by Sam Mariano
Well played, Morrison.
My cock isn’t too happy with the choices I’ve made, and Alyssa doesn’t appear to be either. She moves the sheet aside so she can slide under it, then pulls it up to cover her breasts, like she doesn’t want to be so exposed.
“You really want to talk about this now?” she asks.
“I have to know.”
“All right,” she says slowly, like she’s trying to come to terms with it. Maybe she’s just trying to figure out what to say. Shooting me an uncertain look, she says, “I don’t want to lie to you.”
“Don’t ever lie to me,” I reply. “I won’t be mad at you, I just need to know what was said about me. In the truck on the way home, you referred to me stealing a boat. I never told you about the night I stole a boat.”
She’s quiet for a moment, probably gathering her thoughts. After a long pause, she sighs and turns in the bed so she’s facing me. “Bri did,” she says softly. “She was worried about me.”
Laughing a little, I shake my head. “That’s fucking rich, isn’t it?”
Alyssa flushes a little, but soldiers on. “Our relationship is just—she doesn’t get it. Since we had to lie to her about how we met, it seems to her like I’m in the dark. She thinks I don’t know what you’re capable of, and she was afraid of me finding out after I’d already married you when it would be too late.”
“That’s none of her goddamn business,” I tell Alyssa, reaching over to grab my phone off the nightstand.
Quickly moving over and grabbing my hands to stop me, Alyssa implores, “Please don’t be mad at her. She wasn’t trying to hurt you. I think in the long run she just wanted to make sure you weren’t investing in someone who couldn’t love you back, but you’re not. It doesn’t change anything for me. I do know who you are, and I did know what I was signing up for, but Bri doesn’t know that, Brant.”
“What did she say happened?” I demand coldly, remembering all too well the blinders my sister wore back then.
Now Alyssa stumbles, trying to edit her thoughts as I drag them out of her. “I—She—” Alyssa stops and grabs her head, afraid to say the wrong thing. “It doesn’t even matter,” she finally says, meeting my gaze. “I don’t care.”
“I do,” I state, not looking away. “Tell me what she said.”
It takes her a couple minutes, hemming and hawing and trying to come up with an answer. I wait, knowing she’ll eventually tell the truth. If she tries lying first, I’ll be able to tell, and we’re not ending this conversation until I know what my sister told her.
Finally, she gives me a summary of Bri’s version of events: me being overly suspicious and hard on everyone, poor Nicole and Brandon getting swept up in it. Every single thing about the way my sister sees that night pisses me off.
All three of us chose to hurt someone, but somehow I’m the only bad guy when she tells the story.
Alyssa’s paying careful attention to me, gauging my anger as she speaks. By the time she finishes, she’s practically in my lap, trying to soothe the storm inside me.
“It doesn’t matter,” she tells me again, looking up at me pleadingly.
“She told you about Brandon, too,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief. “Un-fucking-believable.”
“Yeah, I was surprised she told me that, too,” Alyssa admits reluctantly. “Once she started talking it just seemed to pour out of her.”
That explains why she was upset when I came into the kitchen. We eventually swept all that shit under the rug in order to get on with our lives, but she never did forgive me for killing that asshole.
Even though she’s intent on keeping me calm, since my tone is even enough, Alyssa allows her curiosity to get the better of her. “I take it he was the second person you mentioned? You only said the first death was an accident.”
I nod my head, watching her face. “Yeah. The second one wasn’t.”
I don’t know why, but she’s right—the admission that I killed someone in cold blood doesn’t seem to change the way she looks at me.
Maybe it’s because I already told her what would happen to any man she dared cheat on me with, and she believed me.
“That doesn’t seem to shock you,” I remark, curious to see what she’ll say.
Alyssa shrugs, like we’re talking about something far less intense. “Not really. It surprised me to hear it was someone you were friends with, but I already knew you killed someone.”
“Well, he cheated on my sister and fucked my girlfriend behind my back, so... turned out he wasn’t much of a friend.”
With unwavering loyalty, she nods her head and runs her hand across my chest. “I wasn’t voicing disapproval, just saying. That must’ve been really hard for you. Your whole world shifted beneath your feet, everything you knew and relied upon just… exploded.”
Mild disbelief fills me and I can’t help shaking my head at her. “You’re always on my side, aren’t you?”
Alyssa nods and flattens herself on top of me. I lock one arm around her so she doesn’t fall, but she also anchors herself in place by wrapping an arm around my neck and leaning in to kiss me. “Always.”
“I am one lucky son of a bitch,” I tell her.
Smiling at me, she insists, “I’m the lucky one.”
I cradle her face in my hand, tenderly caressing her soft skin with my calloused thumb. She looks up at me with such love in her eyes, and I don’t know what I did to deserve it.
Maybe I don’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m gonna keep her anyway.
“Come here.” I pull her a little closer.
She closes her eyes and leans down to brush her lips against mine.
After a few soft, sweet kisses, the randy little thing draws a laugh out of me by asking, “Now can we have sex?”
Her eyes twinkle mischievously and I nod my head, pressing my forehead against hers. “Now we can have sex.”
23
Alyssa
The next several weeks pass by in a blur. Brant officially moves me into his place, I start work at the yoga studio, and Brant takes me to my first prenatal appointment. The doctor lets us hear the baby’s heartbeat and tells us the baby’s due date—Valentine’s Day, as luck would have it.
Brant doesn’t seem like a Valentine’s Day kind of guy anyway, so what better way to spend the holiday than at the hospital, pushing a tiny, screaming human out of my body?
I can’t wait to meet that tiny, screaming human, though. I especially can’t wait to meet him or her with Brant right by my side.
When I first found out I was pregnant, that was the one thing I knew for sure I’d never be able to offer this baby, and now because of Brant, that’s not true anymore.
He’s so wonderful.
Amid all the excitement of everything else that’s going on, I’ve had to start planning our wedding. We decided to keep it small and intimate, just family and a handful of friends.
I haven’t really talked to any of my friends since the night Brant swept into my life. A few inconsequential texts here and there, sure, but my life has changed so much, it doesn’t feel like I fit in with them anymore. None of them know I even got pregnant. That alone would have been quite a shock and culture break, but now I’m getting married on top of it, and I don’t have the first idea how to explain.
In the end, I decide not to bother. I’d rather not have anyone at the wedding who might make Brant feel uncomfortable, and none of my friends are really close enough at this point that I feel too badly about it. None of them even knew about Theo, and isn’t that the kind of thing someone should have known?
Just family works for me. Since Brant has a giant barn on his property and plenty of parking space, we decide to have the reception in the barn and the ceremony in the clearing behind it. I wanted to have an autumn wedding, especially because all the trees set behind the barn would make an incredible backdrop for our wedding photos with all the fall colors, but I also want to be able to fit into a form-fitting dress. So, in the end, we g
o with the last weekend in September and just hope Mother Nature might cooperate.
My dress is gorgeous. Brant didn’t encourage me to cheap out on anything, but for the most part I tried to be as frugal as possible with the wedding since we have the baby coming and that will undoubtedly bring with it a lot of additional expenses. I splurged a little on my dress, but I wanted to make sure when I stepped into his line of sight, the image of me on our wedding day took Brant’s breath away.
I’m in the house on the phone with the dress shop confirming my appointment to come in for my final alterations when I hear a door slam shut and Scout barking outside.
Looking at the clock hanging on the kitchen wall, I see it is about time for Brant to get home. I love when he’s home; I wish he never had to leave. The prospect of him being home for the night makes me eager to get off the phone so I can go greet him.
When I look outside, though, my heart slams to a halt and my eyes widen. Those aren’t Brant’s feet crunching the gravel beneath his boots. They’re Theo’s.
Throwing the door open and rushing outside without proper thought, I call out, “What are you doing here?”
The sun’s still out, so when he looks back at me over his shoulder, his gaze is blocked by the bronze lenses of his sunglasses. “What do you mean, what am I doing here?” he calls back.
Frown deepening, I step off the porch and start down the walkway in his direction. “You’re not supposed to be here when Brant’s not home. You’re barely supposed to be here when he is.”
“Oh, he’s not home yet?” he calls back innocuously, like he couldn’t tell from the absence of Brant’s big blue truck in the driveway that he isn’t here. “Figured he would be by now.”
The frown never leaves my face, but as I move closer, I start to realize why he is here. We’re going to have a traditional champagne toast, but instead of a traditional manned bar for the rest of the reception, we’re going to fill galvanized buckets full of ice and load them up with beer and an assortment of other alcoholic beverages for the guests.
Theo grabs two buckets out of the back of his SUV, slings one over each shoulder, and looks up at me. “Where do you want these?”
A dark cloud of dread passes over me as I look out across Brant’s property at the barn where the wedding’s gonna be. The buildings are spread out so it’s not close to the house, and I’m not sure if Brant has it locked up, so I can’t send Theo by himself.
“They go in the barn, but you won’t be able to get in. Hang on a minute,” I mutter, turning and heading back into the house to grab the key.
I come back out with a heavy key ring, but I have no idea which key is for which lock. Between the shed, and the shop, and the barn, and the cabin, and the room in the basement, there are more keys than locks I can match them up with.
Theo’s frowning in confusion as I come up beside him with a handful of keys. “He keeps the barn locked?”
“He keeps everything locked,” I state, starting toward the barn with him as I look at the bunch of keys. “I’m not even sure which one it is. Hopefully the right key is on here.”
Scout comes running up beside us, looking up at Theo like he just wants to let him know he’s there. Theo looks down at him. “Hey, you little mutt. You coming with us?”
Scout lets out what he probably hopes is a big, bad, intimidating bark, but he’s too young still and it’s just adorable. I can’t help smiling at the little rascal.
When we finally get to the barn, I see two galvanized buckets already sitting by the barn door. Theo must have brought them over while I grabbed the keys because he is still holding two over his shoulders.
I grab the chain tangled around the door handles and start trying keys.
“He doesn’t even have any animals in here—what’s the point of keeping it locked up so tight?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I murmur as I try to jam a key into the hole. “I think it has more to do with keeping people out. It’s a pretty big property, wouldn’t be too hard for someone to hide in one of these buildings if he didn’t keep them locked. He wasn’t as worried about it before I came to live here, but since I’m here alone a lot, he’s more careful now.”
“Keeping you safe, huh?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Maybe it’s that, or maybe this is where he stashes the bodies,” Theo jokes, setting down the big buckets while I give up on one key and switch to the next.
I shoot him a dry look over my shoulder. “He has a murder workshop, Theo—he’s not gonna stash bodies in the barn like an amateur.”
Theo’s dark eyebrows rise. “He has a what now?”
I bite back a smile at the thread of alarm in his voice. Finally, I find the right key. “There we go,” I say as I pull off the lock and start unwinding the chain.
“I’ll take that for you,” he says, shifting his hold on the buckets to free up a hand.
The chain isn’t that heavy, so I don’t really need to hand it to him, but old instincts compel me to go along with whatever before I realize what I’m doing. Once the chain is in his hand, I snap out of it and realize I could have just said ‘no thanks’ and held onto it myself, but it’s too late now.
Clearing my throat, I step inside the barn. There’s no light except the sunshine streaming in through the cracked door, so the farther into the barn I get, the darker it is. We’ve been storing the wedding supplies we’ve already started accumulating in an old, unused storage room in the back.
Theo follows me inside, and Scout follows him. I show Theo to the storage room and he puts the first two buckets down in the wrong place. I move them over to the reception corner (away from the bags full of more delicate items he so carelessly shoved them up against) while he goes back out to grab the other two buckets.
I get distracted going through supplies while I wait for him to come back, but then all of a sudden the barn starts to go dark.
I frown, looking back at the door, and see Theo pulling it closed.
“What are you doing?” I demand, standing.
“Just giving us a little privacy.”
“No. No privacy,” I say, looking around for the flashlight Brant brought in when I first started using this room for wedding storage.
“Relax,” Theo says as he walks closer.
My eyes aren’t adjusted to the lack of light so I can’t where he’s at. I scramble back against the man door along the wall, grabbing for the doorknob.
Theo drops the buckets and comes over to grab my hands and pull me away from the door. “Relax, Alyssa,” he says again, more firmly. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” I say, hating the panic I hear in my own voice as I try to pull my wrists free.
Apparently tiring quickly of my attempt to free my hands from his grasp, Theo changes tactics, turning me around to face the wall and pushing me forward until I’m pressed against it with his body right up against my back. His hand opens and I pull my wrist free, but before I can do more than reach back to try to shove at his abdomen, there’s a flurry of movement.
All of a sudden, cold, hard metal is pressed against my throat, and he uses the chain to pull me back against him. I grab at it, trying to get my fingers beneath the links to pull them away.
“Settle. Down,” he says lowly, so close I can feel his breath on my ear.
I’m in such a panic pulling at the chain, it takes me a moment to realize that while he does have it around my neck in a threatening gesture, he isn’t pulling tight and trying to strangle me with it; he’s just using it to hold me.
Forcing myself to stop fighting, I draw in a few quick, fearful breaths. My voice shakes as I demand, “What the hell are you doing, Theo?”
“Nothing,” he says, his tone calm and almost soft but with a hint of menace that makes my stomach drop.
Trying to keep my voice level with his, I tell him, “Drop the chain.”
“Why?” he asks, almost like he’s
amused. “Afraid I’m gonna hurt you?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” I mutter back.
“No,” he murmurs in agreement. He shifts his hold on the chain around my throat and brings a hand forward, lightly skimming the curve of my jaw with his fingertips. “I couldn’t go through with it, though, could I? Sent Brant to do the dirty work instead. Somehow, that turned into you marrying him. How the hell did that happen?”
“None of your business.”
He tightens his fist and pulls the chain tight around my neck. It only lasts a few seconds, but when he eases up again, I’m scared enough that I don’t fight him as he lets his hand fall to my chest. He runs it over the swell of my breasts then pulls me back against him more snugly. “Now, that’s not very nice, is it, Alyssa? I don’t like this new habit of you not being nice to me.”
Drawing in a shaky breath, I turn my head and look toward the barn door, wishing Brant were home. Scout is outside losing his mind, barking and jumping at the door. He never acts like that, so he must be able to sense something is wrong.
Leaning in so his breath hits my neck, Theo says, “Why don’t you be a good girl and tell me you’re sorry?”
Why don’t you go to hell.
Swallowing down my angry thoughts with some effort, I ignore the wave of nausea rolling through me and force the words out. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s better,” he says, cupping one of my breasts in his hand and squeezing. “That’s more like the Alyssa I remember.”
My jaw locks and revulsion passes through me, but I keep my mouth shut.
“These are getting a little bigger, aren’t they?” he murmurs as he caresses my breasts through my shirt. “How is my baby doing?”
I tell myself not to even speak to him, just to shut down because I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I can’t stop myself from correcting him. “Brant’s baby.”