Heels

by Megan Erickson

Wow I’d rendered him to disjointed words. This wasn’t a good sign. “Yes. I’m growing a baby. Your baby.” I swallowed, my mouth dry as cotton. “So before you ask me to give you a chance, you should know exactly what you’re getting.”

  And then he did something that in a million years, I’d never thought he’d do. Not the Luke I knew, or the Bryan I’d just met. He fell to his knees in front of me. His fingers fluttered at the back of my knees, then up my thighs, pushing my dress up as they went.

  “L-Bryan.” I gripped the hem of my dress to halt his progress. “What are you doing?”

  His head tilted back, and red-rimmed hazel eyes peered up at me. The color had returned to his face, and his cheeks were flushed, color high and bright. “I want to see.”

  My knees threatened to give out. He wanted to see my stomach, my belly, where I grew his child. I didn’t know what this meant, if he intended to stay, if he wanted me and this child. But I did want to give him this. So I slowly relaxed my grip on the hem of my dress. With one hand on the table and the other on his shoulder, I nodded.

  His hands continued their journey, up the side of my thighs, my hips, and to my waist. I stood before him, heels on, dress shoved up to my ribcage, wearing nothing but a pair of plain underwear. At least they didn’t have holes and elastic showing, but they were nothing fancy. I held my dress up as his hands joined to cup my small protruding belly.

  He didn’t say a word, only ran his calloused palms over the smooth, stretched skin of my stomach. “How small is it now?”

  “I’m about twelve weeks, so about the size of a lime.”

  “A lime.” He elongated the words with an awed tone.

  “I-I didn’t know how you’d react. You said you didn’t want kids.”

  “I don’t want kids,” he said and his tongue came out to swipe his lower lip. “I want this kid. This kid with you.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my lower stomach. That ball in my throat burst and a sob exploded, my whole body bucking with the force of the sound.

  I pitched forward, unable to support my weight any longer as the emotions threatened to crush me. All the stress of the last few months left me in a torrent of tears, zapping the strength from my muscles. I didn’t fall because Bryan was there, his strong arms around me, his chest cradling my face as I sobbed into his T-shirt. “Jesus, baby. I had no idea. I wouldn’t have… Christ I would have called. I would have come back sooner.” I gripped his shirt as a tremble cascaded down his body. “If I’d known this was my future, I never woulda done have the shit I’ve done. I would have worked harder to be worthy of this.”

  He was killing me. His words shattered my defenses and thawed my heart I’d encased in ice since Tim had told me the truth about Bryan. I welcomed the warmth, because that was me. I didn’t work properly with a cold center—I believed people, and I loved, and I did it with all of me. I always would. And maybe that meant I’d be hurt again, but the alternative was letting others deaden who I was.

  I lifted my face, knowing I probably looked terrible with mascara tears tracking down my cheeks. “You’re putting the work in now, aren’t you? You came back. You want me, and the baby. You left that life behind, right?”

  His eyes shone in the fluorescent lights from overhead. Liquid beaded on his lower lid, but he blinked it away. His throat worked, and he nodded. “I’ll put in the work with you and this kid until the day I die.”

  “I hope that’s very far away.”

  He cupped my cheek, thumb brushing my lips. “I never put a lot of thought into who the woman would be who accepted me long-term. Maybe because I was never interested in it. But if I had to have guessed, I’d expect it to be a hard woman who’s seen some shit, you know? Tough bitch. I didn’t realize that who I needed was a sweet woman who lives in a fairytale house, bakes, and smells like peaches. I needed someone to make me better, not just accept me for who I am.”

  “You think I make you better?”

  “I do. When I was gone, I had some decisions to make. And in the back of my mind you were always there, like some guardian angel. And I tried like hell to walk into the light.”

  “Stay in the light. We have cookies. And peaches.”

  He laughed, his voice deep and booming, chest rumbling. “I like it here. So bright I need sunglasses.”

  I beamed a smile at him through my happy tears, and he lowered his head, pressing a kiss to my nose. “Stop that. Need my shades before you turn that smile on me.”

  He kissed me. And I knew there was work to do. This wasn’t going to be perfect. But he came back. Of all the places in the world, he’d chosen here. With me. I just hoped there weren’t any clouds following him that would dare to dampen our sunshine.

  Fifteen

  For the next four days, we didn’t see each other. He called me every night, and we talked, but I told him I needed some time. The truth was that I didn’t quite trust myself around him, especially when he was in my house. I knew what kind of spell he weaved with his hands and his mouth. I wasn’t ready to fall under that fog yet. He knew I was holding him at arm’s length, and he let it happen. I didn’t realize he had that kind of patience.

  But now it was Friday, and he’d asked if he could come over with takeout for dinner. I’d said yes, partly because I wanted to see him and partly because I was craving pork fried rice and egg rolls.

  There was a knock at the door, a strong, determined series of thumps, and my heart rate kicked up. Never in my life would I have thought that the way a man knocked would be sexy. But Bryan knocked on the door confidently, with a sharp rap of his knuckles. See? I couldn’t think straight around him.

  I padded to the door in my bare feet, as my ankles were slightly swollen from working at the library all day. I’d changed into a pair of shorts and oversized T-shirt and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. I’d washed off my makeup too. I was the epitome of needing to be comfortable, and if Bryan couldn’t handle me like this, then he didn’t get me in heels and perfect winged eyeliner.

  I opened the door, and he stood on my doorstep holding two paper bags. I inhaled the smell of Chinese food and my stomach rumbled. He grinned as he took in my outfit. “You look cute, Peaches.”

  “I do not look cute. I look like I’m pregnant and worked all day and am worn out.”

  He leaned in, dropped a kiss on my forehead, then walked past me into the house. “I stand by what I said.”

  I followed him into the kitchen. “Thanks for bringing dinner.”

  He set the bags down on the counter and exhaled, gazing around him. “Feels fucking good to be back here.”

  “In my kitchen?”

  “Yeah, here. In your house. With you.” He ripped open a bag and began to pull out the white containers. He paused and looked up at me. “Look, I want to tell you some things, and I guess I need to know how much you want to hear—“

  “All of it,” I answered quickly. “I let you evade questions before because I didn’t want to pry into your life until you were ready to tell me. But this is different now, isn’t it? We’re having a kid. You want to continue this relationship.”

  He leaned on the counter, expression earnest. “I get that and I want to tell you everything, but a lot of it is really fucking ugly. It’s like…” He dropped his head between his shoulders. “Fuck.” He lifted his head. “It wasn’t even that I was trying to hide from you who I was or what I did. It was that in a way, I was trying to pretend I was something I’m not. I wanted to be that guy who just worked on cars in a small town. Who got to date the pretty librarian and eat her cookies. The guy who deserved to be in her bed. Do you understand what I’m saying? I was lying to myself as much as I was lying to you.”

  The breath left my body. Now that he was being honest with me, I saw the difference in how he’d acted before. He wasn’t holding back now. “We really just dove head-on into the heavy stuff before we even ate, huh?”

  He laughed. “Okay, how about we feed you and that little lime you got in your stomach, then
we’ll talk. Or talk while we eat. I need food and a beer.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh shit, I forgot to get beer.”

  I pointed toward the refrigerator. “I got some for you.”

  That earned me another kiss.

  After filling our plates high—me with pork fried rice and two eggrolls, him with general tso's chicken—we sat at the kitchen table. He chugged half of his beer before digging into his dinner.

  He waited until I’d eaten most of my plate before he opened up his floodgates and talked. He told me about growing up with his mom who was a prostitute, and how he fended off men who thought his younger sister’s body was for sale, too. My heart ached that he’d never really had a childhood. He’d seen too much too young. I wondered what kind of man he’d been like if he’d had the chance to be innocent as a kid. I remembered him giddy at the movies, happy to enjoy entertainment and forget about everything for a while.

  He told me he joined up with some of his friends and began to sell drugs in high school because his mom’s johns dried up, and the family had no money. He told me how he got sucked in, how he was “really fucking good at being a criminal.” (His words.) That he was a leader of his crew and branched out into selling guns, all while claiming territory.

  “When you have territory, you gotta defend it,” he said. “So we made enemies. But it all got out of hand. I knew it was, but at that point, I was in too deep. The bulls-eye was on my back. When I saw a way to get out of it, I took it.”

  He took the fall for a murder he didn’t commit and fled town, moving around a lot until he settled in Gentry.

  “That night at the bar? I was thinking of leaving the next day. Had my bags packed. I saw you and it went out the window. All of it. So I stayed.”

  “And then…” I wasn’t hungry anymore. Instead I stared at him in rapt attention.

  “And then I got called back in,” he said, “because of my sister. She was being threatened because of me, and I couldn’t let that stand. Before I met you, she was the one person I’d do anything for. Well, her and my best friend Reb. When I went back to get her, turned out Reb had turned on me.” He ran a hand through his hair and tugged. “He ran my truck off the road, kicked the shit out of me, and told his guys to take me out.”

  “Take… you out?” I knew what he meant, but I needed him to say it.

  He met my gaze steadily. “Kill me. With a bullet between my eyes. Look I’ve lived a dangerous life, and it’s not the first time I thought I was going to die, but it was the first time I really gave a shit. Because my sister still needed me, and because all I wanted to do was get back to you. First time I didn’t laugh in the face of a gun. I wasn’t fucking laughing, Peaches.”

  “No,” I whispered faintly.

  “But my sister’s guy found us, saved me, and then together we got my sister safe. It all happened within days, but I was beat to hell. Concussion. Fucked up ribs. I spent a week in a hotel room with a fever because this got infected.” He gestured to the cut on his face. “After that, I visited everyone in person and cut ties. I made sure there was no beef, no one coming after me. That I could live free and clear. And then I came back here.”

  “That explains what happened to your truck,” I said inanely, like that was the most important part of what he just said.

  He growled. “Yeah and I fucking miss that truck every day.” He leaned back and downed the rest of his beer. “So that’s the shortened version. But it’s all true. Tara can confirm, and I’m sure she’ll be happy to embellish to make me look even worse than I am.”

  “I’d like to meet her boyfriend.”

  Bryan’s face changed a bit, grew wistful. He focused on picking at the label on his beer bottle. “Yeah, he’s a good man. Tara was with Reb for a long time. I had no idea…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry she ever knew him, or that I’d ever let her into that part of my life. She deserves a man who’ll love and protect her. That’s Lance.” He glanced up and grinned. “Plus, he saved my life so I guess I owe him.”

  “I owe him too. And so does this one.” I placed my hand on my belly.

  Bryan set the beer bottle on the table and leaned forward. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you found out.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “But it’s not.”

  “Well it sucked then. I didn’t think you wanted kids, let alone me. But I wanted the baby, and so that was what I focused on.”

  “I want you both.”

  “I know that now.”

  He held my gaze for a long time, then gave me a short nod. He stood up, picking up his plate and mine on the way to the kitchen. “Go sit on the couch. Put your feet up. I’ll clean up.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  He stopped angled his body to face me, a plate in each hand. “Actually, I do.”

  I parted my lips to answer, but he was already walking away again. So I did what he asked. I went into the living room, sat on the couch, and put my feet up.

  I didn’t even bother turning on the TV. Yes, I’d wanted to take this all slow, but he’d been open and honest. Also, I wanted to be held. I missed his warmth and his hands, the way he looked at me.

  So when he sat down on the couch, I immediately straddled him, loving the way I seemed to fit right against him.

  I tugged at the hem of his shirt, and with a slight curl to his lips, he lifted his hands over his head. I pulled his shirt off, tossed it to the side, and placed my hands on his chest. I’d never taken the time to study all the scars and tattoos and marks on his body. Maybe it was because I was scared to know the history behind them. I wasn’t scared anymore.

  I traced the ivy running up his ribs. “Why did you get these?”

  He shrugged. “Wish I could tell you some meaningful shit, but to be honest, I just thought they looked cool.”

  “They do,” I said. “And this?” I tapped on the lion face over his heart, which was stylized, kind of geometrical.

  “My sister had this lion stuffed animal. I won it for her out of one of those claw machines, you know? And she loved it. Every time some asshole was in our trailer, I’d give her the lion and tell her to hide with it in her closet.”

  My face warmed. “That’s sweet.”

  He shook his head, almost sadly. “Maybe back then I was. Before I let what I thought was heroics warp into fucked up shit for the sake of surviving.”

  I ran my finger over a few scars on his biceps that looked like cuts. “These?”

  “Knife.”

  He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask more questions. In fact, I didn’t want to know anymore. It wasn’t that I had my head in the sand. At least, I didn’t think so. But maybe I didn’t want to hear it all at once.

  His hands rested lightly on my thighs. He didn’t try to advance this, to turn it into sex, although I could feel he was hard in his jeans. “So is this it then? You’re free to start over and leave that life behind?”

  “That’s why it took so long to get back to you.”

  “No more old enemies?”

  He hesitated before answering. “I still have enemies. But they’re content to leave me be.”

  “You sure?”

  His hand slid up my back. “Baby, humans are unpredictable. I’m not making you a promise that I can’t keep. All I can say is I have my ears and eyes open. I would never put you or the baby at risk, okay?”

  I curled my hands into fists against his ribs. “I’m not worried about me or the baby.”

  “Okay, then I won’t put myself at risk. That what you wanted to hear?”

  I nodded and leaned in, pressing a kiss to his lips. I should have known that he’d take the kiss from zero to sixty. His hands slid around to my chest, his thumbs thumbing my nipples through my bra. I ground against him, loving the feel of his hardness against me. I moaned into his mouth as he pressed me closer, and my fingers fumbled with the button on his jeans. With a hand clasped around my back, he lowered me to the couch on my back, his hand delving into my shorts. I whimp
ered into his mouth, eager to feel skin against skin, when the doorbell rang, followed by a knock, clear and loud over the sound of our mingled breaths.

  I froze, my entire body going tight, because I knew who it was, just by the knock. Tim.

  Bryan’s head went up, his biceps straining as he held himself above me, neck craned toward the door.

  I caressed his shoulders. “I’ll get it.”

  “No—”

  “Bryan, I’m not asking. I know who it is, and I’ll get it.”

  His head whipped back to me, and his brows were drawn in, lips firm. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Tim. He also rings the doorbell, then knocks three times.”

  He jumped off of me and stalked toward the door. “Aw hell no.”

  I scrambled to my feet. “Bryan, no. I’ll talk to him. This is my house, and he doesn’t get to harass you in my house.”

  He turned on a heel to face me, hands on his hips. “So he gets to harass you?”

  “I’m getting the door. And I want you to stay here.”

  His nostrils flared, and he muttered, “This is bullshit.”

  I ignored him as he paced back and forth in my living room. On my way to the door, I straightened my clothing and my hair. I still looked a bit of a mess, but then it was Friday night. I opened the door to find Tim on my doorstep, feet braced apart, wearing his uniform.

  “Where is he?” Tim barked.

  Well, at least I knew exactly what he was here for. I stayed calm. “Hello, Tim.”

  “Where the fuck is Drayer? I know that’s his truck in your driveway. The whole fucking town does.”

  My pulse quickened, and I gripped the door with white knuckles. “I’m sorry but he’s busy. Are you here on official police business or is this a personal call?”

  He knew what I was asking. I could call his chief, who was Mark’s cousin. He was family, and he’d side with me.

  A vein throbbed in Tim’s neck. “I can’t believe you, Sam. He’s a goddamn criminal. You think he gives a fuck about you? You’re just something to pass the time before he moves on to his next hustle. Are you giving him money? Are you…” his voice dropped off as his gaze drifted over my shoulder.