I felt something inside of me twinge at that.
I hated that he had to spend time in prison. Especially for avenging his dead fiancée.
There was a line that people shouldn’t cross…and if they did, you should have a free ride to do whatever you wanted to that person. Killing people was wrong, I knew. But killing people for killing your fiancée? Well, that seemed fair to me.
“Here you go.” He held out the spoon.
I took it, being sure not to touch his fingers when I did.
“My sister bought them for me,” he started, startling me with the intro into his story seeing as his breath was right on the back of my neck. “I thought they were so cool…they matched the kitchen. Vanessa hated them.”
I made a sound in the back of my throat. “Well, that sucks because I think they’re pretty cool.”
It wasn’t until we were both walking outside with our coffee that I realized it was somewhat chilly.
“Crap,” I said. “I left my jacket on the hammock.”
We both looked over toward the hammock.
The next time the lightning lit up the sky, we saw my one and only jacket on the ground getting pummeled into a muddy puddle.
“I have a blanket you can use for now,” he murmured as he set his coffee down onto the railing and disappeared inside. He came back moments later and handed it to me.
I took it gratefully, wrapped it around my shoulders as best I could with the coffee still in my hand, and nearly orgasmed right there on the spot when the smell of him surrounded me.
Neither of us said a word for a while after that.
Me because I was trying to decide how to steal the blanket and never return it, and him because he was literally enraptured with the lightning streaking across the sky.
It was only when the silence went on too long that my thoughts got the better of me, and words popped out of my mouth that I should’ve stopped myself from saying.
Chapter 10
If a cow doesn’t produce milk, is it a milk dud or an udder failure?
-Harleigh to Slate
Slate
“You don’t seem that broken up about your…fiancée,” she said. “You seem very well put together about it all. As if you have your shit straight and you’re not sitting here in a funk thinking in the past.”
I sat back in my chair and stared at the woman, practically on the edge of my seat waiting for the lightning to light up the sky just so I could get a glimpse of her. My blanket that I slept with every single night was wrapped around her, and my hands were curled into fists as I stopped myself from reaching over and dragging her over to me.
“I’m not broken up about it anymore,” I murmured. “I had years in prison to come to terms with the fact that she’s gone.”
I looked down at my hands.
“But, saying that, Vanessa wasn’t really mine.”
Her sharp inhale had me glancing away from her and back to the sky.
Was I really about to say this aloud?
“What?” she breathed.
Yep, I was. I was going to do it.
“I’m not the man that got her pregnant,” I said, startling the ever-loving shit out of her.
She gasped and leaned forward. “What?”
I nodded once.
“You heard me,” I said. “The baby wasn’t mine.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it. “Wasn’t your…what?”
It was obvious that she couldn’t get her brain to wrap around my words.
The baby wasn’t his? I could practically see that thought on the edge of her lips, waiting to spill over.
He had a fiancée that was pregnant with a child that wasn’t his?
That’s pretty much why I’d kept the whole thing a secret. I knew nobody would believe me easily…but for some reason, I needed Harleigh to know that Vanessa wasn’t all that she was cracked up to be.
“About a week before Vanessa was shot, I found out that she was carrying another man’s baby,” I murmured, going into the tale that had practically ruined me.
I heard the swing creak as she pushed herself off and started to rock it slowly with one toe.
“How’d you find out?” she asked curiously.
I took a sip of my coffee, loving the bitter taste as it slid down my throat.
“I was at the house” —I gestured to the house behind me— “working on some final stuff that we had to work on. I was already living here, doing repairs in my spare time. But since the bathroom was still in disrepair, she chose to live at her apartment until we could get it fixed.”
Harleigh made a moaning sound from her seat.
I grinned and looked back over at her. “It’s not one of those stories…at least…not yet.”
She made a sound in the back of her throat and went back to drinking her coffee. Though I couldn’t see her face since the particular seat she’d chosen was in mostly shadows, I knew that her eyes were on me.
“Since I was paying her medical bills, she’d had all the paperwork for her OB/GYN sent to the new address. I went out to check the mail the day that I found out and found a couple of letters that were confusing to me. Something called a ‘quad screen’ that kind of scared the crap out of me. Another was some results from her gestational diabetes test. It said that they’d been trying to reach her by phone and couldn’t. Anyway, after I couldn’t get ahold of her by phone, I got on Google and started to research some of the things on the paper that were highlighted as abnormal. When I got to one that was what they considered a ‘dormant condition’ unless both parents carried the gene, or whatever it’s called…” I paused. “Another thing that caught my eye in the notes that were sent in the mail was a thing called RH. Have you ever heard of that?”
“Yes, why?” she wondered.
“Well, about a month or two before Vanessa wound up pregnant, there was this blood drive at work, and we got to talking about how we were both O negative. We jokingly said if something happened to either one of us, we’d be able to donate easily.” I shook my head. “Anyway, I started to research that on Google, too and found out that with both of us having the same blood type, the baby should’ve been the same blood type, too. Both of us had a negative RH factor. Only, the paperwork that I was reading said that the baby carried an RH positive factor, and that she would have to receive some injection so that if for some reason her baby’s blood would be introduced to her blood, her body wouldn’t try to fight the baby as a ‘foreign body’ or something or another by producing antibodies. Which got me to thinking…how did our baby get a positive RH factor?”
“Oh, shit,” she murmured. “Shit, shit, shit.”
I was already nodding my head. “Exactly. So I went over there, papers in hand, and asked her, point blank.”
Lightning streaked across the sky once more.
“Yep,” I snorted at the look on her face. “That’s exactly what I thought, too.”
She shook her head, her face a mask of confusion. “Whhhhhy? Doesn’t she know from soap operas and books that keeping that secret rarely works?”
My lips twitched. “I’m not sure, honestly. But yeah…she was surprised that I’d found out. Honestly and truly, she looked so flabbergasted that I’d found out that she didn’t know what to say.”
“And what happened next?” She leaned forward and placed her empty coffee cup on the edge of the railing, then turned back more fully to me until she was practically sitting sideways in the swing. She was staring at me through the triangle the chains made, and her elbow was resting on the arm of the swing, her chin in her hands.
If I could’ve taken a picture right then, I would have.
Just so I could remember what she looked like right then in that moment in time.
“I forgot that we were supposed to go out on a double date with a buddy from work,” I said. “So I’m standing there, hands on my hips, pissed as hell, trying to have a conversation with her in her hallway when I hear the booted footsteps of someone o
n the stairs. But we’re in such a heated argument that neither one of us stopped our discussion. I asked her who she’s slept with instead of me, and I hear a sound out of a man’s throat clear from behind me. I whirl around, and there’s our friend, standing there like he’s been poleaxed.”
She slaps her hand against her forehead. “And that’s when you realize that she’s slept with your friend!”
I began nodding. “Yes, exactly. The look on his face confirmed it, paired with the ‘son of a bitch’ that came out of her mouth.”
Harleigh sighed then just as a gust of wind blew through and blew her hair back from her face.
The lightning that continuously streaked across the sky kept lighting her up in random blasts, giving me views of her face and expression that were making my heart beat fast.
“What did you do then?” she asked.
“Then Vanessa tried to explain how ‘it was just one time’ and ‘it didn’t mean anything,’” I explained. “My buddy, Charles, I actually believed. Charles, apparently, had no real recollection of the night in question. He knew that he’d slept with someone, but he’d had no clue that it was Vanessa.”
“You believed him?” she asked curiously.
I nodded. “Vanessa said that they’d both had really bad shifts. I’d been off that day to get a root canal. They’d been partnered up, and a really bad accident involving a child and a pregnant woman occurred toward the end of their shifts. After work, they went to a bar and drank away their worries. Though Vanessa stopped before she got drunk, whereas Charles didn’t. The cab they got drove them back to Vanessa’s apartment, and from there, Vanessa took advantage, for lack of a better word. Apparently after they were done, she sent him home in a cab, and then went on living her life as if she hadn’t just irrevocably changed two lives with the decisions she decided to make.”
“And what happened after you found out?” she asked. “Did you leave her?”
“Not at first,” I admitted. “At least, not that she knew. I knew that day that she died, though, that I was going to leave her. I couldn’t do it. After dealing with all the shit from my mom and dad hating her, paired with me having mixed feelings for her, paired with raising a baby with her that wasn’t mine—that Charles told us point blank that he would also be a part of—I just didn’t think I could do it.”
“Your parents?” She sounded confused.
“My parents are a topic for another time,” I laughed. “They’re fuckin’ nuts, and it takes alcohol to talk about them, not coffee.”
She snickered.
“Needless to say, I don’t get along with them,” I said.
“What about Charles?” I asked. “When Vanessa passed…what did y’all do?”
“I was going to prison. Vanessa was dead. The baby was too young, his lungs underdeveloped. He didn’t make it.” I shook my head. “There was no reason to drag Charles’ name through the mud…so I didn’t.”
“Have you talked to Charles since you got out?” she questioned.
I nodded. “Actually, yes. I talked to him a few days ago when he came into the bakery. He’s doing well. Though…he’s still single. Whatever shit Vanessa put him through has kind of turned him into a standoffish guy. He’s definitely not the friend I remembered having before I went into prison.”
“You should hang out with him more,” she suggested. “He sounds like he could use a friend. Is he still a cop?”
I nodded. “He is.”
Another gust of wind carrying some rain, followed by a loud boom of thunder, had Harleigh squeaking in surprise.
I grinned as I felt the light mist settle over my skin.
Why did talking to this woman make me feel like I was free?
“My dad calls this baby-making weather,” she said out of the blue. “Every time it rains like this. Lightning. Thunder. Wind. It’s an inside joke between him and his friends. I think every single one of his friends has a kid that they claim was conceived during ‘baby-making weather.’”
I found myself grinning. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
I ran my hands up and down the length of my arms, feeling a slight chill settle over me.
Normally I didn’t get cold. Paired with it being in the upper fifties, I should’ve been perfectly content out there on the porch. But the wind was now really blowing, and every few seconds I’d get misted with the cool rain all over again, making my body feel chilled.
“I can share my blanket,” she offered, shaking it at me.
I told myself that I shouldn’t do it.
I told myself that it was a bad idea.
I told myself to sit back down and not do what I was about to do.
Yet…I couldn’t stop myself.
I wanted to move to the swing next to her. I also wanted to cuddle under that blanket and share it with her, feeling her body pressed against mine. Even if it was only our arms touching.
Somehow, I found myself moving in closer.
Standing up, I walked over to the swing and took a seat next to her, heart pounding.
She lifted the blanket and held it up for me, urging me to move closer.
It was a big blanket. King-sized at least.
There really was no reason for me to move closer.
Yet…I did it anyway.
I moved closer until her entire left side was plastered to my right.
Her legs were curled up onto the swing, though, making her thigh press against my chest.
Instantly the chill left me, and something else replaced it—need.
God, I wanted the woman.
Badly.
I knew it was a bad idea.
I knew that I should likely stay away.
I knew it, yet I stayed where I was anyway.
Stretching my arm out over the top of the swing, I slowly started to rock us back and forth, hyper-aware of how hot and soft her body felt pressed lightly against mine.
She wasn’t leaning into me per se, but she wasn’t leaning away, either.
“How many more hours of sleep do you need to catch?” I asked curiously.
She took a few seconds to answer, making my lips twitch.
“Umm.” Her voice sounded husky. “Probably at least two or three. Possibly even more. I rarely get over four hours of sleep a day, but I always shoot for at least six. Though it never happens.”
I thought about asking her for more details on why she got so little sleep, but I liked the softness of her body. I liked the way she kept leaning farther and farther into me, giving me more and more of her weight.
Soon she’d have her head resting on my chest.
“I haven’t caught any,” I admitted. “I had some work to do when I got home.”
“What kind of work?” she asked curiously.
I felt my lips twitch. “The kind that has to do with your dad. Are you privy to all that goes on at Free?”
She snorted. “Mostly. I have a few things that I help them with upon occasion, but they try to keep us out of it. Janie, you met her, right?”
At my nod, she continued. “Janie kind of wormed her way in, working on the computers and running background checks, etc. When she started making herself really useful, they offered her a job. Me, on the other hand? I don’t really have anything to offer them. I don’t have any special skills or anything like Janie.”
Janie was a computer wizard. I’d learned over the last couple of days about a lot of the people that worked for the organization. Janie was the youngest of them all, followed shortly by Hoax and his friend who, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember his name.
Slowly but surely, the men that created the organization were finding people they trusted to take over. Though, I wouldn’t be one of those people.
Max may trust me and want me to do it, but I had other reasons for not wanting to stay—I didn’t want to get another woman killed.
“I have to apologize,” Harleigh said softly, jumping slightly when a loud boom of thunder shook the still ni
ght air around us. “I was the one to give your name to my father.”
“You were?” I asked curiously. “When did you do that?”
She shifted against me and leaned even more into my side, positioning her legs to rest against my hard thigh.
“When I first met you a few years ago,” she answered. “Did my dad tell you about Tray and Dre?”
“No,” I answered. “You do remember I thought y’all were married, right?”
I heard her giggle.
“Tray is Dre’s brother…” she began the story, telling me about Dre, the home invader, and the memory loss associated with their story. “The man that lives across the street.” She lifted her arm and pointed to the house. The one that had the moving truck in front of it not too long ago. “That’s Dre’s…um, man.”
I made a grunting sound in my throat.
“That just fuckin’ sucks,” I admitted. “Did Dre ever try to get in there?”
“Dre’s afraid to push him,” she admitted. “Any time Dre gets close to him, Craig starts to get agitated. As if he’s remembering something, but he’s purposefully suppressing the memories—at least that’s what I think he’s doing anyway.”
I tapped my bottom lip with one finger, thinking.
“I’ve seen him staring at your house before,” I found myself saying. “Just standing there, watching. I almost went over there and asked him what his problem was. I’m kind of wishing I did, now.”
Harleigh made a noise in the back of her throat and leaned a little farther into me.
My arm snaked just a little bit farther around her, cupping her shoulder and part of her upper arm now.
“You’re like the smallest person I’ve ever had snuggled up against me,” I found myself saying.
She snorted. “I’m vertically challenged. I get it from my mama.”
I rolled my eyes and grinned. “I would’ve never guessed.”
“I was like a pound at birth.” She yawned. “I was born prematurely. We have pictures of me with my dad’s wedding ring around my ankle. And also me in a Sonic cup. They’re framed on the mantle at my parents’ place.”
A gust of wind had some of her hair up and blowing across my face, and I absently reached over and tucked it back down but left my hand in her hair.
F-Bomb (The Bear Bottom Guardians MC Book 9) Page 11
