Good Boyfriend: A Love Story (The Bad Nanny Trilogy Book 2)

by C. M. Stunich

  I turn back to Zay just in time to bump right into him.

  With another chuckle, he grabs me around the upper arms and keeps me standing.

  “Are you asking what I thought of your family? Because I liked them.”

  “You liked them?” Zayden responds incredulously, taking my face between his warm, dry palms. “My brother is a serious douche, and Mercedes has literally no personal boundaries.”

  I give him a look, raising my freshly pierced brow to emphasize my skepticism.

  “She has no personal boundaries? Says the guy who moved right into my house, into my bed, into my …”

  “Into your …?” Zayden prompts, his lids getting heavy and droopy. Bedroom eyes. That's what he's looking at me with right now. Serious, serious bedroom eyes. They're working, too. I can feel my body reacting to his gaze, my skin getting tight, my lips parting. The area between my thighs turns to liquid and my breath is suddenly weak and thready.

  “My heart,” I say, and then carefully extract myself from his grip.

  I head across the driveway, passing in front of the identical white garage doors at the front of the building and over to a porch and walkway identical to the one on the other side. Of course, Mercedes and Rob have decorated their side with plants, wind chimes, statues, and pieces of outdoor art on the exterior walls. This side …

  “Told you it was a shit hole,” Zay says, dancing past me and snatching the key from my palm. He's slick about it, too, teasing my fist open with those magical fingers of his until I'm relaxing without even realizing that I'm doing it.

  I follow him up the path, swept clean but stained with cigarette burns and unidentifiable spatters. I'm sure it was Zayden that got it to even this questionable state of cleanliness, that night I locked him out of my bedroom after the Tinley incident. Won't she be surprised to find out that we're now an item.

  Fuck, I'm surprised that we're an item.

  “Your palace, m'lady,” Zayden says, swinging the key around his finger with the silver ring and pink Shopkins keychain attached to it. “Waddaya think?”

  He leads me into a unit that's literally identical to the one next door, just flipped. It's the perfect mirror image of Mercedes and Rob's place. I mean, in size, shape and layout it's the same. But over here, the carpet is filthy and stained and smelly. The walls are riddled with scratches and stains and holes that look like someone punched their way into the drywall.

  “It's definitely rough,” I say as Zayden and I pause in the living room and stare out the sliding glass doors to the backyard. There are several wooden garden beds completely bereft of plants, a cement wall topped with mud and weeds that slopes up several feet to a fence with blackberries creeping over the top. There's just enough room back here to fit the trampoline on one side, and maybe a small table and chairs on the other. “How much is the rent?” I ask.

  Zayden chews his bottom lip for a moment and then pulls his phone out to shoot a quick text to Mercedes. She responds right away and he flashes the number in my direction.

  “Holy shit,” I say as Zay lift his brows in question. “That's just over half of what I'm paying at Ingrid's place.”

  Zayden's staring at me now with an almost sad expression on his face.

  “Twenty-two,” he starts, but I can already tell where this is going. He feels sorry for me. It's what started all of this in the first place, him feeling sorry for me, worrying about me. He initially agreed to watch the girls for me because he was afraid I might do something stupid like, you know, ask a random man from the park to babysit for me. “A smarty-pants with a master's degree, a girl who should be out partying and living it up in So Cal and dating a dozen different dudes. How the hell did you get stuck with all of this?”

  “Stuck with it?” I ask as I take a breath and slide my fingers in the pockets of my jeans. As I look at him standing there with his piercings and his tattoos, that gentle softness in his face that—while misplaced—proves he really does give a shit about me, I don't feel stuck at all. I feel excited. I'm in love with him, can't he see that? And Bella and Grace are anything but burdens. Sure, moving back to Eureka totally sucked, but not because it was the end of the road, just because I suddenly had to swerve onto one that was unexpected.

  I'm taking a different route is all.

  But I'm getting everything straightened out, aren't I? Zayden might've inadvertently gotten me fired from the Top Hat, but at least I don't have that ball of dread in my belly at the thought of going back there. With him around, I know I have someone to lean on.

  “I feel lucky,” I tell him and watch his mouth curve up into a smile. “You said right from the beginning that we had a relationship, that it was how we defined it that mattered. Well, I have a friend by my side. A true friend. That's more than most people can say.”

  “Aw, shit, Smarty-Pants,” he says as he steps over to me and puts his hands on my hips, pulling me close. “You seriously have no idea what you do to me when you talk like that.”

  “I guess I must have some idea considering you came all the way back here for me,” I say and he grins, sliding his hands lower to cup my ass. “Oh, hell no. If you want to have sex with me in here, we'll have to get these carpets cleaned first. I don't want to catch anything.”

  “Good point,” Zay says, using his tongue to play with his lip rings as he glances up and I follow his gaze, finding a questionable black spatter on the ceiling above our heads. “If you get pregnant, I want to make sure it's actually my baby.”

  “You're disgusting,” I say, as I shove him a step away and start for the stairs. When I hear his boot steps behind me, I scream and spin around the newel post, letting him chase me up to the second floor and 'catch me' at the door to the master bedroom.

  “So, you really want to move into this shit hole?” Zayden asks, resting his chin on my shoulder and staring at the empty room in front of us. “You do realize that this would be our bedroom, right?”

  “I do,” I say, and I'm glad he can't see my face when I reply.

  Because I'm grinning like an idiot.

  “Dude, how are you not shitting your pants right now?!” Jude screams, kind of theatrically if I'm honest with myself. I lift my cell away from my ear, but the screen is still a spiderweb of cracks and the volume button on the side no longer works, so I can't really turn his screeching down any decibels. It must be at, like, deafening right now. “Think about this, man. It's not too late to change your mind.”

  “I'm not going to change my mind,” I say as I listen to Brooke and the girls gigging from inside the kitchen behind me. I glance over my shoulder to find them emptying the paper bags of groceries we just picked up from the store. I actually had fun going shopping with the three of them.

  “Look, I understand what you're going through. This is why I don't date virgins, Zay. They get inside your head and squirm around your gray matter.”

  “Squirm around? Are you drunk or something?” I ask, listening to drops of moisture filter through the branches of the trees in the backyard. It's so humid and moist around here that it usually sounds like it's raining, even when it's not.

  “Zayden, picture this,” Jude says, the crackling burn of a cigarette filtering through the phone. “You: in Las Vegas, young, hot, taking home a new girl every night. You've got your own condo, a sweet job with even sweeter tourists looking for a good time. Live shows every night, twenty-four hour bars, gambling. And then compare it to this nightmare.” I prop a boot up on the deck railing where I'm sitting and sigh dramatically, but Jude isn't done. Once he gets going like this, it's best to just let 'im finish. I stare down at the hideous hairless dog running in circles around the yard and tap my fingers against the damp wood next to me. “You: in … wait, where are you right now?”

  “Eureka, California, you dick,” I say because I know he knows that.

  “Sure, but like anyone knows where the fuck that it is. You: in the middle of some old ass forest, young, hot, wasting your time with a young virgin girl
who'll probably leave you in a year anyway, taking care of kids that aren't yours. And living next door to Rob—in his fucking house, I might add—do you really think that's gonna work out?”

  “Have a little faith, Jude,” I say as I tap my boot against the wood, searching inside myself for some sort of … I dunno, like panic or something? The way my best friend sounds right now, it feels like I should be freaking out. Only … I'm really not. I don't feel like I'm giving anything up when it comes to Brooke. I've dated dozens of girls, had sex with dozens more, and yet the only one that's made me feel a damn thing is this one. That has to count for something, right? “Once you meet her, you'll understand.”

  “Meet her?” he asks, pausing his rant for a moment. “What do you mean?”

  “I've gotta come down there and get my place ready to rent, gather up my shit. I'd ask you to do it, but then you'd probably just screw it up.”

  “You're probably right,” he says and then pauses to greet another one of the guys that works at the shop. I can always tell that he's there by the jingling sound of the bell at the front door. I'm gonna miss that place. “Hey, did you know Zayden's fallen in love with a virgin and is planning on moving to California?” he calls out, making me shake my head.

  “You fucker,” I laugh. “Just make sure you leave a night clear to chill with us; we'll be down next week.”

  I hang up on him, smiling as I feel a warm hand curl around my bicep.

  Brooke leans against me, her long hair swirling in a gentle breeze, her glasses big and dorky and sexy as hell.

  “Your friend thinks you're crazy, doesn't he?” she asks, and my smile gets a little wider.

  “Maybe, but don't worry about him—he's a bigger fucking doucher than I am.” I turn so that I'm straddling the wet wooden railing, looking down at Brooke in her baggy navy blue sweatshirt. It has a golden bear on the front and the word BERKELEY beneath. Chickie needs to get herself some HSU gear and represent. “You sure you want to go down there with me?”

  “I've always wanted to visit Las Vegas,” she says with a shrug of her shoulders. “Even if two of the four days will be wasted on driving.” She throws one of those sweet smiles of hers my way and my cock just goes platinum. Like, seriously, he's got an atomic number of seventy-eight. Heh. See, maybe Brooke's not the only smarty-pants 'round here? “Are you sure you want me to go with you? What if you change your mind when you get down there? Then you'll have to ship my ass all the way back up here.”

  Brooke chuckles, leaning her forearms on the deck railing, trying to make a joke of it. Buuuuut, I can tell it's not really a joke at all. It's okay; I get it. I really did almost bail, run my ass down to the desert like a fucking coward. She has a right to question my resolve.

  “I'm not going to change my mind,” I tell Brooke, meeting her eyes, letting myself get as serious as I ever do. And I mean, come on, it's not all that often or all that serious. I'm just not that kind of guy. Life shouldn't be a fucking chore.

  “You can't know that for sure. Like you said, we've only known each other for a few weeks. Things might get rough. I don't want you to feel trapped up here.”

  “Okay, Smarty-Pants,” I say as I hop down on the deck next to her, watching the pulse in her throat jump and dance as I take a step closer, cutting the distance between us in half. “Now you're just being a dope again.” I ruffle up her hair and she smacks my hand away. I put my hands on my hips and lean forward, putting my mouth precariously close to her ear. “We might've hit the Big Four, but we've still got a lot of work to do with your sexual education. What kind of professor would I be if I left my student with just her general ed requirements? Gen ed does not a degree make, does it Miss BS in Statistics?”

  “Haha,” she says, but I can see her nipples pebbling, even through that big stupid sweater of hers. “But seriously, what if you start to feel … like, stifled or something?”

  “Why would I feel stifled? My best friend owns the shop where I work; I could get my job back anytime. I already figured out what I can charge to rent my condo and believe me—it's more than enough to cover the mortgage and give me a little extra to live on. Besides, I'm renting it to tourists. If I ever changed my mind and wanted to go back to Las Vegas, I could.”

  I reach out and take Brooke's hand, curling my fingers around it and pressing it to my chest. I put her palm over my heart, but also over my nipple piercing so she can feel how goddamn hard that is, too. She can probably also feel the piercing there which, you know, can't hurt my chances of convincing her that I'm telling the truth.

  “But if I did decide to go back to Las Vegas, you know I'd take you down there with me. If I changed my mind about anything—living here or renting the duplex or whatever—I wouldn't be changing my mind about you.”

  “You're such a smooth talker,” she says, but I can tell it's working anyway. “I bet you say this kind of stuff to all your girlfriends.”

  “Eh, not really, no. They always came to me. Brooke, I went to you. Remember that, okay?”

  She breathes out a long, slow breath and the nods her head sharply in that way of hers.

  “Okay, Zayden.”

  And then she lets me kiss her as the first drops of rain begin to fall from the sky.

  Brooke and I cook dinner with Bella and Grace—the four of us manage to whip up some pretty decent burgers and, like, how could any idiot fuck up frozen fries?—all while Hubert hisses from the top of the fridge and Dodger pretty much violates every part of my foot, ankle and calf area. By the time the kids are tucked into bed, I'm considering pressing charges against that motherfucker.

  “Do you think he has cryptorchidism or something?” Brooke asks me as we change the sheets on the bed together—it's sort of both our faults that they're dirty after all. And yeah, that was totally a dirty joke, baby.

  “If I knew what that was, I would so totally have an answer for you,” I say, making her laugh this soft, girly feminine laugh that completely and utterly fucks with my brain. That sound, the sight of her hair falling past her smiling face, the hideous blue and yellow pajamas she's wearing that she's probably had since junior high … all of that just makes me like her even more.

  “Undescended testicle,” she explains as we both messily shove our respective sheet corners under the edge of the mattress. No hospital corners in this room, my friend. “Dodger obviously doesn't have an actual, um, scrotum or anything but maybe he's still horny all the time because there's one stuck up there somewhere?”

  “Say scrotum a dozen more times and I'll take him to the vet for you and figure that shit out.”

  “Does that turn you on?” Brooke asks, standing up and giving me a look that I bet she thinks is pretty damn coy. The thing is, her big silly glasses are slipping down the bridge of her nose and her pajamas are the color of Big Bird with smiling stars and giggling moons on them. She looks stupidly ridiculous with her full, round breasts trying to pop the button on her top, the broken elastic in her pants making them sag on her curvy hips.

  I want to fuck her so goddamn badly.

  “Scrotum,” Brooke whispers in a husky, porn star voice. “Scrotum, scrotum, scrotum—”

  “Okay, okay,” I laugh, chucking a pillow at her. “It's not quite as sexy as I thought. You can totally stop now.”

  I pick up the floral bedspread from the floor and shake it out, draping it across the mauve colored sheets. Not a single piece of bedding in this room is what a person might call sexy, but it's all clean and crisp and smells like laundry detergent. Besides, I don't need satin sheets or red duvet covers when I have Brooke Overland with me—she's more than enough to turn me on.

  “At least we'll have nice sheets once we pick up my shit,” I add, looking up to find her staring at me like she has no idea how the hell she got to this point. Hey, I'm in a little bit of shock over here, too, but I think it's a good sort of shock. Like, how the fuck did I get this goddamn lucky? “You know how I said I was shit with money management? Well, I have this set of Egypti
an cotton sateen sheets, 1,020 thread count. I paid over seven hundred bucks for 'em.”

  “Are you … are you fucking serious?” Brooke asks me, watching with a slightly nervous expression as I make my way over to the light switch … and flick it off. The room plunges into perfect darkness as a smirk curls across my mouth and I sense the immediate change in atmosphere. “You can leave those in Vegas for your tourist renters,” she says, and even though my eyes are still adjusting to the dark, I can imagine her lifting that beautiful chin of hers in defiance. “I don't want to sleep on sheets that you fucked a hundred girls on. I'm not jealous or anything—”

  “Suuuure you aren't,” I say with a grin, making my way over to her, listening to the slight creak of the bed as she climbs onto it.

  “—but I just think we should make a fresh start together, that's all.”

  “Then you'll be relieved to know that I was too scared to mess the damn sheets up and never once used 'em. The first night I put them on, I got in bed and started masturbating and then realized that my bare ass was lying on seven hundred hard-earned bucks. I tore those fuckers off, jammed it back in the packaging and chucked 'em in the closet. You, my dear Brooke Overland, will be the first girl ever rammed on that luxuriously soft surface.”

  I kneel on the mattress next to her, my eyes finally adjusting to the dim light leaking through the curtains above the bed.

  Suddenly, my heart's pounding like some virgin high school kid. Like, holy crap, there's a fucking girl in my bed. Our bed? I'm guessing I have to leave mine behind in Nevada. What tourist drags a mattress down to Sin City with 'em, right? If I want it to be a vacation rental, I gotta make some sacrifices. I'm totally taking the damn sheets though.