by Chelle Bliss
I grabbed the bangle from Alese’s hands and slid it over her wrist and then did the same for Nya before grabbing mine. Mine was chunkier, more manly compared to theirs, but matching in every other way.
“My girls,” I said and pulled them toward me, wrapping my arms around them. “I’m the happiest and luckiest guy in the world.”
Alese laughed. “You are one lucky bastard.”
Epilogue
Epilogue – Alese
* * *
Bear stopped mid-chew, gawking at me. “You’re what?”
“We’re together and committed,” I told him before taking a sip of the wine Fran had just given me.
He looked at Nya and then to Ret as he set down his fork. “You got them both?”
I laughed over the rim of my glass, loving the look on his face. Bear was by far the funniest person I’d ever met. When Ret said he wanted to move to Tampa and that his father was there too, I was hesitant. I knew about Ret’s past and his father leaving him and his sister behind after the death of his wife, Ret’s mother.
From what I’d heard about Bear, I was petrified to let this man into our lives. He had a criminal record longer than my arm and hung around with bikers. The last thing I expected was to find this fun-loving, goofy, and even sexy man to come barreling into our lives.
Ret nodded with a grin. He knew, just like I did, this would eat Bear up inside. I wasn’t worried about breaking the news to him, but Fran was an entirely different story. “Yeah, Pop. They’re mine.”
My stomach fluttered with those words. I could hear Ret say them over and over again and never tire of them. Bear glanced around again, mouth hanging open, and pushed back from the table.
“Well, fuck,” he said, dropping his fork. “If there was any doubt, this proves you’re every bit my son.”
I laughed harder, covering my mouth so I didn’t spit my wine across the table. The man thought of himself as a playboy, but we all knew the truth. He had eyes for only one woman, and she was standing right behind him, not looking the least bit amused.
I sobered, sitting up a little straighter in my chair. “Hey, Fran.”
She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his chest. “You want two women?” she asked, resting her mouth against his ear.
His eyes widened as he stared at me. “No, baby,” he coughed and placed his hands over hers in front of him. “I have you. What more could a guy ask for?”
“We can make it a reality,” she told him.
He moved his gaze around the table like he needed validation that what she said was indeed what he heard. “What?”
Fran touched his cheek with her mouth and tightened her arms around his neck. “But if you need two, just know I’m not going to be one of them.”
He turned quickly and pulled her down into his lap, wrapping his arms around her. “You’re all I ever need, Fran. Don’t be ridiculous. I can barely handle you sometimes, wildcat.”
She raised an eyebrow with no smile on her face as she stared at him. “Mm-hm.”
Bear rubbed his beard against her neck until she finally lost it.
“Stop!” Fran wiggled in his lap, laughing. “Baby, be happy for the kids. I’m excited for them.”
Fran finally turned her gaze toward me. “Are you happy?”
“Yes,” I said.
She looked to Nya. “Are you happy, sweetheart?”
“Yes.” Nya nodded.
Fran eyed Ret and shook her head. “I know you’re happy. I’m not even going to bother to ask.” Turning in Bear’s lap, she pushed his plate aside. “I learned something important a long time ago.”
“Here we go,” Bear muttered.
He was instantly met with Fran’s icy glare. “You got something to say?”
“Of course not, love. Talk to the kids,” he said, touching her cheek and turning her face away from him.
Nya had her hand over her mouth, trying to hide her laughter, but I didn’t bother. Those two had kept me rolling since the day we moved here. Fran was my spirit animal and exactly how I wanted to be as I grew older. She never held back and definitely didn’t pull any punches. If she said it, she meant it.
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted…”
Bear rolled his eyes.
“Love isn’t something we can control. We don’t get to pick who our heart wants, and sometimes it’s not as clean as society wants us to believe. I mean, take your father and me.” She turned toward Ret, talking straight to him. “I never thought I’d fall in love with a man who couldn’t settle and hopped from woman to woman like it was an Olympic sport. People told me we were doomed and he’d never settle down. But here we are, and we’re happily in love and completely committed. Right, honey?”
“Of course.” He nodded.
“Do whatever makes you happy in life. It can all disappear in a blink of an eye. Live without regret. Love without remorse. And never let anyone make you feel less than you are because they have a stick rammed so far up their ass the damn thing scrambles their brain when they walk.”
I blinked and stared. For a second, I thought Fran was going soft on me. She was almost there with her live and love bit, but then in typical Fran fashion, she went to the stick and ruined everything.
“That was beautiful, baby,” Bear said and held her tighter, kissing the back of her neck softly.
“Now, I don’t care which one of you does this, but someone better start making some babies. I’m not getting any younger, and neither are you.”
“Well, I…” I didn’t want to tell Fran I had no inclination of ever having a human grow in my body. It wasn’t that I was anti kid, but I liked my body, vagina, and life the way they were. I was completely selfish, but I was okay with that and so was Ret.
But Nya…she was another story. She longed for a baby and was open about it.
“We’re trying,” I said and didn’t say anything more. It didn’t matter whose body the baby would eventually come out of, he or she would be loved just the same by all three of us.
Bear smacked Ret’s shoulder and grinned. “My boy. I envy the task before you.” Fran kicked him under the table, and Bear growled. “I meant I don’t envy you at all.”
On the outside, our relationship probably looked like it was impossible. But on the inside, it was the purest form of love and respect I’d ever had.
This was my life. Parents that weren’t mine but loved me like I was their own. A boyfriend and Master who was selfless and loving. And then there was Nya…a best friend, a confidant, and my other half.
* * *
Thank you so much for reading Guilty Sin. I hope you loved Ret, Nya, and Alese.
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PREVIEW OF NAILED DOWN
KANE
“Nope. Nope… Changed my mind.”
I had a feeling Kit would chicken out. She did that a lot. The woman was full of great intentions but not much on the follow-through. I knew her limits. I knew when to push and when to back away. You couldn’t be friends with someone, work with them as closely as we had for the past five years, and not know how to read them or figure out when their limits were met.
Her running away from the suspension bridge, that stupid hard hat and the goggles on top of it jostling as she walked back toward the gate, told me Kit’s limit wasn’t quite in the rearview, but it was inching closer.
“Hang on a second, you crazy woman.” Three long strides and I caught up to her, touching her arm to get her to stop. Her eyes were wide, a little frantic, and for a second I wondered if she’d bother to blink before the tears started to form. “You told me this was okay, remember? You told me you wanted to get this one over with.”
There was a small crowd and a few stragglers who must have recognized us. But the thing about Ashford was that even local celebrities, for the most part, got left alone. One, maybe two double takes, then Kit and I were on our own, secluded a bit by a large Douglas fir tree with browning leaves and heavy limbs. Overhead, though, there were high-pitched screams releasing, muffling, and turning into shit that sounded like something from a horror flick as the zip-liners took off from the deck at the top of the suspension bridge and shot away going at least thirty-five miles per hour.
Kit took her wide, scared gaze from my face, finally blinking, lashes moving like a hummingbird’s wings as one particularly loud zip-liner screamed at the top of her lungs, “Holy shit, someone stop!”
“Oh, hell no!” Kit yelled, stepping back and away from me as she kept her gaze on the screaming woman overhead. “Fuck that!”
“Calm down,” I told her, blocking her when she tried hightailing it away from the bridge. “Would you listen for a second?” She skirted around me, like a damn ball player readying a lay-up, but I kept up with her, managing to spread my arms to keep her from hitting the narrow trail that led to the parking lot. “Shit, woman, you’re acting ridiculous.”
“Move, Kane. I changed my mind. I can’t do this. It’s…” She threw another glance up toward the zip line, then took to shaking her head, repeating “Nope, nope, no” under her breath. “No way. I just… I can’t…”
“Stop right there,” I told her, not moving. I made my features tighten, shot her the frown I knew she hated. That disappointed tension on my face usually showed up when the PAs or interns got on my nerves or when Bill wanted the impossible and my crew couldn’t deliver. Kit had always mentioned how that expression made me look vicious and mean. I didn’t want her to see it, but I’d made her a promise. We shook on it, and I kept my word when I gave it. “You wanted my help. You wanted me to push you, remember?”
She swallowed, and the smallest line moved between her eyebrows, like she was only just remembering the deal we’d made. “But, Kane…”
“Your cousin knew you could do it, Kit. She wanted you to.” I stepped closer, not liking the shake in her fingers or how every time a loud shriek sounded overhead, Kit scrunched up her face, wincing like the sound hurt her. “It was her last wish, right?”
The blink was slow, and when she moved her lids up, I caught the gold flecks that glinted against the sunlight in her big eyes. “Low blow, Kane.”
I shrugged, not remotely sorry for playing the dead cousin card. “Come on.” I turned her around, resting a hand against the small of her back in case she thought of taking off again. “I promise, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
The nerves must have kept her silent, because Kit didn’t speak as we navigated the hike toward the bridge, then the thin, swinging rope itself. She made white-knuckle grips against the twisted railing, footsteps heavy and sure as she walked in front of me.
“Few more feet,” I told her, holding back a laugh when she nodded her head, a quick affirmative motion that made her long hair slap against her face. “You’re okay.”
Around us, the tall trees seemed to stretch on forever. There were huge clusters of limbs and branches that reminded me of the tree house Kiel and I built when we were fifteen so our little cousin Shawna could have camp-out sleepovers with the other eight-year-olds in the neighborhood. It had taken us a solid month to finish it, and I did most of the work myself, but when it was done, Shawna spent every night that summer sleeping under the stars. Her smile alone was worth the work we put into it.
Kit, though, was making me doubt the wisdom of agreeing to the bargain. She really was a chickenshit about heights and hadn’t managed to look over the bridge to the forest around us the entire time we navigated it. I leaned forward, peeking around her shoulder, and shook my head. She had her eyes closed and felt her way over the bridge.
“You gotta check out the view, Kit.”
“No thank you!”
I sighed, stepping closer, and I touched her elbow as we walked two more feet, then met the landing. “Step up, drama queen.”
She went quiet then, and each instruction we received, she obeyed. But she did that with nothing more than head nods and low grunts right until the point that she was strapped to the line with a harness surrounding her. That’s when the waterworks started.
“No, no! No, I can’t…” She turned, grabbing for the latch to unfasten herself from the harness. I stepped forward, waving off the kid who went to help her out of the contraption that kept her fastened to the line.
“Hold on. Wait a second. You want to…” She wouldn’t listen and kept a death grip on the railing, putting her forehead against the metal as she took quick, uneven breaths. “Kit…”
“I know I’m a coward. I know it. Jess was right. I’m a chicken. I know, Kane, you don’t have to… But…God!” She straightened, turning her back on the landing and the stretch of forest around us as she glared at me. “This was an intensely bad idea.”
“If you don’t do this, you’re gonna regret it.”
Kit knew I was right. She understood that I was pushing, that I was only trying to help do the thing she wanted. It was written on her features—the disappointment mixed up with the fear. So, I kept pushing, hating the way her fear, her wild
, manic worry, twisted up something inside my chest. I’d do any damn thing she wanted, and I knew, no matter what she said, this was the thing she wanted. This was an item she had to tick off her bucket list.
“Kane, I’m scared.”
Those three words did me in. Something shifted inside my head and pushed aside the worry I had over letting Kit see anything in me that would make her think our friendship wasn’t enough for me. I’d admit to myself and no one else that I felt something old and primitive for her, something I hadn’t been able to shake for five years. But damn if I’d let even that get in the way of keeping her safe. More than anything, I wanted to take that fear out of her eyes.
“I got you,” I told her, motioning to the kid running the zip line. “We’ll go tandem.”
“That’ll cost extra,” he tried, but I stopped his explanation with a quick glare. “Your choice, man.”
And it was. I knew it. Even if there was a loud, bitchy voice in my head telling me not to get too close, telling me strapping myself to her was an epic level of dumb, I tuned it out. Kit needed me to take the worry from her, and I’d damn well do that.
But I hadn’t expected her to be behind me. I hadn’t expected her to wrap her legs around my waist and her arms over my chest. I damn sure didn’t expect the heat from her panting mouth to move between my shoulder blades as she buried her face against my back.