Until Forever (Providence Series Book 3)

by Mary B. Moore

  “Well, we rode a horse, so we saved a cowboy!”

  He scowled at me as I got out of the car and headed towards our special spot to pick up all of the crap that we’d left behind in a hurry. I could hear him still talking to the car as I did it and rolled my eyes. What was it with men and their cars?

  Chapter Twelve

  Cole

  I took one last look at Eb as I was dragged out of my parents’ home by the assholes. I really didn’t want to leave her. Last night, after we’d had our talk, we’d ended up doing the dirty in my car. Admittedly, I’d been a little worried that I was going to end up being bitten and stung to death by ants and mosquitoes again, so we’d had to ruin my poor car, but being inside Ebru was worth it. Initially, I’d been worried about the ever present security, but I knew that they’d make themselves scarce whilst being vigilant of what was around us at the same time. After all, it was their job to remain discreet. I totally needed to take my poor car for a deep clean now, though. The things that the poor baby had seen…

  As much as it had hurt to see how shaky Ebru’s trust in me was, I wasn’t lying when I said it had strengthened us. I refused to thank Adele for anything in life, though. This was why I didn’t want to leave her tonight; the last twenty-four hours had been some of the best of my life. It wasn’t what we did, it was the strong bond that was now in place between us, and she seemed to be happy now which was all I could ever ask for.

  Getting into the car begrudgingly, I sat back as Coleman got behind the wheel and we pulled away from my parents’. Security was still as tight as ever around us and, because we were all going out, the girls and babies were staying with my mom so that a closer eye could be kept on them. As Coleman kept telling us - we still didn’t know who was responsible for what had happened, and even though they were quiet, it didn’t mean that they were done. I’d much rather be safe than sorry, and the other guys agreed with me.

  “Hey, Maya told me what happened to Eb’s sister and her parents’ man,” Ren said from beside me, and I saw Coleman’s eyes move to look at me in the rearview mirror. “That’s…fuck me. I don’t even know how she survived it all.”

  I sighed as I looked out of the window at the trees going past us. I hated talking about her private business, but I’d opened the floodgates on that one when I told the girls. “Yeah. Seeing her break down at her parents’ house was fucking hard as shit. And then the photos…” I trailed off.

  “Did she get her heart tested after it?” Coleman asked from the front, snagging my attention immediately.

  “What for?” Why would she need to do that? I mean, I’d heard of people dying of broken hearts, fuck even dogs did it, but looking at Ebru she didn’t seem to be dying. Wouldn’t it have happened already?

  “To make sure that she doesn’t have the same heart condition,” he explained.

  “Wait, she could have the heart thingy too?”

  “Maybe! It isn’t necessarily the case, but it has happened.”

  Pulling out my phone, I typed out a text to Ebru. Why hadn’t I thought of this? I’d been intending on looking up the condition but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  Me: Did you ever have tests done on your heart? xxx

  It felt like forever waiting for her to reply. I was about to ask Coleman to turn the car around and just say fuck it to the night when my phone buzzed in my hand.

  My forever: No. We’ll talk about it tomorrow. x

  “That would be a no on the tests,” I told the other occupants of the car.

  “You’re gonna want her to get them done, man,” Ren said, and Coleman nodded in agreement as he drove.

  “No fucking shit Sherlock!” Did they think that I didn’t know that?

  Me: We’re getting it done ASAfuckinP

  My forever: Go get drunk

  After all of this, I fucking needed to, but I wanted to be sober when I got home so that I could tell Eb that she was having those tests done regardless. What if she got stressed? Jesus shit, I’d been rough with her when we’d made love. What if it had done damage to her heart?

  Deciding I needed input on this, I told my worries to the car and felt my eye ticking when they all burst out laughing.

  “Dude,” Ren got out through his chuckles. “I know you think you’re hot shit in bed, but no way are you good enough to stop someone’s heart!” he said, making Coleman laugh even harder.

  “You don’t know that,” I argued. “You hear about those guys dying while they’re fucking a chick all the time.”

  “Unless you’re telling us that Ebru’s a chick with a dick, I think you’re fine,” Coleman replied from the front.

  Fuck these guys. I needed to look up the symptoms of the condition and find out all about it. I wasn’t going to lose Ebru ever.

  We’d been at Jilly’s for three hours already, and the alcohol that I’d been forced to drink was helping numb the worry about…wait, what was I worried about?

  “Another!” Luke shouted, getting up unsteadily and waving his arm at the chick behind the bar. Some asshole had decided that we needed Jagerbombs to chase the beers that we’d been drinking, and I had a horrible feeling that I was that asshole.

  “Here’s to babieshhh,” I raised my glass in a toast and went to down whatever was in it, only to find it empty. “Shtop dinking my drunks.”

  Ren was leaning back in his chair with a glassy look in his eyes, while Adam watched us all with a grin on his face. He’d only turned up half an hour ago and Brett, Ren, Luke and me had been drinking since the second we got through the door. The dude needed to catch up. Even Parker, Ethan and Mace were close to being as drunk as we were and those guys could drink their weight in alcohol and still walk in a straight line.

  I couldn’t remember the new chick from the bars name, but she placed a round of drinks in front of us and walked away without saying anything.

  After some slurred talk about babies and baby shit charts, whatever they were, Tony walked up tp us sounding out of breath. I saw Luke, Brett, and Ren look at him and him nod back, but my attention was snagged by the biggest pain in my ass since Parker abused it, sitting surrounded by guys, drunk out of her mind. So long as she stayed the fuck away from me, I didn’t care if she fucked the world.

  “Letsh play a game. Every time shomeone shaysh baby we drink!” Some asshole suggested, and the table erupted in cheers. Again, unfortunately, I think that I was the asshole that suggested it.

  Ebru

  Maya, Isla and I stood staring at the sight in front of us in a mixture of horror, amusement, and confusion. When we’d woken up this morning, the guys still weren’t back, so we called Coleman in a panic about it. He assured us that they were okay and that he had his men watching them. Then he told us where we could find them, which brought us to now.

  Looking over the line of assholes propped up against the wall still out cold, I took in the decorations on their faces.

  “What do you think Luke is meant to be?” Isla asked, and I looked at him more closely.

  “Either the victim of a failed boxing match or a panda?” I guessed. He had big black circles that had been colored in around his eyes, and across his forehead was something that looked a lot dodgy, a little like bamboo, but a lot like a dick.

  “I think Ren is meant to be a tiger,” Maya guessed.

  Looking at the blue lightning bolt type stripes all over his face, I added another option. “Or David Bowie?”

  Mace I was guessing was a fox because he had the tip of his nose colored in with whiskers on either side of it, upside down V’s on his forehead and something that looked like What Did the Fox Say written across his forehead. Either that or it was Arabic. We continued to look over the group and guessing what animals they’d decided to decorate themselves as, but it was the lint licker above them that we all kept looking back at.

  I don’t know how they’d done it, but Cole was Duct Taped horizontally to the wall in a Superman pose. It looked lik
e they’d used around twenty rolls of the tape. That wasn’t the most eye-catching thing about it, though.

  “Where do you think they got the rainbow glitter unicorn horn from?” Isla asked.

  “Tony brought it,” Baz said gruffly from behind us. He had been laughing since we pulled up, and not chuckles, full blown belly belts.

  I looked at the man in question, who was out cold with the rest of them on the floor, and rolled my eyes. “I should have guessed.”

  “I wonder what they stuck it to his forehead with?” Maya asked, pointing out a really good question and making me wince at the thought of what they’d found to do the job while they were drunk.

  “I believe it’s attached by a bit of elastic,” one of Baz’s men who was standing beside us staring at the sight in front of us said.

  Looking at each other, we all took a couple of steps backward and started taking photos with our phones. At that moment, Brett fell forward and landed with his face down straight on Parker’s crotch.

  “I’m getting these framed,” I snorted, flicking through all of the photos on my phone.

  “Are we going to wake them up and get Cole down from the wall?” Isla asked, sounding as hesitant to do it as I was feeling at that moment.

  Looking up at the line of filthy animals and Cole taped to the wall with a unicorn horn on his head and “I’m a unicorn” written on the tape, with an unfortunately and again badly drawn unicorn horn on his crotch, I came to a decision.

  “Why deprive the town of seeing this first hand? So, is anyone up for some breakfast at the diner?” We all turned and walked back to the SUV leaving whoever was their security detail behind to watch them. “Hey, can you record it when they start to wake up?” I shouted back at one of Coleman’s guys who was still standing glaring at the twats. Thankfully he nodded, so we got into the car and went for something to eat.

  Cole

  “So, who's idea was it then?” Mom asked as she stood at the top of the table with her arms crossed over her chest while we all sat staring into our mugs, doing our best not to yak all over the place.

  “I think I’m dying,” Tony whined, letting his head fall forward to smack onto the table with a thump, making us all groan at the loud noise.

  “How are we going to get it off our faces?” Brett grumbled, still rubbing at his with a wet cloth.

  “That’ll teach you not to get drunk and touch markers, won’t it?” Mom snapped. The girls hadn’t been here when we’d gotten home, and they still hadn’t returned. We knew that they were safe, though, because Baz was with them, but they weren’t answering any of our text messages and calls.

  “I don’t know what you’re worried about, fuck face,” I snapped. “You’re not the one with a glittery rainbow unicorn horn Duct Taped to your forehead!”

  The worst bit about that was that it had an elastic band that would have held it to my head, but whoever had put it on me had gone the extra mile and had taped it to my forehead. We didn’t see it until I tried to take it off and moved my hair out of the way. I was dreading pulling it off after the pain of the tape restraints.

  “Oh sweet Jesus,” Parker mumbled, looking at the screen of his phone. “Have any of y’all been online today?”

  “Funnily enough, it wasn’t a priority,” Brett snapped, still rubbing his face until Mom reached across and snatched the cloth away from him. I’m pretty sure if he rubbed anymore he’d have hit brain.

  Turning his phone around, we all moved in our seats so that we could see what he was so int…

  “Those evil bitches!” Tony shrieked, after what we were looking at had sunk in.

  There weren’t just a couple of pictures of us all passed out, there were group photos and close ups and…

  “What the fuck are you doing, Brett?” Parker shouted as he got to a picture of Brett’s face in Parker’s crotch.

  “I always wondered, you know?” Ren shrugged as he looked at the photo and then between Brett and Parker.

  “Fuck you. Go back to the Labyrinth,” Brett grumbled, making me snort at the awesome David Bowie joke.

  “Kiss my ass. Besides, Cole’s the one with crystal balls!”

  There was silence as we continued looking through the photographs. I still couldn’t understand how the fuck they’d got me on the wall like that, and none of us could remember it either. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that they had help from someone who was sober. The video of us all waking up proved that, but there had been six of Coleman and Baz’s men there when we’d woken up so it could be any of them, if not all of the assholes. The second the tape gave way and I’d fallen on top of them had been recorded, in slow motion. Unfortunately, Mace might be harboring a small grudge against me for the rest of my life seeing as how my arm had remained taped to the wall and he’d been sitting underneath me, so rather than landing flat, my ass had ended up in his face. It was shown perfectly not only on the video, but there were also photos of the moment.

  I would never admit that I made sure that those markers were permanent, and that Jilly had been more than willing to get them out of the storage room for me. I’d decided after the ‘Stang incident that I was going to get revenge on them all for everything that they’d done. This one had almost worked out perfectly if it wasn’t for the unicorn horn; the next one was going to be better.

  Right now, though, I was dying a slow and painful death and whatever was left in my stomach was making its way back up at an alarming rate. When I got to the porcelain God, I flung my head forward to get it all into the bowl, but unfortunately, poor unicorns weren’t designed to throw up in toilets. The horn connected with the back of the toilet, keeping my head over the seat instead, meaning that what came up at that moment went everywhere. The collision had been strong enough though to rip the duct tape sticking the horn to my head off, taking a billion layers of skin with it. Thankfully the next heave of the contents of my stomach went into the bowl…unfortunately so did the glittery horn. Good, I fucking hoped one of those assholes got butt Pepsi and sat down without looking! They’d totally get the point…

  Ebru

  Two weeks later…

  It had been two weeks since drunkgate, and a week since I’d been to visit my mom after her surgery. She was doing well, and they were happy with her progress and ready to start her treatment. It had been hard seeing her lying in bed attached to all of the machines and tubes, and was made harder by the fact that I knew exactly what they were all for and what all of the discoveries and diagnoses meant. The outlook was good, though, and Dad was hoping to bring her here in a couple of months for the weekend.

  We were all at the lake now celebrating Cole’s twenty-fifth birthday, and the guys were in the water playing around on jet ski’s and water skiing. We’d tried to get a turn on one of the jet skis, but they’d refused to share, so we had come out of the water and were lying out on blankets with the babies miraculously still asleep. How they slept with the amount of noise being made, I’ll never know, but I guess if you’re a Townsend or Montgomery you need to be able to sleep through anything.

  Lying at my feet was the tiny micro piglet that I’d bought Cole for his birthday after seeing how upset he was when he had to give Pippa and Dash back to Ren and Maya last week. His family had also bought him a puppy that was lying curled up next to the piglet. It was an Irish Setter, which I’d never heard of before, and the dark red color of its fur was just beautiful. It also had these big old flappy ears that made my heart melt. You’d never have guessed that they’d just met the night before at Cole’s parents’ house given how close they were lying to each other at the moment. I’d expected Cole to name them immediately, but he was so shocked when they’d been brought in that he’d had a total brain fart and couldn’t think of any names. Personally, I was rooting for Winston for the piglet and Poppy for the dog, but who could tell with Cole.

  At that moment, a couple of the EMT’s that I knew from work walked up to us, and I introduced them
to Isla, Maya, Ava, and Scarlett. They spent a couple of minutes talking to us, but it was long enough that all of the men got out of the water and walked up to us practically growling. Mace had been driving the boat while Cole water ski’d, so it was a shock when I looked up and saw that he was one of the guys walking towards us. Looking behind them, Cole looked like he was in agony as he slowly made his way out of the water. When he reached the bank, and I saw how stiffly he was walking and that his knees were slightly bent, I jumped up, but Colette got their first.

  “What happened, kiddo?” we heard her yell out. The guys and EMT’s all turned and looked over at him, their jaws dropping open at the same time when they saw how he was walking.

  “Someone,” he hissed, glaring at Mace, “didn’t give me any warning. Someone, turned so quickly that the handle was yanked out of my hand making me land on my ASS!” he yelled.

  Rolling his eyes, Mace scowled at Cole. “Stop being such a fuckin’ drama queen. We’ve all fallen!”

  “Really?” Cole snarled as he walked up chest to chest with Mace. “If I’d fallen on my ass, I’d be fine. But this wasn’t a fall. I ski’d across the water on my ass!” he raised his voice on the last two words, and I’m pretty sure that we were all trying to figure out why this was so bad. Admittedly, I’d never ass ski’d, but it couldn’t be that painful, could it? “Do you know what happens when you water ski on your ass, Mace?”

  Mace just shrugged and continued looking bored, but Cole had all of our attention now. Even the puppy and piglet, who’d woken up, were staring at Mace.

  “You get a high-speed enema you pimple dicked fuckwad!” he yelled. The chorus of gasps told me that his audience, and most likely everyone else around the lake, was now feeling his pain.

  “You’ve got shit luck Captain Glitter Horn,” Tony broke the silence, getting the finger in return.