And Heather having published that article had put Fran in danger.
Mavis, being Fran’s protector, hadn’t liked that.
Not at all.
I understood, of course, the need to protect those that you loved.
But Mavis had to have a cooler head than she was exhibiting. She had a kid after all.
“You need to learn to prioritize,” I found myself saying. “You have a kid at home. You need to be thinking about Vlad. And what would’ve happened had you actually been arrested? The hospital would have grounds to fire you.”
Mavis stayed stubbornly silent.
But it was my last words to her that had her seeing red.
“You need to grow up, Mavis. Grandmother isn’t here to bail you out anymore,” I continued, not realizing how volatile the situation was until I got a good look at Mavis’s face when I pulled into her driveway and put the truck in park. “You need to start considering what’s best…”
I turned to look just as Mavis got out of the truck.
She walked to the back, reached inside after opening the door, and extracted her son’s car seat from the seatbelts that I’d hooked it into the car with.
Closing the door quietly, she never once looked back, and I realized that I’d probably just accomplished what I’d been trying to make happen for a very long time now.
Kick Mavis out of my life for good.
CHAPTER 10
If you’re going to get on my nerves, do it by getting on one of the 8000 in my clitoris.
-Mavis to Murphy
MAVIS
I made it into the house, got my son settled for the night, and closed the door quietly before I slid down the length of the nursery’s closed bedroom door and dissolved into a mess of tears.
Vlad was still screaming.
He did this every single night.
It didn’t matter whether I picked him up or rocked him to sleep. Vlad liked to cry.
He liked crying even more when I was the one putting him to bed.
My tear-filled eyes made it nearly impossible to see past the hallway that I was at the end of.
I couldn’t see my bedroom door that was directly next to Vlad’s. I couldn’t see the bathroom door.
I couldn’t even see the carpet, I was crying that hard.
In fact, I was so entrenched in my pity party of one that I didn’t realize that someone was in my house. Let alone that someone was close enough to me that they could literally pick me up off the floor.
I went to scream, an automatic response to having arms wrap around you when you didn’t realize that there were another set of arms in your house, but the smell of burnt motor oil and pine hit me like a sledgehammer.
Once I knew that it was Murphy’s arms around me, I only cried all the harder.
Everything poured out of me.
All the shit that had leeched into my life over the last year and a half poured out of me once I had a strong set of arms to help me cope with the pain.
• • •
MURPHY
It was, quite possibly, the worst idea ever to be in her house.
But, after my parting words to her, I hadn’t been able to get over the finality in which I’d said them.
Hadn’t been able to think about leaving this life with one of the only people to ever take care of me, to wish me well, mad at me when I went.
So I’d broken into her house.
I’d used my lock-picking kit and forced my way into her home, ready to do battle with her.
I’d thought that she would fly at me with fists swinging.
I hadn’t thought that I’d walk into the house to hear Vlad screaming. Nor had I expected to walk toward that screaming to see Mavis on the floor in a pile of devastated tears.
I didn’t stop the urge that overtook me.
Instead, I went with it, going down onto the ground in front of her on my knees, then wrapped my arms around her and pulled her in tight to my body.
She hiccupped, her body ready to do some damage upon feeling me, but then she relaxed, as if every last bit of fight leeched out of her.
She collapsed into me, her face going into the crook of my neck, as bone-racking sobs tore through her.
She cried so hard, and for so long, that I started to get worried.
Her son behind the door finally eased his tears right along with his mother, and soon both of them quieted until there wasn’t anything left but the occasional hiccup.
I don’t know how long I was down there with her in my arms.
But I did know that when I finally got up and carried her into her bedroom, my knees fucking hurt each step of the way.
But it was worth it.
Even the breathlessness that hit me only a few steps in.
Her hand went over my broken heart, and she felt the racing as I moved toward her bed.
When we got there, I tried to put her down on her own, but she held onto me like if she let go, I would disappear.
And I damn well might.
Breathlessness wasn’t the only thing rocketing through me in that moment.
Terror and worry were close on its heels.
“Don’t go,” she pleaded. “Not yet.”
Not ever went unspoken, but I knew that she meant those, too.
But I couldn’t make that promise.
“I’m dirty,” I told her, trying to make her see reason.
“I don’t care,” she admitted. “I need to wash my sheets anyway.”
I wasn’t that dirty.
I’d changed about halfway through the day due to a car leaking on me, and the only ‘dirty’ thing about me right now were my boots.
Boots that I easily slipped off as I got into bed with her.
Vlad started crying again just as I was about to position myself around Mavis’s body.
“Should I go check on him?” I asked her.
She sniffled and loosened her arms, letting go of me reluctantly. “Sure.”
I didn’t like the way that ‘sure’ came out.
As if every ounce of what made Mavis Mavis was gone.
But I got up anyway, because having Vlad quiet would make the next few minutes that I allowed myself to spend with Mavis better.
After crawling out of bed, I headed for Vlad’s door, finding him on his back in his bed, screaming just to scream.
“What’s all that noise about?” I asked him quietly.
The moment he heard my voice, the tears stopped.
He smiled a gummy smile at me, and I reached down into the bed for him.
After getting a good cuddle from him, I changed his barely wet diaper and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Even the small exertion of holding him in my arms was making me breathless.
“I need you to be a good boy,” I said to Mavis’s son. “I have to go help your mother.”
As if he understood my words, he didn’t cry or complain once as I laid him into bed and then tapped his nose with my finger.
He smiled, then closed his eyes.
I left him there after only another second of watching him to head back to Mavis’s room.
When I arrived, it was to find her silently crying in a devastating ball in the middle of her bed.
“Mavis,” I murmured as I moved to the bed once again.
This time, I didn’t hesitate in crawling into it.
I just got into that bed and wrapped myself around her tightly before saying, “Why are you crying again, baby?”
Her breath caught. “My own kid hates me.”
I opened my mouth to deny that, but she sniffled hard again. And through a blinding whirlwind of tears and broken sentences, she told me what it’d been like to live with her son since he’d been born.
“He cries, constantly,” she whispered. “But only for me. You, the mailman, Fran? Y’all can look at him and he’s a different kid.”
I thought about that. “He’s never crying when you bring him somewhere.”
She shrugged. “N
o. But I think it’s because he knows he won’t only see me.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. “Your son isn’t that smart yet. He loves you.”
“He hates me,” she disagreed. “I couldn’t breastfeed because he literally hated my breast milk. Yet he’d drink what I pumped no problem. And when I try to feed him, he doesn’t let me hold the bottle. However, when Fran or you feed him? He allows you to hold the bottle.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“He hasn’t slept through the night with me in his life,” she whispered. “Yet for you and Fran? It’s like magic. He sleeps through the night.”
“Maybe he just wakes up and needs you. Did you ever think of that?” I wondered.
She snorted. “That’s not what happens. When he wakes up, he stays screaming until I can give him a bottle. When he has the bottle, he holds it. When he’s done, he throws it to the floor and turns away from me before falling back to sleep.”
I groaned.
Vlad sure wasn’t making this any easier.
“Your kid is a baby. He literally has no idea what he’s doing,” I pushed.
She sniffled and turned her head away.
She wasn’t crying any longer, but her breath was still hitching, like she could restart at any second.
“My grandmother expressed interest in seeing him after their chance meeting,” she grumbled.
I stilled. “You don’t want her to?”
She shrugged. “She made me choose. My inheritance or Vlad. I chose Vlad. Just because he’s cute now, and she feels bad because of how it’ll make her look, is the only reason that she wants anything to do with him.”
Anger started to simmer in my gut.
I moved over her, my knees straddling her hips, and moved her body until she was facing me directly.
Her eyes were swollen and puffy, and deep bags stretched down to her cheeks from underneath her eyes.
“If you need money, I’ll give you some,” I told her bluntly. “If you don’t want to see her, I’ll help.”
Her shoulders sank into the bed, as her face lost some of the tenseness.
“I don’t need money,” she explained. “Would it be nice? Yes. But I don’t need it. Not anymore. Now that I’m working this new job, I have plenty. The only thing I was worried about was paying for school. I figured that out.”
I thought about it for a moment, wondering if I should say what I wanted to say next.
Pressing both fists into the bed on either side of her head, I leaned down and looked her directly in the eyes before I said, “Vlad’s father. Is he around?”
She snorted. “Hardly. I told him about Vlad. He said, and I quote, to ‘get rid of it.’ Instead, I chose to keep him. And fibbed a little bit on the birth certificate.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “What exactly does that mean?”
She looked a little wary then.
“Oh, nothing.” She shrugged.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Why do I feel like you did something you shouldn’t have? And that something includes me?”
She batted her eyelashes at me, then bit her lip for good measure.
I brought my thumb to her lip and pulled down lightly, causing her to let go of her teeth.
“If I tell you, you have to promise not to be mad,” she pleaded.
I shook my head. “I can’t promise that. I’m a little bit hot-headed when it comes to you.”
She snorted, bringing her hands up from between my thighs and pressing her hands to her face with a groan.
“Vlad’s father is Bayne Green,” she said through her hands. “He has a lot of money. More money than I can count. I had to do something that would make it easier.”
“Make what easier?” I pulled her hands from her face and pushed them both up and over her head.
I knew the name.
The country singer, Green, had come from our small hole in the wall Texas town, and had blown up overnight.
He was now so damn popular that he had women coming from everywhere saying that he was their baby daddy.
So I had a feeling that Green wouldn’t notice another ‘supposed’ kid running around.
But whatever Mavis had done meant that he might not be thinking that.
“And…” I urged.
“If I tell you, will you promise me that you won’t yell?” she asked, once again biting her lip.
I thought about the answer for a long moment before saying, “I promise I’ll hear you out before I yell.”
She sighed. “Good enough.”
I waited, and she rolled her eyes.
“In the beginning, when I tried to tell Bayne that I might be pregnant, he said to ‘get rid of it.’ When I pushed, he sent me a list of abortion clinics.” She drew in a deep breath as anger started to simmer down deep. “So I know someone down at the courthouse.” She continued, “And I won’t be telling you her name. Because that’s just not nice. Anyway, I might or might not have forged your signature.”
I tilted my head. “For what?”
“In the state of Texas, you are legally Vlad’s father because I signed your name to the birth certificate.”
I sighed and bent down until my head was close to hers.
Then I kissed her.
Because it was either do that or throttle the holy hell out of her.
When I pulled back, both of us were panting heavily.
Me because of more than one reason.
“I’m sorry.” She paused. “Well, actually, I’m not sorry at all. I’m not. I’m sorry I’m not sorry.”
I couldn’t stop myself from kissing her again.
This time, deeper.
When I pulled back, her eyes were glazed, and she was staring at me in shock.
“Get off me,” she whispered. “Please.”
I moved until her hands were in one of mine above her head, and then moved my mouth down along her jaw. “Do you really want me to?”
There was a long, drawn out pause and then, “No.”
CHAPTER 11
Vagitarian.
-T-shirt
MAVIS
I wasn’t sure what the hell was happening.
I’d kept a huge, massive secret from him since Vlad had been born.
I’d finally let it out…and he was kissing me.
Kissing. Me.
In all my wildest dreams, when I told him about what I’d done—something that was downright diabolical—I’d never expected this particular reaction.
I’d thought that he would yell.
I thought that he might very well kick me out of his life and never let me back into it.
Hell, in a few scenarios, he took me to court.
But not a single one led to this.
Him pressing against me, holding me down, and running those perfect lips of his along my jaw.
His tongue snaked out and ran along the length of my jaw, and I shivered slightly, my breath coming out in short, sharp pants.
And it wasn’t due to the fact that his big body was practically on top of mine.
Even though his knees were on either side of my hips, and his body was curled over mine, there wasn’t a single part of him that was cutting off my air flow.
He was very careful about keeping off of me.
He was also very careful about what he was allowing me to do.
In all honesty, there wasn’t a single part of me that I could move besides wiggling my fingers and toes.
He practically had me trussed up like a turkey ready to be stuffed.
Stuffed.
My God.
I’d been thinking about Alessio Murphy Romano for so long.
So long, in fact, that now that I had him where I wanted him—on top of me, holding me down with his body weight—I wasn’t sure that this was real.
I wiggled my hands, trying to get free, but he only tightened his grip on my wrists.
I tried harder, causing him to hiss out a breath. “Stay still.”
“Or w
hat?” I asked, unable to stop myself from answering his challenge.
He leaned backward until his eyes could catch mine.
“Or I’ll make you,” he answered once he knew he had my full attention.
I scoffed. “You wouldn’t do a damn thing, and you know it.”
He tightened his hold until I couldn’t even separate my thighs, then started to laugh at the look on my face.
“You don’t think I will?” he asked, moving down until he could place his mouth against my collar bone. He gave it a sharp nip before saying, “Would anyone blame me?”
I gasped, my nipples pebbling at the feel of him holding me trussed up, at his mercy.
“I don’t think anyone would, no,” I admitted. “I’m bad.”
He sucked the skin covering my collar bone, causing my hips to lift.
Only, they didn’t get far, because again, he was trapping me on the bed with his big body.
God, I wanted to touch him.
I wanted to run my mouth along his strong jaw.
I wanted to run my fingers through his hair.
I wanted to push my pussy against his…
“Focus,” he ordered.
I blinked, surprised to find him staring down at me with laughter in his eyes.
I cleared my throat.
I wasn’t sure what was going on, nor how I was supposed to act.
What I did know was that I wanted him.
I wanted him to have his way with me, and I wanted him to do it now.
“I’m focused,” I lied.
His eyes smiled even though his lips did not.
Then, he gave me exactly what I’d wanted earlier.
He allowed me to have my hands back.
My fingers hit his skin so fast that he chuckled.
One hand went up into his hair while the other went down to the muscles at the back of his neck.
God. His hair was a whole lot softer than I’d thought it would be.
I don’t know why I expected it to be coarse.
But it was soft, like silk, and I never wanted to take my hands out of the beautiful locks.
My fingers feeling up the muscles on his shoulder stilled when his muscles all of a sudden bunched, and then he was up and off me, making me cry out in frustration.
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