Then, about two weeks ago when the media frenzy with the pictures died down, it was about the fact that Tantor had gone to ground and hadn’t been found since.
After setting me up, he seemed content with the havoc that he’d wrought.
So content, in fact, that he had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth, and he’d stayed out of sight since.
Hell, even Tyson hadn’t seen him. According to him, that was a big deal seeing as he loved to torture Tyson every chance he got.
My guess was that he was making other things happen, things we weren’t going to like all that much.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
I was worried that the things Tantor was working on were going to break me, and I was terrified that in doing so, he’d take Conleigh out, too.
But I didn’t say that to her.
Instead, I looked her in the eyes and said, “I’ve loved you for what feels like my whole life, and I’ve never felt emptier than I have these last two months without you here in my arms.”
She hiccupped as a tear started to descend down her cheek.
“Not to break up this makeup lovefest or anything, but if you don’t want your life plastered in the gossip rags—along with a picture of your girl’s ass—I’d suggest you get into the locker room already.”
I turned to find Joe standing there grinning like a loon.
I felt my hands clench, and only then realized that both of them already had a tight hold on each perfect globe of Conleigh’s ass.
“Shit,” I said and turned.
She patted me on the shoulder pad.
“I can walk,” she informed me haughtily.
I snorted. “And I can carry you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
***
Despite the wind blowing past my face and into my still slightly damp hair, I felt discontent.
Normally this was something that made me feel free.
Over the last two months, I’d done a hell of a lot of riding when things were bad—and there were a lot of those times.
But Conleigh was currently behind me in her car, not behind me on my bike, and I felt discord running through my veins.
I’d felt it for over twenty minutes now, and I wanted nothing more than to pull the bike over just so she’d do the same, and then yank her out of the car and remind myself that she was talking to me.
Remind myself that she was there.
We hadn’t talked at all once we’d gotten into the locker room.
There’d been too many people and not enough quiet space.
And when we got outside, more reporters were waiting at the gates, looking for players—mainly Conleigh and I—to come out and talk to them. But it was really our story that they wanted.
Badly.
Which led to now, me pulling into the driveway of my house.
My hands were shaking, and it probably wasn’t the safest thing in the world to be driving like that.
But Conleigh was there, pulling in right behind me, and I couldn’t fucking breathe.
She got out of the car, and I remained sitting, trying to make my legs work.
It was the sight of her walking up behind me, throwing her arms around my shoulders from behind, that finally made me take a calming breath.
She wasn’t going to leave.
“I got the pictures off everywhere,” I blurted. “They’re not anywhere. And I swear to God, Con. I didn’t do that. I was drugged.”
Her shoulders slumped.
“My parents came into town and told me. Apparently Steel thought I was being an asshole for not forgiving you for something that out of your control.” Her voice quivered. “How could you do that to me?” She shook her head. “I haven’t seen the internet, or the pictures, or anything since I left you standing in the hospital parking lot,” she admitted. “I’ve taken a break from everything, my phone and computer included. But if I’d known…Linc. I wouldn’t have left like that. I wouldn’t have done anything but hold you tight.”
I knew she wouldn’t, which was the whole fucking point of leaving her in the dark.
I pulled her into my chest. “I know, baby. But there are other things happening, and I didn’t want you in the middle of that media shit storm. I might’ve been able to get the ones off the internet, but there were the ones printed in the paper. It wasn’t safe to be around me. Hell, I’m sure having you show up at the game today only stirred that fire right back up.”
She laughed and pulled away, causing me to follow her.
“I don’t give a damn about that,” she admitted. “I only care about you. And now that I know that you had no part in doing what I saw in those pictures, I’m okay with whatever comes our way. Whether that’s paparazzi, fame or misfortune. Hell, as long as you don’t go and keep something so important like this from me again, I’ll be okay with whatever life throws at us.”
I sighed. “I would’ve told you but…”
She placed her hand over her mouth. “We were both at fault for what happened. If I had been thinking rationally and hadn’t reacted without giving you a chance to explain first, I would’ve seen that you were sick, that you weren’t even awake. Hell, now that my brain can think past seeing her hand on your chest, I can see the freakin’ signs. God, I feel so stupid.”
I pulled her into me roughly, wrapping my arms around her so tight that I was sure she was having trouble breathing. But I just couldn’t force them to loosen.
Having her back in my arms felt so fucking sweet that I was sure that at any second it was about to come all crashing down.
I wouldn’t let her go. Not ever again.
“Let’s go inside,” I urged.
In that moment, I needed to be inside of her. I needed that last connection to make this feel completely real.
“My parents are at my place,” she whispered.
Her place that I’d been able to convince the landlord not to sell thanks to offering him about four times his asking price and him accepting. Though she didn’t know that…yet.
I pulled her phone out of her back pocket and handed it to her. “Text them and tell them you’re not coming home.”
She snorted but did as I asked, typing away at her phone at lightning speed.
When she pushed the phone back into her pocket, we both turned and headed for my front door.
We were both seconds away from pushing through the front door when we heard it.
“I saw that y’all were back together.”
I froze at hearing a woman’s voice behind me.
Turning slightly, I faced the same woman who had nearly ruined my life.
Tara.
“You don’t have to worry about Tantor for a while,” she murmured. “My father sent him down a different path for the foreseeable future. I thought I’d come share that with you in case you were curious whether or not he’d be showing up to do anything since y’all have obviously fixed things.”
“No offense, but why the hell would we trust anything that comes out of your mouth? And, FYI, we haven’t fixed things,” Conleigh said coldly. “I’m not sure the things you and your brother broke are able to be fixed.”
That made my heart leap.
Not fix things?
God, that sounded awful, and honestly, the worst possible thing that could ever happen.
If we couldn’t move on from what had happened, then where would we go?
Would we even have a chance?
“I’m sure that you may think that way,” Tara said. “But just look at it this way…I didn’t do anything to him. I only took some pictures. I never touched him other than to place my hand on his chest once and his face once. He undressed himself. I only assisted him with getting a hotel room.” She looked haunted. “He still has his FaithSports contract because of whomever y’all hired to get the pictures off the Internet. Tantor isn’t going to be bothering you for a w
hile. Oh, and you’re not being controlled by your brother and father, being forced do horrible things that you never wanted to do and seeing things that you never, not ever, wanted to see.”
Conleigh scoffed. “That sounds like a bunch of convenient excuses. Someone forcing you to do something like what you did to Linc says that you’re weak, not a victim. Linc is the victim here.”
Tara laughed then, causing Conleigh to stiffen in anger.
But there was no anger in the woman in front of me. Only self-recrimination.
“I’d do anything if it meant that what I had to see never happened again,” she hissed. “And when it comes to a child…you’ll lose every single time.”
With that, the woman walked away, leaving us staring after her.
But not because of the words she’d said, but because it honestly looked like the woman wasn’t going to make it.
It looked like walking was painful for her.
As if she was going to fall down any second.
“I think it’s time to look into that woman.”
I snorted.
“I’ve had people on it for a couple of months,” I admitted. “There’s nothing there. Not a single thing. It’s like she’s a ghost. Hell, even with her and Rome having a baby together and her being in his life for four years, he doesn’t know anything more about her. It’s like she only existed here for a few years while she raised her son. Before Rome’s son died of leukemia, Tara left, stating that she couldn’t do it anymore. But, I’m beginning to think that there’s something a whole lot more going on than we’re seeing.”
Conleigh grunted. “I wish I knew what it was. I’m not sure what to do.”
Her admission was one that I agreed with.
On one hand, I was so angry at her for doing what she did that I wasn’t sure that I’d ever be able to let it go. But on the other, I was looking at this woman, who looked like she was beaten down and broken, and I was wondering if there was anything that I could do to help.
However, at this point, I wasn’t sure that anyone could do anything to help but her.
I had a feeling that whatever it was that she could do wasn’t going to be anything good.
I pushed through the door to my house and closed it behind Conleigh after she entered.
Her face started to take in the house around me, and I winced.
“So…you’ve been redecorating,” she said, trying to lighten the mood.
I snorted. “Sure. If that’s what you want to call it.”
She walked farther into the room, stopping beside the couch and picking up a bag of half-eaten pita chips, placing them on the coffee table.
“I hope your bed doesn’t look like this,” she admitted.
“I haven’t changed the sheets since the last time you were in them. My pillow barely smells like you anymore,” I blurted. “Conleigh, I can’t do this.”
She frowned. “Do what?”
“I can’t be here with you if you don’t think that we can fix things,” I spouted. “We need to be able to fix what I broke if we’re going to make this work.”
She came at me then, her anger palpable. “There’s nothing to fix. Not between me and you. We’ve never been the problem; it’s always been everyone else. So, no, there’s no fixing what’s wrong with me and you, because it was never broken. What does need to be fixed are my reactions to things that I can’t control. I know that you wouldn’t ever set out to purposely hurt me, but it’s going to happen again. You’re too big of a name for the media not to spin things in the most unflattering or untruthful ways, and I’m going to have no choice but to react to that. And I’ll apologize for that now, because it’s going to happen, and I’m not going to be able to control it.”
I pulled her into my arms. “I’ll quit football.”
She smacked me on the upper back, causing my skin to sting.
“You’re not quitting, fool. If you quit, who will I watch in their tight football pants?”
I snorted and dropped my head into her neck, inhaling her scent deeply.
The feel of her so close was causing things inside of me to stir, and I wanted nothing more than to start ripping her clothes off right then and there.
She obviously agreed with me on that, because she pushed back from me and started to rip at her clothes.
The articles of clothing that she had covering her were hastily thrown next to a few articles of mine, and suddenly I had a hot, naked woman in my arms and I was carrying her to my bedroom.
I hadn’t lied.
My room was a pigsty, and I hadn’t cleaned anything in months, including my sheets—just like I’d told her.
Yes, it was probably gross, but I couldn’t force myself to do it with the smell of her still barely clinging to the sheets.
The moment she was down on her back in my bed, I followed her, roughly shoving at my jeans as I did.
Once I had them down low enough to get my cock out, I reared up and lined my cock up with her entrance, sinking inside a breath later.
As she fully surrounded me, I realized that she was right.
What we had was right. It didn’t need to be fixed.
I just needed to believe in it.
And once I was inside of her, I did.
She was home, and always would be.
Chapter 21
I didn’t know he was planning to breathe so loudly when I married him.
-Conleigh to her mother
Conleigh
A man glowered at me, and I had the distinct feeling that he was set on not liking me from the start.
I was at a party that the Bear Bottom Guardians were hosting, and I was uncomfortable as hell about being there after everything that had happened between Linc and me.
“Wade,” he rumbled. “My name is Wade.”
But, with his leg up in a cast like it was, we were both stuck with each other, so I played nice even though his glare was disconcerting.
I nodded. “Is that your real name, or your nickname?”
He frowned and looked at me a little more closely. “Real. Not all of us go by nicknames. Some of the given names are pretty weird as it is. Though Bayou goes by his middle name, but that was before the MC came around. His real name is Benson.”
That was true.
There was Linc and Hoax, Bayou and Wade, Castiel and Liner—both of whom weren’t here yet but were supposed to be coming. And those were just guys I knew their names. There were more men in the MC, but since I’d seen Linc in person last at one of the parties that they hosted, they’d added quite a few new members.
“So, you were shot in the leg?”
That was the one and only time Linc had called me over the last two months, and I’d listened to that voicemail over and over again, willing myself to forgive him and move on.
Now I wished I had listened to my inner self and gone with what I’d known was right, and I wouldn’t have wasted another month being mad over something that hadn’t even happened.
“Yeah,” Wade grunted. “What’s it to you?”
“Don’t be a dick,” Hoax growled. “Just because your wife hates you doesn’t mean that you have to be mean to every woman that you encounter.”
I snorted.
“Just tell him how you really feel, Hoax,” I snickered.
Linc’s phone, that I was once again holding, rang for a third time, and I growled.
Wade lifted his eyebrow at me and said, “Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“It’s not my phone,” I admitted.
“Answer it,” Hoax grumbled, his eyes closed where he was laying back on the couch. “My head hurts like a motherfucker.”
I snorted and pressed ignore, but I did open up the phone and clear the missed call, frowning when I saw the local number.
“Huh,” I said. “Weird.”
“What’s weird?” Linc sat down beside me, making the couch dip awkwardly so I had no choice but to rea
rrange myself so that I was laying against him or risk face planting into the man on the other side of me.
Hoax opened his eyes from where he was planted in the seat beside me and glared at Linc. “What part of ‘I have a headache’ did you not understand?”
“The part where I wasn’t here for that conversation,” Linc muttered. “You look weird without your cast on.”
I looked at the arm that had once been cast and felt my lips twitch.
As long as you weren’t comparing one arm to the other, he looked perfectly normal. It was when both arms were crossed across his chest, like they were now, that you could see how pasty white one arm was compared to the tanned skin on the other.
“Not like I can help it, fucker,” Hoax growled. “Go fuck yourself.”
Hoax had healed fully, other than random headaches he occasionally got, like the one that he was currently fighting. Apparently, they were so debilitating that he wouldn’t be able to work or drive until it went away.
Which made me feel awful.
“You should go get your headache checked out,” I admitted. “It could be that you have something else wrong.”
Hoax grunted. “I’ll ask the pretty nurse next time I see her.”
I snorted. “The pretty nurse told me that you were too scared to go anywhere near her.”
He was talking about Pru, of course.
“That’s because her father is fully capable of killing me before I’d even realize he was there.” He paused. “And I’m fairly sure that he hates me.”
I scoffed. “Sam Mackenzie seems like a big ol’ teddy bear to me.”
“That’s because you’re a girl, honey,” Linc explained. “Sam Mackenzie is a badass. He’ll kill Hoax if he goes near his daughter.”
I smiled and turned my head to study the man across from me.
“At least mine’s easier to hide,” Wade held up his casted foot. “If I keep it, that is. Then it won’t matter whether it’s tanned or not.”
Wade, apparently, was in danger of losing his leg from the knee down due to a recurring infection that they couldn’t get to clear up. The nurses and doctors, according to Wade, feared that the infection was in danger of spreading to the bone.
And if it did that, he might be shit out of luck.
Talkin' Trash (The Bear Bottom Guardians MC Book 2) Page 20
