Maybe Swearing Will Help

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “I’m mad because I wanted to talk to you before we had to leave for my parents’,” he said, scooting back slightly to stare into my eyes. “I wanted to run by the house instead of getting something to eat.”

  “We are…” I hedged.

  “We are,” he agreed. “But now that we have to meet Hayes and his dad for lunch, I’m not going to get as much time.” I was confused as hell until he dug his erection into my belly. “We have to be there by four to get dinner. And I had plans.”

  Plans that I could clearly feel as he ground his hips into me.

  “Call him and cancel,” I suggested. “It’s likely that they haven’t even left yet.”

  Ford leaned back and stared into my eyes.

  Then he pulled his phone from his pocket and placed a call.

  “Yeah, Hayes. This is Ford. We’re gonna need a rain check,” he said brusquely.

  The vibrations from his chest made my nipples pebble.

  “Thanks. You, too. Bye.”

  Ford’s eyes were positively hot as he stepped back even more, putting distance between us.

  “Park at my house,” he ordered.

  Then he moved and opened my car door for me, ordering me in with just a look.

  I narrowed my eyes but did as he asked without complaint.

  Once I was safely ensconced in the car with my seatbelt on, he closed the door and hurried to his own vehicle, getting in and waiting for me to pull out before following me.

  When we arrived at his place, I didn’t take the time to screw around.

  I walked right up to where he was unlocking the door and looked in the bag. Or tried to, anyway. The moment I started to look, he moved it.

  He held it high above my head so I couldn’t reach it and looked down at me.

  “I need to say a few things,” he murmured.

  “You’re really starting to freak me out,” I muttered darkly.

  Ford grinned and gestured for me to go inside.

  And since it was freezing ass cold, I decided to give him what he wanted.

  Walking inside, I plopped down onto his couch and crossed my arms.

  He followed me, sitting on the coffee table in front of me, the plastic bag gripped in his hand.

  “I just want you to know,” he said, breathing out roughly. “That no matter what this says, I’m not mad.”

  I frowned.

  “I’m not mad. And I’m actually really fucking excited about it.” He paused. “I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it’s with you. Maybe because I’ve loved you for a really long fucking time, and just tried to deny it. But I… I want this.”

  My heart was pounding in my chest.

  “You…” My mouth fell open. “You love me?”

  He crossed his arms.

  “I’ve loved you for forever, Ashe,” he drawled. “You were just too busy arguing with me to see it.”

  Tears started to form in my eyes.

  “What the fuck?” I asked. “When did that happen? How?”

  His lips twitched.

  “It happened somewhere between the moment I first saw you and the moment you started making my life a living hell,” he muttered. “I’ve loved you since we were kids. Since I tried to kiss you, and you punched me in the face. Remember that?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Well, you sure kept it a secret. I had no idea.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t say that I handled it well. But I’m going to handle it a lot better from this point forward, okay?”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  “Why?”

  He frowned right back. “Why what?”

  “Why are you handling it better now?” I questioned. “What’s happened that needed to change?”

  He leaned back onto the heels of his hands, the bag next to him momentarily forgotten.

  “It changed the first time you let me inside of you,” he said simply.

  I went from suspicious to understanding, just like that.

  I’d done much the same, to be truthful. I’d had ideas, plans, and Ford hadn’t been in any of those.

  Not that I hadn’t wanted Ford there, but I’d written him off as something I could conquer later. Later, when he wasn’t being so antagonistic every single time I saw him.

  Now…

  “You’ve got to know that I love you, too,” I said, shrugging. “It started out me hating you, to be honest. But sometime when we were teenagers, the idea of you and me not being one, really fucked me up.”

  “Linnett.”

  I blinked at his one-word answer.

  “What?”

  “Linnett,” he repeated. “She’s what changed it for you. I started dating Linnett, and you saw me go from multiple girls to one. That one really hated your guts, too, which pissed you off even more because even our daily squabbles were cut off because you couldn’t stand to be anywhere around her.”

  I grinned.

  “That’s true.” I laughed then. “God, I seriously hated her guts. And you’re right. Talking to you was the highlight of my day. Then she came around and ruined it.”

  Ford sat up and accidentally knocked the bag of crap he had beside him over, and I bent down to help him pick it up.

  My hand froze when I saw what was in it.

  “Ford…”

  ***

  Ford

  “Ford…” she started.

  I bent down to retrieve the stuff that’d fallen from the bag that I’d stopped and gotten on the way home from the call this morning.

  She’d started to help pick it up, but the moment she got the first box in her hand and understood what it was, she was staring at it in horror.

  “Breathe.”

  She took a deep one, blew it out, then looked at me with not a little bit of fear in her eyes.

  “You… what… are you crazy?” she asked.

  My brows rose.

  “Noodles.”

  She blanched at the mention of her favorite food not being something she wanted to eat last night.

  There were five things on this Earth that Ashe was always ready for, no matter if she was hungry or not.

  That was chocolate cake. Then beignets. Third was lo mein noodles. Fourth was a double cheeseburger from Whataburger. And last, a Taco Bell crunch wrap.

  For her to turn down those noodles was telling in and of itself.

  “Throwing up after cleaning out a cat box that you do every single day?” I pushed.

  Ashe grimaced.

  “Your boobs are huge.”

  Ashe opened her mouth and then closed it.

  “Not to mention your nipples are extremely sensitive. All I had to do was touch them last night to get them hard,” I continued.

  She looked down at my cock that was slowly rising in my pants.

  “We don’t have time for that,” I told her. “We have to go to my parents’.”

  She looked at me with horror-filled eyes.

  “I can’t go to your parents after this!” She shook the box at me.

  I gathered the other boxes and took them to the bathroom, dragging her along with me.

  She followed like a child being led to their room after doing something wrong.

  She was practically dragging her feet.

  When we got to the bathroom, I ripped open the box and handed her the test.

  Her immediate head shake had me rolling my eyes.

  “Just do it, Soot,” I ordered.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m not doing this with you in here.”

  “If I’m not in here, you’re going to sit in here and refuse to take part in it. Then you’ll probably go to the bathroom just so you can say you don’t have to go.” I paused. “I know how you tick, dear.”

  “Don’t call me dear like that,” she ordered. “That’s totally just weird.”

  “Babe?” I asked.

  She scoffed and yanked the stick out of my hand, looking at it with
a look of worry.

  “Do I just… pee on it?” I asked.

  “I studied in the car while I was waiting for you to go to lunch. The chick says it’s easier for you to pee in a cup, but none of these came with cups, and I’m not willing to spare a coffee mug for you to pee in it.”

  She took the stick from my fingers and stared at it.

  “This is really weird,” she said, putting the stick between her teeth as she started to lower her pants.

  I grinned and watched her do it.

  “I’ve already seen everything there is to see,” I said. “If it makes you feel better, after you’re done, I’ll pee in front of you.”

  She sat down with a huff and pulled the test out from between her teeth.

  She peed on the stick, eyes wide and scared, and then recapped it.

  I was slightly surprised when she stopped mid pee and held her hand out for another test.

  We did it three more times before I said, “You know, it’s really uncomfortable for me to stop mid-stream. I’m kind of really impressed with you right now.”

  “This is really weird,” she muttered, staring at me.

  I couldn’t care less how weird it was to watch your girl pee.

  I wanted to make sure she did it right.

  I had a lot of things riding on this… and I found myself fucking excited.

  Really fucking excited.

  She finished, washed her hands, and then looked down at the screen where there was still no sign.

  I wrapped my arms around her just as both of our phones started to go off in time with the others.

  “Hello?” I answered Nico’s call.

  Ashe did the same, walking out of the bathroom.

  “Got a girl missing in your area,” Nico said without preamble. “She was last seen on your road, about half a mile away, about five minutes ago. There was a car that saw her run into the woods… and she’s the same girl that went missing three weeks ago.”

  The same girl that we’d had an alert out for since she’d come up missing.

  Most of Kilgore had thought that she was just a runaway, but others had insisted that she wasn’t.

  “I’ll go out,” I said, hanging up.

  When I got back into the bedroom, it was to find Ashe stealing a sweatshirt from my closet.

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 16

  You can have all my hoodies.

  -How to get a girl

  Ford

  My eyes scanned the area as I felt helplessness start to roll through me.

  Ashe, keeping up beside me, but starting to drag behind just a tad, groaned.

  “Why does it have to be so freakin’ cold?” she asked.

  It was cold.

  At least, for us it was.

  It was slowly creeping down near thirty-two degrees, and the longer that we walked, the lower the temperature dropped.

  It was even suspected that we might get some snow tonight if all the conditions went how they were expected to go.

  Which meant that it was bone fucking cold for us, and we hadn’t found a single damn thing in over an hour of searching.

  “How long do we look?” Ashe asked worriedly. “What if this was a false call?”

  I’d thought that, too.

  The false calls had been coming for weeks now.

  Oh, I think I just saw her at the Dairy Queen. Oh, that might’ve been her at the grocery store. Oh, this girl that I’m staring at looks just like her.

  Each time someone investigated, it was found that it wasn’t the missing girl.

  “Maybe we should move and go back to the road. Question the guy that saw her again,” Ashe suggested.

  I frowned hard when we came up to a pond.

  “Son of a bitch,” I growled, looking at it with anger in my eyes.

  The pond was fucking huge, and to get around it, we’d have to walk a really long fucking way in either direction.

  “I…”

  Ashe grabbed my hand, her fingernails digging into my palm.

  “Look.”

  I did, finding myself staring at the pond that was an icy sludge at the edges.

  “At what?” I asked.

  She pointed, her finger pointing out about a hundred feet or so. “By that tree. Look at the pink.”

  I looked harder, only just now seeing the shock of pink that was hanging on to the tree that’d fallen out into the middle of the pond.

  My heart leaped as I saw the lump shift.

  “Oh, fuck,” I said, stripping out of my jacket. “Call them here. Now.”

  And just like that, I toed off my boots and waded into the lake.

  The shock of the cold hit me immediately, seeping down deep into my bones and giving me a body shuddering chill the likes of which I’d never felt before.

  “Be careful, Chevy,” Ashe said from behind me.

  I gave her a thumbs up and kept wading in, making my way to the downed log.

  By the time I arrived at it, the water was deep, and I could practically feel my body getting more and more sluggish.

  My limbs didn’t want to cooperate, and even though I told myself to move, I found that I couldn’t make it.

  The water was just that fucking cold.

  The lump moved on the log, and it was only then that I saw the reason it was moving.

  There was a fucking current or something where I was swimming. Not swift or anything, but just enough that it was making the leaves and the pond move at a glacier’s pace.

  And the girl that I could now very clearly make out was hooked onto the tree trunk by her hoodie. The back of it had caught on a broken branch, and the only thing that was keeping her up and afloat was a piece of fabric.

  Son of a bitch.

  I swam harder, even though my body wanted to do the exact opposite.

  Finally arriving at the girl’s side, I did indeed see that the teen matched the missing girl’s description.

  I hoped it was her. And even more, I hoped that she stayed alive.

  Her lips were blue, and her face was the palest of white.

  Her eyes were closed, and I knew that she’d been in here too long.

  Hell, I’d almost been in there too long.

  Forcing myself backward, I kicked and paddled, struggling valiantly as I kept myself and the girl afloat.

  “Almost here!” Ashe called.

  I chanced a look behind me to see her in the pond up to her knees, shoes and all.

  I could also see a couple of flashes of safety yellow and orange headed our way just behind her.

  The moment that I got to where Ashe was, I relinquished the girl’s body to Ashe.

  Ashe dragged the girl out of the water until she was fully on dry ground, then placed her fingers on the girl’s neck.

  “She has a heartbeat,” she exclaimed, excitement in her voice.

  I swallowed hard, exhausted, and pulled myself right up beside her.

  Just as I dragged myself out and collapsed beside them, about ten officers arrived.

  “That’s her!”

  I knew it was her.

  I shivered violently and forced myself to get up.

  “One of y’all are going to have to carry her out to the road,” Ashe said as she relinquished the girl to the other officers.

  When she knew they had it in hand, she came over to me.

  “Let’s get these clothes off,” she ordered.

  I sat up with the utmost reluctance, pulling the wet shirt over my head.

  “Yummo!”

  I flipped Sammy off.

  “Fuck off,” I told him.

  Sammy snickered and watched as I got naked, not caring in the least.

  When I looked like I was going to keel right the fuck over, he caught me around the bicep and steadied me while Ashe helped me get a dry pair of pants on that she got out of Sammy’s cruiser.

  “I got it,” I said when she start
ed to zip the fly.

  She snorted and let me do it.

  “I’m fairly sure I can zip your pants without getting your dick stuck in the zipper,” she teased.

  I shrugged my shoulder.

  “Maybe,” I admitted. “Maybe not. But I don’t really want to find out, to be honest. It would be just like you to do it. And unfortunately, I can’t feel it so great right now, so I may not be able to tell until you’ve completely maimed the favorite part of me.”

  Ashe scoffed and walked over to where my boots were.

  “Here.” She tossed one at my head.

  I caught it and slipped it on, thankful that I’d worn my cowboy boots that were so easy to take off and on.

  Bonus, they were comfortable and warm.

  I nearly groaned when I slipped my feet into them.

  “Here,” Sammy said. “This is all I have.”

  I gratefully took the raincoat he was holding out to me. Even though it didn’t do much to block the cold, it did block the wind.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Sammy ordered.

  We did, walking the last half mile back to the road.

  “I’m parked over there. I’ll give y’all a ride,” he said.

  The instant I got into the warm police cruiser, I thought that I might very well die.

  Pins and needles started to tingle all over my body, and it literally took everything I had not to profess my undying love for his vehicle.

  “Goddamn,” I said as I stuck my face up against the vent. “I’ve never been this cold before in my life.”

  “You wouldn’t have made it as a SEAL,” Sammy teased. “That little ol’ dip would’ve been nothing to me.”

  We all laughed at that.

  Though Sammy had been a SEAL, he hadn’t been one for long because he’d almost died of hypothermia on his first mission. Granted, the other men on his SEAL team had, too. But Sammy had been the closest to actually giving up the ghost.

  The moment that he got out, he’d moved back to Texas and had declared that he was buying a summer house in Florida on the off chance that it started to get too cold here.

  “Well, it’s not like we could’ve really waited for you, loser.” Ashe laughed.

  Grinning, I sat back in the seat.

  Normal Tahoes came with heated seats.

  Why the hell didn’t the police department splurge on that?

  “Hush, or I’ll make you walk,” Sammy teased.