Until Tom, Finding Forever (Providence Book 5)

by Mary B. Moore

  I’d experienced a lot of firsts over the last year, but this was my first time beating the shit out of someone while laughing my ass off. Only my pretty girl would get his name wrong!

  That thought resulted in me getting punched in the eye, but it was worth it because I had to move my leg to keep my balance and my knee ended up in Taint’s taint. I remembered the feeling of your scrotum connecting with your tonsils well, and normally I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but this asshole had it coming.

  Jumping up and away from the writhing ball of glitter on the floor, I walked over to the nurse for an update, refusing to look back to see what he was doing.

  “I need information on my fiancée, Sonya Hart.”

  The poor woman looked like she’d just left kindergarten, and her eyes were darting between me and Tate - who I assumed was still nursing his injury.

  “Um, the doctor is just with her now,” she replied, taking a step back.

  I was used to people who didn’t know us reacting like this, we just seemed to get that kind of response from people like they thought we were contagious. Then again, with the speed that we were reproducing, maybe we were?

  At that moment, the door opened and out came a doctor that we knew well. Thankfully it wasn’t my date disaster’s dad again. This time it was the Parker Knight - Ren’s best friend.

  Sighing, he took us all in. “Which one of you does she belong to this time?”

  Raising my hand to get his attention, I asked, “How is she?”

  Running his hands through his hair and looking more stressed than I’d ever seen him, he replied, “She’s asking if she can go back and leave a note for the guy that she ran over. Apparently, a taint wouldn’t let her?”

  “It’s fucking Tate,” the broken nut sack groaned from the floor.

  Looking him over and deciding that he’d forego his Hippocratic oath to treat someone who was ill or injured to the best of his ability, Parker looked back at me with pleading eyes. “Can you come and do something before I have to sedate her?”

  “Why would you have to sedate her?” Archer asked, stepping out of the group and allowing me to see that my two other cousins, Levi and Ariana, along with my aunt and uncle had also joined us. Ah, fuck!

  “You want me to list them?” Parker inquired, recognizing my aunt and uncle and giving them a wave. I noticed that he kept his distance from my cousins though and figured that he must have had a run in with them at some point over the years – most people had.

  “Well now I do,” Archer was struggling not to laugh. “You can’t say the word ‘list’ and then not follow it up!”

  Hoisting himself up onto the desk behind him, Parker held up his hands and started to tick off the points as he listed them. “Firstly – she’s upset that she had to decide on one color for her cast. Apparently, we’re being, and I quote, ‘colorists’. Secondly – when she was given pain medication to help her, she said that she much preferred the grape ones that she’d had as a kid. This she shared with us after she’d spat them out into my pocket. Thirdly – she keeps talking about being saved by the cast of Twilight.” Looking down at my cousin, he raised an eyebrow, obviously figuring out the answer to that one. “Fourthly – she wants to go back to the ‘mean bastard’ that she accidentally hit and leave a note for his insurance company, like I said. When we told her that this wasn’t possible, she said that she’d borrow an ambulance if we didn’t let her…and that she was only saying borrow because then we couldn’t get pissed at her for driving a vehicle with pretty lights. Fifthly…”

  “How many of these are there?” I interrupted, curious as to what else could possibly be coming, but also desperate to get to her.

  “More than you want to know, and I’m being sparing with what I list,” he informed me before going back to the list. “Fifthly – she wanted to go into the OR to check on her friend Tony. Apparently, she feels responsible for half of his ass being shot into a tree. Sixthly – she wants to go back to the tree to pick it up for him. Seventhly – she also wanted us to wake him up to ask him what kind of makeup he had used on his face because none of it had come off. Eighthly…”

  “Where’s Taint?” Her voice yelled from behind the closed door, stopping Parker from revealing any more – at least that’s what we thought.

  “And eighthly – she informed us all that your grandparents had a new sex swing on their porch and boxes of sex toys being delivered to their house. She said that it made Christian Grey look like a vanilla bastard instead of a kinky one. She also wanted us to know that when Gram was whipping cream for pancakes the other day, she used a vibrating anal plug,” he rushed out, before jumping down and walking away quickly.

  “Hey, how is Tony’s ass? Could you save it? Do you need a donor because I can donate some of mine! Just stay away from the center parting…” Hearing this, Parker did an about turn and jogged past us in the opposite direction to where Sonya was still shouting about her rescuers butt.

  “Hey, do you know what I just figured out?” Cole mused as we all stood listening in horrified fascination. “She’s a Hart, Isla was a Hart before she married Luke! Do you think they’re related? Maybe she’ll have evil twins too!”

  The thought made shivers of horror run down my spine. The twins were adorable, but they really were part evil. What was completely evil was the devastation that their asses could cause. If I got kids like that…

  “Just lemme go check and I’ll come right back. His butt could still be right where he left it. It was a tree, a green one next to another green tree – I know exactly which one…”

  Just then a nurse came running out and leaned against the door to keep it shut. Looking over at us pleadingly, she held onto the door for dear life.

  “What did you give her?” Cole asked. He was the poster child for why people should never take painkillers, so much so that we only gave him kids Tylenol and Ibuprofen now. Even then, it affected him in the worst ways and had led to him forever being taunted by unicorns.

  “Vicodin,” she rasped. “Then valium because she wouldn’t stay still.”

  Wincing, Cole whistled. “That’ll about do it!”

  At that moment, it sounded like an elephant had hit the door, and the nurse went flying forward into Archer.

  Running up to it, I opened it to see a slightly disorientated Sonya staggering back down the hallway talking about chopped nips and asshole’s neighbors. Speaking of assholes, if she bent down in that gown the world would be seeing hers, so I ran up behind her and tried to steer her in the direction of a bed.

  “Did you check her for a concussion?” I asked over my shoulder, but the nurse was long gone.

  “Oh, hey,” she sang as I lay her down on the first bed we came to. “Did you see that I got saved by Edward? But he didn’t bite me. Why didn’t he bite me? Doesn’t he like me? I’ll bet Layla said something to him, that mean bitch! I wonder how they sparkle? Do they drink diamonds? Oh my God, does blood have diamonds in it? Is that why they call them blood diamonds?”

  Where the fuck was this all coming from?

  At that moment, Parker walked up behind me with a syringe in his hand. “Trust me when I say, this is for our own good. And yours, but mostly ours. Say night-night to the sparkly people.”

  She fell asleep with her finger in the air pointed at Parker. Totally Townsend material because I could have sworn that Maya had done the same thing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sonya

  Now I wish that I’d reversed over the car jumping bastard. I’d been in this place for twenty-four hours and the mean shit who said he had a medical degree said they were keeping me in for another two days for ‘observation’. Observation my ass!

  “But, I want to go home!” I whined to Layla. Whining was such an unattractive thing to do, but on occasions it was necessary – like when you were being held hostage in a hospital.

  “No.”

  “But I don’t like it here. It smells,” I aimed that at Parker who was writ
ing something down. “You smell too,” I told him, but he didn’t even blink – just continued writing down whatever the fuck it was that he was writing. “Are you finishing off your Sudoku or something?”

  Looking over at Tony who had been moved into the room with me, he ignored me and asked him, “How’s the pain?”

  “Like I’ve been humped by a Gorilla,” he groaned and we all winced at the mental image. Some things should never be referred to, and that was one of them if you asked me.

  “You’re due more meds in an hour,” Parker informed him as he set down the paper on the table allowing me to see what he was doing.

  It fucking was Sudoku! I knew that they used iPad looking things nowadays, I just figured that because he was a fraud that he would have to use a pen and paper.

  “You try having your ass shot into your gut,” Tony snapped.

  On a technicality, Tony’s injury hadn’t been as bad as we’d thought. In fact, it ended up being a deep graze. Well, the width of the bullet had gone through his butt cheek leaving a gaping wound, but they were calling it a ‘deep graze’. Unfortunately, it did mean that Tony would have a slight depression in the area, so his cheeks wouldn’t be symmetrical. But as Tom had said – it’s unlikely that any body part was symmetrical, including our faces. Plus, he had two of these depressions in his own butt cheek where the bullet that had hit him had gone through and come back out the other side, so he kinda knew what he was talking about - Mensa membership aside.

  It was nice having my new buddy in the room with me, especially now that they’d finally gotten the makeup off his face. Who knew that SeneGence stuff could stay on like it had, or that it would take so much work to get it off? I’d had many problems with my makeup running down my face through no fault of my own, so I was gonna have to invest in this shit.

  Tony’s boyfriend worked at the hospital we were in, so he’d been taking care of us more often than not. That worked out quite well in our favor because it meant that we got the good food instead of the nasty hospital crap that everyone else got. I never knew that they served steaks and stacks of pancakes with strawberries in these places. I’d have to come here more often!

  “Hey, where’s Tom?” I asked Layla who had picked up Parker’s Sudoku and was looking at it in horror. Yeah, I couldn’t do that shit either.

  “Uh, he had to go get something,” she muttered, dropping the book back down and walking out of the door.

  “What the hell was that all about?” I asked Tony who was eating one of the biggest strawberries that I’d ever seen. Unfortunately, when he shrugged, he dropped the half that was being held between his fingers on his crotch leaving behind a big red smear.

  Well, that was unfortunate!

  Tom

  “That’s disgusting!” Gramps pointed at the sign in the window that read – Come in and pick your ring today. Who the fuck thought that wording was a good idea?

  “So, when are you going to propose to her?” Cole asked as we walked into the jewelry store with Gramps trailing behind us.

  “Holy sheezus,” Gramps crowed looking at the huge ring in the display beside the door. That was just asking for someone to rob you leaving it there if you asked me. “Look at the price of this!” He gestured at the price nipple beside it. That’s what it looked like anyway – a nipple with a lot of dollars on it. “I struck it lucky with Lindee, ya know! There’s no way that she’d be interested in something like this.”

  “Let’s check, shall we?” Cole whipped his phone out, took a photo and then fiddled with the screen while Gramps tried to wrestle it out of his hand.

  “You betraying bastard,” he fumed just as Cole’s phone dinged.

  “Well, what do ya know – you really are lucky. She said she loves it and thank you because it’s a thousand times better than the cheap piece of shit you proposed with,” he read off his screen before turning to the sales woman behind the counter and beaming at her. “He’ll take it. Say, do you do gift wrap?”

  Turning away from the argument that was about to follow, I looked back at the rings in front of me.

  What kind would she like? She was so small that whatever I got would look huge on her hand, but I wanted to get something perfect for her.

  I guess most guys in my shoes would be worrying about rejection, but that wasn’t something that I had. She would say yes, no matter what. I was the most stubborn and persistent of the Townsends – well, I thought I was, but maybe Layla could beat me by a hand – so she really had no option. No, my worry was how to propose. I didn’t want it to be cheesy, I wanted it to be memorable and special.

  “Found one yet?” Cole asked over my shoulder.

  Shaking my head, I went back to looking. After a while, it all started to look the same – sparkly with a touch of precious metal. Gold, white gold, platinum, silver and glittering gems in all shapes, colors and sizes. That’s when I saw a slightly wider white gold band with a diamond that looked like it was in the shape of a feather.

  Pointing at it, I looked back at Cole who was looking bored out of his brain. He looked down and then back up at me as if I was crazy.

  “Jake!”

  Looking blankly back at me, he asked slowly, “The turkey or the constantly pissed off guy?”

  “The turkey!”

  Nodding, he shrugged and then looked back down at the display. “If it stands out to you, then get it man.”

  Beckoning for the sales woman to come over, I pointed at it and waited for her to put it on the counter. She was reeling off statistics and points like it was an Olympian, but I just wanted to see it up close to make sure.

  Turning it to the left and to the right, I made my decision. “I’ll take it!”

  Beaming at me, she left to go and get whatever shit it was that she needed.

  “You know, you’re meant to test the quality of the gold by biting on it,” Cole snickered, putting the idea in my head.

  Raising it to my mouth and biting down with my back teeth, I had just started to release it again when Gramps came up and smacked me on the back, shooting my head forward and the ring went down my throat with the force.

  “So, have we found one?”

  “Yup, show him, Tom,” Cole encouraged, looking at my empty hands in confusion and then back at me.

  I tried to cough that shiny bastard back up, but nothing was happening. I could even feel it slipping further down.

  “Well?” Gramps prompted, squeezing my shoulder and looking over at my hands. “Where is it?”

  The horrified expression on my face let Cole know that his suspicions were correct. At that moment, the sales woman returned and laid everything out in front of us.

  “Would you like me to wrap it for you?”

  “Um, no thank you. We’ll just take it,” Cole said for me because I was still choking on the expensive feather. “Why don’t you ring it up while I put it in this pretty box. He’s kind of anxious to get going.”

  “Can I at least see it before we go?” Gramps was a persistent old shit.

  “Yeah,” I croaked around the glittering nugget that was now making its way to my stomach. “I’ll show you in a couple of days.”

  ****

  Four days later…

  I don’t think Parker would ever let me live it down. When I’d gotten back to the hospital, I’d gone into his office to ask his advice on shitting a diamond out. I knew that biologically it would happen at some point, but what if it got stuck? He’d burst out laughing after I’d explained, given me some laxatives and told me to have a colander ready.

  Every time I saw him after that, he couldn’t look me in the eye and instead laughed to the point of tears and sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. That wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t changed the lyrics to – ‘like a diamond in your brown eye’. The man was just sick!

  On the fourth day - and with the assistance of a colander that was burned to ashes afterwards – out came the shiny feather. I cleaned that expensive shit, literally, with bleach
and one of Gramps denture cleaners, and then sent it off to a lab for sterilization. I didn’t tell them what had happened, but I’d found them online and had made sure that they did a rush service.

  It’s amazing what results come in when you did a Google search for, ‘cleaning shit off your ring’. In fact, I was thinking that maybe I needed to replace my phone because that was some gross stuff.

  The man who had been hit by the car had been found. There was no need to write a nice note to his insurance company because he was dead. She felt bad about taking his life until they’d showed us the weapons that he was carrying on him. I think it was the serrated machete that changed her mind about it all. Two others had been injured by Tate and his explosive party favors and were currently handcuffed to their hospital beds while they recuperated enough to be moved to their new residences in the county jail. We hadn’t tracked Ray Lagan down yet, but Cole was working hard with Coleman on it, while I looked after Sonya.