Swear (Landry Family #4)

by Adriana Locke

  I’ve never felt anything like this in my entire life. My entire heart feels like it’s going to burst. This little thing cuddled up against me pulls at pieces of me I didn’t know could be tugged.

  “His name is Ryan Lincoln Landry,” Lincoln says softly as he pulls the blankets down from his face, revealing a slightly up-turned nose and full lips. “Ryan after his beautiful mother and Lincoln after his awesome father.”

  “Don’t worry, Ryan,” I say. “His conceit isn’t genetic. You’ll be fine.”

  We all laugh, which makes Danielle cough. Lincoln is to her side in a flash.

  There’s a free chair at the foot of the bed and I head that way. Once I’m settled, I pull the blankets down a little more.

  Ryan has Danielle’s skin, an olive-y complexion that will serve him well when he gets old enough to appreciate it. He also has Danielle’s long eyelashes.

  I can’t stop looking at him.

  He’s a perfect little thing created by a love between two people, a love that was almost broken apart. I think back to when Lincoln almost moved to California and when Danielle almost broke up with him, and I realize—none of that matters. That was all just a stepping stone to get them here. In this moment. With this child.

  Already, I know I’d die for this kid. I can see glimmers of my brothers and I hidden in his features, and when he opens his little eyes, he watches me like we’ve always known each other. It’s simply unbelievable and I’m only his uncle. What must Lincoln feel like?

  “After you master eating and sitting up, I’ll give you a run down on the family,” I tell my nephew. “You’re a lucky little guy. This family is the best out there, so if you had a choice before you got here, you did good, buddy. But you’re going to need some quick tips. Like . . . watch out for Barrett around election time, and whatever you do, don’t touch anything on Graham’s desk.”

  Lincoln laughs, reaching for the baby. “Time for him to come back to Daddy.”

  “Linc is a baby hog,” Danielle jokes. “I’ve only gotten to hold him a few times.”

  “Because you’re asleep and that’s not safe,” Lincoln notes.

  I place Ryan back in his daddy’s arms after giving him a little kiss on his soft forehead.

  “I’ll let you guys get some rest,” I say, getting to my feet. “Everyone else has gone home. Mom, Cam, Sienna, Ali, and Mallory,” I laugh, “said to call them if you need anything.”

  “We’ll call Graham,” Lincoln shrugs.

  “Naturally,” I laugh. “Congratulations, guys.”

  “Thank you, Ford.” Danielle waves from the bed as I head to the door and let myself out.

  The elevator ride is short and the air is still warm and balmy as I find my truck beneath the parking lot lamps. On auto-pilot, I unlock the door, slide my key in the ignition, and pull out onto the road.

  My muscles ache from sitting on hospital waiting room chairs all day, but my mind is in overdrive.

  Seeing Ryan tonight and watching Lincoln and Danielle has burned something into my soul. Before now, Ellie was a part of my past and someone I wanted to test the waters going forward with. Now, I realize she’s my past. And my future. There’s no other way around it.

  When my sisters’ friends trolled the malls on the weekends, Ellie would show up at the trails with a pair of ripped jeans and climb on the back of my four-wheeler. When they were having their hair done, she was taking care of her dad. When they were wearing sequins and makeup and falling over themselves to get my attention at the pool, I find this girl in flip-flops and a messy ponytail ignoring me as she sits on the banks of a muddy lake.

  She was the first girl I ever met that didn’t give two shits that my last name was Landry. I’m not sure when she even realized that, to be honest. Ellie challenged me, made me question everything I’d ever thought. Even at sixteen, her soul was so much older.

  When I complained about having to get a new tux to attend a charity function with my mother, it was Ellie that suggested it would be more helpful to take the money we were spending on our attire and donating that to the charity. While the people in my life were making a show of their help of others, it was Ellie that gave her only winter coat to a little girl at school because she didn’t have one and shared her lunches every day with a kid that lived down the road from her and had nothing.

  How do you not love that? Especially when she’s the most naturally beautiful girl you’ve ever seen? When just looking at her seems like it fills a hole in your heart that you were born with and can’t plug otherwise.

  My mind goes back to Ryan and the feeling in the room I just left. The look on Lincoln’s face and the love that Danielle has in her eyes when she looks at my brother and her son. I’ve only had one person look at me like that, and I sure as hell have only felt that way about one woman.

  I grab the wheel and whip a U-turn in the middle of the highway.

  Ellie

  “AH!” MY HEART LEAPS IN my chest the same time I literally jump at a noise from the back. “Damn it,” I grimace. “Grow up, Ellie.”

  I’m such a chicken when it comes to being alone in the dark. Put me in the woods in the middle of the night and I’m fine, but put me in a store on Main Street in Savannah and I’m a big ‘ol baby.

  It’s people that scare me. Crazy serial-killers or demented lunatics that sneak into the bathroom when the curtain is closed or are hovering over you while you sleep. It’s also the ridiculously good-looking men with blond hair and the most incredible blue eyes and crooked grins that terrify me. Those that fit the latter description are the most dangerous of them all.

  Humming a tune and shaking it off, I pour more paint into a pan and pick up the roller. It spreads evenly on the wall. There’s something calming about the fluidity of the motion.

  Violet and I were supposed to take today off. She wanted to spend the weekend getting the last few pieces of her apartment put together. I thought a free day sounded perfect, but the quiet afforded me too much time to think.

  I’ve been here for the last ten hours.

  The streetlights glow on the other side of the black paper we hung in front of the windows to keep prying eyes out until we’re ready to debut the store. The traffic outside has slowed. Only a random car now and then can be heard roaming down the road.

  I roll the brush back through the paint and have it nearly touching the wall when a knock raps against the door. Instantly, my heart lodges in my chest.

  The roller splashes in the paint, spattering my shoes with mint green drops, as I scramble to find my phone. The knock comes again, a little louder this time.

  “Shit!” Grabbing my device, I stand facing the door. I don’t know what to do. Should I call 9–1-1? Should I start screaming now? After all, no one knows I’m here. That means two things: One, no one should be looking for me, and two, no one will be until tomorrow sometime, in which case my body will be stone cold by then.

  I’m dead. A goner. A missing person’s report in the making.

  Creeping to the window, I pull back the paper a tiny bit and peek out.

  And suck in a breath.

  Ford is standing under the light in the front, his hands stuck in the pockets of his khakis. A green polo shirt is stretched across his chest. He looks tired, his posture not quite as perfect as it normally is.

  His head tilts to the side and he catches me spying. His shoulders lift and then drop, as if he’s thinking the same thing—he’s not sure why he’s here either.

  I attempt to keep my face as sober as possible when inside my traitorous body is doing a round-off back tuck.

  I want to be irritated with myself for reacting this way. Frustration is what I should feel, not a blip of excitement.

  He moseys towards me, slipping one hand out of his pocket. It’s planted near mine on the other side of the glass. My fingers bend, as if trying to make contact with his. His do the same.

  I pull back.

  “Can I come in?” he asks.

  Forcin
g a swallow, I look him in the eye. “Why?”

  He shrugs again, but doesn’t respond. That gives me nothing to work with.

  “I’m busy,” I say.

  “Painting.”

  “How did you know?”

  A finger is carefully pressed against the glass on the other side of my forehead. “You’re wearing more of it than whatever you’re painting,” he smiles.

  Blushing, I look away. Here he is, standing before me looking like he walked out of a dressing room at a men’s store and I look like Cinderella, minus the ball gown. Not the impression I wanted to make.

  “I can help,” he offers. “I’m good with my hands.” He tries to hide his smirk, but fails miserably.

  I try not to show my ever-growing amusement. “I’m sure you are.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  The double pane of glass between us seems to disintegrate, melted by the fire that just kicked up between our bodies. Of course I remember. Every cell of my being remembers his touch. It’s impossible to forget how one brush of his finger seemed to switch on an energy inside me.

  “Barely,” I lie.

  “I could remind you.”

  “You could leave.”

  “You’re right. I could. But I don’t want to.” He leans towards me until his face is directly across from mine. “And I don’t think you really want me to either.”

  His eyes plead with me, pull at my heartstrings. And no matter how mad I want to be at him, no matter how dangerous this specific man is to my existence, I relent.

  “Fine.” I’m opening the door before I can be logical about it. I regret it as soon as I do.

  He slips in easily, smelling all delicious, with the confidence he carries like no other. It’s not vanity or arrogance, nor is it some holier-than-thou persona. It’s a charisma, a self-assuredness, a faith in himself that rolls off him with complete and utter ease.

  “Thanks for letting me in. I wasn’t sure you were going to.”

  “I wasn’t sure I was either,” I admit. “I probably shouldn’t have, but no one has ever accused me of being a good decision maker.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  I shrug, turning away to try to center myself. My brain feels like a frazzled wire, every emotion crossing with the other and leaving me a giant walking disaster. I plead with myself to keep it together, to stand my ground. I’ve waited for years to show him I was better off without him. Now’s my chance.

  “Since you’re here, I thought I could tell you that I’ve talked to Violet and she agrees—we don’t need security.” I stare at a little dribble of paint rolling down the wall. “We’re just wasting your time.”

  I hear his shoes against the floor, stepping closer. “I don’t do anything that wastes my time.”

  My breath catches as his hand rests on my shoulder. His palm is heavy and warm, and I could easily tilt my head just a few inches to the side and rest it against his forearm. I’ve done it a hundred times.

  “I want you to know,” he begins with a gruff to his tone, “that if you honestly don’t want me here, I won’t come. I respect you too much to do that.”

  “You’ll just walk away. Trust me, I believe that.”

  It’s a direct reference to the past, a jab at him in the most juvenile way. I know he catches it, but he lets it slide.

  “I never said that.” He circles around until he’s standing directly in front of me. “I never said I’d leave you alone. I said I wouldn’t do that to you here, not at your business.”

  I don’t know how to take that. I’m not sure I even want to read into it. I just know my cheeks are hot as hell and my stomach is flipping all sorts of ways.

  “What do you want, Ellie?”

  “What I want is for you to go away so I can look into some voodoo light stick and have you erased from my memory altogether so I can live a life without knowing you exist.”

  “Tell me how you really feel,” he chuckles, lifting his hand from my shoulder. Instantly, I miss it. “I see you’re still blunt like your dad.”

  The look in his eye is genuine, as is the clarity in his voice. They always got along—two country boys with a lot to chitchat about. His concern makes me happy.

  “I was over that way today,” Ford says. “You think I could swing by and say hi to him sometime?”

  I want to say no because that’s too personal. My dad is my territory and it feels risky to let Ford bleed into that. Still, I know Dad likes him and seeing Ford would make his day. “He’d probably love that.”

  “So would I.”

  I lift the paint roller again and try to concentrate on covering the wall with the mint green Vi and I picked out.

  “Need help?” he asks.

  Looking over my shoulder, I see him slipping off his jacket. I nearly choke when the hem of his shirt lifts when he tosses his jacket on a nearby box and I see the edge of the ridge going from his hip to his groin.

  “Not really,” I say, trying to force myself to look away.

  He doesn’t seem to notice anything other than my stubbornness to let him lend a hand. He flashes me a disapproving look.

  I continue stroking the brush up and down the wall.

  “Talk to me, Ellie.”

  “About what?” I ask through parched lips.

  “Anything,” he says. “I just want to hear your voice.”

  “What if I say I hate you?”

  “No one hates me more than I hate myself.”

  “I might be close. Besides,” I add, “I think you’re way too self-centered to hate yourself.”

  “That’s about the third time you’ve called me self-centered.”

  “Yeah. So? What’s your point?”

  His jaw sets firmly in place. “I’ll admit I’ve done some hedonistic things, namely to you, but I’m not some asshole on an ego trip, El.”

  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  Turning away from him, I go back to painting. I’m a half a stroke up the wall when he plucks the brush out of my hand.

  “Hey!” I object as he drops it into the pan with a thud. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  He steps towards me. I take one back.

  He’s eyeing me like I’m an opponent on the other end of a table, one that he’s ready, willing, and able to bend to his will.

  Throwing my shoulders back, I look him straight-away. “I asked you a question.”

  He moves towards me again, but I can’t go back any farther without touching the freshly-painted wall.

  “I’m sorry.”

  They’re both the simplest and hardest words in the English language and can be the sweetest to hear or the most bitter. Watching them topple out of mouth with that fire in his eyes is a mixed bag.

  “I bet you are.” There’s a swagger to my words, a hint of moxie that I don’t try to hide. “You’re not ignorant. You’re just a typical man.”

  His chuckle dances over my skin as the blues of his eyes darken. “What do you want me to say? That I fucked up?” He stretches his arms out to both sides. “Is that what you want to hear?”

  “No,” I bark back. “It’s not. I don’t want to hear anything from you. I don’t even want you here!”

  My throat burns as he steps closer, my eyes widening in anticipation of his next move. The look on his face is unreadable. All I know for sure is that a conversation I’ve been curious about for years now is about to come to a head.

  “I was nineteen, Ellie. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “I was eighteen. I didn’t know what to do either,” I point out.

  “You said you were pregnant, and all of a sudden, reality hit me.”

  “Would it have been that bad, Ford?” I ask, the chip on my shoulder sitting pretty. “Would it have been so terrible to have been linked to me that once you realized you were free, you had to flee the state? Hell, you had to flee my life altogether?”

  “That’s not what happened—”

  “Oh, it is what happened,” I
snort. “Once we realized I’d jumped gun and it was stress, not pregnancy, that delayed my period, you were out of here.”

  “Ellie,” he begins, “listen to me. That’s not what I was thinking.”

  “Then how do you explain coming to me the week after and just breaking up with me, giving me some bullshit excuse that you had to ‘go find yourself’ or whatever it was.” I laugh angrily. “I knew what you were doing. You were getting away from me.”

  He charges forward, and as I step back, my shirt sticking to the freshly painted wall. It’s a distant observation because his blazing eyes won’t let me look anywhere but at him.

  He pins me in place, his body just inches from mine. His lips twitch as he considers his next words. “I was getting away from you,” he admits. “Because I was sure I was fucking you up. I’d been so careless with you, so cavalier. When you told me you thought you were pregnant, I realized I wasn’t that much different than my brothers, El. Here I was, the one that always prided himself on being the simple guy, the one that didn’t need the silver spoon, acting as entitled as the rest of them.”

  There’s a wave of emotion pooling across his eyes. “Not that it’s an excuse, but I kind of broke. I had all this pressure to figure out which college to go to, which major to go after that would put me on a Landry-approved career path, and I just wanted to be me. Only I didn’t know what ‘me’ even meant. I just felt like a fuck-up, to be honest.”

  “You were never a fuck-up,” I tell him. “There’s no way you believed that.”

  “I did,” he says quietly. “And all I could think was that I was bringing you with me as I was spiraling down this hole. I wasn’t worried about me, Ellie. I was worried about you.”

  “Really, Ford?”

  “Yeah.” He reaches up tenderly and brushes a strand of hair off my face. “Then that fight when I told you . . .”

  I gulp. “Not my best memory.”

  “Mine either.”

  We exchange a sad smile as we both sort through those memories. I can’t even look him in the face.

  “We don’t need to talk about this,” I say, trying to go around him, a lump stuck in my throat. He steps in my way. “It doesn’t make a difference. We’re just wasting our breath.”