Walk Through Fire by Kristen Ashley
But they were still kids.
Cleo should just be a kid. Or if she couldn’t just be a kid, there should at least be times when she was a kid. Not a peacemaker or a helper, existing only to smooth out those edges, which was all it seemed she could be.
But when Logan said his youngest lived in her own world, what he meant was that she owned the world and we all lived in it with her.
I could see this as partly his doing.
He poured devotion on Cleo for being all she was, helping her dad out, sticking close, being attentive, smart, thoughtful.
He poured affection on Zadie for being Zadie and gave her her every heart’s desire, including her own bucket of popcorn because she didn’t like to pass while watching the movie, and three different kinds of candy, all of this only hours before we headed out to a late lunch.
“What are you gonna do?” Dot asked, and I looked to her.
“First, I’m calling off tomorrow,” I answered. “They’re supposed to come over for breakfast and then we’re supposed to spend the day lazing around, watching movies, eating and getting to know each other before we head out for dinner and they head back to the RV. But I’m thinking the girls need a break from me.”
Or, at least, Zadie did.
But possibly Cleo did too.
Three days straight having to put up with your dad’s new woman was two days too many.
On this thought, I threw back the next shot.
“I’m designated driver and your ass is in our car,” Veronica declared.
“You’re on,” I replied.
“Girl,” Elvira called, and I turned to her. “That’s givin’ Zadie her way,” she noted.
“It’s giving them some time just to be with their dad so they can be themselves and not have to put up with me, in Zadie’s case, or try to take care of their dad by finding reasons to like me, in Cleo’s.”
“I see the wisdom in this,” Dottie remarked. “Logan’s taking things too fast.”
“I see that,” Elvira returned. “If Princess Zadie didn’t pull that shit. Now a message needs to be sent that she can’t act up and get what she wants.”
“I hate this for you,” Kellie cut into the exchange, and I looked to her. “The big reunion with Low should be all hearts and roses.”
This surprised me coming from Kellie. Nothing since we were kids was hearts and roses for my friend. She wasn’t a romantic. She loved life and lived it by her rules, but she never expected hearts and roses, not for her, not for anyone.
“She’ll come around,” I assured her.
“What’ll you do if she doesn’t?” Justine asked.
I shook my head, lifting my cosmo and taking a sip.
Then I answered, “She will. Eventually. With this start, it might take years but she’ll get how much I love her father. And if she doesn’t, well…” I shrugged. “I have her father and he and I have learned the hard way that life can suck.”
I felt something coming my way from directly across the table, so I looked to my sister.
When I caught her eyes, she didn’t try to hide the disappointment edged with pain she felt for me that Logan’s girls didn’t fall head over heels in love on sight.
They weren’t all I was going to get. I had Katy and Freddie that I could love and adore and spoil rotten.
But we both knew just how wonderful it would have been if I also had High’s girls to do the same.
“I’m okay,” I mouthed.
She nodded but didn’t look much like she believed me.
So I gave her a reassuring smile and looked to the table.
“Right,” I said. “Enough of that.” I turned my attention to Elvira. “Wedding with soft and bling, wrap your head around this…” I paused for dramatic effect, then threw out, “Velvet.”
Elvira stared at me a second, then smacked her hand on the table and hooted, “I knew you’d deliver!”
“You’ll need a late fall or winter wedding,” I told her. “But an ivory velvet wedding dress with some strategic diamanté placements would look stunning on you. Nothing off the rack. I know a local designer who makes unique gowns and she’s fabulous. Velvet bridesmaids gowns, perhaps in champagne. Bunched swaths of velvet adorning the reception tables or covering the chairs. You’d have to give up on peonies but I see calla lilies with silvered Christmas berries. Or ivory roses bunched with crystals. If you pick winter, we can do a Winter Wonderland theme and incorporate blinged-out pinecones. Glittered twigs. Fur. Marabou or chandelle feathers. Anything, really. Snow glitters. It’s also soft. Winter is made to be soft and blinged.”
Elvira kept slapping her hand on the table when she cried, “Oh Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord.” She stopped slapping her hand and pointed at me. “I want it all.”
All of it?
Feathers and fur? Crystal and glittered twigs?
“That’s a lot,” I pointed out.
“You’ll make it work,” she declared.
I would because that was me but it would be a design nightmare.
“Good thing she’s got more than a year to plan,” Lanie murmured, likely taking in the dread on my face.
“And more than a year for Malik to pop the question.”
Veronica’s eyebrows flew up and she asked Elvira, “You’re planning a wedding and your man hasn’t proposed yet?”
“I’m thinkin’ I don’t care,” Elvira stated. “I’ll just tell him he’s gotta put on a suit, get his ass in the car, and drive him to the church. He can stay and do the deed or he can leave and never see me again.”
“New reality program. Extreme Proposals, Denver,” Kellie whispered through giggles.
“Things are gonna get extreme if that man doesn’t put a rock on her finger,” Tyra put in.
“As far as I’m concerned, my girl Beyoncé made a call to arms,” Elvira said. “And I listened.”
“I think the Great One meant that, if you didn’t put a ring on it, you would see the back of her. Not that you should go out and buy a handgun,” Tabby pointed out.
“Then I shoulda wrote that song,” Elvira returned.
“Don’t settle for anything less, Elvira,” Carissa stated. “But you won’t have to. Malik adores you. He’ll make you an honest woman.”
“Haven’t been that in a good long while,” Elvira muttered, and everyone smiled. “So it’d be nice to wear an ivory velvet wedding dress during my Winter Wonderland Wedding to wash in the honesty.”
“I think I like your new friends,” Kellie decreed to me.
I looked to her and smiled.
“I know I do,” Justine stated.
Dot raised her cosmo. “Right, girls. To old friends. And to new.” Her gaze came to me before it went to Elvira. “And to dreams coming true, no matter how that happens.”
“I hear that!” Tabby cried, lifting what looked like sparkling water.
“Hear, hear,” Veronica said, lifting her martini.
We all followed suit and clinked.
I looked over my shoulder and caught Claire writing what was undoubtedly her phone number on a cocktail napkin for the smiling hot guy who was watching her do it.
I turned back to the table, suppressing a sigh at the same time I suppressed a giggle.
“Right,” Justine turned to Tabby. “When are you due?”
I tuned in to Tab and tuned out my day.
And as it was when the sisterhood gathered—something no relaxing bath, no glass of wine could do better—my crew helped me wash away my shitty day.
* * *
The next morning, I made the call.
I was in the kitchen in my jammies with my coffee and two kittens with their faces stuffed into a bowl of kitty chow, my phone to my ear.
It rang twice, then I heard, “Babe, we’re all up. Gonna be there. Maybe an hour.”
“Low, can we talk for a sec?”
There was a hesitation before, “Sure, beautiful.”
I drew in breath before I said, “I think we should cancel today.”
There was another hesitation, then I heard him say, not to me, “Gonna be outside. Keep on keepin’ on.” I heard some noises that might be the RV door opening and shutting and then I had Logan back. “Say what?”
“I think we should cancel today,” I repeated, then quickly continued. “I think the girls need a break.”
“From what?”
“From me,” I said carefully.
He said nothing for a moment.
Then he pointed out, “They had fun with you yesterday.”
Maybe Cleo had.
Zadie, not at all.
“They need dad time,” I told him.
“They had that last night.”
I knew this wasn’t going to be easy and I’d been right.
“Snooks,” I said softly. “They only see you for any period of time every couple of weeks. It’ll get to the point where I’m a part of their life, a part of visits with Dad. But right now it’s a lot of stress to put on two young girls.”
And me.
Though I didn’t add that.
“They’re fine.”
“I really think you should give them a day with just you,” I pushed.
I got another moment of hesitation before he asked, “Are you sayin’ you don’t wanna be with my girls?”
Shit.
“No, absolutely not,” I replied firmly. “It’s not that at all, Low. I like them. Cleo’s sweet and Zadie’s coming around.” The last was a lie but… whatever. “It’s just that I think this is too much too soon.”
“They don’t see you today, babe, I don’t see you.”
I’d thought of that. I loved that he wanted to see me and I hated that we wouldn’t see each other.
But we, both of us, had to have a mind to his girls.
“Logan—”
“There somethin’ you’re not tellin’ me?”
Shit!
“No,” I lied again. “It’s just that, if it was thirty years ago and I was in this situation with my dad, this is what I’d want.”
“Bullshit,” he returned. “You fuckin’ love your dad. You’d want him to be happy and you’d wanna be there to see that.”
He was right.
“Low—”
“What are you not tellin’ me?”
“Nothing,” I lied again. “I just think you should give your girls a dad day.”
He didn’t reply and this wasn’t just a moment’s hesitation.
This was several moments’ hesitation.
Then he asked, “Zadie say shit to you?”
He asked straight out.
Could I lie straight out?
I had no choice. Delaying my answer was my answer.
The honest one.
“She did,” he bit out. “What’d she say?”
“It wasn’t anything, Snooks,” I answered softly. “I just think you need to give her some time to get used to the idea of me before you force her to spend more time with me.”
“Burned you,” he stated, words that confused me.
“What?” I asked.
“You walked through fire to give me my girls and the first time you looked at ’em, you did it again. Sent you straight to hell, seein’ what I had that you didn’t. Seein’ what I had we couldn’t make. You’re dealin’ with that and Zadie’s bein’ a snot.”
It felt extremely good he noticed and he cared.
But as he spoke, he got angrier with each word and I suspected Zadie would hear about it and that wouldn’t make things any better for her and me.
“You need to give her time to get used to the idea of me, Low. She’s a little girl. I love that you want this to go well. I love that you want it to happen fast. But other people are involved and sometimes we can’t make what we want happen like we want it to happen.”
“Cleo say shit?” he ground out.
“No. We… things are good between Cleo and me,” I assured him. “We’ve had a couple of moments. I think she wants you to be happy but I also think she’s getting around to liking me.”
“She ain’t a little girl, Millie,” he stated. “Zadie’s ten. She knows better.”
“Ten is not twenty-three, Logan,” I told him, and hurriedly continued before he could say anything. “And it’s not my place, I don’t know how to handle your daughters, but I have a feeling that you getting angry at her for having valid emotions is only making her not like me more.”
“Shit happens in life and you handle, it, Millie. You don’t act out like a five-year-old and pour Sprite on it to make it go away.”
He had a point.
“It’s not that they need a break,” he declared. “It’s you who needs one.”
“Honestly, Snook’ums,” I said carefully, “you’re kinda right. But I think it’s all of us.”
“Right,” he clipped irately. “Plans are canceled today, which sucks. For twenty years I have not had a lotta good days that are just fuckin’ good. Yesterday, my three girls together, was one of those days. I was lookin’ forward to more.”
That cut like a knife.
Before I could push past the pain, he kept talking.
“But I don’t want you to have to put up with more shit and it won’t be good for me, knowin’ you are or keepin’ a better eye on things and seein’ it happen, which is only gonna tick me off.”
“We’ll plan something, Low,” I told him. “Something in between visits. They can have dinner at my house. I’ll cook. They can play with the kitties. Maybe we can play a game.”
“We’ll do that and it’ll be more than one dinner,” he decreed. “And I’m tellin’ you now, Millie, Zadie ain’t gettin’ away with this shit.”
Damn it!
“Logan, I’m not sure that’s the right way to go,” I warned.
“I am,” he returned. “Was so fuckin’ happy to have somethin’ good in my life. Two good, pure things that were mine. That I made. Too fuckin’ happy. So happy, I fucked up,” he said. “Cleo’s good ’cause she came out that way. Zadie’s a dreamer ’cause I didn’t cut that shit off when I should.”
Oh no!
This was getting worse.
“Logan, a dreamer isn’t a bad thing,” I informed him.
“It isn’t, you dream of the life you wanna have and you’re willin’ to work for it. It is when you dream of the way you expect life to be and you manipulate or find ways to make everyone around you miserable until you get it. My girl’s spoiled. That’s on me. Her mother doesn’t let her get away with shit like that. And you’re right. She’s ten. She’s young.” He paused ominously. “So she can still learn.”
“You do know, Snooks,” I said quietly, “that you teaching her that lesson, one that will be hard to learn, when I came into her life means she’ll associate that hard knock with me.”
“She can’t sort her head out and see that her father’s happy. Fuckin’ unbelievably happy. Straight up, no shit fuckin’ with that, for the first time since she’s been breathin’, know that comes from me havin’ her, her sister, and you, and she doesn’t want that for me and holds a grudge against you, then I failed at teachin’ her to learn that lesson right.”
I couldn’t argue that.
But I wasn’t even thinking of arguing that.
I asked, “You’re unbelievably happy?”
“Baby, are you back?”
Oh God.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Millie, I was given one good thing in my life, the family I was born into. I found one good thing, my Club. I made two good things, my babies. But in all my life, I only earned one good thing. That’s you.”
Oh God.
Feeling so much, I could do nothing but continue to whisper, “Low.”
“I’m gonna fix this, beautiful. I promised myself I’d fix you when I got you back and this is part of that. I’m gonna fix it and I’m gonna do it how I gotta do it. But it’ll get done.”
“I… okay, Logan,” I agreed shakily.
“Want you touchin’ base toda
“Oh, I’ll be thinking about you.”
He fell silent.
I didn’t.
“I love you, Logan Judd. I earned a lot of things in my life, worked hard for them, but the most precious of those is you. And I’ll say right now that you come with your girls. So I’ll do what I can to help you with Zadie. Do we have a deal?”
I heard the smile in his voice when he replied, “We got a deal, babe.”
“Okay, I’ll share my exciting day with you sometime today and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Right.”
“And, Logan?” I called.
“Right here,” he answered.
“Nothing wrong with dreaming. But you got it right. Best way to dream is do it, then earn it, no matter how that happens.”
“Damn straight,” he muttered, still sounding like he was smiling.
“Okay, have fun with your girls. Love you.”
“Back at ya.”
“’Bye, baby.”
“’Bye, beautiful.”
We disconnected and that didn’t make me happy.
But we disconnected having a plan. A plan that centered around building a new dream.
Logan had been right. He said if he’d been around when I found out I couldn’t give us a family, he would have helped me build a new dream.
It took time.
But now he was doing it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Kitties Who’re Really Pretty
High
HIGH STOOD LEANING against the kitchen counter in the RV, watching his girls scarf down cereal in preparation for hitting school.
Yesterday, he hadn’t gotten in Zadie’s face about whatever went down with Millie. He’d just told them their plans with Millie were off.
Cleo looked disappointed but also relieved. She was likely disappointed for him because she’d seen he’d been happy the day before. But she’d been relieved because Millie was right. Even Cleo needed a break.
That sucked and it meant Millie was right about something else.
He was pushing too fast, too soon.
But Zadie had smiled her cat-got-its-cream smile. She tried to hide it but it was clear she thought she’d gotten her way.