Inevitable: Carter Kids #5

by Chloe Walsh

  "Holy shit," Noah spluttered, eyes widening as awareness dawned on him. "Are you and Jordan not…"

  "Let me die," I whispered. It would be a hell of a lot easier to handle than this particular conversation.

  "Nope," Teagan blabbed, continuing to ruin my life with this conversation. "Which is why I really feel that she needs to have the D right away."

  "Oh my god. Shut up!" I hissed.

  "Jesus Christ," Noah muttered. "You two are so fucking weird." He shook his head in disgust before hightailing it out of the kitchen.

  "Admit it," Teagan shot back. "Just admit that you are in dire need of some crazy, hot sex and I will drop it."

  "Fine," I snapped, losing my patience with her. "I need to have sex."

  "What was that?" She teased, cupping her ear. "I couldn’t hear you."

  "Oh, you didn’t hear me? Well hear this, bitch." Jumping off my stool, I threw my hands in the air and shouted at the top of my lungs, "I, Hope Sarah Carter, need to have sex with a penis! I really need a big, fat, ginormous, juicy dick inside me right this second!"

  Teagan was laughing so hard that it was encouraging the teenager inside of me.

  Laughing along with her, I continued to make a total ass of myself in front of my best friend by breaking into a verse of Nicki Minaj's Anaconda.

  "Ahhhh!" Teagan screamed through fits of laughter. "I can't. I can't…" Crossing her legs to stop herself from peeing, she gasped and spluttered. "You're killing me."

  "See this?" I called out, grabbing my own sweatpants clad ass. "This needs the D." Hip thrusting, I hopped over to where Teagan was squirming and dropped into the twerk position. "This ass needs a dick!" I sang out through fits of laughter as I attempted to twerk.

  "Yeah, it does," Teagan half screamed from laughter as she began to play the drums on my ass. "Woo, go girl!"

  "I need a dick," I laughed, thoroughly enjoying this bit of innocent fun between two best friends. Weird or not, this was exactly what I needed right now. Fun… "Give me the dick!"

  "I volunteer as tribute," a familiar male voice said from behind me and I screamed loudly before falling on my face. The instant my gaze landed on the huge, tattooed man standing in the kitchen doorway with a shit-eating grin on his face, mortification crept through me. "Oh, sweet baby Jesus…"

  "I'll have sex with you," Hunter declared with a wink, causing Teagan to burst out laughing. His words caused my heart to jackknife in my chest. Ice blue eyes stared into mine. His lips curled up in a predatorily smile. "And you're welcome to inspect my dick beforehand to see if it ticks all your boxes." His words dripped from his lips like honey. His blond main was pulled back in his signatory man bun. He cracked a huge smile before saying, "But I've had no complaints."

  "I bet you haven't," I muttered, climbing to my feet, but I doubted he heard me with Teagan laughing like a freaking hyena.

  "Where the hell have you been?" Teagan exclaimed, still laughing, as she rushed over to where Hunter was standing and threw her arms around him, enveloping him in a massive hug. "You said you'd only be gone a few days."

  Immediately, something spiked inside of me. Something green and very ugly. I quickly batted it away, not daring to delve deeper into the reasons behind my sudden burst of emotion. Nothing was simple when it came to this man so I just blocked him out.

  I had been avoiding Hunter Casarazzi like the plague since the night at the Ring of Fire for two very valid reasons.

  The first; being in his presence reminded me of what I was capable of.

  And second; he disturbed me.

  Sure, nine times out of ten, he was here when I came over to visit, but I tried my best to keep my distance from him. I had to because the man had no filter. He was wild and flirtatious and he seemed to revel in making me squirm.

  I couldn’t take his measure because the man was absolutely unpredictable. I never truly knew what he was going to say or do next. I didn’t like unpredictable. It wasn’t safe or comfortable.

  The thought of how close I had come to giving myself to him last Halloween flooded my mind and I reddened even further. Like a cruel twist of fate, my brain reacted like a broken record, playing the memory of that night over and over again…

  Frozen to the spot, I gaped after Hunter, and contemplated my options. I could sit around and live the rest of my life the way I had lived the past several years– miserable and empty. Or I could take a risk on the stranger who walked into my life two months ago and made me feel again...

  Jumping off the bed, I ran out of my room and down the staircase, with only one thought in my mind. Stop him from leaving. I didn’t want to be on my own again.

  When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I spotted Lucky moving towards the front door. Leaving, my mind told me, flashing the word in bright neon letters, and I barreled towards him, the fear of spending another day of my life alone almost too much to comprehend.

  "Hey, Hunter!" I called out. "Lucky, wait." I managed to catch ahold of his cape just as the front door swung inwards.

  "Don’t go," I panted, looking up at him.

  "I'm not playing games here," Lucky told me, and the vulnerability in his voice hit me like a crater. "Don't mess me around, Hope."

  My hand found his of its own accord. "I'm not trying to," I told him, shivering at the feel of his warm touch. "I need..." The words that had been on the tip of my tongue shriveled and died the moment my eyes landed on the person in the doorway of my parent's house.

  Jordan was back.

  From the moment I stepped off that plane and climbed into Hunter's truck, I had been in trouble. I remembered expecting my father to be the one to come and pick me up. I also remembered the excitement and desire I felt when it was Hunter instead. I remembered the burning intensity I had to figure him out. Those secretive smiles and double meaning comments he tossed about airily. Sure, I had seen him back in Cork, and like every red-blooded woman, I had admired his beauty. But the day he opened the door of that truck for me was my turning point. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I had unwillingly opened myself up to him.

  Feeling something for Hunter made me resent him a little.

  How dare he come into my perfectly organized world and pull the rug out from under my feet?

  How dare he make me feel things for him.

  How dare he make me question everything I had ever known?

  I was aggravated and frustrated and not myself.

  I was a ride or die kind of girl, and I was Jordan's ride or die girl.

  Hunter had no business busting into my world and making everything a million times more complicated. He was not supposed to be in the equation.

  1 + 1 = me and Jordan – not me, Jordan, and Hunter.

  And why the hell did I always call him by his real name?

  I didn’t want to.

  I didn’t mean to.

  Lucky was his nickname. Everyone and their mother called him that, but every time I opened my mouth, Hunter came out.

  "I had some stuff I needed to tie up," Hunter replied, drawing back to the present as he set Teagan back down on her feet before fondly mussing her hair. "Took longer than I expected."

  I itched to ask where he'd been. Teagan had mentioned Hunter was out of town last week, but I was sensible enough not to ask questions about him. It still didn’t stop me from wanting to know.

  "But you're back now?" she asked, rearranging her ponytail. "For good?"

  Disturbingly, I hung on every word of their conversation, desperate to hear his answer, but I never found out because Teagan bounded out of the room like an over-excited puppy, calling out, "Noah! Lucky's home."

  Hunter shook his head in wry amusement. "She seems happier."

  "She is," I confirmed, watching his every move as he strolled over to the coffee machine and grabbed the glass jug. "Happy, I mean."

  "And you?" he asked, keeping his back to me as he poured himself a mug of coffee. When he turned around and asked, "Are you happy now, HC?" The intensity in his eyes
almost melted me on the mortal spot.

  "I'm happy," I confirmed, backing up against the island and as far from him as I could.

  Hunter leaned against the counter, giving me his undivided attention as he took a sip of coffee.

  Fuck, why did he have to look so damn good in those Timberland boots, faded denim jeans, that fucking plaid shirt and those ray bans settled on top of his head?

  Tilting his head to one side, his eyes took a shamelessly long appraisal of my body and I felt the burn all the way to the tips of my toes. This man had a hold on me. I couldn’t explain the how's or why's and I didn’t fucking like it.

  When he finally looked into my eyes and said, "Good," all the earlier intensity I'd seen in his eyes was gone, replaced now with…indifference?

  Oh shit, I really didn’t want him to look at me with indifference.

  And I really didn’t want to care if he did.

  Dammit…

  "So, where have you been?" I let myself down by asking.

  Hunter took his sweet time answering me. He wasn’t unearthed by my demands or questions. He didn’t care that I was unsettled by him and it was wildly refreshing.

  "I had to go home for a while," he finally answered. "I had some old scores I needed to settle."

  "Illegal scores?" I couldn’t stop myself from asking.

  "Don’t worry, Bonnie," he shot back with a smirk. "Clyde hasn’t done anything illegal without you since our last escapade."

  My face reddened. "I didn’t mean–"

  "Relax," he said with an easy smile. "I'm just kidding with you. Or is that off limits now, too?"

  We used to kid around a lot before everything went to hell in a handbasket between us. I missed spending time with him. I missed my friend, but I couldn’t trust myself around him anymore.

  The things he made me feel were not safe for me and I had to keep my distance. I was a married woman. I had commitments and I didn’t need the distraction Hunter Casarazzi posed to me.

  Teagan returned then with Noah in tow and I didn’t have to say anymore. I knew this was my perfect opportunity to make my excuses and leave, and I knew that's exactly what I should do, but I found myself taking a seat in the kitchen.

  Because as much as I hated to admit it, the only time I felt like I truly belonged was when I was hanging out in this house with my three best friends.

  Chapter Eighteen

  LUCKY

  Teagan couldn’t cook a decent meal for shit. She was too health conscious, too focused on calories and levels of proteins and all that shit a professional athlete was require to eat during training. Even though Noah was in retirement, he still ate like he was conditioning for a fight. We weren't all fitness fanatics, and thankfully, Teagan had a BFF that more than made up for what she lacked in the cooking stakes.

  I watched from my perch at the island as Hope busied herself with frying chicken in a skillet at the stove. Fuck, I missed her cooking since she moved out. Hell, I missed more than her cooking. I missed everything about the woman, especially that round, sexy ass of hers as she pottered around the house looking like a lost puppy.

  She had a pair of baggy sweatpants on today and an over-sized shirt. Her curls were pinned to the top of her head, held up with a pencil, and I'd never seen anything so fucking beautiful. I had no clue why she continued to hide that amazing body of hers beneath clothes that were about four sizes too big for her, but she did.

  She couldn’t hide that fine ass though, I thought to myself as I studied her curves shamelessly. Hope Carter was built like a dream. Honest to god. And I should know. I'd had the pleasure of having that beautiful body beneath me once. And even though it had ended sooner than I hoped, I'd had a hard time forgetting the feel of her.

  "Hey, Hunter? How many pieces of chicken do you want?" Hope called out with her back to me, her attention focused on the food she was cooking. She crouched down to look through the glass oven door at the tray of roasted potatoes she had peeled, giving me a wonderful glimpse of the black thong riding up.

  "Whatever's going is fine with me," I replied distractedly, tilting my head sideways to thoroughly enjoy the view.

  "There's plenty to go around," she called over her shoulder. "Breast or thigh? What's your preference?"

  Goddamn.

  I had been with more than my fair share of women over the years and I could safely say that not a single one of them had ever evoked in me the feelings Hope Carter did. For Christ's sake, she was a married woman. She had turned me down more than once. And now, she was standing in ugly ass sweats and asking me whether I preferred breast or thigh, and I was burning the hell up inside.

  "I'll take whatever you give me," I told her, and I didn’t just mean the chicken or her ass. I was certain this was the longest Hope had spent alone with me since going back to her husband. Teagan and Noah had left for a walk twenty minutes ago, and I had half expected Hope to tag along with them.

  That's the way it was between us now.

  I smiled and she ran, I chased and she hid, and it drove me batshit crazy.

  Hope was careful around me now. Reserved. A shadow of her former self, and I found myself itching to break her free from the chains and restraints holding the real her inside.

  I missed that girl and everything about her. The way she slurped on her first cup of coffee of the day, and the way she stored pencils in her hair. I missed that adorable expression she wore every time she had to put down her laptop when she was only half way through writing down a new idea. I missed seeing the excitement in her eyes when she thought up a plot twist, and the way she cried when one of her characters was in pain.

  I missed my friend.

  Noticing all her little quirks and habits probably made me a fucking stalker but I didn’t care. I wanted to be around this woman.

  I always had.

  From the moment she crashed into Noah's hotel room last year, Hope Carter had taken me by surprise. The very first time I saw her in the doorway, something switched on inside of me. It wasn’t because she was gorgeous and I wanted to fuck her brains out – I did, but that wasn’t it – no, it was the look in those big blue eyes of hers when she looked up at me. In that moment, I could see how lost she was. I could see the turmoil inside her heart. It was like something inside of her called out to something inside of me, almost like a kindred spirit sort of connection. This beautiful, intelligent, independent and headstrong woman so full of secrets and hidden pain. Hope had burst into my world and intrigued me to the point that I found myself opening up a part of myself to her that had been closed off to the rest of the world.

  Losing Hayley the way I had was the worst thing that had ever happened to me.

  Accepting that she wasn’t coming back was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

  But I did it.

  Hard as it was, I fucking did it.

  The way I saw it, loving someone wasn’t a sign of weakness or something to be ashamed of. Not in the least. Loving someone and telling that someone was one of the bravest things a human being could do. Putting yourself out there, knowing there's a ninety-nine percent chance it will all end in pain and tears and fucking misery, but risking it all anyway because of that one percent chance it might work out – that it might be the jackpot bet you've been trying to win your entire life?

  That was fucking bravery.

  Love was insanity. It was choosing to bare you soul and ugliness with another human being and being okay with what you saw in the mirror because that person loved the parts of you that were unlovable. The parts you were most ashamed of.

  I believed in that.

  It didn’t make me a romantic person. I was far from it. I just believed that there had to be some sort of a recess from the bullshit life humans were thrown into, and that recess was the love of a human heart.

  Some people might say that made me a traitor to her memory, but I'd never given much thought to what others thought of me. In fact, I didn’t give a damn. I was who I was. I had loved and lost,
cried and mourned, and I wasn’t about to shy away from the chance to heal and love and breathe again.

  And the woman standing in front of me?

  She made me breathe again.

  She made me want to.

  Hope gave me something I didn’t realize I had been missing and now that I'd had a taste of it, I wasn’t giving it up.

  I wasn’t giving her up.

  Fuck her husband and the whole damn world. If he loved her as much as she said he did, he wouldn’t have left her. In my humble opinion, the man was fucking crazy. He had walked away from a woman like her and had been touched by fucking god himself that she had waited for him.

  If he had only stayed away a couple more months, hell, even another week, I had a feeling the outcome wouldn’t have been so positive for him.

  "Hunter," Hope warned, stirring me from my reverie. She spun around to face me and held up a shaky hand. "Please don’t."

  Jesus, the way she said my name, the way the word rolled off her tongue, did something to me. I hadn't been called Hunter since pre-k, not even by my folks, but I liked hearing the name come out of her mouth.

  "Don't what, sweetheart?" I cocked a brow and waited for her to enlighten me. I wasn’t about to open my mouth and give her an out. I was baiting the girl and I wanted her to bite.

  She looked head on, blue eyes wide and cheeks flushed bright red, before whispering, "Don’t flirt with me."

  "I wasn’t aware that I was flirting," I shot back with a smirk. Of course I was flirting with her. It was impossible not to. "You asked me a question and I answered you honestly." Now, that part was the truth.

  My response seemed to throw Hope and her brows furrowed in confusion. "Oh," she finally mumbled, redder in the cheeks than earlier. "Okay."

  "Why?" I teased. "Did you want me to flirt with you?"

  "No," she spluttered, almost choking on her words. I cocked a brow in response and it earned me a death glare. "Absolutely not," she reiterated. "No flirting."

  "You sure?" I asked, unable to wipe the smirk from my face. The woman was ridiculously hot when she was angry.