I held my hands up in the air and stepped inside, shutting the door after me. The neighborhood didn’t need to know what was going on in this house. I didn’t need people to know what was going on.
“Back up a second.” I moved toward Hut and widened my eyes. “Sit and take a breath. Just calm down.”
“Calm down?” he screamed in my face, his spittle flying everywhere. “How the fuck can I calm down when she’s been gone for three days?”
“Three days?” My pulse raced, and I had to keep my feet planted to the floor so I didn’t stumble back. I hadn’t been at the house much, and even when I had, I hadn’t seen Lola apart from that first morning. I had just thought she was achieving what she’d set out to do: not see my face. But if she was gone…
“Did someone take her?” It was my first thought. Hut had enemies upon enemies, and people who wanted to take his territory. Maybe one of them had taken her in exchange for—
“No.” Hut laughed, but it was a sinister sound that had goose bumps breaking out along my arms. “She took her shit and disappeared.”
Wow. She’d said that she wanted out of this house, and I had to admit, I was damn proud of her. But…
She was gone.
My hand drifted to my chest, and my palm rubbed against the pain emanating there. She may have left this house and Hut, but in a way, she’d escaped from me too. She hadn’t told me she was leaving, which meant she didn’t want me to know.
“Have you tried calling her?” I was stalling, trying to get all my thoughts in order. She’d left without telling me, but then, she didn’t trust me anymore, did she? I’d decimated that within a matter of seconds when I’d walked into Sal’s diner that day.
I’d told myself once Hut was taken care of, I’d be able to fix things with her. Maybe not resolve them fully, or have any kind of relationship with her, but I could make peace if only to see her face once more.
“Do I look like a fuckin' dumbass?” Hut sneered, stepping closer to me.
I raised a brow, wishing I could fling my fist at his temple and knock him the hell out. I had to keep my cool, though, so I shook my head and said, “Do you know where she went?”
“If I knew where she went, then I wouldn’t be standing here sayin' she’s missing, would I?”
I didn’t reply, not having the energy to talk to him. I knew what he was going to say next. He’d want us to find her, and I’d be able to do it without a doubt. All I’d need to do was make a phone call to Jord and he’d do his magic, producing her address. Failing that, I’d place bets that Sal knew where she was.
“Spread out. We need to find her.”
“Why?” Ford asked, and right then, I couldn’t help but be grateful for his question.
“Because”—Hut stepped toward Ford—“apart from the fact that she’s my sister, she knows way too fuckin' much about what I do. She’s a danger to my business.”
“Wait.” Quinn held his hand up, a frown on his face as he stood to his full height. “Are you saying you want us to find her and make sure she’s safe? Or find her and bring her back by any means necessary?”
Hut’s nostrils flared. “Any means fuckin' necessary. If she fights, knock her the hell out. God knows she could use a lesson or two on how not to betray me.”
My hands clenched at my sides, my breaths becoming more rapid the longer he talked. He didn’t want us to find her and make sure she was okay. He wanted us to get rid of her before she could talk. There was a line that I understood had to be crossed sometimes, but this was not one of those times. He didn’t need to do what he was telling us. He wanted to do it.
“Maybe—” Ford cut himself off and shook his head. His eyes darkened, his body so taut I thought he’d snap any moment. He didn’t like this one bit, and he wasn’t the only one.
I couldn’t get a read on Quinn, but he was eyeing Hut warily like he was a bomb about to explode any minute.
“Maybe what?” Hut spat.
“Nothing.” Ford stepped forward. “We’ll go and look for her.” He tilted his head at me, and then Quinn. “Let’s get started.”
Lola was better off away from Hut, as far away as she could get, and they both knew that. I opened my mouth to refuse, but Ford’s subtle shake of his head had me closing my mouth and staying silent.
“I’ll be here in case she comes back,” Hut said and barged past Quinn, heading into the kitchen. I couldn’t stop looking at him as he snorted a line of cocaine off the kitchen table, not caring that there was an open block right there for the taking. He wasn’t aware of anything else going on around him, and this would have been the perfect opportunity to raid the house, but one block wouldn’t serve as well as a whole load of them.
“Come on,” Ford said, and I followed after him outside.
He halted on the sidewalk, Quinn next to him, and I planted my hands on my hips, making up the circle. “We should leave her,” Quinn said first, a frown on his face. “She’s better off without him.”
My head reeled back at his words. I knew it was how I felt, but to have one of the other crew members say it too? I didn’t know what to think.
“Agreed.” Ford nodded. “We leave her wherever she is, let her be, and say we looked for her. God knows what he’d do if he actually found her.”
“So what’s the plan?” I asked, already knowing I’d do anything to keep Lola safe, even if it was from myself.
“We pretend to look for the next”—he looked down at his cell—“four hours, come back and say we found nothing.” Ford glanced up at me. “You down for that?”
“Yeah, I’m down.” I didn’t say another word as I walked over to my car, begging my legs not to sprint in the way they wanted to. They may not want to find her, but I did. I had to.
Chapter Twenty-Five
LOLA
Pregnant.
I was pregnant.
I’d heard of people losing blocks of time where they went into their heads to process things, but I’d never quite believed them until now.
Nothing was sinking in. Nothing but that. The white stick haunted me every time I walked into the bathroom. It called to me every time I felt like I was going to throw up. But I denied it, even to myself. If I pretended like I hadn’t taken the test yesterday, then it hadn’t really happened. I was living in a fantasy world, but it was the only way I could survive right now.
“Lola?” a deep voice shouted through my apartment door, followed by four knocks in quick succession.
My eyes widened, and my hand immediately fluttered over my stomach. It was him. Brody.
“I know you’re in there.” He banged on the door again.
I flung myself out of bed, running into my living room and staring at the door like it would fly off its hinges any moment. I couldn’t let him in. I couldn’t see him, not right now. It was bad enough that he’d lied to me, but things had changed.
“Please, darlin', let me in. It’s important.” There was a pause and then his voice lowered. “Hut knows you’re gone, he’s trying to look for you. I just…I just need to know you’re safe.”
I didn’t know how I’d taken the few steps to the front door, but I’d drifted there without even knowing it. I willed my hand not to flick the lock and open the door, but it did it anyway. “Brody.” My voice was a mere whisper, but the look in his eyes told me he’d heard me loud and clear.
“Can I come in?”
I didn’t know what to say or what to do, so I stepped back to let him inside. His face was covered in a couple of days’ stubble, and the bags under his eyes told a story of little sleep. But it was the way his dark-brown eyes flashed over my whole body that had me shuddering.
He closed the door, the click loud in the otherwise silent room. “I needed to see you were okay.”
His words set something off inside me, and I dived at him, flinging my arms around his neck and pushing my face into his shoulder. He gripped me so hard I was sure he’d never let me go. I shouldn’t have touched him.
My hands drifted to his arms, and I pulled back, my chest hitting his on each breath. His dark eyes met mine, and they promised me things I shouldn’t have wanted from him. They promised to keep me safe. But it was the way they flicked down to my lips that had my mind made up. I wanted what I wanted, and for once in my life, I was going to take it, consequences be damned.
I dived for his lips.
Nothing else mattered when we were touching, and that was part of the problem. We hadn’t cared about anyone else or the hurt we could cause, and right then, I couldn’t bring myself to care either. When Brody was around, I felt whole, like a full circle with its ends meeting.
Brody’s body shuddered as I ran my tongue over his lips and he pulled away, holding me at arm’s length.
“What—”
“I don’t want this.” The dark brown in his eyes turned almost black as he stared at me, not one flicker of any emotions showcased there. He’d shut me out, blocked me from seeing any truth he’d shown me only a few minutes ago. “I don’t want you.”
My pulse thrummed harder than it ever had before, and my shoulders sagged. Was it possible to break apart piece by piece until I completely evaporated? Because that was what was happening.
“You don’t...” My voice cracked, and I willed it to sound strong. “You don’t want me?” Tears came to the surface of my eyes, and no matter how much I forbid them to come forward, they wouldn’t listen to me. His gaze followed a lone teardrop as it tracked down my cheek, but I didn’t move it. I let it trail all the way down to my chin where it unceremoniously dropped onto my chest.
“No,” his rough voice answered. He let me go and backed away another step, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his posture screaming like this was an everyday conversation.
But it wasn’t.
He was shattering everything we’d had over the last couple of months with only a few syllables. How could your world change so much in the space of such little time and few words? I’d been a fool to think he came here for me. He'd come here for himself. He probably wanted to make sure I wouldn’t talk, that I wouldn’t tell anyone exactly who he was.
“But”—I swallowed and stepped forward—“what about what we had?”
A muscle in his jaw jumped as he tensed. “It was the job. You know who I am and what I do. I was there to take Hut down and—”
“I love you.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. I desperately wanted to throw my palm over my mouth and take them back, but they were out there now, ready for the world to hear—ready for Brody to listen to.
His eyes flared as his lips parted. “I love you, too.” He pulled his hands out of his pockets and framed my face. His smooth palms slid over my cheeks, his thumbs rubbing back and forth on the wetness that marred my soft flesh.
This was it. This was where our lives would change forever. It wouldn’t be easy to be together, I knew that more than anything, but when two people loved the way we did, it was only natural to need to be together.
I gazed into his eyes, searching for the promises I hoped he would make. It wouldn’t matter what he said, all I wanted was him. “Brody, I—”
“But it’s not enough.”
The words echoed around us, batting off the walls with the same force a bat hit a baseball before it flew out of the stadium. My breath caught, my pulse slowing down as my heart skipped a beat. It felt the loss before I could register what he meant.
“I love you, Lola. But I owe my wife everything.” His hands dropped from my face, the loss of his warmth causing me to shiver. “She’s everything to me, and I won’t push that aside, no matter how much I want you.”
“But—”
“I just had to make sure you were okay.” He nodded like he was affirming his decision in his mind. “Now that I know you are, we can part ways. You’ll never have to see me again.”
I couldn’t form words. Not when he took a step away from me, not when he turned, and not even when he walked away, taking my heart with him and leaving me with nothing.
I blinked at the closed door, my hand clutching at my stomach. The tears finally stopped, and a renewed energy replaced my sadness. If he didn’t want me, then that was okay. I’d do what I had to do, be who I wanted to be because he’d just told me the truth.
I wasn’t enough.
I’d never been enough.
LOLA
People said time was the best healer, and that was all I thought about as the days passed, rolling into one another uneventfully. I craved the normalcy of it to keep me occupied from everything that had happened in the last month.
My first year of college was done. Finished. Finito. And I had just under three months until I had to go back. I had to make a plan for those three months, put things in order, and channel all my efforts toward that. Plans got destroyed. Plans were never stuck to. Plans sucked. But it gave me a driving force.
Butterflies took flight in my stomach as I locked my apartment door behind me. Today was the day. The day where everything would become real. Part of me regretted not telling Brody I was pregnant the other morning, but the other part of me was glad I hadn’t. It wasn’t like I was going to keep the baby from him.
I would tell him, just...not yet. He’d told me where he stood—next to his wife—and that was okay. I refused to be one of those women who used her child as a bargaining chip. If he had really wanted me, then he’d have told me. So for now, it was me and the growing fetus in my belly against the world.
I pushed open the door to the apartment block and brought my hand up above my eyes to shield from the blinding sun.
“Lola!” My head whipped around, spotting the red car that Jan was sitting in, waving her arm out the open window. “Hey!”
I walked over to her and pulled the door open, cringing at the heat inside the car. Apparently, she didn’t have air-conditioning—open windows it was then.
“How you feeling?” Jan asked as she pulled out onto the road. Jan had become a friend in the time I’d worked in the diner, but since I moved into my apartment a week ago, she’d become more than that. And when she found out I was pregnant, she’d decided she was going to take me under her wing. Any other time, I’d have pulled away and gone it alone, determined to face it by myself. But I had no idea what I was doing, and it was about time I opened myself up to real friendships.
“Okay, I guess.” I shuffled in the seat and stared out the windshield. “I didn’t throw up this morning, so that’s a good thing, right?”
Her tinkle of laughter floated on the air between us. “Yeah. But you know the whole morning part of morning sickness is just a myth, right?”
I frowned and turned to face her. “It is?” I asked.
“Yep.” She took a turn and pulled into the lot of a doctor’s office. “It can hit you at any stage. When I was pregnant with Aria, I’d only ever get sick at night.”
“Well, shit.”
Jan pulled the car into an open space and turned the engine off. “And don’t even get me started on the smell of lemons.” She shivered and pulled a face. “They churned my stomach each and every time.” I laughed. Bacon I understood, but lemons? “You ready?” Jan asked, her jovial face turning serious.
My hand fluttered to my stomach, and I inhaled a deep breath. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
She pushed out of the car at the same time I did, and together we walked to the doctor’s office. This felt like a huge moment, one that Brody should have been there for. Maybe I should have told him after all?
No.
I wasn’t going to second-guess myself. I’d have this appointment, get all the dates in order and then decide for sure what to do. Besides, he was still undercover. It wasn’t like he could do anything
right then anyway.
The doctor’s office was cool, bringing relief from the heat outside, and my body thanked it silently. I’d felt like a human furnace for the last week, and nothing I seemed to do would cool me down apart from leaning against the cold tiles in the bathroom naked.
Jan walked us up to the front desk, and for the first time in years, I felt my age. I was nineteen—twenty in a couple of months—but I had no idea what to do when it came to this sort of thing, so I let Jan do all the talking, and when she passed me a clipboard with some paperwork on it, I realized I didn’t even have insurance.
How was I meant to raise a child when I couldn’t even pay to see a doctor?
I stumbled over to the chairs in the waiting room, tears burning my eyes and making it difficult to see the paperwork. How was I meant to do this on my own? Could I do this on my own? I’d finally gotten away from Hut and into my own place, but now I had this to tackle. Life was throwing things at me left, right, and center. The only difference was, I’d caused this. I’d had sex with Brody without protection, so I was the only one to blame.
“Hon?” Jan placed her hand on my arm. “What’s wrong?”
“I…” I looked over at her, the tears slipping free and tracking down my face. “I don’t have insurance. How am I meant to do this when I can’t even pay to see a doctor? What if this is all a mistake? What if I’m a terrible mom? What—”
“Hon.” Her smile was small, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “One step at a time, okay?” I sniffled and wiped my arm over my face. “First thing is your insurance.”
“I don’t have—”
She nodded. “You do.”
“I—”
“I told Sal that I think you have the flu and don’t have insurance.” She shrugged, her lips kicking up more on one side. “You know what that man is like. He added you on to his right away.”
“What? But…” I trailed off.
“Listen, we’ll have this appointment, and we can worry about all the rest later, okay?” Jan plucked the clipboard from my lap and started to fill in some of the sections. “You don’t have to tell Sal yet if you’re not ready. I know you have some things going on, and I won’t pry.” She paused and looked up at me, her brow raised. “But know that I’m here if you do want to talk.”
Fallen Duet: Brody & Lola: Free Fall & Down Fall (Easton Family Duet Boxsets Book 1) Page 26