Dare Me, Part Two Dare Duet Sawyer and Billie: Unchained Attraction Series

by Shandwick, K. L.

  “I know, and I’m not … not really,” I added, quickly, “maybe I’m overthinking.”

  “Then you need to stop. I’d never be romantically interested in your brother. I only have one more thing to say and then this conversation is over. A few months ago, I thought I’d never get over seeing Logan and Poppy together, and since I’ve been with you, I couldn’t care less. When I see you, my mind is immediately full of desire, longing, and love. When you touch me, it makes my bones feel like they are melting inside, and when you kiss me, you control the beat of my heart. No man has ever made me feel the way you do.”

  “Yeah?” I asked playfully, as my heart swelled to hear her thoughts. My stomach flipped over with her admission.

  “You are the hottest man I have ever met, the only man I want, and for some unfathomable reason, I believe you truly want me. We’re going to have a great future together, but this shit in our lives will rumble on unless we make a stand and face it head on until we reach a point where it doesn’t hurt us anymore.”

  When she looked straight ahead at the road with flushed cheeks, I knew it had taken a lot for her to express herself like that, but her confession reassured me about us moving forward. What she’d said was exactly what I needed to hear.

  It was almost 5:45p.m. by the time we arrived back in New Jersey, and as soon as we hit the cul-de-sac where Billie lived we were surprised to see a light on in Billie’s sitting room.

  “I definitely checked I’d turned everything off before I left with Colby,” Billie muttered, sounding both confused and a little bit anxious.

  “It’s okay. I’ll go and check, you stay here,” I said, parking her car on the road and not in her driveway. As I went to get out of the car, Billie gripped my hand to stop me and wouldn’t let it go.

  “No. What if it’s a burglar, I mean, what if he has a gun? Let’s call the police. We’re not taking a chance with this, I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  Searching through her bag, she pulled out her cell, and at that very same moment Logan walked past the sitting window. “It’s Logan.” Relief filled my chest at the same time as a mixture of frustration and curiosity took over from my apprehension.

  Billie immediately slipped my grandma’s antique ring box out of her purse, tugged the ring over her knuckle, reluctantly inspecting it. For a second, her dull blue eyes connected with mine and then she placed her engagement ring back in its box. “Sorry.” Her apology was regretful in tone, but it was all the unspoken words she hadn’t said that showed in her sad expression. Although my heart ached when I saw her take it off, I got it. There hadn’t been time to tell them about our plans, and in this instance, more for Colby than her ex, I’d felt it was the right thing to do.

  Sliding out of the driver’s side, I wandered around the hood and opened her door. Taking her hand, I helped her out onto her feet then hugged her quietly for a moment. “It’s okay, darlin’, whatever this is, we’re not going to let it bring us down.”

  The game Logan played at Christmas when he’d turned up at Billie’s door highlighted his willingness to fuck with us as a couple. I was determined not to lower myself to his level, and I remained calm to help Billie feel more comfortable with Logan’s sudden visit.

  Before we reached the front door, Colby opened it, ran out excited to see Billie, and hugged his mom’s side. “Whoa, Baby, what are you doing home already?”

  “Poppy wanted to come home, so we left Grandma and Gramps early this morning and flew back. Dad’s in a mood, by the way,” he added solemnly, as he leaned back to look up at her with a sad look in his eyes.

  “How did you get into the house?”

  “You know that key you hide in the bricks at the back wall near the cherry tree?” he asked.

  “I’d forgotten about that,” Billie replied, she had needed no further explanation.

  “Dad didn’t,” Colby informed her, deadpan.

  When Billie looked past Colby into the house, before glancing at me, I knew by the furious look in her eyes there was going to be words between her and Logan. “Well, now that you’re here, do you think you’re strong enough to help me get your mom’s suitcase out of the car?”

  Placing an arm around his shoulder, I turned him away from the door and guided him toward her car. I knew the diversion would keep Colby busy for a few minutes, and it gave Billie the opportunity to challenge Logan without their son having to listen to his parents’ disagreement.

  “How was your trip, buddy, did you have fun?” I asked sounding upbeat, even though I was concerned about what was happening inside. The pull I had toward Colby felt natural and there was just something about him that made me want to spend time with him.

  “With Gramps yeah, he was cool, but I hated all the whispering, and I know Grandma wasn’t happy with Daddy and Poppy, because she kept doing this long huff thing she does when Gramps leaves the toilet seat up. Then the usual happened,” he said, throwing his eyes in the air.

  “The usual?”

  “Yep, Poppy saying to my dad he wasn’t fun and that she wanted to go out to a bar. My dad had to go with her because she said she couldn’t go out alone. I stayed at home with Grandma and Gramps when they went out. I didn’t mind though, because we got to play Scrabble and then we had hot chocolate with whipped cream and baby marshmallows.”

  “Well, the drink sure sounds cool, but I don’t know about the rest of it,” I replied, trying to take the sting out of his words, but agreeing with how annoyed he must have felt. I closed the trunk. It was cold and I knew I couldn’t keep him outside without a coat any longer. As we walked back up the path, I was relieved to see Billie arrive back at the door and I guided Colby quicker in the direction of the house and painted on a smile.

  “You haven’t done any gaming today, have you, Colby?” Billie asked her son.

  “Nope, we got home a little while ago and Dad said I couldn’t go play because you’d likely be mad when you got home.” Billie scowled and glared in Logan’s direction, he glanced up from the counter stool he sat on and shrugged his shoulders.

  “You said not to let him play games when he was with me.”

  “Okay, Colby, thirty minutes only, but put your headphones on, I don’t want to hear that crazy music coming down the stairs.” Colby raised an eyebrow like he knew her words were a lame excuse, and even I knew she meant she didn’t want him to hear her when she tore his father a new one.

  With Colby out of the way, Billie wandered behind the kitchen counter and began making a pot of coffee. “Talk,” she said to Logan. I’d never heard anyone sound so mad with one word.

  “Can we have some privacy?” he snapped back, glaring at me.

  “No, Sawyer stays,” she demanded, as she folded her arms like she meant business. I felt proud that she hadn’t allowed her ex-husband to dictate the terms of the conversation between them.

  “Poppy was miserable from the moment we got on the plane. Nothing I did was right, and Colby got on her nerves.”

  “Colby did what? How dare she—”

  “Yeah, well she did dare. My father saw how selfish she was being and eventually went apeshit with a few choice words toward her, and here we are,” he said, holding his arms out to indicate his arrival at my house.

  “Why here? Why didn’t you take Colby home … no wait, I know why, because you’d have argued, am I right?”

  “Yeah, are you getting a kick out of this?” he probed. When Billie stared him down and didn’t reply, I could see she was trying not to lose her cool. “Anyway, I remembered about the spare key and figured I’d bring him home. If you had moved it, I’d have taken him to a local hotel. You said you were away until the third of the month, but I see your plans have changed as well. Trouble in paradise?”

  Ignoring his comment, I watched my girl as she wandered out into the hallway, lifted Logan’s overcoat off the peg and brought it back. “Okay, as Colby is home and I’m back now, you may as well leave him here and go home,” she informed him, sh
oving the coat into his chest.

  “But it’s my time,” Logan insisted, glancing quickly toward me. I knew he wanted me to say something, but I was determined not to become a vessel for her ex-husband to vent his anger.

  “You should have thought about that before bringing him back here.”

  “I brought him here because I knew if I took him home Poppy and I would have argued. Colby suggested coming home, so here we are,” he gloated. He’d gained the upper hand because of a previous threat Billie had to stop contact at his home if he and Poppy continued to argue.

  “You brought him to my house without checking I’d be here?”

  “I guessed you’d still have left the key where it was, it was your idea to put it there for emergencies in the first place.”

  “Okay, thank you for considering Colby’s needs in relation to Poppy, but we’ve got this now so you can go home and straighten out whatever is going on with you guys.”

  “You’re kicking me out? In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s no car outside.” He was right, neither of us had considered this.

  “Then how did you get here?” Billie snapped.

  “By cab from the airport. As Poppy had driven us to La Guardia, I didn’t have a choice.” Billie walked over to where I’d placed her car keys down on her counter. “Here take mine.” Slapping the keys near his hand on the counter, she looked directly at Logan and shook her head with a disappointed look on her face. “You can keep it there, and I’ll pick it up one evening on my way home from work.”

  I could see by the look in Logan’s eyes her suggestion had hurt him, and if I wasn’t mistaken I felt an unspoken vibe of regret about his situation, and it dawned on me he still had feelings for Billie.

  I eyed him suspiciously and he shifted nervously on his feet. “It’s fine, darlin’, I’ll arrange for someone to pick it up tomorrow and drive it back. You have a second key for it right?” I asked, quickly. Logan immediately glared contemptuously toward me for interfering in whatever plan he’d begun to cook up in his head, had he gotten Billie alone.

  “Even better,” Billie agreed, backing me up. Without a valid reason to further delay his departure, Logan reluctantly took his coat from Billie and slowly put it on.

  Not wishing to delay his leaving any longer than necessary, I walked over to the front door and opened it for him. I almost laughed aloud at the scowl on his face, and I knew in his mind he was probably mentally kicking my head in.

  “Hold on, Sawyer, I’ll just let Colby say goodbye to his father.” Billie ran upstairs, leaving Logan and I alone.

  “Aren’t you tired of being in the middle of Billie, Colby, and I?”

  “Is that what I am … in the middle? Or in the way?”

  “Now you mention it, I’d say both,” he replied, without a hint of shame.

  “Then you better get used to it, because I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yet,” Logan added, and I immediately scoffed, amused by his misplaced confidence.

  “I believe you made your choice, and from what I can see, it’s now a case of wanting what you can’t have. In case you have forgotten you are divorced … unchained, wasn’t that what you wanted? Perhaps you should have treated Billie with a lot more care, respect and courtesy in the first place. Life is full of regrets, Logan, but there are some things you just can’t come back from.” The look on his face was a mixture of dismay and anger that I’d called him out in such an honest way.

  “Your confidence is incredibly cocky. I suppose being a musician has given you a distorted sense of perspective. Let me tell you something you may want to bear in mind. Your shoes may be placed under my wife’s bed right now, but I’ve seen you together. You are far too young to manage a woman like Billie.”

  “Actually, Billie is your ex-wife, my girlfriend, and the way you talk about her anyone would think you were talking about an unbroken horse.”

  “What horse?” Colby asked, as he came downstairs minus the blue wool sweater he’d been wearing, looking more comfortable in the set of green Christmas themed pajamas his grandparents had sent him.

  “There is no real horse, buddy, I was explaining something to your dad,” I replied.

  “You should listen Dad, Sawyer gives good advice.” I chuckled at Colby’s timely reminder to Logan where I stood with him and his mom. I exchanged a small smile and a satisfied look came back toward me from Billie, but this was quickly masked.

  “Come on, Colby, say goodbye to your dad. You’ll see him again a week from Friday,” she added, confirming the date to set this in Colby’s young mind.

  Colby hugged his dad quickly then turned his attention to me, asking me to come and see the new skill he had learned on his gaming machine. It was clear Billie wasn’t interested in having any more time alone with her ex-husband, so I nodded to Colby and held up a finger.

  “Give me one minute here. Go set it up and I’ll be right there,” I replied, opening the front door wider. “Drive carefully, Logan, there are a lot of out-of-state vacation drivers out there and the weather doesn’t help make the roads any safer,” I stated, dismissively. He flashed me another scowl and walked past me. He stepped outside and stuffed his hands in his pockets; he began to turn, as if he were going to say something, but Billie came up behind me and closed her front door firmly behind him.

  Chapter Two

  As the evening had been taken over with unforeseen events, and Colby was now at home, we ordered pizzas like we had sometimes done on previous family nights. While we were waiting for them to arrive, Billie became quiet.

  “Are you okay?” I probed, thinking Logan had upset her again.

  “I wish I hadn’t been so impulsive with our engagement. I should have spoken to Colby first.”

  “I agree, we were caught up in the moment. We may have gone about this all wrong, but I’m not sorry you went with your gut and dared me,” I told her. “Do you want me to ask for Colby’s permission to marry you? I’m a rookie at dealing with this stuff, but I know we should have done this first. I’m confident he’ll say yes, so I think for him at least, we should make him feel he had a choice.” Billie looked touched. Tears immediately filled her eyes as she leapt forward and hugged me tight.

  “You’re such an amazing man, Sawyer. I’ve been thinking long and hard about how quickly we made such a massive decision, one that will affect the rest of our lives, but I think I got overawed by the whole experience, during our visit to your parents’ place.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked suddenly, my heart stalled in fear she’d been about to call our engagement off.

  “You have no idea how it felt to be so readily accepted, not only by your parents, but your sisters and dare I say, your brother as well? Being an only child with an absent father, I had no idea what I’d been missing. My mom was an only child too.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yeah, that feeling where someone’s got you just because of who you are to them, no matter what the situation may be. I’ve never had anyone be that for me before ...”

  “Well, my brother definitely didn’t have my back—”

  “I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about how your family worked together to protect me against Charlotte, because they knew what had happened was wrong, but also how James spoke about you. He sounded genuinely happy that we were together and again when he’d heard we’d gotten engaged. Until I was placed in that situation, I hadn’t realized the impact on Colby’s development of not having relatives.”

  “He’s had Logan’s parents up to now.”

  “He has and I’m so grateful he has them, but they’re getting older. What I mean is there hasn’t been any children in the family for him to relate to.”

  “That part is going to change for sure,” I agreed, nodding. “He’s going to be overwhelmed by the girls, and it’s great that Brock will have another boy in the family. So are you happy for me to speak to Colby about us?”

  “I am, but we need to be delicate. I don�
��t want Logan to find out by chance. Information this loaded needs to be handled with care. If we tell Colby now, we’re going to need to ask him to keep our secret a little longer. Just until he comes back from his next visit with his father. I’d rather he didn’t learn of our plan from his son, I need to be the one to break the news to him.”

  “Break what news?” Colby asked, coming around the corner from the stairs his face looking puzzled. Fortunately, the doorbell rang. I was glad for the interruption of the pizza delivery, because I felt eating first would help us establish some dialogue before I dived in with the question, which would ultimately change his life as well.

  Watching Colby eat his pizza, I noticed how ‘off’ he was and my heart clenched when he repeatedly asked my opinion about something. It told me he wanted me to like him, and this fueled my confidence for what I needed to ask him. I hadn’t thought what I’d do if he said no, just hoped he wouldn’t let us down.

  After we’d eaten our food, I left Billie to load the dishwasher and took Colby over to the couch by the fire.

  “Hey, buddy, do you think we could have a chat about something?”

  Staring at me like he was surprised by my request, he appeared a little unsure when he met my gaze and nodded. I glanced over toward Billie, and she instinctively looked up at me like I had spoken to her. When I winked she knew I was about to talk to Colby about marrying her and immediately made excuses to leave the room.

  “I’m going to empty your suitcase and gather up the laundry. You two behave while I’m gone,” she joked.

  Colby tucked his hands under his thighs and rocked back and forth. My heart squeezed at how nervous he appeared. I gave him a smile in reassurance.

  “All right, buddy, I wanted to say how sad I was that your vacation with your dad and grandparents didn’t finish well. Sometimes kids behave better than adults,” I stated in very simple terms.

  “You mean like how Poppy didn’t behave?”