Mister Monster: A Hero Club Novel

by Desiree Lafawn

  “Two,” Dexter continued, not waiting for Ash to respond anyway, “we’ve had some scares early in the pregnancy. Everything’s okay.” He rushed to assure us, even though Ash hadn’t moved and I hadn’t taken my eyes off Bianca’s belly since I first saw it. “But it’s nice and quiet here, and less stressful for Bianca and the baby. So we come here for a day or two to relax when things get too hectic.”

  Ash finally opened his eyes, but made no move to get up from the chair that couldn’t be in any way comfortable. “Yeah, okay, congratulations, Truitt. Bianca. But what are you doing here right now? How did you know we’d be here?”

  “Oh, that.” Dexter grinned wide and I was reminded of how charming he could be when he really put his mind to it. Charming, but nothing more. I had no lingering attraction to him at all, and I was genuinely happy for him and Bianca. And their growing little family. Kids weren’t for me, but for those that wanted them, well, it was wonderful. “Caroline told me.”

  Ash’s head whipped to face me, the look in his eyes one of outrage.

  “I did not.” Like I would be having private conversations with my ex-boyfriend about my travel arrangements with my actual boyfriend. Get real.

  Dexter started laughing again, but it was Bianca that broke the tension. “Your dad told his dad, who told him, who told me. Seriously, Jay, do you ever get tired of poking at Ash? Grow up.” She whacked him with the dust rag but missed, and he laughed again.

  “Jay?” I had no idea why she would call him that.

  “It’s a long story, it’s something she calls me when she’s being bossy.” Dexter grabbed her around the middle, and even though she made a good show of acting like she was struggling, he placed her on the sofa next to him with infinite care and gentleness. I peeked to the side to catch a ghost of a smile on Ash’s mouth. Was he getting soft on those two? Say it wasn’t so.

  They were nauseatingly cute, though.

  “Anyway. We aren’t staying. We just came by to say hi, and explain that it’s us keeping up with the place a little bit, so don’t freak out. And I know you’re coming to meet Caroline’s parents. I…I don’t have any advice for you there, man, sorry.”

  Ash didn’t say anything, but I bet he was thinking about how hard he could hit Dexter and get away without jail time. Instead, he said something that shocked everyone in the room.

  “Thank you.”

  “Excuse me?” Even Dexter was surprised and didn’t think he heard right.

  “Thank you for loving my grandmother and helping to take care of her home. My personal feelings aside, I can’t be here often since I live so far away, and coming here and seeing it look like a lived in home again”—Ash paused and swallowed hard—“Well, it doesn’t matter what I think. Gigi loves her home, even if she doesn’t always remember it. The pictures, the flowers, everything you do for my grandmother…it’s because you love her. And I can’t find fault in that.”

  Dexter didn’t know what to say to that, and neither did Bianca.

  “I still don’t like you though. Bianca, you’re probably okay.”

  Dexter laughed. “Oh, thank God. I seriously did not know what I was going to do if you started being nice to me, man. Don’t throw off the time-space continuum like that.”

  “Seriously, it’s time for you to go. Caroline almost killed us on the way here, and I need some quiet time to remember I’m alive. No annoying house guests allowed. Bianca, you can hang out if you want to. Actually, Bianca, you are welcome any time you want. He has to ask permission.”

  Bianca grinned, not insulted on Dexter’s behalf in the least. “Come on, Jay, let’s go home. I want ice cream from the Bodega on 5th.”

  “But we aren’t going even remotely close to Fifth Street.”

  Bianca smiled. “I want ice cream. From the bodega. On Fifth Street. They have the hot sauce gummies I like. No one else has them. I want the hot sauce gummies. On my ice cream.”

  Dexter jumped from the couch, eager to please the strange eating habits of his expectant wife. As he passed by me he grabbed me up in a giant bear hug, lifting me off my feet completely before setting me gently back down. Ash sprung out of his chair faster than a blink, and by the look on Dex’s face, I knew he got exactly the reaction he wanted. I had never seen this side of Dexter before. To me he’d always been an overconfident, sometimes egotistical friend/lover. Did Bianca bring out this man's child? Interesting what the right relationship could do to a person. I wondered what changes I would bring about in Ash, or he in me.

  “Caroline, you look great. Whatever you’re doing, keep it up. You’re gorgeous.”

  Scratch that. That little shit could go die.

  “Don’t worry about how my wife looks.” It wasn’t a roar, in the animalistic sense, but the windows maybe still rattled in the panes and both Dexter and Bianca looked down at my bare left hand.

  “You guys got married?” Bianca looked skeptical.

  “Not yet.” Ash answered Bianca, but he was giving Dexter the death stare. And for someone who was a good head shorter than Ash, I thought Dex was holding up pretty well for someone holding the stick he’d just used to poke the big, carsick bear.

  “What do you mean, not yet? You didn’t even ask.” Was I even a part of the equation? Wasn’t my input needed?

  “We’re already living together. I gave you four closets. It’s like the same thing.” Ash finally focused his attention on me and the entire living room grew silent.

  “It’s not the same thing at all. This is the most nonromantic thing that’s ever happened to me. We haven’t discussed this. You can’t just talk to people like it’s a done deal. We are meeting my parents tomorrow, get your life straight.” I hissed the last part. God, he was domineering. Showing his ass in front of Dexter just because he gave me a compliment. Man, he was easy to rile up and part of me was pissed he kept taking the bait. But we’d never talked about getting married. Never. Not once. We hadn’t even had the kids talk yet. It was coming, but I kind of hoped we wouldn’t have an audience that included my ex lover, at the time.

  “Well, what would you say if I did ask?”

  “Personally,” Dex interrupted, “I think you guys should just go for it.”

  “Nobody cares what you think,” Ash and I both yelled at Dexter at the same time, while Bianca grabbed his arm and forcibly yanked him out the door. We could hear him laughing all the way down the sidewalk and around the corner. Probably where he parked his car so we wouldn’t know anyone was there. I waited a full fifteen seconds before I turned to face Ash again. He stared me down, waiting for me to saying something, and when I didn’t, he finally spoke.

  “Well?”

  21

  Ash

  I’d never been in the doghouse with anyone before, but after an entire nine-hour drive home in silence, where I did not let Church behind the wheel, I figured out that maybe she might not be happy with me. I made it to about thirty miles out from home before I tried to break the silence.

  “Look, if this is about the storage unit, trust me, you aren’t going to miss that stuff.” Maybe I’d vetoed her bringing some of that stuff home. Okay, maybe I’d vetoed every single piece of the artwork. But most of that stuff was so godawful ugly I couldn’t imagine it hanging on my walls. I mean, our walls. Having to stare at it day after day. Some of it was nothing but random blocks of color with splishes and splashes flickering across it. That’s not art. That’s…scribbles.

  “Some of those paintings were twenty grand a piece. Other pieces are from priceless collections.” Her voice was low and even. We were about to have a fight. I just knew it. I was kind of hoping not to do this now. I had plans for when we got home. I know she was mad at me for what I said in front of Dexter and Bianca, and I admit it was in poor taste. But in all honesty, I’d been thinking of asking her to marry me for a while, I just needed the right moment, and the right ring.

  While the living room in Gigi’s old house with Dexter and Bianca present was definitely not the righ
t moment, and I most certainly didn’t use the right words, I was pretty confident I had the right ring. Church had spent literally hours going through her spacious storage units. Plural. Digging through things she wanted to keep, things she wanted to sell, and things she wanted to donate. Pretty much all the clothes, jewelry, and shoes went into the trailer. Some furniture pieces went in as well. There were no household items to be had. She’d left them in her old apartment when she’d sublet and didn’t care to collect them. We’d bought all new when we moved into the new house anyway. I wasn’t worried about household items. The artwork, though. I had to put my foot down with regard to the multitude of absolutely hideous paintings she had in her collection. I didn’t even get mad when she called Dexter to see if he could find a home for them. She didn’t want to sell them. She wanted them on walls. I laughed when he told her they were ugly too.

  She kicked me out of the storage unit then. Told me to leave her alone in her sorrow. I left her to have her tantrum and took the time to go down to the jewelry store and have them perform maintenance on Gigi’s ring. Luckily, the single karat oval alexandrite stone my grandfather had given my grandmother when they got married. I heard he worked three jobs for two years to afford that ring. I never got to meet the man, but she wore that ring until her hands grew too stiff and her fingers hurt too much to wear jewelry anymore. She gave it to me when I was twenty-two, in the hopes that I would find the perfect woman to give it to. I couldn’t think of another woman I would trust to wear it on her hand other than Church. Never mind it was probably the cheapest piece of jewelry she’d ever been given. She would love it. I knew it.

  I just needed her to get over being mad at me first.

  It wasn’t until she’d stopped ranting that I realized she was waiting for me to say something in response. I couldn’t tell her I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t an idiot. I also couldn’t tell her I was busy thinking about asking her to marry me with my grandmother’s wedding ring when we got home, so please excuse me for being distracted.

  “Look, I love you. And in doing so, I admit there are going to be things we disagree on. But those paintings were fugly, and it’s my wall space too. So if you want to decorate the inside walls of your four closets with those beeps and boops you call artwork, that’s fine. But I don’t want to stare at them when I’m eating my breakfast. Can we just agree to disagree on that?”

  Welp, I wasn’t doing a very good job of diffusing anything. I’m pretty sure I was making it worse. Story of my life with Church, anyway.

  “It isn’t just about the stupid paintings, Ashley.” It didn’t even make me mad when she busted out the full name anymore. “You insulted my father.”

  Hell yeah, I did. “Five minutes after we met, he asked me my net worth. I was completely in my right to tell him it was none of his business. Also, if you tell me he didn’t already look up every minute aspect of my life before we even got there, I’ll call you a liar.”

  “Point taken. But you showed your domineering side in front of my mom, and now I think she has a thing for you.”

  “New flash, Church, lots of women have a thing for me.” I laughed as she slapped my arm. She’d been working on strength training lately, but it still didn’t hurt—much. “Ow. You’re the only one in charge of my thing, though. I swear.”

  She giggled as she swatted at me. Giggling was good. That meant happy, right? Thankfully we pulled into our neighborhood, so we could finally put the road behind us and relax for a while. The trailer could fuck off until tomorrow. I’d worry about unloading it then.

  It was hard not to swell with pride in our new place. We’d opted to build, not in a neighborhood, but on a plot of land in a wooded area not too far from the city where we both worked. The house was big enough, with the promised amount of closet space for Church, and enough bathrooms we wouldn’t have to share counter space if we didn’t want to. There were plenty of bedrooms, but I’d rather reserve them for out-of-town guests than children. We hadn’t had the conversation yet, but I was pretty sure she and I were on the same level when it came to kids. That might change in a few years, and we had time. But right now, I think we were both content with our careers and each other. No need to rush other things. The stone front of the house sprawled across the bare dirt. We’d only moved in recently, the lawn was still bare dirt, I hadn’t even had sod rolled in yet.

  The dirt wasn’t what caught my eye, though. As I pulled the truck in the long, wide driveway, a large flash of white and gold caught my eye. A large, flat package was on the front porch, leaning against the front door, completely covering it. Church looked at me, and I looked at her. Neither of us knew what it was. She got out of the truck first, but I was right behind her, a sinking feeling in my stomach as I approached the porch and saw the bright white wrapping paper covered in gold writing and bells.

  Congratulations. That’s what the paper said. Gold ribbons cascaded from the top, the curly tendrils blowing in the light fall breeze.

  Congratulations. Congratulations on what? Nope. He couldn’t have followed us here. No way.

  But I knew better. Fuck me, I should have known better. Church hooted as she peeled the paper back on one corner and then ripped it straight down, a maniacal grin on her face. I didn’t have to see the garish gold frame, or the splishes and splashes of color to know what was on my front porch. Decorated like a present. A present from Satan, maybe.

  Nope. He wasn’t taking this from me. I was the man here. I was in charge. Caroline jumped up and down on the porch, completely ignoring me, much to my irritation. I wasn’t going to let him get to me. Not today. Not on my front porch of my own house. I was the man here, not Dexter Truitt.

  Hell, might as well let him be right about something. Sinking to my knee on the cement of my walkway, I cleared my throat to get her attention.

  “Hey, Church.” Her eyes widened when she saw me kneeling in front of her. I dug the box out of my pocket, and in probably the coolest move I’ve ever made as a grown man, I flicked it open with one hand, the greenish purple oval glinting in the late afternoon sunlight. Her mouth fell open and I grinned. This was my lady, my Church. And I’d keep her forever if she’d let me.

  “Well?”

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  About the Author

  Desiree Lafawn lives in Ohio, where you can experience all four weather seasons in a single day. She writes contemporary romance, romantic suspense and paranormal romance.

  To read more books by Desiree Lafawn, go to her website

  https://desireelafawn.com