Thaddeus (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 2)

by Hope Hitchens

  She really didn’t have to make it this hard or make me this hard and keep leaving before she could do anything about it. It wasn’t like she didn’t feel the exact same way. I lay on my back, running my hand over the head of my dick. Fuck, she was killing me.

  It was always something. When it wasn’t her husband, it was the kids. When it wasn’t that it was the refrigerator or the oven or the fucking tumble dryer. She was not the only hot blonde in Monterey. There were tons of girls who would let me hit it with none of the baggage she had.

  Why did she taste so fucking good? Why was I going to go back again if she asked me to?

  I closed my eyes thinking about the laundry room. I had had my fingers inside of her, and she hadn’t asked me to stop. Her pussy was like silk; I couldn’t wait to use my dick on her. She felt tight too like she would strangle my cock when I slid it into her. She had probably never gotten it as good as I wanted to give it to her. My balls tightened, and I jerked my dick quicker. Her skin, the way she smelled, the way she felt, the way she tasted. I had to have her.

  I groaned as I nutted, hard, up my chest and down my hand.

  All that should have ended up inside Veronica’s pussy. What a waste.

  Post-ejaculation clean-up was the saddest part of jerking off. Maybe Bart was right. Maybe I didn’t want to fuck his sister. Scratch that, I still wanted to fuck her, but maybe I shouldn’t want to. I knew when I was being rejected, and that was a fucking rejection loud and clear.

  Had she wanted it rough and dirty in the laundry room?

  Nope. She had wanted to honor the vows she had made to some shitbag who she was trying to divorce anyway. The guy had stalked her to find out that she had moved here. I didn’t know what their home life had been like, but you didn’t grab girls like that, not when you had good intentions. Maybe it wouldn’t have escalated because they were in public but who was to say he hadn’t tried some bullshit when they lived together.

  The girl had run away. There had to be a reason, and I would bet anything it was his fault. Michael. I wanted to see him again just to get another punch in. Fucking asshole.

  My phone rang. I searched the room, looking for it.

  It was her.

  “Hello?”

  “Thaddeus... hi, are you busy? Is this a bad time?” she asked. I sighed. So nice. So polite. Why was she like this? I thought for a second to tell her that I had just finished jerking off thinking about her and was still naked, but I kept it to myself.

  “Nope. What’s up?” I asked her. I heard her sigh, and then there was this rustling sound like she was moving the phone from one ear to the other.

  “Thaddeus, I’m really sorry about the other day,” she started. I only had people call me ‘Thaddeus’ in its full form when they were my commanding officer or my doctor or something. The only other person who would call me every syllable of my government name was my mom, even when I was a kid and the name had been too big for me.

  I wanted to ask her what she was sorry about but again, I held my tongue.

  “What’s the matter, Veronica? Tell me what you want.”

  Was she sorry that she had rejected me or was she sorry that one of the kids had gotten in the middle of what could have been a very fun time for me and for her? Maybe she was sorry because she thought I was torn up about this and she didn’t want any hard feelings between us. Had I been thinking about her a lot? Yes, but that was another thing on the list of things that I was going to keep to my damn self.

  “One hour. I just need someone to watch the kids for one hour.”

  I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to do it. The kids… I had to give it to her and Bart, their bitch mom who abandoned them too; they were pretty good kids. I didn’t want to kill myself when we had been alone together, and they were old enough to wipe their own asses when they used the bathroom. The kids probably could be worse but still.

  “What time?” I asked her through gritted teeth, relenting. She could have asked, ‘Thad, I need you to give me a kidney,’ and I would have asked her ‘which one, left or right?’ Maybe it wasn’t that serious, but I was out here doing things for her that I wouldn’t do for anyone, especially when I wasn’t getting anything out of it in return.

  “Soon. In about an hour. I’ll pick them up before they have to have dinner.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. You’ll pick them up?”

  “I need to use the house. I was hoping you could have them over at your place for a couple of hours.”

  “Veronica… I don’t think-”

  “Thaddeus, please. Michael is coming over, and I don’t want him around the kids.”

  This was great. Fucking fantastic. Not only did she want me to have the kids in my house, she wanted me to watch them while she had a date with her husband. I didn’t read women very well, but that sounded like the sort of thing you asked your friend to do. Your friend who you thought of as a brother.

  You didn’t ask a guy you were interested in to look after your kids while you were with another man. I wasn’t convinced that Michael had me beat on many fronts but now, I was starting to believe that maybe I was.

  “Oh, are the two of you still talking?” I asked, more jealously than I should have.

  “We’re married,” she said like it was a good reason why she kept pushing me away. That was the thing, in theory, it was a good reason. It was even a great reason but in reality, the guy was on his way out the door, and she was pushing him out. Maybe their marriage certification was still valid, but there was nothing, not a damn thing that she still felt for the guy. The way she reacted when I touched her? Not anymore.

  “So you keep telling me. You didn’t seem so married in the laundry room that day, or in the kitchen when you had your hands all over me. You know what Ronnie? He might be your husband, but I don’t think you care. You keep saying you’re married, but since you let me fingerblast you in the laundry room, I just don’t believe you anymore.”

  The silence that came down the line was deafening. I had never regretted saying something so fast in my whole life.

  “Veronica, shit. I didn’t mean-”

  “I’ll just… it’s whatever. Forget about it.”

  “Veronica, wait. Don’t… listen, I’m sorry. That was out of line.”

  She wasn’t saying anything, but she hadn’t hung up because I couldn’t hear her click off.

  “By all means. Tell me how you really feel,” she said. “I’ll figure something out. Don’t let me keep you.” She hung the phone up.

  “Fuck,” I swore. I looked around the room for something to put on. I couldn’t just… I wasn’t going to let her believe that I… fuck. I had to get over there. What the hell was I going to tell her? What could I say? She was all over the place with her mixed signals, but I didn’t have to take it that far. She was getting to me in more ways than one, and I was mad about it. I was frustrated. I didn’t want to wait around for her to make her mind up about whether or not she was going to honor her husband that day, but I didn’t want to leave her alone.

  I wanted to get it out of her, the thing she wanted from me and I from her. Ideally, we would have fucked by now, and I could have forgotten her already but that hadn’t happened, and it wasn’t going to. Even if we had fucked, I knew I wouldn’t have been able to forget her—not that quickly. Not her. I didn’t know why not her, and it made me mad that I didn’t. All I knew was I had offended her, and I needed to fix it.

  I drove to the house, hoping I wasn’t too late. I knocked at the door. Christopher opened it.

  “Hi,” he said. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”

  “Didn’t your aunt tell you? You guys are coming to my house today,” I said as brightly as I could muster which wasn’t very. The door swung open wider, and Veronica was standing there. Her face went from expectant to dark when she saw me.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked me.

  “You asked whether I could take them. Here I am.”

  Her eyes narrowed.
The fact that Christopher was standing right there probably meant she wasn’t going to call me any of the names she wanted to.

  “I told you I’d take care of it.”

  “Veronica. I’m sorry-”

  “Save it, Thaddeus. I heard you the first time. If you’re taking them, then do it. I’m expecting company,” she said. “Get your shoes on and get your sister,” she said to Christopher. She turned and went into the house. I watched her go up the stairs and nearly ached to go after her. I wanted her to forgive me, but I wasn’t a fool.

  Okay, maybe I was.

  I followed her inside. She had gone up the stairs and was nearly at the top. I grabbed her hand, making her spin around. She immediately tried to pull her hand back, but I wouldn’t let go.

  “Thaddeus-”

  “Veronica, I’m sorry. Please. What I said to you-”

  “Let it go. Okay? Just take the kids and leave.”

  I held the back of her neck and leaned in to kiss her, but she turned away from me. She slid her hand out of my grasp and continued up the stairs.

  “Close the door on your way out,” she said before walking into a room and closing the door.

  The drive back to my house was silent besides the sounds of somebody going through a tutorial on how to build something using Legos because I had relented and let the kids use my phone. Why did I care so much about Veronica being mad at me? She was cold—arctic—when she saw me. Swinging the car around to try and talk to her again would have been a mistake, just like going after her up the stairs had been.

  Her face, though. I’d gotten that look before, but I didn’t want it coming from Veronica. I had to talk to her. I had the kids. We would have to see each other when I handed them back over to her. Maybe then she would be more receptive to my explanation… once I got one.

  I grimaced thinking that I would be following Michael. Would she even want to hear me after talking to that suit-wearing gasbag? Nobody liked a show-off. A two-thousand-dollar watch was still worthless if it couldn’t tell the fucking time. They were obviously on bad terms; why did they have to keep seeing each other? More specifically, why did she have to keep seeing him?

  The biggest kick in the balls would be if today was the day that Veronica decided the relationship was worth salvaging after all. Yup. My reckless mouth would be the thing that drives Veronica back to her husband.

  We got to the house, and the kids forgot about the phone when they saw the TV. Sixty-five inches. Way more than I needed or could justify why I even had, but it was the one thing I allowed myself to splurge on. Just because I had the money didn’t mean I had to go overboard, get a diamond encrusted toilet. The TV was my one new money tacky purchase that I would allow myself.

  There was like, nothing attached to it—no cable, none of the other shit. I had gotten it for one reason, or two—my guilty pleasure; PS4 and Xbox One. Those were the main two, the latest in my collection. Some guys did stamps and fishing hooks, I did consoles.

  It took about ten minutes of digging to find a game that the kids could play in my collection that wasn’t going to give them nightmares. We decided on Halo 5 which was pushing it, but they seemed okay. I played my first FPS when I was six, and I had turned out fine… mostly fine. Veronica would let me know whether it gave them night terrors or not, for sure.

  The hour Veronica had originally requested was coming to an end, and the kids were getting hungry. I ordered them a pizza which I had to bribe them to have because it wasn’t a Sunday. Veronica was supposed to have come and get them before dinner, but she had been held up.

  Figuring I was justified in calling her if it was about the kids, I picked my phone up. I found a text message from Ronnie herself. I had to read it over a few times before I understood what she was telling me and even then, the words ‘hospital’ and ‘ambulance’ were the only things that had seemed to register.

  This was a perfect opportunity not to panic.

  I tried not to panic.

  I failed and panicked.

  I tried harder, leaving the room briefly to try and call Veronica’s phone. She had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance; she wasn’t going to pick up.

  I went back to the living room where the kids sat eating their pizza, getting grease all over my controllers.

  “Hey, guys. Uh, grab a slice each and let’s go,” I said. So smooth. This was why I couldn’t have kids.

  “Where? Home?” Christopher asked.

  “No… uh, we’re going to go get your aunt,” I said vaguely.

  In about five minutes we were on the way to Monterey Peninsula Community Hospital. She hadn’t said what was wrong but if that suit-wearing shitbag husband of hers had anything to do with this, he was mine, and this time, Ronnie would not be able to stop me.

  12

  Veronica

  The way that I felt about Brian Hartman in ninth grade. That was the way that I felt about Thaddeus. Brian was so cute. I liked him so much. I would smile uncontrollably when I saw him and wouldn’t be able to control the fluttering in my stomach when he spoke to me. That was the last real hardcore crush of my teenage years before I started dating Michael. I was so fucking young. How gross. Thaddeus made me feel a way I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager, and this was both revelatory and tragic.

  He was hands down, the light at the end of the tunnel for me and this divorce. He didn’t seem like marriage material, but that was the beauty of it; I didn’t want another husband. I just wanted someone to come through when I wanted someone to fingerblast me as he had so eloquently put it.

  He had been rude and insensitive but I—let’s face it—I was the one who was cheating on my husband with him. We weren’t even married like that anymore but… but nothing; it didn’t matter anymore.

  He couldn’t come round to the house again—not if I was home. He seemed to be good with the kids, but there were probably young people all over Monterey trying to make twenty bucks an hour babysitting Chris and Nikki. Maybe I could train them to stay home alone. The neighborhood was fantastic, and they were smart kids. There was an emergency phone in the house, and they both had my parent’s phone number and mine memorized. I was holding them back if anything.

  I knew he had followed me up the steps and it took the fact that Nikki and Chris were within earshot to keep me from saying something I regretted. Who the hell did he think he was, talking to me like he knew me? It had been abortive from the start. I didn’t even have a right to be sad about it. What had Bart said? What had the man said?

  He had been right about Michael, and he was right about Thad. I should have listened, but I hadn’t, and now I had a crush on this guy that I was never going to see again. It didn’t matter how much I liked him, or how much I wanted to let him touch me anymore. It was over. He was right. I was flip-flopping about what I felt, and it was not fair to him or to Michael.

  It wasn’t even about being married or not. It was just about being honest. I wanted Thad, and I was using Michael as an excuse to keep us apart. All Thad wanted from me was the thing I wanted him to give me. That long, hard thing I felt pressing into my back when we were in the laundry room. He hadn’t asked for a key to the house. He hadn’t asked to meet my parents; he didn’t want all that. He just wanted a good time, and truthfully, I wasn’t opposed. I didn’t want anything serious anyway.

  I was letting him believe that I was going to give it to him, using Michael as a scapegoat not to. I felt like an utter asshole. When I swung by to get the kids, I would apologize, and we could at least part on amicable terms.

  I was changing clothes upstairs when the doorbell downstairs told me that the one person I wanted to see less than Thad had just shown up.

  Michael was right on time. I answered the door, and he strode in without a word. He had on what he usually had on, a suit, which was inconceivable in this heat, but his core body temperature was none of my business. He wanted to talk? We’d talk. I was giving him an hour, no more. I had the kids I had to collect from Thad’s
house. I’d been achy and premenstrual all day, and the Midol was doing nothing for my cramps. He was going to get my worst if he pushed it.

  “You live here now?” he sniffed.

  I rolled my eyes. He acted like anything under five thousand square feet was a shack.

  “What do you have to say to me, Michael?” I asked him.

  “I shouldn’t even be here. You don’t deserve to talk to me right now.”

  We were standing in the entryway—that way he would be able to leave faster. I would have maybe offered him a seat and something to drink, but I was willing to let courtesy slide for now. He didn’t deserve it. He had a lot of fucking nerve acting like he was doing me a favor by gracing me with his presence. I had wanted to hear him out, if only for the fact that we had lived under the same roof for many years and that there was a time when we... or at least I had been in love.

  “Michael, if you came here to fight, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Is this what you want?” he asked, motioning to the house. “Do you have any idea what you’re leaving behind?”

  “All I’m leaving behind is you, Michael. Believe it or not, I want to be here. I love my niece and nephew, and they need me.”

  “You sure that’s all you love?” he said, under his breath.

  “Excuse me?”

  “What are you trying to say, Veronica?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That guy? You don’t like that. Long hair, tattoos. When did you start going for thugs?”

  I flushed despite myself.

  “He’s not a thug.”

  “How long’s it been since you started up with him? Before or after you ran away?”

  “I don’t have to tell you that,” I said in a way that I intended to be defiant.

  “Oh, okay… so before,” he said. I rolled my eyes.

  “If you really want to know, I never even looked at another man till the day I got here. I was yours, Michael, even when you weren’t mine. You can’t say I broke my vows with anybody because you broke them first. I’ve been in this marriage alone since we lost the first baby,” I said. Michael looked at me like I was a huge, huge disappointment. He looked at me the way you look at something you buy and then later find out you paid way too much money for.