SweetHarts (5 Book Box Set)

by Kira Graham

  “You have something that Chilli doesn’t have, something that captivated me and will keep me coming back for years to come,” she muses, her eyes dancing so brightly that I groan and feel my cock harden inside her.

  I shouldn’t ask. She’s setting me up, but hell, she looks so happy that there’s no dark hole that I wouldn’t step in for her.

  “What’s that, Rosie-mine?” I murmur, already forecasting many more days like this, when we’re coming down from some drama and looking to resettle the fragile world that is our love.

  “Your dick is waaaay bigger.”

  I laugh, the sound almost like a sob as I clutch her to me and think about everything that has happened, everything that could have happened, and everything that will come next. I need to think about Heath’s injuries and the recovery time that Nate will need after taking a bullet to the head. Thank God it was just a graze, but it was severe enough that I have some damage control to do and people to take care of. I need to go to the hospital and check on Brent, who was found near death, just barely clinging to life. He’s now in a coma, an induced state that the doctors think will help him heal after one of the bullets that Hilan put in him nicked a kidney and almost caused him to bleed to death.

  There is so much to do, but, as I feel my wife relaxing against me, the feel and sound of her breathing evening out, all I can do is hold her more tightly and let things go for now. Soon, though. Soon, I’m going to find the answers, and when I do…

  Epilogue

  Achilles

  There are things that happen in life that make you stop and reconsider the path you were on. There are things that shake it all up, and, after the dust settles, make you realize that the earthquake of life has revealed some ugly truths that you don’t want to see.

  For me, almost dying was that earthquake, and now that the dust has settled and the way is clear, what I see is a life that has been spent in the pursuit of…thrills. There is no constancy to anything I do, no committed sense of permanence, and nothing in my life that I can show to say that I was better than anyone who came before me.

  And I like it that way.

  That sounds awful, and it probably is, but to me, freedom is something that I’ve always revered and sought in life. It’s not that I feel trapped, because I don’t. I like my job, I love my family, and I adore the new additions of the Sweet clan into the crazy melee that we call our kin.

  But everything else…it’s just the way I want it. I like waking up and knowing that I can do whatever I want at any given moment. I like having the time and space to enjoy a spur-of-the-moment trip, or just spend an entire Sunday in bed, because no one is counting on me to be anywhere that I don’t have to or want to be.

  At least, I liked it just fine until I became best friends with a woman who is demon-minded and so contrary that I still ask myself why I didn’t run like hell the moment I met her. Alex Sweet is—was—my best friend. The first real friend that I ever had who didn’t throw herself at me and demand more than I had to give her.

  But I fucked it all up, destroying a friendship that I’d come to count on, to enjoy, and to need, because I changed the dynamics and then freaked out when all was said and done.

  I should never have slept with her. I should have turned around and walked away when I looked up one day and became spellbound by the beauty that I had been overlooking.

  Instead, I did what I do best and jumped in, never once considering what would happen when the tremors stopped and the dust settled. She shook me up and turned everything upside down, and ever since she walked away from me, I’ve been left picking up the pieces of a life that I am not fitting into quite as well as I once did.

  I don’t know what to do about Alex Sweet. I don’t know where we’re headed, but there is one thing that I do know for sure.

  She can’t hide forever, and when I finally find her…

  Well, that’s the part that I don’t have answers to yet.

  PEACE

  Chapter One

  Alexandria

  My life is officially over, and I got the news last week, when I pissed on a stick and found two pink lines staring back at me. At first, I didn’t believe it, so I had to consult sixteen other sticks, all the while hoping that at least one would give me a different result. But by the time I reached number sixteen and saw the same two pink lines, it finally sank in.

  I am pregnant. Knocked up. With child.

  I’m going to be someone’s mom, for life, and there’s nothing that I can do to stop that. Which is terrifying, but not as bad as some women might think. Because it’s actually not that I’m freaking out about having a baby, per se; it’s more that I’m freaking out about the person I have to share this baby with.

  Achilles “Chilli” Hart.

  He is the hottest man ever to grace this planet, and I am not just saying that from within a hormone-filled stupor, in which my vagina is ruling my brain. It’s true. Chilli isn’t just some run-of-the-mill good-looking guy who turns heads. He’s the kind of guy who makes other men gulp and turn an eagle eye on their wives, their sisters, and even their freaking moms. Hell, I’ve seen octogenarians who do a double take and then start drooling when he walks in, all smiles, with his easy good looks and a weird grace that makes him perfect.

  Until you realize that when God made Chilli, he figured that he’d have to tone him down somehow. And by that I mean that the man is a klutz. He doesn’t trip or stumble so much as crash and smash and sometimes injure himself. He can be standing stock still beside you, and somehow, something will still end up being spilled on you.

  And yet, even with that one flaw, I have to admit that he’s as close to perfect as it’s possible for a man to be. He’s kind. He’s smart. He’s so good-looking that I almost orgasmed the first time I met him.

  And he’s obsessed with me, or at least he was until three months ago, when we slept together. After that, it became a cold war in which I was scrambling to figure out what the hell was happening. One minute, we were hot and heavy, and the next, he wasn’t answering calls, texts, or his front door.

  Admittedly, I feel like an idiot for that last part, because every respectable woman knows that if you get ignored when you call or text, then showing up at the dude’s house is stalker overkill. My cousin Rosetta would call it wooing a man, but I call it being willfully blind and asking for humiliation.

  That being said, I can’t just ignore the reality that I have to talk to Chilli, because facts are facts. I’m pregnant with his baby, and despite what I feel for him right now, and despite his being a cowardly jerk, I need to tell him. How he’ll react to this news is beyond me, and frankly, it doesn’t even matter anymore.

  But he needs to know.

  The problem is, every time I pick up the phone or start to drive out towards his house, I find myself recoiling so sharply that I do things like throw my phone against the wall—I’ve had to buy a new phone three times now. And as for driving over…let’s just say that I ended up on the border of South Carolina before I could stop myself.

  To put it plainly, every time that I so much as attempt to get in contact with Chilli Hart, my body freaks the hell out and either breaks my electronics or tries to make me move to another state. Like, right now? I’m sitting with my head in the toilet and my phone in my right hand, and I’m noticing, fearfully, that it’s inching closer and closer to the water in the bowl, apparently against my will.

  Jesus! It’s like watching my body work independently of my mind, and if it doesn’t stop, then I’ll have to go to church with Mom and Daddy and talk to the priest about invasions of the demonic kind.

  Suddenly, my phone rings, scaring the shit out of me, and it takes more than a little control to stop my hand from tossing the thing directly into the puke-filled toilet.

  “Hello?” I stutter, the caller ID not working because the phone is so new that I haven’t had time to save any numbers on it yet.

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me, Alexandria Tut Sweet!” Ros
e yells into my ear, making me wince and wish to God that I’d let my hand do the talking instead of answering.

  I’ve been ducking and diving my family for weeks, going so far as to skip out on both regular family dinners and Honey’s fortnightly dinners, just so that I can avoid seeing my cousins and the Harts, who are now family, too, because my cousin Cleo is engaged to the oldest Hart boy, Adonis, and my cousin Rosetta is married to his brother Zeus. So we’re all family and entwined together, which makes it super hard on me, because when you’re driving towards your childhood home for dinner and then find yourself in Alabama, several days later, with a phone filled with texts, voice messages, and the clear knowledge that people are searching for you, you’re forced to realize that you have more than just a little problem.

  Last week, I thought that I saw Chilli walking in my direction on the sidewalk, and I came to in a freaking dumpster, only to see that the man coming my way held only a passing resemblance to him.

  You understand my problem now? I’ve turned into a freak who bolts at the mere mention of the man. And I’m having his baby! Talk about freaking dilemmas.

  “Alex!”

  “I’m here! Jesus, Rosetta, would you get off my fucking tits already?” I groan, another wave of nausea filling me, even though I’m like four months along. I read somewhere that most chicks lose the whole vomit thing after the second or third month. Not me. And it isn’t morning sickness so much as just every minute sickness.

  “No. Where have you been, asshole? I’ve tried calling you, texting you, and even showing up at your apartment and your job, Alex,” she hisses, causing me to wince and shudder.

  Of all my cousins or siblings or…whatever, we’re more sisters than anything else, seeing as how my Aunt Angelica—or Honey, as everyone calls her—carried Sin and me because our own moms couldn’t. And Tee, I think; I can’t forget Tee. She’s my sister—adopted, technically, but as much a real sibling as any blood connection. My sisters are all entwined in each other’s lives, and normally, I would be okay with their butting into my business as much as I enjoy butting into theirs. Not this time, though. Nope. Not when I need time to figure out what I’m going to do—

  “Alexandria! For God’s sake, talking to you is like talking to the freaking Sphinx. Or Tee. What the hell’s going on? You left your job? And moved out of your apartment?” she demands, making me wince again.

  Okay, so…here’s the thing. I used to live in the same building as Zeus Hart, who married Rosetta, who happens to be a lawyer and a serial killer in the making. I couldn’t keep living there and risk having her turn up out of the blue, not when I’m still fragile and in need of space. So I did kind of move, but, in my defense, I was sharing a floor-ceiling combo with a guy who is into BDSM with his wife. I don’t know much about babies, but I’m pretty sure that it isn’t healthy to have my unborn kid listening to them fuck and call each other Sweetpuss and Daddy.

  I made a good maternal choice there. I really did. And if moving in the dead of night, so that people don’t know where I live now, is something that happened as a result of that good choice, then it’s a bonus. Not the actual reason. Mostly.

  Dammit!

  “I told you, Patrick and Nina were getting really freaky about the sex—”

  “Alexandria, you spent an entire afternoon going over blueprints that you bribed a city hall official to get you, just so that you could drill a hole in that floor of yours and get footage of Patrick and Nina screwing!”

  Yeeeeah. But that was before I became a mom. Now, I’m determined to be normal and good and—

  “What’s the big deal? So I moved. People move apartments all the time.”

  “And leave their jobs? And stop answering their phone? And stop coming to dinner? We haven’t seen you in over a month, Alex! Your mom’s been crying for days, and don’t even get me started on Jack, because you know how my daddy is,” she says accusingly, causing me to wince yet again.

  My Uncle Jack is as much a father to me as my own is, which means that if people are starting to get riled up about my no-shows, then he’s certain to be one of the first in line. And he’s a crier, too. Not the masculine variety, either. No, Uncle Jack is the kind of guy who will sob and bawl like a baby if he’s feeling an abundance of emotion. Hell, he cried when I got my freaking period, and then spent three hours talking to me about the emotional toll that it takes on a woman.

  I told him that bleeding from my vagina for five days, smelling like a dirty, injured hooker, and having pad chafe is not an emotional event; it’s a freaking injustice. That only made him cry more, muttering that if he could bleed for me, he would.

  God, I love that man.

  “Rosetta—”

  “Shut up! Just shut your lying mouth, and don’t you dare spout any bullshit at me, Alexandria, or I’m likely to really lose my shit and do something that we’ll both regret. Something that Dad would cry about for years. Whatever the hell is going on with you, you need to stop whatever it is you’re doing and talk to us. We’re all worried sick. It’s gotten so bad that Mom’s stopped cooking.”

  “You should thank me for that. I’m doing humanity a favor,” I point out, as the thought of Honey’s food makes my stomach turn and heave violently.

  “I’d laugh, if I had it in me. Where the hell are you?” she screeches, so loudly that I rip the phone away from my ear and slam the toilet lid shut before my hand can toss it in.

  I’m starting to feel that same panicky dread that fills me whenever I think of Chilli. It’s that gut-deep terror that saw me moving in the middle of the night and ignoring calls whenever my family tried to get in touch with me, and it’s the same feeling that wakes me up in the middle of the night and spurs me to check the doors and locks, and to reset the alarm that I have in my apartment.

  I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. It could be hormones, as Doctor Cox explained, or it could be plain psychosis, as Doctor Phil said on that one episode that I watched before I decided that I don’t like the guy. Whatever it is, all I know is that I can’t deal with it right now.

  I said that I’m four months pregnant, and I am, but what I didn’t say is that I’m getting as big as a house already, and I guess that if I were going to be all real with myself, then I’d admit that a lot of this hiding thing is because of what I look like. A house. A fucking whale. The side of a barn.

  “Rosetta—”

  “Where are you, Alexandria? I’m not going to ask you again, bitch. You know that I have connections, and you know that I will use whatever I have at my disposal to get to you, and when I do…” she says, trailing off sinisterly and leaving the rest of her thought unsaid.

  I still shiver, because what she’s leaving unsaid is likely to be harmful and more than a little painful. Rosetta may be the lawyer in our family, and she may have more than a little respect for the law, but when it comes to family, only one law rules: blood. She’ll straight up murder me if I don’t comply, and honestly, after a month of being alone and trapped in this apartment, I need someone to talk to.

  I’m on a leave of absence from work, thanks to the unmanageable sickness—and yes, because I’m also hiding out—and that’s left me cooped up in this apartment with no one to talk to but myself. Being a relatively sane and reasonable person, I don’t think that that’s a good idea, because what I come up with when left to my own devices isn’t exactly healthy. Mentally.

  I’m just not a hundred percent sure that adding Rosetta to the mix is a good idea, either. The bitch is straight up evil when she’s riled up, and I’ve seen her kill kit.

  “If I give you my address, you have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone else, Rose. Just you,” I warn her.

  I love Cleo, Tee, and Sin, and I adore my mom and aunts and uncles, but I’m just not ready for them all to see me like this yet. They’d notice the pregnancy right off the bat, and while I know, logically, that I have to tell Chilli, just the thought of his knowing is enough to make my pits break out into a col
d sweat.

  “Alex—”

  “Promise me, Rosetta! That you won’t tell anyone where I am, and that you’ll come alone,” I insist, every part of me tense to the point of pain.

  I can’t handle anything else right now, and while I am normally a levelheaded person, I can’t fight against the anxiety that spikes inside me at the thought of others being here, finding out, and then…

  Don’t think about it! Just stop, and breathe. Just breathe, I tell myself when I start to tremble, a fine sheen of sweat popping up all over me.

  See what I’ve been dealing with? I go into full-panic, fight-or-flight mode when I consider Chilli finding out about the baby, and then—then things happen. Like my somehow finding myself at the front door with my car keys in hand, before Rosetta’s even had a minute to answer me. Shaking violently, I slam my back against the door and try to tell myself that this is going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay. I shouldn’t run. I can’t run. I need to be an adult about this and just tell people. I’m not a coward. I’m not. I’ve never run from a fight in my life; just ask Bertha May Sockton, the nearly three-hundred-pound lacrosse lesbian who thought that she could intimidate me in high school. Sure, my parents had to pay for those new teeth of hers, but did she ever take me out with her stick? Not after I took all her teeth and snapped her knee.

  “I won’t tell anyone, but I swear to God, Alex, if I show up and you’re not there, or you’ve given me the wrong address, I will hobble you, tie you up in the guest bedroom, and feed you Honey’s food,” she warns, eliciting a giggle from me because we in the family recognize that that isn’t just torture; it’s akin to KGB interrogation tactics.

  Relenting, I sigh and give her my address, ending the call with the promise that I will be here, even as my hand starts reaching for the doorknob. I slap it, cursing at the pain, and somehow manage to push myself away from the door, fighting my body with everything I have just to get myself into my bedroom so that I can change and keep busy enough not to run.