by A. L. Woods
My brow quirked north. “Man Bun.”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Terry’s family lives on a farm in Cheltenham and was growing pot in a barn.”
“And Cash was his inner-city dealer.”
“Exactly.” She blew out a breath. “The thing was, early on in our relationship, Cash would bring me along for his drop offs. He used to stop at an ice cream parlor off of West Broadway to get me a cone with a scoop of cookie dough.”
“So, his argument about not getting you involved didn’t make any sense,” I pointed out.
“That’s right. After the cops showed up the night my sister died, we got dressed so we could head to the station. I needed to identify the body, since they couldn’t get a hold of my ma.” She trained her eyes down into the mug, her jaw trembling. “The smell of sex and cheap perfume hit me as soon as I opened the car door. It was undeniable. There’s no mistaking that scent for stale air, and the car seat was pushed all the way back again. He knew I knew. I just got in the car and cried. It was like my entire world was coming apart and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I had the ache between my legs to remind me of what an idiot I was to trust him, and what my decision had cost me.”
“Raquel, you didn’t do that. He did.”
She looked up at me. I was relieved to see no tears glossing in her eyes. “I know I didn’t, but it doesn’t change that I might never know who she was. I begged him to tell me who for weeks, but he wouldn’t budge. If I had known sooner, I would have never slept with him that day. Maybe Holly Jane would still be here.”
I fought the urge to rush to try to change her mind. She was entitled to feel the way she did even if I didn’t agree with it; it didn’t alter my opinion that this wasn’t her fault. At some point or another, the Flannigan sisters had hit a fork in the proverbial road. Where Raquel headed north toward a future that was safe and unlike anything she had ever known, Holly Jane had shifted course and veered off to a shadowy place that took her right back to where she started.
Raquel’s movements drew my attention back to her. She leaned forward on the countertop, her elbows resting there as her hands tented together, creating a bridge for her chin to rest upon.
I leaned forward on the countertop, my hand cradling her bicep, my finger sweeping over the exposed bare skin. “What Cash did to you is on him. It’s a reflection on him, not you. And even if you never find out who she was, his actions or yours didn’t cause Holly’s passing.” I didn’t like the guy, but he couldn’t be blamed for her sister’s death, either.
She sniffled, tucking her hair roughly behind her ears. She lifted her eyes to meet mine, her smile a faint and pitiful little thing that barely managed to reach her dimples.
“Don’t force yourself to smile through whatever you’re feeling,” I said. “You’re allowed to feel down or pissed about it.”
“I don’t want to ruin the weekend.”
“You’re not.” I placed my mug on the counter and walked around the counter to where she sat. With her body still facing the kitchen window, I stepped close to the bar stool, wrapped my arms around her from behind, and planted a kiss onto the crown of her head before I spoke. “If you wanna spend the whole day in bed, we’ll do that. If you wanna talk about this, we will. And if you don’t, we won’t. Just don’t smile unless you feel like it.”
“Why are you being so amenable? I thought you liked my smile,” she murmured, tilting her head back so her lips were mere inches from mine.
“I love your smile,” I whispered, leaning in. “But I want it to be real and not a mask for what you’re really feeling. I want to earn those smiles honestly.”
“Like my heart?” I couldn’t tell if the staccato was my heartbeat or hers, but the steady thrumming had us drawing closer to one another. She straightened in her seat and spun her body around so she faced me, her feet perched against the rung of the stool. My hands instinctively went to her shoulders, sliding up the length of her creamy neck until my fingers were trapped in her hair.
“Exactly,” I said, right before my mouth made its descent on hers.
Nothing had ever felt truer in that moment than our kiss.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I couldn’t tell you when Sean was hotter. When he had my legs slung over his shoulders and his cock plummeting into me, or right now when he stood behind a stove, spatula in hand and a deep look of concentration pulling his brows into a V.
His hair was a mussed mess of dark strands, the set of his shoulders relaxed. My eyes had been riveted on him, taking in every curve and delineation of muscle that looked hand sculpted on him. I knew construction was constant physical activity, but shit, I had accepted the stereotypical picture of a short man with a protruding beer gut and tool belt for decorative measure that was equivalent to a paper weight for a businessperson.
Sean was anything but short and anything but useless. His forearm flexed as he tested the edges of the eggs with a spatula.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so focused cooking eggs before.”
He snorted, his mouth forming into a slanted smile. “Can you cook eggs?” he asked without looking at me.
“I don’t think I’ve ever tried.” I laughed. It hadn’t taken me long to smile, the deep honest kind that he had wanted to see. Not when I was still perched up on this bar stool with a replenished mug of hot coffee and a half naked man cooking for me.
“Well, they’re easy to fuck up if you don’t watch ’em carefully,” he said, shaking the pan to reinforce his point. He shot the stack of pancakes he had set down in front of me a look. “Your pancakes are going to get cold,” he warned.
“They’re absorbing the syrup. You know that’s how I like them.”
“Ah, yes. A soggy, sweet pile of mush. Sounds great.” He chuckled, flipping the eggs over for few more seconds before he slid them onto a plate next to a mountain of bacon. He cut the heat on the stove, his lower back meeting the counter edge. If he wanted me to eat, he shouldn’t be parading around half naked while looking like that. At this angle, I had nothing but an eyeful of his defined chest that was peppered with dark hair, washboard abs and track pants that hung low enough on his hips that my gaze roved over the happy trail that descended past the waistband.
“Eat.”
The command ripped me prematurely out of my reverie. I let out a sigh of dreamy despondency, appraising the food. “Then don’t be so good looking,” I offered with a shrug, picking up a piece of bacon and taking a contemplative bite. “It’s not my fault that you’re this distracting.” I caught the intentional flex of his biceps, a wry smile testing the corners of his mouth.
“I didn’t think you’d do such a good job stroking my ego,” he said with a short shake of his head, after a breathless chuckle.
“I think by now you’ve figured out I’m excellent at stroking a lot of things.”
His brow shot north, his lips peeling back to reveal those perfectly lined teeth. “Now, that is something we can agree on.”
Sean pushed off the counter, depositing his coffee mug in the sink behind him. I cut into the pancake I had saturated in syrup just as he dragged back the bar stool opposite of me. He placed one foot on the rung, the other firm against the ground. He looked too big for the seat, all long limbs and muscles that were too thick to be accommodated, but I was too high on the proximity of him to bother teasing him about it.
“Are you going to eat?” I asked, nodding at the eight pancakes, four eggs, and six pieces of bacon he had cooked up.
“Nah, I’ll have a shake in a bit.”
My brows hit my hairline. “Please tell me you didn’t make all of this for me.”
“Of course I did.”
“I can’t eat all of this,” I glanced down at the deconstructed pancake I’d picked at on my plate.
“Don’t worry, the kid will be home shortly. Whatever you don’t eat, she’ll inhale.”
At the mention of Trina, my insides churned. “I should get dressed.” I slid fro
m the barstool, but he caught me by the elbow before I made it even two steps away.
“Where are you going?”
“To put on real clothes.”
“I much prefer you with easy access.” As though to reinforce his point, he slid a warm palm up the tract of my thigh, his fingers creeping dangerously close to my heat. The tremor that rolled through me was enough to satisfy him, because he released his grip on me to stand. His arms came around mine from behind, his chest flush against my back. “Don’t wig out because of her.”
“She’s your kid sister, and I’m not trying to make my half-naked presence here weird.
“She’ll be fine,” he pressed with a boyish snicker, his chest blanketing my back. As though on cue, the keys in the lock of the front door jingled and to my abject horror, my legs rendered me immobile, keeping me trapped in the kitchen.
Trina’s hair stuck out in six different directions, her eyes hooded like she was still half asleep, her makeup smudged around the edges.
“Morning.” Sean’s voice vibrated through his chest against my back.
His younger sister looked at him, her brows deep over her eyes. “Morning.” She yawned. Her mouth rocked from side to side, her gaze dipping to me. I waited for the judgement to set in, but what I got instead was sleepy amusement. “I had fully prepared myself to walk in on you two ass-naked, so this is progress.”
“Jesus,” I bit out, withering under the remark, a blush heating my cheeks.
“What?” Trina asked, eyes widening just a smidgen. “You don’t know what it’s like living here. He has zero scruples; the mute button doesn’t exist for him.”
My body stiffened under his hold, but the fucker just squeezed a little harder.
“Like seriously,” she continued, breezing by us. As he had predicted, Trina moseyed over to the serving dish of food, picking up a golden pancake and biting into it. “Did he tell you he likes mid 90’s porn?” she asked through a mouth full of food, “For four months, he didn’t realize I could hear it. Do you know what that’s like? What that does to an impressionable young woman coming hot off the heels of a traumatic period of her life? Nightmares. Nightmares.”
Laughter shot out of me, and Sean’s frame went rigid. That was fine, all right.
“I’m going to kill you,” Sean muttered.
“Can you put on a shirt before you do?” Trina asked, appraising her brother derisively, her upper lip curling back in disgust. “Raquel’s got a shirt on.”
“That’s about all she’s got on.”
“TMI, big brother. T-M-I.”
Without warning, the front door creaked open. I jolted in place, but Sean just tilted his head in the direction of the sound. The door closed with a soft click, my heart kicking in my chest, a pulse forming in the soles of my feet. The indifference between the Tavares siblings told me not to panic, but in my current state I was not prepared for another one of his sisters to make a surprise appearance.
“You can come in, Lainey.” He chuckled.
My eyes widened. Who the fuck was Lainey?
A pair of eyes belonging to a woman peaked over the small stretch of wall between the kitchen and the foyer before she accepted the invitation. She looked no more than Trina’s age with two thick champagne colored braided plaits on either side of her head that ended just below her chest. Her eyes reminded me of a shamrock, the rich green appearing lighter near her pupils. She was indisputably beautiful in the way that Trina was cute, but it was the little boy no more than two perched on her hip with wildly curly dark hair that stole my breath. He met my gaze, a cheeky grin eating up his face before he buried his face into her chest.
“It is true.” She laughed, all big teeth with lips that looked bee-stung painted a deep mauve. “You do have a woman in here.”
“Did you think I was bullshitting you?” Trina warbled through a mouthful of pancake.
“No,” Lainey said with a shake of her head, the plaits moving with her. She shuffled the weight of the kid on her hip upwards. “I just thought he was doing the abstinence thing.”
Sean groaned. “Can you two stop talking about us like we’re not here?”
I felt his hold slacken on me; my eyes trained on his back as he moved toward Lainey, who hadn’t moved from her spot in the threshold.
He jerked his head toward the barstools where Trina was standing. “Gimme the kid, and go eat.” He held his hands out to the boy, whose smile nearly reached his eyes.
“You want me to hand my kid over to you while you’re not even wearing a shirt?” There was something coquettish in her voice that annoyed me. Her eyes swept over his frame with an appreciation that looked too familiar, too personal. Her leprechaun green peepers followed the happy trail beneath his belly button, but instead of the roving stopping there, they settled exactly where I hadn’t wanted them to: his groin. His sweatpants weren’t exactly form-fitting, but they weren’t loose enough to disguise what he was packing, either.
I was compelled by the urge to drag her out of the house by her stupid plaits and toss her ass out onto the dooryard so she could think about how to behave.
I had jested him for being the jealous one, but shit, karma was a bitch.
Sean was either oblivious to her blatant attempt to flirt with him, or impervious to her charm. He rolled his eyes at her and held his outstretched arms toward the kid. “Yeah, actually.” He impatiently flitted his fingers. Lainey mirrored his reaction with the roll of her eyes, stretching her arms outward and handing the toddler over, who latched his chubby arms around Sean’s neck in a vise grip.
I wrinkled my nose in distaste. I hated kids. I hated the idea of their incessant crying, screaming, and grubby, sticky palms on everything. I hated that they grew up to be self-righteous, wise-mouthed assholes who thought they knew everything the world had to offer them. I hated the way kids changed people, how the humans who conceived them stopped being individuals with their own identities in exchange for titles like Ma and Dad. How those so-called parents had the ability to let their children down and ruin them for life and perpetuate this never-ending cycle of disappointment that they inevitably injected into the next generation. Yet here was Sean, rewriting the schema in my brain while looking really damn good with a kid in his arms, talking in a hushed tone to the boy who was eating up every word he said like Sean was the sun in the sky. Warm and all-consuming.
“I’m Elaine Walsh, but you can call me Lainey. I’m Trina’s best friend.”
I shook myself out of my daze to glance down at the woman who I dwarfed by a good three inches. She proffered her hand to me, her acrylic nails long and rounded at the tips, sporting a genial smile that reminded me of the boy in Sean’s arms. I took her palm in my own, a warning in the grip of my handshake, the gesture not wasted on her. I caught a tick of amusement in Lainey’s smile as she reciprocated my strength before our hands separated.
She followed my eyes to where Sean was whispering conspiratorially to the toddler. “And that’s Aidan, my kid. He’s two and a half.”
Sean glanced at me, his easygoing smile doing something dangerous that pervaded my insides while he was clutching the kid. He murmured something else to Aidan, who giggled and nodded his head, the springy curls moving with him. Sean bent into a squat, setting the kid on his feet. I listened to the soft shuffle of the denim of his pipsqueak jeans as his feet carried him across the kitchen to where I stood and those plump arms of his wrapped themselves around my bare leg.
Every inch of me lit up like the Fourth of July. My insides warmed for the pint-sized human latched onto my leg in the most overwhelming kind of way. The kid’s shy adoration colored his sea-green eyes that looked out at me from under thick black lashes, the kind that people like me shelled out six bucks at the CVS every three months for trying to achieve. Those peepers of his melted every frosty bone in my body as the disdain for tiny humans that lived inside of me found its way inside of a microwave that I’d just set on high and walked away from. I ignored the pop, spark,
and plumes of smoke that drifted from the crevices of the door in pursuit of getting just a moment longer with the kid.
Just as quickly as he came though, he was gone, all nervous giggles that sent him darting back to his mother on wobbly legs, taking my heart with him like it was no big fucking deal that he had me wrapped around his baby-sized fist.
“Sorry, he’s a little shy,” she amended, smoothing out the curls of his hair with one hand, while the other clung onto a greasy and crispy piece of bacon. If she called that shy, I didn’t want to see him confident. The kid had more game than most grown ass men I knew, and I’d been privy to witnessing some pretty epic behavior in my day. It all paled next to the kid. His soft locks were buoyant under his mother’s roving fingers as she smoothed every unruly wave back into place, her mouth rocking as she chewed.
I’d seen plenty of kids, but none of them had ever made me feel like that. My pocket of South Boston wasn’t exactly the hub of chastity belts. People had babies, plenty of ’em, but beyond my sister when she had been that small, I had yet to meet a kid I liked. It had been decades since I had even been in the presence of one, I’d forgotten the supple feel of their skin and had a proclivity to avoid meeting their eyes dead on.
“This is so good,” Lainey moaned, like she had never had bacon before. Hell, up until a few weeks ago, I had been unable to recall the last time I had pancakes, so who was I to judge?
“Can you two get a plate? You’re getting crumbs everywhere,” Sean grumbled.
“There he is,” Trina quipped, the self-satisfied smirk that seemed to be a family trait edging her mouth. She stretched out her limbs like a feline, tossing her brother a wry look. “Mr. Grumpy.”
“I’m not grumpy; you’re both making a mess.”
“It’s not me,” Lainey pointed out as she split a piece of bacon and popped it into Aidan’s mouth, who accepted it without complaint and chewed it enthusiastically. “It’s your kid sister.”