“Hello, Father,” Benson said, looking unaffected by the words.
Meanwhile, I wanted to shove the palm of my hand straight down his throat.
His father just called him stupid. What kind of parent did that?
“Why don’t you go get yourself a plate of food and talk to someone that’s not a teenager?” he asked. “Jailbait, son. You can’t stick your dick into that.”
I lifted my lip at his vulgar words. “In case you need clarification, it’s not illegal to talk to someone underage.”
“Is that what you were doing?” He laughed. “My boy is stupid, though, so there’s a possibility that that really was all that y’all were doing.”
My spine stiffened once again. But before I could open my mouth and tell him that he needed to leave, that Brielle chick—I’d learned her name over the last year, too—that Benson was so protective of came into view.
The father immediately changed his tune. He went from a hateful bastard to a sweet, charming man in the blink of an eye.
If I’d met this man first, I might’ve actually liked him.
Luckily, I’d seen his true colors in how he’d treated his son.
“Hey, Brielle, my girl,” the man said, holding his arm out for Brielle to walk under.
Brielle did, grinning wildly until her eyes landed on me. Then they narrowed.
She took in me, Benson, and then stiffened.
Benson hadn’t looked up since his father had walked into view.
“What’s going on?” Brielle asked. “What happened? Donald?”
Benson’s father, Donald I assumed, looked between me and Benson. “Seems my boy here was talking to this underage girl.”
“Benson doesn’t talk to any girls but me,” she said, looking skeptical.
Or pissed.
I wasn’t quite sure which.
“He was talking to this one,” Donald grinned. “Weren’t you, boy?”
Before anybody could say anything, Benson’s large expressive eyes landed on me. I felt the weight of his stare, and my heart skipped another beat.
“Have a good life, Fancy.”
And I had a feeling that would be the last I’d ever hear from him.
I felt like there was a hole the size of Kentucky in my chest.
Prologue II
I need to go to the gun store. I don’t know what for, but I’ll figure it out when I get there.
-Bayou to Hoax
Bayou
I never forgot her.
No matter where I went, what I did, or how much time had passed.
There was just something about the young woman that I’d spoken with—that had told me that I should stick up for myself—that had stayed with me.
When I saw her for the first time in eight years standing in the middle of her sister’s lawn, watering her flowers? I became obsessed.
All the confidence I’d been able to insert in myself over the years, all the change I’d forced myself to go through? All of it was ripped away like a flimsy shade umbrella in the middle of a Texas thunderstorm.
I saw her, and everything I’d worked so hard to perfect was exposed, raw and bleeding, all over again.
But she didn’t recognize me—at least I didn’t think she did—and I went on for almost a year thinking that I had to move past whatever the hell it was that made me unable to stop thinking about the girl.
Then we finally met—thanks to her sister—and the understanding dawned in my Fancy’s eyes.
I knew the moment she recognized me that it would be bad.
Then my cousin, Hoax, had to go and fall in love with Fancy’s sister, and I realized two things.
One, I’d never be able to get away from her. My obsession with the woman—something that’d been going on for nine long years—was going to be fueled. She’d be there. At every club party. At the birth of Hoax and Pru’s children. At anything and everything that I would be at.
There would be no escaping her unless I was at work, and even then my mind gave me such a vivid picture that I still couldn’t forget her—even if I wanted to.
Nope. There was no forgetting Fancy.
Not at all.
Chapter 1
How to have the perfect body while eating like a fat piece of shit.
-a book every woman wants
Present day
Phoebe
“Ma’am?”
I looked up at the guard that was standing there looking at me like I was out of place.
Funny, but I felt out of place as well.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Just drop all your stuff in that locker right there.” He pointed to the locker at my back. “Then you can walk through the detector.”
I did as he asked, then returned with nothing but my body.
Walking through the metal detector, I blew out a relieved breath when it didn’t ring out that I’d had contraband metal of some type on me.
I had no idea why I was always nervous when I went through them.
At the airport, courthouse, or even a prison—it was all the same. I got panicky even though I knew that there was nothing on my person that would set it off.
“And you said you’re here to meet with the warden?” the guard asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “For an interview.”
He looked at me skeptically, and I barely contained the urge to bare my teeth at him.
“The guard at the door there will escort you to the next station.” He pointed.
I looked up to find another guard standing there, his eyes hyperaware of everything that was happening around him.
“Thank you.” I smiled at the first guard.
He winked and turned back to the woman that’d followed in behind me—a young blonde that was exceptionally beautiful.
A young blonde that I’d seen at Benson—Bayou’s house quite a bit.
A blonde that Bayou had thrown his arms around and protected from my sister all those years ago.
A blonde that was stalking my sister because she didn’t like Hoax’s—her cousin as well—choice of female company.
I hated her.
“Oh, do we really have to do this every time, Caden?” Brielle asked in that whining tone that never hesitated to put me on edge.
“Yes,” Caden, the guard, answered. “It’s protocol. Every guard that works here even has to go through it.”
Brielle sighed loudly, sounding extremely put out to be treated as she was, and did as she was asked.
“You may sit.”
I sat down in the seat the guard indicated and looked around the room he’d taken me to. It was a waiting room of sorts that had one door leading back out into the hallway, and one door leading into what I assumed was Bayou’s office.
There was a desk in between the inner door and the outer door, but it looked like it wasn’t manned and that it’d been empty for quite a while thanks to the dust that was collecting on the phone that sat there.
Five minutes later, Brielle arrived with a flurry, and walked to the inner office door and started to knock.
The guard that’d escorted me in stopped her before she could. “Don’t. He’s in an interview right now. Just sit here and wait.”
He pointed to the seat next to me and Brielle narrowed her eyes.
In blatant disregard of her instructions, she dropped her arm from where she’d been about to knock, and walked to the desk that was between the two doors, taking a seat at the abandoned rolling chair.
“You may go now.” She flicked her wrist at him in a shooing gesture.
My brows rose.
Wow, she was a complete bitch!
I squirmed in my seat.
Today was a big day. My first ever big girl job interview.
I’d graduated with my bachelor’s degree in nursing no less than twenty-four hours ago, and I took my state test that would issue me my nursing license three days from now.
/> I’d been wracking my brain, trying to figure out just what in the hell I wanted to do with the rest of my life when the job that I was about to interview for had popped up on a job-search website.
Thinking it couldn’t possibly be as good as it sounded—which was pretty awesome—I’d applied.
Did it occur to me that he’d be here? Sure.
The moment he came back into my life again, things were tough.
I wanted things that I knew he wasn’t willing to give me, yet that didn’t stop me from wanting them.
But then I’d have to tell myself that this man and the one I’d known all those years ago weren’t interchangeable.
The sweet, caring, odd boy that I’d been thinking about for the better part of my teen years and all of my technically adult years wasn’t the same one I was reintroduced to.
It was like he was a completely different man.
The young man that I’d met all those years ago wasn’t there anymore. In his place was a man that I didn’t recognize.
Not that the man changing, becoming more confident in himself, wasn’t epic.
But still…it did hurt the slightest bit that I’d thought about how nice it was to have a man that was confident and sweet, but different.
This new man? The man that went by Bayou now and not Benson according to Hoax, my future brother-in-law, had insisted. Yeah, he was a whole new level of unreachable.
I heard the inner office door open and I looked up from my Kindle.
“Still reading,” Benson—Bayou—said.
I startled to find him staring directly at me.
I nodded once and hit the button that would shut the screen off and stood up.
Suddenly everything inside of me was taut with anticipation.
My eyes went over the man standing in front of me.
He no longer had problems meeting people’s eyes. I’d noticed that about him over the last few months that I’d been hanging around more thanks to my sister’s relationship with Hoax.
He also had zero problem standing up for himself or others.
At least that new trait was a relief. I didn’t like that he didn’t stand up for himself when he was younger.
“Brielle?” Bayou frowned. “What are you doing here?”
Brielle looked at me, then looked at Bayou, and grinned.
“I was here to interview for the new job that you have open,” she answered.
I stiffened.
That hadn’t been what she told the guard as she was arriving. She’d told him that she was there to ask Bayou if she could borrow something, and she thought she had a better chance of getting it if she came by in person and asked.
What a bitch!
She hadn’t been here to apply for a job! The only reason she was ‘applying’ for it now was because she’d heard me say that I was there interviewing for it! Fucker!
“We’ll talk later,” he muttered. “Right now, I’m interviewing her.” He looked back to me. “You ready?”
I stood up and went into his inner office, suddenly extremely nervous.
I saw his eyes go to my wrists, taking in the tattoos that just barely peeked out of the bottom of my long-sleeved shirt.
I wore the shirt for obvious reasons. When interviewing for a new job, I wanted to make a good first impression. What I did not want to do was put my arms that were full of tattoos on display. Because being on display meant that they were up for discussion, and for this man, I couldn’t discuss them.
The first hint of the old Benson that I knew finally reared his head as he reached out and touched first the tattoo on my left wrist, and then the one on my right.
“This isn’t an easy job,” he said, his gray eyes connecting with mine. “But nothing will hurt you.”
I smiled then, feeling for the first time a sense of hope start to course through me. The old Benson was in there somewhere. He was just doing a damn fine job of hiding him. Controlling him.
“I know you’d never let me get hurt,” I murmured. “And that’s very nice of you. But I can handle my own.”
He looked at my five-foot-three height, my small stature, and snorted.
The bastard.
“I’m sure you could hold your own against a flea,” he admitted. “But against these hardened criminals? You’d be eaten alive in seconds.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared. “I’m more than happy to prove you wrong.”
“And how do you plan on doing that?” He laughed in my face. “Gonna challenge me to a wrestling match?”
The thought of rolling around on the ground with him was highly tempting, but there was no way in hell I was going to admit that.
“No,” I said carefully. “But if you give me this job, I’d be more than willing to prove it to you that way.”
He didn’t smile with his mouth, but his eyes told a different story.
“Then you have it.” He stood up and offered me his hand.
It was smooth and rough, warm and strong.
“Let me go get the paperwork.”
Brielle was waiting in the outer office area when Bayou finally opened the door.
“My turn?” Brielle popped up.
Bayou turned his gaze from me to her. “No. Fancy has the job.”
I felt my heart skip a beat.
“But, Bayou,” Brielle whined. “I hate my job at the hospital and you know it! Plus, you know me!”
“And I really care for you,” Bayou muttered darkly. “And I don’t want you getting hurt here. I’d be gutted if something happened to you.”
I felt the burn straight to my soul.
Meaning that he cared if Brielle was hurt, but not me, seeing as he’d just offered me the job.
Hitching my shirt sleeves up in annoyance, I started out of the room, heading straight for the bars at the end of the hallway that separated this wing of the prison from the rest of the prison.
I’d made it to the guard and was waiting patiently for the guard to get it open when I heard my name called from behind me.
“Phoebe?”
I wanted to ignore him.
Really, I did.
But I also didn’t want to risk losing the job that I hadn’t even had for a full five minutes yet.
I turned and saw Brielle leaning against Bayou, Bayou’s arm around her shoulders. She was sneering at me while Bayou was staring at me with confusion on his face. “Can you be here tomorrow at eight?”
I nodded once, then turned, exiting out of the hallway, and then the building as fast as I could.
I barely restrained the urge to key Brielle’s stupid car that was parked right next to me.
Chapter 2
Been on a diet for two weeks straight. Proud to say that I’ve lost 14 days of happiness.
-Phoebe’s comment that Bayou has no idea how to respond to
Bayou
My brain was a fucking mess.
The last thing I wanted to do was cater to Brielle’s whiny questions, yet there I was doing it anyway.
“I don’t understand why I can’t have that job,” she persisted even though I’d already given her a logical answer that I thought might shut her up.
Emotions were not my forte. However, when it came to Brielle and her insecurities, I was more than capable of playing her game. I’d had fifteen years of dealing with her irrational anger, her jealous rages, and her incessant need for comfort.
But today, after talking to her for the last hour? I didn’t have anything left in me to offer Brielle for comfort. Not when all I could think about was Fancy.
She’d been a part of my life since she was a young teenager, and even though I hadn’t seen her much until the last several months, it still felt like yesterday when I’d first met her.
It was weird. It felt like I had a connection with the woman from the moment I’d first seen her. From the moment I’d disentangled her from the belt system in the helicopter. The
one that she definitely shouldn’t have been in, yet was anyway.
Then again, Phoebe had never shied away from danger.
Over the time that I’d been in the Army as military police, Phoebe might have thought that I was gone, but I wasn’t.
I’d been exactly where I needed to be—there, but not there. Aware of the comings and goings of her life, but unseen.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and looked at the clock above Brielle’s head, mentally calculating the hours until I got to see Phoebe again. Seventeen. Seventeen hours, twenty-three minutes and sixteen seconds.
Fifteen.
Fourteen.
Thirteen.
Twelve.
“Are you ever going to answer me?” Brielle asked, anger rising in her voice.
Eleven.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
“Bayou, seriously,” Brielle growled. “What the hell is your problem?”
Six.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Fifty-nine.
Brielle growled in frustration and stood up, walking around my desk and depositing herself on the corner so that she was less than a foot away from me.
She didn’t touch me, though.
She knew better.
Nobody ever touched me unless I wanted them to, and it was rare when I even allowed that.
Handshakes were fine.
Backslaps were also okay.
As long as they were by men.
I was a full blown adult and still learning new things every day.
Like the fact that Phoebe’s touch didn’t cause my mind to panic and freeze like it did with other women.
“Bayou, seriously, you’re starting to worry me,” Brielle pushed.
I got all the way down to sixteen seconds—where I’d originally started an entire minute ago—and finally answered Brielle.
“You can’t have the job because you didn’t apply for it, Phoebe did. She was the first one qualified for it, and she has a Bachelor of Nursing while you only have an Associate’s. Your expertise is all with pediatric patients, which we most certainly won’t be having here. You already have a job, and she doesn’t. She’s better qualified because she’s also more than capable of handling herself while you’re not,” I told her bluntly.
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