Beautifully Toxic (Toxic Love #1)

by L. M. Roberts

  I close my eyes and grip the sides of the counter. I don’t hear someone coming into the kitchen until I’m scared out of my thoughts by Triple-A’s warm touch on my shoulder.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?” he asks, looking at me with concern.

  My eyes start to water, and I bite my lip, shaking my head back and forth. “Nothing, baby boy. So, you and Jessica figure out what you want?”

  He stays silent for a moment. It breaks my heart more and more looking at him. Damn, he looks so much like Alex. I’ve been successful in keeping it all from him, but if he keeps looking at me like that I don’t know how much longer I will be able to keep it in.

  He doesn’t say a word but jerks me to him in a fierce hug. I let a few traitorous tears fall from my eyes as I snuggle my head into his chest. He has no idea how badly I needed this. There is something about a person that loves you giving you solace. It makes you feel like you can take on the world when in reality you can’t walk the next few steps without breaking.

  I’ve been going day to day as if nothing had happened. It was starting to take its toll. I wanted to be able to scream, cry, and just completely break down without anyone seeing me. Besides silently crying in my bed at nighttime, that’s the only alone time I get with Triple-A being here all the time.

  My parents have been taking him more and more over the past few weeks so I can have the time to myself. I can tell he is catching on to what they’re doing, but he hasn’t voiced his opinion yet. It’s coming, though. Triple-A isn’t one for being kept in the dark and liking it. He wants to know everything that is going on around him at all times. Again, just like his father.

  Somewhere deep inside me wishes that I could just come out and tell him who his father is, but I know if I do that he will never look at me the same again. I don’t think I would be able to see that look on his face and not completely lose myself. And I knew that things would be different too. He would ask questions about why I never told him and if he has seen him before. Plus, the lie I told him about his father is so damning that he would never believe me ever again.

  He thinks his dad left us when I found out I was pregnant with him. See, that part isn’t the part that is false because Alex really did do that. The part that his father died in a car accident is the part that I am worried will take him into an all-American rage. I know I shouldn’t have told him that lie, but I couldn’t reveal the truth to him. There was just no way. He would demand to see his dad, and at the moment, I just can’t do that. My heart breaks thinking about that douche bag. So, seeing him in person is completely off the table.

  It’s then that Triple-A surprises me. I have to make sure that I am still alive and breathing because it feels like everything in my chest is falling out of my ass.

  “Is this because of my dad, Mom?”

  Yeah, knife to the motherfucking heart.

  I nod into his chest, and he squeezes me tighter. “Mom, I know you lied all those years ago.”

  I choke on the breath I inhale. He knows? What the fuck? I suck at keeping secrets.

  I lift my head away from him and smile when he wipes a tear from my cheek. “How do you know? Did Nanny and Pappy tell you?”

  He smiles that breathtaking smile and his hazel eyes shimmer. “My father isn’t the only one that can dig up some good dirt. I may be thirteen, but I know my way around a computer. I’ve seen him at the tattoo shop too,” he releases on an exhale of breath. “It’s hard not to see that he’s my father. I’m his freaking twin.”

  I giggle. “Yeah, you are. I’m sorry…” I start, but get so choked up I have to stop. “I’m sorry I lied to you, baby boy.”

  He shrugs his shoulders and holds me to him tighter. “Mom, I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to figure it out.”

  I hiccup on a sob and start shaking my head back and forth slowly. “If only it were that easy, baby boy.”

  He grabs me by the shoulder and yells into the living room that we’d be back in a minute. His girlfriend is sitting there, huddled on the couch watching some boring ass show, but nods and smiles at me. I can see the pity in her eyes, but instead of doing what I always do and bite someone’s head off for that, I keep silent.

  After my door is closed, he walks me over to my bed, and we sit down. He sits next to me and starts kicking my shoe with his. I know he's about to ask something that makes him feel uncomfortable. That is his tick. The thing that he does when he is in a situation that he can’t figure out fast enough and feels like he is in over his head.

  “Mom, I don’t want to know what happened. But if it has anything to do with Alex, then you need to come to terms with it. I may be thirteen, but as we both know, I look, act, and sound a lot older. I know this isn’t your fault and that it's my genes from dear old pop. But you need to figure it out because he is going to find out about me; it's only a matter of time. Especially with that security business he owns. It’s about time he knows, anyway. We could sure use the help.”

  I’m already shaking my head, and he takes my hands in his. “Just think about it, okay? It’s not that I want to know him. Because let’s face it, if he makes you feel like this, I don’t want to know the son of a bitch.”

  “Language, Alex Andrew Adams,” I bark. “You may look like a legal adult, but you are still my thirteen-year-old.”

  He chuckles. “Pappy lets me say it all the time.”

  Reminder: Fuck Dad up when I see him again.

  We sat there for a little longer before I make up my mind. The next time I see him, I have to get this over with and tell him about his son. I know that’s the reason I feel as guilty as I do. He has the right to know that he has a son. Hell, any parent has the right to know they have a child. It just sucks that I won’t be able to keep him all to myself anymore. Knowing Alex, he’ll demand to see Triple-A.

  It makes me nauseous to think that he could take my little boy away from me. That’s what has me so scared. Fuck me. Why does everything have to be so hard? Simple—that's all I freaking want is a simple life. The house with a white picket fence and two point five kids. A life with a husband that loves me more than life itself. A life I can totally see myself having, even now. I guess I just need to tell him and get it over with so I can start my future.

  “I’m going to fuck your pappy up, baby boy,” I say out of nowhere.

  “I’d like to see that,” he chuckles. “You know Pappy would roll you. Heck, Uncle Dom, Uncle Chase, and Uncle Scott will all roll you. I don’t know where you got your height from, but it sure wasn’t Pappy’s side of the family.”

  I playfully slap his chest. “You little shit. Go back to Jessica and order some pizza. I’m going to get cleaned up before I come back out there.”

  He silently slips out the door, which is quite the feat for him. I walk to the connecting bathroom and begin the process of taking my makeup off. When I glance in the mirror, I am slightly horrified at the mascara lines on my cheeks. I look like the crypt keeper’s wife. I quickly clean myself up and come out of my room. I see the lights are low in the living room, and that can only mean one thing. Triple-A is trying to make a move. Any other parent would go bursting in there and stop him from copping a feel, but that’s not me. It wouldn’t embarrass him enough. Plus, I need a good laugh.

  I hurry back to my bathroom and grab some triple antibiotic ointment. This should so make her think he has some rash going on. I slip back into the living room without him noticing that I’m there. And I was right—Triple-A has his hand up her shirt and his lips fused against hers. I have to stop myself from freaking out because all I want to do right now is throw that bitch to the curb and stomp her ass.

  So, in true Sin fashion, I embarrass the shit out of him. I slip back to the hallway and yell. “Triple-A, did you remember to put your cream on earlier?”

  You could hear pins fucking drop. Even the TV was muted. I slapped a hand over my mouth when I start hearing furious whispers come from the living room shortly before the light switches on. I’m sti
ll hurting on the inside, but this takes my mind off the douche bag that broke my heart.

  I straighten myself up as much as I can, and I start walking toward the living room again. I see Jessica sitting on the other side of the couch with a disgusted look on her face and Triple-A glaring at me with no shirt on. Ha. I had caught them before it got too far. This shit is too good.

  I go for the innocent look. “So, honey, did you put it on?”

  He scowls. “Mom, you know I don’t have any cream. But thanks for embarrassing me.”

  A little squeak slips through my lips. “You’re welcome, baby boy.”

  I skip off down the hall when I hear a girly laugh sound out. I smile while I put the cream back. At least that gave me a small reprieve from feeling like shit warmed over. Now I guess I will have to do something else so my smile can stay on my face. This should be so freaking fun.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Alex

  Three fucking weeks.

  I have been sitting here on and off for that length of time, and she hasn’t shown her face, period. Bullshit. Motherfucking bullshit, if you ask me. I know what I did was wrong, but damn, can’t a man explain himself? I realize what I did was something that cannot be undone, but everyone makes mistakes. No person on this godforsaken earth is perfect. And now I’m looking like a complete and total stalker for sitting outside the tattoo shop at all hours of the day. The only thing I need is a bottle of lotion, a hole in a basement, and someone telling someone, ‘it puts the lotion on the skin or it gets the hose again.’ Could my life be any more fucked up?

  Peering across the street for the thousandth time today, I growl in frustration when I see that James has yet again taken another one of her clients. This bitch was getting on my nerves, making my dick hard as a rock, and fucking with my schedule. I know that it isn’t truly her fault, but I can’t stop the thought that if it weren't for seeing her again, I would be back at Pierce Security staying on my motherfucking schedule.

  She has been the only woman to make me feel like my body is trying to rip itself apart in a million different directions. The only one that makes me throw everything out the damn window just for one simple look in my direction; just a damn acknowledgment that she knows who I am. This was the reason that I had to get away from her. She makes me flip everything to where the only thing that I can ever think about is her. My life doesn’t work like that. I can’t just keep doing this, and as long as I have her in my mind, that’s the way it’s going to be.

  But for the life of me, I can’t stop. It’s like this sickness that has burrowed its way into my bones, latching on like it’s a fucking leech or something. Every moment that she’s not with me, I have to know what she’s doing. Every person she comes into contact with, I have to get a background check on them. It’s crazy, psycho, stalkerish shit, and I am head over my ass lost.

  I said to myself that one fuck was all I needed; however, I knew deep down that it wasn’t going to be enough. Sin screams to a part of me that has laid dormant for so long. And the only time that I feel like I am about to lose myself is when she is involved in some fashion. If she weren't so beautiful, I would say she was a disease as catastrophic as cancer, if not worse.

  She is a sickness, and now I find myself fighting a battle that can never be won.

  I sigh and lay my head back against the headrest. My phone has been ringing off the hook since earlier this morning, but I found myself still firmly planted in front of the shop this afternoon. Today, of all days, I can’t seem to pry myself from this spot for the life of me. There are meetings that need to be held, numbers that need to be looked at, and new clients I need to do background checks on.

  Everything was a fucking mess because I didn’t have enough willpower to leave. Hell, the car was already purring at the curb, and the only thing I had to do was put it into drive and be on my way. Just the thought that I might catch a glimpse of her smiling face is what kept me from leaving.

  “Why do I have to be so fucked up?” I whisper to the silence of my car. “Normal… That’s all I’m asking for is to be normal.”

  I close my eyes, press my foot down on the brake, and force myself to shift the vehicle into drive. I sigh and take one last look at the shop before I start making my way from the curb. I glance back in front of me and then notice out of the corner of my eye a pretty little thing heading into the tattoo shop. With a quick glance, I’m struck with awe as Sin’s beautiful body opened the door and walked in.

  And then I fuck up.

  The next thing I hear is the sound of crunching metal, and a damn airbag coming for me at two hundred fucking miles an hour. My head and upper body are forced back into the seat as every fucking breath in my body explodes from my lips. I hear people yelling, footsteps falling, and then people at my door to make sure that I’m all right.

  Can this get any more embarrassing? Well, yes, Alex, I do believe it can. Let’s take hitting a fucking light pole for two hundred.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I hear from my left.

  I turn my head to see that it’s Sin standing within ten feet of my truck, holding a hand over her mouth. I don’t know if she is about to cry—because she has tears in her eyes—or if she is about to lose her shit all over the sidewalk. I smile lightly and try to get out of the vehicle, only to be held hostage by the damn seat belt and airbag. I growl in frustration—kicking, hitting, and slapping at anything that’s in my way of getting to her.

  “Why won’t you just fucking die, motherfucker?” I growl, slapping at the airbag.

  After I successfully kill the damn airbag and get out of my seat, I try to open the door. It’s then that I realize I can’t open the damn thing because I hit a light pole head on. How did I even do that anyway? I should have felt the bump from going onto the curb or, hell, I should have felt something. When I hear a slight giggle to my left, it's then I know the reason. Sin. Just seeing her made everything else fall away from around me. Lesson number one learned: never, ever drive a car and stalk at the same time—always ends badly.

  I slip through the driver’s side window, and then to add insult—or should I say embarrassment—to injury, I fall out of the fucking window and onto the ground.

  “Seriously? Fate knows how to kick a man whiles he’s down,” I mumble, slowly righting myself.

  When all the people dissipate and the cops come to check on my wrecked truck before towing it, I make my way to Get Inked, with my nerves sitting high in my throat. I don’t know what it is about this woman, but all in one day she has caused me to wreck my life, my car, and now she’s on the verge of destroying my heart.

  Opening the door, I come face to face with a pissed off James and a silent shop. The men and women that are sitting in here look like there is about to be a showdown and even if they make the slightest noise they will miss something. I glance around James to see that Sin is at her station, getting set up for a man that has a half finished tattoo on his chest.

  I begin making my way toward her and then feel a halting hand on my chest a second later. I peer down at James’ tattooed hand and then back up into his brown—almost black—eyes.

  “Go home, Pierce.”

  I know that his voice is supposed to sound like it’s his way or no way at all, but I fight the urge to laugh in his face. Many people mistake my silence for weakness, but that just means that they will be the ones surprised in the end when they are lying flat on their back.

  “Step off, James. Trust me, you don’t want to get in the middle of this,” I whisper, making sure that my eyes don’t leave his. “I have to talk to her, and you are just pissing me off and keeping me from doing just that.”

  I watch as he glances around, and then thinks better of it. He steps away from me, glaring at me the entire time. I smirk, knowing that he would give anything to give me a fat lip. I set my sights on the raven-haired beauty snapping her gloves in place and make my way toward her.

  Nothing and no one was going to get in my w
ay. This has been a long fucking time in coming—when she outed herself at my house, telling me she knew who I was. Yeah, all bets were off. I told her back then she would be mine, and there was nothing that she could do about it. She should have heeded my freaking warning.

  I pass by the other tattoo artists and see them all glance up at me before they get back to their work. It’s a good thing, too. I didn’t want to cause a scene in a public place. I’ve already wrecked my fucking truck, so no more attention being drawn to me is a good thing. The only person whose attention I wanted was the woman that has the key to the lock surrounding my dick. And today she was either going to give it up or release me. At this point, I didn’t care which. Walking around for the past three weeks with a hard on from hell and no one to take it out on was torture.

  There were women around me all day, every day; but none of them were Sin—the little bitch that crawled under my skin and set her claws in deep. Things were going to change today, or by God, someone was going to leave with an ass whooping.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sinclair

  Fuck me!

  I knew he was going to be here; I just knew it. There was something in me that told me just to go home and forget all about coming into work today, but did I listen? Fuck no. When will I ever start listening to the voice inside my head? Probably when I’m being dragged through the swamps by a person with half a face mask looking at me like he wants to eat my last piece of cornbread.

  Here I am trying to focus on getting everything set up for this tattoo, and I can’t even do that because his presence is just too much. It’s like I can’t fucking breathe and someone has set an elephant on my chest. Just freaking great.