Snapped out of her trance, Veda reclaimed Dr. Nailer’s eyes, and a shot of guilt surged through her.
Guilt—because of why she’d chosen Dr. Nailer in the first place. She hadn’t chosen her because she was the best ObGyn in the hospital. She hadn’t chosen her because she’d agreed to schedule their appointments well outside Gage’s work hours. She hadn’t chosen her because she’d promised Gage would never find out, swearing to uphold the utmost discretion.
Veda hadn’t chosen Dr. Nailer for any of those reasons, however compelling.
She’d chosen Dr. Nailer because she was the wife of Brock Nailer.
And Veda would do anything to get closer to Brock Nailer.
Was this the person she’d become? A liar? A manipulator? A user?
While one part of her was thrilled to hear that Brock probably wouldn’t be reproducing anytime soon, another part of her was deeply bothered by the pain in Dr. Nailer’s eyes. The tears making them gleam. The desperation that was clear as day.
Veda wanted a baby for this woman more than she wanted one for herself.
“It’s a blessing, Veda.” Dr. Nailer spoke candidly, revealing her true heart. “I think, one day, you’ll understand what I’m saying.”
“But that’s the thing.” Veda shrugged. “I don’t just want my baby to be a blessing to me. I want to be a blessing to my baby. And right now, I’m not a blessing. I’m just a fucking mess.”
A fucking mess who’s using you to get closer to your husband.
A fucking mess who’s looking to cut his giggle berries clear out, ensuring he’ll never be able to give you the child you crave so desperately.
“If I’m going to be forced to be someone’s mom.” Veda tried to ignore her thoughts. “I at least want to have a real shot at being good at it. And, right now? I just can’t see it.”
How could she show a child real love when she was still fighting to make peace within herself? How could she raise a healthy child when she was utterly contagious with anger and hatred? Bound to infect anyone who came too close, including her innocent baby?
She couldn’t.
Not until she’d avenged the innocence that had been stolen from her ten years ago.
If she had any chance of being a good mother, she needed to finish what she’d started.
She needed revenge.
Not just for herself, but for her baby too.
Dr. Nailer smiled softly. “Your pregnancy is high risk, and you won’t be in the clear for another twelve weeks. That’s plenty of time. Take it easy. Take the time to give this baby the kind of thought it needs and deserves.”
Take it easy?
Veda almost laughed.
Instead, she gave Dr. Nailer a sheepish smile. “Do you want to have lunch with me sometime?”
Dr. Nailer smiled widely, appearing relieved. “I’m so glad you asked. I’ve been behaving so unprofessionally; I wouldn’t have had the courage to. I’d love that.”
Veda held her arms out, and the two women embraced.
For the first time since returning to Shadow Rock, Veda didn’t dread the idea of making a new friend.
Because this friend would bring her one step closer to her number four.
And make castrating him as easy as pie.
7
“How do you like it?” Veda gazed at him from under her fluttered lashes, letting a coy smile spread on her lips as she stroked his glistening dick. She’d taken her sweet time getting it good and slippery with her lips and tongue, making each tug she drew come nice and easy.
Gage tightened his fingers in her curls with one hand while leaning over and cupping one of her bare breasts with the other. He thrust into the tight sleeve she’d made with her hand, hissing through his smiling teeth at the pleasure it sent rocking through him. The bed sank under the weight of his naked body, his feet planted on the floor on either side of her, where she smiled back up at him from her knees.
“I like it any way you like it.” He pinched her nipple softly, licking his lips at the whimper it caused to leave her lips. He bent down and stole a soft kiss. One wasn’t enough, however, and he followed up with his tongue, pushing it past her parted lips, swirling it with hers in time with her slick strokes.
“I want to know every inch of you, “she whispered when he pulled back, pressing her forehead to his, her tugs coming slower. “I want to know how to make you cum in seconds.” Looking down at her fingers, which didn’t even fit all the way around his shaft, she leaned forward and flicked the precum glistening on the tip with her tongue.
“Goddamn,” he breathed, burying his hand deeper in her hair, pulling her in.
“Tell me,” she demanded through clenched teeth, accepting another heated kiss from him, laughing softly when he released her nipple and buried his other hand in her hair.
“The first time I saw you?” His brown eyes gleamed down at her. “With that Blow Pop between those gorgeous lips…?”
“Mmmhmm…” She bit her bottom lip with a nod.
“I nearly came in my pants at the thought of me in its place.”
“You did?” she whispered.
“Just the tip, trapped between those amazing lips…” He bit his own bottom lip. “And you? Sucking it so ravenously… you damn near pulled it from the stick?”
“Just the tip?” she asked, drawing her hand up his shaft, still slippery with her previous attentions. “That’s what you like?”
He swallowed thickly, his eyes going dark as he nodded.
She leaned in, barely restraining a giggle when she envisioned the engorged, aching head before her as a grape flavored Blow Pop. She drew it between her lips with a moan, circling her tongue around it with the same vigor she would a lollipop, waiting until his moans had turned to heaves. Until his eight pack abs were constricting so tightly they seemed seconds from tearing through his skin, until he was unable to stop the unconscious thrust into her mouth, giving her more of the head.
She pulled back; gasping in the breath she’d been holding, tightening her fingers around him. “What else? What about when you’re not in my mouth?”
“The tip,” he begged. He nearly pulled her curls straight from her skull as he thrust into her hand, silently begging to be back inside her warm mouth, under the menstruations of her slippery tongue.
She raised her eyebrows, jerking him a few times before lingering at the plump head. She covered it completely, like her hand was a blanket, laying her palm atop it and squeezing softly.
He hissed, his ass leaving the bed, his body begging for more of what his parted lips couldn’t manage to ask.
“The tip,” she nodded, unable to stop a giggle at this new revelation. Whether it was her mouth, her hand—her anything else—she now knew how to make her boyfriend wild with ecstasy. How to make him come in seconds, if that was what she pleased. She removed her hand from that tip and trapped it between her lips once more.
“I’m gonna cum, baby. Oh, God, I want you to swallow it,” he begged, seconds later. “Please, swallow it. Just like you did that night.”
She pulled back, her confused eyes rising to his. “That night?”
“Yeah…” His face softened. He removed his hands from her hair, stroking her cheeks with the backs of his fingers. “That night on the balcony… When I made you choke on it.”
Veda jolted awake.
She gasped, making the pillow her face was buried in get trapped in her mouth and nostrils.
As the alarm sounded from the nightstand, she remained face down, ass up, in the middle of her bed. Sunlight filtered in through her curtains, laying just enough heat on her blanket to make it feel like she was trapped in the Sahara Desert.
“Why, why, why?” The pillow muffled her cries. Whether she was screaming at her alarm, at herself, or at the little nugget in her stomach begging for its first puke of the day, she wasn’t sure. She managed to sit up on the edge of the bed and slap the snooze button. Sweet silence. Her spine crumbled forward as the beds of her fe
et touched the wood floors. She covered her stomach, the silk of her nightie slippery under her fingers.
Her fingers dug into the fabric as if trying to get to her uterus. “I’m really sorry about this, man. Your dad’s a monster—your mom’s a mess. You pretty much have zero chance of being normal once you make it into the world…” Veda looked down at her belly. “If you make it…”
She sighed and stood, trudging into the living room, hand still on her stomach.
“Dr. Nailer says we should take it easy because we won’t be in the clear for another three months, but Mommy has important things to do and people to castrate. Castrate, not kill, because your mommy’s not a killer.”
Once in the living room, she grabbed the remote from the coffee table and switched the TV on. The morning news anchor’s voice filled the room as she went to the kitchen, eyes still partially closed, gait still sluggish, voice hoarse.
She opened the fridge and paused, looking down at her belly. “Like I said to the doctor yesterday… I don’t just want you to be a blessing to me.” She poked her belly with the tip of her hot pink nail. “I want to be a blessing to you too. And if Mommy’s going to give you a good life, and save you from years and years of intensive psychotherapy on a count of her insanity, then she has to eliminate that insanity before you arrive, right? She has to introduce you to a normal world. A normal home. A normal mom.”
Grabbing a carton of orange juice, she swigged straight from the bottle.
“I appreciate you letting Mommy wake up this morning without racing straight to the toilet to throw up.” She made a fist and gave her stomach a tap. She smiled softly, but the smile didn’t stay for long. “We’re going to be okay. Even if Dad is ten. Even if you’ll never know him. Even if Mom still has a lot of work to do. Even if you weren’t planned out as thoroughly as you deserve…. We’re going to be okay. Jax Murphy is dead and gone, right? That’s always a plus…” Veda smiled at the thought, leaving the orange juice on the counter while trudging toward the bathroom, feeling the familiar, uncontrollable gurgle in her stomach. “Let’s go throw up…”
But as she was making her way to the bathroom, the voice of the female news anchor rang into the air.
“The police need your help in identifying the body of a man who was found in the Mackenzie River yesterday morning…”
Veda stopped dead in her tracks, and her heart did too. The bile that raced up her throat was almost impossible to swallow back, but she managed, swiveling on her heel. Her wide eyes flew towards the TV.
“The man was found washed up at the edge of the water. Apparently, his pants leg got caught on a rock…” The news anchors shared a look as the female anchor continued. “According to police, that was the only thing that kept his body from being pulled out to sea…”
“The Mackenzie isn’t even open to the public anymore is it, Sally?”
“No, it’s not, John. The bridge was closed nearly ten years ago when engineers deemed it too feeble to carry weight. It sits over the single most dangerous body of water in all of Shadow Rock.”
Veda’s chest heaved. Just when she was sure her heart couldn’t pummel her ribs any harder, it did, making her feel like she was on the verge of a full-blown asthma attack. She clawed her nails into her stomach, the blood pumping through her veins at record speed, making her ears throb and rendering the anchor’s voices muddled.
“If you have any information please contact the Shadow Rock Police Department at…”
Veda swiveled on her heel when her stomach heaved, clapping a hand over her mouth and racing to the bathroom.
The bile flew up her throat before she could make it to the toilet, so she grabbed desperate hold of the bathroom sink, emptying her sick stomach there instead.
It was the most intense morning sickness she’d had, for good reason, and as Veda found herself racing back into her bedroom, snatching her phone up from her charger, and dialing a number, she had a feeling this was only the beginning.
“Yo, it’s all good,” Hope’s voice rang in through the speakerphone before Veda said a word, smacking her gum, cool as a cucumber as always. “So they found him. So what? We wore gloves when we broke into his house. And in the very unlikely event that we did leave evidence behind on his body, the water has washed it away. They have no way of tracing it back to us. We just have to lay low until this all goes away.”
Still heaving from the marathon vomit session, Veda spoke with a strained voice. “How can you be so calm right now?”
Veda was beginning to wonder if this was the first man Hope had ever killed. Judging by Hope’s tone of voice, just as calm and cool as it’d be ordering a number four at McDonald’s, Jax Murphy’s blood definitely wasn’t the first to touch Hope’s hands. Maybe not even the second, third, or fourth.
Hope responded, still relaxed, proving Veda right. “Like I said, V. Just lay low, and this will go away. That piece of shit raped you, right?”
Veda’s eyes slammed closed. “Right.”
“And before you pussied out, the original plan had been to kill him anyway, right?”
“Right.”
“That animal fucking deserved it…” Hope paused. “Right?”
Veda nodded as if Hope could see her. “Right.”
“Don’t worry, V.” Hope laughed softly. “You just focus on having a happy birthday, alright?”
It was Veda’s turn to laugh.
It was abysmally early in the morning, and she’d already managed to forget what day it was. It was easy to forget when one’s life was falling apart as spectacularly as hers.
“Right,” Veda chortled. “Happy fucking birthday to me.”
8
Happy fucking birthday to her, indeed.
Veda always pretended she didn’t want attention on her birthday. She didn’t want the big doe eyes, the big song and dance, and all the big hoopla that most people demanded. But as she found herself signing into the welcome desk with Latika, perusing the hallways and meeting eyes with her fellow employees—nary a birthday wish in sight—emotion stung her eyes.
She knew she was hated around those parts. There wasn’t a single employee in that hallway who hadn’t endured the wrath of “new Gage”, and every last one of them blamed her for it.
Why in the world would they wish her a happy birthday?
Quite the contrary, they were probably praying for her untimely death before she did something else to ruin all their lives.
She lowered her eyes when they began to burn, avoiding the looks from everyone in the hallway as she entered the employee on-call room.
Once inside, she looked up, and her mouth fell open.
“Happy birthday, Veda!” A dozen or so of her fellow employees, all wearing different colored scrubs, threw their arms over their smiling heads as they cried those three words in unison. A small chocolate cake sat on the desk in the corner of the room with an unlit pink candle in the middle. A few cards had been laid next to it, along with a rectangular present wrapped in polka dot paper.
Tears now bubbled in Veda’s eyes for a completely different reason. She clapped a hand over her eyes to hide them, and her co-worker’s laughter filled her ears, followed by their excited clapping, thrilled their surprise had landed.
A pair of arms encircled Veda and pulled her into a hug. She knew instantly from his unique scent, his slim frame, and the sound of the chuckle tickling her nose that it was Jake. She slung her arms around his waist, squeezing him back.
“Happy birthday, bub.” Jake set his chin on top of her head, his laughter still making her nose tingle. “Are you crying?”
“No…” Veda pouted, only pulling her face from Jake’s chest when the tears had dried. Her eyes floated over the people in the room. A few of her fellow anesthesia residents, a couple of her favorite nurses, some of the administrators, and even a few of the doctors she loved. All smiling back at her. “You guuuuuys,” she purred, covering her pounding heart.
Sniffling softly, she stepped out
of Jake’s hold and moved around the room, hugging everyone else too. Only after she’d embraced each person did she come back up next to Jake, pouting as he bent down and lit the wax candle in the middle of the chocolate cake.
“Wow,” Veda said, fully recovered from her emotional reaction, holding her hands out at her sides. “I have friends in this place? I thought everybody hated me.”
“Jake paid us all ten bucks to be here.”
“Aw…. Jake,” Veda cuddled up to him from where he was still bent over, lighting her candle, even as everyone’s soft laughter surrounded her, assuring her that they were joking. That there were at least a few people in that hospital who didn’t see a scarlet letter blaring from her chest every time they laid eyes on her.
Just as Jake got the candle lit, the door to the room flew open, and Coco Lockwood appeared, panting softly. Her dark brown cheeks were slightly red from running, long black ponytail still swinging behind her as her wide brown eyes met Veda’s.
Veda hadn’t even realized the room had been incomplete until her favorite student nurse came barreling in, and found herself crossing the room with her arms out.
Coco accepted Veda’s hug with a smile. “I’m so sorry I’m late, Veda. I wanted to make it in for the big surprise, but my mom and I got in a car accident on the way here. It was completely her fault. I swear to God, she drives like a ninety-year-old Asian woman.” Coco held a hand out across the room. “No offense, Dr. Jin.”
“Yeah, Asian people can’t drive.” Dr. Jin shrugged, assuring Coco that there was no apology necessary, soft laughter following her half-hearted admission.
Coco’s eyes flew to the candle blaring on top of the cake. “I didn’t miss the birthday song?”
“You didn’t miss it, bub,” Jake said.
A student nurse spoke up from where he sat on one of the bunk beds. “But you’ve been off the last few days, so you did miss the employee meeting where Gage Blackwater delighted us with all the fun ways he plans to fuck up our money and our lives.”
Coco frowned. “That doesn’t sound like Gage.”
Yearn (Revenge Book 4) Page 5