“Do not blow up Woody’s bathroom,” I warned as he pulled me against his chest.
“Well, I’m not shittin’ in the yard,” he replied. Wrapping his hands around my skull, he tipped my head back to look at him. “All good?”
“Not even close,” I whispered back.
“We’ll get ya there,” he said, kissing my forehead. “But first, bathroom.”
“Down the hall on your left,” Mark directed him.
“Hey, Bumblebee,” my dad greeted, still standing just inside the door. He was watching me closely, his jaw clenched and his eyes soft.
“Hey, Dad.” I tried to smile, but my eyes watered. God, these fucking hormones were the worst.
“C’mere,” he ordered, opening his arms.
There was something about the feeling of my dad holding me close that made everything seem safe. The scent of leather and his deodorant, the way he notched his chin above my head and smoothed the back of my hair with his palm, it was one of the most comforting things I’d ever encountered.
“We’re here now,” he said with a sigh.
“You made good time,” Mark said from somewhere behind me.
“We were motivated,” my dad replied as he let me go, leaving one arm wrapped around my shoulders. “Fill us in?”
“While I make breakfast,” Mark said, jerking his head toward the kitchen. “You guys hungry?”
“Starving,” my mom replied.
We followed Mark into the kitchen and my mom started laughing. “Well, this looks familiar,” she said, staring at the table covered in car parts.
“Bullshit,” my dad argued, leading me to a chair. As soon as I’d sat down, he ran his hand over my hair again before stepping away. “Woman, you have never let me leave any of my shit in the kitchen.”
“You have to train them,” my mom told me teasingly. “But they eventually learn.”
My dad scoffed and turned toward Mark. “You got any coffee?”
I sat back and let their conversation flow around me. For the first time in almost twenty-four hours, I felt like everything might be okay. Not that I’d make it okay, or I’d figure it out, but that it actually was going to be okay.
“I’m chafing like you would not believe,” Cam said as he came into the room.
“Keep your swamp ass away from me,” I replied, trying to dodge his hand as he reached for me. “You better have washed your hands!”
“Of course I did,” he said, flicking water in my face.
“Ew,” I groaned. “Why didn’t you use a towel?”
“I heard something about breakfast and I was in a hurry,” he replied, chuckling.
“Help me clear the table,” my mom ordered Cam. “We can set this stuff on the counter.”
“I can grab that,” Mark said apologetically.
“No biggie.” My mom waved him off.
I watched as she and Cam cleared the table while Mark grabbed supplies out of the fridge and spoke quietly to my dad. Shit just kept getting weirder and weirder.
“You haven’t had any water since you got here,” Mark said as he set a glass of ice water down in front of me. “Didn’t you say you were supposed to be drinking a lot of it?”
“I’ve been a little preoccupied,” I replied. I tilted my head back to meet his eyes. “Thank you.”
“Why are you supposed to be drinking water?” my mom asked, watching us in confusion.
When I didn’t answer right away, Mark did it for me.
“Because of the breastfeeding.”
“The breastfeeding?” my mom replied. Her eyes shot to the baby.
“It’s not what you’re thinking—” I said, shaking my head.
“You told us that you had your friend’s baby with you,” my dad said, his voice low and angry.
“Yeah, about that,” Mark waded in, pointing at my dad. “You could have filled me in.”
“She is my friend’s baby,” I said at the same time. God, this wasn’t how I wanted to tell them. My parents were staring at me like they wanted to throttle me, and I couldn’t really blame them. I hadn’t given them the full story when I’d called them, and now they were having this huge bomb dropped in their lap with no warning.
I looked at Mark, whose face had lost all expression while he waited for me to explain what the hell was happening. I hadn’t exactly been straight with him, either.
I looked down at the baby’s sleeping face and took a deep breath before lifting my head again.
“I was a surrogate.”
Chapter 6
Mark
“You were a surrogate,” Cecilia’s mom Farrah said, dropping into a chair at the table.
“Yes,” Cecilia confirmed. “I carried her, but she was never supposed to be mine.”
“The fuck?” Cam muttered.
“She’s not genetically linked to me,” Cecilia said, her voice strained. “I was just the gestational carrier. I just, you know, grew her because Liv couldn’t.”
“And Liv’s the friend who was gunned down at her house last night?” her dad asked. Casper looked like he was ready to hit something, but he also oddly looked like he wanted to hug his daughter.
“Yeah,” Cecilia said. Her fingers started pulling at her bottom lip.
“So—” Farrah started to speak, then seemed to lose her train of thought. She shook her head and ran a hand down her face. “So, she belongs to your friends. Do they have any family? Where is she gonna go?”
If I hadn’t known Cecilia so well once upon a time, and maybe if I hadn’t been watching her so closely, I wouldn’t have seen the way her arms tightened around the baby. She lifted her chin.
“She stays with me,” Cecilia announced.
“Don’t think it works that way,” Cam said, disbelief threading his words. “You can’t just take her if she’s got family.”
“The only family she has is gone,” Cecilia shot back. “Cane has a grown son, but Liv was afraid of him. She’s not going to him.”
“Wait, how old was your friend’s husband?” Cam asked.
“You don’t get in the middle of family shit, Cecilia,” Casper said at the same time.
“Jesus,” Farrah muttered.
“Stop,” Cecilia snapped, smacking her hand on the table. “None of you have any say in this.”
“The hell we don’t,” Casper replied darkly.
Cecilia rose from the table. “If you wanna go rounds with me,” she said softly, staring unflinchingly into her dad’s angry eyes, “I’m all for it. But you don’t make my decisions for me, and you haven’t in a long ass time.”
“What you’re doin’ is wrong,” Casper replied slowly.
“That’s a little like the pot calling out the kettle, isn’t it?” she shot back. Then she turned and left the room.
We all stood silently, digesting everything we’d heard. I didn’t know what to fucking think. She’d carried the baby and I knew she loved her, but if baby girl belonged to someone else, it wasn’t any kind of right for her to keep her.
“What a godawful mess,” Farrah said, running her fingers through her hair the exact same way Cecilia had done the night before. “She can’t be serious about keeping that baby.”
“I feel for her,” Cam said, leaning back in his chair. “She was havin’ that baby for a couple that’s dead now. She wasn’t growin’ her for some relative to raise.”
“You and Trix had a surrogate and somethin’ happened, that woman would sure as fuck not be keepin’ my grandkid,” Casper said through his teeth.
“I’ve got no skin in the game,” I waded in cautiously. “But I’d give her a minute. Cecilia isn’t stupid. She always has a reason for the things she does.”
“She’s not stupid, but she’s selfish as fuck,” Cam muttered.
I waited a second for her parents to tell him to watch his mouth and my stomach soured when they didn’t.
“Keep your bullshit opinions to yourself,” I said, filling in the silence. “You say another word about y
our sister and you can get the fuck out of my house.”
“You fuckin’ kiddin’ me?” Cam asked, straightening.
“Enough,” Casper snapped, pointing at his son.
“I’m gonna check on her,” I announced. “Coffee’s about done. Mugs are in the cabinet to the left of the sink.”
I walked away before I said what I wanted to. Fucking Cameron. Their whole fucking family. I wanted to shake them. It was the same old shit that Cecilia had dealt with when we were young. It was like they thought she was inherently bad or something, like she was just selfish and mean and they just had to deal with it. Never, not once, had they tried to get to the root of the shit she said and did.
Cecilia could be a bitch. Hell, she could be the biggest bitch you’d ever meet—but there was always a reason, even if it didn’t make sense to anyone but her. She had never gone around trying to piss people off.
What was that saying? Hurt people hurt people.
And I’d never met someone who hurt as bad as Cecilia and managed to hide it so well.
She hadn’t gone into the guestroom. Instead, she was sitting in the center of my bed.
“You here to give me shit?” she asked, looking up from where she’d set the baby between her knees.
“You’re in my room,” I pointed out, closing the door behind me. “And I figured I’d put a shirt on before I started frying bacon.”
Cecilia sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said, watching me cross the room. “I swear to God, they turn me into someone even I can’t stand.”
“You let them get to you,” I said, pulling on a t-shirt. “And I’ve never understood why, because in the end, you do whatever the fuck you want anyway.”
“Because they’re my parents,” she said, staring at the baby. “And I still want their approval.”
“Not sure you’re gonna get it this time.”
“When have I ever?” she said, chuckling humorlessly. “Same shit, different day.”
“Cec.” I sat on the edge of the bed. “She’s not yours.”
“You know,” she snapped, looking up to meet my eyes, “I’m so fucking tired of everyone always assuming that I’m doing the wrong thing.”
“This seems pretty cut and dry to me.”
“Well, you have no fucking clue,” she said. “None.”
“Then why don’t you tell me?” I said softly.
“It won’t even matter.”
“Try me.”
“When I say Liv was scared of Cane’s son, I mean scared,” she said after a long pause. “She called me to pick her up once from their house. It was before they were married. When I got there, she was shaking. Cane had left for some work thing and his son had shown up. He told her that she’d never marry his dad. That he’d gut her first.”
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered.
“Yeah. And that wasn’t the only time. The guy’s a fucking nut job. It got to the point that he wasn’t allowed at the house.”
When someone knocked on the door, her mouth snapped shut.
“Come on in,” I called.
“Hiding out in here isn’t going to solve anything,” Farrah said tiredly as she swung open the door.
Cecilia stayed stubbornly silent.
“You can’t just keep a baby that isn’t yours.”
“Sit down,” I replied, pointing to the open space next to Cecilia. “I’m guessin’ you’ll want to hear this.”
“Mark,” Cecilia said in warning.
I glanced at her and then back at Farrah. “Let her talk.”
Farrah nodded and strode into the room. She sat down next to Cecilia and waited.
“After Cane found out that his son, Drake, had been threatening Liv, Cane banned him from the house. He wasn’t even allowed on the property. They maintained a relationship as far as I know, but Cane kept things separate. Liv was fucking terrified. She was always on guard. Eventually, after they were married, things settled down and she seemed like she wasn’t as worried anymore.” I frowned. “If she was, she didn’t say anything to me about it.”
“He kept seein’ his son?” I asked in disbelief.
Cecilia shrugged. “It was his kid.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Casper said from the doorway. “Any man that threatened your mother would answer to me.”
Cecilia nodded once at her dad. “When they asked me to be a surrogate, they were concerned. Liv wanted a baby more than anything, but they didn’t want Drake to find out and cause problems.”
“Fuck,” Casper spat.
“So we didn’t go through an agency,” Cecilia said. “Cane had the money and the connections to do it privately.” She met her dad’s eyes. “It was all legal and aboveboard. They just didn’t want to advertise it.”
“They threw you in a lion’s den and crossed their fingers that he wouldn’t fuckin’ notice you,” I said, anger burning in my chest. “Jesus Christ, Cecilia.”
“She was my best friend,” Cecilia replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “And I was in a position to help.”
I wanted to believe that was her reasoning, that she’d gone into the thing because of love for her friend and nothing else, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that her motivation wasn’t quite so clear cut. I searched her eyes for clues and she looked away.
“It all went fine,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “My pregnancy went off without a hitch.”
“Yeah, until you had the baby and your friends were shot dead in their house,” her dad said, smacking his hand against the doorjamb.
“He couldn’t have known,” Cecilia said, her eyes widening as she shook her head in denial. “They were waiting to tell anyone. They didn’t even come see me at the hospital.”
“Timing’s a little too coincidental,” I told her softly, reaching out to put my hand on her thigh.
“There’s no fuckin’ thing as coincidence,” Casper said. “That shit doesn’t exist.”
“They had the baby’s room all set up,” I reminded Cecilia, my gut twisting as she closed her eyes in sad realization. “What’s this guy look like?”
I had a pretty good feeling that I could describe him to her, but I waited to say anything until I was sure.
“Dark hair and eyes,” she said, her hand lifting to her lips before she deliberately dropped it again. “Mid-twenties. Less than six feet tall, but not super short. He wears his hair brushed back from his face like some old-time gangster and he looks like an idiot. Walks around like he owns the world. Saunters.” She scoffed.
“Baby,” I said, my tone telling her everything she didn’t want to hear. I’d seen that man. He was the douchebag we’d watched leave her friend’s house with a box full of shit. No wonder he hadn’t robbed the place. As soon as someone found the bodies, it would all go to him anyway.
“Fuck,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears. “Goddamn it.”
Farrah reached out to rub her back. “We have to assume he knows about the baby,” she murmured.
“But he has no proof,” Cecilia countered, sniffling. “She’s still legally mine, and I don’t think he even knows my name.”
“What do you mean?” Casper asked.
“I gave birth to her, so she was legally considered mine. Her birth certificate has my name on it.” Cecilia reached out to smooth her hand over the sleeping baby’s head. “They could’ve done a thing called a pre-birth parentage order, but they decided not to. Liv and Cane were going to legally adopt her, instead. I guess they just really didn’t want anyone to know until they actually had the baby.”
“They never filed any paperwork?” Farrah asked dubiously.
“No,” Cecilia replied. “I haven’t even sent in the birth certificate yet. Liv hadn’t decided on a name, and I didn’t want it to be something different than what she chose. We were supposed to sign everything this morning. Cane’s attorney was going to come to the house—that’s why I was staying the night there.”
“So the bodies have most likely been found by now,
” Casper said quietly. “Anyone else know about all this?”
“No,” Cecilia said, shaking her head. “Only the attorney.”
“We got company,” Cam said from the hallway, his voice low. “Guy’s checkin’ out the front of the house.”
When the doorbell rang a few seconds later, I knew it wasn’t one of my team outside. They might hang back for a minute when they noticed the bikes parked out front, but they sure as hell wouldn’t have rang the doorbell.
“I’ll handle it,” I said. I strode to the front of the house with Casper at my back.
“Don’t like this,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, me, either.” Grabbing the pistol off the table near the door, I double-checked that the safety was on and stuffed it in the back of my sweatpants. As soon as Casper was out of sight, I swung open the door.
“Can I help you?” I asked, keeping my expression neutral as I stared at the motherfucker I’d seen the night before.
“Hey,” he said, smiling. “Sorry to bother you, but I was thinking about buying that place for sale down the street, and I was wondering how you liked the neighborhood.”
“It’s good,” I replied, hiding the fact that I wanted to grab him up by his scrawny neck and choke the life out of him. “Pretty quiet. No complaints.”
“Good, good,” he said, still smiling. “Good place for a family, then?”
“Don’t have a family,” I replied. “So, I couldn’t tell you.” I looked beyond him, wondering if he’d brought any muscle or if he was arrogant enough to come alone. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t about to put Cecilia and the baby in danger by starting shit when I didn’t know who else was watching the house.
“Alright,” he chuckled. He stared at me for a moment. “Well, thanks for your time.”
“No problem.” I shut the door in his face and shoved the deadbolt home.
“Motherfucker had balls, showing up here,” I told Casper as he stepped into view.
“How the fuck would he know she’s here?” Casper asked.
“No idea, but he sure as hell does,” I muttered, looking out the gap in the curtains. He got right back in his car and drove away, not even bothering to continue the buying-a-house-down-the-street cover.
Craving Cecilia Page 7