At the time, I’d thought he was like a soldier robot, barking out instructions and making calls. Now, I saw him as a dad who loved his kids completely. He’d taken over the planning and organization, bossed us all around, yelled multiple times that we couldn’t organize a piss in a toilet, and had called in his security team to ‘get their gadgets and do shit to find them.’
Following behind Dale as he walked into the bar, I scanned the room and grinned when I saw Ari sitting at a table with her family, Sadie, her dad, and Rich, all of them watching the new installment of the girls’ night in.
“Why won’t this just end?” she whined, burying her face in my chest as soon as I sat down next to her. “I’ll give you the best blow job of your life if you pull the plug.”
Although it was tempting, I still wasn’t doing it. I was also hoping no one had heard it. Given that none of the people around us looked like they were going to stab me with a pretzel stick, I doubted they had.
“Y’all were in here for hours drinking, baby. There’s a lot to go through.” I didn’t ruin the surprise by telling her that the other hours had stuff in them that was too private to share, nor did I tell her that I knew for a fact this was the last one they had.
“You suck!”
Kissing her on the top of the head, I angled her away so I could whisper in her ear, “You can suck me later.”
Turning my chair slightly, I got a clear view of the wall and what was happening on the screen at that moment.
5h 04m 10s into the video
It was clear to see that by this point, the girls were trashed. Not just wasted, but completely wasted. There was no coordination, no focusing, no equilibrium, nada.
There was a brief lull in conversation as they all sat, smiling at nothing, but then Ari sat up straight, looked in Sadie’s direction, and told her excitedly, “I have a wiener.”
There was a delay in her reaction, but when it came, Sadie almost rocked herself off her chair.
“Does that mean the same thing I use the word for?”
“Of course,” Ari said proudly, then added, “I have two.”
Sadie’s mouth opened and closed, then got stuck on open as she blinked rapidly. “You have two wieners?”
Beau leaned across and made a mad swipe for Ari’s hand, missing it twice but eventually finding it. “I’m so happy for you. I feel like I’ve known you my whole life, and you’ve always just been Ariana to me. This is just awesome-uh-sum-sum-sum.”
“How long have you known each other?” Sadie asked, smiling widely at both girls like this was a revelation circle or something.
“Only since we were three,” Beau sighed. “We lost out on so much time, not knowing the other one was out there.”
Beau and Ari glanced at each other after watching this, both of them wearing the same ‘kill me now’ expressions as people started chuckling at their tables. That’s when I noticed how full the bar was tonight.
What followed on the screen was an emotional outburst of their feelings for each other and questions about why they hadn’t been best friends sooner.
Halfway through it, Sadie suddenly sat up straight. “Wait, did you say you had two peckers?”
Slowly turning her head to look at her, Ari frowned at the question. “I dunno?”
“You said you had two wieners or did I imagine that?”
Beau sat back, her eyes wide and excited. “You did. Hey, that’s kinda smart. Men have to pick a side to shove it into, and I’ve always thought it must be a hard choice to make. Like, does it depend on the day? Their mood? What pants they’re wearing? Or is it a whole man thing they can’t share?” When Ari and Sadie just looked at her blankly, she just shrugged. “You get to divide and conquer—one tucked on both sides. Or wait, do you put them both on one side? That’s got to be… bulky.”
“I just put one under each arm,” Ari told them, demonstrating with her arms curved out either side of her torso. “If you put them under one arm, you’re gonna end up panicking about dropping one or your balance.”
“You put them under your arms?” Sadie breathed.
Spoiler alert: when they found out they were discussing Ari’s dogs and not if she had two penises, there was a lot of disappointment. It led to a discussion on the manly version of size, including how they make each inch eight standard inches.
Somehow, that then ended up with a discussion on romance books.
“When I was fifteen, I nicked one of Gran’s bodice ripper romances. It was set like three hundred years ago, and this highlander type of guy captured his enemy's daughter. Anyway, the author described her pubes as ‘a thatch of hair on her mound,’ and that was a mega gross mental image. Anyway,” Sadie sighed, spinning her hand in the air, “a few years later, one of my brothers came home after a night with this bird. He said she had a lot of hair down there,” she pointed at her crotch under the table. “I said it couldn’t have been that bad, so he says it was like the roof of a thatched cottage, and that’s when it all made sense why I was so grossed out by the ‘thatch of hair’ description. It put me off reading romance for years.”
“Why’s that so bad?” Beau and Ari asked at the same time.
Pulling her phone out, Sadie closed one eye as she tried to unlock it, forgetting it had facial recognition security and not her thumbprint. It might also be pointed out that with one eye shut, it wasn’t going to unlock.
Shaking it, she opened her other eye to yell at it, whooping when it unlocked. “I put the fear in you, hah!” she yelled at it, then looked at Beau. “What was I doing?”
“Explaining why a thatch of hair was gross.”
“Ah,” Sadie nodded, tapping her screen. “Yeah, there are some properties with thatched roofs in the UK. They make them out of branches and whatever. Actually,” she paused, frowning as she looked at the table now, “I don’t know what they use? Maybe they just pick branches up that they come across for recycling, you know?” Both ladies nodded like they understood it. “So, they look pretty, but these branches are all mashed together and kept in place with wire to make a seriously thick roof on the property. They make them so tightly packed that they can last one hundred years before they need replacing.”
Beau sat back, her eyes wide. “Wow, that’s a lot.”
Holding her phone up to show them the screen, Sadie shouted, “Well, imagine your pubes looking like this. That’s what I see when I think about the thatch of hair description in that book. The poor bloke probably had to fight his way through the tightly packed hair. All I can see is a matted minge—”
Beau shuddered and gagged at the mental image, but Ari was stuck on her wording. “A matted what?”
“Minge. You know, your nunney.”
“Ew!”
Around us, screens lit up as people searched for what Sadie was talking about, then a chorus of gags and groans followed, so I pulled my phone up and typed in ‘thatched cottage roof.’ Comparing pubes to what was in the picture in front of me… those roofs looked like they were twenty inches thick—that’s some gross pubic hair.
“Of course, once they get to the stage of needing to be replaced, they grow moss and start to rot…”
Holding her fist up to my mouth, Ari begged, “Please stop.”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to get that mental image out of my head,” Beau groaned. “A rotting thatch. That poor vagina.”
Taking a mouthful of her drink, Sadie gestured at Beau with the glass. “Tell that to your exploding snatch.”
“S’true,” Ari slurred, nodding like a bobblehead. “Know what I get confused about when I’m reading? When they’re doing the dirty, and the guy just slips right into her,” she muttered. “If you’re fitting a—hopefully—big peg into a small hole, you gotta take it in stages. How much of a loosey-goosey are you if the dude just swooshes right in?”
Then, just in case the girls didn’t understand the word ‘swooshes,’ she moved her arm through the air like an airplane, making a whooshing noise with
it.
One of the guys watching it shouted out, “Is this really what women talk about when they’re drunk?”
Shonelle, the woman who was a bitch to everyone, but especially Bonnie and Sadie—who, of course, had to be there—sneered, “No, that’s just disgusting. Most of us talk about shoes, hair, and classy stuff.”
In a rare act of badass, Bonnie replied loudly, “She’s lying. Women discuss anything and everything, sober or drunk. Men discuss what they want to, too.”
Standing up—making sure her chair made a loud and dramatic noise on the floor to get her everyone’s attention—Shonelle snapped, “That’s where you’re wrong. I wouldn’t lower myself to talk about stuff like that. It’s disgusting. But, then, I wouldn’t expect anything less from her.”
There was no doubt in anyone’s minds who she meant, especially seeing as how she was pointing and glaring at Sadie.
“She probably only talks about how many embryo’s souls she’s fed on this week,” Sadie mumbled to the rest of us, rolling her eyes.
She couldn’t have heard what Sadie said, but her eyes narrowed on her anyway. Before she could try to embarrass her even more, Bonnie called out, “Considering you just farted loud enough for the bar to hear and to make sure you had people’s attention, I’d think you’d understand how dumb your words were.”
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one whose mouth dropped open hearing Bonnie taking on the woman who’d bullied her for so long. I’d only heard about some of it, but what little I knew was terrible. I also knew Bonnie didn’t defend herself ever, she was too shy and unsure to do it, so it was awesome.
“I didn’t fart, it was my chair on the floor.”
Nodding sympathetically, Bonnie sighed, “I believe you,” with an exaggerated wink. “My brother used to blame it on squeaky floorboards.”
“You bi—”
“I’d advise you to either sit the hell down and shut the fuck up, or you can leave and be banned for the rest of your life. The decision’s yours,” Archer growled as he walked up behind Bonnie’s chair.
The sneer on Shonelle’s face was unattractive. “You don’t have the authority to do that.”
“Yeah, he does,” Tate shouted from the entrance to the hallway that led to the office and the bathrooms. “So do I, and so does my wife. In fact, all of our family have the authority to do that, including Bonnie and Sadie.”
Her face paled slightly, but it was Elijah who struck the final blow. “I don’t know what you were fed as a kid, but it was high on delusion and low on morals and integrity. You’ve bullied your way through your life, using it to feel validated and satisfied, and that’s just sad. Now, I think you’ve said enough for tonight, so sit down and be quiet.”
Shocking the shit out of the rest of us, she did as he’d said, but her expression made it clear the war wasn’t over.
Pulling my attention away from her and putting her bullshit to the back of my mind, I focused on the woman I loved. I hadn’t told her yet, I didn’t want her to associate it with what she’d gone through, but I needed to let her know soon.
She was leaning into Beau, whispering frantically to her about something before nodding and shooting me a smile.
“I’ll be right back. I just need to go and get something from the office with Beau.”
And, not giving me a chance to answer, she got up and ran in the direction of the hallway.
“Nice, no one thought about the cripple,” Sadie huffed, but the smile on her face as her dad rolled his eyes proved she was just messing around.
Now, the smile on Elijah’s face said he was serious about something. Her.
“Hey, Parker?” Sadie asked, awkwardly sitting down next to Dale and me, anxiously wringing her hands together.
She looked pale and like she was in pain. “Are you okay? is it your leg?”
“No, no,” she replied quickly, her eyes darting from me to Dale and back again. “I just... I wanted to...” she broke off with a pained sigh.
Picking up his beer, Dale motioned at the other end of the bar. “I can leave y’all to talk if that’s—"
Clearing her throat, she took a deep breath and straightened her spine. “No, this concerns you, too, I think, Dale. I just wanted to say something. I heard what they were saying about you that day,” she cringed, looking at me sadly. “Ariana knows my story, but I wanted to tell both of you some of it, so you know I understand.”
“You don’t have to, Sadie. I appreciate you offering, but—"
Cutting me off like she’d done to Dale, she squared her shoulders and proceeded to blow both of our minds. She always acted so confident and self-assured, but hearing what had happened, the years of anxiety and panic attacks, and what brought her here... It blew my fucking mind.
At the end of it, Dale had finished both our beers and was wearing the same expression that I knew I was.
“I’m telling you this because I knew something about you that I know can make you feel uncomfortable around people who know the story. I understand those feelings. I also know what it’s like to have what I was told is called ‘survivor’s guilt.’ Other women didn’t get to escape what I did, and even though I’m so relieved I wasn’t...” she broke off, rubbing her arms like she was cold or just needed the comfort. “Even though he didn’t succeed with me, I still feel guilty that I was spared what they had done to them. I figured if you knew my story, it’d help both of you maybe not look at me like I was dangerous to your safety.”
Jesus Christ, until she said it, I hadn’t realized that was an issue for me, but she was right. Part of my problem in the last three weeks had been precisely that.
“Thank you, Sadie. I’ve been feeling off since it happened.”
Smiling sadly at me, she nodded slowly. “I get it, and I also get how you feel as well, Dale.”
Not having any words, Dale moved swiftly and was hugging her before I could even process what he was doing.
“Thanks, sweet Sadie. That means a lot!”
Over her head, I could see Elijah watching my brother with narrowed eyes, but when he looked at me, he just flared his nostrils and nodded, looking satisfied we hadn’t upset her.
Pulling away from him, she tucked a chunk of her pale blonde hair behind her ear with a shaky hand. “I also want you to understand that I know how vulnerable it makes you feel, so I wanted to give that back to you to hopefully help you settle. Ari said you’d had nightmares and been off since it happened, and I knew part of it would be because of that. It also goes without saying that your story is safe with me, and if either of you ever need anything...” she trailed off and braced like she was expecting us to shoot her down or laugh in her face.
And it was at that precise moment that I saw what Ari and her family must have seen when they met her—she was wounded inside. I wasn’t as astute as they were, so it’d taken me longer to see it, but now I was wondering how I hadn’t before. Maybe it was the confident woman persona she put on? Perhaps it was the fact she acted like she was made out of titanium? But I felt like shit for not seeing it.
I also felt bad about her bracing the way she was. That came from experience, not just fear. She’d gone through close to what I had in all the ways I’d gone through them. Mother fucker!
Glancing at Dale, I knew from the grim expression that he felt it too. Both of us reached out at the same time and surrounded her in a double hug.
“I’ll do that, honey, and I just want to let you know, too, that your secret’s safe with us.”
“Means a lot you’d share it with us, Sadie,” Dale murmured. “You’re first on my list if I need someone to talk to.”
Wiping under her eyes, she pulled away slightly. “We’re like the three musketeers, eh?” She snickered.
And I realized all over again how lucky me and my brother were. The before had been so ugly, and I felt like we were drowning. The now made it easy to breathe and was so far from ugly there wasn’t a name for it.
“I like that,” Dale mused.
“Let me tell you about the time Parker scarred me as a kid when I caught him playing with his sword...”
Seventeen
Ariana
“Here,” Beau said, thrusting a tampon at me. “I knew I had one in there.”
How she could find anything in her purse was an enigma, but I was thanking all that was holy she’d found one for me. Normally I was prepared, but distractions undoubtedly led to mistakes like this, and you could say I’d been distracted recently. It would be an understatement, but you could say it.
Before I could thank her, though, the door to the office opened behind me. I’ll never be able to understand why I did it, but as soon as I heard my brother’s voice, I threw the tampon back at her. Almost like it played out in slow motion, she reached up to catch it, her expression horrified, and bobbled it a couple of times.
On the last tap of her hand, the long package spun and landed under her tank in the space made by her cleavage, leaving half of it poking out.
“Uh, is this a bad time?” Tate asked as I spun around to smile at the doorway. Behind him stood Levi, Gramps, and Parker, all of them looking sympathetically at poor Beau.
“Nope. I’m just going to...” she trailed off and then plucked the tampon out. “Uh, bathroom. Damn periods, never know when those gushers—" she stopped and looked at me horrified. “I mean suckers, are going to arrive. Got to just plug it up and—”
A groan and whimper sounded from deeper in the hallway, and, almost like it reminded them they’d had a reason for coming here, all the men stood up straighter.
“We had a surprise for you,” Gramps sighed, rubbing his face with both hands. “Ah shit, this poor guy just can’t catch a break!”
Levi moved away from us, and I heard him hissing at someone to “man the fuck up.”
Then it clicked.
Forbidden Gold (Providence Gold Book 5) Page 27
