“Ben—” I began.
“Well, Miss. Cairney is the one that’s stupid, not the homework,” Beckett interrupted.
“Beckett, we don’t call people stupid.”
“Flick.” He glared, a very silent but loud warning. “We do if they are.” He dared me to challenge him again. “When do you need this homework for?”
“Before school end.” I could see the hope in Ben’s eyes.
Beckett smiled back at him. “Then I’ll bring your homework by for then.”
Lila ignored all of this and carried on chomping her breakfast and chatting to her unicorn.
“Kids, time for teeth, off you go.” I ushered them out and spun round to Beckett, who, from the look on his face, was expecting my upcoming rant. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Do you need a list?”
He put his mug down and folded his arms over his chest. “If it’s a list you’ve got, then yeah.”
“One: Promise him something you won’t deliver because you’re at work, which means that now I have to do his family tree. Two: Call his teachers names, if he repeats that he gets in trouble. And three: Tell him you’ll take it to him; do you remember where the school is? Because that part of our jobs rotation is usually on my job list.”
“Said I’ll do it, and I will. And they clearly are fucking stupid if that’s the narrow-minded bullshit they’re filling his head with. And I won’t answer the barbed remark about the jobs list and remembering where the school is.”
Ben appeared with his backpack already slung on his shoulders looking less grumpy by a country mile. “Aunty Flick, what time will you be there to hand in my family tree?”
“I’ll be there before school ends, kiddo,” Beckett replied, shocking the hell out of both Ben and I. “And I might just give Miss. Cairney an education about real families.”
“Beckett,” I warned at the same time as Ben whooped and hollered, “Great!”
He put his mug in the sink which he knew annoyed me because the dish washer was right next to it. “Gotta get to work, see you at school later.”
When he left, I knew one thing was for sure, I was going to be there, ready for damage limitation.
I heard it first.
The mumbles from the mom brigade on the yard, all hushed at the rumbling of the motorcycle as it came closer.
No… he didn’t?
Yes, he fucking did.
Beckett rolled to a stop outside the gates, straddling the machine and disrupting the calm order of the school yard world. Some moms looked horrified, while a few marveled at the sheer sight of him. When he whipped off his mirrored aviators like something from a movie and climbed off the bike; I knew which camp I was in. The one that said Beckett Hope was hot, my panties had just disintegrated, and I was approximately three seconds away from an involuntary orgasm. I watched as he grabbed a tube cleverly strapped to the side of his bike and sauntered through the crowd towards me. “Babe.”
That one word in front of everyone had my legs quivering until I knew he’d done it to make a point, and this was just another joke at Felicity Peters’ expense.
“Let’s go talk about family.” He walked off, more than keen to make his point, leaving me drooling.
“Beckett! Wait! They’re still in class!”
“Good, kids won’t be the only one getting a fucking lesson today.”
My legs moved at double time to follow, quickly calculating how far away the nearest school was, we’d probably need it once this was over. Beckett, wearing his cut, purposely clomped down the hallway in his big motorcycle boots, and looked so out of place, every teacher that spotted us through the doors and windows did a double take.
At Miss. Cairney’s door, he didn’t knock, just strolled right in, and I followed, silently praying for mercy and clemency on her behalf. “Uncle Beckett,” I heard Ben whisper in awe and surprise from a desk slap bang in the middle of the room.
Miss. Cairney was a plump old busy body, who looked like she could use some mind-blowing drugs, a bottle or two of bourbon, and a night of hot, passionate sex. Life had passed this grumpy bitch by and she’d been sucked straight into the Lemony Snicket phase of child management. “Appointments are usually held in the office and after classes.”
“Good job I don’t have one then, this won’t take long.”
“I’m in the middle of class.”
Beckett understood that she was looking down her nose at him, and there were zero fucks given as he strolled to her desk and started to look for something. “Well, that’s good too, you can learn a little something along with the kids.”
Her back went ramrod straight. “Maybe we should take this to the hallway. That might be better.” Beckett ignored her, grabbed what looked like a sticky tack from the desk and walked over to the whiteboard like he was a teacher on staff. He unrolled a great big hunk of paper from inside the tube, which he casually threw at her desk. “Mr. Hope. I don’t think—” Beckett turned and glared at her, immediately causing her to back down.
“Ben, come here kiddo.”
All the kids’ mouths were wide open, utterly silent, watching Ben as he made his way up front. Finally, I looked to the paper and my heart nearly exploded.
“Remember what I said about there being lots of different families?” Ben nodded. “Well, this here is yours.” Ben looked up and a grin slowly took shape as he soaked up all the information. “Look, here’s Uncle Wolf and Aunty Angel,” he pointed out, and their names were there, along with a cute illustration of a Wolf and an Angel. “You can follow it all the way to where you see you, me, Lila and Flick.” I followed Beckett’s finger as he moved around the paper, all the family members of the Black Sentinels had something cute that depicted a nickname, he’d even included my mom, dad and gran. My eyes blurred when I saw he’d stuck a photo of Tracey in pride of place where Ben’s mom was. There were more names on there than people we’d met and right then, I wanted to scream at his stupid teacher. Because she was stupid. How dare she make this brilliant kid feel slighted because of circumstances way out of his control. Who said families had to be traditional?
“Do we have a problem here?” The school principal had appeared in the classroom, just as the end of the day bell rang out and all the kids left the room.
“I don’t know. Is there?” Beckett asked back, challenging him.
“Parents usually make appointments.”
Beckett smiled that grin I’d come to love and turned to face the sour old cow of a teacher. “See, your principle gets it. He just called me a ‘parent’.”
“Ben,” I interrupted, knowing this had the potential to go south. “Go find your sister.”
“And bring her back here,” Beckett finished.
I feared there would be bloodshed. As soon as the door closed, he began, his voice calm. “You think it’s okay to tell a kid who just lost his mom, moved to a new school, and is dealing with grief, that only blood family matters?”
“I… uh… well… maybe there were some crossed wires.”
“Did you tell him you’d fail him without letting him explain?” Miss. Cairney tried to fold her arms, but as there was no gap between her boobs and her belly, it was a challenge. “I see you’re gearing up to feed me some nonsense, so let’s be clear. If there are wires crossed in here, it’s your job to uncross them. You don’t, or I don’t like how you’ve done it, then you’ve got crossed wires with me.”
“Mr. Hope—” the principle wasn’t stupid, “—Let me assure you that we respect all family types, even unorthodox ones.” Okay, so maybe he was stupid, and he realized that was completely the wrong thing to say. “I wasn’t implying—”
Beckett had heard enough. “Let me be clear, you people are in a position of responsibility over young minds. Start taking that seriously. I hear you’re not where my kids are concerned, and we’ve got problems.”
He’d called them ‘my kids’ and I was two seconds away from melting in a pool of emotion
al goo.
“I assure we take that seriously.” The principle had now gone from glaring at Beckett to seriously glaring at his staff member.
“If you did that, I wouldn’t have had an upset kid at the breakfast table.”
“Agreed,” he conceded quickly.
“Good. Glad we’re on the same page.”
The classroom door burst open and Lila barreled in. “Unca Beckett! Unca Beckett! I got a star today.” She proudly raised a finger and pointed it to a sticker on her dress.
Beckett’s face softened and I re-melted after I’d just pulled myself together. “Course you did. Come on, you can tell me all about it over ice cream.”
“Yay! Ice cream!”
Beckett grabbed her hand and walked out of the classroom, leaving Ben and I to follow, completely done with the conversation. As we walked down the corridor, he ignored everyone but Lila, and listened to her ramble on about her day. As the path cleared for us, those women that thought he was hot before, now saw his gentle side and that just sealed the deal… for me as well.
“Uncle Beckett,” Ben shouted, “we forgot our family tree.”
“Yeah, we did, but that’s okay, we know who our family is. So, we can leave it there just to remind Miss. Cairney. It’s time for her to do some learning for a change.”
Back at my car, I strapped the kids into car seats and closed the doors. “Bring them to the clubhouse, there’s ice cream waiting. I’ll sort them for dinner. You can have a night off, Flick.”
My heart deflated.
I didn’t want a night off. I wanted to be with the family on the wall in the classroom, that I for once felt a part of, I wanted to see the kids’ happiness at having a place to belong, but before I could reply he was already walking to his bike.
The disappointment lashed deep inside me and I was blurry-eyed again, but for a very different reason. Beckett roared off to the clubhouse and I knew I needed to get over this before I dropped the kids with him. But all I could think about was that even though my name was on that piece of paper and I lived in his house and worked with his old lady friends, he didn’t really see me as part of that family.
I comforted him in the dark hours when his nightmares took hold and I still wasn’t enough for him. I never had been, and I never would be. I was just the live-in nanny.
Miss. Cairney wasn’t the only stupid person, I was too. And this moment was a perfectly acceptable use of the word.
I’d become invested in something that wasn’t real, and stupidly, I only had myself to blame.
Shadow
“You okay?”
She didn’t look okay.
Flick looked like the light had been snuffed out behind her eyes. I was sat watching a game with the kids after ice cream at the clubhouse, where I was keen to solidify that they were part of the family. I wanted that firm in Ben’s brain before that bitch at school did anything else to put doubt in his mind. It worked too, ten minutes into the biggest bowl of ice cream that he’d conned Malia into giving him, he was a different kid.
I’d done that.
I’d got something right.
Flick nodded and turned to walk off.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked and she stopped in her tracks. I gave her the night off thinking she’d want a bit of freedom, after all, she was the one who’d bitched about having nothing in her life but this.
“Out.”
Fuck. Yeah, something had definitely crawled up her ass. “Another date?”
Her eyes flashed. Had she been on another date?
Flick ignored me. “I’m whacked, gonna get to bed early.”
I let her go as I finished my beer and then shut the house down for the night. An hour later, I did my fake moaning and closed my eyes. Thirty minutes later, she still hadn’t come to save me and I didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t part of the plan. I was ready for her tonight, ready to ramp things up, to stop pussy-footing around, and show her that I wanted her to have her place on that family tree.
I wailed a little louder and this time gave my nightstand a bit of a shove, so the lamp toppled to the floor. As I hoped it would, it brought her to my room, only unlike every other time she didn’t crawl into my bed with me, she huffed and puffed, even f-bombed under her breath and stood there. Why was she going off script when I had a fucking plan?
“Beckett! Wake up!”
I jolted at her words, completely unprepared for her to speak. “What’s the matter?” I fake mumbled.
“You’re gonna wake the kids with your damn nightmares.”
Well, that pissed me off. Did she think I wanted to have fucking nightmares about death, war, and I repeat, fucking death. I couldn’t hold it back. “Get the fuck out of my room.”
“Asshole.” It was the first time she’d called me that in a while.
I hated that I was just getting us to a place where I could make a move and she was going to ruin it, make me have second thoughts. “Stop.”
“I’m not a fucking toy or a dog that responds to commands, so fuck you. Asshole.”
By the time she’d turned, I was already behind her in a move so stealthy that she had a glimpse of how I’d earned my club name. At times like this, I was grateful for some of the skills the army had taught me. The skills to kill people probably shouldn’t have rated on that chart, but still, shocking the shit out of people so they felt fear and panic was definitely a good one. “What are you doing?” she whispered. I put my hand on hers pulling it away from the door handle.
“I think you know. You don’t normally shout at me or leave me to suffer.” I was so close to her back that my whispered reply caused a full body shiver.
“Why… why are you naked?”
I peered down at her chest and her nipples poked at the fabric of her tank, begging for attention. I could feel the warmth radiate from her ass cheeks straight against my cock. My fucked-up, sex deprived brain sent a message straight to said cock, causing her to feel exactly where it was resting. “I want you.”
“You don’t,” she threw back.
“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t want.”
I pushed against her, we were locked tight and she burned to the touch but shivered like she was hypothermic. “You don’t. I’m just a fucking day sitter for the kids.”
Where the fuck had that come from?
“Are you insane?”
“No,” she spat. “At school, outside, in front of your brothers, I’m just the nanny, the unfortunate bitch who got stuck helping you with your family. But the minute we get something right, you dismiss me.”
Hold on, what was happening here? “I—”
“Yes, you did. Told me to go like a fucking dog under your command.”
I was confused. “Flick, I didn’t mean it that way, I just thought you could do with a night off, and you said the same yourself.”
She pushed back and turned around. “To do what? Go out with the friends I don’t have, go on another date so you can chase him off. Without those kids, I have no life.”
Fuck, she was right.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think. I thought I was being kind. Why didn’t you say? You could have stayed at the club with us.”
“Us. I’m not feeling a part of that, and what did you want me to do, beg?”
“I know of one thing I’d be happy to hear you beg for.”
“In your dreams, Beckett.” The fire in her eyes got to me, really got to me. Whatever this mood was that she had going on, it made me horny as fuck.
“I remember when you used to dream of kissing me.”
“And guess what? That happened and you acted like I was nothing back then too.”
We were still slammed up against the door, me naked and her in only a few items of clothing, but whatever she had to say she needed to get it off her chest so I could move forward with my plan.
“I’d enlisted, babe.”
“So that gave you the right to ignore me?”
It did and it didn’t.<
br />
It was a shit thing to do, but I figured a clean break was better for her. Back in the day Flick was already crushing hard on me, being sweet to her after I’d had her against the tree in her garden wouldn’t have been fair. She’d have got her hopes up and she needed to move on, to get her own life going in case mine ended while I was away, and not be hung up on some imaginary love story. “It was the best thing to do.” I stroked a finger over her ass cheek.
“It hurt. You keep hurting me.”
I didn’t expect that. “How?”
“You act all normal, like we’re real, like our situation is real, especially in front of other people, and then get all… assholey.”
I smiled at her word. No one loved being called an asshole, but it was our thing and it was all kinds of cute when she did it. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I barely have my head on straight on a good day.”
“Exactly, and that’s gonna hurt me again, so leave me alone.”
“You don’t leave me alone.”
“What?” she breathed.
“At night, you don’t leave me alone.”
“You know about that?”
I snorted, “A hot piece snuggles up to me in bed. Fuck, yeah I know.” It was safer to go down that route than tell her I knew because I was pretty much permanently conscious. My inner demons would never let me settle, and switching off for just a few minutes was the difference between life and death.
“You are a fucking asshole. I was worried about you, and you took advantage.”
“Wasn’t me sneaking into someone else’s bed, pretty sure that’s a crime in some states,” I tried to joke and realized it was not the right time. “Look, stop overthinking shit for just a second and I’ll show you some real advantages to this game you started.”
“I’m not playing games!”
“You are babe. I know it and you know it. Time to quit fucking around.” Flick wobbled and her inner resolve wobbled. I’d called her out and everything inside her screamed to be offended and indignant. “You tell me I’m wrong, right now, look me in the eye and tell me you don’t wonder about us and I’ll open the fucking door for you myself.”
Flick (The Black Sentinels MC Book 4) Page 11