by Mj Fields
“Not sure, Truth. Is it fat with a PH?”
She doesn’t say anything as I straighten the mattress.
“And you know what?”
“What?” I sigh out.
“I don’t even care if you hate me ’cause, right now, I don’t”—hiccup—“like me either.”
I make quick work of putting on fresh sheets, change pillowcases, and grab a fresh comforter, which is so fucked up because I haven’t fucked Dee since I saw Truth on my bedroom floor. I want to tell myself that it’s because I want her to shut the fuck up and go to sleep, but that would be bullshit. I want her to be comfortable. I need her to be fucking comfortable so she falls asleep, so she stops talking about herself like this, and so she stops revealing all the shit she thinks about me that makes the hardest thing in years even more difficult.
“Tobias Easton?” she whispers.
I look over at her, all curled up in the corner. “What?”
“I’m still not sleeping on your bed.” She closes her eyes and hiccups.
“Truth Steel, like hell you aren’t.”
She rolls over, her Phat ass, the one I’ve imagined bent over my bed, my hands kneading it, my body slamming into hers so fucking hard she’ll feel me for days, months, years, for fucking ever as I watch it bounce with each thrust, is staring me right in the face, and she’s wearing black leggings, which isn’t hiding shit.
“I’m not sleeping in a boy’s bed for the first time who doesn’t even like me.”
I stalk over, pick her up, and consider tossing her on it, but she opens those green eyes, the ones that plead with me, and I do something really fucking stupid. I pull her tight to me, pull back the comforter, and lay her in it, real nice and real gently.
When I go to step back, she clenches my shirt with both hands and asks, “Why do you try to make me hate you so much?”
I open my mouth to say something, but she puts a finger over my lips. “What’s my name?”
I pull her hand away and shake my head.
“It’s Truth, so don’t lie to me.”
My jaw ticks as I tighten it, hoping like hell I don’t drop a bomb and fighting the fact that not only do I want her to be comfortable in my bed, but I want to be the one to show her how she deserves to be treated in my—a bed.
“Please,” she pleads.
I exhale my held breath as I contemplate my words.
“The truth is you and I don’t have a chance.”
“Why?”
“If I can stay the hell out of trouble, I have a scholarship waiting for me and a chance to become a good man.”
“Except for that time you were an asshole”—hiccup—“those times you tried really hard to be an asshole”—hiccup—“and that one time I hated you because you broke a promise and punched my brother.” Hiccup. “I think you already are.”
I can’t help but smile, and her reaction is to return a smile, a beautiful punch to the gut, even though she’s sloppy drunk. A smile to make me regret it.
“That’s because you don’t know everything about me.”
She starts to say something, and I pull the same shit on her—covering her mouth with my finger.
“I have shit I don’t want to talk about, not with you, not with anyone.”
She takes my wrist gently in her tiny hand and slides it to her cheek. Then she rolls to her side and closes her eyes. “More,” she yawns out.
“More?” I ask, trying like hell to force myself to step the fuck away.
“More truths,” she whispers.
“That’s it—I don’t want to hurt you.”
“So you hurt me anyway? Makes no sense.” Hiccup. “Real.”
“Real?”
“Real truths,” she says, rubbing her face against my hand.
“I don’t want to hurt me either,” I whisper.
She opens her eyes and slowly turns, looking at me with concern evident. “My truth?”
I shake my head.
She shakes hers in response. “I’d never hurt you.”
“That’s bullshit. You already have.”
She cocks her head to the side.
“The fight. And don’t tell me you didn’t kiss him to hurt me. You were staring right at me.”
She slowly starts to sit up, but I can’t shut up.
“I lost my shit and broke a promise, and I haven’t got much but my word.”
I’m expecting a fight, but she doesn’t say anything.
“And you know she kissed me the first time, because you were watching it. Then you snuggled up with that fucker and kissed him to spite me. Tell me I’m wrong.”
She shakes her head. “Brisa said kiss him, and I did. And tonight, when he sat behind me, I let him kiss my neck.” She reaches over, grabs my hand, lays it on her tight-ass abs, and starts moving it up slowly. I know I should pull away, but if this is all I can ever get, and it is, I’ll allow it. “When I moved his hand up my body, I did it with my eyes closed, wishing he was you.” She leans forward and brushes her lips against mine as she keeps moving my hand slowly up her belly.
When I feel my knuckles against the swell of her breast, I start to pull it away.
“Please don’t.”
“Truth?” My voice is thick and deep.
She nods slowly.
“I want you more than I’ve wanted anything ever. But if I did what I wanted to do with you, knowing who you are, I’d never forgive myself.”
“But if you don’t, maybe I’ll never forgive you.”
She starts to look down, and I reach up, lifting her chin and rubbing my thumb across her lips.
“You’ve been drinking, and you’re seventeen.”
For some reason, that makes her smile, and it’s soft and it’s sweet.
“I’ll give you the whole drunk thing, toss in that I’m high, too, but the age of consent is seventeen.”
“Fuck,” falls from my lips, and when she blushes and looks down, I know it’s because she thinks this is going to happen. And I want to tell her that’s not the truth, but she lies down and looks happy, on my bed. I can’t do that. Not tonight, because another fight with her would ruin us both. Another fight with her would end with us both getting what we want, but there would be no happily ever after.
Not for Tobias Easton and Truth Steel.
“Lay with me?”
“Until you fall asleep, yeah.”
I lie on top of the comforter and her underneath. I pull her close and hate the fact that we fit fucking perfectly together.
But, for just a few hours, we can both pretend.
Chapter Twenty Three
Tobias
I never sleep well. A couple hours is all I ever get at a stretch, so the fact I slept for four straight hours is amazing.
Four hours with her, and I am now standing here, feeling like a fucking hurricane is coming, and it’s not even hurricane season. I force down my protein shake and try to get my shit together.
Some fucked-up feeling pulls me to my front porch with a cup of coffee, thinking maybe it’s just instinctual to want to piss all over the porch when you have a woman you actually give a fuck about in your bed. But when a big black Denali rolls down my street, parks in front of my place, and the father of the soon-to-be wrongfully accused steps out, I know it wasn’t a hurricane I was feeling. It was Cyrus Steel. The man, the myth, the legend.
“My girl here?”
I nod. “She’s sleeping, she’s safe, and I didn’t touch her.”
“Now, why the fuck would you think I would even have that thought in my head? Do you think I’d truly believe my girl would give it up to a guy who pisses his pants?”
I sigh and sit down. “I wouldn’t think you’d be too happy about it, but I wanted to spare you the worry.”
“Worrying stopped after we picked Patrick up from the police station, wondering where my daughter was for five fucking minutes,” he spits. “That five minutes was like a fucking lifetime, kid.”
“I can underst
and.”
Through his teeth, he sneers, “The fuck you can.”
I nod, knowing there’s no way in hell to argue it. I’m not a father. And there’s no way in fuck I’m going to tell him I never will be because, in the past few months, I’ve mourned the loss of the girl I knew immediately would one day be my wife and the children we will never have.
“The other night, after our little ride, I looked into you.” He takes off his sunglasses, pulls a chair up close enough that we’re almost knee to knee, sits down, and pops his pecs. “You know the loss of a parent, and I can look you straight in the eyes and say I get that. Lost my father due to the fact he was the kind of man who would follow his son to save someone’s life, and he ended up dead because of me. So, I get that you get loss. But when, for even five minutes, you think your girl can be in the woods dead, lost, being hurt, you don’t get to tell me you know or understand that feeling. You don’t get to tell me you know or understand what it would be like to tell the woman who made you forgive yourself for an accident you couldn’t have foreseen that her baby was missing or worse.”
I nod. “I did what was asked of me for a girl I’ve been falling for but will never be able to have. A girl who has fallen for me, and I have to push away because we can never be together. So, I may not get exactly how twisted your guts might have been for those five minutes, but you will never know what it’s like to have to do what I’ve been doing either.”
His eyebrows shoot up, and he’s borderline raging when he asks, “You talking about my little bird?”
“Before you flip on me, which I get you want to, I’d appreciate it if you’d hear me out.”
“You got three minutes, punk,” he sneers.
“Guess that will have to do.”
“Time’s ticking,” he says as he sits back, his muscles flexing as he tries to hold himself back from tearing me a new asshole.
“My mother—”
“Hope Easton.”
I nod. “She had me—”
“At fifteen.”
Again, I nod. Then I lean back, rub my hand up and down my face, and whisper, “Fuck.”
“Keep your shit together. You got two and a half minutes, kid.”
“She worked—”
“A nurse, and for the US Navy.”
“After years of stripping.” I look at him and see his body stiffen. “She started when she was fifteen, obviously didn’t go by Hope, but I don’t know her stripper name.”
“Where did she work?”
“I’m pretty sure you already know the answer to that.”
“She know my Tara?”
I shrug. “Never heard mention of her. I was five when she quit because of some shitty babysitter who almost burned our place down with a crackpipe, with me in it.”
He lets out a deep breath and sits back.
“Your kids don’t know. No one but Frank does.”
“Your boss at the jewelry place?”
I nod then shrug. “Something like that.”
“Meaning?”
“He and Mom were tight on and off. When she died, he got custody. When he almost lost this place, I threatened him with some shit if he didn’t help me get emancipated so I could handle the finances and make sure I kept the place we were happiest.”
“Bad ass move. Go on.”
“Got me a scholarship to Seashore before I did that, but I got like three minutes and thirty seconds, so I’ll leave that and my criminal record alone and continue.” I’m fucking rambling and feel like I’m going to be sick.
“May ask you to revisit, but go on.”
I scrub my hand up my face and tell myself to get it together.
“A friend knew I was struggling and thought, hey, let’s find your daddy. I did one of those DNA tests, found my closest relative on a website, stalked a little, found pictures of my mom on his social media, found pictures of him in my mom’s shit, and boom, I have a father. Ninety-nine point nine percent. Pictures aren’t the greatest, but who the fuck am I to judge how the man lived? I’m the son of a fifteen-year-old girl who got knocked up while working at a strip club under an assumed name and a fake ID.”
“Ease up on the stripper bit. You know my wife had the same beginning. No one there to help them get by, and shitbags everywhere leading them in the …” He stops talking, and I realize my knee is bouncing, chest is tight, eyes are fucking filling up, and I want to crawl out of my skin, but I’ve got nowhere to go.
Nowhere.
I finally look at him. His eyes are wide, his chest rising and falling. He’s not feeling any more at ease than me.
I shake my head and look down, unable to watch him look me over, knowing I’m going to get sick if he sees something about me that reminds him of the man he literally saved his wife from, the same man who knocked up a girl who was still a kid, the same man that I share DNA with.
“He’s dead, if that makes it any easier. Died after I sent him money like I had been for the couple months we’d been messaging. Used it to buy meth.” I look up at him.
His face is unreadable, and he’s not saying anything, but he’s doing it—looking me over.
“Look, you and Frank are the only ones who know. Tony—whatever he went by then—never mentioned it. Wasn’t until I saw Truth at the shop that Frank put two and two together. He told me the story Mom had told him about that piece of shit.”
I look back up at him. “It’s hard enough being the kid who’s been alone since sixteen, so I’d really like to ask a fucking favor.” I laugh at how stupid it sounds knowing his kid is in my bed.
He doesn’t say anything, so I just throw it out there, hoping maybe he’ll show me some grace. “I only have a couple months here, and I really don’t want people talking shit about me or trying to ruin my chance at becoming someone good, doing something good, even though I was born in this situation.”
He finally speaks, and it’s the most up-front question, too. “Why were you still sending him money after you knew who he was?”
“Kept saying he was gonna come here, wanted to meet his boy. I thought if I threw him a bone, he’d stay away. Never gave him enough for bus fare at one time. Played the game to shut a fucking door that should have never been opened. But Gabrielle thought maybe I had someone out there who gave a fuck. Never told her. I prefer she doesn’t know.”
I look up to see his head is hung low.
“My birth certificate says father unknown. Once I get to Columbia, I’m not looking back.”
“Your home is here.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Not coming back.”
Fighting fucking tears again, I look toward the ocean. “I care about her. A fucking lot. So, I’m going to ask you another favor. Keep her the fuck away from me. If it takes telling her who I am, then do it. Just keep her away.”
I stand up, pull my keys from my pocket, and then toss the spare to him. “She’s in my room. Get her out of here.”
“You and she didn’t …?” He stops himself.
“Do you think I would take that from her, knowing what I know? Knowing my father beat her mother up and tried to sell her … fucking innocence? I may be from shit, sir, but even I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I did that, knowing what I know.”
I start to walk away, and he calls after me, “Tobias!”
“Just get her the fuck out of here!”
“Dad?” I hear Truth and start running. “Oh my God, what did you do to him, Dad! What did you do!”
“Come on, little bird; let’s get you home.”
“He didn’t do anything! He didn’t even try! I did, though, and …”
I outrun her voice, and then I fucking lose my mind.
Chapter Twenty Four
Cyrus
“How are you doing?” Tara asks from over her shoulder as I walk in on her rearranging shit on her dressing table before she turns around and looks at me with eyes that I know will see through my shit if I spew it.
Normally, I can hide
shit, avoid conversations, micromanage situations, have little conversations about shit that might get heavy before it does with the kids, taking every fucking precaution I can to ensure that they don’t get weighed down by anything they don’t need to be weighed down with.
Sounds like a lot of stress, but it’s a fucking walk in the park compared to days passed, and nothing, not one fucking thing has come up that I couldn’t handle, knowing that I have this woman, who I love, who loves me, and makes me a better man.
“Come here, Birdie,” I say, sprawling out on our bed and patting my lap.
She smiles and floats over. Yeah, my birdie doesn’t walk; she either flies or floats.
Straddling my lap, crawling her fingers up my abs, outlining every fucking piece of art, she then bends down and kisses the kids’ names.
“On a scale of one to five, how bad is whatever you’re hiding from me?” She looks up, green eyes soft and the tiny little worry lines around her eyes crease a bit more.
I sigh and roll her over onto her back, spread her legs with my knees, and press my forehead against hers. “That all depends on how we deal with it, yeah?”
“But not a five, right?”
I shake my head and rub my nose across hers.
“Is she still not talking to you?” she asks, eyes following her fingers as she traces Truth’s name.
I take her hand and kiss her fingers. “Is she talking to you yet?”
She smiles and nods. “I get an I love you at night, and no, I’m not going to school until Dad says he’s sorry in the morning.”
I kiss her neck and chuckle against her cheek.
She pushes up on my chest and takes my face in her hands. “I’m a grown woman, Cyrus. I love that you want to protect me from things, but they’re my kids too.”
I groan and roll onto my back, taking her with me. I move her hand to Justice’s name. “This one is doing some shit he shouldn’t be doing.”
“What?” She smiles.
“He’ll tell me eventually and, until then, I’ll follow them around and make sure they’re safe.”
