SweetHarts (5 Book Box Set)

by Kira Graham

  I don’t even mind that something hard is digging into my ass, and that it isn’t his dick, as I sniffle and try to come to terms with everything that’s happened today. I’ve been poked at, prodded, disappointed to the point where I thought that I was going to fall apart, and now…I’ve lost another home. Jesus, maybe Mindy was right; bad things do happen to bad people.

  “What happened? Did I leave the hair straightener on again?” I ask, trying to remember what I did this morning. “Oh, my God—Tee!” I yell, panicking as I remember the dog and think about its poor little body all burnt up in the bathroom.

  “Tee is fine; she was at work,” Paris assures me, shushing me until I sputter and pull back, wiping tears from my cheeks.

  “Not my cousin, you boob. The dog. I locked the little shit—er, I mean, the poor little darling—in the bathroom,” I confess, feeling ten kinds of awful about that.

  I watched a show once, though I can’t quite remember which one, where one of the main characters said that anyone who hurts or kills a dog should go straight to hell. And I agree. But it’s not like I was going anywhere else, anyway. Poor Tee-bag. It must have taken less than a minute for that little bas—uh, baby to become overwhelmed by the heat.

  I hear Paris sputter, and then I feel him shake violently before he laughs so hard that I shove him away and glower, promising to punch him in the nuts again just as soon as I feel like I’m on level footing. Dear Lord, I should never have locked him—or her, whatever that thing is—in the bathroom, but in my defense I woke up this morning to find it gnawing on the big toe of my left foot, and it was biting so hard that I think it really was trying to chew it off. I should probably get a tetanus shot or something—

  “You named your dog after Nefertiti?” he asks, wheezing when I frown and cock my head to the side, studying him so minutely that I see everything.

  Paris is something else entirely when he smiles or laughs, and seeing him laugh now is the equivalent of watching the sun come out from behind a bank of dark storm clouds. My breath catches, and for these brief seconds, I forget that I’m miserable and feel my heart go light as I grin and watch him enjoy this moment.

  “Don’t tell her, but it’s the only name that I could come up with when the little shit launched himself over the couch and bit me in the ass,” I whisper, chortling when he throws his head back and booms out a laugh, his hands clutching at his stomach.

  “I won’t tell her, scout’s honor,” he vows, once he’s started to wind down.

  “I don’t believe for a second that you were ever a scout,” I scoff, the shock and sense of loss still there but overtaken by the terrible guilt I feel about Tee-bag.

  Dammit.

  “And you would be wrong, Sinai. But then, that’s always been the biggest problem between us, hasn’t it? We’re wrong about so much that we seem to have taken for granted,” he says softly, causing me to snort and turn away to stare out the window.

  “Why do you have black stuff on your face?” I ask, not wanting to talk to him about us.

  Since there is no us unless you count two hot sex sessions and some nasty words that I’d rather forget entirely.

  “I went in there when I realized what was going on.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Don’t worry—it was only a little smoke at that point, and just enough flames to make it clear that a fire extinguisher wasn’t gonna cut it. That’s when I heard the barking,” he says, smiling as he holds up his arm.

  Two holes mar the sleeve of his jacket, along with a few tears in the shape of a bite mark.

  “You got Tee-bag out?” I gush, throwing myself at him when joy overwhelms me.

  Until I realize that I now have to keep the little runt, and worse, I won’t ever be able to lock him in the bathroom again. Shoot. Meanwhile, Paris accepts my hug easily, and I’m the one who has to pull away and remind myself that I sort of hate him, although that’s not easy to do now that I know he saved that stupid dog. And okay, I like the way it feels when he hugs me tightly to his chest and seems to breathe me in, while trembling a little against me.

  “I should have saved myself the trouble and just left the little shit, but I thought that you were inside,” he murmurs softly against my head, the slight pressure of his lips making me think that he may have just kissed my hair. “But you weren’t. You were at the doctor,” he says even more softly, pushing me away so that I have to meet his eyes.

  I see the question there, along with something that looks like hope, and my heart pains me when it stalls inside my chest and then gives off a sick thud. He doesn’t think that I’m…? But that’s not possible. He knows…doesn’t he?

  “Yeah,” I whisper, gulping out a silent groan as he keeps searching my eyes while holding on to my hand, his grip so tight that it hurts my fingers and helps me center myself.

  “Sin, baby, what’s going on?”

  “You know,” I mumble, hating him for making me spell it out.

  What does he think, huh? That some stupid miracle happened, and suddenly my lady factory just started chugging away? Only a fool would be that dumb, and if that’s what he’s thinking, then all I can say is join the club, because for the smallest, most hopeful moment, I wanted to believe that, too.

  “Goddammit, I don’t know a goddamn thing! That’s the problem. You don’t talk to me,” he yells, slamming a hand into the steering wheel with a curse so vile that my mom and aunts would faint dead away if they heard it.

  And then pray for him.

  “And whose fault is that, huh? Who’s the one who just doesn’t have the patience to wait, to listen?” I throw back at him, my own patience fraying now that my shock and sorrow have fled.

  I recover quickly from trauma. What can I say? It’s a skill that Uncle Jack taught me around about the time that he gave me the speech about my period, tried to give me the sex talk, and almost ruined me for sex—for life. Now that’s trauma.

  “What did you expect, woman? I fucking loved you from the first moment I set eyes on you and saw you sneakily spitting into Adonis’s coffee!” he yells, his eyes blazing when my lips twitch, and a little burst of mirth leaves me. “This isn’t funny!”

  No. No, it really isn’t, not even a little, I think, as I watch his hands curl around the steering wheel and let his words settle inside me. Loved. Love, but with a D attached to the end that nearly shatters my heart. It’s funny what one small, simple letter can do to change a word that I’ve wanted to hear for so long that it hurts to think about. He loved me. Past tense. Long gone. Over. I guess I have only myself to blame for that one, but as someone who isn’t used to taking the blame for things, unless I find them hilarious and shameless, it’s not easy to accept the blame for this as I fall back into my seat, nearly screaming when someone pounds on the window and ruins the moment.

  “Dude, Paris, you can’t just pull over on the side of the road and stop here like a sitting duck,” Nate growls, his eyes flicking over me with a frown when I sniff and turn my head to look out the window, not ready to answer any questions.

  “We’re talking,” Paris snarls, his jaw twitching when Nate scowls at him and shakes his head.

  “Do it somewhere safe. Her fucking apartment was just burned to ashes. She needs to be on lockdown.”

  “Take me to my parents,” I mumble, my words getting ignored by both men as they start discussing teams and numbers and something else that flies over my head because they start to whisper, and then Nate growls and storms off as Paris starts the car and pulls away, checking his mirrors frequently.

  “We’re going to my place to talk, and before you start arguing—don’t. It’s a waste of breath. What we need to say to each other needs saying now, and I’m not taking no for an answer,” he warns me.

  “What a surprise. The great Paris Hart not taking no for an answer,” I taunt, ignoring his huff of annoyance and looking out the window to avoid looking at him.

  Stupid idiot. Stupid, sweet, brave idiot. Why does he have to be s
o demanding, darn it? Everyone seems to think that he’s the happy-go-lucky, easygoing brother. Well, I have news for them—this guy is as demanding and stubborn as a freaking spoiled mule!

  “Stop grumbling over there, and get ready to spill your guts. I don’t wanna hear anything out of you unless it’s to tell me just what the fuck is going on with you lately!”

  I zip my lips after that, and silently prepare myself for a long-overdue talk that makes me want to pull an Alex and run until my feet bleed.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Paris

  I’m as nervous as fuck when I pull into the underground parking garage and shut the car off, turning to watch Sin as she sits quietly, nervously biting her lip with a frown. She looks so small sitting there that’s it’s hard for me to remember that this is the same woman who broke into my apartment one night almost a year ago, and somehow poured hot wax on my balls while I slept. She’s also the same woman who got her ass banned from church—for reasons she refuses to discuss with anyone, but I get the feeling that it had something to do with the priest showing up one Sunday morning with a neon orange toupee and a four-leaf clover inked onto his cheek with a Sharpie.

  Sin is brazen and unapologetic, and yet she’s the most stable person I know, which is why I woke up this morning knowing that something is very wrong with her, and that that something didn’t just happen recently. No, when I finally pulled my head out of my ass and started thinking, without my own feelings coloring the picture, I started to puzzle together a number of small things that I’d missed before. Like the fact that she has completely abandoned her career, something that she loved so much that it’s hard to believe that she hasn’t once asked about the restaurant since the accident, or even hinted at coming back. She lost her spark somewhere, and the longer I lay in bed this morning, thinking about it as I watched the dawn arrive, the more I saw. She’s different, and that difference started sometime around her breakup with Cole.

  I didn’t like thinking that she was heartbroken over that asshole, and it took me about an hour of cussing and cursing before it hit me that she would never have let him drag her down. That’s not who Sinai is. She’s sweet and smart and funny and as scary as hell, but one thing she isn’t, and I never thought she would be, is defeated. She rolls with the punches, thumbs her nose at life, and says what she wants, when she wants. This is the woman who stood up at Alex’s and Chilli’s belated wedding reception and gave a speech that outlined every one of Alex’s transgressions, despite her cousin’s threats to slit her throat while she slept. Sin is the person that people count on to say it like it is, and to relieve any tension with one smarmy word of disgust or one comment of pure, unfiltered rudeness.

  But I hadn’t seen any of that in so long that it hit me like a blow to the nuts: I’d been so intent on winning her that I’d overlooked the things that were right in front of me. And then afterwards, while I was wallowing in self-pity, I hadn’t once seen that she was…broken. My Sin is broken, and all I’ve been doing is slowly grinding the pieces that are left under my shoe. Shaming her, treating her like a meaningless booty call, hurting her, and shamefully enjoying it all.

  “I don’t want to be here,” she says softly, another indicator that she’s lost her fire.

  Before this past year, she’d probably have opened the door of my car while I was driving, thrown herself out, performed a SWAT-style roll and recover, and then sauntered off after threatening me with revenge. Hell, knowing Sin, she’d have waited until I was speeding and then punched me in the balls, all while cackling and taking a video to send to Rosetta.

  “You don’t have a choice,” I bark out, ignoring her snort of derision as I hop out of the car and come around to wrestle her out.

  She’s cursing under her breath and sending death glares towards the SUV from where the security guys are all watching, but she doesn’t fight as much as I know she would have before. I pull her into the elevator and swipe my card for the top floor, knowing that when we get there, the door will be manned by no fewer than three of the guys from that SUV.

  Sin doesn’t say a word as we ascend, and I’m starting to sweat by the time we reach my apartment and she silently walks in, her lip curling as it always did when she takes in the sparse furnishings and the minimalist look that I gravitate towards.

  “Jesus, Hart. If you’re seriously dating some other woman, the least you can do is pretty this dump up a little. This couch feels like a concrete block under my ass,” she grouches, her lip curling again when I chuckle, shed my jacket and tie, and walk over to the kitchen island to grab two bottled waters.

  She doesn’t thank me when I pass one to her and lower myself onto the one-seater to her left, leaning back with a sigh of fatigue now that my adrenaline is ebbing, and the events of just an hour ago are catching up with me. I guess that that’s the last nail I needed in order to stop and think about what we’ve been doing these last few months. Seeing her apartment going up in flames and thinking that she was in there, possibly already overcome by the smoke and lost to me, woke me up like even that fucking accident hadn’t been able to do.

  The truth is, no matter what came before, and no matter what she’s said and done—or what I’ve said and done—I love this woman, and I probably always will. Hell, I knew that I must still love her, and that this feeling wasn’t just another flash in the pan, when Chantel offered herself to me on a silver platter, and I didn’t so much as feel one spark of desire. The woman is gorgeous; no one can deny that. Heck, even Sin said she’s hot, so the fact that I found her naked on this very “concrete block,” with her attributes bared and on offer, and I didn’t do anything about it, tells me that Sin owns my dick and balls, and she always will.

  “I’m not dating some other woman,” I say softly, smiling ruefully when she sniffs and bares her teeth at me, giving me a look that I’ve missed so much that I feel my dick go as hard as stone.

  Shifting to relieve the discomfort, because I am fully aware that if I go in for sex now, I’ll end up watching Sinai rip my cock off and chew it to pieces, I rest my arms over the growing bulge behind my fly and take her in. She’s pale, as nervous as hell, and practically chewing a hole in her lip as she avoids my gaze.

  I should probably ease us into this, but hell, the one thing that Sin and I have always had in common is our habit of just blurting shit out and enjoying the fallout.

  “Are you pregnant?” I ask, the fragile hope within me turning to horror when her lip trembles, and tears fill her eyes.

  “Don’t be cruel, Paris. I can say a lot of things about you, but you’ve never been cruel,” she accuses me softly, her eyes going hard when I frown in bewilderment.

  “Why is that cruel, Sinai? We’ve been together twice, but we were wild enough that I came inside you more than half a dozen times. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that you’re pregnant, especially when I find you leaving an OB-GYN’s office,” I point out, my confusion spiking even higher when Sin shrieks and jumps to her feet, throwing her water bottle at me with a string of curses that penetrates my ears only after I’ve recovered from taking a bottle to the face.

  “Are you trying to be a bastard? Because if that’s what you brought me here to talk about, then I’d suggest that you take me to my mom and dad’s house right now. Or I’ll kill you,” she warns, that spark of fury growing more intense, the angrier she gets.

  I love her angry, God help me. It makes me as hard as hell thinking about her attacking me right before I take her down and love her so hard that we both pass out afterwards. Fantasies of her in my bed have been on a nonstop loop for months, and now that she’s actually in my home, I can’t stop myself from wanting to put her there, under me, taking every inch of me—

  “Oh my God, are you aroused?” she asks when I don’t answer, her eyes going wide as I press the heel of my hand against my dick to relieve some of the pressure.

  “Can’t help it. You’re so fucking sexy,” I say honestly, my mind struggling to stay on c
ourse when all I can think about is getting inside her warm sex.

  Baby, Paris. Ask her about the doctor, I tell myself, forcing my thoughts to go back to where they should be. She almost died, and then I found her coming out of the doctor’s office. That’s what we have to discuss, as well as the fact that we can’t keep going on like this. We belong together, and as messed up as the road to all this has been, we need to be together. Because, as I’ve discovered, I can’t live without her.

  “Oh, God. Stop it! Stop running so hot and cold all the time. You hate me, you want me, and then it’s right back to the start. You’re giving me freaking whiplash, Paris!” she yells, tears shimmering in her eyes. “What is it that you want from me, huh? Do you want to keep punishing me for the way I hurt you? Is that what this is about?”

  “Sin—”

  “Because I’ve had e-fucking-nough of being hurt. I lost everything that I ever thought that I could want, plus things that I didn’t even know that I did want—all while you were pursuing me so hard that I couldn’t think straight. You wanna know why I stayed with Cole even though I hated him? Because you were just too intense. You wanted me so badly, but don’t think that I haven’t heard all the stories about how fast you fall in and out of love. And the way you kept railroading me all the time, even when I told you that I was dealing with some heavy shit? Why couldn’t you just freaking wait for me to work through it?” she screams, her hand going to the vase on my coffee table before she pulls it back with a muffled oath and stalks to the window. “And then, this? Look, I’m almost certain that you heard me talking to Tee about my condition, so you can quit playing dumb and stop trying to hurt me. I can’t have babies. I’m getting over it, and soon, I will get over you, too. I’m not proud of myself for still being in love with you, but you know what? I’ll move on eventually. If you let me go.”

  I can’t form a single word. I’m still stuck on the words “condition” and “can’t have babies,” my chest going as tight as a drum when I meet her gaze and see the truth written in her eyes. Sin can’t have children, and instead of telling me, she…