before, just as quickly, they disappeared.

Tack Allen never missed anything.