Suit (44 Chapters #4)

by B. B. Easton

  I smiled as I pulled in, feeling a tiny surge of badassery.

  Boundaries schmoundaries, motherfucker. This is my garage now.

  As I got out of the car and headed toward the door that led into the kitchen, I decided that barging in and yelling obscenities was probably the best way to go. So I flung open the door and stomped into the kitchen with my chin held high, ready to jam my finger so hard into that smug bastard’s tie-covered chest that I poked his cold, dead—

  “Ken!” I called out, swinging my head from left to right.

  The TV was off in the living room. The lights were off too. But the blinds on the bay window were wide open, bathing everything in a pinkish-orange glow as the sun began to set behind the pines in the backyard.

  “Ken?”

  The sideways light danced and glittered across the edges of an assortment of stuff on Ken’s breakfast table, which was usually stark and spotless. Papers and tiny objects were lined up neatly from one side to the other, and right in the middle was a glass vase filled with velvety red roses. Ken would never buy flowers—“A waste of money. They’ll only die,” he’d say—but I recognized those blooms. They were the same ones I’d admired every time I went to smoke out in the gazebo. The ones that matched the color of Ken’s front door. He hadn’t bought those flowers; he’d grown them.

  I leaned forward and smelled one fat blossom before letting my eyes roam over the painstakingly perfect row of items on the table.

  The key I’d left behind Monday morning sat, untouched, in the exact same spot where I’d laid it down. I traced it with two fingers, missing the weight of it on my keychain. Right next to it, Ken had placed his spare garage door opener. Tied with a red bow.

  Damnit. I smirked. I thought I’d stolen that parking spot.

  Next to the remote was a single piece of paper, folded into thirds and placed with precision. Looking over my shoulder to make sure that I was still alone, I took a deep breath and peeled open the parchment. I only scanned the first three sentences when my uncertainty was transmuted into absolute, effervescent excitement.

  Congratulations, Mr. Easton. Your application to join the College of Business Administration’s Accounting program has been accepted. We wish to welcome you to East Atlanta Technical College.

  I read those first few lines over and over again, a swell of pride filling my chest and making it ache. If nothing else came from our relationship, if I turned around and drove away and left things undone forever, the time I’d spent with Kenneth Easton would not have been in vain. He was going to be the best goddamn accountant the world had ever seen. He’d just needed a little push.

  I clutched the letter to my chest, letting my eyes drift to the stack of papers at the end of the row. They were fanned out in a perfect arc, a blue pen placed vertically beside them.

  I reluctantly set down the acceptance letter and picked up the top sheet in the stack.

  United States Postal Service Change of Address Form.

  Then, the next.

  Department of Motor Vehicles Change of Address Form.

  Then, the next.

  Bank of America Change of Address Form.

  “I would have filled them out for you, but you know how shitty my handwriting is.”

  I screamed and spun around, clutching the forms in my balled-up fist as Ken waltzed into the kitchen and leaned against the kitchen counter a few feet away. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt. His hair was tousled, damp from a shower, and he smelled like Irish Spring soap and home.

  “You scared the shit out of me!” I yelled, swatting at him with the papers in my hand.

  “Sorry.” He smiled.

  With that single smile, my heart forgave him for whatever he was apologizing for and whatever he was about to apologize for and whatever he would ever apologize for again.

  But my brain hadn’t caught up.

  “What the fuck, Ken? You can’t just steal my stuff and cut some flowers out of your yard and pick up some forms from the post office and think I’m gonna move in with you like nothing ever happened. That’s not the point! None of this”—I waved the papers in the direction of the table—“is the fucking point!”

  Ken’s smile disappeared, and I hated that I’d made it go.

  “I know.” He looked at the ground, then the wall, then the ceiling—anywhere but at my accusatory face. Sticking his hand in his pocket, Ken pulled out a sheet of notebook paper, folded into a perfect rectangle. Unfolding it, he said, “You told me to write down what I wanted to say. So…I did.” Ken’s aqua eyes flicked to mine for just a moment and then fell back to the paper, now open in his hands. “I knew exactly what I wanted to say the whole time. I just…” Ken shook his head. “When I wrote it down, it made it seem so small. It’s only three sentences.”

  Ken looked up at me with brave, terrified eyes.

  “Nine words.”

  His chest expanded, nostrils flared.

  “I can say nine words.”

  I was watching Ken fight one battle in a war he’d been waging his whole life. Seeing his struggle, seeing him trying to wrestle his feelings into words and force the words out of his mouth, was almost more than I could bear. I wanted to tell him to stop. That I didn’t care if I ever heard him say it. But I realized that he was doing it for himself just as much as he was doing it for me, so I stood there and waited for him to emerge from battle victorious.

  Handing me the piece of paper, Ken took a deep breath while I held mine.

  Then, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the floor, Ken uttered the sweetest, most sincere nine words one person has ever said to another person.

  “I love you. I miss you. Please come home.”

  My elation at hearing those nine little words was completely overshadowed by the pride I felt for Ken. A slow smile spread across my face, and overjoyed tears tickled my eyes as I watched the tension roll off his broad shoulders. Watched the relief dance into his features, lifting and brightening them, one by one. I blinked away my tears so that his adorably sheepish, self-satisfied smile would stop being so goddamn blurry.

  Ken slid his hands out of his pockets and pulled me into his arms. He was hard and clean and warm and safe, and he pressed his lips to the top of my head as I cried dirty black tears all over his soft white shirt.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t say it before,” he murmured into my hair. “I wanted to. Every night when I called you, I told myself I would. I just…” Ken’s voice trailed off, once again at a loss for words.

  “I know, baby.” I pulled away just enough to see his handsome face. “I know. I found out more about that today.”

  Ken’s brows pulled together, and his posture stiffened. “There is something wrong.”

  “There was.” I smiled. “But you fixed it. Just like you fix everything. You used all your strengths to make up for your one weakness. You fixed yourself.” I pushed up onto my toes and planted a soft kiss on his worried lips. “And you fixed us.”

  Ken dropped his eyes to my shoulder as a deep crease slashed across his forehead. He seemed to be thinking about something, probably warring with himself to find the words he needed again. I wanted to ask him what was going on, but I decided to wait and let him tell me on his own.

  He needed to tell me on his own.

  “Brooke?” Ken eventually said, lifting his eyes to mine.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you remember what you said when Amy broke up with Allen? About why she left?”

  My relieved, pliable body froze solid in his embrace. My lungs burned, deciding that I needed to hear whatever was about to come out of Ken’s mouth more than I needed oxygen.

  “Uh-huh,” I exhaled.

  “You said she…wanted to get married.” Ken pressed his forehead against mine and closed his eyes, probably to avoid having to make eye contact. “Do you want to get married?”

  Thump, thump, thump, my heart pounded in my ears.

  “Ken…”

  Thum
p, thump, thump, my pulse throbbed in my throat.

  “Are you…proposing?”

  “No,” he replied immediately.

  The letdown almost caused my knees to buckle.

  “But I will.” Ken’s voice was solid and resolute. He wasn’t asking; he was telling.

  “You will?” The pitch of my voice shot up at the end of that question almost as high as my rebounding spirits.

  Ken nodded, his forehead pushing mine up and down along with it.

  My chin quivered as I nodded along with him. It was everything I’d ever hoped for, but there was a nagging voice in the back of my skull telling me that Ken was offering more than he was capable of giving. I didn’t want to live in a fantasy world anymore.

  So, with a deep breath, I laid my hopes and dreams at his feet and asked him for the truth instead. “Ken, do you want to get married?”

  He nodded again without hesitation. “If that will make you stay.”

  I smiled.

  “If that will make you stay.”

  It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t hearts and rainbows and fireworks. It was the simple, honest truth, and it was everything I’d been longing to hear. Well, almost…

  “What about kids?”

  “One kid.”

  An unexpected laugh burst out of me. Leaning away from Ken, I looked at him with one eye as I giggled and wiped a tear away from the other. “You’re gonna give me a kid?”

  “Just one, so you’d better make it a good one.” With his hands on my waist, Ken walked me backward until the edge of the kitchen table hit the backs of my thighs.

  “What if it’s twins?” I laughed, clutching his shoulders for support. “They run in my family, you know.”

  Ken smirked, his hands moving from my waist to the button of my jeans. “Then, you’re just gonna have to pick your favorite.”

  Zip.

  I gasped as Ken’s fingertips teased me over my panties, and his mouth found a tender spot just below my ear.

  “Ken?” I breathed.

  “Mmhmm…” he hummed against my neck.

  “I love you.”

  Sliding his free hand up the back of my neck and into my shaved hair, Ken held my head as he placed a tender kiss on my parted mouth. “I love you, too.”

  Joyful tears streamed down my cheeks as I tried to kiss him back, but my lips simply wouldn’t cooperate. I’d never realized how hard it was to make out with someone when you’re both smiling like idiots.

  I guess I’d never been in love enough to find out.

  I want to tell you that Ken cleared the kitchen table with one swipe of his muscular forearm and took me right there in front of the open blinds. But he didn’t. Instead, he led me through the living room where my easel and Eiffel Tower sketch had been placed in the corner, next to the fireplace; up the stairs where the series of Warhol-esque fruit paintings I’d done for art class in eleventh grade had been hung at perfect intervals; past Robin’s old room, which now had my computer desk and bookshelf in it; and through the doorway of our new master bedroom.

  The once-beige walls of Chelsea’s old room were now a rich slate gray—my favorite color—and Ken had filled it with a blended collection of our furniture. His bed, my dresser, his nightstands, my curtains, his big-ass TV, my lamp. And, on every wall, my art.

  Actions. Actions everywhere.

  “I live here?” I whispered into my fingertips as Ken led me over to the bed.

  “We live here,” he corrected, smirking at me over his shoulder.

  As my wide, misty eyes drank in every detail, every surprise cameo from my old life, Ken peeled off his T-shirt and sat on the edge of the mattress.

  When my gaze swept over to him—chest bared, secrets bared, intentions bared—it was as if I was seeing him for the first time. I’d thought I loved Ken before, but what I’d fallen in love with were mere glimmers of the qualities he truly possessed. Now, they were on full display in high-definition. His strength. His selflessness. His grace. His love.

  I’d kissed a prince, and somehow, he’d turned into an even better prince.

  When I ran my hands through his damp hair, I didn’t feel the urge to yank on it. When I kissed his upturned lips, I didn’t nip or bite at all. And when I ran my hands up his biceps and down his shoulder blades, I kept my claws retracted. For the first time in our relationship, I had no frustrations to take out on Ken’s body at all. I simply wanted to love him.

  And, for once, he let me have my way.

  I stood and undressed slowly, leaning in to steal a kiss or two between every article of clothing I removed. Ken’s cerulean eyes watched me without a hint of challenge. His smirk was gone, replaced by heavy eyelids and a slightly parted mouth, which I kissed again as I stepped between his legs and stroked him over the fabric of his gray sweatpants.

  I wanted to kiss him everywhere. For every time someone had wanted to tell him they loved him but didn’t. I wanted to cover him with so much love that he never refused to accept it again.

  I peppered kisses along his hard, stubbled jaw and over to his earlobe and smiled when I felt his cock jerk beneath my hand. As I reached into the waistband of his pants and gripped his shaft, Ken reached up and palmed my small breasts. When I ran my thumb over his slick tip, Ken ran his thumbs over my peaked, pierced nipples. As I kissed my way down his neck, Ken slid a flat hand down the center of my torso. And, as I traced my tongue along the valley of his sternum and over the ridges of his ab muscles, he slid two fingers over the barbell in my clit.

  There was no power struggle. No taking or denying. No sadist or masochist. There was just us—two people who’d finally learned how to speak the same language.

  I kissed my way up the length of his cock, bent at the waist and eager to please. But, before I could take him in my mouth, Ken grabbed my narrow hips and lifted me up onto the bed. I squealed, landing on my hands and knees beside him, as he reclined backward onto the mattress with a smug smile. My eyes followed the same trail my tongue had taken—from his perfect, pursed lips to his perfect, glistening cock. As I crawled over to him, intent on finishing what I’d started, Ken’s hands grabbed my ass and guided me so that I was straddling that mouth I’d just been admiring.

  I took him into my throat and moaned against his smooth flesh as he flicked and swirled his tongue across mine. My legs began to tremble as I worked him faster, trying not to collapse under the enormity of my feelings and the pleasure building between my thighs. It was too much, and I had nothing to hold on to. As my moans turned to whimpers and my trembles devolved into shakes, Ken listened to my screaming body and obliged.

  Flipping me onto my stomach, he blanketed me with his heat and heaviness and humming, buzzing electricity. He grounded me like the live wire that I was, and when he filled me from behind, when I clenched around him and gripped his hands and cried out in ecstatic relief, I lit him up, too.

  As soon as Ken cursed and collapsed on top of me, I smiled even bigger than Julia Roberts trying not to cry in Hugh Grant’s bookstore. Because I wasn’t a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her anymore. I was a girl, lying under a man, who loved her more than she’d ever thought possible.

  From that moment on, a kind of peace settled over me that I’d never known was possible. Ken’s promise to marry me felt like a security blanket, comforting my restless, wayward soul. I’d spent my whole life searching for my future. Aggressively. Obsessively. What would I do? Who would I be? Who would I marry? Where would I live? Every morning, I would wake up and resume my quest for adulthood, and every night, I would go to bed, discouraged and frustrated and exhausted from trying to claw my way out of the quicksand of adolescence. But, just as I’d begun to lose hope, Ken had reached in with both arms and dug me out. He’d dusted me off. And he’d whispered the answers I’d been searching for as we stood together, admiring our future.

  We fell into a natural rhythm that weekend, finding our new normal. Ken did the dishes. I did the laundry. Ken did the yard work.
I sat on the bench swing in the gazebo and smoked while I watched him do the yard work. Ken did the grocery shopping. I went with him but was not allowed to touch, look at, or even think about adding anything to the cart unless he had a coupon for it or it was on “a good sale.”

  On Monday morning, I woke to the sound of my alarm clock instead of the sensation of being burned alive, and when I curled up against Ken’s back and told him I loved him, he squeezed my hand and said, “I love you, too.”

  I floated to school on a magic carpet woven from angel feathers and unicorn manes. I sailed through my classes on a fabric softener–scented breeze. And, as I skipped to the subway station that afternoon, eager to get back home to my betrothed, my phone damn near exploded in my purse.

  Whistles and chimes and dings and doodle-oodle-oodle-oos burst from my bag in all directions as I rode the escalator up to the train platform.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I muttered, digging in my purse until I finally grasped the source of the digital cacophony. The device vibrated violently in my hand as notification after notification flashed across the screen. One, two, three, four, six missed calls and four voicemails.

  Flash, buzz, flash, buzz.

  “What in the ever-loving fuck?”

  I scrolled through the missed calls first, all from the same unknown number. Then, I listened to the voicemails that were flooding in as I waited for my train.

  Tuesday, September 16, 1:03 a.m.: “What’s up, BB? It’s Zach. This is my cell in case you want to call me back. It was awesome, hanging out with you tonight. Come by anytime. Juliet’s way less scary when you’re around.”

  Tuesday, September 16, 8:38 p.m.: “Hey, BB. It’s Zach. I just wanted to let you know that Drivin’ N Cryin’ are playing at the Georgia Theater this weekend, in case you want to go. My roommate’s a bartender there, so I can get us free drinks. Hope you can make it.”

  Thursday, September 18, 5:22 p.m.: “Hey, BB. Sorry if I came on too strong last night. I blame the whiskey.” Zach chuckled. “Listen, my buddy is having a soft launch for his new tapas restaurant tomorrow night, and I’d love for you to come with me. I’ll be a perfect gentleman, I promise. Just let me know.