Come and Get It: A Small Town Bachelor Romance

by Knox, Abby

  You know who kept me in the loop so nothing would come as a total shock when I came back? Not my family. Not my attorney. The judge who sentenced me.

  For a little while, for just these few precious moments, I get to be with the most eligible female in town.

  I’m not flattering myself. I know why she did it. She had an itch, and I scratched it.

  And that’s the end of it.

  But all I want to do is lie here and feel her breath rising and falling while she sleeps.

  Seven years. Seven years without a woman.

  Nothing could bring me back here except a woman like this.

  But I can’t stay. It would only cause a public scandal. An outcry. People would clutch their pearls so hard they’d break.

  I take one more inhale of the pink grapefruit scent of her hair.

  One more caress of one soft, pink breast.

  One more swipe down and up her long, smooth leg.

  Slowly, I extract my cock that’s nestled in between her warm, firm little ass cheeks. I get up and decide to have a shower before I leave to go meet with my parole officer and look for a job. As much as I want to leave her scent on me, I can’t do all of that smelling like I just got laid.

  I smile as I stand under the hot spray, examining her bath products. Coconut almond soap. Grapefruit-scented shampoo. Hibiscus and lemon conditioner. Avocado hair mask. I catch myself smiling at all these tropical, feminine-smelling products, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve smiled in earnest in seven years—probably even longer. I don’t remember ever taking in a pure moment of joy.

  The closest I ever came was walking the perimeter of my family’s land and looking out at the sunrise over the low-lying prairie as it slopes down into the gentle hills near the Mississippi River.

  But that’s all gone for me now. I don’t have a farm and I don’t have a claim on this woman and her extensive collection of hair care products.

  I don’t even have my truck.

  It’s like the most lonesome country song ever written. No point in having a pity party about it.

  Just like my addiction counselor said, sometimes it’s not even one day at a time, but one moment at a time. And right now I’m just taking a shower. And the next moment, I’ll leave and put this woman out of my head.

  If I don’t, I won’t be able to survive.

  Chapter 4

  Drea

  After what Paul did to me last night, I do not care if I ever wake up again. I am still so blissed out in the morning-after haze that when a thud on the back door wakes me up, I don’t even care what’s happening.

  I rub my eyes, yawn and sit up, feeling the sweet soreness between my legs where he made me come two, three, four times. It’s like we were on the same REM cycle and woke at the same time to do it all over again, two more times last night.

  I peek inside my robe; my tits are covered in hickies.

  The thuds are more insistent now.

  I look beside me on the bed, but Paul is gone. The brief sigh of relief that I haven’t been caught in bed with a felon is quickly replaced by the feeling of missing him. The weight of him next to me in my bed. It was only one night, but…it was the best night of my life.

  Don’t get attached. It doesn’t matter what you said to each other in the letters. Men in prison say a lot of things to secure a good fuck when they’re released. You knew that going into this agreement.

  You wanted someone to fulfill your little breaking-and-entering fantasy, and he did. Now go and see what’s making that racket at the back door and move on with your life. Find a nice guy. Adopt a dog. Fix up the barn. Get some chickens, raise a family, and continue to be the best damn judge this backwater has ever seen.

  The thuds stop, and it turns into a single, huge boom that has the back door rattling on its hinges.

  What the actual…

  As I approach it, there’s one more very forceful and loud boom that sounds like cannon fire. I instinctively jump backwards as the door flies inward, wood splintering as the old worn hinges let loose.

  I scream. Standing on top of the broken door lying on my kitchen floor is my brother-in-law, Logan, holding a shotgun and breathing heavily.

  To say that I’m now sobered up from my sex-intoxicated state would be an understatement.

  “Drea! You’re all right!”

  My hands clutch my chest in case my hammering heart decides to fly out of my chest and I need to put it back in.

  I catch my breath and stammer, “Of c-c-course I’m fine. What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you on goddamn crystal meth?”

  The shouting and the banging and the crashing has brought a third person into the kitchen: a very damp Paul, dripping wet and loosely wrapped in a bath towel. Paul sees my wide and panicky eyes as I take him in.

  I look from him to Logan as I inwardly cringe.

  Nobody was supposed to know about this.

  Logan’s voice comes out in a rattle and his face is as white as my mussed bedsheets. “I came to check on you in case that creep came by,” he says, pointing at Paul. “Your bedroom window screen has been destroyed. I thought the worst.”

  I have to massage my temples and close my eyes for a moment to process. I sigh heavily, letting the insane rush of adrenaline dissipate.

  “As you can see, Logan, I’m fine.”

  His blanched expression turns to utter confusion. “But the screen…and him…”

  “My name’s Paul.”

  “I know who the fuck you are, Chet. What are you doing to my wife’s sister? Are you holding her hostage? Drea, is he holding you hostage?”

  I sigh. “Oh my god.”

  Paul takes over. “I’m not going to justify that with an answer. Run along home now and leave your adult family members to live their lives.”

  Logan’s mouth opens but he stops short with the sound of sirens coming up the long driveway from the county road.

  My eyes goggle at Logan and back at Paul. “What’s that? Who called the sheriff?”

  “I did,” Logan says. “Soon as I saw the shredded window screen.”

  “Are you fucking serious, Logan? He hasn’t committed any crimes! What did you tell them?”

  “I didn’t tell them anything specific, just that there might be a break-in and that it was definitely this felon asshole.”

  “Logan! You need to go out there and fix this. Paul could get into real trouble. He hasn’t even checked in with his parole officer yet.”

  Unexpectedly, Paul pulls me toward him by the waist and plants a kiss on my forehead. “I don’t want to make trouble for you. I’m gonna disappear now and you two just tell them Logan made a mistake.”

  The plea falls out of my mouth before I can stop myself. “Where will you go?”

  “Drea! Really?” Logan shouts, flabbergasted.

  “Shut up, Logan,” we both say.

  Paul looks deep into my eyes and his thumb and forefinger own my chin for a beat. He doesn’t answer me with words, but makes me understand with his eyes. He blinks hard. I see his chest rise and fall with a heavy breath.

  He’s telling me he doesn’t want to go.

  He’s telling me he doesn’t know where he’s going.

  He’s telling me he’s going to stay out of trouble.

  The heat in his eyes burns all the way down my body, telling me he will find me.

  It’s ten times more eye contact than we had during the brutal, fire-starting sex we had together all night last night. It’s more intimate eye contact than I have ever had with any man.

  I try to reciprocate but I’m not good at this.

  I try to tell him I want him to stay, but I can’t.

  I try to tell him there are a million things I want to talk about and do with him but I can’t because Logan is here.

  Paul gives me the most barely noticeable nod, and then he bolts to the back bedroom.

  I hear him deftly move around, presumably gathering up his strewn clothes, and then slipping out the way he fir
st came in last night.

  I slump into a kitchen chair.

  Logan is full of questions, none of which have answers he’s going to like. “Logan, when I give my statement, I want you to go outside. You can give them your statement and say whatever you like, but I swear to god, if you ever stick your nose in my personal business again, Thanksgiving is going to be pretty fucking awkward from here on out.”

  His eyes are not so full of judgment as they are concern.

  “You can make your own decisions; I’m just trying to protect you,” he replies, sounding confused and defeated.

  The sirens are at the house now and cut off when the patrol cars park. The boys in khaki leave the engines on as they make their way up the brick path from the gravel driveway.

  “I don’t need your protection. Tell them whatever the fuck you want to, and then go home and take care of your own wife,” I tell Logan.

  He shrugs apologetically. “Lemme fix your door first.”

  I shout at him, my anger taking over. “Leave it!”

  He awkwardly backs out of the door, muttering and apologizing, saying something about coming back later to put it back together with newer hinges.

  I hear him greet the deputies and shoot the shit with them. God, it’s Blake and Brooks—I recognize their voices from court.

  Dispatch could not have sent a more unprepared couple of bro dudes to explain what happened here. They are going to love the borderline-rape fantasy that played out here. God.

  How did my morning go from awesome to dreadful in sixty seconds?

  I stand to make coffee to kill time until the boys are ready for my statement, muttering to myself. “Why can’t people in this town just use the phone before jumping to conclusions? Not like there’s nothing else to do here…”

  Chapter 5

  Paul

  I may as well be a house fly that just landed on his desk and he’s ready to smash it.

  That’s about as much humanity as I am afforded in the eyes of my parole officer. I don’t know what else I expected. He’s said nothing to me since I sat down at his desk. It was unsettling while I filled out the paperwork. And now he’s wordlessly setting a paper cup in front of me with a meaningful clink of glass against steel.

  What is it about this office? Everything is nailed down and made of steel. The desk, the file cabinets, the doors. Feels almost as institutional as prison.

  I have never been known as a guy to break the silence first. So I just sit there, staring at the glass cup and back up at him.

  I look at his badge and remember his name. Harlan.

  I know the Harlans. Yet another family playing Big Fish/Little Pond in Middleburg.

  I have to control myself from rolling my eyes. I pass the time there thinking about my truck.

  I wonder where she is.

  Daddy’s farm was sold out from under me to that asshole Jackson Clay and his firebrand little wife. I wonder if that prick had the decency to keep my truck stored up on blocks and drain the fluids.

  It was more decency than I should expect. Or, if I’m honest, deserve, after the way I had spoken about his wife.

  A truck may be a sacred thing, but a man’s woman is a whole other level. Especially for Jackson.

  Blame the alcohol, blame the oxy, blame the major assholery of my past, but I was not looking forward to making amends with the Clays. Shit, didn’t they have enough from me with all that land they now owned? Thanks to them and their little band of cronies, the countryside outside of Middleburg was now virtually free of the “smell of money”—way fewer hog barns, feedlots and the associated manure lagoons.

  Yeah, real bunch of do-gooders has nearly taken over our town since I went away.

  Still, the good ol’ boys, like Harlan here, are not any better.

  It feels as though we are playing a game of chicken now and the first to speak loses.

  Without breaking his gaze he reaches down, picks up a small metal trash bin lined with plastic and spits into it a brown, wet mess.

  I can’t even believe he’s allowed to do that in here. Truly this is still a backwards little town when red-faced, tobacco-chewing bullies like him get to carry a gun.

  He may look at me like I’m the scum of the earth, but if he only knew that just last night I was in the bed of everybody’s favorite young judge, having my way with her long legs, soft little breasts and sweet, slick pussy.

  I don’t say it out loud. I would never do that to any woman, whether a one-night stand or otherwise.

  I don’t know which of those Drea is right now, but the mere memory in my mind, and in my tired, satisfied muscles, must be making me draw myself up taller. Getting fucked by a drop-dead gorgeous woman on my first night of freedom? Yeah, that’ll make me proud as hell.

  And it’s just helped me win this game of chicken.

  Harlan speaks first.

  “Well, let’s go then,” Harlan says, standing up with a grunt due to the beer belly that’s straining against the buttons of his uniform.

  “Go where?”

  “The pisser.”

  “Aw, Harlan, that’s sweet but I don’t swing that way.”

  That was a mistake. Harlan stands me up by grabbing me by the front of my shirt.

  “That homo shit might be funny up at Grayhill Penitentiary, but you better watch your pissant mouth or you’ll be doing drug tests with a chaperone one day in the Middleburg nursing home.”

  I grin. “I’ll either be dead or long gone from this one-horse town before then, unlike you, Harlan.”

  His beady eyes narrow on me. “You think you can read me, pretty boy?”

  “Since you asked. Yeah, Harlan, you were born here, you graduated by the skin of your teeth from Middleburg High School because mostly you skipped class and hung out back behind the gym chewing your dip instead of doing your Spanish homework. After school you realized you didn’t have a plan, and since you couldn’t make a living out of making donuts on the football field with the truck daddy bought you, you figured the military was the answer. Which was it, Harlan? The Army? Navy?”

  Still holding the trash can in his hand, he spits again, this time breaking eye contact to do it, just for a second. But it’s enough to tell me I’m getting to him.

  “The Corps,” he says.

  “Of course it was. But then you found out that shit was hard! And you couldn’t hack it. Directionless, you came back home where daddy helped you get into the bail bondsman business. A bruiser like you, he figured you were tough enough. But then you started complaining it was boring, and one favor after another landed you here, in this institutional-green office with no windows where all you have to look forward to each day is the company of ex-cons, a few hours spent on YouPorn, and your own body odor.”

  He wants to hit me so bad. Not as bad as I’d like to hit him.

  Neither of us try it though.

  “In the john, you fuckin’ psychopath.”

  I enjoy the shit-eating grin on my face while in the pisser, filling the little glass test cup as Harlan watches. He’s extremely uncomfortable so I take my sweet time.

  It doesn’t bother me any. I’ve been in a fish bowl for seven fucking years. At least now I get to walk down to Hawk’s Diner when I’m done here. Gonna rehydrate with a strawberry milkshake in an old-timey stainless steel cup as tall as my boots.

  Before I leave, Harlan roughly shoves a manila envelope into my chest. “Stay clean. Get a job. Call me tomorrow with a real address. You can’t live on the streets, it’s against city ordinance.”

  Before I leave I throw one more comment over my shoulder. “Nicotine’s a drug, you know. This town won’t suffer a rehabilitated criminal but they sure do suffer hypocrites.”

  I hear Harlan mutter something under his breath as I beat it and head down to Hawk’s.

  It’s easy to get clean in prison.

  I never went in for contraband prison wine and other substances. I just didn’t see the point.

  In my old life, I like
d to get drunk and fight. Get drunk and drive donuts on the high school football field, just like the Harlan boys. Shit, I probably had one or two of those fuckers in the back of my truck on any given night of general hell raising and picking fights.

  I learned real fast in prison that starting fights is a quick way to get me put in solitary.

  And I didn’t have a truck to do donuts in while I was on the inside. Obviously.

  And screwing? Well, there wasn’t anyone on the inside in a men’s penitentiary I wanted to screw. Doesn’t matter to me none if that’s your thing; it just didn’t do it for me. And I kept my head down so I never ended up being a target for the rapists.

  So my penchant for alcohol was the first thing that got fixed during this time in prison.

  But now that I’m out, now that I’m clean, and now that I’m without a job, I’m so damn bored.

  I want to go see Drea, but in the work I’ve done in recovery, I recognize this feeling as the same one I used to get for drugs and alcohol. Drea could quickly become my new drug. But I can’t let that happen. She’ll get caught and her career will be over. So I gotta sit with that desire until it passes, instead of numbing it or giving in to it.

  Hawk’s Diner is just a short walk from the parole office. I seat myself and then put my head down to study the menu, even though I know what I want.

  I feel like people are staring at me. I guess I better get used to it.

  “What can I get ya?”

  A pair of young legs appears next to me. I glance up and see a massive pregnant belly. For a second, my heart clenches. It’s a beautiful sight, and something I’ll probably never get to have the longer I stay in this town. Who would want Chet the felon to father her baby?

  My eyes reach her face and something changes in her expression from “What can I get ya,” to “Oh my effing god.” Her eyes narrow at me and the hands that are holding the pen and paper pad drop to cover her belly.

  Something in her face is familiar. She’s got curly hair and a short, curvy frame, but her eyes, nose and chin are shockingly familiar.