Quit Bein' Ugly

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  I winced.

  He was right.

  “Alfie does, too,” I confirmed.

  Croft looked at me. “The nerd.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Very original.”

  Croft smirked before taking another bite of pizza.

  “You know,” Raleigh said. “Croft was a nerd when he was younger, too. He was also in the band. He wasn’t nearly as cute as he is now.”

  “Raleigh…” Croft warned her.

  Raleigh ignored him, though.

  Instead, she focused on me.

  “He also didn’t kiss a girl until he was a sophomore in college,” Raleigh continued, looking at me with a sinister smile on her face. “He used to be known as…”

  Croft hit her in the face with a piece of pizza.

  The pizza slid all the way down to her lap. Her face covered in sauce, she looked freakin’ hilarious.

  My mouth opened as I turned and looked at Croft. Croft who was calmly reaching for another piece of pizza as if he hadn’t thrown the last one at his sister.

  “You did not just do that,” Raleigh squeaked, picking up the pizza she’d been hit with and taking a vicious bite.

  “Children,” Ezra started.

  “Gavin was my mediator,” Mrs. Crusie sighed. “These two always fought like cats and dogs. Gavin was the one that got along with them both, and then made them like each other as long as he was around. It’s always been like this. And, just sayin’, but Raleigh was the one to give Croft that awful nickname, so I can see why he doesn’t want it mentioned. It practically ruined Croft’s senior year of high school.”

  Now that had me intrigued. “What was the nickname?”

  Croft was already shaking his head.

  “Come on,” I pleaded. “Please?”

  Croft’s eyes were hot as they landed on me.

  Raleigh leaned forward and acted like she was about to share state secrets with me.

  “His name was Crop Dust,” she whispered. “Because he had really, really bad gas.” She paused. “Actually, he had really bad smelling shits, too. It’s like something crawled into his ass and died.”

  Croft raised his good hand and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “He still does,” Raleigh continued, not knowing how pissed her brother was getting.

  “Raleigh,” Ezra warned. “You’re pushing.”

  “Well.” Raleigh shrugged. “She wanted to know.”

  I had. But not at the expense of what Croft was now looking like.

  Murderous. Embarrassed. Disgusted.

  “Sorry I pushed,” I whispered to Croft.

  He raised his shoulder.

  “It made me who I am today,” he admitted. “I wasn’t the most pleasant looking of kids. I was chunky, unhealthy, and I stunk. But not because of what she said, but because I was very bad at hygiene. I just… didn’t see what the big deal was. Anyway, my senior year was god-awful. The bullying was insane, and that was what pushed me to become a lawyer, lose the excess weight, and become healthy. I started CrossFit my junior year of college and haven’t looked back since.”

  I felt something tug at my heart.

  “Gavin was our good kid.” Mr. Crusie laughed. “He was the one that never had any problems. He was socially accepted, very popular, and loved his brother and sister. Raleigh was the awkward, accident prone one. Croft was the band nerd. But Gavin? Jesus, Gavin was perfect.”

  Everyone went silent at that.

  Then Raleigh sniffed, her eyes turning to me.

  “Gavin had been playing mid-season. He’d come up to bat his second time, and the pitcher had thrown a wild pitch and struck him in the chest. The ball had made contact with his heart at just the right moment—according to doctors—and his heart had stopped. He’d died in the middle of that field, and despite the coach at the time, as well as my own father, giving him CPR, he didn’t make it,” Raleigh said softly.

  I’d actually heard that from quite a few people, but I was going to let her talk.

  It seemed like Gavin didn’t get much talk time lately, and if they wanted to talk about him, I wanted to listen.

  “That’s why you were at the school, right?” I asked. “When that kid nearly hit me with my computer? To donate the Heart Guard shirts?”

  Croft nodded as he absently took a bite of his pizza.

  “I donate to the area schools every year,” he confirmed. “I spend the months of January and February schmoozing with the rich of this area collecting donations. They’re all donated in Gavin’s name.”

  “That’s sweet,” I replied. “That you do that. I’ve also heard that you make it to almost every single one of Gun Barrel High’s baseball games. And you’re also the reason that they have defibrillators at every sports complex in town.”

  “I am,” he confirmed. “Well, with their help.” He gestured to his parents. “If they’d had that at the field, he might’ve lived.”

  “Wow,” I breathed. “That was one of the first things we saved up for at the gym. A doctor that comes suggested we have one just in case.”

  “It’s a very good thing to have, yes.” Croft took another bite of pizza, his eyes lost in thought.

  Everyone was silent for a bit after that, and I finished my pizza before everyone else.

  J, Ezra and Raleigh’s son, crawled up to the couch I was sitting on and stood up before climbing onto the cushion next to me. I handed him a pepperoni off a piece of pizza in the box and he ate it, then held his chubby little hand out for another.

  So I gave him that, too.

  We did this for about ten minutes while all the adults watched, and soon there wasn’t a single piece of pizza with pepperonis on it.

  “You know,” Ezra said at last. “If I’d known that all I would ever be eating again was pepperoni pizza, I would’ve rethought marriage to you.”

  I snorted that laugh out and snagged the last piece of pepperoni off of Croft’s pizza before handing it to J.

  He took it with a happy gurgle and held out his hand for more.

  “I’m sorry, buddy,” I said to him. “There aren’t any more.”

  “There’s one still in Raleigh’s lap,” Croft muttered as he finished off his fourth piece.

  All eyes moved to Raleigh as she picked up a pepperoni and tossed it at her brother. He caught it and handed it over to his nephew.

  His nephew leaned over and sucked Croft’s entire two fingers into his mouth.

  Which then caused everyone to laugh.

  J, thinking this was fun now that he had everyone’s attention, crawled over to Croft’s lap and gave him a big, sloppy kiss on the cheek.

  “Thanks, buddy.” Croft wiped his chin. “That’s gross.”

  Raleigh snickered. “You used to call those kisses creepy when I gave them to you.”

  “They are creepy when they come from a ten-year-old, weirdo,” Croft countered. “Coming from your baby, though? Not as creepy. Give it a few more years.”

  Ezra wrapped his arm around his wife’s waist and pulled her deeper into the curve of his arms.

  I pulled my feet up onto the cushion and leaned into the arm of the couch. I’d never sat on my couches before, so this was a first for me.

  And I decided that they sucked.

  They weren’t comfortable, and I was fairly sure that if this was going to continue, I would need some new ones.

  “So what’s the plan for…” Ezra started when my front door opened and Flint and Camryn spilled inside.

  “Oh, pizza!” Camryn said as she walked over to the half-empty pizza box.

  “We just ate, Cam,” Flint tried.

  “We had tacos. This is a completely different food group,” she patted her belly. “And I was only able to get one in, remember? I have room again now.”

  She picked up a slice of pizza and eyed it. “Is this something new?”

  I pointed at J, who was laid out sideways in Croft’s lap, sucking on the piece of crust that he’d given him.

  Camryn motione
d for me to move over, and I did, scooting closer and closer to Croft until I was practically touching him from hip to shoulder.

  “More,” Flint grumbled.

  I rolled my eyes and gestured toward the kid that was taking up half of a cushion.

  “No can do, bro,” I said.

  Flint looked at the kid, tilted his head, and then lifted him up in one smooth motion.

  J looked at Flint.

  “I can’t believe in a few short weeks, you’ll have one of those.” Raleigh sighed. “Camryn, I love you so much.”

  “I know, right?” Camryn started to cry around a piece of pizza.

  “You’re going to choke,” I pointed out.

  Croft scooted over on the couch until he was next to the arm, and then carefully lifted his bad arm up to place it on top of it before lifting his good one up for me to climb closer.

  “Come on,” he urged.

  I went, tucking my head under his chin and curling into his body.

  He wasn’t the only one that’d had a long day.

  In fact, if I could curl up right here and go to sleep…

  • • •

  CROFT

  She fell asleep against me like it was the most normal thing in the world to do.

  “She’s such a loser,” Flint grumbled. “I swear, she’s been doing that since she was born. All it takes is one lousy cuddle, and she’s out.”

  “She’s sweet,” my mother admitted. “I’m excited for you, honey.”

  “Excited about what?” Camryn asked around another bite of pizza.

  “My brother finally pulled his head out of his ass and is dating the CrossFit queen.” Raleigh clapped her hands.

  “She hates when you call her that,” Flint chuckled. “Why do you call her that?”

  “Because when we started CrossFit, she was the woman we wanted to be,” Camryn said around a bite of pizza. “Seriously. She showed us how to do handstand pushups one day, and like just kicked up onto the wall and started knocking them out like it was nothing. Then, when we all try, we can’t accomplish shit. And she’s so fuckin’ pretty, too.”

  “Amen.” Raleigh sighed. “She can wear those short shorts and rock them while the rest of us can’t even walk out of the house in pants.”

  “You can pull off shorts,” Flint said, patting his wife’s thigh.

  “Yeah.” She paused. “But not like she can.”

  Camryn had a smoking body. She always had.

  But she was right.

  She’d never, not once, been able to fill out a pair of booty shorts the way that Carmichael could.

  The first time I’d ever walked into their gym, I’d zeroed in on her.

  She’d been bent over doing a deadlift with her ass to the door. She’d been mid-workout, her face sweaty, her shirt caught up in her shorts, and her legs quivering as she lifted a heavy barbell. But her ass. My God, her ass.

  I had dreams about that ass.

  “I know that look,” Ezra drawled.

  I curled up my lip at him and flipped him off with my good hand. “I don’t want to know about you having these looks when it comes to my sister.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Raleigh teased.

  “I’m most certainly not,” I disagreed. “I have what I want. And I seriously don’t want to think about y’all. Just no.”

  Ezra dropped a kiss to Raleigh’s neck, and I caught his eyes and narrowed my own, a nonverbal ‘watch yourself’ passing from me to him.

  He grinned and looked to my parents to see my mother staring at me with hearts in her eyes.

  “I want more grandbabies,” she ordered. “And to accomplish that, you probably should start working on it.”

  I rolled my eyes, but the thought was planted.

  Carmichael pregnant with my baby did sound really fucking awesome.

  Like, so awesome that I just might get her that way. If she’d let me, anyway.

  “We’ll see, Mom,” I teased. “Could someone go let the dogs out?”

  Mom got up and did that, taking the now-empty pizza box with her.

  Danger, huddled close to her side, stayed with her, surprising me.

  “Maybe Danger will do good with her,” Raleigh said softly. “They don’t look like they hate each other.”

  “No,” I agreed. “They don’t.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Kind of a lady. More of a pervert.

  -Coffee Cup

  CARMICHAEL

  When I woke up the next morning, Croft was gone.

  I was also asleep in my bed, with an obvious dent where Croft had once laid his head for the night, and the smell of him on my sheets.

  After getting up, I walked through the house, finding that I was alone.

  Danger was nowhere to be found, which obviously meant that she’d gone with Merida, Mrs. Crusie.

  Lion was gone, too, which prompted me to look outside and take a look across the street.

  Croft was nowhere to be found—or his car anyway—but there was a police cruiser sitting outside my house.

  I looked at my watch and winced.

  I was supposed to be teaching a noon class in about thirty minutes.

  I’d better hurry if I was going to make it in time.

  But just as I got to my bedroom to get dressed, I found a note at the bottom of my bed with my name on it.

  Carmichael, I went to teach the class. Can’t move or demonstrate, but I was bored as hell and you slept for, like, ever. I’ll be home in about an hour and a half with lunch. –C

  Grinning, I thought about the night before.

  It’d only been hours later that I’d woken up to find that we were alone.

  I’d woken up somewhere around two in the morning and had a hard time going back to sleep.

  So, since I did this on a regular basis, I stayed up for a couple of hours and read one of my all-time favorite romance novels.

  Which then had me thinking about other things, which happened to be why I started doing what I was doing next.

  Which also happened to be when my sister-in-law came into the room with Raleigh.

  “Knock much?” I asked as I saw the two of them enter.

  “Yes,” Raleigh said as she held out a footlong Subway Sandwich. “I asked your brother, and he said that you liked this kind of sandwich. Hopefully he wasn’t just pulling my chain, because I got it for you.”

  “What kind is it?” I asked curiously.

  “It’s a meatball sub,” she answered.

  I took it without dropping what I had in my other hand which happened to be a condom that I had attached to a plastic bottle and placed it on the counter.

  “What are you doing?” Camryn asked as she came to stand next to me.

  “I’m testing something,” I said as I turned my Mountain Dew bottle upside down.

  “What?” she asked, looking from me to the condom and back.

  “I’m testing to see how much liquid can go into one of these things before it breaks,” I answered, stating what I thought was the obvious.

  “But why?” she pushed.

  I looked over at her, then back to my task. “So. Say that I might or might not have had sex with someone. Say that the condom wearer might or might not have come in the same condom twice. I just need to make sure that it’s built to withstand the load without breaking.”

  “There’s no way in hell that two ‘loads’ will be the equivalent to a two-liter-filled thing.” She gestured to what I was doing with the two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew.

  “But the penis was…” I stopped, unsure whether or not I wanted to admit just how big Croft’s penis was.

  I didn’t really think that the woman that used to have a crush on my crush needed to be told about his penis size. Nor said owner of the penis’s sister.

  It was bad enough that Camryn had once liked him.

  I didn’t really want to gross Raleigh out. I liked her and I wanted to continue to have her as a friend.

  “Are we talking about m
y brother’s penis?” Raleigh asked. “I’ve heard rumors. I always assumed those rumors were false.”

  “Noooooo,” I lied. “Of course not. I have sexual intercourse with multiple penises at a time.”

  Raleigh rolled her eyes. “I’m going to just go outside and eat my sandwich. Y’all come back and get me when you’re done talking about this disgusting stuff.”

  Camryn snickered as Raleigh walked out the door.

  “You should just get on birth control,” she suggested.

  I looked at my watch.

  “My doctor’s office is closed for lunch,” I sighed. “I’ve never been on birth control before. What would you recommend?”

  She pursed her lips. “I would suggest the implant in your arm. You can just get it and forget it. Birth control pills, or the shot, you have to remember to get it/take it. Which sucks all on its own.”

  I held the Mountain Dew-filled bottle and nodded once. “I think I’m okay.”

  “I think that you’re nuts,” she countered. “What made you do that anyway?”

  “I’m just freaking out,” I admitted. “I just started dating him, and all of a sudden we’re doing stupid stuff.”

  “And getting really close all at the same time,” she murmured. “Are you okay?”

  I drew in a deep breath. “It feels… not real. I mean, he didn’t give me the time of day, and all of a sudden, we’re sleeping with each other, he’s healing from a gunshot wound, and I don’t want him to ever leave. I’m… scared.”

  She threw her arms around me, and the condom fell into the sink with the two-liter still attached to it.

  “Croft is a good guy,” she promised. “He wouldn’t do anything to break your heart, Mikey.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not you, too.”

  “Sorry, girl.” Camryn didn’t appear sorry in the least. “It’s downright catchy. And when that’s all Flint refers to you as, it sticks.”

  I sighed. “Just don’t call me that at the gym, and I’ll be okay.”

  I didn’t mind ‘Mikey’ but I did mind ‘Mike.’ There was nothing wrong with the name, I just didn’t like it all that much when they were calling me that nickname.