Beginning of Forever (Heaven Hill #7)

by Laramie Briscoe

  He understood what she was saying, but he didn’t want to voice that. He didn’t want her to know just how profoundly she’d changed his life with one act, one night together. He now knew that he would do anything in his power to protect her and to make sure she never left him. The feelings he had were strong, and he wouldn’t be able to ever deny them.

  *

  Meredith groaned. She had to pee in the worst way, but she knew it was early, she could tell by the way the sun wasn’t fully lighting up the room. And it was warm, so warm with her own personal heater lying next to her.

  “Ugh.” She threw the covers back and ran to the bathroom. This was one side effect of pregnancy she did not like. Her bladder woke her up more often than not, and it was beginning to mess with her sleeping pattern.

  “You okay?” Tyler asked a few minutes later as she came back to bed and snuggled next to him, putting her feet on his leg. “Damn, woman, your feet are cold,” he hissed as she ran them up and down his calf.

  She giggled when he grabbed hold of her foot and flipped her so that she was flat against the mattress. “I’m not scared of you,” she told him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  “You should be.” He moved his hand up her leg until he encountered the cloth of her underclothes then wrapped the leg around his body. One thing the two of them were enjoying, now that Meredith wasn’t so tired anymore, was a pickup in the action in the bedroom. It didn’t matter when or where he tried, she was always ready for him.

  She pulled him down so that their lips could touch. “We don’t have a lot of time before we have to go get Addie,” she mumbled before he could devour her.

  “Then we should definitely hurry,” he told her. And then he did devour her.

  Tyler Blackfoot could sometimes take her breath away with the simplest of kisses, but when he put his mind to it, he could destroy her. He made love to her mouth; there was no other way to put it. By the time she felt his fingers at the waistband of her underwear, she was a quivering mess.

  The sound of the cotton ripping was loud in the quietness of the room. “Way to be patient,” she laughed against his lips.

  “Never have been when it comes to you.” He took a moment to pull back and admire her. They’d had a good time the night before. It had been a long while since they’d had a night without Addie. He’d had a few shots of bourbon, and she’d stayed up later than she had in a long time. Without the routine of getting a toddler ready for bed, her makeup was smudged beneath her eyes. She’d never looked more beautiful to him.

  The way he entered her body hadn’t changed, but the feelings he evoked when he did had. From the first time they’d done this since she found out they were expecting, things had been different. It wasn’t a conscious decision on either of their parts, but he treated her gentler than he ever had, and she was more apt not to fight her body for what she wanted, she let it come naturally.

  They clicked now on a level they never had before, and it made everything that much more amazing. As he thrust into her body, she wished they had infinite time together, but she knew they fought a clock—one that was small and demanded attention when she was around.

  She dug her hands into his hair, pulling his mouth from hers. “Already close, Tyler.” She threw her head back against the pillow.

  He had absolutely no problem when it came to getting her there, and he was more than happy to oblige.

  *

  Mandy thanked Layla for driving her home, promising to call her later on in the day. As she made her way up the front porch, Drew and Charity came out of the house, Drew carrying Addie.

  “Hey, where were you last night?” he asked, looking closely at her. “I watched for you and Dalton, but I never saw you. I was getting worried, but then someone said you stayed with Layla?”

  “Yeah.” Mandy nodded her head. “What are you doin’ with Addie?” she asked, taking Drew’s gaze from her.

  “We’re taking her down to Tyler and Meredith. Tyler and I are going hiking today—something different from the normal workout.” He shrugged his shoulders.

  “And I’m heading home, unless you want to hang out,” Charity told her. There was hope in her eyes, but Mandy wasn’t sure that she wanted to be confronted by all the questions so soon.

  “I’m really tired.” She yawned. “I think I’m gonna go take a shower and then hit the bed for a nap. I’ll text you later,” she promised.

  As she walked into the house, Drew turned to Charity. “Why did that feel like a brush off?”

  “Last night was a long night for everybody, and its cold today; it probably wasn’t what you think it is.”

  Charity only hoped that everything was, indeed, okay.

  ‡

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Fuck, its cold.” Tyler breathed heavily into his hands as he and Drew stood outside one morning in November. He stomped his feet against the hard ground, trying to warm them up. They were about to start their warm up run, before they would move it inside to where the old boxing ring was still erected. “C’mon, me and Mer have an important appointment this morning and I can’t be late,” he told the teenager as he started them off on a jog.

  “Oh yeah?”

  His smile was huge. “We get to find out what the baby is today.”

  “That’s exciting.” Drew grinned back. “I remember when mom found out about Tatum. We were all pretty pumped, although I can admit to you that at the time, I had wished it was a boy.”

  “Understandable,” Tyler told him as they ran along the property of the compound. “Is something weighing on you? You haven’t been as talkative the last few days.”

  It had been on Tyler’s mind to wonder if he should ask Drew if something was wrong, but he hadn’t wanted to pry.

  “It’s stupid, but I think Mandy and Dalton are sleepin’ together.”

  Tyler blinked. “As in sex?”

  “Yeah,” he answered tightly.

  “And that’s bothering you?”

  Drew tried to put it into words, but it was hard. He knew that it really wasn’t any of his business, but he couldn’t help it. “In a big way. Dalton is one of my best friends—has been since I came to the clubhouse with mom.”

  “Then I would think you’d trust him with your sister. I think he’d be one of the only people you’d trust with your sister.” Tyler was failing to see the point of this.

  Drew stopped and put his hands on his head, inhaling large gulps of cold air. “Even though Mandy and I are twins, I’ve always been her protector; I’ve always seen myself as the older one.”

  Tyler laughed. “That’s funny, because she’ll tell you the same thing about her.”

  He smirked. “I guess that’s because we do share such a close bond. Either way, I’ve always seen myself as her protector, and I know how guys my age are. I’m not sure whether she’s ready for that or not.”

  “Shit.” Tyler knew he walked a fine line here. He didn’t want to piss off his friend, but he needed to let the kid know that his sister had a right to her own life too. “It’s not your place to say whether she’s ready for that or not. It’s not even Liam’s place. She’s in charge of her own body, Drew. I mean do you even realize what a fucking double standard you have going on here? You and Charity have been active a while. Charity is no different than your sister.”

  “No she’s a lot different than my sister,” Drew argued.

  “You know what I mean. You can’t expect your girlfriend to be one way and then your sister to be another, that’s not fair. You’re all the same age, and if she’s comfortable sleeping with her boyfriend, then that’s up to her.”

  Drew blew out a breath. “I don’t want her to get hurt, and I feel like they’re movin’ way too fast for this.”

  “That’s not your decision.” Tyler looked at his phone, checking the time. “And let me be honest with ya. It’s a real dick move for you to be high-fiving other friends for having sex with their girlfriends and then wanting to hang Dalton for
it. It’s a hugely douchebag move. None of this is your decision, you get no say in it, and I’m telling you, if you say something to either one of them, you’ve probably lost a sister and a best friend. Is it worth it?”

  He shook his head. “No, it’s not, but I’m having a hard time with this.”

  Tyler clapped him on the shoulder. “Wait until your mom finds out you and Charity are having sex. Wanna talk about someone having a hard time with it? Enjoy it while you can, little man, enjoy it while you can.”

  That scared the shit out of him, his mom finding out, because he knew she wouldn’t take it well. He was eighteen though; there wasn’t a whole lot she could do to him. It was knowing she would be disappointed that worried him. Since the problem he’d had with the steroids, he’d done everything he could to win back everyone’s trust, and he didn’t want to risk that again. Glancing to the side, he saw that the sun was starting to come up. “You gotta go?”

  “Yeah, Mer’s appointment is first one of the day, so I gotta rush back and take a shower. Think about what I said, Drew. You’re all adults now, in adult relationships. You may still be in high school, but not for long. You and Mandy? You’ve always been old souls. Don’t let this bother you so much; it’s a natural transition in life.”

  *

  “Are you excited?” Meredith asked Tyler as she lay on the table, waiting for the technician to come in and do her sonogram.

  “This makes me nervous,” he told her as he sat next to her, holding her hand.

  “Why?” There was hardly anything that ever made Tyler nervous, and for the life of her, she couldn’t imagine what about this would make him that way.

  “What if it’s a boy, and what if he’s a disobedient fuck like I was?”

  “Then we be his parents and teach him manners and discipline,” she told him slowly. “I know you never had a lot of stability in your life growing up, but your kids will have that. It’s a whole different world for them, Ty. You’re an amazing father, regardless of what you had as an example.”

  “My example was Liam and how he treated the twins. Had they not come into his life, I would have no idea how to treat a child.”

  “How did he know?” Meredith asked. She hated to bring up William, but he’d never been much of a father figure either.

  Tyler bit his bottom lip and pushed his hair back from his face. “Things like that; they’ve always come easy to Liam. He just knows what to do, and I never could figure out how. He’s a born leader, I think. He doesn’t take no for an answer, and he’ll keep at something until he’s mastered it. Stubborn as all get out.”

  “Then I’m glad you had him to look up to.” Meredith ran her hand through his hair. “He’s a great example.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by a knock and someone coming through the door. “Hello,” the technician said to them. “Sorry we’re a little off schedule today. We had someone call out, and it’s pushed us a few minutes off track.”

  “That’s fine,” Meredith told her. “I’ve waited this long, a few minutes won’t kill me, but I am sayin’ this. Right after we’re done, I really have to find a bathroom.”

  The technician laughed and had a seat. “Then we’ll get this done as quickly as possible, and I’ll do my best not to press too hard on your stomach.” She looked over at Tyler. “Can you grab those lights for me?”

  They were bathed in darkness as she turned the machine on and they heard the steady thumping of the baby’s heart.

  Meredith and Tyler gripped their hands together tightly as they heard that sound. It was the most welcome sound ever.

  “We have a good, steady heartbeat,” she said as she moved the apparatus around on Meredith’s stomach. “Everything is looking very good. I read your report, and all your test results came back A-okay. So, before I tell you, do you two want to know what the sex of baby Blackfoot is?”

  “We most definitely want to know,” Meredith answered for the two of them.

  “Congrats, Mom and Dad…you’re having a boy.” She indicated the male anatomy and looked over right as Tyler’s face went white and he slid of the chair and went down flat on his back.

  ‡

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Oh my God, Tyler. Are you okay?”

  He came to with Meredith and Ashley standing over him. He was lying in the floor, his back pressed against the hard tile.

  “Did you hit your head?” Ashley asked, as they helped him sit up.

  “No, I’m good,” he did his best to reassure them, but he still felt a little faint.

  Meredith did her best to keep the smile off her face. “You’re good? You passed out.”

  It all came back then, they were having a boy. He wasn’t sure why that affected him in such a way, but the room swam again, this time not as a bad. “It was a shock,” he tried to explain.

  “This isn’t unusual,” Ashley explained to the both of them. “Let me go get you some peanut butter and crackers, you’ll feel better once you have something in your stomach.”

  They were left in the room alone as the technician went with her.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Meredith asked as she had a seat on the examination table. “You went down like a pile of bricks.”

  “Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve never, not once, in my life passed out. You should be proud that you had a hand in it. I’ve always managed to keep my shit straight.” He breathed out a long breath, thankful that his heart was no longer pounding in his ears, he no longer had tunnel vision, and his hands weren’t shaking.

  “Even if you’re worried, I’m excited to be having a boy.” She placed her hand on her stomach and gazed at him with so much love. “I hope he’s just like you.”

  That almost made him sway again. “We’re never getting any sleep for the next eighteen years; I was a hellion.”

  She grabbed his hand. “I told you, this baby is not defined by what you did as a teenager. We’ll be fine because we will teach him what it means to have two loving parents and a loving family. History is not going to repeat itself.”

  As Ashley came back in the room, thrusting a package of crackers at him, all he could do was hope that Meredith was right.

  *

  An hour and a half later, Meredith was at CRISIS, sitting at her desk, going over some of the paperwork that would make her life easier. She’d had a discussion with one of her workers the week before and told her that she was cutting back in a big way. The board that dealt with the government regulations on the entity had approved Meredith going part-time and moving Jennifer into the role of the day-to-day operations manager. Now, Meredith was going through files—purging, organizing, and showing Jennifer the ropes.

  “Do I have to file these every month?” Jennifer asked as she pulled incident reports from a temporary holding folder.

  “They should be,” Meredith told her. “But with the pregnancy and all the stuff going on, they’re backed up. Let me take a look through them, and then we’ll see what we need to do.”

  Jennifer handed them over and Meredith glanced through, skimming a few of them, until she came to someone that she’d completely forgotten about. “There was an incident report on Stephanie when y’all confronted her about the drug use?”

  “Yeah, I thought Christine told you.”

  Christine had apparently kept that secret well. It led Meredith to wonder why she had. “No, she never told me about this. Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

  “It was a while ago, and I don’t remember everything, but when we confronted her, she went crazy. She said that she was sick of everyone telling her what to do, and no one could be as perfect as you.”

  If someone had thrown cold water on her, it would have shocked Meredith less. “As me?”

  “Yeah, she said some really weird things about you, but I figured she got fixated. You know how some women come in here, they see someone who’s gone through a lot and they have their shit together, and they get jealous. I figur
ed you were the one she got jealous of.” Jennifer shrugged. “We haven’t heard from or seen her since she left.”

  Come to think of it, Travis had never given her a full report on Stephanie—even when she’d specifically asked him to. She’d meant to confront him about it when they’d gotten back from their vacation, but things had been crazy then. What the hell did Travis and Christine know? What were they hiding from her? “Is Stephanie’s stuff still here, or did she take it?”

  Walking over to one of the lockers, Jennifer leaned in. “She left this bag, and she’s never been back to get it. I didn’t want to tell you then, but I don’t mind telling you now—she kinda gave me the creeps. It was like when she looked at any of us, she was walking on our graves. It was that kind of creepy.”

  Meredith took the bag and had a seat on the carpeted floor. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to get up, but there wasn’t enough room on her desk to go through the contents of the bag. Opening the drawstring, she dumped it out. “Why wouldn’t she come back for these things?” she asked as she saw a journal, some receipts, and a picture album.

  “Maybe she’s planning to,” the other woman speculated as she started going through the receipts.

  Drawn to the picture album, Meredith picked it up and placed it in her lap. She turned the first two pages, seeing pictures of Stephanie with another girl who looked familiar, but she couldn’t place her. That wasn’t unusual though; pregnancy brain was in full effect for her at this point. Turning the page, her heart stopped. There in hot pink and black was a birth announcement for a baby by the name of Addalynn. The date of birth was right, and looking at the baby picture, Meredith knew it was Addie. Stephanie was Addie’s biological aunt. She knew it without anyone having to tell her.

  “Shit,” she cursed as she tried to get up.

  “Hey, don’t hurt yourself,” Jennifer told her as she leaned over and helped the other woman up. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure.” Meredith was breathing heavily, trying to control it. “But I think Stephanie is related to Addie.”