I snorted just as Reb squealed, smacking her hands into the rising tub water, soaking me and Mel.
“You’re crazy!” I sang to Reb, making her laugh and slap the water again.
I let her play for a while as Mel and I chatted about anything and everything. That was the beauty of being best friends with someone. You could segue from the awful security guard at your job to a discussion on mall cops to the movie Mall Cop and somehow end up discussing Jennifer Lawrence’s open letter about getting paid less than her male counterparts, with no breaks in between.
We continued to talk as I emptied the tub and climbed inside with Reb, shutting the curtain so I could turn on the shower and bathe us both. Mel held out a towel and wrapped it around Rebel as I handed her out so I could wash my hair, and she followed me into my room as I grabbed some clean clothes for us out of a laundry basket at the end of my bed.
“What do you want to do today?” she asked as she wrangled Rebel into a diaper. “I need to get some Christmas shopping done.”
“It’s only October.”
“I like to be done before everyone else so I don’t have to deal with idiots taking up all the parking spaces close to the stores.”
“You want to go to the mall, Reb?” I asked, pulling a shirt over my wet hair. She gave me a short nod and climbed to her feet, her hands rubbing distractedly at the eczema on her little belly.
“Okay, first, let’s grease you up!” I called, catching her as she tried to run out of the room.
I pulled the thick cream the doctor had given us off the top of my dresser and sat down on the bed, pinning a squirming Reb between my thighs. “Should we blow on it?” I asked her as I squeezed some of the cream into my palm. She hated when the lotion was cold, so we’d started blowing warm air over it before I rubbed it in. I wasn’t sure if it actually warmed it up, but she believed it did, so it was worth the few extra seconds it took.
Reb leaned close to my hand, and I felt her warm, wet breath waft over the skin of my palm.
“You’re not supposed to eat it!” Mel exclaimed, making Reb giggle.
I rubbed my palms together swiftly then started slathering the cream all over Rebel’s torso, grabbing some more cream when I was done and smoothing it down her arms and legs, too. She didn’t have eczema on her arms at the moment, but that didn’t mean that it wouldn’t show up at some point if I didn’t keep her lubed up.
“Okay, let Auntie Mel get you dressed and we’ll go,” I ordered, setting Reb on her feet. “I need to take out these contacts before they’re permanently glued to my eyes.”
“You slept with them in?” Mel asked in surprise as she quickly pulled a t-shirt with snaps at the crotch over Reb’s head. She was probably getting a little old for those types of shirts, but they still fit her and the snaps kept the shirt down so Rebel couldn’t scratch the eczema on her stomach when I wasn’t looking.
“I fell asleep pretty quick last night,” I mumbled, making Mel laugh. “Give me five minutes.”
When we got to the mall, Mel immediately pulled us into a store and started browsing through the racks as Rebel leaned over the side of her stroller, reaching for a display of necklaces that were the perfect height for little fingers.
I didn’t know why the hell they put the sparkly shit down so low.
“I thought we were Christmas shopping,” I complained as I tried to steer Rebel away from anything that would catch her attention.
“We are—for me. I deserve Christmas presents, too,” Mel said seriously, holding up a shirt for my approval.
“That’s ugly as shit,” I said flatly, making her put it back.
“You’re bitchy when you don’t get laid,” she replied.
“So I’ve pretty much been a bitch for the past two years?”
“Yes.”
I laughed. “You’re an asshole.”
“Yes, but I’m your asshole, darling,” Mel sang, pulling a dress from the wall and dancing with it from side to side.
“Molly?” a woman’s voice called somewhere behind me.
“Oh, hey. Trix, right?” Mel asked as my eyes widened.
“Yeah—we met at the bar last night.”
“I remember,” Mel snorted.
“Oh, hey,” I greeted, turning around to see Trix, an older woman and two younger girls.
“Farrah, this is Molly and Melanie. They went to school with Will, and we saw them at the bar last night.”
“What’s up, girls?” Farrah said with a smirk, making me like her instantly. She was wearing a baggy pair of jeans and a flowing top, her hair in loose braids down her chest. She should have looked ridiculous, but for some reason, it seemed to fit her. “This is my daughter Lily and my niece Rose.”
“I’m Will’s little sister,” Rose piped up. The two little girls looked a lot alike, but Lily’s head was tilted down, like she was shy or something.
“I remember when your mom was pregnant with you,” I said, smiling. Rose looked so much like Mrs. Hawthorne, it was uncanny.
“Really?”
“Yep. She was huge.”
Rose and Lily laughed, and that’s when Lily’s head popped up.
She was blind. Her eyes were beautiful, dark brown with sooty lashes and I couldn’t find anything wrong with them, but they were vacant.
I glanced at Farrah and Trix to see them watching me intently.
“You must look like your dad, Lily,” I told her with a smile. “You don’t look anything like your mom.”
“I know!” she laughed, her voice like a little fairy’s. “Mom says I got my dad’s pretty skin before he started covering it with tattoos. He’s Mexican.”
“Your skin’s pretty glorious,” Mel piped in. “Yours, too, Rose. Me and Mel can’t keep a tan.”
“It’s all in the moisturizing,” Farrah informed us, wrapping her arms around the little girls’ shoulders. “Remember that, ladies. Drink water and moisturize.”
“She always does this,” Lily told me conspiratorially. “She used to be a beautician, so she thinks she knows all the secrets.”
“Once a beautician, always a beautician,” Farrah said loftily. “We’re like the Marines.”
“Jesus,” Trix mumbled, laughing under her breath.
Rebel chose that moment to start flailing her arms and legs. Her stroller was pointed toward Mel, so she’d pretty much been hidden and wasn’t happy that we were ignoring her.
“Oh, no,” Mel crooned as she leaned down. “You weren’t the center of attention for five minutes, whatever shall you do?”
“I like that one,” Farrah said quietly to Trix.
“She went home with Rock last night.”
“Good, maybe she’ll be the one to pull his head out of his ass.”
I tried to pretend like I didn’t hear them, but they weren’t exactly trying to mask their conversation.
“Come here, baby,” I said as Mel lifted Reb out of her seat. As soon as she was in my arms, I turned back toward the group.
“This is my daughter, Rebel,” I announced, fixing Reb’s glasses so they weren’t crooked on her face. “Can you say hi, Reb?”
Reb signed hello, and looked at the group with a huge smile.
“She doesn’t talk yet,” I said, glancing at Lily, “So she’s waving.”
“How the heck are you going to talk to her?” Rose asked Lily, whose mouth twisted up in a grimace.
“You can talk to her,” I said quickly. “She can hear just fine, she’s just not talking yet.”
I looked up at Trix and Farrah, and both women were smiling cheerfully at Rebel as she batted her eyelashes at the little girls.
“Hi, Rebel,” Lily said softly, her eyes pointed over my shoulder. “I’m Lily. How old is she?”
“She’s almost two.”
“Don’t babies start talking when they’re like one? Curtis and Draco are only one and they never shut up.”
Mel snorted behind me as Farrah huffed.
“Draco and Curtis are my b
oys,” Trix informed us. “They babble.”
“They say a lot of words, too,” Rose pointed out.
“Well,” I said as I glanced over at Mel, who gave me a small smile. “Rebel has Down syndrome. Do you know what that is?”
“A couple of the kids at my school have that,” Lily said, nodding her head.
“Yeah, so it’s just a little harder for Reb to master stuff than it is for other kids. She’ll get it eventually, though.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Lily, I think she wants you to hold her,” Rose said, leaning around her aunt to talk to her cousin. “She’s got her arms out.”
Rose was right. Rebel was leaning forward, reaching for Lily.
“Oh, um,” I said, glancing helplessly at Farrah.
“It’s okay. She holds the boys all the time—she knows what she’s doing.”
Lily took a tentative step forward and lifted her arms.
I didn’t want to be an asshole. I really didn’t. But Rebel was sort of a live wire. You never really knew how she would behave and I was really afraid that Lily would drop her.
I took a deep breath and handed Rebel to Lily, who immediately propped Rebel on her hip with one hand under her tush and the other solidly around her back.
“You like Lily, huh?” Farrah asked Rebel, leaning down to look into her eyes. “I like her, too.”
Rebel smiled and lay her head down on Lily’s thin shoulder.
Lily beamed. “She totally loves me,” she announced.
“She’s like the baby whisperer,” Trix told me, watching Lily. “Sometimes she’s the only one who can calm the boys down for a nap.”
“Okay, girls, we need to get cracking,” Farrah announced. “Brenna’s present isn’t going to buy itself.”
“Do you want to walk with us?” Lily asked, her expression pleading as Rebel’s fingers sifted through the hair hanging over her shoulder.
“I think—”
“Sure. I’m not liking anything in here.” Mel chirped, cutting me off.
“Okay, I guess we will,” I said through my teeth.
“Give Rebel back to her mama, Lilybug,” Farrah said softly.
“I’ll hold your hand, okay?” Lily told Reb as I took her away and strapped her back into her stroller.
We left the crowded store and headed out into the main part of the mall, and as soon as there was a little room to move, Rose led Lily to the side of the stroller so she could hold Rebel’s hand as we walked.
My panic must have shown on my face because Farrah sidled up to me immediately. “As long as you don’t plan on starting or stopping fast and you’re not into running little girls over with your stroller, she’ll be fine,” she told me, nodding toward Lily. “Rose leads Lily around like she’s an extension of her body. They know what they’re doing.”
“I hope Rebel has a friend like that,” I said quietly, watching the girls as they giggled at my baby’s antics.
“Well, they’re cousins,” Farrah pointed out with a laugh. “I married my best friend’s little brother, so they’ve been connected since birth. I’m not sure if Rebel will ever have what Rose and Lily have—most people don’t. But I’m sure she’ll have a best friend.”
“Does Lily go to a school for the blind?” I asked, immediately feeling like I’d overstepped. “Ugh, ignore me.”
Farrah laughed. “No, she goes to regular school, and has a tutor three afternoons a week. We couldn’t separate the girls after Lily lost her sight.”
I wanted to ask a million questions. They were right on the tip of my tongue, but somehow I kept my mouth shut. Farrah was the first mom I’d talked to that had a special needs child—and even though the girls were totally different, I wanted to know how she did it. I wanted to know the secrets. Sometimes I felt so alone.
After half an hour of visiting with our new friends, Mel and I said goodbye and walked toward the other end of the mall, where we’d parked the car.
“What the hell was that?” I hissed once we’d gotten far enough away to not be overheard.
“Gathering intel,” Mel replied, bumping her hip against mine.
“What intel? You talked about makeup and asked if Trix worked out!”
“Did you see that woman’s ass? She had ass for days!”
“You’re so annoying!”
“Hey, they invited us. I just thought it would be cool to find out a little more about Will.”
“We didn’t find out anything new about Will.”
“Sure we did—about his family, at least.”
“I probably won’t even see him again,” I muttered, grabbing Rebel’s coat from the storage space under the stroller. I stopped at the door and shifted around to face her, my eyes going wide. “Oh, shit.”
“What?” Mel asked, moving forward. “Oh. Shit is right.”
Reb had poop soaking through the little leggings she was wearing.
“This is because of that fucking taco!” I bitched as Rebel watched me with wide eyes. “Does your tummy hurt, baby?”
I lifted her out of the stroller and wrinkled my nose.
“I’m sorry,” Mel said softly. “Do you have clothes for her?”
“No, I didn’t even think to bring any,” I mumbled, pulling Reb to my chest. “Let’s just get her to the car. We’ll turn up the heat and I’ll change her in the backseat and leave her in a diaper for the ride home.”
The next fifteen minutes were a disgusting mix of groaning and laughter as I wrestled with Reb in the back of my car. When I finally had her cleaned up, my car stunk, but she was happy as a clam. I buckled her into her seat and crossed my fingers that she wouldn’t have another accident on the ride home—car seats were much harder to clean than babies.
“Okay, no more tacos,” Mel said in amusement as I backed out of our parking space.
“Ya think?”
“Yeah, yeah. You know, you never explained why you hadn’t said anything about seeing Will,” she said, turning to face me. “What was that about?”
“Do you remember when that shooting was all over the news last year—some guys came in and shot up a family barbeque?”
“Yeah.” I could see realization dawning on her face.
“Yeah—that was Will’s family.”
“Holy crap,” she whispered.
“From what I heard later, his youngest brother died. His mom was in the hospital for a while, and there were a few other people who died, too.”
“That’s nuts. Why would someone shoot them?”
“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” I murmured, immediately feeling like shit for saying it. “They’re part of the Aces Motorcycle Club and I’m guessing it had something to do with that.”
“But Will’s brothers are way younger than us.”
“Yeah, I know.”
We were silent for a minute as we got out onto the road.
Then both of us gasped as two police cars quickly followed by another three flew past us, their lights and sirens blaring.
“Holy shit!” Mel exclaimed as I pulled quickly to the side of the road. “They were hauling ass!”
“Where’d they go?” I asked, turning in my seat to try and catch a glimpse of the cars.
“They pulled into the mall.”
“I wonder what happened?”
“Robbery?”
“That was a lot of cop cars for a robbery.”
Chapter 4
Will
“You should be careful,” my dad warned me as we carried my mom’s old patio table toward the shed in their back yard. “Fucking around with the suit’s daughter.”
“Who told you?” I grunted, almost tripping over a rock in the yard before I righted myself.
“Who do you think?”
“Cam’s such a fuckin’ busybody.”
“Yeah, he is,” my dad chuckled.
“It was nothin’,” I said as we set the table inside the shed. We were getting ready for winter, putting all the summer shit inside so it didn�
�t get ruined. The rain and snow wouldn’t really be an issue with the patio furniture, but after two years in a row of the wind knocking the table over and shattering the glass top, we’d started putting it all away.
“You like her, it’s not nothin’,” Dad pointed out as we headed back for the chairs.
“She’s got a kid.”
“So?”
“So she’s got other shit goin’ on.”
“She single?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Asa!” my mom called from the back door. “Come in here!” Her voice wobbled, and my dad took off at a run.
I followed him inside and found my mom sitting on the couch watching the news.
“Sugar, I told you to stop—”
“It came over the radio,” Mom interrupted him. “That’s why I turned on the TV.”
My mom wasn’t fragile—far from it. But since the day my brother died, she’d had nightmares that kept her awake at least three nights a week. Sometimes Dad had to remind her to eat, and sometimes I wondered what she would have done if she didn’t have three other kids to worry about.
My parents had come to an agreement a couple months after Mick died. Mom would start going back to the shrink she’d seen when I was a kid, and she’d try her best to stay away from things that would trigger her nightmares—like the news.
“Rosie was just there.” Mom’s voice came out strangled. “She just got home twenty minutes ago.”
“Right, baby, so she’s fine. You don’t need to watch this shit.”
My dad reached for the remote, but Mom slapped his hand away, making him huff in annoyance.
I sat on the arm of the couch and listened to the anchor announce a special report. Apparently, there had been a shooting—my gut rolled at that—at a local mall. The suspect was dead, but they had no idea why it had happened or how many other people were hurt.
Dad finally snatched the remote out of Mom’s hand and shut off the TV. Before she could bitch him out, he was cupping her face in his hands and murmuring something to her that I didn’t catch. That was my cue to leave.
I went back into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge as I shrugged off the flannel I was wearing. It was too hot in the house to be wearing that shit inside.
Craving Molly (The Aces' Sons #2) Page 4