by Anthology
He opens his arms, gathers me against his chest and runs his lips over the back of my neck in a way that makes me break out in goose bumps. When Bran feels the shiver he yanks the quilt from my bed and fans it over my body.
“Damn you,” I scold, cuddling closer to him. “I’ll need to have another shower.”
“I’ll join you,” he offers, allowing a hand to roam low and brush across my ass.
I nibble his chest playfully. “Probably the best perk about this RA position, a private bathroom.”
He smiles. “And I’m always happy to help you abuse the shit out of that perk.”
“As you’ve proven countless times over the last six months.”
Bran moves my head to his chest and softly strokes my hair. He knows how much I like it. By now he knows just about everything about me. There’s nothing I can’t tell him. That’s worth more than ten thousand of the sweatiest rounds of fabulous sex.
But I won’t lie. The sex is nice too.
Almost as nice as hearing the words “I love you,” from the man who owns my heart. He says it now, as his fingers sift lazily through my hair. Bran isn’t the kind of guy who just tosses out words like that so hearing them never gets old.
“I love you too,” I promise him.
As the minutes tick past there’s not much point in running to class. We move to the narrow bed and idly run our hands over each other while trading stories of old days and new ones. It’s nothing but bliss, being in his arms, breathing him in, letting my hands roam over his warm skin. When I tip my head back and stare at the ceiling I see the enormous print of A Starry Night, a Christmas gift from him, a reminder that some things have changed and some are the same. I won’t be graduating next year like I’d intended. Instead I’ve completely switched career paths, abandoning the idea of the sterile business world and choosing a major in art history. Eventually I hope to be a professor. It’ll mean an extra year of school and a pile of added debt, but Bran has reminded me that the things I once wanted aren’t so out of reach after all.
By late afternoon we haven’t done a thing except make love repeatedly and take a short nap draped around one another. When I announce I’m hungry Bran does the noble thing and immediately phones in an order for pizza with pepperoni and pineapple, my favorite. Bran yanks on a pair of boxers and I wrap myself toga-style in a sheet while we feast on pizza and talk about how nice it’ll be this time next week when all the kids are gone on spring break. We’ll take day trips to the mountains. We’ll drive into the city and visit the art museums. And at night we’ll have practically the whole place to ourselves.
“Here.” He pushes the last slice of pizza in my direction. “Take it.”
I smile. “I’m full.”
“The hell you are. You had like two pieces.”
“That was all I wanted.”
“Eat the last piece.”
“No.”
“Cricket!”
“Bran! I’ll force feed it to you if I have to.”
He considers. “I might not mind.” He picks up the slice and puts it down. Picks it up and puts it down again.
I lean over and tap his hand. “What’s up?”
Bran looks down and runs his fingers through his short black hair. “We’ve only got another two months left in the school year.”
“I know. You worried about finals already?”
“Hush. It’s just that after May we’ll have to find other living arrangements.” He pauses and gives me a long, searching look. “What do you say we find them together?”
My breath catches. “What are you suggesting?”
“Just that I am knock-down drag-out in love with you, baby.” He cups my face in his hands and examines me closely. “No one’s ever come close. No one ever will. I’m asking you, Cricket, will you live with me?”
I don’t care that the sheet falls open. I kiss him with all the passion in the world before pulling away. This time there’s no youthful confusion. I know exactly what he’s asking. And I know exactly how to answer.
“Matthew Branson, you know I will.”
THE END
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Saint
An Anathema MC Novella
By Lana Grayson
Copyright © 2015 by Lana Grayson
Chapter One
Gold
My baby’s cries screeched over the whole damn neighborhood.
The kid never wailed like that when I was at home. What a welcome.
I cut the bike’s engine. The wheels sunk into the mud leeching through the gravel. The truck blocked the garage. Alexis left the door ajar. Again. The light flickered in the cabin.
Christ. How much would a new battery cost us?
The bike would be fine outside. No safer in the garage. Alexis opened every goddamned window in the house anyway. Didn’t take a genius to realize she had been smoking and didn’t want to get caught. Whatever. I didn’t care about the cigs, but leaving the windows open after eleven o’clock at night invited more than the goddamned rain into the house.
The skies opened when I was still on the interstate. I hadn’t minded then, especially as it washed the blood from me. But ruined carpets would set us back another couple hundred, even if I did the work myself.
The door clattered shut behind me. The curtains stuck to the walls—damp. The window sills puddled with water—damp. The kitchen sink cluttered with dishes—damp.
No wonder the kid cried. She was probably wet too.
“Alexis!” I tossed my helmet on the dining room table. The mail scattered. More yellow envelopes than white this month. No surprise there. “Where are you?”
She didn’t answer. And why would she? When I left for the job, she was ignoring me. I didn’t complain. Better than the usual string of profanities she used to garrote me.
I dropped my jacket over the chair. My shoulders ached from the ride. A shower and blowjob would make me feel human again, but a quick tug was safer than dealing with a pissed off Alexis and her demon teeth. She’d want something in return to play nice, and I wasn’t paying my own girlfriend to blow me. I sure as hell wasn’t handing over The Couple hundred I made from the run to protect my goddamned balls from her fist.
Sleep was just as good.
But the baby cried.
Screamed.
“Alexis!”
Nothing. I expected her to ignore me, but the kid?
My boots might have kicked through the bedroom door to get Alexis out of bed. Wasn’t worth it. Instead, I gently edged into the baby’s room with a soft whisper. No sense scaring the piss out of the girl—wasn’t about to smuggle another pallet of cigs across the state lines just to buy more diapers.
But I wish I had sold my soul for more diapers.
“Christ, Silver.” I greeted my baby with a grunt. “What the hell happened to you?”
The baby was more than my pride and joy. She was my last shred of dignity, bundled in a Harley Davidson onesie. Her big blue eyes welled with fat tears. Her mouth opened wide. One painful little tooth drove through her skull. I swore it bore into mine instead. I’d laid down my bike on the interstate before, even got a shiv in the side in County, but Christ. Nothing hurt me as much as that single spec of white breaking through her gum.
She screamed.
Straight-up, red-faced, lung-shredded screamed.
I didn’t fucking blame her. Her pudgy hands reached for me.
She was covered in shit. Just…covered.
“Silver, what the…”
I didn’t know how to pick her up without making it worse. Her diaper blew out at least a couple hours ago. The mess stained her crib, her blanket, her skin. She reeked, and her cries only got worse now that I was home. I recognized the sound. She was hungry.
/> But it was worse than that. She was cold and miserable and caked with shit. Her arms. Her legs. I stopped her before she brushed her face again.
Where the fuck was Alexis?
I kicked open the drawer to the changing table. Alexis hadn’t stocked it since the last time I went shopping. The two boxes of wipes were empty.
No diapers.
I rifled through Silver’s dresser.
No clean clothes.
A pile of baby clothes stacked behind the door, but I threw a load of laundry in before I left. Two goddamned days later, and Silver’s clothes still stashed in the washer, wet and rotting in the basin.
Just perfect.
I wasn’t letting the kid wallow in filth. Her old man did that enough, and I swore to her the day she was born she’d have a better life than that. Almost six months passed, and my only salvation was that my baby was too young to remember broken promises.
The crusty outfit peeled off. No sense saving it. It landed in the garbage. Her diaper, saturated and ruined, followed. She kept wailing, especially now that she was hungry, dirty, and freezing.
Broke my goddamned heart.
I didn’t care that she was a mess or reeked. I cradled her to my chest, hauling her to the bathroom. The tub had a clog. Stagnant water ringed an inch around the tub. Alexis’s makeup and hair supplies were tossed off the sink. Empty toilet paper rolls and tissues stuffed into the overflowing bin beneath the vanity. She hadn’t taken the garbage out and dumped an ash tray on top of it.
I resisted the urge to swear and held Silver over my shoulder. Her cries pierced my ears. I rubbed her back. It did nothing to soothe her.
Dishes stacked in the kitchen sink. I tossed them onto the counter as her tiny fists clawed at my shirt in a wild tantrum. Even she didn’t know what she wanted. I did my best to help her.
And no water came out of the faucet.
“What the hell.” I slammed a hand against the sink. The yellow envelope on the table taunted me.
A water shut off notice.
Jesus. The house didn’t used to have peeling wallpaper and broken windows in the basement. The neighborhood was trash, but I once grew a garden and had a game room. When did my house turn into fucking Tikrit? I spent an entire tour there just waiting to get home. All that I missed now was the sand and a blown IED under my foot.
“Alexis!” I shouted.
The kid cried louder. Great. I was the bad guy again.
Living in the Anathema MC meant I got my ass handed to me by the highway and our enemies, but I never complained about broken bones or black eyes. Didn’t ache as much as this. My daughter’s curled fists bruised beneath my skin. She hit my pride. Hurt more than a shot to the jewels, and Silver had a habit of kicking there too.
I swaddled her in a towel that didn’t have too many stains and set her in the high-chair. The books said not to leave her unattended in one, but proper parenting also meant not letting them suffer in their own shit for God knew how long.
I strapped her in and burst out the back door. I kept a bucket in my shed. If my neighbors saw me filling it from their spigot, they were smart enough to keep their mouth shut. I rinsed the bucket once then filled it to the brim.
The kid deserved better than a bath with water warmed over the stove, but once I washed the shit from her skin, her shrieking muted from panic-stricken to mild tantrum. She fought against the water because she was miserable. If she knew half the curses raging through my head, she might have told me where to shove the paper towel I used to clean her up.
I couldn’t blame her. She wanted a goddamned bottle. I needed one too. Whiskey. Beer. Whatever. Didn’t fucking matter so long as I could drink it to dull how it’d feel when I broke the glass and slit my wrists.
I hauled Silver out of the sink and wrapped her in a towel. No diapers. Whatever. At least she was clean. Her bottle was another crisis. Five hours before, I stared down a barrel of a gun and swapped a truckload of cigs for a bag of non-sequential bills. The empty refrigerator intimidated me more.
One lone bottle of water lurked behind an empty pitcher of iced tea and five cans of beer. It’d do. I mixed the formula and tossed everything into the microwave.
The dab of formula squirted onto my wrist. It soaked into my skin, scarred with a tattoo of barbed tendrils and violent letters. Just yesterday, it stained with blood. Now it dribbled with formula.
I preferred the formula. Never thought I would.
I hauled the kid into my arms and offered her dinner. She worked herself up too much. She wanted to scream, not eat. I tickled her lip with the nipple to bait her into taking the damned bottle. No dice. I wasn’t in the mood to bargain with Silver about her welfare. I’d squirt the formula down her throat while she hollered if it’d get her fed.
Fortunately, my baby idolized her daddy. At least, I figured she did, but it wasn’t like she had a lot of other sources to get her love. She clamped on the bottle and sucked it down. Her eyes peeked up at me.
Tearless, for the first time since I got home.
Should have nicknamed Sophie Sapphire instead of Silver. Those eyes would bring a man to his knees. Barely six months old, and she already won me over. Christ, she had me the instant they set her in my arms. Never thought I’d have such a perfect little creature love me, but I’d be damned if I ever betrayed that gift.
Unlike her mother.
The bedroom door was closed. Alexis probably heard our daughter crying and slammed it.
I kicked it open. Silver giggled. At least one of us did.
Alexis passed out on the bed, t-shirt barely covering an ass clad in only a bright pink thong. I used to like that ass. Hell, I stuffed enough cash in her panties while she danced at Sorceress to own it. But she played me good. After a few weeks of fooling around, I convinced her to shack up with me. It wasn’t a stable relationship, but the sex was okay, and it only cost me a couple hundred bucks in purses, makeup, and shoes to keep her in bed and out of my business when I did jobs with Anathema.
Once it got old, once I realized I could do better, I kicked her out. She was happy to go. I was happy to be free, especially since then I found someone worth my time. Someone beautiful. Perfect. Smart.
Then Alexis came back. Said I got her pregnant. And it wasn’t about me anymore. I had to work something out for the kid. I owed her that much.
A can of beer rested on the nightstand. That didn’t bother me as much as the new bruise sweeping up Alexis’s arm. At least she waited until the kid was born before shooting up.
Silver gripped her bottle. She could almost hold it to her own mouth. The internet said that was good, that she was developing quick. I didn’t want that to be the greatest source of happiness in my life, but it meant Silver wasn’t completely fucked up, despite whatever shit she slept in at home.
I didn’t ask for much. I just wanted to give her a goddamned chance.
“Alexis.”
She didn’t move. Her arm tossed over the curly shades of red blocking her face.
“Alexis!”
Nothing. If the kid wasn’t in my arms, I’d have rolled Alexis’s ass off the bed. She didn’t even wrap herself in a blanket. Not that she could. The comforter stained with an overturned bowl of spaghetti.
I smacked the bottom of her foot. Alexis stirred and peeked open a bloodshot eye.
“Where the hell have you been, asshole?” She spat.
So this was how it’d be? The starting gun fired, and I wished it aimed for her instead.
“What the hell were you doing?” I shrugged at the kid. “Silver’s been crying! Didn’t you hear her?”
“No.”
“Bullshit. The entire goddamned neighborhood probably heard her. You’re fucking lucky someone didn’t call the cops.”
“Ain’t no one calling the cops on Gold Mered’s house.” Alexis slipped from the bed. She yawned, but her skin stayed stretched and thin. She didn’t used to look like plaster. At least the makeup gave the illusion of sobriety. “Soph
ie’s fine. Babies cry.”
“Know what else babies do? They shit. Everywhere. She was a mess.”
“So change her diaper.”
Fuck. I counted to ten. Didn’t help. Silver wiggled, and I kept my voice low so I wouldn’t scare her.
“There aren’t any diapers,” I said.
Alexis rolled her eyes. Twice. She knew there wasn’t a goddamned thing I’d do to teach her any fucking respect. A good backhand solved most problems, but I wouldn’t hit the mother of my child.
What a time for restraint.
“Why don’t you go buy some?” Alexis sneered at me. “Do something around here for fuckin’ once.”
“Why didn’t you get diapers? You were watching her!”
“Yeah, I was here watching our baby. What the hell did you expect me to do?”
I gestured to Silver’s room, with the empty cabinets and mess. “Go to the store? Do some laundry?”
“Because it’s that fucking easy. You have no idea the work it takes to keep this family functioning.”
I just hauled a truck filled with smuggled cigs halfway through the desert to trade for a couple thousand in profit for the club. Then I nearly got my ass run off the road in a goddamned downpour when a half dozen rejects from Anathema’s split charter, The Coup, decided to fuck on our side of the river. I still made it home in time to bathe and feed the miserable baby.
Yeah. I had a good idea how to keep the family functioning.
“Why is the water shut off?” Stupid question. Alexis shrugged. “I gave you cash to pay the bill. You were supposed to go to the office yesterday.”
She didn’t answer. Never had an answer. She tried to cover the track mark on her arm, like it’d make a goddamned difference.
“You’re unbelievable,” I said. The kid was nearly done with her bottle. When was the last time she ate? “For fuck’s sake, the baby was covered in shit, didn’t have water for a bath, and she’s crying like she’s starving. I was gone for two days. You can’t take care of your own daughter for two days?”