“Me too, baby,” he said, pulling her in again for another hug, this time standing up with her in his arms. “Me too.”
I hadn’t realized I was crying as well until Sammy reached up and wiped a tear off my cheek. “No cry mommy.”
“They’re happy tears, sweetie. Very happy tears,” I told him.
“How?” King asked.
“I called in that favor to the judge. Turns out I could do more than just write a letter of recommendation after all,” my father said.
“She’s ours?” King asked. I could tell he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. For someone to come and take her or for my father to tell him that this was only a visit.
My father nodded. “You’ll have to meet with the counselor, take some parenting courses, and there will be some home visits. That stuff I couldn’t get you out of.” He laughed nervously. “But the judge has already signed off. She’s all yours.”
King stood up and came over to me.
And there we were.
King was holding his daughter in his arms.
I was holding my son in mine.
Our baby growing in my belly.
“Hi,” Sammy said to Max.
Max pressed the side of her face into King’s chest. “Hiiiii,” she sang, between the fingers in her mouth.
“Mommy, are you still making pancakes?” Sammy asked, tugging at the ends of my hair to get my attention. Tears formed in my eyes as I looked around from face to face of my family.
My real family.
The one I was always meant to be with.
I pushed Sammy’s hair out of his eyes and planted a kiss on his forehead. I looked over to King who smiled a rare ear to ear smile, his eyes glistening with his own happy tears. King reached out and grabbed my hand.
I gave him a squeeze and smiled.
“Because, Pancakes.”
I was finally home.
Epilogue
King
“I’m glad I didn’t just kill you the first chance I had. It turns out that keeping you alive has served a greater purpose. So in a way, I’m grateful that you’re here right now, still breathing.” I leaned over the chair and stared into the motherfucker’s black soul.
“You’re going to let me go?” Eli asked, his face swollen and bleeding, covered in burns from the fire pit explosion.
“Not a fucking chance, you piece of shit. You’re going to die. But not right now and not by my hand. I’ve got special plans for you.”
“Ww-hat are you going to do?” Eli stammered.
“I’m going hand you over to a friend of mine. Who in exchange for a little playtime with you this evening, helped me kill another stupid motherfucker who decided to fuck with the wrong trailer trash.” I stood and cracked my knuckles, clearing room for Jake to step up. Eli’s eyes went wide.
“I know you!” Eli said. “They call you…The Moordenaar.”
“Good,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Then you two are already acquainted.” I pushed off the wall and headed for the door, leaving Jake staring silently down at Eli, his eyes black, the demon within him ready to do what it does best.
Kill.
“But you just said that I wasn’t going to die right now,” Eli called frantically to me as I opened the door of the shed.
“You’re not,” I said. “Jake here has cleared his schedule.” I tipped my chin to Jake. “He’s got all fucking night.”
With miles and miles of nothing but the Everglades in every direction, Jake could make Eli scream as loud as he wanted. Which was exactly what he did because I hadn’t walked ten steps before Eli’s scream tore through the night. I stopped to light a cigarette and smiled to myself.
I whistled the entire way to my bike.
That night, with my girl tucked in close to me, my hand over her growing belly, Max and Sammy sound asleep in Preppy’s old room; I was able to take a very long awaited deep breath.
The sounds of Eli and Tanner begging and screaming for their lives lulled me into a very deep and very happy sleep.
Doe
Five Months Later
I was sitting at the kitchen table working on a sketch of a tattoo for one of King’s clients, my swollen feet propped up on one of the other chairs, when King came bursting into the kitchen looking frustrated.
“Baby, have you seen my keys? They were on the table and now I can’t find them,” King said, searching through drawers and cabinets.
I looked up from my sketch. “No, did one of the kids take them?”
“I don’t see how they could have, I had them an hour ago before I dropped them off at Grace’s.” I rested my hands on my belly, the baby, another little girl, had the hiccups so fierce my stomach jumped every few seconds.
“Did you try—” My thought was interrupted when a burst of sound from the living room caught both our attention. We slowly turned to face the TV, which was changing from channel to channel.
“What the fuck?” King asked. Walking into the living room, he picked up the remote from the side table and started pushing buttons, but the TV kept changing channels at the same pace before finally coming to a stop.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
American Ninja Warrior.
“Check the freezer,” I said.
“Why the fuck—” King started.
“Your keys, they’re in the freezer,” I said, turning to face King, who looked at me like I was as crazy as I felt. Reluctantly, he walked over to the kitchen and sure enough, he produced his keys from the freezer and dangled them in the air.
“Who the fuck put them in there?” King asked.
“Fuck yeah, I am here. I’ll always be here…”
“A friend,” I said, wiping a tear from my eye. “My best friend.”
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Acknowledgments
Thank you first and foremost to my readers for your patience. I love you all so very much. Thank you for making this dream of mine more wonderful than I could have ever imagined and thank you for sticking with me.
Thank you to Karla Nellenbach for making my words look pretty AND make some sort of sense.
Special thanks to Aurora Rose Reynolds for all of your encouragement and for taking the time to be an early reader for KING. I am honored to call you my friend.
To the blogs both big and small who have supported me since day one, thank you so very very much. I don’t know where I would be without you. Aestas, TRSoR, LitSlave, and so many many more.
Special thanks to Milasy, my book soulmate. So much filth to read, so little time.
Thank you to Joanna Wylde for offering to help me and for all of your wisdom. I am forever grateful for your advice.
Thank you to my agent, Kimberly Brower, for believing in me and for being patient.
Thank you so much to Andree Katic for being a phenomenal King
and cover model, and to Chocolate-Eye Photography for taking such a wonderful picture.
Thank you to my wonderful husband and beautiful baby girl. I couldn’t do any of this without you and I wouldn’t want to.
Also By T.M. Frazier
The Perversion Trilogy
PERVERSION (Book 1)
POSSESSION (Book 2)
PERMISSION (Book 3)
THE OUTSKIRTS DUET
THE OUTSKIRTS (Book 1)
THE OUTLIERS (Book 2)
The King Series
Listed In Recommended Reading Order
Jake & Abby’s Story (Standalone)
The Dark Light of Day (Prequel)
King & Doe’s Story (Duet)
KING (Book 1)
TYRANT (Book 2)
Bear & Thia’s Story (Duet)
LAWLESS (Book 3)
SOULLESS (Book 4)
Rage & Nolan’s Story (Standalone)
ALL THE RAGE (Spinoff)
Preppy & Dre’s Story (Triplet)
PREPPY PART ONE (Book 5)
PREPPY PART TWO (Book 6)
PREPPY PART THREE (Book 7)
Smoke & Frankie’s Story (Standalone)
UP IN SMOKE (Spinoff)
Nine & Lenny’s Story
NINE, THE TALE OF KEVIN CLEARWATER
King & Doe’s Novella
King of the Causeway
Pike’s Story (Duet)
Pike (Book 1)
Pawn (Book 2)
About the Author
[ Image: SQUARE HEADSHOT.jpg ]
T.M. Frazier never imagined that a single person would ever read a word she wrote when she published her first book, The Dark Light of Day.
Now, she’s a USA Today bestselling author several times over. Her books have been translated into numerous languages and published all around the world.
T.M. enjoys writing what she calls ‘wrong side of the tracks’ romance with sexy, morally corrupt anti-heroes and ballsy heroines.
Her books have been described as raw, dark and gritty. Basically, while some authors are great at describing a flower as it blooms, T.M. is better at describing it in the final stages of decay.
She loves meeting her readers, but if you see her at an event please don’t pinch her because she's not ready to wake up from this amazing dream.
For more information please visit her website www.tmfrazierbooks.com
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/tmfrazierbooks
TWITTER: twitter.com/tm_frazier
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/t.m.frazier
JOIN MY FACEBOOK GROUP, FRAZIERLAND: www.facebook.com/groups/tmfrazierland
The Wright Brother
By KA Linde
To Rebecca Kimmerling,
for every wonderful book you’ve helped me with
and a million more to follow.
Chapter 1
Emery
I rolled my shoulders twice and yawned. I hated being at the office this early. It was mind-numbing, but at least I got to see Mitch. He didn’t have class for another hour, and I figured we could use that time to get some coffee…or just occupy his office. I could think of a few things that I preferred to working.
My feet carried me straight down the hallway of the history building at the University of Texas, Austin. I was anxious for that uninterrupted hour alone with my boyfriend. It might be a bit taboo that he was also my professor and the advisor for my PhD, but it worked for me.
I reached his office and opened the door. “Mitch, I thought we could—” I stopped mid sentence and stared at what was before me.
Mitch was seated in the chair behind his desk—the very desk I had been fantasizing about. And a tiny blonde undergrad was sitting in his lap. Her skirt was hiked up; I could tell even from my vantage point.
My stomach dropped out of my body. This could not be happening. I could not be this naive.
“What the fuck is going on here?” I demanded.
The girl hopped up and straightened out her skirt. “Nothing,” she squeaked.
“I was just helping her with some last-minute…assignments,” Mitch said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, my voice low and menacing. My eyes snapped to the girl. “You should leave. Now.”
“Emery,” Mitch said consolingly.
“Now!” I yelled.
The girl grabbed her purse and rushed out of the room. I slammed the door shut behind her and glared down at the man I’d thought I loved for the last three years. But looking at him sitting there, adjusting himself, all I saw was a pathetic excuse for a man.
“God, this is embarrassing,” I snapped. “I’m leaving. I’m leaving you, I’m leaving the program, and I’m leaving the university. I’m fucking done.”
“You can’t leave the program, Emery,” he said, not acknowledging what else I had said.
“I can, and I will.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said, pushing back his messed up hair. “You only have a year left.”
I shrugged. “Don’t give a damn right now. You fucking cheated on me, Mitch.”
“Come now, Emery. Do you really believe that?”
“Um…hello? I just walked in on you with Angela! She’s an undergrad!”
“You don’t know what you saw.”
I snorted. “That’s rich, coming from you. I’m well aware of what I saw. I doubt it was the first time, too. How many others are there?”
He stood and tried to reach for me, but I pulled away.
“We can make this work, Emery.”
“God, do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Oh, Em,” he said, straightening his black suit coat. “Don’t act so childish.”
I fumed at those repulsive words. “I am not acting childish by accusing the man I loved of sleeping with someone else. I’m standing up for what I think is right, and your bullshit routine is far from that. Are you sleeping with other students?”
“Honey, come on.”
“You are, aren’t you?” I shook my head and retreated. “Wow, I am an idiot. Not only do I really not want to be in academia, but I also really don’t want to be with you.”
“Emery,” he called as I marched toward the door. “It’s been three years. You can’t do this.”
I whipped around. “Tell me you’re not fucking anyone else and that I’m the only girl for you.”
He ran a shaky hand back through his long blond hair. He thought he was the cool professor, the one everyone could talk to about not just their research problems, but also their life problems. He’d reeled me in that way, and like a fool, I’d been blinded by the nice suits, fancy dinners, and finally finding a man on the same level as me. Turned out…he was a rat.
When he didn’t respond, I scoffed at him. “That’s what I thought.”
Walking out of his office was one of the most liberating experiences of my life. He deserved to lose his job for what he had done all these years, but I didn’t have it in me to go there yet. I walked into the history department and filled out the appropriate paperwork to withdraw from the program. Maybe, one day, I would want to go back and finish my PhD, but today, I knew that I had come to the end of the line. One too many panic attacks, my first ever prescription for Xanax, and a dissertation topic that seemed perpetually out of reach had done me in.
Screw academia.
I drove my Subaru Forester back to my one-bedroom studio, cursing Austin traffic the whole way. How was it possible for there to be bumper-to-bumper traffic at all times?
Three years’ worth of neglect had taken over my apartment, and my head ached from just imagining what to do with it all. At that moment, my life was completely open before me. No obligations. No job. No future.
I rolled my eyes at my own ridiculous thoughts and began to stuff half of my closet into the two suitcases I had. An hour later, I tucked my MacBook into my leather bag, remembered to grab my phone and computer charger, and kissed Austin good-bye. I’d eventually have to come back for the rest of my shit, but fo
r now, I was going to forget all about Mitch, kick up the Christmas tunes, and drive the six hours home to Lubbock.
The weird thing about Lubbock was, most people had no idea where it was, and when you told them that it was actually not full of tumbleweeds or overrun by the desert, they’d seem surprised. As if that was all there was in west Texas. It was a city of three hundred thousand people, for Christ’s sake!
The six years I had been in Norman at the University of Oklahoma, I’d gotten so good at responding to strangers’ questions about where I was from that I still hadn’t broken the habit of telling people I was from Texas, even when I’d moved back to Texas.
It would inevitably be followed up with a, “Where?”
And then I would have to explain, “Lubbock. It’s west Texas. Stuff actually exists there. Texas Tech and Buddy Holly.”
People would nod, but I didn’t think anyone really believed me since they hadn’t been to west Texas.
My sister, Kimber, was waiting for me outside when I pulled up to her brand-spanking-new house. She placed a hand on her swollen prego belly, and her four-year-old daughter, Lilyanne, ran around her ankles.
I put my car in park and jumped out in a hurry to scoop up my little niece. “Hey, Lily Bug,” I said, twirling her in a circle before swinging her onto my hip.
“Lilies aren’t bugs, Auntie Em. Lilies are flowers!”
A Kiss For You Page 91
