by J. C. Allen
He may be a kid but he was smart enough to know the truth. There was no need to lie to him.
“Because I’m the only one that doesn’t have a job, so I can stay home all day.”
“Oh. Cool.”
Not quite sure that’s the word I’d use, but if it makes you happy, kid, I’m all for it.
He turned and said goodbye to Grace, who finally was able to stand and smile on her own. I waited until we were away from Michael to make sure Grace was actually fine.
“Are you drunk?”
I leaned in close to her, smelling her perfume… and the trace of mixed drinks on her breath.
“Relatively,” she said with a snort. “I drank last night too. I think they are just… mixing.”
That… that would not be a thing. But, OK. She swallowed and smiled up at me. Much as I was trying to be serious, it made me grin back down at her—at least she wasn’t running away from me at full speed.
“Hm. Okay. Well, I’m going to take you home,” I said, holding her arm at her elbow, relishing the feel of her soft skin against my hand as I walk us forward. “Hope you don’t fall off my bike when I do.”
“I’m not that drunk.”
The way you’re looking, can’t be too sure. She pulled her hand from mine and walked a few steps away from me. This shit again?
“I don’t need a ride anyway.”
She crossed her arms. When she took another step, though, her frown turned to a look of shock when she stumbled and nearly fell. I just rolled my eyes as I tried to figure out how to best deal with this.
“What was that?” I said, walking up to her, gently taking her wrists and holding her there so she doesn’t fall again.
“Shut up.”
She snatched her hands away. Now, I was just laughing, which she didn’t like very much either, but how the fuck could I not be laughing at her ridiculousness now?
“Fine,” I said with a groan. “Where do you live?”
I opened the seat of my bike to get the helmet I never use but Grace would. She may have said she didn’t need a ride, but in her state, I wasn’t going to leave her much choice.
“The Quad.”
“Isn’t that…”
I trailed off, but I already knew that’s what people call the welfare neighborhood. It didn’t make sense, given that she drove a Mustang in high school, but at this point, I just wanted her home, regardless of where home was or how she would have fallen from her upbringing to a welfare status.
Without another word, I put the helmet on for her. My fingers grazed her cheeks, so soft and delicate to the touch. I finished quickly and then started up my bike, but as I sat and looked at her, she stared back at the bike like it did her wrong. Just don’t fall when you get on. We can deal with the rest of this later.
“You okay?”
I chuckled, but I was starting to feel a little nervous.
She nodded then stepped closer to the bike. Her hand came on my shoulder as she maneuvered herself on the bike—a bit awkwardly, but not as badly as I would have feared earlier. I got a sinking feeling inside when I felt every soft inch of her body pressing against my bike and I felt the thrum of the engine below us and the way her arms cinch my waist.
It’s nice. It’s…
“Aren’t you going?” Grace said, leaning forward to ask, her lips coming so close to my ear I can feel her breath.
Every nerve of my body was waking up to her, showing me how much I had missed her touch. She really meant something other than a screw or a release.
I kicked the bike into gear and headed off the driveway. I waited to hit speed until I reach the main road. It didn’t take me long to get to the Quad, but when I arrived…
It was where rock bottom people lived. This was where people who just got out of prison lived, where criminals lived. It didn’t feel right. I knew I would rather take her to my place and make her help with Michael.
But a part of me didn’t want to do it, knowing what sort of things would happen and what consequences I would have to pay if that happened. She had been drinking, clearly, and I didn’t think I could have her that close without finishing what I started.
And that was just for tonight. The rest of the week…
Just get her home. And then get away from her.
“I’ll walk you up.”
I swung my leg over the bike when I got off. She stared at me but didn’t protest. She doesn’t have a choice, anyways; I don’t really trust her to get upstairs on her own.
Not in this part of town, that’s for sure.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked her, my hand going to the small of her back.
“Almost a year.”
She leaned into me too, like she didn’t even realize it.
“It’s scary—”
“Only if you are scared,” she smirked.
It was weirdly encouraging to see her be snarky. It was one of the signs she still had her shit a little together.
We reached her door, and she used a rested key to unlock it and then force it open.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem.”
I stood on her threshold and stared down at her, my hands going to my pockets again for safe keeping. Both of us looked like we just wanted to blurt some great truth out, some great confession that neither of us wanted to be the first to say.
Fortunately, the drunk among us was always the first to speak, and tonight was no different.
“I uh—I still think about you sometimes. Thought about you, I guess. But that was a long time ago.”
I smiled softly at her. I knew it took guts to say what she did. It helped that I was on the same page as her.
“Is that why you got drunk tonight? So you would have the courage to tell me that?”
She shook her head quickly.
“No, it was just free.”
I laughed; it was pretty damn hard to disagree with that logic. I peeked inside her apartment, noticing it was dark, but I could see the couch and small kitchen off to the side. It was a small place… too small for someone who drove a Mustang in high school.
But this wasn’t going to be the place where I asked her about it. Not when she was barely in condition to walk.
“I think about you too, Grace.”
She parted her lips, forming a soft smile that almost seemed inviting. Fuck it. I crossed the space and shut the door behind me before I wrapped her up in a kiss. My hands gripped her waist as she opened her mouth to me, my tongue slipping inside and tasting her. Too late to change my mind now.
She moaned, latching her arms around my neck and molding her body to mine. She hummed against my body, my cock throbbing and coming alive.
“Matthew,” she groaned against my lips.
I groaned back and kissed her harder, suckling her plump lips. She felt as perfect as I remembered—everything about her is perfect. Her breasts pushed against my chest. She started to grind against my thigh, right where her clit was, after she pushed me to the couch.
Pretty sure there’s going to be no blue balls tonight.
Sure as fuck hope not!
My cock rubbed against her inner thigh, hardening more, begging to be inside her. I kept kissing her—I couldn’t fucking get enough of her. My hands trailed to the zipper of her dress, but hers stayed around my neck, occasionally twirling the long ends of my hair.
She’s not stopping you, though. Don’t do what she doesn’t want, but seems like she wants it.
I wanted her so badly. She, though, wasn’t kissing me like she wa drunk, but like something else was going on.
I slowed down the rhythm of our lips moving together and my tongue swirling around hers. I caught the tail end of something on her dress and tugged at it.
It was… a tag?
She broke the kiss, staring at me.
“I… wasn’t sure I would keep it.”
“I get it.”
I leaned off her, holding myself up on my forearms. I still breathed
heavily, and she was panting from the kiss. Her lips were puckered and swollen, her hair disheveled. It was fucking hot.
But… something about that tag reminded me of how drunk she was and how we had ended. It was like the lustful spell that she had put on me had suddenly faded.
“Do you want to… move to the bedroom?”
She bit her lip nervously as if she is afraid of the answer. Unfortunately, she had reason to be.
“No I uh—I need to get back to Michael.”
That was true, but it wasn’t the main reason why. I just felt… I needed to know more. Grace was more to me than just pussy—if she wasn’t, I would already have been inside her on the couch. She was someone I wanted to know and get to understand, and fucking her drunk on my brother’s wedding night didn’t seem very conducive to doing that.
“Oh. Okay.”
Her disappointment was obvious. I just hoped that with the night to sleep it off, she would appreciate it more.
“Yeah,” I said, quickly standing before I change my mind.
“I’ll see you around.”
I looked down at her as she nodded with a somewhat sad smile. I took a good look at her—her big green eyes shining, her lips full and pink, and her chest heaving up and down with every breath she takes.—and I hurry out, knowing what I did was the right thing.
I can’t say I was perfect. I almost nearly changed my mind at her front door.
But I did eventually leave, and I told myself that I couldn’t look back.
When I got back to Mom’s house, all the cars were gone and the place was nearly spotless. My mother, it seemed, had not so much retired to her place as she had merely taken a break, because the place was absolutely spotless.
As I walked around, though, I realized why Mom had probably worked so hard to keep it clean—the day was probably a reminder of what life was like when my father was alive, with so many people over. She had probably wanted to get the house back to her ideal as quickly as possible.
But while she could do that physically, she—and by extension, I—would never be able to do that. Simon and Rosella had their little family going on. Jaxson and Isabelle were hitched and happy as hell. Zeke and I were still the same, living the single life, of course, and loving it.
At least, I thought I was. But…
Leaving Grace at her place was harder than anything had been for me in a while. It wasn’t just because I wanted her badly. It was because something didn’t feel right with where she lived, how she was living… it didn’t make any sense compared to what I saw before.
Maybe I had it all wrong. It had been a long time, and if I got the chance to talk to her again, curiosity was going to get the better of me. There was a part of me that wanted to play the role of hero, even if I knew that wasn’t necessarily the smartest idea.
Simon and Rosella had given me her number if I had any questions with Michael, and now that I was alone, staring at my phone, I had half a mind to make something up just to call her.
But no. I wasn’t going to do that. If I had had the willpower and concentration to leave her when I did, I wasn’t going to suddenly break by calling her. That chance had come and gone, at least for tonight.
So, instead, I decided to take care of the actual duty given to me.
“Hey bud, you ready to go?”
I found Michael in front of the television where I left him. Good boy. He grinned up at me, his dimples just like Simon’s, except smaller and cuter.
“What took so long?”
His tone was a little too knowing, like he had picked up on what Grace and I had going on. I nervously laughed and brushed his question deftly aside.
“It’s windy outside. Get your stuff.”
Rosella had long been opposed to him riding on the motor cycle, given that he was small for his age just like Simon was. Nevertheless, I let Michael ride—on the condition he didn’t tell Mom, of course. I even let him sit in front of me to ensure that he would have no chance of falling.
It took about twenty minutes to get home. When we arrive, Michael was half asleep. I had one of my extra rooms set up for him. I also had a game room he spent a lot of time in when he visited. I taught him how to play video games, which was pretty cool to say… well, it was until Rosella got pissed about him asking for their own game system at the house. That was a moment where Simon looked at me knowingly—like he approved of it, but because Mom didn’t like it…
“You know the drill, shower and teeth brushed before bed.” I said, patting and rubbing the back of his neck until he squirmed away from me.
“Yeah, yeah.”
When I head to mine, back on the first level, I did the same thing, but I added something else—thinking of Grace
She was under my skin; her taste was still on my lips. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It must have said something about her that for everything that had gone down tonight, she was still on my mind quite a damn bit.
I got out of the shower, throwinging on a pair of gray sweats as I padded around the house to the kitchen. As I snacked on my choice of late-night snack, grilled cheese, I made one for Michael, who headed down the steps a few moments later, following his nose. It was pretty damn late for a ten year old to be awake, but if Mom was going to get mad about her little one being up on her wedding day, well, I wasn’t going to feel bad about that one.
When I finally headed off to sleep after putting Michael in, though, my mind was still in one place—wondering about Grace. It was easy to do—the softness of her lips still throbbed on mine, as did the feeling of my body pressed against hers.
I knew then I didn’t just want to get to know Grace better.
I needed to.
“Are you gonna sleep all day?”
Bright sunlight hit my eyelids. I rolled over in bed to Michael yelling, shaking my arm to get me to wake up. Jesus, who wants kids when they do shit like this? I guess there’s a reason I’m not in any rush to make that happen.
“No,” I groaned as I swatted him away. “Go watch tv or something, I’ll make breakfast.”
“You’ll just go back to sleep. Get up and then I’ll go.”
He crossed his arms, his patterned pajamas hanging loosely on him. Fucking kids, man. They knew how to negotiate and play hardball.
“Fine, fine, long as you know you’re just like your mother you know. Happy?”
He looked up at me, shrugged, and then shuffled off out of my room. I shook my head at him but smiled. It might have been a pain in the ass to be awake so early, but when it was a joyful kid, it was hard to be too upset.
As I slowly woke up, one thing still stood true… her. After I went through a morning routine, I checked my phone. Only Simon had texted me, asking for a Michael update. After taking care of that, I found myself staring at Grace’s phone number.
Breaking.
Cracking.
Fuck. Goddamnit.
I hid back in my room to call her, sitting on my crimson bed sheets, staring at a blueprint framed photo of a motorcycle on my wall.
“Hello?”
There were two things I noticed immediately. One was that she had clearly been awake much longer than I had. The other was that she didn’t recognize it was me—which was fine, since she had no reason to have my number, but it was still a bit disappointing.
“That’s quite the hello. It’s Matthew.”
There was some shuffling on her end with complete silence. I imagined she was thinking about last night… and how I had walked out just before we’d gotten too frisky.
“Oh,” she said, confusion in her voice. “Hi. How did you get my number?”
“Rosella and Simon gave it to me in case I needed help with Michael.”
A brief pause came. I felt mighty unsure which direction this call was going in—I was either about to laugh my ass off or severely regret ever calling her.
“You couldn’t make it one night?”
Oh, whew.
“I did, but um—what does he like
to eat for breakfast?”
I winced at the dumbass excuse I made up. I just had to hope that Grace found it cute—which I think she did, since she started laughing at me.
“Anything edible. He’s not a baby anymore..”
“Okay. Fair enough,” I said. Another pause came. Time to bring it to her. “What do you like to eat for breakfast?”
There was a long pause before she even said anything—and I almost wished she hadn’t.
“I have to go.”
She hung up so quickly. I stared at my phone, dumbfounded, until I forced myself to get up. Maybe that was karma for leaving her last night?
Fucking weird. Guess I’ll just have to try harder to figure that one out.
Later, though. Take care of the kid first.
“Okay, kid, how does pancakes sound?” I said as I headed in to Michael.
“Awesome.”
As I started to cook our breakfasts, my phone rang. I scrambled for my phone, wondering if it was Grace calling me back. If so, would she apologize? Would I apologize? Would—
I’d never felt so disappointed in my life to see Jaxson’s name.
“You’re up early,” I groused.
“Matthew, we have a situation.”
Ah, shit. He’s getting right to it without humor. That’s never a good sign.
“What is it?” I ask Jaxson.
“A threat from Cavaro.”
The fuck?
“I though they were all dead?” I said, making it a point to move out of the kitchen, away from Michael.
“All the ones we knew of,” he clarified. “But they have cousins. Relatives of some sort. Who else would want revenge?”
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Yeah—shit is right. I don’t know what they want, not yet. But we have to lay low for a bit.”
I nodded slowly.
“Understood.”
“I’ll work to gather more intel. We’re not going to tell Simon until he gets back. But between the three of us, Matthew, we have to eradicate this now.”
And keep Grace safe.
They’re going to go for her, knowing her connection to the family.
So… you want to get to know her better? You protect her.
