Mistake

by K. Webster

  “I had a flashback.” Thoughts of Drake still linger and I burst into tears. I’m safe now. That rat bastard was put away years ago.

  Thad brings a hand to my cheek and kisses my nose. “Baby, please tell me what just happened.”

  I can’t stop crying, but I don’t want to lose the physical and emotional connection with the man on top of me. “Make love to me. I’ll tell you after.”

  He frowns down at me—his face wars between scrambling off me and granting me my wish.

  “Please,” I whisper and peck his lips. “I need this.”

  His eyes close, but when I kiss him harder, he parts his mouth open and meets my kisses. Within seconds, his cock is erect again inside me.

  “Make love to me.” This time, my order is heeded as he begins sliding in and out of me.

  In this moment, it’s not about getting off or fucking. It’s about making new memories—writing over old ones.

  “God, I don’t understand you. You’re so goddamn addicting, O,” he murmurs against my lips.

  My body tightens as it reaches for an orgasm on the horizon. With each deep thrust of him into me, I get closer and closer. Sweat perspires between our chests as we both quiver in anticipation of our ecstasy.

  “You don’t have to understand me—just be with me.”

  He nods against my lips and grunts. His body slaps against mine pound after pound and echoes throughout the room. God, I’m so close to losing control.

  Pressing my eyes closed, I give in to my climax. This time, bright, beautiful stars sparkle before me. Big, beautiful fucking stars.

  “Yes, Thad!” I cry out.

  He moans into my mouth as I feel his dick throb within me. When he empties himself into me, he sits up on his elbows and regards me seriously.

  “Now.” Not a question but an order.

  I comply. Not because I have to, but because I want to.

  “When I was eighteen, I moved in with a man. His name was Drake. He was a very bad man, Thad.”

  He tenses and his gaze becomes furious.

  I sigh raggedly but continue. “He was a photographer who showed up on my doorstep to recruit me to model. God, I was so fucking naïve. I packed my shit and left without a glance back.”

  “Continue.” His body is shaking. He knows that whatever I have to tell him will be ugly.

  “At first, things were great. He was nice to me and I even got to model a little. I had my own room in his apartment. Things were fine. Well, they were fine until I was hunting for a stamp and went into his office. He told me never to go in there.” I bite my lip and whine, “I just needed one stamp to mail my mother a letter. One fucking stamp.”

  Tears burn a trail down my cheeks as I silently cry.

  He dips his lips down to mine and kisses me supportively.

  “And then I saw it. I saw the fucking shrine!” My voice is shrill as I remember that night. It was awful. Every single square inch of that room had a picture of my sister stapled to the wall. I was horrified.

  “What shrine?” he asks against my lips.

  “The shrine of her! My sister!” My body shivers as I recall how I felt when I discovered it. There were hundreds of photos of her. It was bizarre. He was a fucking stalker.

  “Holy shit,” he mutters and lifts up to look into my eyes. Concern paints his face, and I’m thankful—thankful to unload this story on someone.

  “Exactly. So I storm into the living room, where he’s watching football, and lay into him. Seconds tick by—maybe minutes—before he calmly stands. The calm was brief before the storm, and what a fucking storm he made. That night, I lost my virginity. Not by my choice,” I sob loudly.

  “I’ll kill him,” he whispers and gently kisses me again.

  I chuckle darkly. “I’ll get to him first.”

  The moments trickle by while we stare at one another.

  “Is he in jail?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re safe now, O.”

  “I’ll be safe when I spit on his grave.”

  More moments pass.

  “How’d you get away?” he asks finally.

  I swallow and suppress a shiver. “One night, he got wasted and left his phone by the bed. That night was more of the same—sex and beatings. He’d fuck me as I had to stare at the tattoo of my sister’s name on his chest. That shit does stuff to your head.”

  “God, I am so sorry,” he mumbles.

  “After he fell asleep, I called Momma and begged for her to get ahold of Olive. Bray and Jackson came to my aid. He’s in jail now, but those memories resurface at times.”

  “I’ll keep you safe. Always, O.” His promise seeps into my soul, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that he means it.

  Her hand feels small and fragile in mine as she guides me down the hallway of a very posh-looking building toward her sister’s loft. Earlier, she unloaded one hell of a story on me. So much more makes sense with Opal now. Her decision to run off with Drake had been a terrible lapse of judgment, and she’s spent the past several years doing everything in her power to not to do anything like that ever again.

  That’s how she became fixated on Trent. It stings a little that, in the beginning of our union, she was apprehensive to jump in with both feet with me. She’s somehow lumped me into the same category as Drake.

  A mistake.

  “They’re going to love you,” she promises and plants a kiss on my cheek when we stop in front of a door at the end of the hallway.

  I’ll prove to her that I’m not some mistake. I’m not a disaster in her life like Drake was.

  “You’re the only one who matters,” I tell her softly and hug her to me.

  She pulls away with a grin and turns the knob on the door, letting us inside. The way she just walks into her sister’s loft unnerves me because, in my family, you would never do such a thing. Mom has her order—her rules—and knocking before entering is one of them.

  What sounds like a herd of elephants storming toward us ends up just being two little girls who attack Opal as she enters, nearly slamming her to her ass. “Aunt Opie! Aunt Opie!” they both squeal in such a high pitch that I’m surprised the huge windows along the far wall of the space don’t explode.

  “Abby! Mia! I missed you too!” she laughs and hugs them tight.

  The girls look nothing alike. Even though they are about the same age—four, maybe five—their looks are completely different. One of the girls has long, dark hair, fair skin, and piercing, brown eyes. The other has wavy, coffee-colored hair, pale-brown eyes, and tan skin—possibly the exotic combination of a biracial couple.

  “Thad, this is my niece, Abby,” Opal says, introducing me to the darker-skinned girl.

  I squat down and offer my hand to shake, but she launches herself at me, hugging me around my neck instead. Both girls giggle when I fall backwards and land on my ass with an “Oof!”

  Abby finally releases me and points to the other little girl. “This is Mia. She’s my best friend. We both love Frozen. She likes to play Queen Elsa and I always pretend to be Anna. Do you have a puppy? Daddy won’t let me get a puppy because he said we don’t have a yard for it to play in. Will you buy me a yard for Christmas so Daddy can get me a puppy? Are you going to be my uncle? I want you to be my uncle. Why did you color on your neck? Did you draw a picture of your house?”

  The little girl excitedly rambles on and on, never giving me a chance to answer her questions. Opal can’t stop laughing as Abby assaults me with questions while I get back to my feet. Finally, the one named Mia steps in to save me.

  “Abby,” she sasses with her nose in the air. “He can’t hear you and he can’t speak. Let’s go play Barbie dolls. My Barbie is going to Princeton like Daddy.”

  I widen my eyes in disbelief at her snootiness, shake off the Princeton reminder—a reminder of my brother—and send a frazzled glance over to Opal. She shrugs off the children’s comments and questions with a smile as if she’s used to them.

  As we
round the corner of the hallway, we find two women sitting on the sofa with tears in their eyes. When they see us, they burst out laughing. I recognize the pretty blonde as Andi from Dr. Sweeney’s. The other one stands and swipes at her cheek.

  “Sorry, Thad. The girls are nuts. I’m Olive, Opal’s sister,” she chuckles.

  I stride over and shake her hand. She and Opal look very different. Olive looks exactly like her daughter—exotic.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m crazy about your sister,” I grin at her.

  Andi stands and runs over to envelop me in her signature miniature bear hugs. “You’re a keeper, Thad In My Pants.”

  When she releases me, Opal speaks up. “Where are the guys? Where’s Pepper?”

  Olive bends to pick up some coloring books and stacks them on the coffee table. “They went to get takeout. Pepper had to go with them because she’s pregnant and nothing sounds good to her—like, ever. I’m sure she has them driving all over the Upper East Side looking for mashed potatoes and lo mien or something disgusting that only pregnant women find appetizing.”

  Opal and Olive smile, but Andi looks down at her feet with a frown. I recognize her pain. I’m about to ask her if she’s okay when the front door bursts open and a flurry of commotion soon follows.

  “Jordan, so help me… If she forgot my fortune cookie, you have to go back. I have been craving those damn things for a week now!” a pissed-off, attractive, pregnant brunette snaps as she wobbles in the door. It’s clear she’s about to pop out that kid any day.

  “Babe, I’m sure it’s in there. You reminded her, dare I say, fifteen times?” he questions with a grin as he looks over at me. I recognize him immediately. He’s Trent’s college buddy, and I’ve met him on a few occasions.

  He waves to me in greeting as he ushers the pregnant one over to the kitchen table, where they begin pulling food out of bags in her search for her precious fortune cookie.

  “It’s not here!” she hisses dramatically and flails her arms in the air.

  A tall, solid, blond man stalks up behind her and tickles her ribs. She swings at him, but he easily dodges her pregnant ass. “Bray, so help me, if I have this baby on your hardwoods, I will kill you.”

  He laughs and holds his hand out to her. When she snatches an empty fortune cookie wrapper out of his hands, I think he may have started the World War III.

  “You ate my fortune cookie, you motherfucker!”

  We’re all laughing, even Jordan, when Bray points to Andi’s brooding asshole of a husband and says, “There were two, Pepper. Chill your shit. Jackson’s keeping it safe for you.”

  Her relief is palpable as she holds out her hand expectantly to Jackson. He cocks a dark eyebrow at her before handing her another empty wrapper. Those two are up to some shit—both of them dead set on terrorizing her. When she realizes what he’s done, the poor girl turns so red that I think she might give herself an aneurism.

  “I fucking hate you two! Jordan, take me back to Pei Wei.”

  Jackson laughs his ass off as he begins pulling a shitload of fortune cookies from another bag and tossing them at her one at a time.

  Jordan shakes his head and bites back a laugh as he picks them up off the floor and sets them on the table. “Leave my wife alone, Jackie. I don’t want to have to kick your ass, because then Mom will kick mine.”

  I try to ignore the pang of jealousy in my chest. Those two men clearly have a great relationship—one that brothers are supposed to have. They probably have a normal mother too.

  “Guys, this is Thad,” Olive says, finally introducing me to the group.

  As if realizing for the first time that I’m here, Bray’s and Jackson’s demeanors change. Both men square their shoulders and glare at me.

  What the fuck did I do?

  “I remember you. Keep your hands off my wife,” Jackson snips out and stalks over to Andi. When he hugs her possessively, I refrain from rolling my eyes.

  If he knew that, moments before, I hugged her, we might be rolling around on the floor while he tried to beat my ass.

  Opal comes around to my side and slides an arm around my hip. “Be nice to my boyfriend, punk.” She’s trying to lighten the air, but I bristle at her having to protect me from the big, bad Jackson.

  “What are your intentions with my sister?” Bray demands.

  Both Olive and Opal shout, “Bray!” at the same time. My body tenses because I feel like I’m on the other end of the fucking firing squad.

  I meet his challenging glare. “I care about, O.” The firm, unwavering tone of my voice seems to cause him to relax a bit.

  “Good, because I wouldn’t want to have to kill you.” I think he’s joking, but I hear the warning loud and clear. He loves her dearly and protects her as if she’s his flesh and blood.

  “I can respect that,” I tell him honestly.

  Once he nods, the tension in the room dies down. The women flurry over to the table and start pulling food from bags and sorting it all.

  The pregnant one, Pepper, eyes me with a disdainfully arched chestnut eyebrow. She briefly glances at the tattoo on my neck, the one Abby thought I’d drawn, that peeks just above my collar of my shirt. When she looks back up at me, she scowls. Then she mouths, “I’m watching you,” and, in a creepy-as-fuck move, does a two-finger action as she points to her eyes and then over at me.

  I can handle Bray and Jackson with their alpha protectiveness. But Pepper? Her pregnant hormones coupled with the feral look in her eyes makes her unpredictable. Pepper scares the shit out of me.

  During dinner, we all soon fall into comfortable conversation. I only have to dodge the warning glares of Pepper the Viper a couple of times, and the veins in Jackson’s neck only stand out once when I high-five Andi after she says that the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone movie is better than the book.

  We’re just finishing up dinner when Olive stands. “Girls, if you’re all through, you can go play.”

  The girls squeal as they leave the dinner table, and we all watch them run off before our attention is back on Olive. Opal squeezes my hand under the table. She seems slightly nervous about whatever Olive has to say. I return the gesture and quickly kiss her on the cheek.

  “I have an announcement,” Olive breathes out anxiously. “Jo has once again asked me to purchase the firing range so that she can retire.”

  I sneak a glance over at Opal and she smiles.

  “But I declined her once and for all. The reason is that we’ve decided to expand our family.” She grins and looks over at Pepper, who nods supportively. “We’ve been on a list for an intercountry adoption and have finally been approved. Next month, we’ll be travelling to Haiti to meet Astryd, a sweet, two-year-old orphan girl.”

  Opal gasps in surprise. “Olive, that’s great news. Congratulations!”

  My eyes flit over to Andi, whose face is ashen. Her long, blond hair hangs around her face as she stares into her lap.

  “I need to go to the restroom,” she says suddenly and nearly knocks her chair over when she all but runs from the table.

  Everyone is chattering happily to Olive and Bray, but my eyes follow the sad woman who is slipping into the bathroom. I look over at Jackson, expecting him to go after her, but he’s launched into a Twenty Questions marathon as he drills Bray for answers about the adoption process. Finally, when I realize that nobody seems to care about what happened to Andi, I stand. I’m ignored as I excuse myself and stride over to the bathroom.

  When I reach the door, I hear sniffling on the other side. I tap the door with my knuckle.

  “You okay in there?”

  A bitter laugh echoes in the bathroom. “Peachy.”

  Rolling my eyes, I turn the knob and discover that it’s unlocked. I push inside and see Andi’s red, tear-stained face fixated on her purse as she rummages around in it, looking for something. Her hands find purchase on a prescription pill bottle, and it rattles as she opens it with shaky hands. The bottle slips from her grasp and the
container hits the floor, spilling the pills everywhere.

  “Shit!” she hisses as she drops to her knees to pick them up.

  Scooting inside, I close the door behind me and kneel down in front of her to help her pick them up. When I grab up a handful, I open my palm. Valium. I knew what they were the moment I saw the engraved V and the light-blue color of the pill. The urge to pocket the handful in my hand while she’s distracted as she frantically picks them up is strong, but I refrain and continue helping her gather them. This chick needs her meds.

  “Want to explain the meltdown?” I question as I hold out my hand to her.

  She collects the pills from my palm and drops them into the bottle before looking up at me. Her eyes are uncontrolled as she sets one of the pills in the back of her throat and swallows it down dry. A bizarre laugh escapes her.

  “Since you asked, Dr. Sweeney, let me tell you. I melted down because I’m sick and fucking tired of the fact that I can’t have kids always being shoved down my throat. It’s irrational, I know. I love those women in there—they’re two of my best friends. But every single day I see them, I’m reminded that they can have what I want. It comes easy to them. For me, it’s a fucking nightmare.” Her body trembles and I have the urge to hug her.

  “Do you want me to get Jackson?” I ask gently, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  She shakes her head fervently. “No. He’s had enough of it. I can’t keep blowing up on him every time I see a stroller or a fucking Pampers commercial. I’m choosing my battles, and the less I have to smother him with, the better. I don’t want him to resent me.”

  Her entire body is still shaking as she kneels on the floor. Leaning forward, I do what feels right. I hug her. The anxiety and distress immediately evaporate as she lets me embrace her. As I hold her, she sobs loudly into my chest.

  “Andi, it will be okay. Things will work out. I’m here if you ever need to talk. I understand about trying to hide your crazy.” I grin and squeeze her tighter.

  Her sobs become laughs, and I stroke her hair in a comforting move. “Thank you, Thad. Sorry to unload. I’m glad Opal has you. She’s special, but then again, so are you.”