I lean forward, elbow on the table, chin resting in my hand. "I can’t believe that. I mean... look at him."
"I know, but it took a long while for him to bulk up like he did. That boy could eat. But I’m getting ahead of myself. When he tried to steal my purse, I wrapped the straps around my wrists so he couldn’t get it. Then he tried to run away and I grabbed the hood of his sweatshirt and held on. He cursed a blue streak and told me I was crazy," she laughs and I can’t help but laugh along with her.
"I’m trying to relate that version of Cage with the respectful one he is now."
Joan laughs again. "He grew up hard, as you know, and he was really very good at putting on a show when inside he was angry and hurting. So, after a little time, I managed to convince him to come home with me, that I wasn’t a pervert, and I just wanted to help him, he eyed me skeptically but came along. I gave him a lot of latitude, a lot because he needed it. Eventually we came to terms we could both agree on."
"Until he got into trouble and met my grandpa."
Joan straightens after putting chicken in the oven and nods. "Until he met your grandfather. There were so many things I wanted for Cage, and being a thug wasn’t one of them."
"He’s not a thug, Joan."
"Oh, not now he’s not. He was. How do you think you get started if you’re not blood? It isn’t by being a model citizen." She blows out a breath. "I’m sorry. I don’t mean to offend you or talk badly of your family."
"No, no, it’s okay. I don’t have anything to do with that side of the family—at least I didn’t until the threats started coming in." I take a sip of my tea.
"Cage told me about your family and about what’s going on now. I hope you don’t mind, but I asked him about you when I knew you were permanent in his life and I asked him to not leave out the ugly details. I recognized your name and I know who Lucy is."
I nod. "None of it’s pretty—my past, I mean. My family either, for that matter. Okay, that’s not true. Lucy’s mom and dad have carefully avoided anything to do with that lifestyle so Lucy, Joey, and I have been very lucky that way. But finish telling me about Cage before he gets back and finds a way to prevent this conversation from happening."
"I love how well you know him." Her smile is affectionate and knowing. She goes on to tell me how Cage got in tight with Grandpa Giovanni and because he was loyal and grandpa liked him, Cage received more protection than most. "Since that’s the road Cage chose, I’m grateful to your grandfather for that, at least."
"You know my grandpa doesn’t just choose people. He always has a reason." And now I was really curious as to what his reason was for choosing Cage, a kid from the streets. Whatever his reasoning, he chose well. Cage was reliable, discrete, professional, controlled, and hard when he needed to be—no pun intended.
"I gathered as much. I just never figured out the ‘why’," Joan says.
"You likely never will. Grandpa does what he does for his own reasons and, honestly, a lot of the time it makes no sense to anyone else. I blame it on Nana Russo’s mojo."
Joan laughs. "Nana Russo’s mojo?"
I nod. "Serious. Nana Russo—Carlotta Russo if we’re being technical, works some serious magic." I look to Joan, who’s looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind. "I see you’re skeptical."
"Just a bit." Sarcasm. I really, really like Joan.
"Let me give you an example." I lean forward further and Joan takes a seat across from me at the kitchen island in the middle of the room. I look around and Joan looks with me.
"What are you looking for?"
I look at her out of the corner of my eye, "Anything nana. She doesn’t like us talking about her mojo."
"Oo-kay," Joan mutters. Who can blame her? I sound nutters right now.
"Alright," I say when everything is calm and easy around us. "Have you heard the story of how Lucy and Jesse met when we were seventeen?"
She nods. "You mean that...?"
"No, no. Not that. But about a week after we arrived in L.A., grandpa and nana came to visit us. We told her about Lucy meeting Jesse and that’s when it happened." My heart’s beating frantically in my chest.
"What happened?"
I look around again. "Nana grabbed Lucy’s hand, closed her eyes, then trailed her fingertips up and down those lines you have on your palm—you know, lifeline and all that."
"Yes," Joan replies, absently tracing her own.
"Nana tells her she’s going to be seeing Jesse many times before it’ll be his time to make it her time."
"Confusing."
"Oh yes. Seriously. And we did see him a lot. We went to concerts, saw him on TV, interviews, magazines, on the Internet. All that stuff. Then Cage hooked us up with that video. I mean, he knew Lucy had a crush on Jesse. It wasn’t a secret."
"So, it could be that Cage and your nana were in cahoots."
"No. Nana’s mojo isn’t discussed by her with anyone other than family, and even though Cage is, most likely, considered family, she won’t discuss it unless you’re blood," I explain.
"Okay. I can understand that."
"So, we get to that set and Jesse recognizes her and he helps her go from acting to music, taking us all along for the ride. Without Jesse entering the picture, she never would have done it. I know that for a fact. She’d make excuses for why she couldn’t do what she wanted to do more than anything else. Her biggest excuse? Her mother."
"What about her?"
I blow out a breath and take another sip of my cooling tea. "She pushed Lucy into acting. I’m sure Cage told you this story. Anyway, Lucy wouldn’t stand up to her mother—ever—about anything. It was like, when it came to Mama Regina, Lucy’s spine fell out and slithered off, nowhere to be found. That is not an exaggeration."
"Hmm," Joan nods as she sips her own tea.
"So, we go to a club. Jesse and the band show up. Lucy and Jesse get hot and heavy on the dance floor—"
Joan perks up. "Oh! I saw that on TV. I watched it on YouTube. That was so sexy."
"Exactly. And let me tell you this: until Jesse, Lucy never even would grind up on a guy on the dance floor because she was afraid of this very thing. Then, the shit hit the fan. Their ‘dance’," I tell her using air quotes, "went viral. But before it even got started, Lucy called mama and stood up to her telling her she was done. No more acting. That she’d just finished her last film until further notice and that we were going to do music."
"How’d her mother take that?"
"About as well as you’d expect. But Lucy," I shake my head, "she’d found her confidence from just one day of being in Jesse’s presence and her backbone was solid and sturdy. She stood her ground. What happened next was a series of Jesse and Lucy events from his encouraging us to form our band to helping us find band members. He was making it her time and, essentially, our time."
"Hmm," Joan mutters, absent-mindedly tapping her teacup with her index finger, lost in thought. Yeah, nana’s mojo can seriously mess with your mind. I sip my tea, waiting her out.
Joan meets my gaze. "Do you think she’d work her mojo on me and help me find my ‘one’?"
I grin. "It’d take some convincing but seeing as you’re Cage’s mother and I’ll be vouching for you, I think she might make an exception to the blood rule."
Joan nods. "I’m anxious to meet her."
I nod in return. "It won’t be a quick visit. She’ll need to get to know you a bit—well, a feel for you really. You don’t have to tell her anything personal. Just be yourself and she’ll find whatever it is she needs to work her mojo."
"That sounds crazy."
"It does and I wouldn’t believe it, family or not, if I hadn’t seen it work first hand more than once."
Joan leans forward. "Let me get us some more tea and then you can tell me about other examples."
I let out a snicker. "Absolutely."
I’M LYING IN BED READING when Cage comes in. He pauses in the doorway and just stands there. I know I look like hell—my hair up
in a messy bun, loose sweat pants that don’t dig into my abdomen, and an Avenged Sevenfold t-shirt that’s seen better days—but he’s seen me look worse. Much, much worse.
"What is it?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "I just like seeing you in our bed."
Our bed. I smile, but inside that sends me into mini-panic mode. Whenever things get good like this for me, it always goes very, very wrong and very, very quickly. I’ve spent my whole life keeping myself closed off, with everyone else on the other side of an invisible, impenetrable wall. But Cage... he found a way in. He really has to be Batman. No one else would be able to find a way in undetected.
"There’s still an hour of daylight left. Would you go somewhere with me?" he asks.
"I look like hell."
"You look beautiful as you always do, but where we’re going no one’s going to care."
I give him a look that shows him just how much I don’t believe that. He chuckles and comes toward me with my tennis shoes. I sit up and he kneels at my feet before slipping the shoes on and tying the laces, knowing it hurts for me to bend that way.
Before he can straighten to stand I lean forward a bit, pressing a kiss to his lips, then holding him close. I’m so afraid of how much he could hurt me, but I’m also grateful for every second he’s in my life, so if it goes bad, at least I can hold on to this feeling right here. This one of contentment and love.
"OH MY GOD," I whisper when the car pulls down the lane.
"Are you alright, Fee?"
I nod and swallow. The door opens and I step out slowly, fighting the tears that are threatening to spill free.
"This way," Cage says, taking my hand in his. He leads me over the decently manicured lawn—I’m not even sure how that’s possible in California, but it is. It’s not a lush green, but it’s not brown and dirt either. He stops and turns to me, taking both of my hands in his. "Behind me is what I want to show you. If you don’t like it or if you want something different, we can change anything you want. But," he breaks off, swallowing hard, "I just thought she deserved this."
I nod and the first tear spills. He steps to the side and I gasp. My hand flies up to my mouth to try to stifle the sob, but I fail. Before me, next to my parents’ headstone is one for our baby girl. It’s an angel wrapping its body and arms around a heart. The heart—I sob again as I read it—says "Lilyana Rose – Your light shone for only a brief moment but you are forever loved." On the bottom, etched in the black granite, "From Mommy & Daddy" and beneath that, "2015".
I look at the angel and my gaze meets Cage’s tear-filled eyes.
"S-she," I whisper, "the angel... she looks like my mother."
He nods.
"How...?"
"Regina and Lucy."
I throw myself at him and wrap my arms around him. He picks me up gingerly then sits on the grass in front of our baby’s resting place.
"It’s okay?" he asks.
I nod. "Who’s Rose?"
He swallows hard, again. "She was my mother."
"Oh honey." I hug him tighter and his arms enclose me in his warmth.
"He killed her. My—well, I guess dad is what he was."
I wait him out, knowing he’s gathering himself, debating if and what he wants to share with me.
A breath shudders out of his body and I kiss his chest. "I was twelve. He was a junkie. My mom worked two jobs while he sat around and shot up the money she earned."
I soothe him as much as I can, rubbing his back with my hand.
"Then she got sick. Pneumonia and she still worked and took care of me while that miserable motherfucker did his drugs and fucked his whores. My mother, literally, worked herself to death and when she died, his money train ended. A junkie without a fix isn’t fun. I knew it was going to get bad so I bolted. I stayed with a friend for a couple days. When I went home to get the rest of my stuff, he was gone. So I went in and packed all my clothes, my baseball glove and ball my mom got me without the old man knowing, and when I opened the front door, he was there with one of his dealers. His dealer was roughing him up pretty good."
Oh no. No. No, no, no. I hold him tightly, afraid of what’s coming.
"They eventually saw me trying to sneak by. I’d nearly made it too," he tells me with a wry laugh. "So fucking close I could taste it, only to have the bastard grab my hoodie and ask me where I was going. At this point it was all about survival because I knew the old man would do whatever he needed to get out of his debt alive. And when he offered me up to the drug dealer, I wasn’t at all surprised."
"Oh honey." I reach up and cup his cheeks, thumbing away the tears spilling from his eyes.
"What did surprise me, though, was when the dealer turned to my old man in pure disgust demanding to know what kind of miserable fucking excuse for a father would do such a fucked up thing. The dealer didn’t wait for an answer. He just backed him into the kitchen and shot him. I was glued to the spot on the front walk, not sure whether to run or stay. When he came back out, he saw me shaking and told me he wasn’t going to hurt me—if he’d wanted to do that, he would have already done it. Then he introduced himself to me."
He’s looking at me now, instead of holding that unfocused stare above my head. His mouth kicks up into that half smirk.
"His name was Ernesto Russo."
I gasp. "No way."
Cage nods. "He gave me three hundred bucks, all he had on him at the time, and he also handed me his card. He said to call if I ever needed anything."
"Holy shit."
Cage nods. "I nearly threw that card away—nearly. But I held onto it. I’m really glad I did. I called that number about a year and a half later and Ernesto took me to Giovanni, who’d heard all about me by then."
"So that’s how it happened," I say, wiping beneath his eyes.
He nods. "That’s how it happened. But there’s one more piece of the puzzle I didn’t know until I was about eighteen or so."
"What’s that?"
"Your Grandpa Giovanni and Uncle Ernesto frequented the diner where my mother worked. They’d been in Chicago for a while and when they came back, my mom was sick. They paid for her to go to a doctor but it’d been too late. The medication just couldn’t undo what the sickness had already done."
"I’m so sorry."
"They paid for her funeral. I always wondered how she’d gotten such an elaborate headstone," he tells me, motioning to our left and back a row.
"Rose Lynn Stewart," I murmur.
He nods. "My mother."
I nod and sniffle.
"Our baby girl will have both our moms and your dad looking after her, Fee. She will never be alone."
"Oh Cage," I sob and cry into his chest.
"It’s alright, Fee. Just let all that hurt out now. No more holding it in," he murmurs against my ear, his breath hitching as he cries with me.
"I wanted her," I sob out. "From the minute I suspected, I wanted her."
He nods and rocks me back and forth as we hold and comfort one another while we grieve the loss of our child.
There are pink and white long-stemmed roses in vases on both sides of the headstone and I know our little Lilyana would have loved them.
When we both settle, I lean back.
"How did you become Cage Nichols?"
That half smirk again. "There’s nothing too exciting about it really. One day I was out with your grandpa and there was a shiny penny on the ground and he leaned down to pick it up. I scoffed and he asked me what was wrong with saving pennies. I told him there was nothing wrong with saving pennies but the least I wanted to save was nickels. He asked me why. I told him my mom always told me to save my nickels. From then on they called me "nickels" and when I turned eighteen, I changed my last name to Nichols."
"I love that story." It’s a warming one, a positive memory for him. I will always be grateful to my grandpa for giving Cage happy memories.
I notice more time has gone by than I thought when I get a chill.
"Th
ank you for this," I tell him, holding his face in my hands.
He nods once, the nod signifying emotional time is over and, in truth, I’m grateful. This last month I’ve been through the emotional ringer.
"I think it’s time we get a break from all the bad and have some good for a change," I mutter aloud.
Cage grunts in agreement, still holding me as he rises to standing. God, he’s such a big man, so strong and beautiful.
"I think maybe it’s time for Nana Russo to work up some mojo for all of us—positive mojo."
Cage chuckles. "I thought you told Lucy mojo can’t be used for personal gain."
"Apparently I was wrong. Look how the mojo worked out for her!" I reply with a laugh.
"True, but, Fee, think about this a minute. I think she overdid it with the mojo a bit."
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"She’s happy and married to Jesse and in love, but she’s also pregnant with triplets," he says with a raised brow.
"Good God. Let’s skip the mojo."
He throws his head back and laughs and I join him. In this moment, with this man, who needs mojo?
Sera
Edge of Desire by John Mayer
Bad Intentions by Niykee Heaton
Unlike Any Other by Delta Rae
THREE MORE WEEKS HAVE FLOWN by and while it is great spending time with Joan and getting to know her, shopping with Lucy, and hanging out with the gang, I’m bored. Bored, bored, bored. Bored stiff. I need to do something, which is why I called Dr. Brickner’s office and asked if I could do some sit-down modeling jobs before my full six weeks were up. She approved me for part-time work status at four weeks postop and I wanted to kiss her on the lips. She assured me that wasn’t necessary. I told her she’d earned it. Xander asked if he could watch. Perv.
Then I asked about sex. Dr. B said, ideally, six weeks is the wait period but some women experiment as early as four if they’re feeling up to it—and I am certainly feeling up to it. Granted, there’s still some pulling of the incision area, which looks great but, hopefully, will fade even more with time. I think if Cage did the majority of the work, I could be very comfortable having sex. Tonight will be experimentation night.