Thaddeus (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 2)

by Hope Hitchens

  I raced back out to the car and started driving. He had indicated the place they would be. It wasn’t a Coldstone or a Dairy Queen; it was probably a local place. It wasn’t far, just about fifteen minutes from the house.

  I scanned the booths looking for a large, tattooed man and two blonde children. It was the bright pink of Nikki’s t-shirt that I saw first. I ran up to them squeezing her in relief, briefly surprising her before she returned to her ice cream.

  “Where were you guys, I thought I’d lost you,” I said, showering Nicolette with kisses as she tried to eat her ice cream. I hugged Christopher like it had been three years and not three hours that I had been gone.

  “We got bored in the house, so Thad brought us out for ice cream,” Chris said, blasé like I hadn’t been catastrophizing for the last half hour. I looked over at Thad. He didn’t have ice cream in front of him, but he did have a beer. He had been watching the entire exchange like it was pure comedy.

  “I wish you’d called me before you left the house with them,” I said, stroking Christopher’s head. Both the kids were completely unbothered, shoveling their ice cream in their mouths happily. The cups they were eating out of were absolutely massive—way too much ice cream for just one serving.

  “They’d been so good; they deserved a treat. Do you want some?”

  I shook my head.

  “Have they been good? Really?” I asked. “What did you guys do?”

  “We talked about you,” Nikki said through a mouthful of ice cream.

  “Really? Did anything interesting come up?” I asked. Thad smiled at me from across the booth.

  “Just the basics. Do you have something to hide?” he asked.

  “Hurry and finish your ice cream so we can go back home,” I said to the kids, ignoring him. He wasn’t going to know how much the thought of him asking about me excited me, not if I could help it.

  “Actually, Christopher was just talking about how much he wanted to go to the playground,” Thad said.

  “Yeah, can we go Aunt Ron?” Chris asked, excitedly. I looked at him and had to think of a good reason to say no. There wasn’t one besides the fact that I wanted to go to the house and I was most comfortable with the kids there with me too. During their short time with Bart, he had taken them out nearly every day. If I wasn’t wrong, the playground they were referring to was likely the same one they had visited with him. Maybe they had told Thad about it… or Thad just curiously knew all the good places to take children.

  “Do you have somewhere to be?” I asked him.

  “I’m free all afternoon,” he said easily. I looked at him. Why? Why wasn’t he at work or something? What did he even do? He said he and Bart had met during SEAL training, but he was here, and Bart was working. Wouldn’t the Navy have him scrubbing barnacles off of ships or something? I wasn’t complaining. It was good because I had needed a babysitter and he had come through but why didn’t he seem to have anywhere to be today?

  “Can you come with us?” Nikki asked.

  The children both either genuinely liked Thaddeus or wanted to hang out with him, or something was happening between the three of them that I wasn’t a part of. Some sort of get-Veronica-and-Thaddeus-to-spend-time-together conspiracy.

  “I guess,” I sighed, “Just for a few hours.”

  Monterey, California as it turns out; great for kids. I had been expecting fairly little out of the military town, but I was impressed. The children ran themselves ragged all afternoon. The best part was that there were other kids there they could play with and talk to. I felt a little guilty watching them. I thought it was fine having them with me in the house, playing Clue and Monopoly but they needed this too.

  Thad kept me company while they ran around, telling me all the different places I could take them, next time they wanted to go out. The reason he knew them all was not because he was a creep but because he had grown up in Monterey and had visited the same places when he was young. I mean, of course that was why. I don’t know why I had been expecting something grimmer. He seemed like the kind of person that had been an adult all their life. I couldn’t imagine him as a child, half his height, guileless, with a dirty face.

  Both kids were completely pooped by the time we got back to the house. Christopher could just make it up the stairs himself, but I had to carry Nikki up. I put each to bed before heading back down to lock up.

  “How’d I do?”

  I jumped hearing the voice. Thad was standing in the living room. His hands were in his pockets, and he was looking at me. He had waited.

  “I didn’t realize you were still here,” I told him. He had offered to drive all the way to the house with us and had helped get Chris through the door, but I had expected to find him gone already. I walked to the kitchen, and he followed me.

  “I’m sorry for scaring you. With the kids. I should have called to tell you we wouldn’t be here when you got back.”

  I turned my back to get nothing in particular out of the refrigerator. We were alone, and it was dark. He made me nervous.

  “That’s okay,” I said into the fridge. I wasn’t even hungry, but the tub of mayonnaise was less intimidating to look at while I talked to him than he was. “I think they had a good time.”

  I felt his presence behind me before he touched me, alerting me that he was back there. His hands closed around my waist, and he pulled me back into his body. They moved down and traveled under my shirt, making contact with my skin. I felt like everything in my body had slowed down by half. My skin burned under the pressure of his hands. He kissed my shoulder and my neck. My body was having an extremely primal response to his touch. It hadn’t even been that long. I should not have wanted him as badly as I did.

  “Did you have a good time?” he asked. He spun me around and held me to him by my lower back. His hands, again burrowing under the fabric of my shirt to touch me. His hands were big and rough. Strong. They ran up as high as my bra strap. If he had wanted to unhook it, I probably would have let him. I had been out of the game for a while, but I knew what was coming. Michael hadn’t looked at me like that in years, but I knew that face.

  “I think you should go,” I whispered.

  “Okay.”

  His lips sealed over mine firmly. His hands left my back and held me by my nape. I felt his teeth biting my lip, and I parted them. His tongue invaded my mouth, and I couldn’t help myself. I sighed and leaned into him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders, letting him claim my mouth with his tongue. His kiss stoked a barely there flame inside of me that years of lacking intimacy with Michael had nearly extinguished. My whole body felt hot.

  Suddenly the fridge chirped into life, its alert letting us know that we had had it open too long. I broke the kiss hastily and closed the fridge. What on earth was I doing? Guilt swam through me, and I bolted, heading for the front door. My left hand felt heavy like my wedding ring were still on it, reminding me that my divorce wasn’t final yet. I was still married.

  “Thanks for helping me with the kids,” I said. He had followed me at a much slower pace, watching me with amusement in his eyes. I held the door open for him.

  “Yeah, don’t mention it,” he said. He leaned in, and I immediately backed away. He did it again, this time holding my face steady between his hands. I looked up at him. He must have been able to see it—the guilt. I felt like I had been caught with chocolate smeared on my face after being told not to touch the cake.

  “Please don’t,” I whispered. I didn’t want to cry in front of him, but that was exactly what was threatening to happen.

  “Don’t what?” he asked.

  I flinched as he pressed a kiss to my temple and walked away.

  9

  Thaddeus

  So, Veronica Kingsley wasn’t interested.

  Big deal.

  You can’t get ‘em all. It just wasn’t meant to be. Her brother had told me not to go after her, and he had been right. Sure, he was the one with the crazy ex who had abandoned his kids bu
t at least he had gotten to the point that he had an ex and kids. That was more than I could say for myself.

  She had totally wanted me though. Totally. You could tell from a kiss and from that kiss, I could definitely tell. She was into it. If I’d gotten one hand between those thighs, it would have been game over.

  If I had then maybe tonight, I wouldn’t be drinking alone.

  It was more expensive to go out but staying home was just a slippery slope. Just the fact that you had to leave the house sort of kept you on your toes a little. Kept you sharp—sharper than you would have to be if all you needed to do after getting drunk was fall off the couch and crawl on your belly to your bed.

  It didn’t even matter if you didn’t make it all the way off the couch. You were in your house. You could crash on the floor if you needed to. I didn’t need to though. It wasn’t that bad. It got this way every year, around this time but it was never that severe. I had tried different approaches.

  Deploying around this time had the advantage of keeping me busy. You couldn’t really ruminate that well while trying not to get shot or blown up. There was the chance that it would backfire on you and your rumination would fuck up your game, and you would get shot or blown up. There was also the fact that you were operating deadly weapons. Those tend to just get deadlier when you don’t have your head on straight.

  Staying home meant I could hole up for as long as it took and then come out at the end of it, good as new. No one had to get hurt but the guilty party—me. Alcohol worked to numb out. Other things would have worked better but again—slippery slope.

  It didn’t really get easier, year by year. Sometimes it was fine, and I would barely feel a thing. Other years it was brutal, and it was like being in a pit with concrete walls that you couldn’t climb up out of. What I needed was a fucking distraction.

  Veronica could have been that distraction for me, but she wasn’t into it. Or she was into it and now wasn’t. Or there was a chance that she might have been into it and I blew it. I wonder what it was about me that had rubbed her the wrong way. The list of things she liked was likely shorter and easier to get through.

  I cleared my last beer and closed my tab. That was another one of my rules; no hard liquor. It was harder to get really fucked up on beer, you had to drink more, and it took longer; generally, more effort. Because it didn’t really burn the way liquor did too, I liked to think that it didn’t do as much damage, but that was to be seen when my liver finally did or didn’t give out. The fact that you had driven somewhere was pretty good motivation to stay under the legal alcohol limit. I swung round in my seat and stopped.

  I wasn’t that wasted, and I wasn’t that bent out of shape about the girl that I was seeing her when she wasn’t there. I wasn’t seeing things; she was definitely there. The woman at the table had short blonde hair, blue eyes, and she was alone. Her face was shaped like a heart, and her lips were pink and pouty. Just like the other times I had seen her, the only thing going through my mind was kissing them. Yup. It was her—definitely her—but what the fuck—again—was she doing at a bar alone?

  The question was answered for me as soon as I had thought it.

  A man in a suit walked into the bar and went to sit with her. First of all, it was night time, but it was still summer. Who the fuck wears a suit like that in the summer. I hated the guy immediately. Who was he? It wasn’t any of my business, but I wanted to know. Was she on a date? She didn’t smile at him when he sat down. There were drinks in front of them, but neither of them was actually drinking them.

  I watched them. I wasn’t close enough to hear them, but one thing became obvious fairly quickly. He, whoever he was, was not happy. She would keep looking down and then looking back up at the guy. They were definitely familiar; you didn’t get into it like that with people you didn’t know. Whatever she was saying to him, it was getting him heated. His hands balled into fists, and his body language was antagonistic.

  They had only been sitting for a little while, but she got up to leave. As she did so, the guy—Mr.-unidentified-Caucasian-male—grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. She tried again, and he just pulled her down to the chair again, that time harder.

  I bolted to my feet. Big mistake my friend. I looked at his hand on Veronica’s arm, and it might as well have been around her neck. The two of them were obviously familiar, but I knew harassment when I saw it. It didn’t help that he was putting hands specifically on that particular woman. I wanted to beat his ass.

  “Is there a problem here?” I asked. The guy glared up at me like I had done something wrong. He was the one pulling a girl’s arm from its socket. Veronica jumped when she saw me. She looked like she was about to be sick.

  “Back off pal,” he said to me.

  “I don’t know, you have an awful tight grip on the lady there,” I said to him.

  “Thaddeus, it’s okay. Just go,” Veronica said.

  “I thought you two didn’t know each other,” the man said to her. He hadn’t let go of her arm, and she was struggling.

  “Michael, please,” she said.

  “Yeah, Michael,” I added. He let go of her, pulling a couple of bills out of his wallet and throwing them on the table. He got up to leave, pulling—no, hauling—Veronica out with him. My hands balled into fists because they were itching to tell Michael a thing or two about interacting with ladies. I waited until they had both exited the bar—that way there was less chance of the owner calling the cops on us. I watched his back. We were the same height, probably weighed about the same too. He had a suit on, however, like an idiot. Who the hell was he? As far as I could tell, Michael was a piece of shit.

  I wasn’t worried as much as I was mad. This guy likely didn’t come from here, and Veronica knew him. He was, however, dragging her along like a rag doll and that was a problem. I followed them out. The guy was talking to her, but she wasn’t looking at him.

  “Hey! Michael,” he turned, and I swung at his face, connecting with his nose. He let go of Veronica who looked completely horrified.

  “Veronica, go to your car,” I told her. Michael was touching his nose to see if there was blood coming out of it; there was. He looked at me like he didn’t believe I would dare. He charged, and Veronica screamed. He tackled me to the ground.

  “Michael, don’t!” Veronica begged.

  “Why not, Veronica? You said you didn’t know him.” And then he punched me. It was the kind of punch that people had when they primarily punched targets that did not hit back. It wasn’t a bad swing, but it was sloppy. Inexperienced. He went for my neck, squeezing. If Veronica kept yelling like that, someone would end up calling the cops. I grabbed his neck, startling him enough to roll him onto the ground, so I was above him.

  “Thad, behind you,” Veronica called. I turned just as another guy’s foot got me right in the face. I fell backward. That hurt. I waited. I waited for the thing that always came next, the kick in the ribs, but it didn’t come. Instead, the guy who had kicked me was standing over me, talking to Michael. I wrapped my arms around his legs, bringing him down.

  I could hear Veronica; she sounded like she was crying. The man she was with—Michael—was telling her that this wasn’t over. He called off the second guy, and then they left. Veronica came up and knelt down on the ground next to me.

  “I thought I told you to leave,” I said.

  “We came together. Michael and I. What were you thinking going after him like that?”

  “Are you okay?” I asked her, ignoring her question. What was I thinking? I was thinking there was a man who was harassing you and that he needed to pick on someone his own size.

  “Me? What about you?” she asked gently. She touched my face; the skin felt sore and tender under my left eye and the bridge of my nose. It likely wasn’t broken, but I’d be swollen as shit tomorrow morning. “He split your lip,” she said, running her thumb over my lower lip. Part of me was ready to just sit there and let her touch my face like that, but we had to leave the
scene of the crime.

  “Come on, I’ll take you home,” I said, getting up and pulling her up with me.

  “Give me the key,” she said, “I’ll drive.”

  “Not a chance in hell, Buttercup.” I had taken a couple of hits; I wasn’t laid out. The hell she would get behind the wheel of my truck. I opened the passenger side door for her. She was silent most of the ride back to the house.

  She kept looking at her phone; someone, most likely Michael was blowing it up. She explained to me that the second guy at the fight was Michael’s driver. He had a driver, the sack of shit. The fight wasn’t my best performance, but it had been two against one. Michael had gotten lucky. If it was just the two of us squaring up, his suit-wearing ass would have been toast.

  We pulled up to the house. She thanked me for the ride. I had questions, but I didn’t know how forthcoming she would be with explanations. There was no way she would try and field them after what had just happened. She couldn’t.

  “I’m so sorry about Michael,” she apologized like it was her fault. “At least come inside and ice your face or something.”

  I followed her out of the car. I didn’t want her to feel guilty about it. It wasn’t her fault.

  “Are the kids here?” I asked as we walked in.

  “They are asleep. They can usually do short periods alone. I didn’t expect to be gone very long.”

  We walked in, and she led me into the kitchen. She pulled a packet of frozen green beans from the freezer and handed it to me. I stuck it on my face to appease her. She walked up to me and touched my face again, ghosting her fingertips over my lips.

  “What were you thinking swinging at him like that?” she asked. She sounded annoyed, but she looked worried.

  “Like I have something to explain here? He was harassing you. Who was that guy?” I asked her.