Irrevocably Mine (Imagine Ink Book 3) (18 page)

“I’ll never be done with you, Sam, you’re Macy’s mother and I wouldn’t want you out of her life. I hope when you’re clean and ready, we’ll find a way to both be a part of her daily life.” Now, she was bawling in earnest, disbelief fueling her tears. She really expected him to not forgive her, hate her even.

“Do you really mean that?”

Dax dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Of course, I do. And for what’s it’s worth, I do love you. I love you as the mother of my daughter. I love you as a friend I didn’t even know I missed, and I love you as the first woman to hold a piece of my heart. It may not be the storybook love we dreamt of in high school, but I believe it is the love we were always meant to share. We just missed it because we were too busy trying to make it into something else. But I’m glad we tried. It trained us to recognize that irrevocable love in those we were meant to share it with.” Dax knew the meaning wouldn’t be lost on her, especially since she had seemingly found hers in the man who encouraged her to get clean.

Thomas Greene. He’d first learned of him from Chuck, but he became a real person, not just on paper, when his daughter’s face lit up talking about him. She believed him to be a good man, and after seeing Sam, he was convinced of it, too. He’d been called away on business, or he would’ve brought Macy to him, according to his daughter.

“Then, you approve of Tom?” He nodded. “You also sound as if you’re speaking from experience, so have you found your paperback love yet, Dax?”

“I sure have, now I just have to convince her.”

They said their goodbyes and Dax left for the hotel where Chuck and Macy waited. He dialed Stacy again and was shocked to get John. Apparently, she’d tied one on last night and he’d pocketed her phone to keep her from drunk-dialing someone. Dax couldn’t make it out because reception was horrendous before the call dropped completely. He was unsure what to make of that little bit of information, but it didn’t matter. As soon as he could get in touch with her, he’d demand an answer, one way or another. He couldn’t do the limbo, not with his daughter back in the picture. All or nothing. In or out. Full disclosure. She had to choose, and he would use everything in his arsenal to make sure she chose them. All three of them.

T
he butterflies
in her stomach had turned into condors as she approached Dax’s place. Not one to normally give into nerves, she tried to give herself a pep talk. Surprisingly, her inner voices were mute. They pretty much had been since they seemingly merged into one. Maybe she didn’t need them anymore and that’s why they disappeared. She had to admit, she kind of missed
Puppies,
though. That thought amused her as she knocked on his door. She was ready for him to open it so she could throw her arms and legs around him.

This was it, she was ready to take what she wanted and hold back nothing of herself. If his daughter came home, she’d give her all to her, too. Stacy Olivia Roberts was done living by fractions. Whole was the only option. It had always been demanded by her in other arenas of her life, and she freely gave it. From this day forward, her relationships wouldn’t be any different.

When there was no answer, Stacy let herself in. Dax trusted people and lived off the beaten path, so he always left his door unlocked. She checked the garage first. Dax spent a lot of time in there carving wood. No Dax, but she did notice the tables were gone, both hers and the other. For a minute, she wondered at that. Would he have given it to someone else? No, that was ridiculous, he wouldn’t do that. When he made something, he said the wood or steel decided the shape, and for the most part, the recipient.

Calling his name through the house produced no results. Wandering from room to room, she was fairly certain that if he was in the house, he was sleeping. It was more likely he was in his smith building out back, but she’d make sure before she trekked out there in her fuck-me boots. They were impractical, but so was the skin-tight mini skirt she was wearing with the over-the-knee-leather-invitations. If Dax didn’t get the hint when he saw them, he was brain dead.

Paying little to no attention to the open doors, she zeroed in on the closed one. Knocking lightly, she slowly opened it. At first, her senses were overwhelmed with the scent of Dax. She deeply inhaled the familiar tobacco and heat flavor that was all Dax. Stacy almost choked on it when she opened her eyes and focused on the room in front of her. “Holy shit.” She was drawn to the bed that dominated the room. It was something out of time and place, yet…not. It screamed Dax. It controlled the very air of the room…just like he did.

“How did I not see this the other night?” she asked herself as she took in every detail.
Oh, yeah, because the only thing I could think about was getting his cock in me and then getting out of here the next morning.

The headboard damn near kissed the ceiling. It was monstrous, but…delicate. As she neared, she noticed the same scrollwork as the tables framing a scene that was breathtaking—one eye, a spear, and braids.
Shit, it’s Odin
. A life size bust of Odin was carved right slap in the middle of the massive thing. Her eyes tracked the scrollwork around and around. It seemingly had no end or beginning, just like the tables Dax said had Syn and Vidar on them. Stacy visually followed the second outer scroll to find it.
Ah ha, just like the…tables.

There they were, both of them, on opposite sides of the bed. They lined up perfectly with it to form the never-ending scroll. It took her a while to grasp what she was seeing. Understanding finally dawned on her. Dax never planned to break up the set. He made the table for her, but it was perfectly carved to complete the headboard; both tables were. A scroll without beginning or end. Unbreakable. Their tables closed the circle, so to speak.

That’s how Dax sees me, us.
We’re a complete circle.
Before she could stop herself, she was on her knees, climbing up to Odin and looking him in the eye while her fingers ghosted over the lines, appreciating every angle and turn. This was what Dax offered her, the protection equal to that of a god, guarding her heart with ferocity. An unbreakable bond, one that kept anyone meaning them harm out. Never-ending love with no take-backs. Once given, it would never be rescinded.

Irrevocably his.

Stacy wasn’t sure how much time she spent on her knees looking into the eye of Odin, but it was long enough for her determination to set in. Determination to protect his heart as he would hers and to become as intertwined with his soul as the scrollwork that looped from one table, through the headboard, to the other, and back again and again and again. The lines were infinite when connected through the bed.

Finally shaking off her worship-filled stupor, she swiped her cheeks and headed to the forge, now more determined than ever to love the man, as he deserved. Her heart lost a touch of its helium when he wasn’t in there either. When she turned to leave, something on a pile of rags caught her eye. Bending to retrieve it, she noticed her name tooled on the leather sheath.
Is there anything this man doesn’t do?
He is almost too good to be true.

The satisfying sound the blade made as she pulled it free was comforting in a weird way. The blade was slightly curved, ultra-thin, and light. Stacy tested its weight and it felt custom-made for her hand.
Well, it is.
The hilt was only moderately ornate, it had their names running down the sides in an old Norse-type lettering. Minimalistic beauty at its finest. Stacy re-sheathed the blade and tucked it into her boot. Using the inside leather tag, coupled with the super thin clip on the sheath, kept it snug against the leather. So snug, in fact, she couldn’t feel it against her skin, and the minimal weight didn’t seem to affect the wear of the boot, either. Once she stood, she practically forgot it was there.
Perfect fit.

She made a cursory check of the other outbuildings, noting his missing car and headed back to the house. Stacy was concerned about the blade, why was it abandoned on the rag pile? Where the hell could Dax be? Picking up his kitchen phone, she pressed the speed dial labeled “1.” Dax said he wasn’t working today, but she thought she’d double-check. Walker confirmed his absence at the shop, but couldn’t add anything tangible to his whereabouts. None of the other numbers were programmed and she was screwed without her phone. She didn’t know a single number, not even her own. Rifling through his junk drawer produced and old cell phone bill, so she dialed the number at the top.

Dax wasn’t answering and she didn’t want to say what she needed to in a message. So instead, she rambled and made things awkward. “Dax, it’s me. We need to talk. I mean, I’ve got shit to tell you. It’s important. John has my phone, long story, so come by my place when you get this. I’m calling…shit. It doesn’t matter, I can’t say it over the phone, just come by.” She considered leaving a message to explain that message, but that was a vicious cycle crazy girlfriends engaged in. And she would not be a crazy girlfriend.

T
he night
in the hotel was proving both calming and unsettling—calming because he put everything aside, they didn’t even turn on the t.v., and he got to know his daughter; unsettling because he felt off where Stacy was concerned. He wanted to call her, just to hear her voice and ensure she was safe. There was no rhyme or reason for it, but something didn’t feel right. Maybe she had already made her decision and it wasn’t the one he’d hoped for.

That thought was like a constrictor coiling around his chest and squeezing the air from his lungs. His eyes sought his silent phone to see if Stacy had texted or called. Just then, his daughter’s voice broke through his thoughts, and he stared into eyes so much like his own. The snake loosened its grip, and a measure of peace washed over him. Dax reached forward, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear and cupping her cheek. He was doing a hell of a lot of that, it seemed. Maybe because it reminded him of when she was younger, and all that was taken from him, but his little Macy Bug was here.
Right here. Right now
, but he wasn’t living in the moment. Half of Dax’s heart and thoughts were in Florida.
No, he decided. I have lost too much time with Macy. Time I will never get back; I refuse to give her half-measures now. She deserves more, and so do I.

With his new mindset, he turned the phone off completely, giving Macy his undivided attention. He would check in with Stacy when they returned and their relationship would be settled once and for all. Tonight, he just wanted to be with his daughter and get to know the young woman who was sitting cross-legged on the bed in front of him, doodling in a book and chattering away. “Earth to…”

“No need to do an interplanetary call, Bug, I’m listening. I wanted to ask you something, why is it you haven’t been checking your phone constantly like most girls your age do? Instead, I see you drawing and writing most of the time. Do you not have any good friends?”

Macy didn’t miss a stroke of the pencil, even when she made eye contact. “Geez, Dad, I’m not some loser, of course, I have friends. It’s because I don’t have one. Well, I do, but it’s an old flip phone that I only turn on when I go out with friends, which I have plenty of by the way, or when I was away from Mom. She didn’t want me to have my nose stuck in a phone all the time, missing out on what’s right in front of me because I was throwing birds at pigs or texting friends who weren’t there and ignoring the ones who were.” She dropped her eyes back to her drawing momentarily before returning her gaze to him and lowering her pencil.

“Besides, I enjoy drawing. It’s how I absorb my world. It’s been a constant in my life. Mom did break down and buy me a new phone before she went into rehab, but it’s in my pack, still sealed in the box. If I had been raised like the empty-headed girls at school,” she held the drawing out for Dax to examine, “I would overlook things like this.” Without looking at the drawing, Dax’s estimation of both Sam and Macy rose significantly.
That’s exactly what I would’ve done if Macy had been with me.
More and more of himself was becoming apparent in a daughter he hadn’t seen in years. In many, many ways.

When he took the sketchbook from her, he gasped. She was more like him than she knew. The drawing was a portrait of him that he could not believe she had done with a number two pencil only. The shading and depth of color seemed infinite, and the likeness, remarkable. Macy was an artist, no doubt about it, but it was what else she captured that had him in awe. Both eyes were focused on the artist, but one looked at her intently and lovingly, with hope brimming over the lashes and a serene face surrounding it on that side.

The other half spoke of unsurety and insecurity. And while the eyes were focused on the artist, that one was somehow looking away, off into the distance—concern, and a certain nervousness swimming in the depths of the gray strokes. Dax was gob-smacked. He had no words. “I…how…”

His daughter laid her hand on his, still gripping the pad. “I draw what I see, and that’s what I see. What is it that has you so divided? Is it me? Do you not…”

“The Thing’s rock hard c…uh, fist. Do not even finish that question.” The words were spoken harsher than he intended but he couldn’t even stand to hear what he was certain she was going to ask. “I want you more than I want to breathe. I have since the minute you were conceived. Every minute of your life only strengthened that, even when you weren’t with me. That will never change, Bug, no matter what I do, you do, or anyone else does, you got that? I love you with everything I have, and I always will.”

The thud of his back snapping against the headboard was lost over the sobs of his daughter and feel of her in his arms. She launched into his lap just like when she was five. Physically, she looked like a young lady and, intuitively and intellectually, she was beyond that, but emotionally, in that moment, she was just his little Bug. “Shush, don’t cry. Every tear you cry lands on my soul. What’s wrong, did I do something to hurt you? I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

A sniffle-laced, almost childlike voice answered him, “No.” Sniff. “You did everything right.” Sniff. “I love you so much daddy.” Sniff, sniff, sniff.

The last two sniffs were from him.
Daddy. She called me Daddy. Not Dad or Dax, but Daddy.
It was like a DeLorean going eighty-eight miles per hour.
Note to self, spend less time with the Trivia Savant Tori.
The years melted away, he wasn’t holding a teenager dressed in denim and leather, he was holding a happy child dressed in tutu with a tear-streaked face; a little, dark-eyed, light haired angel who had begged for ballet lessons for months, dancing around the house in a tutu every day to show her dedication and love for the dance; a taller-than-the-rest-of-the-students, Macy Bug, who just finished her first class and launched herself at her dad on the parent’s bench before even being dismissed by the instructor.

It shouldn’t have shocked him that she did it now, Macy had always been an all or nothing kid, and that had not changed. She felt things and let them encompass her. Dax used to be just like her, and right now, he missed that part of himself. If he had not dialed it back, he would already have Stacy, if that’s how it was going to go, and Macy would have never drawn a picture capturing half of him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t give you my undivided attention. You deserve so much more than that, Bug. I’m out of practice at this parenting thing. But I’ll catch up soon enough. No worries.”

“Wait, did you just use
The Thing
as a curse? Is that how you talk all the time?” She burrowed deeper into his lap.

“No, Bug,” he laughed, “just this month.” Dax knew she didn’t get it, and that was okay. She would learn his quirky ways as he learned hers.

Another sniffle was all the warning he got before Macy asked the questions he was avoiding. Not because he didn’t want to tell her, he just didn’t want to dump adult problems on a kid. “Is it a girl? That’s bothering you, I mean. Do you love her? Wait, are you remarried? I mean, it’s okay if you are, I understand, I just want to know.” Then, the atom bomb of questions came, “Will she like me?”

Dax created enough distance between them to make eye contact. “First off, it doesn’t matter if anyone, anywhere, no matter who they are, likes you. If they don’t, then they are not worth our time. We are a package deal, period. Secondly, I am not remarried, nor do I plan to be. I can be with a woman, one that loves us both, and not be married. Even though it would be solid before I introduce you, don’t worry about marriage. A family isn’t built around a piece of paper; it’s built around love. And thirdly, Stacy will love you like crazy, no doubt about it.”

Macy laughed, much the way he had when it hit him the other day. “We rhyme. That’s a good sign, right? Do you love her, or more importantly, does she love you? Not the friendly way Mom did either, but the dreamy Holder and Sky kind of love, like in
Hopeless
by Colleen Hoover.”

“What is
Hopeless
?”

“It’s just like my favorite book ever, but never mind that, does she?”

Dax didn’t really have to think about the answer, somehow, he knew she did. The question in his mind was if it would be enough to unseat the claws of her yesterdays.

“I believe she does, Bug. I take that back, I know she does, I can just feel it, but she’s been through a lot. She’s tough as nails and doesn’t need anyone to take care of her and, well, I have to show her that I can do just that, but not because she needs it, but because I do. It’s complicated and not for you to worry about. If it is meant to be, it will be and Heaven help me when you two get together against me. I’ll not stand a chance.” He chuckled.

“If she’s as wonderful as you say she is, that’s true, you won’t stand a chance. A chance of being alone.”

That’s right, my Bug, my heart will never be alone again now that I have you and hopefully my Stacy, too.

Macy wasn’t been shy at all. She spoke her mind freely and without regret. He learned so much about her that night. He learned that Sam had taught her about her roots, his roots. All he could guess was his mother must’ve told her. Sam had confessed that she had been in touch with his mother. That was one of the most painful confessions of it all,
go figure
. The fact his mother knew where his daughter was years ago, yet opted not to tell him, hurt like a bitch. With her addiction and brain damage, there was a good chance she didn’t remember half the time, but still, it stung.

Dax learned how intuitive and wise Macy was. It was a little scary to see such a young person in touch with everything around them. Sam had done a good job, despite how it came to be and her issues, she did well.

Her favorite school year, fourth grade. Favorite color, black. Favorite food, steak, well done, and the “size of her face.” Favorite animal, all of them. Favorite music, an eclectic mix that ranged from heavy metal staples to jazz.
What she wanted to be when she grew up…a lawyer.
Yep, a lawyer.
The two ladies in his life would get along
just
fine.

He snuggled her close and they relaxed, letting the emotional exhaustion take over, wrapped in each other’s arms, and it was a feeling Dax was grateful for. To be a Dad again was just, indescribable.

I
t was tempting
to stop by the cell store and pick up another phone on the way home from Dax’s, but, Stacy couldn’t justify dropping five hundred dollars on a new phone when John would return tomorrow night ish with hers. As much as she wanted to be connected, it was kind of nice to be unplugged. If it were work and urgent, she would see the alert on her laptop, so no big deal to live without it for twenty-four hours or so. She was starting to think of it as a vacation. The thing that did bother her was not having it if Dax called. But surely, he would get her message and show up as soon as he was free. It was still a mystery where he was, though. Usually someone knew, but it seemed like he had disappeared.

As much as it nagged at her, she wasn’t worried about him, per se. Dax was capable and strong; he must be just in a place where he can’t get in touch with anyone. It wasn’t like him to be inconsiderate. Of course, he might not have been. He could have been in touch with any number of their friends, but short of them driving to her house or her to theirs, there was no way to inform her.

For a moment, Hank entered her mind, but she banished him rather quickly. There was no way in hell a worm like Hank could have hurt a giant like Dax. Besides, someone would have known if that had happened. Again, she remembered that Hank was a follower, not a leader. He wouldn’t dare go after Dax—her, maybe, Dax, never. Hank didn’t have the balls.

When she got home, a healthy dose of fear prompted her to be extra cautious. Maybe it was dwelling on Hank or being without a phone, but either way, she locked the doors immediately, double-checked the windows and unlocked her gun drawer. Carrying the weapon around on her hip might make her feel better.

It’s not there.

Stacy rifled through everything in the drawer and no gun. It was impossible. It had to be there, she moved it aside last night to give John the parole notice. Where else could it…