Quit Bein' Ugly

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “And by the power vested in me.” The preacher was laughing, too. “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss…”

  I was kissing her before the words even left her mouth.

  • • •

  “Oh, man,” Flint said as he saw the wedding cake topper. “That’s so fuckin’ funny.”

  It was.

  I hadn’t been aware that our wedding cake topper was a groom power snatching his bride.

  “Where did y’all even find this?” I grinned down at my wife, squeezing her hip lightly as I asked.

  “There’s a couple in Tennessee that makes CrossFit inspired wedding materials. There are these wedding toppers, and some really cool tabletop accessories. I only got the wedding topper, though. I figured having our wedding and reception in a CrossFit gym was enough.”

  I dropped a kiss on her head and then pulled her in the direction of my parents.

  “Come on,” I urged. “Let’s go talk to my parents. Get our photos done. Then we can go get changed.”

  And that was exactly what we did.

  Her into her booty shorts, and me into a pair of knit shorts and no top.

  And in the end, we all ended up doing lifts, eating pizza, drinking beer, and having a grand ol’ time.

  Best wedding day ever.

  EPILOGUE

  Nice girls put out.

  -Text from Croft to Carmichael

  CARMICHAEL

  I woke up to someone kneading my stomach.

  I blinked my eyes open, thinking that it was Croft, but came up empty when he started snoring softly.

  I looked down at our son, Gavin, and blinked.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as his pudgy little hands continued to knead my stomach.

  The snoring abruptly stopped as Croft woke.

  “This feels like that bread dough that I helped you make yesterday,” Gavin said, burying his face in my flab. “I want to make bread. Can we do that again today, Mommy?”

  The awful man beside me started to laugh.

  I looked over at him to see him burying his face into the pillow under his head.

  “This isn’t funny,” I hissed at him.

  He pulled the blanket down, allowing me to see one laughter-filled eye.

  “I don’t know why you would say that,” he countered. “Because from my end, it’s absolutely hilarious.”

  “That’s because a ten-pound bowling ball didn’t rip its way out of your vagina after stretching the hell out of your stomach for nine months,” I countered. “You still have nice, perfect abs. What do I have, Croft?”

  He moved until his face was close to mine.

  “My heart.”

  I sighed.

  How could I be mad at him for saying sweet stuff like that all the time?

  I slowly got up, stretching my arms high over my head.

  When I heard Croft growl, I looked at him over my shoulder.

  “Is it your day to take him to daycare, or mine?” I asked.

  “Mine,” he answered. “What time are you leaving for school?”

  I looked at the clock on the wall.

  “About an hour,” I answered. “It’s a good thing he woke us up because I would’ve overslept.”

  Today was the first day of the new school year.

  Today meant that I was finally getting to do what I loved.

  After speaking with my bosses about what I wanted out of my career, they went ahead and decreed that after the next English teacher left, I could have her job.

  Only, her job wouldn’t come up nearly as fast as I thought it would because she’d decided that she needed just one more year to get thirty years. Then she was done.

  But I was okay with that.

  After returning to work, news of my accident had spread like wildfire among the students. After they’d heard what Alfie had done, they’d all rallied around me. Even my theater students.

  I wouldn’t say that the rest of that year had gone smoothly, but they definitely weren’t pulling chairs out from under me after that.

  Then I’d gotten pregnant with Gavin, and I’d gone from being able to do a lot of things to not being able to do anything.

  I’d gotten super duper sick to the point where I’d had to be hospitalized twice for dehydration, and from there I’d been put on bed rest.

  Once Gavin was born, I’d decided to take a few years off of teaching to spend at home with him, and that’d been the best decision I’d ever made.

  So it all worked out in the end, and today I would finally be starting my job as an English teacher.

  “You excited?” Croft asked, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my flabby waist.

  “Ecstatic,” I admitted. “I’m so excited I can hardly stand it.”

  “You’ll do great,” he promised. “I can’t wait to hear about your first day.”

  “Me neither!” Gavin cried as he started to jump on the bed.

  We both turned to look at our little boy.

  When he was born was the happiest day of my life, other than marrying the man with his arms currently locked around me.

  The best thing in the world was seeing our boy placed in his arms for the first time.

  “What are you wearing to school today?” I asked my kid.

  “I want to wear my Nanos, a pair of sweatpants, and my Rogue t-shirt,” Gavin declared.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Of course, he did.

  My kid literally survived in gym clothes.

  Hell, I couldn’t say much. I did, too.

  And when Croft wasn’t in his stuck-up suits, then he was in the same type of attire.

  “How’s your shoulder feel today?” I asked.

  Yesterday had been competition day for Croft.

  It’d taken him two years to get back to where he was, but he did finally find a way to get back to the competition he missed.

  “It feels surprisingly well,” he admitted. “The damage that was done to it by the bullet is likely permanent, but I’ve found a way to work around the pain.”

  I wrinkled up my nose. “I fuckin’ hate Alfie.”

  Alfie had gone to prison. And hopefully he’d be there for a very long time and wouldn’t get the parole at thirty years like he was told he might.

  Karen, on the other hand, hadn’t had it nearly as bad.

  But she did lose her license, had a restraining order against her for both Croft and me, and moved out of the country to boot.

  Partners Law Firm had closed its doors.

  They were laughed out of town, actually, and all of the cases they’d so called ‘won’ lately had to be retried.

  It. Was. Awesome.

  And, bonus points, Croft had done better the second time around.

  Speaking of…

  “Today’s the first day of the big trial, right?” I asked.

  Croft had been working on a case that was going to be big.

  It also had to do with Schultz’s sister, and the woman that’d dated my brother before Camryn had come into the picture.

  “Yep,” he said. “She’s going to go down.”

  I grinned like the loser I was, because I seriously couldn’t stand that woman.

  “Kick ass, babe!”

  He rolled his eyes and then walked into his closet.

  I walked into mine, and we met in the bathroom a few minutes later to finish getting dressed.

  “Oh, hey!” he called out, voice muffled. “I got a graduation announcement from Bryan Abrams sent to my office. Do you want to go?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course, I want to go! I’m so proud of how far he’s come. I can’t believe he’s already graduating.”

  Croft snorted. “That happens when you get your life together.”

  That was true. Bryan had definitely turned his life around, and I was proud as hell that I’d had a hand in helping him do that.

  Once Croft was dressed, he went to help Gavin, and in the end we all walked out the door on time. />
  Motherfreakin’ win!

  “Love you, hubby!” I called as I was about to drop down into my car.

  He winked. “Love you, too, Mike.”

  I flipped him off.

  But it didn’t bother me like it used to.

  Not when it was my sexy husband calling me by it.

  A Note From the Author

  Okay, y’all. I know that this is going to be hard to hear, but this is the final book in this particular series. If you’re wondering about Shultz, he will have a book in my new CrossFit series that will start coming out in 2022.

  Look for the first book, No Rep, in January 2022.

  Catch up on the rest of the series

  Raleigh & Ezra

  CHAPTER 1

  Women my age are supposed to be able to look suave and sophisticated while walking in heels. Me? I manage to trip over thin air.

  -Raleigh’s inner thoughts

  RALEIGH

  If there was one thing in this world that I never wanted to do, it was embarrassing myself in front of him.

  Ezra McDuff, the town bad boy, high school football and baseball coach. was everything I was not.

  Suave. Cool. Coordinated.

  Then there was me.

  My name conjured fear in the hearts of all residents of Gun Barrel, Texas.

  Why, you ask, would an innocent woman like me, the woman that every single kid in town screamed a hello to because she was the ‘best teacher ever,’ strike that kind of fear?

  That’d be because I, Raleigh Jolie Crusie, was the clumsiest person in four counties.

  And normally when I went down, I took people with me.

  For instance, moments before, I’d been walking.

  Sure, I’d been looking down at my phone because I was reading…but that’s beside the point.

  Who the hell put clearance Christmas shit in the middle of a godforsaken aisle?

  Target, that’s who.

  There I was, walking and minding my own business while I caught up on my latest read, and the next thing that I know, I ran into a large box of wrapping paper.

  And when I say ‘large,’ I mean large.

  There wasn’t just one box, either.

  There were multiple boxes.

  Fifteen, in fact.

  But, I’d walked past four such boxes before I’d tripped on thin air—like always—and took a header to the left.

  I managed to cradle my phone to my chest and tuck and roll, but that also made me into a human bowling ball.

  I took down not one, not two, not nine, but eleven boxes jam-packed with wrapping paper.

  And every last roll of wrapping paper fell out of the boxes and started rolling in every which direction.

  Meaning that not only did it get me, but it got four other people in the process.

  Jennifer Marie, the beauty consultant at Ulta that was here getting a coffee. Brian McAdams, the young sales clerk that I’d taught three years ago and was now an assistant manager in this fine establishment. Larry Conway, the electrician. And finally, Ezra freakin’ McDuff.

  Though, Ezra didn’t exactly go down like the rest of the people did.

  He only tripped on one and dropped what looked like an armful of undershirts and underwear.

  Boxer briefs.

  Boxer briefs that landed directly next to my face.

  But apparently, clothing hadn’t been the only thing Ezra had been holding.

  He was holding a box of condoms, too.

  Why do I know that particular detail?

  Because the box smacked me in the face, and, like the loser my nose was, it started to bleed.

  He made me bleed by dropping a box of condoms. On. My. Nose.

  Dear sweet baby Jesus on a cracker.

  I grumbled and held onto my nose as I felt the blood start to pour out.

  The only good thing I could say about it was that it was one of those value sized packs, not just the small ones that had like twelve condoms in it…not that I would know. I’d never bought condoms before, so who knew? Maybe the value size was really the smaller package.

  The closest I’d ever gotten to the condoms was when I was buying tampons, and even then, they were still half an aisle away from the offending pieces of latex.

  I wailed and rolled onto my hands and knees.

  Instead of waiting around for cleanup, and knowing what a bleeder I was, I started to make a mad dash toward the bathroom where I could find something to hold over my nose.

  The first thing I came to once I was inside were the paper towels.

  I moaned as I covered my nose with a handful of towels, cursing the stupid machine when it only spit out a small square of paper at a time.

  God.

  Anybody. Anybody in the freakin’ world could’ve hit me in the nose with those condoms, and I would’ve been okay. Anybody but Ezra McDuff.

  Shit.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I panted into the paper and rested my head against the cool, white-tiled wall beside the dispenser.

  Then I counted to one hundred, hoping that would help.

  It didn’t.

  But what it did do was give my nose enough time to stop bleeding.

  I reached for my phone, thinking now would be a perfect time to call my best friend, Camryn, and tell her about my humiliation.

  But…it wasn’t there.

  I closed my eyes and realized what had happened.

  When those condoms had hit me in the face, I’d dropped my phone to immediately raise my hands to my nose. And in doing so, had left my phone wherever it happened to be when my hand had discarded it.

  Garnering the courage, I walked to the door and pushed.

  When I opened the door, bloody paper towel still in my hand in case it started to bleed again, it was to find the best backside in Gun Barrel, Texas blocking the door.

  “Uhhh,” I hesitated. “’Scuse me.”

  Ezra turned around, saw my face, and blanched.

  “Are you okay?”

  He was looking at me like he’d never seen me before.

  To be perfectly honest, he probably hadn’t.

  I wasn’t exactly in Ezra McDuff’s social circle.

  I was more like that quiet girl in the corner at a party, while Ezra was the town hero and star quarterback all rolled into one.

  The sad thing was, we worked at the same damn place. We probably passed each other in the halls half a dozen times every school day, if not more.

  He was also staring right at me, and I was finding it hard to breathe.

  I’d dreamed of this day so many times.

  So. Many. Times.

  In high school I used to sit behind him, studying his every move.

  When I’d been a junior, and he’d been a senior, we had our first class together.

  My last name started with a C, and his with an M. But, since he couldn’t sit in the back thanks to some rule that the coach of the football team at the time had made, he’d had to move to the front, and I’d been pushed back a chair.

  And, by doing so, I’d gotten to see his every single feature for an entire year.

  Which had been how my infatuation with the man had begun.

  At first, it’d only been my appreciation of his body.

  He was six-foot-four, muscled, and strapping.

  He was also funny, intelligent, and sweet.

  He was a caregiver. He was a nurturer. And he also had no clue that I was alive, even then.

  Now, he’d grown up quite a bit from that boy that I used to obsess over, but he was still no less captivating.

  Today, he was in a simple pair of jeans—covered in dirt and grime from whatever he was doing—probably working on his old truck that he got in high school, and still drove on Sundays to this day.

  His white t-shirt was stained, too.

  And he had grease on his cheekbone.

  His dirty blond hair was longer than normal, and some of it fell into his eyes. Those eyes that were a mix between a go
lden honey and a seafoam green.

  At times, I wasn’t able to tell which color was more prevalent, but I’d decided long ago that it was dependent on the color of shirt he was wearing at the time.

  I swallowed when I got a load of the newest tattoo that peeked out from under his shirt sleeve.

  It looked like a sugar skull, but honestly, I wasn’t really sure without actually pulling his shirt sleeve up and looking. And that was creepy. I tried not to be creepy.

  “Ma’am?”

  I gritted my teeth.

  He didn’t even know who I was, but I could tell that I was familiar to him, at least somewhat.

  He was studying me like he was trying to place how he knew me.

  How about school from kindergarten up to my junior year. He had been two years older than me, and since the town of Gun Barrel was so small, the bus route had kids that ranged from kindergarten all the way up to seniors in high school. How about college? I knew Oklahoma State is a big campus, but he never saw me there even once? How about work? He never noticed me at all?

  Dammit!

  “I’m fine,” I lied.

  In all honesty, I was thoroughly embarrassed.

  I was also sick at heart.

  I had this idea in my mind that maybe I wasn’t quite as invisible as I always felt like I was at times.

  Apparently, if the football coach, who knew everybody didn’t even know me, then I was a lost cause.

  I smiled.

  He winced.

  That’s because the movement forced the clot that had stopped the bleeding in my nose to break loose.

  Blood trickled down my face.

  And I decided now was the time to go.

  That was when I looked down.

  At my phone. In his hand.

  He was holding it out to me.

  I took it with shaking fingers as I placed the towel back to my face.

  Then, to add insult to injury, I looked down to find my phone not only open but the book I’d been immersed in reading still up.

  My cheeks flamed.

  There was no way, with him holding it like he had been, that he hadn’t scanned what it was that was on the screen.

  None.

  And what it was, was my latest book club read, a BDSM romance that had immediately grabbed my attention. Then kept it.