by S. R. Watson
“But. But—”
“No buts. Let’s get this shopping done. My vote is that we start at the bra store.”
I watch her try to contain her laughter. She finally doubles over. Tears leak from her eyes because she’s laughing so hard. I give her a mock frown, and she laughs harder.
“Bra store? Who says that? You know you have the tact of a bull in a china shop. At least your mom tried to tell me I needed to put the girls away in a nice way by suggesting I shop for some essentials.”
She resumes her laughing, and I can’t help but join her. I should have known she wasn’t fooled.
“Okay. You got me. Let’s go, my little hitchhiker.”
She sticks her tongue out at me, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying our banter. She hit the nail on the head about one thing. I do hate shopping. Especially with women. I only want to fuck them or do the arbitrary things that lead up to the fucking like dinner and maybe a movie. You get one night of my attention, and then I’m on to the next. It’s the best way to avoid the inevitable clinginess sure to follow if I let one stick around too long. I’m doing this as a favor to my mother. It sure as fuck isn’t how I saw my day going, but surprisingly, I don’t mind. I don’t want to read into the reasons why either. I’ll show her a good time today and then resume my mission to get laid. Shouldn’t be that hard. Two words. Contact list.
“My vote is we go to a store that can be a one-stop shop,” she says.
“I don’t know what a one-stop shop is, but it sounds like my kind of plan,” I agree.
“Well, in this instance, I’m speaking of Target. I can get everything I need in one place.”
I like that she’s not frivolous, and that she can shop at Target. She gets major kudos for that choice.
Our goal is to get in and out of Target in under an hour. Beau told me I’d get a few Rosalita shirts similar to the one his mother wore last night for a uniform, so I didn’t go crazy with clothes. I bought a few pair of black slacks for uniform pants, bras and panties, of course, a few sundresses, and the rest were essentials like feminine products and toiletries. Beau originally wandered off to sift through music. Nobody really buys CDs anymore, but that’s what he has upgraded to in his old pickup truck. Apparently, he’s already found what he’s looking for because he’s standing at the front of the store. He heads toward me when he spots me, but I don’t want him looking at the personal things I grabbed. I’m sure he’s coming to put it on the company card, but I wave him off. He’s still coming. He stops when he reaches me.
“Beau, I don’t want you to look at the stuff I bought.”
He turns his back, immediately catching on.
“I’ve seen plenty of undergarments before, doll. Usually on the floor, but still … ”
I can’t believe he just said that out loud. I can feel the heat creep up my neck. The cashier just chuckles. “I bet you have,” she mumbles under her breath. I admit she is cute. Busty blonde with a uniform a size too small—yep, just like Ethan’s type. Any man’s type, really.
A stab of jealousy hits me from nowhere. I need to get a grip. I’m sure a guy who looks like Beau has women lined up for him. He’s not mine, so why should I care. The cashier takes her sweet ass time ringing me up and bagging my stuff. I don’t even have a lot, so I know it’s a ploy to extend the glances she keeps sneaking at Beau. Some people have no shame. What if he was my boyfriend? Ugh. Refusing to let him look at my unmentionables and feminine products is probably a dead giveaway that he’s not. I’m sure she thinks we’re related, but still.
I blow out a frustrated breath, and she finally takes the hint to move a little quicker. “That’ll be two hundred and eighteen dollars,” she says after she bags my last item.
On cue, Beau turns around with the credit card already in hand. She is all smiles and over the top with flaunting her assets. I would argue to pay, but I know that’s not happening. I snatch the bags and focus on looping my arm through them. I don’t want to watch him soak up the attention from that thirsty chick. As soon as I have them all, I start to the truck.
“Wait up.” I hear Beau coming up quick behind me. “Let me carry some of those.”
“I got it,” I snap.
“Whoa. Why the attitude?”
I know he doesn’t deserve that. I don’t know what the hell has come over me. I have no right.
“Sorry. It’s not you, okay? Girls like that just get under my skin.”
“Girls like what?” he asks, trying to contain his stupid grin.
“Bimbos,” I huff.
“Why? I thought she was really nice. She does her job quite enthusiastically, I might add.”
He’s just fucking with me now. “Can we change the subject now please?” I walk a little faster, not letting him take any of the bags. He doesn’t say anything else about her. He unlocks the door for me, and I throw all the bags inside. Don’t want them to get blown away in the bed of the pickup. He closes the door after I’m in. We drive a few miles before he attempts to make conversation with me again.
“You like country music?”
“Some.” He slides the CD he just bought into the player. Moments later, Luke Bryan’s “Country Girl” starts filtering through the truck. He taps the steering wheel in time with the music as he sings along, and my frustration starts to dissipate. He is too damn cute for his own good. He looks over at me and winks. He actually has a really nice voice.
“Sing along if you know it,” he yells. I sing with him in an octave lower while he belts out the lyrics. Eat your heart out, Target girl.
We drive down a gravel path until we get to a clearing with a lake. He maneuvers the truck until the bed is facing the lake and the front of the truck is facing the way we just came. He kills the engine but turns the ignition so the CD continues to play. He then hops out and is around to my side before I can get out all the way. I’m not used to this chivalry stuff.
“Well, this is your surprise, my little hitchhiker.” I look around confused. The lake? Are we getting in because I didn’t buy a suit. “C’mon,” he says, pulling me to the back of the truck.
He lets the tailgate down with one hand before letting my hand go. It’s only now that I see the bags he threw back there. He jumps up on the bed and takes out some blankets and pillows. My heart speeds up. What is he doing?
“Don’t worry. It’s just a picnic,” he assures, reading my mind.
“Oh, I figured,” I lie. I climb onto the bed and help him to take the food out of the bag. The little casserole dishes still have condensation from the heat. The insulation bags do a good job of keeping things warm, but there’s no way we’ve been riding with this stuff since we left this morning. The hair salon alone took most of the day. He must have grabbed the food right before he picked me up.
“I thought I’d share one of my favorites with you, Chicken Piccata.” I watch as he spoons it onto actual plates. When he pulls the wine glasses out of the bag wrapped in newspaper, I can’t help but giggle.
“Paper plates and cups probably would have traveled better,” I point out.
“Ah, but not as classy. Besides, plastic doesn’t go with the setup we have here,” he says, pointing at the daybed he’s created for us.
If I was reading into things, I’d say this look suspiciously close to a date, but I keep that to myself. I don’t want to spoil whatever this is. It’s nice. Ethan would have never done anything like this for me.
Beau has our chicken in front of us with the breadsticks I still hadn’t got around to tasting, wine, and to top it all off, Italian Cream cake.
“How can you get away with eating this kind of stuff and still look like that?” I can’t help it. I swipe a finger through the frosting and lick it.
“Look like what?” I stumble all over my words as I realize I alluded to how hot I think his body is.
“I just meant … how do you stay fit?” I finally get out.
“It’s a lifestyle. I work out and eat right for the most pa
rt, so my indulging doesn’t really affect me.”
“So tell me a little about you? Did you grow up here?” I just want to change the subject.
“I’m more curious to know about you. Mine is a long story.”
“So is mine and not really good dinner conversation.” This sparks his curiosity even more as I see the gleam in his eyes.
We finish our food and almost polish off the entire bottle of wine before he circles back around to our previous conversation.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says out of the blue. “Tell me all about you. I want to know everything about the mysterious woman in front of me. In return, I’ll tell you about me. Parts of my life that many are not privy to, but I’ll share with you to make it fair.”
Luke Bryan is still playing softly in the background, and the sun is setting. Orange and red hues reflect off the lake in a romantic kind of way. It may be the buzz of alcohol coursing through my blood or me just being plain nosy to find out things about him that many people don’t know, but I agree to tell him about me. I’m just passing through town, right? So what if he knows. It’s my justification and I’m sticking to it.
“Deal.”
He pushes the food off to the side and leans back against the pillows. Neither of us has room for dessert after that delicious meal. The breadsticks definitely live up to the hype. He catches me off guard when he pulls me back to lean against the pillows with him. I don’t resist. I can just watch the sunset as I tell my fucked-up story, and I don’t have to see the pity that will surely be in his eyes.
“Where should I start?” I half chuckle nervously.
“Anywhere you want,” he assures.
I decide to start with my family. “My family didn’t always have money. In fact, when my dad was going through his residency, my mother worked two jobs to help us stay afloat. My father is a general surgeon, but he has always lived beyond his means even when he had a shit ton of bills from medical school. He wanted to keep up with colleagues who had years under their belt to settle into their career. He and my mom argued about it all the time,” I explain. “Fast forward a few years. One of my dad’s colleagues, Jerry, decided to go into private practice with just the two of them. They were both unhappy with the group they were in, but neither of them had enough funding to pull off such a large feat. Rather than be inundated with loans from the start, Jerry convinced my dad to bring in a third partner. A silent partner, aka a huge fucking investor … his son, Ethan Nichols. World-renowned plastic surgeon. My dad agreed, and it wasn’t long before their practice soared to new heights in their fancy new building and only the most elite clientele for patients.”
“Sounds like your father accomplished what he set out to do,” Beau surmises.
“Oh, that’s not the end of it. The fame and money brought in wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He shoved me down Ethan’s throat at every turn. Jerry and my dad thought it was their duty to play matchmaker. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl. I went to school, got good grades, and always did what I was told. I believed wholeheartedly that he knew what was best for me. If he thought it was this Ethan guy, then surely, I should give him a chance. To my surprise, we hit it off immediately. I thought I had found my soul mate—my Prince Charming. When he proposed, my parents were over the moon. My dad was all but too eager to welcome him to the family.” I let out a trembling breath because this is where things turn ugly.
“So you got engaged to Mr. Rich Guy,” Beau says more to himself.
“Yes,” I confirm. “It was a fairy tale in the beginning. I moved in with him after only being engaged a couple of weeks. I was nineteen then. Free to make my own choices, but I chose the man my dad chose for me. Only I was too plain for him—too plain for his glamorous lifestyle. He started with tossing away all my things under the guise that he only wanted me to have the finer things in life. Then he wanted me to have breast implants then dye my hair blond and add extensions because he liked big haired blondes. Soon, I no longer recognized myself, but I justified all the changes as doing my part as a fiancée. I was determined to make an effort to fit into his world. This is how the women looked. I didn’t want to be an embarrassment.”
“You should never have to change who you are for someone else. Especially not for a man who’s supposed to love you for who you are,” Beau growls. He grabs my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze. I can feel him looking at me now, but I don’t want to see the pity in his eyes. I haven’t even shared the horrific part yet.
“There’s more. Ethan started to change. Became less trusting. I enrolled in college to get my prerequisites for nursing. He constantly accused me of cheating on him with various male students at the university. Accusations turned into fights. Well, I should say beatings because he did all the punching.” I can feel Beau’s tension in my hand, but he lets me continue.
“I should have left him then, but I fell for his many apologies—believed him every time he said it wouldn’t happen again. I dropped out of college to pacify him, believing that things would get better. The honeymoon phase was nice. That’s the phase when he was the most doting fiancé. It wasn’t even the expensive gifts he gave me. I soaked up the time and attention he showered me with. But then those honeymoon phases got shorter and shorter while his trigger list grew longer. Sometimes, the verbal abuse rivaled the physical abuse. My body became his punching bag. Never my face, though. Never a place I couldn’t hide with clothes.”
I don’t even realize I’m sobbing until Beau pulls me to him. My head nestles into his chest.
“Ah, Bleu. Why did you stay for so long? Why didn’t you tell your family?”
“I couldn’t tell my dad. He puts Ethan on a pedestal. Between Ethan and his dad, they own two-thirds of the private practice. They could push my father out. No way he’d be able to maintain what he’s built on his own.” I sniffle. “I felt stuck. I didn’t want to be the sole reason everything fell apart. That was until this last time. We hosted a charity event. One of his newly married colleagues brought her husband. He felt overwhelmed, so I took him out for a walk around our gardens. I knew how it felt to feel like a foreigner looking into a world where he didn’t quite fit. Only after the event, my intoxicated fiancé accused me of cheating once again.
“He beat me unconscious and left me on the closet floor bleeding. I knew the honeymoon cycle that started the next day had to be the last one. Over the next two days, I grabbed the only things left that I originally moved in with and pulled five hundred dollars from one of the credit cards to halfway replace the things he destroyed of mine. I left everything else behind—clothes, jewelry, Range Rover, and credit cards. I wasn’t taking anything that was part of that life. I used part of the money I took to get a bus ticket as far as Atlanta. Then I hitched a ride with a trucker headed to Memphis until he started hinting that he wanted sex as payment. When he stopped for snacks at the convenience store in the middle of nowhere, I saw it as my chance to escape. I hid in the bathroom until he gave up and drove away. Then I ran into you on my way to Hope Town.”
“My God, Bleu. That was both the bravest and dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You could have been raped, killed, or both. I understand, though. Nobody should ever have to endure something like that. He’s a fucking coward. I wouldn’t mind getting a hold of that fucker and seeing how much he likes to fight then.” I can feel the rage within him. He rests his chin on my head while taking calming breaths. “You should have told your father. I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted you to be in that situation. He would have found another way.”
“That’s just it. I don’t know if he would have. I mean, surely, he saw the changes in my appearance. The sacrifices I was already making while losing my identity in the process. He never said a word. In the end, I was too scared to say anything. Afraid to dismantle what my father had built but even more afraid to go to him and have him take Ethan’s side with some justification. I just couldn’t. I left a note for Ethan with all my credit cards on the kitchen counter and just left.
”
I’m the model of calm when I feel anything but. People who prey on the weak or beat women sicken me. I could have let Bleu know I suspected her abuse from the bruises I saw, but I don’t want her to question our generosity or motive for getting her the job and offering her a place to stay, so I keep it to myself.
“Ugh, I need more wine,” she whines. “I don’t want to think about it anymore. You’re the only person I’ve trusted with my truth, and now, I just want to put it behind me.”
There is so much I want to say, but I don’t want her to feel even worse for her choice. I grab another bottle of wine from the bag and pour her a glass. She snuggles into me closer and sips her way to relaxation. I can feel the moment the tension leaves her body.
“So I guess it’s my turn,” I begin, ready to hold up my end of the bargain to share.
I’m ready, ready to delve into my past after she was so brave to share hers, but I’m surprised by the unexpected. Bleu lifts up and gives me the softest kiss on the lips. Maybe it’s her wine consumption that I have to thank, but I’d like to think she could no longer refute her attraction to me.
The gentlemanly thing to do here is let things end there … with a peck. Only my cock is hardening with each passing second, so my continued willingness to stay away from her is dissipating rapidly. I know I should leave her alone. She needs someone who can give her more than one night.
Ah, fuck it! I take her now empty wine glass and set it aside. I pull her into my lap, and she doesn’t resist. I know she can feel my hardness even through our jeans. Luke Bryan is playing softly on a loop behind us, and the sunset is the perfect backdrop.
I pull her closer and capture her lips tenderly and purposely slow, taking cues from her reaction and body. She pulls herself closer and deepens the kiss. She grinds against me, and I’m content to let her take the lead for a moment. She grabs a handful of my hair, and I’m loving how she is taking control. I won’t fuck her, though, until I’m absolutely sure she wants it. Our make-out session is on a fast track to getting us there, though. She gyrates her petite body against my denim-clad cock, and I want to free it so badly, but she has to initiate that next step. I slide my hand underneath her Stanford shirt. She is still braless. Her tits are perfect. My mind wanders to how amazing they’d feel with my dick between them.