by Mj Fields
“Was it slightly robotic?”
“What?” I chuckle.
“The delivery. Did he sound almost like a robot? Like maybe he was saying something possibly scripted?”
“You know him much better than I do. What are you getting at?”
“Mom. He’s saying what she’d want him to.”
“That such a bad thing? I mean, when our kids are growing up, I hope we discuss what we think is best and are strong enough to admit if the other person is right, then go with it.”
“First thing you need to know, I’m always right.”
“I’m gonna let that slide until I have a promise this is going where it’s supposed to.”
She looks at me, eyes hardening a bit, like she’s trying to figure me out, like I have some sort of angle. I don’t, so I give it right back to her.
“You think I don’t know how hardcore you are. You think I don’t see the fierceness in your loyalty to all those you love, and that I don’t see it in return?”
She lifts a shoulder. “Just need to know you can hang.”
“I can hang.”
She purses her lips together and moves them back and forth, mischief playing in her eyes. I know what she’s thinking.
“Don’t play, Katy Steel, because you’re asking for more than you can handle.”
“Pfft.” She rolls her eyes.
“You begged for more, and I couldn’t give it to you without assistance from a shoehorn in the thirty seconds you gave me. Give me an hour, and I will rock your world. Give me two, and I’ll do it with a little bit of backwoods country charm.”
She raises her eyebrows as a smirk plays on her perfect, little bow lips.
“And if I give you three?” She shrugs. “But my daddy told you that you couldn’t.”
“The stipulation was under this roof.” I shake my head. “And this roof happens to be mine. See what you do to me? You’ve got me tied up and twisted.”
“I dare you.”
I shake my head. “Gonna have to need your heart before I can. Also, your entire family knows what’s up with us and mine hasn’t a clue. How about we leave the beach and head for the lake?”
“I don’t think I’m ready for that—”
I grab her ass. Pretty hard, too. “You think I wouldn’t have liked an hour and a half heads-up before I found out my girl was pregnant at a dinner table filled with twenty of your crew?”
“Wasn’t supposed to be like that.” She appears a bit sorrowful.
I lean in and kiss her, then stand. “Go get ready. Only fair to let them know.”
“We have until the end of May.”
“Katy,” I say, looking down at her.
“Fine.”
“Gonna need to stop and get a new phone on the way, too.”
“Might want to get a more durable one this time. From what I understand, I’m a lot to handle. Frustrating, in fact,” she calls over her shoulder as she heads to the room she’s always shared with her cousins when she’s been here in the past. The room I always wanted to stay in.
I know I shouldn’t thank God for the way this all went down, but I do it anyway.
“Hey!” Katy yells.
I walk toward her room and peek inside as she’s stepping out of her sweatpants. “Yeah?”
She walks over to one of the three bags and bends over as she searches inside one, giving me the most delicious view of her perfect peach of an ass, framed in a tiny little black thong.
When she turns around, she catches me staring.
“Sorry.”
“Are you?”
I shake my head. “Not really.”
She smiles and holds up a small frame. “Congratulations.”
I walk over and around her, taking her hips and pulling her back against me. Then I push her hair to the other side and rest my chin on her shoulder.
She clears her throat. “This is real heavy stuff we’re dealing with.”
“Doesn’t look all that heavy. Looks kind of tiny. Well, shit, is it a boy?”
“No.” She laughs and steps away, handing me the picture. “Can’t find out until I’m twenty weeks, if I want to.”
Still looking at the picture, I ask, “Do you?”
“Do you?”
“I love that you asked, but it’s your body that’s carrying our baby. I think you should decide.”
“I love that you said that, but now that I know you don’t like my sister, and that you don’t hate me because I got knocked up and it may cramp your lifestyle—”
“Katy, I’m way more than good with you carrying our baby.” I set the picture on the bed, reach out, and take her hands. “My lifestyle now revolves around us.”
“Then I say, if we want to, we can. If we want to wait, we can do that, too. Now, what should I wear?”
“I’m thinking exactly what you have on is perfect.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.” She shakes her head. “While I change, can you send my dad and mom a text and let them know where we’re going?”
“Of course.”
“You have their numbers?”
“Yeah, Katy, I do.”
The Lake
Katherine
Looking out the window of Brand’s black Nissan Titan, while we drive through Mantoloking, is kind of surreal. My nose isn’t in my phone, secretly searching for updates on Brand, because … he’s right beside me.
Not only is he right beside me, but he wants me to love him.
Not only is he right beside me and wants me to love him, but he thinks he loves me.
“Hey.” He squeezes my hand, the one he’s been holding since we got in the truck.
I look over at him and remember why I was looking out the window to begin with. Because looking at him makes me … incredibly giddy.
I squeeze his hand in return. “Hey back.”
“You wanna open that new phone and set it up?”
“Sure.”
“Any preference in music?”
“Anything is good,” I say as I look at our entwined hands, not wanting to let go. Then I glance up at him.
“Phone can wait.” He squeezes my hand.
“Whaaat?” I ask.
He laughs as he glances at me again. “Don’t wanna let yours go, either.”
I reach down with my free hand and grab the box. “I’m pretty talented, you know. I think I can do this.”
He smiles. “I know you can sing and play piano.”
“Whatever.” I laugh. “I’d hardly call my three-year-old attempt to make some wannabe cowboy notice me—”
“You have no idea how many times I’ve watched that video and wanted to kick myself in the ass, but I’m talking about the videos Patrick posts on Snapchat once in a while. Your voice is sultry, seductive, beautiful—just like you.”
I smirk. “This is the point in the conversation where I should say something nice about you.”
“Don’t put yourself out. I already know what you think is nice about me.”
“Oh, yeah? You think I’m that transparent?”
“No, just think I know you better than you think.”
“So what do I like about you?” I ask, because honestly, I’m curious.
“You like my eyes. Always looked directly into them when pissed off at me.”
He’s not wrong.
“My lips. Definitely my lips.”
“They’re big and soft, like a pillow covered in silk,” I admit.
“Yours are a perfect bow. Makes each kiss a gift.”
I, Katy Steel, am officially mushy and melting.
“What else do I like about you?” I ask in a much huskier voice than intended.
“My hands wrapped round yours or skating up your soft, smooth curves.”
“These are rather obvious things, you know.” I pretend to be unimpressed by his compliments when, in fact, I don’t think I’ll ever be unimpressed with anything he says to me.
He winks.
“I like yo
ur hair.”
“I like yours more.” He squeezes my hand.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I like your voice, and although I’ll never admit it outside of this pickup truck, I know every lyric and the damn TikTok dance to “Girls Go Bang”.”
To that, he laughs, and God, I love his laugh.
“Don’t laugh at me, Brand Falcon; you’ll regret it.”
“Never gonna regret a thing with you.”
“And even though I’ve spent a couple months hating on you and possibly name-calling based on ignorance, I loved at least twenty-nine seconds of that night.”
“Gonna pray for a snowstorm so we get stuck at the Landing so I can give you the best fifty-eight seconds of your life.”
I don’t say one word, because I’m too busy praying for the same.
He hits a couple buttons on the steering wheel, and “Girls Go Bang” fills the truck.
“Prove it.”
For the last half hour, I’ve tried my best to ignore my bladder. “I have to use the bathroom.”
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Can you—”
“Maybe, but I don’t want to run into the house and not be cordial so I can pee.”
“Want me to pull over here, or can you wait five minutes?”
“Pull over here? Um, no, I can wait five minutes.”
“You’ve never squatted behind a tree?”
“Um, no. Luckily for me, there’s always a bathroom close by.”
“Once summer comes, I’m taking you tent camping.”
“Once summer comes, I’m going to be busy with a baby and preparing for college.” I stop and look at him. “Well, maybe not.”
“If that was your plan, that’s what you’ll do.”
Not likely, I think but don’t dare say out loud. “Yeah.”
He squeezes my hand, a hand he’s yet to let go of. “We’ll figure it out.”
I nod, but a cloud of doubt weighs heavily on me. Through this entire fiasco, I’ve been more worried about how to hide my embarrassment. I’ve thought the only possibility of getting through this was to run from it … hide from it. I never truly let it sink in that all my plans, my goals, my dreams, my life … would change. Hell, I hadn’t even nailed down what I wanted to do with my life, or chosen a career path. All I knew was I kicked SAT’s ass, that school came easy to me, and that I could be whatever I wanted to be.
Truth, Justice, and Patrick have a direction … a passion that they can turn into a career one day. Mom reassured me that I would figure mine out, too, so I never stressed it. I was going to go to school for liberal arts and science and wait for that to happen. I thought that I’d one day have some epiphany.
Brand squeezes my hand. “And we’ll still go camping.”
And just like that, I’m sucked into a world that is Brand Falcon.
“Just so I have to pee behind a tree?”
“Hell yeah! Why not? Then, the next time someone asks you if you have, you can say, hell yeah.”
“Hell yeah, huh?”
“Exactly,” he says as he pulls into a place that I recognize from pictures and videos, from the past, from the place he sang to Bella, and I sang to him. Carlin’s Bar.
There are a couple of pickup trucks in the parking lot, but not many.
“Kind of where it all began.” He shrugs as he kills the engine.
Apparently, I make a face that shows my jealous streak. I’m going to need to work on that.
“Don’t hate on this place, Katy girl. It’s the place you staked your claim.” He hops out and starts to whistle.
I open my door to get out, and he shakes his head and opens it the rest of the way, telling me, “Lot of things have changed since I was a kid, but no amount of destroyed childhood fantasies will ever take away from me wanting to be a gentleman and treat my lady as such.” He holds out his hand, and I take it.
“Remember that next time you recommend me pissing behind a tree or suggest going camping.”
He smirks. God, I love his smirk.
He doesn’t let go of my hand. I love that, too.
Then he does let go of my hand to open the door, but as I walk in, I feel its return on the small of my back.
“Straight ahead and to the left,” he says, but as I start to step away, he grips my sweater.
I turn back and look at him, and he leans in and kisses my cheek. “Go.”
When I turn back around to head for the bathroom, I realize that was our first public display of affection, and I didn’t even die.
“Katy?” I hear the woman behind the bar say my name and look back.
She’s not talking to me; she’s talking to Brand.
I hear his reply, “Only girl it ever will be, Jan.”
“So, not waiting until graduation, huh?” the woman, Jan, asks as I start to push the bathroom door open.
I look back as he looks toward me, smiling as he shakes his head. “Look at her, Jan; who could deny that?”
After using the bathroom, grinning behind closed doors, I walk out, trying to stow the giddy feeling that has replaced all the other feelings that I have ever felt every time Brandon Falcon was around.
Feelings such as anger, annoyance, disgust, jealousy—so much jealousy—and, of course, the inevitable self-loathing at the physical feelings he evokes, all replaced with dancing silly emojis in my belly.
As I walk down the hallway, I see Jan at the bar, but not Brand. She nods toward the door, and then I hear the sound of a guitar playing and stop immediately. She winks at me and nods again.
It takes just a few notes to realize what song it is.
“Oh my God,” I sigh, and then he starts to sing.
“Get a load of me, get a load of you, walking down the street, and I hardly know you, it’s just like we were meant to be.”
I have to force to move my damn feet, but force them, I do.
When I peek around the corner, he’s sitting on a stool in the middle of a small corner stage about a foot off the floor, playing a guitar, singing and looking at only me. His hazel eyes, like magnets, pull me slowly toward him. I have to force myself to stop so I don’t climb right up on the stage with him. It’s the first time in my life I ever wanted to be on stage.
I watch, mesmerized by him, his song choice, his obvious affliction to keeping us private and taking things slow, and laugh at the fact that there’s clearly no way of taking things slow when I’m pregnant.
“It’s inevitable, it’s a fact that we’re gonna get down to it, so tell me, why can’t I breathe whenever I think about you?” With that, he sets the guitar in the stand, hops off the stage right in front of me, takes my face in his big hands, and kisses me. Lips soft against mine, tongue swift to move inside my mouth, and then … applause.
Laughing against my mouth, he pulls me into a hug and whispers, “Should have kissed you like that way back then.”
“Yeah, you should have.”
He hugs me tighter, and I hug him back. Then he steps back, jaw muscles tightening. “We need to get out of here before the rest of them realize how deep into you I wanna be.”
“What?” I laugh.
When he turns me around and pulls my back against his chest, I gasp.
“Still need me to answer that?”
“Pretty sure I get the point.”
“See y’all later,” he says as he turns us around and walks us out the door.
Once out of earshot, we both start to laugh.
He opens the door to his truck. “Get in, tease.”
“Oh, please,” I huff as I climb in.
I feel two hands on my ass and look over my shoulder.
“My bad.” He holds his hands up.
“Might kind of like your Brand of bad,” I say as I climb in.
When I reach for my seat belt, I glance over at him. His hands are still up, and he’s not moving.
“You okay?”
“Give me”—he pauses and adjusts himself—“thirty seconds.”<
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My mouth immediately waters, nipples harden, and my core clenches.
Holy hell, that was hot.
“Katy.” My name on his sexy as hell lips comes out thick and sounds so sexy.
“We should”—I turn and click my seat belt into place—“go.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.”
He takes his time walking around the front of his truck, and I don’t mind, not at all.
Front row, first class.
He runs one hand through his hair and opens the door with the other. His forest green thermal lifts slightly, giving me a glimpse of his abs, and the V. I know hot bodies, appreciate them even, but to me, the deep, thick lines of his V are so insanely defined because they’re holding up his extremely thick, long cock.
As he gets in he sighs. “I’ll use a bit more restraint next time. Shouldn’t have grabbed your ass without permission.”
“Okay, cool. Then I won’t undress you with my eyes, wondering what you look like completely and totally naked.”
“Gonna have to tell you, right now, I really wish I didn’t give the folks an ETA, because I’d show you.”
“I dare you.”
His brows jump as he looks at me.
I love it. Makes me feel… sexy.
He bites his lower lip and looks up. “Six inches, man, I need six inches.”
“I feel like you’re packing more like eight.”
“You feel that, huh?” he asks, reaching over and taking the back of my head.
“Yeah, I feel that.”
“I want you so bad right now.” He brushes his lips across mine.
“Same,” I whisper before pressing mine against his.
He’s the first to pull back. “But they’re expecting us.”
“Do you think they’ll be upset if you’re a couple minutes late?” I joke.
His laugh is different this time, throatier, darker. “You’re going to eat those words.”
“Let them be dessert. I’m kind of hungry for food now.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure am.”
Starving, actually, for him, and now praying for snow.
The Landing
Brandon