Thaddeus (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 2)

by Hope Hitchens

  As much as I wanted to, there was just no way to use the kids as a day-long excuse for me anymore. I just couldn’t use the excuse anymore, their need for formal education overrode my desire to have them all to myself. There were the weekends which could potentially still feel like the way the summer had been, but that was two days a week. What about the other five? I didn’t know what to do with those.

  I was probably more nervous than they were. I was scared. Genuinely frightened. I had been putting this off, the acceptance of my, what was it, my lone adulthood for as long as I could, and I wouldn’t be able to when they were in school. It wasn’t like I couldn’t just stay at home all day.

  That was an option. It was absolutely an option. I could find all manner of things to do. All sorts of television shows to binge-watch, but that was too pathetic a thought to even contemplate seriously. That should have been the thing that I resorted to if I had no plans or if my plans fell through.

  That should not have been a first-choice activity. I felt a little embarrassed at how defeatist I sounded already. I was young, still. Twenty-four wasn’t over the hill. I could even get a job if I wanted to… it would probably suck because people with college degrees worked minimum wage jobs and I didn’t even have one of those. Still. The options were out there, all I had to do was decide to pursue them instead of trying to rewatch Law and Order SVU. That should become a rule for me the way the kids wouldn’t be able to watch television before all their homework was done or couldn’t eat pizza on weekdays.

  The thought of pizza made me nervous. There was no way they were going to be eating school lunches. Absolutely not. I needed something to look forward to every day and preparing their lunches was going to be one of them. There was nothing I hadn’t thought of. I had been waiting for this day with excitement—anxiety too—but a lot of excitement.

  Since it was finally here, I couldn’t help but feel, what, bereft?

  The kids were nervous too, but there were two of them, they could hold each other’s hands, literally and figuratively through the process. Who was going to hold my fucking hand? Who was going to comfort me when I got back to the house after doing the morning school run? Who was going to sit with me at lunch or make sure I wasn’t alone at playtime?

  How had I gotten this far as an adult without any adult friends? I hadn’t had any friends carry over from high school and hadn’t been to college so nobody from there either. Michael had kept all our friends after the divorce. Since the kids were out of the house, it was a perfect time to really explore what Monterey had to offer me as a newly single twenty-something-year-old girl.

  The single thing was just a matter of fact, not something I was trying to change. Not actively anyway. I wasn’t even that single anyway. What was being single? It was time to ask the real questions that mattered because fuck if I knew. I hadn’t been single since I was too young to vote. Six years later and I understandably needed some help puzzling it out.

  Did the presence of Thad as someone I was having regular sex with make me less single than I would have been if he wasn’t there?

  What was Thad doing right now?

  You know, for information’s sake.

  His job had loose hours, so he could have been doing anything.

  Speaking of that job, I had so many questions, both about the job and also just general questions, like where was he right now, what was he doing and had he eaten yet. Was the fact that the kids were going to school now one that meant I could not call him up randomly as much as I was doing or that I could do it more?

  There was only one way to find out.

  I had gotten a lot more brazen about calling Thad because all his responses to me had been positive. He always just came when I asked him to. He even did when I didn’t ask him to, which wasn’t a bad thing. I liked spending time with him. I thought about maybe sending a text message over making a phone call because it was still sort of early in the morning but called anyway. He picked up after a couple of rings.

  “Good morning, Buttercup,” he said.

  Just like that, I was like a fourteen-year-old girl on the phone with the guy she liked.

  “Hi, did I wake you?”

  “Mm-hmm,” he said sleepily.

  “I can call back if you want to go back to bed.”

  “No, I’m awake, what’s going on?”

  “The kids went to school today,” I told him.

  “I bet they were excited,” he said.

  “They were. Nervous too. Is it okay if I give the school your name and contact as the person besides Bart and me who is allowed to pick them up or receive phone calls in case of emergency?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  “Good, because I already did.” He laughed.

  “What are you going to do now you that don’t have them to hide behind all day anymore?”

  There was the chance that he was just really perceptive, he had been proving himself to have uncharacteristically good intuition. Alternatively, there was just the possibility that I was very obvious. Like my every shortcoming and insecurity was just written on my forehead in a font and text that everyone could read but me. Both were probably true... the one about me being easy to read was definitely true. If I was that transparent, what else did he know about me that I wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of spelling out for him?

  “I don’t know. I have to like, make friends now, or something,” I said heavily.

  “What are you doing today?”

  “Nothing... maybe you, later if you want.”

  “How about now? If you leave the house now, how soon can you get here?” he asked.

  “You have got to try harder than that,” I teased him. He laughed.

  “Alright, I know how this stuff goes. I’ll take you out first. Wear something comfortable. Pants, or shorts.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “By now, I really feel like you should be able to trust me when I take you out.”

  I thought about it. When had he ever steered me wrong? He was yet to do so. I told him I’d be ready when he got here and went upstairs to change clothes after doing the dishes.

  Admitting that I liked Thad, not to him, but to myself was safe. It was just true. I had been hiding from the truth about what was going on between Michael and me for long enough, and I could keep hiding from the truth, or I could nut up and face it. It was about goddamn time. I liked Thad, and that was fine. It was probably healthy; it meant that I wasn’t dead emotionally. Michael hadn’t killed my ability to love… to like. He hadn’t killed my ability to like.

  The next step with these things was to tell the person you liked that you liked them, but that wasn’t possible. It was, but I wasn’t going to do it. We had something good between us. You didn’t just tell people that you liked them. Or maybe you did. Regardless I wasn’t going to.

  He got to the house, and I got into his truck. He surprised me by leaning over to me and kissing me. We started on our way, and something that sounded like the BBC World Service or something was playing through the radio.

  “Where are we-”

  “I’m not telling you.”

  “If I guess and get it right, will you tell me that I got it?” I asked.

  “You aren’t going to get it right, how many locations do you know in Monterey besides the kids’ school, my house, and the town hall?”

  “I was just going to guess, like the McDonald’s drive-through then back to your place.”

  “Ugh. That’s awful,” he grimaced.

  “You eat instant rice and take out, but that is gross?”

  “It is, objectively, but it’s like, culturally delicious. Everyone in this country loves to eat that shit knowing that in reality, it sucks. I’m just surprised you’d think I would take you to a drive-through. I’m not raking it in like your last guy but Christ.”

  I laughed.

  “What’s your McDonald’s order?” I asked.

  “Just a cheeseburger, I’m not a regular
. The only time I really want it is when I get home from deployment. It’s gross, and it’s cheap, but it tastes like home.”

  “Like your childhood?”

  “Later childhood maybe, my mom never let me eat that shit.”

  His mom. His dead mom who had been murdered by his dad. It was only when he mentioned that he had parents that I realized that, of course he did. This wasn’t a Kyle XY situation; he had been a child at one point in his life because he was an adult now. I appreciated when he brought it up because I didn’t know how to, or if I should. From what he had told me, our childhoods had been so divergent.

  I had been a happy kid, and then the shit went sideways at eighteen. He had lost both his parents at twelve. One was still alive, but he had murdered the other one. Was that information you shared with the girl you were just having sex with? I had been the one who asked, but he wasn’t under any obligation to tell me. He had wanted to.

  “Here we are,” he said. I looked at the sign.

  “You brought me to a firing range?”

  “Rifle and pistol range. Let’s go.”

  He exited the car before me and opened my door for me, helping me out of the truck.

  “I wouldn’t have judged you if you did take me to McDonald’s. I would let you hit it either way.”

  He leaned down and kissed me.

  “You know where the schools and public pools are, but those aren’t places that you go for yourself; that is where you take the kids.”

  “You brought me here because you think I would bring myself? You think firing rifles is what I do in my spare time?”

  “It’s what I do in my spare time. Come on. You’ll love it.”

  20

  Thaddeus

  “I hate this,” Veronica complained. I looked at her face around her eye and gently touched the area. She flinched back.

  “Hold still.”

  “It attacked me.”

  “It’s just a scope bite. Happens to everyone. Your rifle wasn’t seated right. Here,” I took the gun from her and stood it on the ground.

  “A bite? Does it happen to you?”

  “No,” I admitted. I had been shooting guns for a long time, and it hadn’t happened, not yet at least. It was nothing. She had just placed her eye too close to the scope and had gotten caught on the rifle recoil. She flinched again when I touched the area just above her eyebrow where the rifle scope had hit her. I didn’t think it would bruise, but it would feel a little tender. A lot of people who weren’t used to handling firearms were surprised, almost pissed off by the number of ways a gun could hurt you besides getting shot with one.

  “Stop touching it,” she said, pouting.

  “It’s not serious. It’s not bleeding. You’ll be fine. Do you want to go again?”

  “No.”

  “One more time,” I encouraged her, picking the rifle up. “You can do it.”

  She rolled her eyes, but she took her stance and let me seat the gun below her shoulder. I instructed her to put one of her legs back further than the other, so the recoil didn’t take her out and stood behind her, waiting for her to aim and fire. She pulled the trigger, the bullet missing the target. We were using a paper target with a black silhouette of a man on it.

  “Again, come on. Hit the target.”

  “I could get it if we moved it closer.”

  “Just picture Michael’s head and aim for it,” I told her. She laughed and took aim again, this time firing three times. One missed the target completely but two hit inside the black silhouette.

  “Boom. Dead,” I said.

  She put the rifle down.

  “Good thing we never kept guns in the house,” she said. I smirked. I didn’t want to trash her ex too obviously, but I loved it when she joined in. It had been a gamble bringing her to the range, but she had been more cooperative than I could have expected. I had just wanted her to try. If she didn’t like it and wanted to sit in the car after firing one shot, that would have been fine, as long as she had made an effort.

  I wanted her to see what I did. What I was paid to do. We played board games and all that cute shit when we were with the kids, but now, they weren’t here. It was about time she did something that she wasn’t used to doing—things that were not making healthy sandwiches and shopping for school stationery.

  In the car driving back to my house, I wondered whether this could be classified as a date. We hadn’t eaten anything, but you didn’t have to eat something for it to be considered a date. She didn’t like to call what we were doing dating but if it wasn’t that, what on earth was it?

  She wasn’t my friend with benefits. That would mean she was my friend which I didn’t really want her to be. I wanted her to be the woman I went on dates with. If she really didn’t want to think of us as dating, then that was fine. She could think whatever she wanted. Really, just because she disagreed did not make it false.

  I was the only guy she was having sex with, and she was the only girl I was having sex with. Even if the lean turkey wasn’t marked like that in the grocery store, that didn’t mean it wasn’t lean turkey. You could mark it sirloin of buffalo, and it wouldn’t change what it was. She could label, or refuse to label us however she wanted; the fact remained that I was the only guy making her come.

  We would have to pick the kids up in a few hours. That was more than enough time. My hands were all over her before we even made it to the bedroom. She pushed me onto the bed. She was on top of me. I had my hands on her ass, and she was letting me give her my tongue. I moved my hands, running them up her back, under her shirt. Her skin was warm and smooth. I unhooked her bra. She raised herself off of me and pulled her top off, getting rid of the bra too.

  Her tits were real nice. The other parts were nice too but if I had to pick my favorite part... no that would be her pussy. Or her mouth. Or her eyes; they were blue like the water in the marine reserve. Perfect, no garbage or oil spills or anything gross like that.

  On her shoulder was a nice purple bruise forming from the rifle recoil. Next time she would need to use a smaller piece, maybe an AR15, or something. She ground her hips down into my crotch as she undid the button of her pants. I pulled my shirt off and watched her. She was like this innocent young girl sometimes, but other times, it was like she was making up for all the orgasms Michael never gave her when they were married.

  “I want to ride your dick,” she said. She had this sweet smile on her face like she wasn’t talking filthy. She hopped off and shimmied out of her pants. I pulled mine down to my ankles and sat up, leaning back on my arms for her to climb back on. She climbed into my lap. I was ready. Her hand held my cock and ran its tip along her slit which was wet already. I kissed her, licking the inside of her mouth.

  When she was already naked like that, I knew it made her pussy leak juices all over the place. I could feel it; she was practically dripping. She was incredibly sexy. I watched her face as she finally sunk herself down onto my dick. Her head was back, and I couldn’t resist putting one of her nipples in my mouth, just for a little something extra. She moaned gently, feeling me filling her up and sucking on her nipple at the same time. She loved it.

  “All the way down, baby,” I urged her. I used my hands to part her ass cheeks, so I could run a finger over her tight hole back there. She almost screamed feeling my finger circle that little bud. She rode me, up and down, resting her arms on my shoulders for balance.

  She had prime pussy. Michael was an idiot letting her go. Maybe I owed him a thank you. She was so wet; I could feel her moisture dripping down my balls. I wanted to hold her down and pound her, but watching her face and making her scream and shudder was just as good.

  She must have been close because she started riding faster, whimpering and making these hot little sounds. I held her still and lowered us to the bed with her still on top. I held her arms behind her back and jackhammered up into her from below. She screamed and bit her lip, moaning my name but not being able to get anything else out. I felt my
balls clench and made the last few thrusts really count before I came and started to get soft. Hitting her as hard as I could with every last one. She squeezed down on me right on the heels of my own orgasm.

  If she really didn’t want to be dating me, she sure wasn’t acting like it. Why did she hate the idea so much anyway? Michael—that Silicon Valley gasbag—had her brainwashed or something. She had called that idiot her husband for years; why was it so hard to call me her boyfriend? I got that she needed time, but dammit, how much?

  We took the truck to the school to pick the kids up. She had likely been anxious about this all day. It was the first day of the rest of her life, for the school term at least. She would need to get something in her life to do that wasn’t based around the kids because they were out here doing their own thing too.

  I was not opposed to her leaning on me for that kind of company but what if I wasn’t there for whatever reason? I had been thinking about deploying and when I might do it again... it was more accurate to say I had been thinking about how much I didn’t want to deploy again, for at least a little while. Or a long while. I could pick up again whenever I wanted.

  Monterey was suddenly somewhere I wasn’t that mad about staying in for extended periods of time. I liked the city—I had grown up here—but I was a young… young-ish, single… single-ish guy with a job that made me travel. I didn’t have my parents here or anybody that needed me around; I could leave if and when I wanted to. It wasn’t a big deal.

  It still shouldn’t have been a big deal, but it was a bit of a bigger deal now. If I was being straight, I just didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay. I could afford to—that wasn’t a problem. I just wanted to stay. Were Veronica and the kids the reason, yeah. Maybe they were.

  I could always deploy when Bart came back; that way it would be like an exchange. I didn’t have to be there when he was. I didn’t have to be there now, but I didn’t want to leave. Back in the day, kids were a lot less precious and if your parents weren’t picking you up, or the bus, you would just leave. They’d just let us go. Kids walked all the way home if they lived nearby or would go to their parent’s work or the YMCA or something.