by Mila Cole
“I’m eighteen.”
“Yes, you are.” She gave me a sweet motherly smile.
I was still worried. “We can’t let Dad kill Slick. He won’t, will he?” My words frantic as they left my mouth.
She pulled me to her chest and gently rubbed my arm. “Shhh. We will figure it out. But I think you better tell Slick how you feel. You don’t want to go through all the trouble of picking a fight with your dad if he doesn’t feel the same way. And I’m not saying he doesn’t, but you should be sure.”
“You’re right.” I perked up. “I have to tell him.”
Trim walked through the door, and Mom and I were still lounging on the couch.
“Trim!”
“Hey,” he answered.
“I have to tell Slick how I feel.” Clearly the two glasses of wine I’d drank had kicked in. “I’m going to tell him I love him. Can you take me to him?”
Both he and Mom were laughing at my outburst. I was obviously making a fool of myself, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t wait. He had to know while I still had the balls to go through with it. Trim didn’t seem to be surprised that I admitted I loved Slick. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, but either way it was time that Slick knew.
“I can take you,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
“Tomorrow?” I glanced over at my mother. “You don’t mind, do you?” I asked since I’d be cutting our trip a little short. But I didn’t want Dad to get suspicious. He would think that I was still visiting Mom.
“No. I don’t mind. But you have to call me and tell me all about it.”
“I will.”
Mom and I spent the rest of the night talking. We stayed up until midnight gabbing about all the things we hadn’t talked about in so long. I filled her in about the date auction and all the money we’d raised for the fundraiser.
Our talk was amazing. She’d missed out on so much with her career, and I knew she felt guilty about it. I was a grown woman, and so many things had passed that she was never a part of. It hurt to think about, because deep down I felt like she was absent more than she was there. But I had a feeling that things were going to get better between us. We talked about taking a girls’ trip soon and getting a much-needed vacation where the two of us could catch up even more. It sounded wonderful.
It was going to be hard to leave her the next day, but she’d be home in one week. Then the two of us were going to fix whatever was going on with Dad. At least, that’s what I was hoping for.
Fingers crossed.
Twenty-Seven
Slick
Chloe and I were in the middle of building the biggest and best LEGO castle known to man, when someone knocked on our door. I had yet to tell her that we were going to have to move again, because I wasn’t ready for the letdown. Just when things were going so well, I was going to up and take it all away. Some great uncle I was.
“Keep going. We have to figure out a way to make a roof for that tower,” I told her as I stood up from the floor to go answer the door.
We weren’t expecting company, so I looked through the peephole to make sure that there wasn’t some armed man on the other side. Not that I could defend us much with no shirt on and a pair of baggy sweatpants.
Tony’s face was just inches away from the hole in the door. It was all I could see.
“Damn, you’ve got a big head!” I shouted as I swung the door open.
Tony smiled, showing all his teeth. The big goofball.
“I thought you were out of the country until tomorrow?”
“Well… We decided to come back early.”
“We?” I questioned. He was acting funny, unlike himself. I’d known the man many years, and I could just tell something was up.
He stepped aside, and there she was. Lighter stood there wearing the Phillies baseball cap I’d gotten her. Her bottom lip was sucked in as she stood there nervously swaying back and forth. Neither of us said anything, but I was still in shock. What could I say? She looked so small and beautiful. She was wearing a pair of baggy jeans and a plain white T-shirt that was tied in a knot on her side. It almost hurt me to look at her, because she so easily took my breath away.
“Well, this is awkward,” Tony announced as he pushed me aside and walked into my apartment. “Chloe!” he called out. “Where’s my girl?”
“So. Um. What are you doing here?” I asked. Lighter was still standing in the hallway.
Her sweet voice made my heart beat faster. “I was hoping we could talk. Can I come in?” she asked. Her eyes flicked to my bare chest as I moved to the side and let her into my apartment.
Tony was standing in the living room with Chloe in his arms. She was hugging the life out of him. Her castle was long forgotten.
“Lighter!” Chloe called out when she noticed that Lighter was standing in our living room. She wriggled free from Tony’s arms and raced over to hug her.
“Hey, kiddo,” Lighter said as she kneeled down to hug her back. “I’ve missed you. Have you been watersliding without me?”
“Only once. Thank you for my bracelet.” She held out her arm, showing off the bracelet that she never took off.
“You’re welcome. I’m glad you like it.”
“Hey, Chloe,” Tony said. “How about a slumber party at my house? Clock is there, and I’m pretty sure he’s been wanting to watch that mermaid movie. What do you say?”
Chloe’s eyes grew wide, and the cutest grin stretched across her face. There was no way a kid would say no to that. I looked at Tony, and he glanced at Lighter. They obviously schemed this whole thing up. I wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, but I knew that Tony was giving me alone time with Lighter. It was obvious that there was something on her mind. Wait… He’d said slumber party. If we were comparing me to bright crayon colors, I was definitely a dull gray.
“You better make sure it’s okay with the big guy.” Tony hitched his tattooed thumb in my direction.
“Can I go, Dad? Please. I really want to.”
Holy shit!
She called me Dad. Not Uncle J, or Big Head, but Dad. I didn’t know what to say. It was the first time it’d ever happened, and I wasn’t sure she even realized what she just said. Tony was smiling, and I realized everyone was standing there waiting for my response.
“Sure thing, little bear.” My heart was hammering in my chest. If I could’ve froze time at any given moment, it would’ve been right then when she said the word “dad.”
I was bent down on one knee looking right at her, thinking about how happy she made me. I may have been a big tough guy and her knight in shining armor, but in that moment, I thought that this little bitty girl might just make me cry, and I didn’t care who was watching.
She hugged my neck. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I was still shocked and crouched down in the floor with my hand covering my mouth. Chloe ran off to her room to pack her bag.
She hugged me once more before she left. Tony said that Knox would bring her home sometime the next day, but that he would be back to get Lighter first thing in the morning. When they closed the door behind them, I rested my head against it.
“She called me Dad.”
“For the first time?” Lighter asked.
“Yes.” I looked over my shoulder at her.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow.” I repeated her words. “I don’t even know if she realized what she said, but she said it. I can’t even describe this feeling.”
“You look happy,” she responded.
Yeah. Happy.
I took a few steps back into the living room where she stood. She looked uncomfortable. Her eyes scanned over the room. It wasn’t much. We had a couple of windows, some decent furniture, and an old stone fireplace. It was nice to us.
I’d been too busy riding the happy train, I’d forgotten that the two of us were alone. For the rest of the night, it was just us.
No interference.
No p
aparazzi.
Just us.
I cleared my throat. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Sure.” She followed me into the kitchen. “I’ll just take some water.”
I reached in the fridge and pulled out a couple of bottles and handed her one. The air between us was stuffy. It seemed that the two of us had completely forgotten how to communicate. We weren’t ever really good at it. The last bit of communicating we did was through text, and that didn’t go so well.
Opening the patio door, I let her walk ahead and followed her outside. The view was crappy compared to what she was used to, but I knew how much she loved the fresh air. Anytime the two of us were outside, she always seemed to breathe a little easier.
It was weird seeing her there. I still couldn’t believe it. If her father knew that she was in my apartment, I’d be a dead man.
“So.” I sipped my water. “You visited your mom?” That sounded ridiculous coming out of my mouth. Small talk wasn’t my thing.
She took a deep breath, like it was hard for her to speak or something. She was the one who wanted to talk to me, not the other way around. “Yes. I did.”
Okay. The small talk wasn’t working. In fact, it was really starting to aggravate me.
“What did you come here for?” I cut right to the chase. Skirting around the elephant in the room wasn’t my tactic. She obviously had something to say. She was jumpy and constantly clearing her throat, and I was growing restless just watching her.
Her body tensed up, and she narrowed her eyes at me. I waited, not so patiently, as the seconds ticked by. If this were a bomb, we would have been dead by now. The silence was pissing me off. I could hear every bird, car, and person within a half-mile radius.
“You wanted to talk. So talk,” I growled.
“I need alcohol.”
“What?”
“Alcohol!” she shouted. Her hands were all over the place, like she was becoming more frantic. I’d never seen her so on edge. Sure, she was the fidgeting type sometimes, a little all over the place. But this was different.
The plastic chair tipped as I stood up and walked back inside. All I had was beer. She didn’t say what she wanted, but it was the only option I could give her.
When I grabbed the bottle from the fridge and turned around, she was standing just a few feet away. I reached out, holding the beer within reach.
She only had it in her hand a second. She hadn’t even taken a drink when she said, “I think I’m in love with you.”
“You didn’t even take a drink. Did you just need to hold it in order to speak?” I guess acting frantic was contagious. I was pacing my kitchen, trying to process what she’d said. For the love of God, I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
“I’m serious, Slick.”
“No,” I said.
“No? What do you mean no?” I could see the rise and fall of her chest as her breathing picked up.
“I don’t know. It’s just… We can’t… I mean, how…?”
“Could you speak English? Or hell, give me a complete sentence,” she countered. We’d grown far past agitation and were about to start a full-blown argument. It’s what we did best.
“There’s no fucking way. You need to go, before someone realizes you’re here.”
She placed a hand on her hip, and there was fury in her eyes.
Why did she have to look so sexy standing there in that baseball cap?
“Lighter,” I sighed.
“Slick.” She frowned, then shook her head. “No. It’s time I knew your real name. It’s pretty sad that I don’t, and I don’t plan on standing here, continuing to yell, and not know your damn name.”
I rolled my eyes but had to stifle a laugh. She was adorable. “Jensen. My name is Jensen Micah Stevenson. Happy now, Princess?”
“Very.”
I reached over and took the beer out of her hand. If she wasn’t going to drink it, then I was. The room had gone quiet. Freakishly quiet. She would look from the floor to me and then back to the floor.
“Your dad.” I eyed her. “He’s ready and willing to kill me any second. There is nothing that either of us can do to change that. I don’t have a job anymore. Plus, there’s Chloe. I have to think about her in all of this. For the first time in my life, I’m doing the right thing despite my feelings. If you were any other girl, I would’ve…”
“You would’ve what?”
I smirked. “You know what. I don’t do relationships, and I’m definitely not jumping into something that’s likely going to kill me. I’m sorry. I’m just not.”
Lighter’s shoulders slumped. “I know.” She closed her eyes for a second and then opened them slowly. Her eyelashes fluttered like the wings of a butterfly. Those damn eyes were my weakness. “I went to talk to my mom, and I told her everything. I told her about what happened with Dad, and you. She had no idea. She was just as freaked about the whole situation as I was. I think she had an idea about the things he’s been doing behind closed doors, but when I told her about threatening to kill you, she went ballistic. I’d never seen her so upset before. Turns out there was a lot I didn’t know about her, and the relationship she had with my father. There were some things that I was sure she left out, for my sake, but nonetheless it was still heartbreaking to hear.” Her eyes moved to find mine. “She was the one who made me realize how I felt about you. She’s coming home at the end of the week to talk to my dad. I told her I didn’t want to be there anymore. Home, I mean. I don’t care if I ever see his face again.”
That was hard for me to hear. After all, he was still her father. I remembered the look on her face the other night. I knew she was afraid of him, and she had every right to be. “So, what do you think is going to happen? I mean when your mom gets back.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think she’s unhappy with their marriage, and I think she has been for a lot longer than she led me to believe. Either way, she knows where I stand. I promised that I’d go home tomorrow and that I’d be there when she got home Friday and we’d try to work things out. Despite dad’s incredulous decisions, I think she knew that I was safe with him. That he wouldn’t hurt me. Not to mention, Trim promised someone would be with me around the clock. He knows how scared I am about going back there. I don’t know what my mom will accomplish, but I’m eighteen, so I’m free to go. The only reason I was even living in that penthouse was because my father agreed to pay for my college. But I don’t care about that or his hidden agendas and whatever else he has going on. My mom will pay for school if I need it.”
“I want to make sure I’m hearing this right.” I ran a hand over my face, letting out a long hard sigh. “You’re saying that in a week, you’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“He’ll come after me. I’ll be the first person on his list,” I told her. “If he doesn’t kill me himself, then he’ll just hire someone to do it.” The thought made my stomach turn.
“Right now, yes.” She stepped closer to me. “But I think my mom can convince him to let me go. I think she holds enough power over him that he won’t come after you. He can’t keep me locked up forever. Seems his business is more important than I am, so I don’t think he’ll risk anything trying to keep me there.”
I wanted to believe her, because deep down I knew she was my girl. But I couldn’t risk it all until I knew for sure. “Just tonight, Princess. We get one night, and then nothing else until I know for sure. I want to hear it for myself that loving you won’t kill me. If it were just me, I would’ve already put up a fight. But Chloe and I are a package. I can’t jeopardize my life and leave her alone. Not even for you.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “You love me too?”
“I think I do, Princess.”
I could hear the relief when she sighed. “I’ll fix it. I’ll fix everything.”
“One night.” I wrapped my arms around her and lifted her up off the ground. “If you want me?” I asked as I kissed the soft skin under her neck.
“I want you.”
Twenty-Eight
Lighter
Every single nerve in my body was on fire, tingling from the inside out. I wanted him more than I wanted anything in the world. It was beyond want. My need for him was so overwhelmingly consuming that nothing else existed in that moment. With nothing standing in our way, he was finally going to be mine. Even if it was only for the night. I’d take it. I’d take him.
He was kissing his way down my neck, causing me to moan in pleasure.
“You don’t know how bad I’ve wanted you,” he said breathlessly.
“I’m yours.”
I slid down the hard length of his body, feeling every single inch of him until my feet hit the floor. Those baggy sweatpants were really doing something to me. He was beautiful beyond measure. Every single tattooed inch of him was sculpted to perfection. The man was a dreamboat. Women must’ve thrown themselves at him, desperate for one night. Same as me. I was desperate. More than desperate. I wanted him to touch me, to worship me, to screw me like there was no tomorrow.
I unsnapped the cap from my head and tossed it on the ground, letting my hair fall loosely around my shoulders. His fingers gripped the bottom of my shirt, and my hands went straight up above my head. I didn’t want to rush the moment, but my body was acting on its own accord, craving his touch.
Just breathe, Lighter.
He lifted my shirt dangerously slow over my head.
It was the first time I was scared of him. Not scared like I didn’t want to do it or worried that he’d hurt me, but excited-scared, like the moment before the roller coaster plummets toward the ground. My heart was lurching in my chest as I stood there wearing only my loose-fitting jeans and my plain white bra. The color of his eyes darkened as he drank me in, slow and steady.
Suddenly, my experience level felt like it was flashing above my head like an open sign. Could he tell how nervous I was?
“You look beautiful,” he stated. His fingertips grazed the swell of my breasts. They were gentle strokes that caused goose bumps to rise on my skin.
Words couldn’t find their way out of me. Thank goodness, because they would’ve been shaky and all over the place. Placing his hand under my chin, he lifted my head and bent down to kiss my lips.