by J. Daniels
She’s tapping the bar anxiously with her fingers, looking over her shoulder every few seconds toward the door. Her hair is down, and she’s wearing a shirt that has my eyes going from her chest to her face and back again. I motion for the bartender.
“Can you send one of those purple drinks to that girl right there for me?”
He nods and gets to work on her drink while she pulls her phone out with a scowl. My phone beeps.
Mia: I mentioned today, right?
Me: You’re so fucking beautiful. Do you know that?
Just as my message goes through, the bartender sits the drink down in front of her. She smiles at him, looking at the drink and then glancing at her phone. Her eyes immediately find mine across the bar, and I make my way to her. My hand brushes along her back, and I claim my spot.
“You looked thirsty from where I was standing. Thought I’d help you out,” I say with a smile.
She places her one hand on my knee. “I need to talk to you about something.”
I tilt my head and push her drink closer to her. “And what is that?”
“We need to move the wedding up.” She grabs the straw between her fingers and dunks it in and out of her drink.
“Why? I thought you wanted a summer wedding? I mean, I’m all for stealing you away right now and making you my wife, but you seemed pretty dead set on the date.”
She smiles and pushes her drink away, motioning for the bartender. He stops in front of us and gives me a friendly nod before looking at her. “I’m sorry. Can you make this nonalcoholic? I can’t drink this.”
“Sure thing,” he says, taking her glass away.
She hits me with a smile and grabs my hand, laying it across her stomach. “Ben.”
“Hmm?” I’m still trying to piece together why she suddenly doesn’t want the drink that she so eagerly consumed our first go-around. It takes me a minute to focus on my hand. My eyes meet hers and she smiles. And then it clicks. “Baby, are you pregnant?” The hope in my voice dominates over the sudden anxiousness that begins to brew in my gut.
“I really don’t want to be the size of a house when I’m walking down the aisle to you. So, I was thinking maybe a spring wedding instead? I’d be five months by then.”
“Angel.” I’m on my knees in the middle of the bar, pressing my face against her stomach. “Please tell me I’m not hearing you wrong.”
She giggles against me and turns my face up. “You’re not hearing me wrong. Nolan’s going to be a big brother.”
My senses are flooded with a need to protect this woman and my baby that she’s carrying. “We need to get out of here.”
“Why? This is our spot.”
I shake my head and stand, grabbing some money out of my wallet and paying for the drink she won’t be consuming. “There’s people smoking. And it’s really loud.”
She laughs and puts her hand in mine, allowing me to lead her outside. “Babe, I don’t think the noise level in here is going to hurt the baby. He’s barely the size of a peanut right now.”
I stop in the middle of the parking lot, spinning around. “He?”
She smiles up at me and places her hands on my chest. “Just a gut feeling I have. It’s too early to tell.”
I wrap my arms around her, staring down at the woman that I’ll give my life for.
“You’re going to put me in a bubble for the next nine months, aren’t you?”
I kiss her forehead, pulling her against my chest. “I’ll do whatever’s necessary,” I say.
And she doesn’t argue with me. She allows me to hold her right where we stood that night. Before I knew she’d change my life. Before I knew I was holding the woman I was going to marry.
My future. My forever.
All mine.
The End
Hi! Thank you so much for reading Where I Belong! I hope you enjoyed Ben and Mia’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it. Please consider leaving a review! I’d love to hear what you thought.
#BamaBoysForever
xo, J
* * Continue on to read the first chapter of FOUR LETTER WORD, the first book in the new DIRTY DEEDS Series published by Forever/Hachette Book Group. * *
FOUR LETTER WORD
Chapter One
Sydney
I HAD BEEN sitting in the same spot for an hour.
Well, at least it felt like an hour. I honestly had no idea what time it was. I couldn’t look at the clock to verify how long I’d been immobile. I couldn’t look at anything besides the hand resting in my lap.
No, not resting. It shook violently, no matter how hard I pressed it flat against my jean- covered thigh.
My skin all over was clammy and frigid at the same time. Sweat tickled my palms, pooled at the base of my neck and in the hollow dip of my throat. It was quite possible I was running a fever.
I should feel sick. This was sickening.
The house felt eerily quiet, desolate, though I knew Marcus was in the other room. I hadn’t heard the evidence of his departure—the front door closing or the low rumble of his truck starting up.
He hadn’t left. And why would he? Why would he be the one leaving in this scenario?
You should be leaving, Sydney. Get up. Run. Grab your stuff and get the hell out of here.
I exhaled a trembling breath. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t stop shaking. I could barely remember how important oxygen intake was in the matter of staying alive. Long seconds stretched out before I would inhale in a panic, allow my lungs to taste the air in the room I shouldn’t still be sitting in, then expel that breath all too quickly.
I needed to go. I needed to react somehow, because I hadn’t thus far.
I felt numb. And this . . . this felt like a dream.
A paralyzing dream.
The kind you didn’t wake up from.
My phone rang from my bag on the floor somewhere, but it sounded miles away. I couldn’t lift my head to the noise. I couldn’t even remember where I had tossed it after I endured the one-sided conversation with Marcus.
Endured. Not participated in.
Him, doing all the talking, all the explaining, and none of it sounding the least bit apologetic, his voice cold and distant, detached, final . . . having made the decision, his decision, while I stood there frozen.
Frozen.
Marcus turned on his heel and swiftly left the room. I collapsed into a pile of heavy limbs on the floor, where I’d remained, and where I had every intention of remaining.
That was my reaction. It was the only reaction I was capable of.
Until the phone rang . . . again.
Something felt off. It was a miracle I felt it, whatever it was, considering my deadened state.
Like a whispered warning against my ear.
My spine stiffened in an instant. I turned my head in the direction of my muffled ringtone, scanning with what felt like new eyes.
Fresh and alert.
I was up to count six of Taylor Swift singing about being young and reckless. I knew who was calling, and I contemplated ignoring my best friend again, slouching over and righting myself to my previous position, until I realized . . .
Shit.
Shit.
My already tight chest grew tighter.
Tori never called me that many times in a row. If I didn’t answer her, I was usually in the middle of a shift at work, and she’d leave her standard “call me when you get a sec” message.
She never rang me up like this. Urgently.
Was something wrong?
I found my bag halfway under the bed and tugged it out by one of the straps. Palming my phone, I answered the call just before the last words of the verse sounded.
“H-Hey, what’s up?” I asked, voice strained and anxious, stumbling brokenly through my greeting.
My head hit the side of the mattress as I resumed my location on the floor with my knees pulled in close against my chest.
“Syd.” Tori’s voice cracked with a whimper. “Hon . .
. hey, hey, are you busy right now? Do you have a minute to talk? I need to talk.”
I blinked rapidly at her distressful tone.
I suddenly couldn’t remember the last hour, or however long I had been in this room. I couldn’t remember the bomb Marcus dropped in my lap before he dismissed me with a curt nod and went about his business doing God knows what.
My hands no longer shook. My breathing was even. Focused.
I had never heard my best friend cry. Never. Not once in the twelve years we’d known each other. And we’d been through some shit, let me tell you.
But she was now.
I was right. Something was off.
Worry consumed me. My blood ran warmer as I began to pace along the length of the bed, pressing the phone to my ear as I quickly collected myself.
“I have as much time as you need, sweetie. What’s going on? Why are you upset?”
“Wes,” she hiccupped.
Wes.
Tori’s boyfriend of six months and serious enough he was obviously worth shedding tears over.
I hadn’t had a chance to meet the guy yet, due to my busy work schedule and the three-hour drive time between Tori and myself. But I felt like I knew him. Ninety percent of Tori’s and my conversations revolved around what amazingly sweet thing Wes did for her that week.
He seemed perfect.
My attention snapped back to the phone at my ear when I heard a crash, the sound of glass breaking, followed immediately by my best friend’s livid but still distraught high-pitched voice.
“Married. He’s fucking married, Syd! Can you believe that? That son of a bitch has a wife!”
I stopped pacing and stared openmouthed at the wall.
Married?
Oh, God . . .
Tori took in a shuddering breath and I started pacing again, needing to either move or hit someone. And I wasn’t jumping at the chance to confront Marcus just yet, so option two was out.
Tori’s voice shrank to a more vulnerable decibel when she finally continued.
“God, Sydney, how stupid am I? How did I not see this? His weeknight rule with being too busy to see me Monday through Friday, always sending my calls to voice mail only to return them minutes later, which I’m imagining now was enough time for him to make up some bullshit story to appease his wife so he could sneak out and call me back. Asshole. God . . . that stupid, fucking asshole. How? How did that not set off alarms in my head? Was it that obvious? Was I that blind, Syd?”
I didn’t know if it was from my frantic pacing, or from Tori’s confession sinking in, but suddenly I needed to steady myself with a hand on the wall.
The room began to spin.
I blinked everything into focus before finding my own voice, which I kept quiet.
“Oh, my God, Tori. My God. How did you find out? What happened?”
“Saw him with her at the mall, pushing a damn stroller through the food court,” she answered, sounding equal parts disgusted and destroyed. “They looked so fucking perfect together, I didn’t know whether to throw up or scream.”
She groaned, and I heard more things rattling in the background.
I pictured Tori testing the weight of different glass objects before she chose one to hurl against the closest wall.
“I walked right up to the son of a bitch. I saw her ring. I saw his. I was ready to confront him then and there. You know me. But you know what that bastard did?”
She sniffed loudly through the phone.
It broke my heart to hear her like this, but I didn’t get to tell her that before she continued.
“He . . . he threw his arm around her, smiled at me, and introduced us. He actually introduced his wife to me, Sydney. Told her I was an old friend from high school. Can you believe that? A friend.”
She chuckled derisively at the word.
“I’ve done things with him I’ve never done with other men. I’ve talked with him . . . you know? That kind of talking where you just share yourself with someone for hours and hours and you can’t think of anything else you’d rather be doing. I don’t know if I loved him, but I could’ve. I know I could’ve.”
“What did you do?”
She breathed through a tight laugh.
“I know what I should’ve done. I should’ve called him out on it. Stomped his balls out. His wife deserved to know. I would want to know, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t. I stood there like some freak, staring at him with my mouth hanging open. I probably looked psychotic. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After God knows how long they walked away and I . . . I just kept standing there until a security guard came up to me and asked if I was okay.” She paused, then whispered, “I wasn’t. I’m not.”
I moved to the bed and sank onto the mattress, elbows on my knees, and rubbed my palm across my forehead.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing either. I couldn’t believe people could be this malicious as to openly hurt someone this way, even though I was suffering from a pain similar to what Tori was experiencing. But at least she was acknowledging it. Admitting the effect it had on her and even going as far as confessing it to someone.
I couldn’t do that yet. I wasn’t feeling anything.
Until now.
The change was swift. I suddenly felt everything, as if someone had taken a book filled with the range of human emotions and chucked it at my head. I was overwhelmed. Alive with reaction. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I was full of rage and bitterness, pain . . . God, the pain was undeniable now. It felt like a cancer eating away at my bones.
Tori let out a strangled yell. Something else shattered through the line.
I closed my eyes and imagined doing the same thing.
I knew her adoration for Wes ran deep and threatened to run deeper the more time she had spent with that man.
She saw him as her future.
He already planned one out with another woman.
Are all men complete pieces of shit?
My eyes flashed down at my left hand, lifeless on my leg. One particular finger felt foreign to me. Irritating. Like an itch I couldn’t reach to scratch.
I couldn’t remain still anymore.
My skin pricked at the base of my neck as I stood and pulled my suitcases from the walk-in closet, dragging them to the bed.
I knew my best friend better than anyone. I knew that sometimes she simply needed me to listen instead of offering my assurance or advice. Just knowing someone was there for you spoke louder than a lot of words.
So that’s what I gave her. Silence.
She cried softly into my ear as I threw my entire life into two suitcases and one duffle bag. I ransacked the bathroom, not caring how I left it as I packed away my toiletries. I wiped away every memory of myself from that room.
Every photo. Anything tying me to Marcus. Everything personal.
I wanted them gone. But more important, I wanted to be gone.
I stripped the ring from my finger and held it tight in my fist, the blunt edge of the diamond threatening to break skin.
Tori dragged out an edgy breath, then told me quietly, “I’m sorry, hon. I just needed to get that off my chest. You’re probably busy, right? Are you at work? It’s cool, I’ll let you go.”
Work. That was another thing I had to deal with. Immediately. Sooner the better.
“Yeah, I’m kind of in the middle of something,” I replied, which wasn’t entirely a lie. I knew she would assume that meant I was at the hospital, when in reality I was in the middle of letting go of the life I thought I was meant to have.
The one I wrote vows for.
I had to get off the phone. The sooner I finished this, the better.
“All right. I gotta go anyway. There’s glass everywhere. I should probably clean it up before I step on it. Call me tomorrow if you have a chance.”
The call disconnected.
I chuckled, which seemed so strange given the reality of the situation.
My current, completel
y fucked-up situation.
Tori never waited on the line to hear anyone’s good-bye. I knew that about her. I’d overheard many conversations she held growing up, but every time we spoke, I still readied myself with a response.
It was habitual, and the normal thing to do.
I envied her ability to cut the world off like that. To dominate life.
It wasn’t too late for me to become a wrecking force. I had absolutely nothing to lose anymore.
I had nothing at all.
Securing the duffle strap over my shoulder, I lifted the suitcases and marched down the hallway.
Noise from the television grew louder as I descended the stairs. Marcus was continuing on with his night as if nothing had been revealed. As if we were still an “us,” and he hadn’t taken all of that away from me.
I briefly glanced in his direction when I moved past the living room.
He was sitting in his favorite chair and nursing a beer, his feet crossed at the ankles and propped up on our coffee table. His eyes glued to the game.
Typical.
He was a creature of habit, and he had already come to terms with a world we were no longer facing together. He chose it willingly.
Why should my departure affect him? He’d already let go of me.
Marcus didn’t speak. I knew he wouldn’t, but what surprised me was my silence. I had so much to say, to scream, in his face or from this distance, it didn’t matter, but more than anything I wanted to get on the road before darkness blanketed the sky. I hated driving at night.
And most important, I wanted to get to my friend.
I didn’t need to free up a hand to open the door. Our storm door never latched properly, and with a swift kick at the base, it would swing free and open, creaking at the hinges.
For the first time since we’d moved into that house, I was grateful for the minor imperfection.
I didn’t need to free up my hand, but I did need to open it slightly. Two fingers letting go of the weight burning against my flesh.