Vic Vaughn is Vicious by J.A. Huss

CHAPTER NINE - VIC

I do not sleep.

I pick up the bike from Spencer and drive it home, then I just go right up to my room, go out onto my balcony, and look down onto Mountain Avenue, wondering how the fuck this day went so sideways.

It’s not even Vivian, either. I mean, yeah. The idea of me having a kid is a shocker. And if I hadn’t already spent the whole day thinking she was mine, in a way at least, then this would probably be the major issue rolling around in my head.

But I did spend the day with her and she’s fun. I like her. She likes me. This, whatever it is, is going to be—well, if not an easy transition, at the very least a manageable one.

It’s just that she comes with a mother.

And all day I thought her mother was Veronica. Someone I love unconditionally. Someone I would die for. But Daisy is a whole other story.

I can’t decide how I feel about seeing her again.

Because even though a few hours ago I hadn’t thought of Daisy in almost seven years, now I will never be able to get her out of my mind again.

HALLOWEEN NIGHT

SEVEN YEARS AGO

She feels right.

Like she’s meant to be sitting behind me on the bike, gripping me tight.

The ride over to the mansion from the art building is way too short and as I approach the raging party going on in my front yard I have an urge to keep going. To take her deep into the mountains to some lonesome cabin where the world can’t touch us. And just stay there with her until we’re best friends and she can’t bear to look away from me.

But then I’m being waved forward through the crowd of people gathering in the street, and the next thing I know, I’m pulling up to the garage with all the other bikes and that dream of a time-out in the mountains where I have her captive attention just disappears.

She takes her helmet off and smiles as she hands it over. I can’t take my eyes off her, so I just absently drop the helmet onto the ground and take her hand in mine.

We don’t talk. The music is too loud, the people are too much, and the party is way too easy to use as an excuse to be quiet.

I walk her through the crowd in the front yard. There are over a hundred people here, half of them women wearing similar sexy outfits to the one Daisy has on.

I don’t look at any of them. They are nothing compared to the sweet innocent thing I just brought home.

I grab us a couple bottles of beer. I don’t bother asking if she’s legal to drink. I don’t want to know. But she’s not really interested in the beer. Or the party. It’s pretty clear that her attention is on me.

We go inside.

I take her upstairs.

Daisy looks around my room, fascinated by everything. I watch her carefully as who I am begins to sink in. She had no idea back on campus. She thought I was wearing a costume. And maybe she started to get a little curious downstairs, but up here in my bedroom—surrounded by everything that makes me me—there is no way to miss who I am.

“You wanna go now?” I asked her.

No. She wants to stay.

Now that my hand is up her dress and my thumb is pressing against her cotton panties, there is no way I’ll let this girl go in the morning. This is no one-night stand.

And when she comes in my hand… fuck. I start having fantasies of locking her up and keeping her forever.

One breast is already exposed, her sweet milkmaid top crooked because I made it that way. Her body is trembling from her instant orgasm and her head has fallen backwards, exposing her throat.

I lean forward and trace my lips over the arch of her neck and she gives in, slowly falling backwards into the velvet comforter.

I crawl up her body, angling my hips over hers, pressing against her as I straddle her thighs. Then I kiss her for real. A slow, open-mouth kiss filled with tongue.

Her mouth responds first. Then her hands are dragging my t-shirt up my back. I was worried for a moment that she would be a virgin and this would involve a lot of cajoling on my part. But she’s not. Clearly. She has a mind of her own and she’s going for it.

The t-shirt comes off by her hands. It’s tossed aside without care. And then there’s no going back. It’s an avalanche of heaving breathing. A tsunami of wandering hands. A tornado of twisting tongues. She is gasping as I rip her blouse open. The bra snaps too—front closure, always nice—and then her perfect, round melon breasts are in my hands.

Her back arches up as I squeeze them, my mouth covering one nipple as her hand dips down to my open jeans and just… goes for it. No hesitation. Fully on board. One minute I’m in control, and then next she’s got my dick in her hand, squeezing me the way I am squeezing her.

I want to fuck her immediately. Then do it again.

And that’s exactly what happens.

I turn away from Mountain Avenue, push through the billowing curtains, and stand in the center of my room again, seeing it as it was that night.

Not much has changed. A few more framed sketches on the wall. A few more magazine covers. But this room tonight could still be that room that night. And I get lost in the memory for a few moments.

How did that night even happen?

I roll it back in my head, trying to make sense of everything. I was in Lucille’s office because she’d been stalking me and leaving crazy messages on my voicemail. We weren’t even dating.

I have known Lucille for most of my life. Our fathers were friends before hers went to prison. After that happened I lost track of her. She moved away or something. Reinvented herself, I guess.

But then, one day, there she was again. A senior in college for art, of all things. The day I met Daisy in Lucille’s TA office, I was there to set her ass straight. We had a one-night stand a few months earlier. A little ‘let’s go out for drinks and catch up’ kind of date that went awry at the end. And she thought we were dating. Started leaving me crazy messages on my voicemail when I didn’t return her calls. And fine, I’m pretty used to crazy, that’s just the kind of women I end up with, but Lucille was going above and beyond.

I never did set her straight, though. Daisy appeared and my mind was wiped from that moment forward. I was caught in some kind of spell and didn’t snap out of it for days.

Here’s the part of the whole Daisy one-night stand that pissed me off. It wasn’t supposed to be a booty call. I had her number. After we had sex I handed her my phone and told her to call her number. She did. I know she did. I saw her do this. I looked at that number. I smiled about it.

Then we fell asleep and when I woke up, she was gone and that number was too.

Days, man. Days. I was sick over it. I can’t even explain why I was so sure this Daisy girl was gonna be a thing for me. But I was.

I am going to have a relationship with my child’s mother, whether I want one or not. And here’s the thing. I don’t think I like her. Not after how she left me.

I don’t care that most people probably think I have no right to be angry—I’m fucking pissed. She kept my daughter a secret for six years. I missed things. And fine, I’m no candidate for father of the year by any means, but she didn’t even give me a chance.

But here’s the real insult. People think that guys like me don’t have any feelings about the hookups, but that phone number thing? She erased our night together.

And then she did it again, didn’t she?

Thirty, or sixty, or ninety days later she knew she was pregnant with my child and she didn’t tell me.

And this just pisses me off.

At six-thirty AM I finally give up on sleeping and go downstairs. Gramps is already up drinking coffee and doing his wordsearch puzzles when I enter the kitchen.

He looks up at me and smiles. “I like your girl, Vicious. She’s a keeper.”

I nod at him and pour myself a cup of coffee. “Spencer said the same thing.” I sigh these words out like I’m already exhausted and the sun just came up.

“What’s her name again?”

“Vivian, Gramps.”

“Oh, yeah. You did good with that name, Vicious. Keep the V’s alive.”

This makes me smile. I didn’t really pay attention to that last night, but he’s right. Daisy named our daughter Vivian.

Why?

I didn’t introduce her to my brothers that one night we were together. So she looked us up.

This infuriates me. Because it means there was no way she didn’t know that Vivian was mine from the start.

She knew. All these missing years were premeditated on her part.

I just stand there in the kitchen and look down into my cup of coffee, wondering what I ever did to this girl that she would just toss me aside like that.

And I do get the irony. I have played many a girl in my player days. But what Daisy did feels like more. It feels personal. Like I wasn’t worth telling.

When she left my bedroom that night, she saw me the way everyone in this town sees me. As someone unworthy. Someone beneath her.

I thought about her for maybe… a week? Maybe even less. But that was a soul-searching week for me. I just didn’t understand why she would take her number back like that. She would’ve had to have been careful not to wake me. She would’ve had to use my fingerprint to open my phone. And then she would’ve had to search for her name.

I pictured her doing this. Sitting on my bed, the only light in the room coming from the phone in her hand making her face unnaturally bright. What else did she see in there?

Did she go through my photos?

Did she go through my numbers?

Did she check my browser history?

Who knows, who cares. None of those things are the point.

The point is… I was wrong about her.

She was nothing special.

And that’s when I forgot about her.

At seven-twenty I grab Vivian’s backpack that she left here yesterday, go outside and sit on the porch steps. I have a fresh cup of coffee for me and a juice box for Vivi, courtesy of Gramps.

I open the backpack up and take a look inside. She’s got the usual kid things in there. A stuffed animal, some hair ties, an extra t-shirt and pair of shorts, and that sketchbook.

I pull out the sketchbook and stare at the cover. It’s your typical spiral notebook of drawing paper. But there are stickers all over it. Flowers. Daisies, to be specific. Pink ones, and blue ones, and a few ladybugs.

And then I smile. Because I know this sketchbook. I knew it. It’s the same one Daisy handed in for grading that night we met.

I open it up and stare at the drawing on the first page. I’ve taken enough art classes to recognize the assignment. Shaded geometric shapes. I flip through it, find more of the same, then she graduates to hands, and lips, and eyes, her skill improving as the assignments progress. I pause to study a still life of daisies inside a milk bottle half-filled with water sitting on an old wooden table with a crooked checkered tablecloth. There are a handful of acorns scattered around a half-seen aged leather halter.

It’s a nice drawing, shaded with care. And her use of negative space is above average.

I flip the page again and stop short when I realize she drew… me.

I mean, it’s a man. He’s got a bit of a beard. His hair is a little too long, his lips full. His eyes piercing. And none of this really looks like me.

But those tattoos… yeah. This is me.

She drew me. I scan the page for a date and find it. December tenth. I flip the page again, but after that, it’s all Vivi’s drawings. Daisies, like the stickers on the front.

I flip back and look at the picture of me again. This was her last assignment. Her final.

And she drew me.

Why?

If she wanted to forget about me, why draw me as her final?

And she had to have known she was pregnant by then. At the very least, she had to have an idea.

I close the sketchbook, put it back inside Vivi’s backpack, and shove it inside the house. I need to think about that, but not right now.

I glance at my phone and realize seven-thirty has come and gone and no kid. And I’m just about to get up and hunt Daisy down when I finally see them walking down Mountain Avenue towards the mansion.

Vivi starts running towards the house when she sees me, so I get up and meet them halfway down the block.

“Guess what, guess what, guess what?” Sis’s eyes are bright with excitement and she’s practically bouncing up and down.

“Tell me,” I say. “I’m a horrible guesser.”

“I got a phone!” She reaches into the front pocket of her backpack and pulls out a cheap, pay-by-the-minute flip phone.

I make my eyes wide. “That’s a-mazing.”

She looks at the phone like it’s a pancake with the face of Jesus on it, awestruck. She then proceeds to flip it open and closed, open and closed, as I turn towards an approaching Daisy.

“Don’t you have a car?”

Daisy scowls at me, but doesn’t reply. Instead, she turns to Vivian, bends down, and places both hands on her shoulders. “You will call me if you need anything.”

I sigh at that. “I know what I’m doing here, Daisy. I have five nieces. I have been babysitting them for over a decade.”

Daisy stands back up and smiles at me. It is not a warm smile. It’s a warning smile. “Be careful with my daughter, Vicious Vaughn. I will be back at six, maybe a little sooner if I get done with my finals early. So please have her ready when I arrive. Vivi?” Her voice goes sweet and soft when she says our daughter’s name. “You will call me if you need anything.” She looks at me again. “And I do mean anything.”

“I will, I will, I said I will.” Vivi is as anxious for her mother to go as I am. And she’s looking damn cute today with her lime-green shorts and pink flower top. She even has a new set of pigtails and they come with green and pink ribbons.

“You left your other backpack in my sidecar, sis. So I have it for you.”

She holds up her back-up backpack. “I got this one today.”

“I love it.” I turn to Daisy. “So. I should probably get your number, right? I mean, I had your number. Once. Long time ago. But only for a couple hours because when I woke up it was missing from my phone.”

She puts her hand out. I hand over my phone and she calls herself, her phone ringing in her purse. “There. Happy now?” She forces a tight-lipped smile and then turns to Vivi. “OK, I have to go. I’ll see you tonight. Be good and do not wander off.”

“I will, I will, I said I will,” Vivi moans again.

Daisy sighs. I can tell that she does not want to do this. She does not want to drop her daughter off here with me. But Alec Steele is not a lawyer to mess with. She doesn’t have to know who he is to understand what he is. Everything about him says formidable. And not the same way people might see me as formidable with my biker boots and scruffy face. Alec is one of those men who looks like he’s perpetually hunting. And not hunting the way the Moran clan hunts up in the mountains, either. Hunting for a real meal and hunting for a financial one—two very different things.

Daisy is a student, so she’s poor. She can’t afford her own lawyer if this whole thing with the sheriff blows up and that means she can’t afford to piss off Alec Steele and become his next target. Which means she has to play nice with me.

But she better not blame me for any of this. My name might be Vicious Vaughn, and this town might hate me and my whole family, but I am not a deadbeat. I work. Hard, most days. I’m the one who took care of my siblings after my mother died giving birth to Vann. Gramps and Pops were always at work tattooing. Vann had a sitter while the rest of us were in school, but after school I was the fucking babysitter. Not just for Vann, either. For all of them.

And fine. Maybe I didn’t do a great job raising them. Maybe we could’ve turned out better, but I was twelve years old. I did my best.

So if Daisy Lundin had come to me back in the day and said she was pregnant, I would’ve known what to do. I would’ve taken care of her too. Her life would’ve gotten easier, not harder.

Whatever she’s been through? None of that is my fault.

I refuse to take responsibility for any of it.

Daisy sighs one more time. Then forces herself to turn away and start walking back towards campus.

“Hey,” I call out.

She turns.

“Do you want a car?”

“What?”

“Would you like a car?”

“Would I like a car?” She looks at me like I’m insane.

“Yeah.” I nod my head towards the mansion. “We’ve got like… four extra. Only three are working right now, but it’s summer. We only ride the bikes in the summer. So. Let me ask you again. Would you like a car, Daisy Lundin?” I hold up a finger. “Actually, it’s a truck. They’re all trucks. As you can see.”

Her eyes wander over to the various haphazardly parked trucks in the large front yard, then flick back to me. “You mean right now? You want to give me a truck… right now?”

“Well, you are walking somewhere. So… yeah. Would you like a truck to get to school?”

I can’t see any way she takes offense to this offer, but she actually does take offense to this offer because her whole face changes. It’s not a good change. “Let me guess. Is this the part where you say, ‘You’re not walking around town with my daughter? She’s too good to ride the bus? She deserves a truck that only I can provide?’”

“What the actual… F are you talking about?” I’m seriously confused.

“This is the part where you try to make me feel unfit? Because we can’t afford a car and have to ride the bus?”

“What? No. I love walking. I walk almost everywhere. I have nothing against walking. The bus though…” I cringe thinking of all those students on it. “But you must have to like… grocery-shop or something. A car comes in handy for that. And it’s at least a ten-minute walk over to campus and you were late getting here. So if you take the truck, you won’t be late getting there.”

Daisy’s eyes go lazy and low. Like she couldn’t be more bored with me. “I don’t have a parking permit.”

“That’s gonna stop you? Really? You’re gonna to turn down free transportation because you don’t have a parking permit?”

“If you don’t have a permit and you park on campus, they give you a ticket.”

“Yeah. I know. I went to that stupid school for five years. But Daisy, they have meters in front of the student center that go for two hours. Just flash your credit card at it and leave it at that.”

“I have to go.” And then she turns and really does walk away.

I sigh and watch her. Vivi does too. But as soon as she turns the corner Vivi says, “She’s not mad.”

“No? She sure seems mad to me.”

“No. That’s not mad. That’s sad.”

Oh. Didn’t think of that.

“We have a car, it just doesn’t work. And we can’t afford to fix it.”

“Oh,” I say again. “OK. I get it.”

“But she will take the truck if you just give her time to think about it. She doesn’t like to rush into things. She likes to be careful. So ask her again some other time and then she might say yes.”

“Hmm.” I look down at the new princess and smile. “You’re pretty smart, you know that?”

She nods. “Yeah, I know. My mom is always telling me I’m way too smart. But”—she brightens—“my smart brain is how I found you.”

I wonder about this for a moment. How much I should say. How much I should leave for later. And then I land on this. “We have to take a test today, sis.”

“What kind of test?”

“A DNA test. It’s gonna tell us if we’re related.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s gonna tell us if I’m your father.”

“We need to take a test for that?”

“We do.”

“Because you don’t believe it’s true?”

“No, that’s not it at all. I’m like ninety-nine point nine nine percent positive you’re my kid. But. We still need to take the test to make it official.” Alec texted me this morning and said he had it all set up. They’ll even come to the house. So it’s not even like I have a choice. “But first, we’re gonna go eat breakfast with Gramps. And then we’ll do the test, and then we’ll go get your goldfish.”

“Yes!” Vivi does a fist-pump. “I want SpaghettiOs and toast for breakfast.”

“Yeah. Probably not.” I point her towards the mansion. “But don’t worry. We won’t have egg whites, either.”