Color Me Pretty

by Celeste, B.

  A head bob. “That Adele Saint James can get her happily ever after with someone she’s always had by her side. The general public knows she isn’t like her family. They’re rooting for her.”

  I found that hard to believe. Not that they’d root for her, but that they’d do the same for us. But maybe I was a cynic and wanted to think I didn’t deserve the same ending because I was struggling to accept the story changed. The endgame seemed pointless to fight though because our narrative never drifted. The one where I’ve loved Della her entire life.

  I was just going to love her ten times harder for the rest of mine.

  “Sir?” he said cautiously. When I didn’t answer, he chose to continue. “You’ve always been there for her, but when everything comes to light, she’ll need you.”

  “I know, Dallas.”

  “All of you.”

  All of you.

  Blowing out a quiet breath, I found myself nodding to the window. “She already has all of me.”

  I was met by silence.

  And that fucking smile.

  Seeing the lean blonde sprawled across the bed on her stomach had the tightness in my chest disappearing in a millisecond. All it took was one look at those long, tan legs and I was done. Walking around the side, I sat on the edge and moved the hair away from her face which was buried into her pillow, one arm wrapped around it while the other was somewhere under the blanket she was twisted in.

  She stirred when I brushed my fingers along her cheek, letting out a little breathy moan that sounded like my name. After a few seconds, she turned her head and fluttered her tired eyes open until they found mine. “Theo?” Sitting up, she moved hair out of her face and looked at the clock on her nightstand. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  “You must have needed it.” Her bottom lip drew into her mouth. With a shrug, she swiped her eyelids with her fisted hands, and that was when I realized they were puffy. “You’ve been crying.”

  “I—”

  “And don’t try lying about it.” Situating myself so I sat beside her with my back against her headboard, I crossed one ankle over the other and watched her. “Dallas told me.”

  She frowned. “He’s such a tattletale.”

  I chuckled. “He’s doing his job.”

  “So, you’re finally admitting it?”

  I quirked my brow.

  “You’ve insisted for years that I should use him to get around the city, even though you made it seem like he was hired by Sophie.” She rolled her eyes and slid backward to mimic my position, crossing her arms over her chest. I hadn’t told her Sophie hired him I just hadn’t denied it when she’d asked me as much. “I always suspected he was watching after me a little too much for him to be Sophie’s employee.”

  “Why would you say that?” It wasn’t like Sophie had anything against Della. She was too headstrong about how she wanted her niece to live, but she loved her.

  “She’s Sophie,” came the response I wasn’t surprised about. “She usually doesn’t do anything without it being in her best interest.”

  I could have tried arguing, but I didn’t. “I hired Dallas years ago. Wanted to make sure you were looked after when I wasn’t around.”

  “Is that how you see me?”

  I was silent, confused as I watched her face twist in horror.

  “As your responsibility? Because that kind of sucks to think about, Theo. I don’t want to be treated like some ward—”

  “Stop.” Shifting, I moved the blanket away from her and readjusted myself, so my body was fully turned toward hers. “I was more than willing to have this conversation over dinner, but now works too.”

  I refused to let her say anything before I got out what I had to say first. It was clear she wanted to interject, but after our conversation that morning, I wasn’t about to let her imagination run wild over what was going on here.

  “When I told you that I didn’t want to go back to what we were, I meant it. It’s impossible to be who we were when you were just little Della and I was only your dad’s friend. You were never my responsibility even if I wanted to believe you were. When you got older, when you started walking and talking with a newfound sass that made people laugh and turn their heads, I wished you were only that. Honest to God, Della, I wish sometimes I looked at you like I did then. As this adorable little girl who looked at the world with such innocence and hope. That meant that I didn’t fail you and your family by letting corruption sink in.

  “And before you tell me I wouldn’t have been able to stop it from happening, I know. I’ve thought about it countless times and drove myself fucking crazy. You know what I realized after drinking myself into a fucking stupor over it?”

  Slowly, she shook her head.

  I took her hand and draped it on my thigh, squeezing it. Maybe a little too tightly, a little too aggressively, but she didn’t pull away. “You wouldn’t have been the person you are today if it hadn’t been for everyone else’s choices. I’m not saying I don’t wish your father would have taken a different path, or that I wouldn’t go back in time and change anything if I could. But you wouldn’t be the amazing woman sitting here beside me if he hadn’t fucked up.” Ignoring her flinch over the blunt statement, I weaved our fingers together. “I don’t how many times you need me to tell you that you’re beautiful, inspiring, and the exact kind of woman I need to ground me, for you to understand, but I’ll tell you over and over again until you get it.

  “The truth of the matter is you don’t need me to. You don’t need me to tell you that you’re anything because you already know it. You wouldn’t have gone back to school, painted those paintings, or let your friend convince you to dance if you didn’t know you were a strong woman, worthy of the kind of love I’m going to give you for a long fucking time. Not because I’m obligated to, but because I wouldn’t know what else to do with myself if I couldn’t.”

  I didn’t miss the way her lips parted, how that breathy little exhale escaped them, or how her fingers gripped mine like she couldn’t quite believe what I’d said.

  I swallowed. “We’re going to have bad days, Della. The both of us. It’s not only you, sweetheart. We’ll have to figure out how to navigate them together.”

  She blinked. “Because…”

  I raised her hand to my lips and pressed a kiss against her warm skin. “I love you, Della. Plain and simple.” Her eyes closed when I pressed another kiss against her ring finger, making a point. “Think you can stick with me while we figure this out? It’s not going to be easy. There’s a lot between us that people may or may not understand. I don’t want them to dictate what we do, to make their opinions part of the relationship I want to explore with you.”

  Every day since the first time Anthony and Elizabeth asked me to watch Della, I’d been wrapped around her finger. Every day was a new adventure—something to learn. Her quirks, the things she hated, the things she liked. When she asked me to dance with her, I danced. When she asked me to hang up her pictures, I hung them up. Shit, how many hours of YouTube tutorials did I watch to learn how to braid hair because she wanted me to braid hers? There was nothing I wasn’t willing to do to keep a smile on her face, and that hadn’t changed. If anything, the need to make her happy grew into something all-consuming.

  “You’re an idiot.” I froze at her words, keeping a firm hold on her hand as I watched her eyes flutter closed for a moment before cracking back open to study me carefully. “You’re such an idiot, Theodore West. Do you know how long I’ve loved you? How many times I’ve said it as something more than your friend’s daughter who looked up to you? If you can promise me that you’ll be by my side during my worst days, then how could I not be there for you during yours?”

  My throat bobbed as she rose on her knees and swung one leg over my lap, straddling me. Sinking down, she sat there and stared like she was afraid I’d change my mind and leave. If she thought that, then she was the idiot.

  She ran a palm across my jaw, thumbing my bottom
lip before leaning in, hovering over them with hers. “I know people won’t understand right away, but they’ll see.”

  “And what is it they’ll see?”

  Her lips brushed mine as she said, “That I love you too much to let you go.”

  Pressing her closer into me, I wrapped an arm around her waist as my other hand cupped the back of her head to deepen the kiss. She parted my lips and slipped her tongue inside, but it was me who took it farther. Rolling my hips upward, I listened to her telltale moan before flipping us over, so she was on her back with her bare legs spread for my body to slip between.

  When her arms snaked around my neck to pull me closer, my cell rang. Ignoring it, I bit her bottom lip. Trailing my mouth down her neck and nipping it as I moved my hands to the oversized tee she wore to strip it off her, the phone pinged in my pocket.

  “Fuck.”

  “You should check that.”

  “It’s probably Dallas. He’s outside waiting for us.” Momentarily, I’d forgotten about our dinner plans. I liked the thought of spreading her legs and eating her out instead.

  Her face reddened like she knew what I was thinking. “He’s waiting for us?”

  “I can send him off.”

  For a moment, it looked like she was going to nod. Then, in a quiet voice, she admitted, “I am kind of hungry.” My cock throbbed with a need to be inside her, but I ignored it. It wasn’t every day Della admitted something like that. Most people would consider the statement mundane, but I knew better.

  Standing up, I offered her my hand, trying to pretend I didn’t see the way her eyes roamed down to the large bulge that was tenting my pants. “Come on then, Della. Let’s grab something to eat. We can continue this later.”

  She bit into her lip again, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Is that a promise?”

  I bent down and kissed her again, groaning when her tongue swiped mine. “If I don’t come inside you at least once tonight, I’ll probably die, sweetheart. That would be a real shame, wouldn’t it?”

  “You can’t say things like that to me,” she all but groaned, pulling a pillow over her face.

  I laughed and yanked it away. “Can’t help it. The thought of me inside of you, maybe even planting something there someday, drives me fucking nuts.”

  Her sharp inhale wasn’t lost on me. “You would want that?”

  Did she not? I could remember all the times she would share her elaborate future, family and white picket fence included. She’d never described a high-rise penthouse where her children couldn’t go outside and play without the risk of crime around. It was always some place remote, quiet, and peaceful. A house surrounded by grass and trees and close friends and family.

  “If you do,” I told her honestly, brushing her face with my knuckles. “Until then, practice makes perfect.”

  She rolled her eyes and smiled. “You would make a really great father, Theo.”

  The thought of her with a swollen belly only made my cock that much harder. “I need to get you out of here before I lock us inside your bedroom and have my way with you in every position humanly possible to try making that happen sooner than we both want.”

  “Theo!”

  I swatted her ass. “Come on. Time to go.”

  She just laughed.

  Chapter Twenty

  Della

  I hadn’t wanted to go to Divers after the celebration dinner Ren, Tiffany, and I went to for the end of school. It was my annoying best friend who insisted we needed to go, which meant there was somebody there he wanted to see.

  Tiffany nudged me at the table we’d secured off to the side. “What’s up?” She was on drink number three, four if you counted the shot she took, and watched me carefully with the tiny straw in her mouth. She barely looked buzzed but the glaze in her eyes told me she was going to feel it soon enough.

  Ren had disappeared shortly after we’d arrived, talking up some redhead who looked oddly like Rupert Grint, which made sense considering Lawrence watched the Harry Potter movies at least four times a year. Tiffany had rolled her eyes, ordered us drinks, and watched him work over the guy who had to be our age if not a little older.

  “Nothing.” I faked a smile. I wanted to ask her the same thing after seeing the frown she was fighting all night. “I guess Ren and Ben stopped seeing each other for good.”

  All I got was a shrug.

  As if he knew we were talking about him, he squeezed the Rupert lookalike’s arm and walked over to us with a grin. “Ladies. Miss me?” He directed the last question to Tiffany, bumping her with his shoulder. When she recoiled, his grin disappeared.

  “I was asking Della what was wrong,” she told him, finishing off her drink before putting the glass down a little too hard on the table. One of my brows raised.

  Ren turned to me slowly. “What’s up?”

  I couldn’t explain the bottomless pit in my stomach where a mixture of flutters and firecrackers went off. I wanted Theo here, taking me away, telling me we were going to spend time together tonight. But he knew where I was. He’d encouraged the night out, saying, “I’ll be here when you get back, baby girl.” That term melted me in a puddle at his feet and he knew it.

  “Like I told her. Nothing.” Eyeing Tiffany, I noticed she was doing her best to avoid looking in Ren’s direction.

  “You’re mopey,” she accused.

  Ren laughed. “She’s probably moping still about the grade she got in Ribbons’ class. Her final dropped it.”

  I frowned at the reminder. “I didn’t deserve a C on that paper. It was well mapped out and researched. I spent way too long making sure she’d have no reason to critique it.”

  Tiffany snorted. “You’re upset about school? It’s over. Isn’t that why we’re celebrating tonight? You shouldn’t even be thinking about anything other than alcohol, which begs the question of how many drinks have you had because it’s clearly not enough.”

  I rolled my eyes and sipped at the one I’d been nursing for half an hour. It was warm and too sweet, but I didn’t want to give them an excuse to order another. “Ribbons hates me, so I wanted to prove to her that I could talk about topics related to my father and do it in a professional, well thought out manner. And she still nearly flunked me on it.”

  The paper had been on political scandals in New York City. I’d even referenced Malik’s case that she was so willing to bring up during our one strange conversation, which was where I discovered that her late husband had been put out of work after he was accused of stealing the money George Malik was responsible for taking. Apparently, their life had been swept up in the scandals she’d long since studied, making her hate the situation more. I wasn’t sure how her husband had died, but a few articles I came across had mentioned suicide, and in that moment I’d felt sorry for Professor Ribbons. Nobody deserved to lose people they loved and cared about. I knew that all too well.

  The more I’d researched George Malik and other cases similar to his, I’d cringed at the implications found in the thousands of reports online and pushed past the suggestions reporters and police had made that everything he stood for was no different than my father when his time in court had surfaced. And as if all that work I’d done to collect information about Malik hadn’t been cringeworthy enough, I’d even included pieces from my father’s case because of the current nature of it. Just to prove to Ribbons I wasn’t shying away from right and wrong because I was a Saint James.

  All I could picture during it was my father being carted away too many times. I watched him get guided out of our old house, court rooms, visitation rooms, and eventually, the funeral home. How many times did I need to relive that torture, that emotional discord, just to get other people to see that I was a victim too?

  When I saw that C in the corner of the paper in bold red ink and a circle around it, I felt defeated. Shattered. Maybe I should have talked to her, tried arguing for a better grade or asking why she’d given me that one at the very least because it wasn’t like I took an app
roach that was questioning her belief system. If anything, I was agreeing with her about how screwed up our justice system worked. I couldn’t though. I was tired of chasing after people for answers.

  Logically, I knew the paper was thought out and researched and edited so many times the facts were drilled into my brain. Ribbons didn’t like me, and whatever potential she said I had was gone. Maybe it was non-existent to begin with. And when Theo had woken up in the middle of the night to find me working on the paper in the living room, he’d told me something that I’d only agreed with after getting the paper back. “Why bother obsessing over impressing her, Della? You should never waste your time on people who are set on misunderstanding you.”

  He’d been right. Again. I didn’t tell him that though and told him to go back to bed instead. Theo, of course, didn’t listen. He sat on the opposite end of the couch with his feet propped on the coffee table, the TV on the lowest volume, and Ramsay curled on his chest. He’d fallen asleep keeping me company while I finished proofreading the paper.

  It was Ren who pointed out, “You still got a B- in that class. I know people on the team who took it and walked out with Cs and Ds despite studying their asses off. Tommy, you remember him right? He was the guy who…” He winced. Tommy had been the guy at the frat house who’d noticed I was acting off. After being drugged, presumably. “Anyway, he’s a political science major and said all her classes were tough.”

  “Doesn’t Ribbons hate everyone?” That came from Tiffany, who wasn’t completely wrong. It seemed like she disliked me more thanks to my bloodline.

  “Yeah, well…” I shook it off, brushing a hand down my face and curling hair behind my ear. “It doesn’t matter. I care about my grades and doing well.” And making everybody like you even though it’s humanly impossible.

  “You’re such a nerd,” Ren chuckled when he saw my disgruntled expression. He downed his last drink and looked around as a few women eyed him from the table over.

  Tiffany noticed too, making a face at him like she couldn’t believe he was even giving them his bedroom eyes. “What’s going on with you and what’s his face? You guys aren’t tickling each other’s fancies anymore?”