Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn

Chapter Sixty

Dixon

Dixonwas out on the terrace, immune to the cold thanks to the fact he’d nearly finished the bottle of scotch in his hand when the chirp sounded that his front door had been opened again by someone with the code. His first thought—fuzzy as it may be—was that his mom had come back, since there was no way it would be Fiona. He hadn’t been able to get the look on her face as she’d fought to keep from crying in the theater out of his head. Every time he closed his eyes, there she was. Every time he was in a room that was too quiet, he heard the words she’d thrown at him in response to his announcement. Every time he had a single thought in his head, it was about Fiona.

Desperate for some peace from all the winning he’d done by going after her, he’d taken the scotch up to the terrace. He’d lit the fire in the pit, dragged a blanket from his bed, and had set up out there and celebrated. That’s what a person did after a victory, which is exactly what had happened.

He’d won.

He felt great.

This had been the best week of his whole damn life, thanks very much for asking.

Who in the hell are you talking to, Beckett?

None of your damn business.

Okay, maybe it was time to put the scotch down if he was both asking himself questions and answering them. He set the bottle down on the slate tile next to his chair.

When he finally clocked the two sets of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, he knew his mom hadn’t come back for round two of oh-look-at-my-loser-son. No. This was worse. The asshole brigade had invaded his castle, and here he was without a moat or a dragon or a barrel of hot tar.

Turning, he caught sight of his cousins as they walked out onto the rooftop terrace. Per usual, Griff had a joyous grimace on his face. Nash, meanwhile, had flipped the bird to convention and his usually nonstop-moving mouth was pressed into a grim line and he wasn’t saying a damn thing.

“What in the hell are you doing here?” he asked, not bothering to get up from the chair he’d been sitting on since before dusk.

Griff didn’t stop his forward momentum as he said, “Kidnapping you and taking you to Gable House so you can pull your head out of your ass.”

Dixon glared at the two jerks who’d gotten him in this mess in the first place with that ridiculous last-man-standing bet. “Get the hell out of my house.”

“Easy way or the hard way?” Griff asked, his grin making it apparent which option he was hoping for.

It took some effort and more than a little forced coordination, but he got up from the chair with only minimal weaving. “Fuck off.”

All the anger and foulness of the past few days twisted inside him, propelling him forward. He swung at Griff but came closer to hitting Nash—that is, if the width of a city block counted as close. Even he knew it was a pathetic attempt. God, what in the hell had happened to him? How had he become the bitter guy drinking by himself while thinking about the woman he never should have let get away?

“That’s just sad,” Nash said. “Have some pride, man.”

“S’all your fault,” he said, bending over at the waist and sucking in great lungfuls of air as the terrace started to weave and bob around him.

“Really?” Nash said, disgust thick in his voice. “We’re the ones who told Fiona to fuck straight off?”

Hearing her name come out of another man’s mouth was all it took to fire up a whole host of bad ideas. In this case, it was to rush his cousin. Getting right up into Nash’s space, he slapped his hands on the other man’s chest and shoved, hard. Nash went back a couple of steps but he didn’t retaliate. Didn’t take a swing. Didn’t make even a token move of aggression.

Dixon let out a howl of frustration, his hands in tight fists at his sides. They needed to come at him. Land a few jabs. Make the outside as fucked up as he felt on the inside. It was their fault. They owed him for that.

“You,” he said, jabbing his finger in the air in his cousins’ general direction. “You two set the parameters of the bet.”

Nash, the man who never lost his temper, never, took a threatening step forward, his face flush with fury. “One, you didn’t have to accept them, and two, you could have just admitted that Fiona is worth more than winning.”

“With what’s at stake?” he scoffed.

“You don’t even know what’s at stake! None of us knows what’s in the damn present.” Griff crossed his arms, but he kept the rest of his body loose and ready—no doubt he’d be ready if Dixon bull rushed him like he had Nash. Griff wouldn’t stumble back. The man never moved unless he wanted to. “Grandma Betty could have wrapped a pair of pot holders. She would have found that shit hilarious and you know it.”

“It would still be the last gift.” One of the last things she touched. It could be a ball of Peacock’s hair after a grooming session and it would mean something—everything—to him.

“Is that all that matters to you?” Nash asked, disgusted. “Winning?”

“It’s always the most important thing.” At least it had been—everywhere but at Gable House and with Fiona. Like Grandma, she’d never cared about his record, his place in the class, his failed marriage like everyone else had. The unfairness of the thought left an acidic taste in his mouth. Everyone or just you, Beckett? He sank back down into the chair, legs too wobbly to hold him anymore. “Because if I’m not winning, then who in the hell am I? We Becketts are winners. We win. Always. Races. Bets. Competitions. Everything.”

“No one wins everything, numb nuts,” Griff said. “Do you even want to know the odds for that? They don’t exist because it’s impossible.”

“All you’ve done is play yourself and lost Fiona in the process,” Nash said, staring at him as if he’d run over his damn dog. “She was perfect for you.”

“She lied,” Dixon said, holding on to that one thing as if it could keep him afloat when it seemed like all he was doing was drowning in a sea of bad decisions. “She only went out with me because she wanted to get her nana’s skincare line picked up by Beckett Cosmetics.”

“So?” Griff used his fingers to thunk him in the middle of his forehead. “You only went out with her to win a bet when you have no clue what the prize is. Is that really any better?”

“I was honest about it.” Not like Fiona. Not like Nicole.

“Yeah,” Nash agreed. “Honestly an asshole.”

“You two can get the fuck out of my house,” he snarled.

But they weren’t wrong, and the truth of that was sinking in through the layers of his pickled brain. Everything Fiona had said to him in the theater came flooding back. Was she right, was winning his way of blocking out the rest of the world? Was he just as fucking guilty of not trusting himself as she was?

“Nah, we’re staying,” Griff said. “Less work than carrying your scrawny ass screaming down five flights of stairs.”

He tried to stand, but the scotch and realization of how badly he’d fucked up had sunk in and he couldn’t. “I’m not scrawny.”

“Just stupid,” Griff shot back.

He dropped his head into his hands, the misery making it too heavy to hold up anymore. “What am I going to do?”

The only sound was the scratch of Nash dragging another chair across the slate tile on the terrace, bringing it close to what he had to see as his most pathetic cousin.

“The first thing you’re gonna do is sober up,” Nash said. “And then you’re gonna figure out what it is that you want.”

He didn’t need any time for that. He knew it drunk or sober, awake or asleep, miserable or happy. “I want Fiona back.”

Nash nodded and sat down, propping his elbows on his knees and steepling his fingers, tapping them on his chin. “What are you willing to do to make that happen?”

“Whatever it takes,” Dixon said.

It was the truth. Nothing was worse than losing Fiona—not because he had to win but because he loved her. The messy kind of love that asked if he was willing to walk around for the rest of his life with his heart outside his body and he’d say yes. She already had it, so much so that she could wear it around her neck like that gold necklace she always had on.

Griff stopped his pacing to come to a stop next to Dixon’s chair. He shot his cousin a hard look. “Even lose?”

The idea of it made him want to puke—well, that and the half bottle of scotch sloshing around in his stomach—but the idea of never seeing Fiona again made him want to crawl into a hole and never come out.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Even lose.”

Griff let out a long, low whistle. “Well then, I’ll start the coffee.”

And just like that, some of the ache in his chest eased. It didn’t go away completely—there was no way it could without Fiona—but he had hope, and he could work with that.

Chapter Sixty-One

Fiona

There was a ruckus at the door, but Fiona didn’t look up from the Ice Knights game as she sat on the couch of her parents’ home in Waterbury. The plain truth was that there was always something going on at her parents’ house, some interfamily pranks or drama, and she just didn’t have the energy for it. Lately, it took everything she had just to maintain an even keel. Since she’d walked out of that theater, it was like she was missing part of herself. She’d feel it for half a second, make a mental note to be sure to tell Dixon about the funny thing one of her students said only to realize that he wasn’t a part of her life anymore. Each time it hurt like peeling off a half-formed scab.

“Fiona, there’s someone here for you,” her mom called.

“Who is it?” her dad responded, grumbling under his breath about people not respecting the important things in life. “The game’s on.”

“It’s Dixon and his bodyguards,” came her mom’s response.

In that moment, Fiona forgot how to breathe. Dixon. Here. Chicken that she was, she was tempted to stay on the couch and pretend she didn’t hear any of that. No one would blame her. Her family would take care of shooing him away. If only that’s what she wanted deep down in her secret heart of hearts. The truth was, though, that she could barely believe it was real and she had to go see for herself.

She was almost to the front door when she heard Fallon’s voice.

“You gotta whole lotta nerve coming here,” her sister said. “It was smart of you to bring protection.”

Fiona knew that tone. It was 100 percent fuck around and find out. She increased her speed and made it down the hall in record time, coming to a stop behind her sister and looking over her shoulder to the trio of men on the other side of the door.

“Those aren’t bodyguards. They’re his cousins, Nash and Griff,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at the other men. She was unable to take her eyes off Dixon.

He looked like hell, with dark circles under his eyes and a five-o’clock shadow that looked more like eleven at night. But even that wasn’t the reason she couldn’t stop staring at him like he’d grown seven heads.

Dixon Beckett, Rage fan for life, stood on her parents’ front porch in head-to-toe Ice Knights gear. He even had temporary Ice Knights tattoos under each eye and the logo shaved into the side of his head and spray painted. He was holding a flower arrangement the size of Rhode Island made up of silver and blue carnations that spelled out Dixon Beckett Is a Loser. Then there were the balloons. Several dozen were clipped to the back of his jersey, each one with his face printed on one side of them and This Guy Is a Sorry Jerk printed on the other.

“What are you wearing?” she asked, still not sure she wasn’t just imagining it all because it was a lot to take in.

“An Ice Knights jersey signed by the entire team, including the coach.” Dixon pointed to a brown spot on the sweater. “He spilled his coffee right there.”

That’s when she noticed his nails were painted Ice Knights silver with one letter screened onto each nail so that his fingers spelled out I Concede.

He shot her a can-you-believe-this grin, and part of her melted right then and there, which wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all.

“Why?” She crossed her arms, doing her best to mimic Fallon’s stance, and caught herself. No. She wasn’t falling back into that. She was who she was. “Is this some sort of joke?”

He held out his hands in the international sign of I’m-not-here-to-fuck-with-you and shook his head. “Because there’s something you need to know, and I can’t think of any better way to tell you than dressed in the stuff from your favorite team with this on the back.” He turned around, and on the back of the jersey where it would have listed a player’s last name, it had The Ice Knights Are Better Than the Rage embroidered underneath.

She wouldn’t fall for that. She wouldn’t get all gooey and giggly. Too bad it was too late.

“Why are your cousins here?” she asked instead, giving that dorky little wave of hers she couldn’t seem to stop in Nash’s and Griff’s direction.

“Because it involves them.”

Gritting her teeth, she let out a hurt hiss of breath, understanding finally dawning. “Oh, is this where you proclaim that you’re the last man standing and that you won?”

Which would be more than a little weird, considering he’d decked himself out in full-on I’m-a-loser-baby gear.

He shook his head.

“Then why are you here? I have things to do.” And she couldn’t take the anticipation wound up in hope that was building inside her the longer she stood there.

“I’m here because I’m officially a loser—I lost the last-man-standing bet the moment I fell in love with you.” He walked up to her, taking her hands into his and sending a wave of electric awareness through her. “My whole life, all I’ve cared about is winning, but as a very wise woman told me recently, I needed to get my head out of my ass and grow up about that.”

Her cheeks burned with excitement as she recognized her own words and what him saying them could mean. “I said that—well, more or less.”

“Exactly.” He tucked a strand of her hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear. “And then another wise woman said that winning didn’t mean anything if I lost you.”

“That would be me,” a woman piped up from behind Griff’s bulk as she walked around. “Hi, Suzanne Beckett, mother of said loser and so pleased to meet you finally.” Dixon’s mom was as light as he was dark and as petite as he was tall, but they had the same eyes. “I’ve heard wonderful things about you. I cannot wait for you to join the family.”

Join.

The.

Family.

“Mistakes have been made,” he said, lowering his voice and bringing her in closer so that even though his family and her family were circled around watching without even an ounce of embarrassment at listening in, they were there alone together. “Lots of them, and they’ve all been mine. I’m so sorry for everything—especially for what I said at the theater. I shouldn’t have assumed that you were like Nicole. You’re nothing like her, but I threw all my bullshit on you, and I’m sorry. So very sorry. I was an asshole. A supreme asshole. The biggest asshole to ever have assholed. Please let me make it up. I don’t want to lose you, Fiona.”

She flinched back, the declaration a slap of reality across her cheek. “I’m not a prize to be won.”

“No, you’re more than that.” He ran his thumb over her knuckles, the touch soft, watching as he did so, as if he didn’t understand why he was doing it, only that he needed to touch her. “My cousins had to come because I am officially declaring that I’ve lost this bet. I lost that first day at the Natural History Museum when you asked me if I was a Regency-era virgin.” Her family snickered behind her, but he barreled on. “And when you spent an hour arguing with me that wines should be paired with the weather, not food. I lost when you tried to teach me how to make cut-and-bake cookies and then didn’t mind at all that the whole house filled with smoke because I can’t be near you for any length of time and not want to get you naked. And I don’t care that I lost. In fact, I want to keep on losing—if it means I get to lose with you.”

Her chest tightened, too afraid to believe what she heard. Mr. I Win and Nothing Else Matters couldn’t really be saying what she thought she was hearing. Dixon? Willing to lose? Could it be true?

He must have sensed her hesitancy, though, because he raised a shaky hand and smoothed a hair behind her ear before continuing. “Please don’t let me be a winner, Fiona. This is one bet I can’t win. Because if I win, it means I’ll never get to watch the way your nose crinkles when you laugh or sit on the couch with you while you grade papers. Or fall asleep with you in my arms again. I love you, Fiona Hartigan, and I will do anything to lose this bet. I know I messed all of this up, but I’m hoping you’re willing to give me, us, a second chance.”

“Why should I?” she asked, her voice shaking with emotion because it was all she could do to not throw herself into his arms.

His gaze caught hers as he lifted her hand and pressed her palm over his fast-beating heart, then raised his other hand in a pledge. “Because I love you more than winning, Fiona Hartigan.”

Everyone in the room seemed to take a collective gasp, including Fiona.

In fact, she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Her brain was spinning out with a tangle of hope and fear, silver linings and clouds, belief and cynicism, but there was only one side she could ever land on—the one she’d always been on, the one that saw love, this time real love.

“But what about the bet? What about winning?”

“If I have you, I’ve already more than won. I will lose anything for you. Anyway—” Dixon shrugged. “Let those two knuckleheads fight it out. And when they both end up losing the bet, well, then that means we’ll have to figure out another way to pick a winner.”

“You’re incorrigible,” she said with a laugh. “But I love you anyway.”

“That’s the only win I ever need.” He dipped his head so their lips nearly touched. “I love you, Fiona Hartigan.”

Her stomach erupted in butterflies. “Now kiss me and forfeit that bet.”

“Gladly, because I’ve never been happier to be a loser in love with you.” He cupped her face and kissed her like he meant it, like he’d always mean it.

They stayed like that until the cacophony of claps and catcalls broke through the haze.

“Well,” her mom said as she blew into her cupped hands and then rubbed them together. “This certainly has been exciting, but it’s freezing out here. You all come on in for brunch.”

“We couldn’t,” Suzanne said even though she was inching toward the front door, no doubt angling to be one of the first inside.

“You have a houseful already,” Nash said, also inching toward the door. “We don’t want to intrude.”

Katie looked around in confusion. “This is only half of the usual horde. Don’t worry, we’ll break out the card table and just stick it on the end. There’s always room at my table.”

“You might as well just accept the inevitable,” Dixon said to his family as he tugged Fiona closer against him. “Trust me, there’s no fighting a Hartigan woman. She always wins.”

Fiona looked up at Dixon and brushed her lips across his in a hint of a kiss. “I think this counts as a win-win.”

He laughed and kissed her for real, like a man who couldn’t wait to spend the rest of his life doing just that. She knew exactly how he felt.

…

The end …

Well, almost. It’s Griff’s turn next to see if he can be the last man standing. And, of course, there is the little detail about just what is in that present from Grandma Betty and will anyone actually win this bet? All of that and shenanigans aplenty are coming in Neanderthal and Mansplainer.

Read on for the first chapter of Neanderthal!