Mess Me Up

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “You’re trouble, Lincoln,” Izzy said softly. “You’ll come to dinner with us after the game?”

  Linc looked a little startled. “Uhh, yeah.” He paused. “I guess.”

  My mouth turned up in a smile. “You’re screwed. Just say yes.”

  Linc shrugged. “Yes.”

  Izzy’s smile was brilliant. “You don’t get hurt, either.”

  With that, Linc’s easy grin was back. “My body is worth millions. If I break it, I don’t play. Trust me when I say it’s never my intention to get hurt. Plus, we’re just playing flag football, so no touching at all.”

  Izzy narrowed her eyes. “I know boys, Linc. Trust me when I say that it’ll get out of hand.”

  “Never,” Linc disagreed.

  Let’s just say, she didn’t hesitate to say “I told you so” when it did, in fact, get out of hand.

  ***

  I was laying on the ground, my balls screaming for me to do something, but there was nothing I could do.

  I felt someone nudge my side, and I opened my clenched-shut eyes to see Izzy standing over me.

  Her eyes were heated, and she was running that gaze of hers up and down the length of my shirtless body.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  I had one hand on my balls, and the other one clenched into a fist at my side.

  I couldn’t manage anything but a short, jerky nod.

  She looked over at Joe, then at Linc, who were watching sheepishly.

  “You know,” she said softly to them both. “I had plans for those tonight.”

  Joe snickered as Linc’s eyes widened. “He’ll be okay.”

  “Maybe.” She tilted her head and leveled them both with an angry look. “But I told you not to let him get hurt, didn’t I?”

  Linc winced. “It was an accident.”

  “It most assuredly was not an accident,” she countered. “He gave you the slip, and you retaliated by diving at him. Your big, fat head hit his junk. It wasn’t nice.”

  Linc look chagrined. “If he hadn’t said what he said, I would’ve left him alone.”

  She turned her eyes back down to me. “What’d you say?”

  I didn’t dare open my mouth, not when she looked so pissed.

  It was kind of cute, actually.

  “He said that Linc had his head in his vagina,” Joe offered. “And that if he needed help pulling it out, he knew a girl in Alabama that would gladly get it out for him.”

  Izzy looked down at me. “Who’s the girl?”

  “Conleigh,” I supplied just as Linc said, “No one.”

  Joe started to laugh. “Linc has a girl who isn’t really his girl because he won’t let her be his girl.”

  “That’s very convoluted, and I don’t know what it says about me that I actually understood what you said,” Izzy teased.

  I sat up, my balls aching at an eight on the pain scale instead of the ten they had been a few moments before and looked around at the other men.

  I’d held my own, because the other eleven men that had played with us were just as tired, sweaty, and worn out looking as I was.

  “I’m not sure why you quit,” Joe said. “You were making moves out there that you weren’t making before you retired.”

  “He’s lost some weight,” Izzy said. “And he’s rehabbed hard. He’s a very studious pupil who makes sure he gets all his work done.”

  Joe snickered. “Oh, I’ll bet you help him get his work done…after you work him over yourself.”

  Izzy flipped him off.

  “Now, I’m really hungry,” she said. “You forgot to get me that cookie.”

  “Oh, shit.” Joe turned to look around the field. “Hey, Water g—WG!”

  I winced, expecting Jolene to turn around and kill him.

  She didn’t, but you could tell that she wanted to.

  Jolene turned and raised a brow at the insolent man. “Yeah?”

  “Did you ever bring those cookies out here?”

  She pointed to a box at the end of the table. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

  Joe jogged over, pecked her on the cheek, and took off with the box of cookies before Jolene could knee him in the balls like he deserved.

  But watching Jolene as she watched Joe run away, I didn’t see the anger I’d expected. I saw…longing.

  Probably much like the look on my own face when I thought of Izzy.

  Which made me scowl.

  I couldn’t let myself depend on another person again.

  They left.

  Always.

  When you needed them most, they left.

  My parents had done it. My grandmother had done it. My best friend had done it. Then my son had done it.

  I wasn’t going down that road for a fifth time. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… well apparently, I’m a dumbass.

  I came to my feet with my head and balls pounding, wincing as I took a step toward the water jug that’d been set up on the sideline by Jolene. That first step produced a sharp pain that ran all the way down my leg courtesy of my balls.

  “Are you okay?” Izzy touched my arm hesitantly.

  I nodded once, swallowing through the lump that had formed in my throat as I realized how much Izzy was already beginning to mean to me. “Fine. Just need to walk it off.”

  “Here!” Joe shoved the cookies at me, which I in turned handed to Izzy without looking at her.

  Izzy, or at least I thought it was Izzy, took them but I didn’t turn around to make sure.

  Instead, I walked over to the water jug and filled one of the paper cups that was stacked on the table next to it.

  After downing three cups of water, I finally turned and heard the conversation going on behind me.

  “…want to go to eat with you. Where are y’all going?” Joe asked. “I’ll bring Jolene along. It’ll be like a party!”

  Izzy was staring at Joe like he was a bug. “But nobody invited you, Joe.”

  Joe’s grin started to fade, and Izzy started to laugh. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I was just joking, I swear! You can come—we’d love for you to come. But you do know that his MC brothers are going, too, right? Apparently, this place that we’re going to has really good crawfish, and they’re doing one of those fundraisers where they donate money for each pound of crawfish someone consumes.”

  I felt my lips twitch, loving the way Izzy teased one of my friends as if she did it every day. As if Joe was just a regular person to her—which he was. But he was also one of the most eligible bachelors in the world thanks to his pretty face. It wasn’t often that I saw ol’ Joe Blow teased.

  “I’ve never had crawfish,” Joe said, sounding intrigued. “How do you eat them?”

  I then listened through Izzy’s two-minute explanation as she explained how to eat a crawfish.

  “And then, after you pull all of the meat out of the body, you suck their heads so you get all the spices out,” she finished.

  Everyone blinked, including me.

  But I didn’t blink because of her impromptu crawfish eating lesson. No, my reaction was because of the visual I got when she started talking about sucking heads.

  Speaking of heads, the one in my loose shorts was starting to thicken.

  My balls also gave a pulse of need, which was quickly followed by a pulse of pain shooting through my lower abdominals.

  Hopefully I hadn’t broken myself, because that would really suck.

  Especially with the way Izzy was strutting her ass in front of all these men, making me feel things that I didn’t want to feel.

  ***

  My mood hadn’t improved by the time we were eating our crawfish. Watching her eat her food had wreaked all kinds of havoc on my nerves.

  The way she was talking to everyone, acting like she couldn’t feel the anger rolling off of me in waves, was driving me insane.

  It was when she leaned over the table and touched Wade’s
hair because they were talking about how soft it was that I almost lost it.

  Shoving my half-eaten food away, I latched onto Izzy’s wrist and tugged. “Can you come help me for a second?”

  I didn’t give her a chance to really answer, and instead, I started pulling her from her chair and dragging her where I wanted her to go.

  I also didn’t miss the knowing looks that the other men at our table shot me as I tugged her away, nor did I miss the looks from the two women in the place. Wade’s ex-wife, who’d come in with another man and sat next to our table, and Jolene, who’d been sitting with us and was forced to come by Joe.

  I didn’t care.

  Izzy was driving me fucking insane, and I had a pressing need that was getting more serious by the second.

  Something only Izzy could fix at this point.

  “Rome, what are you doing?” Izzy asked, coming along with me without hesitation.

  “I have a problem,” I said.

  “What kind of…umph!” she squeaked as I pushed her into the men’s bathroom, which, luckily, was only a single stall, and slammed the door. “Rome, what…”

  The rest of whatever she was going to say was lost on her lips as I pressed her up against the wall and slammed my mouth down onto hers.

  That was when she finally understood, and not once did she protest.

  Not when I was slipping those tight-ass shorts off her, or when I picked her up as I unzipped myself. Not even when I thrust into her after testing her readiness and fucked her so hard that her back would likely sport bruises from my haste.

  But I just couldn’t stop. Couldn’t help myself. Couldn’t stop wanting her.

  Couldn’t stop needing her.

  “Rome,” she whispered into my mouth. “Oh, God. I’m going to come.”

  I realized right then that not only did I want her and need her, but I loved her.

  Chapter 15

  Quit posting your problems on the internet. Go to a bar like a normal person.

  -Rome to Linc

  Izzy

  “Can I borrow your truck today?” I asked sweetly.

  Rome looked over at me. “Why?”

  He’d been acting really weird lately, and although nothing overt had changed between us or with how he treated me or acted around me, I could still tell something was off. Whatever it was that was bothering him, though, he was doing his damnedest to hide it.

  “Because I want to go get something, and it’s two hours away.” I paused. “I’ll also need to borrow you, too. I don’t drive, remember?”

  He sat up from his sprawl on the couch.

  “You really need to learn how to do that.” He paused, sounding sort of miffed. “I don’t like that you have to walk everywhere.”

  Well that made two of us, but I had to do what I had to do.

  I shrugged. “I’ve been doing it for forever. I don’t need a car right now, and although I do want to get one at some point, I have to have my license first.”

  “Then get your license,” he countered.

  I gave him a droll look. “To get my license, I have to have some sort of driver’s education. Then I have to take a test in a car, and I don’t have a car. Not to mention, I don’t have the money to get a car right now.”

  I was still recovering from the hit I took when I chose to hand off Senator Antilles to my parents’ cleaning business. They had no problem taking him on, and they didn’t even say thank you.

  But whatever.

  Two hundred dollars a week less sucked ass, and I wasn’t doing well.

  “Why don’t you have any money?” he suddenly asked. “You don’t have Senator Antilles’s place anymore, but I know you don’t come cheap, and you clean at least eight other houses a week just as big if not bigger than Antilles’ house, so what’s going on?”

  I leaned against the arm of the couch and stared at him, wondering if he was going to judge me for what I was going to say.

  “I pay my brother’s mortgage,” I explained.

  “Your brother who has two teenagers who could help, a wife who also works, and a job with your parents?” he clarified, starting to get angry.

  I shook my head. “No. The other one. Slate. The one in jail.”

  He blinked in confusion. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want him to lose everything,” I whispered. “Because when he gets out in a couple of years, I want him to have a place to go. Somewhere that isn’t tainted by my parents—who tried to take over the payments on it so that Slate would owe them. This way, if I cover it, when Slate gets out, he doesn’t owe them a goddamn thing.”

  His eyes were intense on me.

  “Tomorrow I’ll teach you how to drive,” he muttered. “And today we’ll do whatever you want to do. I don’t have anything going on that’s important.”

  I looked down at my hands.

  “You’re a good man, Rome,” I whispered. “Whether you think so or not, you’re a good man to me.”

  He stood up then, drawing me up off the arm of the couch and wrapping his arms around me until I was plastered to him. “You were a good woman, first. Trust me when I say that I haven’t always been a good man. It was only when you came along that I pulled my head out of my ass.”

  I looked up into his eyes, craning my neck almost as far back as it could go, and realized that this man was it for me.

  He was my one.

  All these years I’d been handed disappointment after disappointment, and I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I couldn’t see that life would ever get better.

  But then Rome happened, and it was getting to the point where I didn’t think I could live without him.

  This thing we had happened fast. So much faster than it probably would have had our situation been different.

  However, what we had was right. It was good. It was mine, and I would fight for it no matter what. Seeing the look on Rome’s face as he stared down at me, I knew that I’d never be able to walk away from him.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, lifting his hand to push one of my curls out of my face.

  I swallowed at the sweet act and said, “To Shreveport.”

  He didn’t ask questions, and I was glad that he didn’t.

  Instead, he let me go after a quick peck on the lips and then went to get his socks and shoes on.

  Ten minutes later, we were in his truck driving down the interstate.

  Forty-five minutes after that, we arrived at the man’s house that I was buying my item from.

  “What is this, a tattoo parlor?” he questioned, looking around the area with an eye that clearly said he was ready to defend me from harm at a moment’s notice.

  “Um, no.” I shook my head. “It’s something…else.”

  Tugging on his hand, I led him to the door.

  I could feel his hesitancy as we made our way up the uneven, broken concrete walkway that had weeds growing through the cracks. Rome did not like this place at all, and it showed in every aspect of his body language.

  His shoulders were stiff, and his eyes were constantly scanning the area. His mouth was set in a firm line, and the hand holding mine was hanging on a little too tight. Not because he was scared for himself, but he was scared for me.

  “Izzy…” he started.

  I pulled free of his hold and knocked on the door. Rome cursed up a soft blue streak.

  “Izzy, seriously, this isn’t…”

  A teenager answered the door, and the smile on his face clearly conveyed his excitement.

  “Ms. Izzy!”

  Rome’s voice halted mid-reprimand, and I turned to him and gazed at his now-curious eyes.

  They said, ‘what did you do?’

  I turned with a smile tugging at my lips and said, “Chaz! We made it!”

  Chaz, the boy I’d been talking to over the last week, not to mention FaceTiming with to make sure that I made the right choice, pumped his fist.
<
br />   “And is this your man?” Chaz asked just as excitedly.

  Rome was wearing his MC vest and had his scowl firmly in place.

  There really was no smiling when Rome was in public, at least not unless I was the only one around.

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “He’s who we’re getting him for.”

  “Chaz rescues box tortoises,” I said softly. “I don’t know how I ended up looking at his page, really. It all started when I read a story about tortoises crossing the road, and someone explaining that a tortoise lives within a square mile area, and if you move them too far out of that area, you put them at risk of never finding their way back home again. Anyway, long story short, Chaz here was commenting on the thread about the tortoise, answering the questions people had, and I noticed his name. Chadwick Box Tortoise Rescues. I clicked on his link because I was curious at first. I remember Matias mentioning a box tortoise.” I didn’t expound on the day. He knew the day just as well as I did, as well as the exact moment.

  He’d told me the story in a letter that he’d written only hours after the conversation.

  Yet I didn’t want to remind him of what I’d kept from him.

  Instead, I just explained the tortoise’s story.

  I was too scared to look at Rome, so I kept my eyes on Blitz’s cage, where he munched happily on a piece of lettuce.

  “Chaz, you want to tell him about Blitz?” I asked hopefully.

  If I told the story, I’d probably break down in hysterics.

  It was just too close to home for me.

  “Sure, Izzy.” He grinned. “Blitz came to me via courier. Apparently, I’d made such a name for myself that I was left Blitz in a kid’s will.”

  I felt Rome stiffen next to me.

  “Blitz was owned by a fifteen-year-old who passed away from cancer about a month and a half ago,” Chaz started, unaware of the spiral of grief that Rome was currently dealing with. “His mother sent Blitz to me when her son passed away, as per his wishes. I was sent a letter from Blitz’s owner, Seguin, asking me to make sure I found the perfect owners for Blitz. I was given three requirements. One, the new owner had to be a male. Two, the new owner had to like football. Three, the new owner had to be willing to sign a contract with me agreeing to follow the care instructions and if anything happens and Blitz cannot be cared for by you, Blitz would return to me for rehoming.”