Happily Ever After (With the Bad Boy Book 15)

by Wanda Amard

  I built a life for myself with a nice house and a beautiful wife — a beautiful, pregnant wife, who is getting ready to start a family with me because she’s stupid. However, I won’t be here to be a part of this family because Kimber trusted me not to screw it up and I did. I lied to her and worst of all myself. I thought I could handle this thing with Ricky and get him out of my life forever. We’d have a house in the city and no consequences, but I was stupid to think I would ever be so lucky. That fate would grant to me a chance at a second life. I should’ve run when I got out of prison. Headed right down to Florida, broken my probation and started a new life. Let Kimber find someone who deserves her. I don’t deserve someone as innocent and trusting.

  But no, I wanted to go the straight and narrow. I was dumb to think I could do it, but people like me — we never make it out. Not alive anyway.

  I can’t allow Kimber to see me this worked up. She’ll ask questions. I stop before entering the trailer to gather my breath and my thoughts. One hundred scenarios run through my mind — packing our bags tonight and hitting the open road topping the list — but it doesn’t matter where I go. Ricky will find me. I am his and there’s no getting out from it. Not anymore.

  She’s in the kitchen wrapping plates in brown paper and stacking them on top of each other in a box when I walk inside and see her. When I left this morning, the living room was empty, looking the same as it has for the last year I lived here. She hadn’t started putting things in boxes yet and a few items needed to wait until right before. But now it’s easy to see she’s been busy today. The place looks packed, boxes lining one wall are stacked higher than they should be for her condition.

  “Did you lift these boxes?” She shouldn’t be lifting such heavy things while pregnant.

  She nods and grunts, not paying me attention.

  I cover the distance of the kitchen, wanting to touch and feel her as much is possible in my last few hours with Kimber and freedom. I grab her hand, stopping her from dropping another plate in the box, and she holds on to the counter meeting my eyes.

  “I’m ready to move.”

  For a moment all my troubles are forgotten, and it’s just the two of us together. “Me too, babe.” I’ll yell at her for lifting more than she should later.

  If my service to Ricky will do anything, it’ll give her a free home to live in for the rest of her life. Not even Ricky can take it away. I can leave and know I’ve done at least one good thing.

  “I’m glad, but leave the lifting for me. And guess what?” I can’t help but share my good news and hope Kimber will remember me as not being a total screwup when I’m gone. “I got a promotion today at work. They made me the general manager of the shop.”

  Her eyes widen and she wraps her arms around me, squeezing tightly. “Vinn, that’s great. I didn’t realize it was open.”

  The excitement in her words makes our future seem possible for a moment. Kimber and I can live together, a quiet life where I manage my cousin’s oil change and come home to a house filled with Kimber and our children. The guilt at missing out on our forever chokes me.

  Even though I know it’s a dream, for tonight I want it to be real. I’ll allow myself the fantasy I don’t deserve.

  She stares at me with her beautiful eyes and I do my hardest to etch the look of her face into my brain forever. My head lowers and our lips connect. Immediately I know what I want and suspect she needs it as well. Kimber wraps her leg around my waist and instinctively my hand finds her pussy, rubbing her through the tight leggings she wears. We step back and her body rests against the tall stack of boxes with kitchen items. Kimber helps, twisting her pants down her legs and revealing her clean shaved cunt just waiting for me.

  “Please, Vinn,” she begs as if I’d ever tell her no.

  Frozen and unable to move even though I want to, it’s a moment I need to remember because it could be our last moment. Her hand slides up my pants, and she pops the first button before I gain control of myself and help her long. Kimber tips her head back hitting the top of the box, and I line up our bodies, spearing her in one quick thrust. There’s no time to waste.

  “Oh, Vinn. Yes.”

  Her words are enough to spur me on and I pick up the pace, taking one of her covered breasts in my hand and squeezing hard, wishing the fabric wasn’t a barrier to skin-on-skin contact. The boxes rattle behind her as I hiss and jackhammer into her body while picking up speed. I swipe my thumb across her clit, and Kimber screams out, her fingers biting into my shoulders as she pulls me closer. Her teeth grind together and her lips go firm. Her head falls back, and she moans out my name. Her pussy constricts and she orgasms around my cock. The dishes rattle again smashing up against one another as the box tilts further when I push Kimber into it hard, letting her feel every inch of our connection. I’m using her and she loves it. Like a bastard, I’m releasing my troubles into her unsuspecting body. She takes everything I give her and soothes my soul.

  Knowing I already successfully put my child in her doesn’t stop the sheer satisfaction I get as my cum shoots into her pussy, filling her with everything I have.

  Chapter Seven

  Kimber

  I pull open the curtain, letting the morning sun in and stretch my body. I’d imagined by now I’d be used to Vinn, but after last night we went to bed together and it was as if he had needed to touch every piece of me. The area between my legs tingles this morning in a delightful way.

  “Why is this box dented on the side?” Rubi asks, pointing to one of the kitchen boxes from last night.

  My cheeks heat and I raise a shoulder, hoping she’ll take it as an answer. Thankfully she does.

  “What do you have left to pack?” she wonders aloud, surveying the wall of boxes in the living room.

  “Mostly clothes and things in the bedroom. I’ve been waiting until the last minute to get together bathroom stuff.” The bathroom I’ll shove in a box right before the movers show up tomorrow morning.

  And by movers, I mean Rubi, Jefferson, and my brother Hunter. We need everybody who has a truck and working arms available.

  “What time do you want us here tomorrow?” she asks reading the words written on the boxes and laughing at the one on the top. As I packed more items, the organization I’d started with deteriorated. Toward the end of yesterday, right before Vinn came home, I started labeling boxes with, “kitchen shit” or “living room crap.” It got the job done.

  “First thing tomorrow morning, like nine o’clock.”

  “Vinn has the whole day off?”

  “Yeah, all weekend. Hunter has to leave about three tomorrow though.” We hope we can move all the boxes on Saturday and then spend Sunday setting everything back up before Vinn returns to work on Monday morning. It’s a long shot, but with help I hope we can do it. It sounded more feasible before things were in the boxes. Now looking around at all the crap I’ve of accumulated the last year, I don’t know how we’ll ever get it to fit into our new space. Still, soon we’ll be in our new home.

  “I’m just so excited, Rubi. I can’t wait for all the fun stuff we can do in the yard and in the house.” Birthday parties and other plans… we even talked about building a small fire pit to put in the backyard and roast marshmallows.

  “And it’s super close to the apartment Jefferson and I are renting this summer,” Rubi says mentioning the fact my new house is a few blocks away from the high-rise in downtown Lansing they plan to move into this June. Both are tired of living at home. Jefferson will only be a short walk away from the community college where he takes classes and Rubi hopes to find a job close before her temporary one with the beauty school ends.

  “Just think of all the birthday parties our children can have together?” I say picturing our future families growing up together.

  Rubi’s face scrunches. “Babies? By the time I’m ready to have kids, yours will be old enough to babysit for me.” She laughs, slapping down a loose piece of tape on a box.

  “You never kno
w.” I grin hoping she takes it as a joke.

  She does and laughs but shakes her head in denial. “No way, no kids. I need to get a lot more of my feet underneath me. Find my first real job,” she says, emphasizing the word real.

  “Your job is real.”

  Rubi rolls her eyes, tapping on a box. “The beauty college gives everyone jobs until they find something better. If I don’t have a new job within a year, I’m out.”

  She’s worried as her year gets closer, but I know my best friend. She’ll have something spectacular lined up in no time — end of the summer at the latest.

  A door on another trailer opens and then closes, and a car starts up, peeling out of the driveway. “Won’t it be so nice to have a house with a yard and neighbors not up our butt?” The longer I allow myself to picture living in this home, the more excited I become. Our very own house. Sure, the neighbors are close, but it’s not as close as living in the Fabulous Acres Trailer Park. I’ve never lived in a home let alone one where you didn’t peek into your neighbor’s window if you looked out yours. I could open the curtains. Let in natural light.

  A siren fills the room so loud it must be close, followed up with another less than a minute later. And then another. And another. The ambulance comes later. Just as my ears have gone back to normal it zooms past the trailer. I peek out the window checking my mother’s trailer and breathe a sigh of relief when none of the vehicles pull into the park.

  “What’s with all the cops?” Rubi asks, peeking out the window on the other side of the trailer.

  Like I would know. “They’re all turning at the golf course,” I say, checking out the kitchen window and seeing them come to a halt a block away over the river. They pull into a neighborhood across Mt. Hope, the large road that divides the have and the have-nots in this part of the city.

  Rubi steps back, letting her curtain fall. “Rich people problems.”

  We both look at one another and smile, her grunting out a quick laugh. Whatever it is probably isn’t major. Any time something happens in that neighborhood, they send more cops than they do for a robbery on the south side. At least it’s not my mother… This time.

  Chapter Eight

  Vinn

  My car crunches over the pea stone that outlines the makeshift driveway in front of our trailer, and I punch the steering wheel with my fist, watching as the last rays of the sun are blocked out by the horizon. Barely 6 o’clock and it’s pitch black outside. There’s nothing more depressing than Michigan in winter. It’s worse knowing it might be the last time I see one as a free man.

  Time has run out. I’m a dead man walking.

  Tomorrow morning, rather than helping our friends pack boxes and move us into our new home, I’ll be taking a suitcase and driving up north, leaving everyone behind with nothing more than questions I can’t answer. I should go now so I don’t see Kimber’s face in the morning when I leave. My pussy ass can’t watch her heart break.

  On my lunch break, Kimber sent me a picture of another stack of boxes, letting me know Rubi was the one to place them there after I yelled at her for lifting heavy things yesterday. Now, I have to walk into the house and leave her rather than help her on stack, move, and load them into her brother’s pickup truck. I’ll be gone all weekend unable to help. She’ll have questions and it’s up to me to lie to my trusting wife.

  Or not.

  I’ll tell her the truth and take my punishment, hoping with the baby she carries inside of her, she won’t leave me. I’ll get down on one knee and tell her what happened and then I’ll beg for her forgiveness. If she takes me back, I’ll do everything in my power to keep myself alive and out of jail while working for Ricky. I owe her so much more, but it’s a start.

  I open the door, expecting to find Kimber happy to see me and excited to get going for tomorrow’s move. The closer we get, the more excited she grows about our fate whereas the more troubled I become. Instead of meeting me at the door, asking to take boxes over to the new house early as I anticipated, she sits on the couch her attention glued to the TV. I close the door harder, thinking she didn’t hear, but she doesn’t budge.

  “Kimber,” I say, skipping my usual greeting when I come home from a day of work. The timing doesn’t seem right. I’ve lost the right to call her honey. “Kimber,” I try again to get her attention. “We need to talk.”

  Her eyes flick up, but only for a moment. “Shh,” she says and then goes right back to the television. “Look.”

  I know she watches daytime television when I’m not around, but she’s never been this enthralled in the evening. Not when I’m home.

  “This is important.” I have to make her listen and see the severity of what I will tell her. I’ll break her heart and get to watch it crumble to dust in front of my own eyes.

  “Vinn,” she says and then pauses, “Ricky is dead.”

  Ricky’s dead? The two words break through my steadfast determination and I slip around the TV to join her on the couch. On the screen, interrupting the regular nightly news, the anchor, a blonde, wears a sad and face as she speaks to the viewers. In a red ticker at the bottom, the message play over and over, letting me read it more than once when I can’t make sense of the words.

  “Police say they do not have a cause of death yet, but Mr. Durango was found at his desk this morning.”

  “Ricky died?” I ask.

  Kimber whips her head in my direction. “Shh,” she says, putting her attention back to the television.

  The reporter continues, “He was active on many charitable boards and organizations in the city of Lansing and our surrounding areas in the Capital region. At this time, foul play is not expected, but detectives have said it is an open investigation.”

  The anchor sitting next to her, a tall male who normally gives the sports report, shakes his head back and forth while watching her speak. “It is such a tragedy for the city. We’ve lost one of our own.”

  The woman, Angela, nods in agreement with him.

  Wow. I lean back, resting my weight against the couch. Holy shit. My lungs release tension.

  The news anchors repeat what they’d said earlier, adding more details to the charitable contributions Ricky made to the city but leaving out any of his nefarious activity. No one but the underbelly knew of his other side.

  Holy shit.

  My stomach rumbles, and if I had eaten during the day, I’d worry it would come back up. But since I haven’t been able to eat much in days, there’s no worry.

  I’m free.

  Ricky Durango is dead and I’m free.

  We’re free.

  I reach across the couch and grab Kimber’s hand, squeezing tightly. I’m breathing air, a big long gulp of it for the first time in weeks. My shoulders fall and my teeth unclench. I’m a long way from relaxed, but it’s a start.

  There will be no trip up north and no working for Ricky. Prison has no place in my future — just Kimber, our baby, and a little house away from her mother.

  When we walk out of this trailer tomorrow, we’ll begin our new lives, and I vow to leave everything behind. All the damage and the baggage I thought I’d left behind once before but ended up carrying with me to this doublewide trailer will be left here. It’s nothing but a new life and future for Kimber and me from this point forward.

  I will not make the same mistakes.

  Ever again.

  Chapter Nine

  Kimber

  Moving day came quickly, and even though Vinn kept me up half the night discussing our plans in between bouts of sex, I’m wide awake before Hunter and his pickup truck pull into our yard at the trailer. Vinn may have picked out the house, but he hasn’t seemed excited about it until last night. We sat and talked for hours about what our life would be like together. There’s no longer a threat of Ricky forcing Vinn into more jobs. Ricky is gone forever.

  This morning he let me use the key to open the door to the new house, and as we walked in, I knew the smell of stale air would soon be replaced
by the lives we would create. I felt at home for the first time in my life.

  “Where do you want this one?” Hunter asks, not waiting for my reply as he tosses a box labeled kitchen in the middle of the living room. The dishes rattle together, and I scowl at my brother, thankful he’s here to help but wishing he could be less brotherly about it.

  Vinn walks in the front door carrying another box and sets it on top of the one Hunter dropped. “This is the last one from the truck.” He looks at me and then Hunter. “You didn’t let her lift anything. Did you?”

  Hunter rolls his eyes. “No, she’s done absolutely no work this entire day.”

  I scoff. Just like my brother to underplay my contributions. “I supervised. Without me, how would you know where to put the boxes?”

  Hunter kicks the box he placed on the floor, rattling the dishes again. “We’d read it from the tops.”

  Vinn laughs and places a quick kiss on my shoulder, numbing my brother’s insult. It’s not my fault Vinn won’t let me lift anything. Plus, I may have packed the boxes a little too heavy. He’s been complaining since we were toddlers.

  “One or two more loads in each truck should do it. I’ll meet you guys back at the trailer?” Vinn asks, making it sound like Hunter has any say in the matter. He’s our bitch until he has to work at three.

  He checks his watch. “Yeah, I can get one more load in before I have to leave. That couch might be a problem though.”

  “I think Jefferson can get it in his.” Vinn pats Hunter on the shoulder and walks back out the front door to find Jefferson and send him and Rubi on their way getting the last of our furniture in one load.