Nobody Knows

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  That was what Malachi was to me.

  A flaming hot man that I knew that I should stay away from.

  Yet, I couldn’t make myself do it.

  I couldn’t stay away.

  And I knew I’d get burned, but I couldn’t quite make myself care.

  “Fine,” I said. “And Axe stays with me. You can visit him.”

  “What’s it mean that I think this is going to come back and bite me in the ass?” he asked.

  “Probably because it is,” I confirmed.

  CHAPTER 8

  My hobbies include judging people’s eyebrows and grammar.

  -Sierra to Sammy

  SIERRA

  Gabriel,

  Tell me about yourself.

  I know that we said that we wouldn’t exchange photos, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t tell each other what we look like, does it?

  I’m not tall, or short, I guess. I’m just about average. Five-foot-five.

  I have mousey brown hair that I’ve cut all of three times in my life, meaning that it’s really long. I’m talking to my waist long if it’s fully straight and I take the three hours to make sure that it is.

  I have lightly tanned skin that stays year-round, and freckles on the bridge of my nose and the tops of my cheeks, right underneath my eyes.

  I have boring brown eyes that are the color of mud—not Texas red-dirt mud—but the brown mud that normally allows trees to grow in it. What is that? Topsoil? I don’t know what it’s called. Maybe a more apt description would be the color of a Hershey’s bar. Blah.

  As for my body shape, it’s nothing great. Just a normal body, I guess.

  And I have small feet. Size six. I think that’s why I trip so much.

  Anyway, hopefully you’ll tell me about yourself. Also, I hope that you’re being safe.

  If you ever decide to allow me to buy you something and send it to you in a care package, let me know!

  Sierra

  • • •

  “What’s this I just heard about you dating my sister?” Sammy came up not long later and insinuated himself so close that Malachi had to step back or be pressed up against him.

  I punched him in the ribs and he backed off, but only slightly.

  “What’s it to you, fart face?” I asked. “You’re suddenly concerned for me now and not Mark?”

  “Mark is a good friend, Sierra. I’m sorry that I’m a little upset with you because you broke up with him out of the blue,” he said, his eyes moving to Malachi. “So you’re seeing my sister, but you’re not telling me that you are? What kind of friend does that?”

  “The kind of friend who knew you were pissed off this week,” I said, smoothly lying as if I were telling the truth. “Let’s just point out that you were pissed at me this week, and I didn’t think that it would go well if Malachi told you we were dating.”

  “Damn fucking right.” His eyes narrowed on Malachi. “I just… this doesn’t make any fucking sense. I would’ve known that y’all were together.”

  “Let me see your phone,” he ordered, holding out his hand to me.

  I rolled my eyes and gave him the finger instead.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I’m going to text him,” he said. “If you’re really seeing each other, your phone number would be in his phone, right?”

  I looked at Malachi warily.

  “Sammy,” I said, trying to play it cool. “This is utterly ridiculous.”

  He held out his hand for my phone, and when I refused to give it to him, he only started laughing.

  “I knew that you wouldn’t do it,” he jeered. “What’s really going on?”

  I reached into my pocket and handed him my phone. “Here.”

  He didn’t know my passcode any… Sammy signed right into my phone, using a passcode that I’d only changed it to a month ago.

  When had he had time to figure it out?

  He quickly went to the phone app and queued up the number.

  I opened my mouth, desperate to stop him, but he dialed a number anyway.

  When I stepped forward to explain, Malachi’s pocket started to ring.

  “Wait,” Sammy said as he looked in between Malachi and me. “You’re her Gabriel?”

  You’re her Gabriel.

  Three simple words that had the power to knock me to my knees.

  My head whipped around and I stared in dawning realization at ‘Gabriel’ or ‘Malachi.’

  I wasn’t sure which one to call him.

  “I didn’t realize that you went by Gabriel,” Sammy said, no idea that he’d detonated what amounted to an atomic bomb between Malachi and me.

  Gabriel and me.

  Shit.

  “Well that just makes a whole lot more sense,” he admitted, his eyes moving from me to his sister and back. “Y’all have known each other forever.”

  Malachi’s eyes met mine and held them.

  Things were passing between us as each of us tried to process the information that we’d been given. Out of all the signs that were blatantly right in front of us, I’d ignored them all. Now I felt like a complete and utter dumbass. Like I should’ve figured this out a very long time ago.

  He was my Gabriel.

  But he went by Malachi.

  And now I was just seeing him in an altogether different light.

  No longer was he just the sexy, dark, scary man that stood in the shadows at all of my brother’s parties. Now he was Gabriel—the man that I’d shared my deepest, darkest secrets with. The man that had been missing for two years and wrote me a few months ago and it was like no time had passed at all.

  The man that had been caught and tortured as a prisoner of war.

  The man that had a very good reason to be so scary and standoffish.

  The man that was my dog’s first owner.

  “Well, this is just great,” Sammy said as he clapped Malachi on the back. “But I have to go find something to eat for Hastings.”

  He was a half-step in the direction of the food table when he whipped around.

  A thought had occurred to him. “You knocked my sister up?”

  Oh, boy.

  Just when we were starting to make progress.

  • • •

  MALACHI

  “That went… differently than I expected,” I admitted as I walked through the woods heading to my grans’—now also Sierra’s—place.

  The woman next to me walked carefully through the woods with me, using her phone light for illumination.

  I didn’t need the light.

  I’d tracked through these woods for my entire life. I knew them like the back of my hand.

  Not to mention the moon was so bright tonight that I could practically see everything for a hundred yards in front of me.

  “You want to know what’s really wrong? The fact that I’ve been talking to you for years and didn’t even know it,” she countered. “How could I not know that? I even have your calendar photo up in my room right now! You’re freakin’ Mr. November!”

  I thought about that for a long moment, then shrugged.

  “We purposefully didn’t hand out that information,” I said. “Sure, did the thought of looking you up occur to me? Yes. But I liked our arrangement. I liked that I could talk to you about just about anything and you wouldn’t judge me. That the next time I saw you, you wouldn’t look at me with pity that my parents treated me like such shit.”

  I looked down at Axe walking between us.

  He was happy as a fuckin’ clam.

  God, I’d missed him.

  I owed her more information, though.

  Information that she needed to really understand what had happened and how we’d missed something so big.

  “I changed my name,” I admitted, returning my eyes to the house that I could see in the distance. “I started using my grandmother’s maiden name. Gnocchi. After everything that went down with my parents, I couldn’t look them in the eyes anymore, let alone have the same
fucking name. So I changed it.” He paused. “And it was a big ass mess, me changing my name. I mean, I had to change everything. Driver’s license. Social security card. All my paperwork. Hell, if I’d been thinking straighter, I never would’ve done it.”

  “And Malachi?” she asked softly.

  “My first name,” I told her. “I told you that I went by my middle name. I don’t do that anymore, though. Not… after.”

  Not after my parents had practically ruined my life.

  That was to be expected, I guess.

  I could see the wheels turning in her head, though.

  “There’s more?” she guessed. “How did nobody else know this? I mean, why did you allow me to keep calling you Gabriel in all of your letters and texts?”

  My head tilted slightly to the right. “Because I was always Gabriel to you. I didn’t want to be someone new with you. I wanted to be who I always was meant to be.” He paused. “And I didn’t really go about telling everyone about the name change. The only people who really knew were my grandmother and Luca. And with Luca losing his memory? My grandmother and me? We don’t show weakness. That means that anything that has to do with family, my grandmother is going to safeguard with her life. That means me, and why I changed my name.”

  She looked away from me, almost as if she had so many questions whirling through her brain that it was hard to pick just one to ask me.

  I waited patiently, then grinned when she practically leaped across the small bridge that I’d built for my grandmother to get over the creek safely.

  Speaking of my grandmother…

  “I think that my grandmother knew who you were the moment that she allowed you to rent my place,” I admitted. “She’d been waiting on me to move in there for years. That’s why it’s still vacant, and why she’s in the small house at all. She wants me to move back home.”

  “How would she know me?” she asked. “It’s not like there aren’t thousands of Sierras in the world. Hell, hundreds in just Kilgore alone. Did you know that I graduated with four Sierras?”

  My lips twitched.

  “Actually, yes,” I said. “You told me, remember?”

  In a letter.

  There was so much that I knew about her that most wouldn’t normally know about a woman that they’d first truly met.

  It was a bit disconcerting.

  “And to answer your question about how my grandmother knew.” I pointed down to the dog. “You have Maxie.”

  “Axe,” she corrected automatically. “And I guess you’re right.”

  “My grandmother moved home just to find him,” I said. “She promised me that she would. And I guess, in a way, she did.”

  Sierra’s face took on an expression of confusion, then dawning realization. “Your grandmother saw me at a dog park. I thought it was super, duper weird that she was there without a dog. But now it’s kind of making sense.” She paused in the middle of the yard that I’d grown up playing in. “That’s when I mentioned not having a place to stay. She offered me her place.”

  My lips twitched. “She knew.”

  “She’s a crafty little lady.” She laughed as she walked to the swing set that’d seen better days and sat on it.

  The entire swing set groaned but held her weight.

  I made a mental note to come out here and fix a few things.

  I couldn’t have her swinging on it and possibly hurting herself.

  That definitely wasn’t good for a baby—a fall to the ground like that.

  Shit.

  She was pregnant.

  “So your parents still don’t know that you didn’t go sleep with a random man?” I asked as I leaned against the tree next to where she was swinging.

  “No,” she muttered miserably. “My dad came over today and I just… panicked. I said that I was with someone now, and it was new, and we were trying to navigate things now that I was pregnant. I didn’t… shit. I insinuated the fuck out of it that who I was seeing was the father of my child. I just… they really loved Mark. Like so much. They’re in shock that I’ve managed to find myself in this situation. And I lie to make things better, but it only makes them worse.”

  I picked up a stick and shook it at Maxie—Axe—who immediately locked his eyes onto it.

  She raised her brow at me.

  “You might want to drop the leash,” I suggested.

  She did, but immediately started to shake her head. “He doesn’t fetch…”

  Her voice trailed off when I threw the stick.

  It sailed all the way across the yard, knocked through a couple of branches, only to come to a stop at the base of a tree.

  The dog was off and running before I’d even finished my throw.

  Her gasp was audible as she said, “He never, and I do mean never, chases after things.”

  “Only a stick,” I said. “Not a ball. Not a toy. Just a stick.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve had that dog sleeping in bed with me for years, and I feel like I don’t even know him.”

  I chuckled softly, feeling lighter than I had in a long time.

  “I’m glad that he had you, Sierra,” I said softly. “I wish he never had to go there in the first place, but if he had to, I’m glad that he had you on the other side.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Don’t let thoughts of Monday steal your Sunday.

  -Sierra to Malachi

  SIERRA

  Gabriel,

  Did you know that your vagina can turn blue from an increase of blood flow during pregnancy? It’s called Chadwick’s sign.—I don’t have this yet in case you’re wondering.

  Also, did you know that boobs grow so fast during pregnancy that sometimes they can grow unevenly?—No, mine are both the same size still, in case you were wondering that as well.

  In case you are wondering what signs and symptoms of pregnancy I’m experiencing—that would be a big fat nothing. The only thing that I’ve noticed is that I missed my period and that I don’t like to wear tight clothing around my midsection. That’s it.

  Do you ever want kids?

  Sierra

  • • •

  I woke up to my dog nudging me in the bladder.

  My very full bladder.

  I groaned and rolled over, coming face to face with a pair of sock-covered feet.

  I went up onto my elbows and stared blearily at the feet for a few seconds, wondering who they belonged to.

  “You sleep really hard.”

  I blinked some more at the man that was connected to those feet.

  “And you are really confused when you wake up.” He continued to speak.

  I scrunched up my nose in confusion.

  “I’m… what?” I asked, really not altogether with it this early in the morning.

  He grinned.

  It was a small, barely noticeable twitch of his lip, revealing only the smallest amount of straight white teeth, but it was still there.

  And it had my heart racing.

  “You’re adorable confused,” he said as he looked at me with his intense stare. “Do you have to work today?”

  I scrubbed my hand over my face, trying to think clearly.

  “No,” I admitted. “I actually have to go to a doctor’s appointment today. Tomorrow. I work tomorrow.” I looked at him with eyes a little clearer. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m here because I heard you mention something about a doctor’s appointment in passing yesterday, and how would it look if I didn’t go to this as your new boyfriend?” He paused, his eyes taking in the calendar where I wrote my appointment down, and grimaced. “And I also heard that my parents made a visit yesterday. And it always entertains me to see my grandmother yell at them. She wasn’t here yesterday, but she saw on the video feed that they came to your place, and then went over to hers, and I’m just assuming right along with her that they’ll be back today.”

  I shoved up onto my elbows and knees, totally missed his eyes flare seeing as I was in underwear and a t-shirt an
d was a fairly rough sleeper—meaning my t-shirt was up around my belly—and hurried to the bathroom.

  I needed to get my teeth brushed, use the bathroom, and wash my face.

  Only then could I deal with the sexy man in my bedroom.

  “As for how I got in here,” Malachi said as he toed the door open slightly. I squeaked in surprise as he shoved into the bathroom, but instead of turning toward me, he turned toward the sink which was all the way across the room and started to wash his hands. “I used to live here. A, I have a key. B, I know exactly how to get in and out of this place without creaking a single floorboard, let alone getting in and out of a locked door. And C, my grandmother has an entrance from her place to yours. You remember that, right?”

  I hastily finished my business and yanked up my panties, flushing the toilet with my face flaming hot.

  “You realize that I was going to the bathroom, right?” I asked, feeling the heat hit my cheeks as I sidled up to the second sink right beside the one he was standing at.

  He finished drying off his hands with the towels that were for decoration only and turned to study me.

  “You do realize that I’m supposed to have knocked you up, right?” he pushed. “And, just sayin’, but you know more about me than my own grandmother does. So, yeah, I feel like this is something that we can share.”

  He had a point.

  “Are you sure about them thinking that you and I… you know?” I asked. “I mean, your problems with Luke and the police department really can’t be that bad. Can they?”

  He leaned his hips against the counter as he watched me wash my face.

  He was silent so long that when I pulled back to look at him, water droplets streaming down my face, that I thought he hadn’t heard me.

  He had.

  “I don’t…” He blew out a breath. “I don’t fit in here anymore.”

  I frowned.

  “What?” I asked, drying my face off with the correct towel and tossing it onto the sink between us. “What are you talking about?”

  “I was thinking of leaving,” he admitted. “The SWAT team is great but…” He tilted his head. “I’m not sure that a career in law enforcement is for me.”