SweetHarts (5 Book Box Set)

by Kira Graham

  He shrugs, and I see his discomfort when he faces me.

  “I went to the reception like you asked me to and made sure that people stayed for at least an hour in order to appease you. I’m afraid that she caught me talking to Heath, and she may be under the slight impression that you advised me to break things off. I’m sorry, Al. I didn’t mean for her to get that out of what I was saying,” he says softly, smiling ruefully when I shrug.

  “It’s okay. She’s a strong girl, that one. She’ll get over it, and besides, it’s not like we’re buddies or anything. Her and Sin seem to be partners in crime at the moment. I think that Sin’s even taught her how to drink now,” I muse, my need for a good old drunken night of letting loose nearly crippling me.

  It’s like a tradition of sorts with us. Sin and I have always celebrated breakups by getting shitfaced, and without that, I can’t celebrate shit. Not that I want to. I’d be more of a pathetic drunk if I could drink right now, so yeah, once again, I’m saved by reality. Meaning, it would be wrong to drink while I’m pregnant. God, I wish that weren’t true!

  “At least she’s loosening up,” Nate mutters, slapping his hand softly on my thigh. “Look. How about this? You and me take a little vacay. You put in for all that leave at your practice after you hired that new therapist, so you don’t have to go back to work right now. Let’s take advantage of that and go take that vacay on Zeus’s island,” he suggests, a smile twisting his mouth when I growl and shake my head. “Why not? Come on, it’s going to waste right now, and babe, you need to get out of here before they all lose patience and descend. Frankly, I’m surprised that Rosetta hasn’t taken a chainsaw to this door already.”

  Me, too. But hey, life can surprise you. It’s also surprising that I haven’t had a hundred eighty-seven tear-filled messages from Jack, or that my mom hasn’t been around to feed me twenty-four hours a day. Though that could have something to do with the fact that when they tried to show up, I met my family at the door. With a gun.

  “I don’t want to go on some pseudo-vacation in the same place that I was going to have my honeymoon. Besides, I want to go to work tomorrow and start making plans for the nursery, and no, you are not moving out. My bedroom is unnecessarily huge, and I’ve already thought about having a contractor come in here to wall off the half that I don’t need,” I tell him, watching him deflate with relief.

  “Maybe I should—”

  “You aren’t moving out. I need you with me to change diapers and to hold me up in the shower when I can’t hold myself up. I hate to break this to you, pal, but you’ve got post-birth duties now that my asshole of a boyfriend is out of the picture,” I muse, my amusement more dark than funny.

  “I’d do whatever you needed me to do, but maybe…we’ll let time tell? Chilli may surprise you.”

  “The only thing that would surprise me about Achilles Hart is if he bled after I put a bullet in him.”

  And soon, I really will believe that.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Achilles

  “She still won’t answer?” Zeus asks, his relaxed pose as he leans against the doorframe belying the hard look that he gives me.

  I shake my head and continue sanding down the hardwood floors, my mission right now to finish the house after the crews all abandoned me just as the permits finally came through. At this point, I am all alone, and I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to be around me. My crew is pissed off at me, half of them having been at the church because Alex is the kind of woman who would invite all of her friends, regardless of their financial position compared to that of others. I thought that Juan was going to physically assault me when I finally reached the church, and the others weren’t much better.

  Raul did punch me. Miguel gave me a sneering look while he and his girl walked away, and Clarke just shook his head and told me what an asshole I was. Even French couldn’t be brought around, and that’s saying a lot, because French is always saying that a stranger’s just another friend you need to talk to more often.

  “She obviously leaves her phone on just so that she can decline my calls,” I tell him, sweat dripping into my eye when I shut the sander off to look over the newly restored floor.

  This is the last floor that I have to stain, and then I can gratefully say that they’re done. In a month, I’ve refinished all the floors, built the extension and porch, and finished all the trim work. It’s unbelievable, but I’ve almost finished a house that should have had a full crew working on it. I guess that that’s what happens when you don’t sleep or talk to anyone. Oh, yeah, and when you get kicked out of your job for a two-month period because your boss-brother can’t be around you until his temper cools off.

  Not that I blame Adonis. I really do get why he’s so pissed. There he is, willing to do anything to make Cleo take that final step, and I’m the idiot who stands his bride up at the altar. Not that I meant to do it, mind you. I just lost track of time, and then…things went south when I realized what I was doing.

  Talking to Raquel Jefferson instead of going to the church where my bride was waiting on me. Why I did it, I will never know. I just…needed to close that chapter of my life and start anew, you know?

  “This place looks good. You’ve been working hard on it,” Zeus says, changing the subject because it’s all talked out and dead in the water.

  I told him where I was and what I was doing, and, for the first time, Zeus didn’t give me that disappointed look of his and call me an asshole. He nodded as if he understood, and told me to keep trying with Alex. The thing is, I don’t know that it will help. And I can’t blame her. It’s not like I can just text her and say that I was resolving the issue of a previous marriage that wasn’t really a marriage because it wasn’t completely legal yet, and that my brothers rushed in to save me from what would have been a huge con job.

  When I was just starting college, I was with a girl on and off, strictly for sex, with absolutely no future involved. I thought that we were clear about that, but I guess that Raquel didn’t agree. Long story short, she told me that she was going to get deported, and, me being me, I came up with the “solution” of marrying her to keep her in the country. It was nothing more than a piece of paper to me, but apparently, it was much more than that to Raquel, who, as it turned out, was American and therefore not about to be deported. She wanted money—needed money to help her grandparents—and, at the end of the day, she was willing to use me in order to get it.

  I don’t blame her for that, for loving her family enough to do whatever she thought she had to. What I do blame her for is using me and coloring my view of…women. And I realize now that that is exactly what was happening. I was looking at women and thinking, I’m the nice guy who doesn’t hurt them because I am upfront with them, but what was really happening was that I didn’t trust them enough to commit, so I’d be “kinder” by being honest rather than leading them on.

  Because I didn’t trust them.

  Until Alex. I trusted her implicitly, which was why when Rosetta sent me that taped conversation that she’d had with Alex, I knew that I couldn’t keep holding back with her. It’s funny, but hearing her become so agitated and confused, and then say with such absolute certainty that she loved me, made me feel secure in a relationship for the first time. To know that the only thing that she was certain of was love, was like having a woman commit to me in a way that far surpassed some stupid license.

  That gave me the courage to propose, even when I was as scared as hell, and it carried me through the ensuing three weeks, while the wedding was being finalized. I stuck to Alex like glue during those three weeks, afraid not that I would change my mind, but that she’d change hers. Until she slapped me, told me to fuck off, and then kissed me and told me she loved me.

  Honestly, we must really be twisted if that was what settled things for me.

  “I needed something to keep me busy, seeing as how Adonis banished me, and Ma won’t talk to me,” I grunt, getting to my feet with a groan when my b
ack unlocks after hours of being crouched.

  “They just need a minute to get over what happened. Not to drive the knife in further, bro, but you weren’t there. You didn’t see Al’s face when she realized what was happening. It was like seeing everything just drain right out of her,” he says softly, reminding me of the pic that Paris sent me, with the words, “Congrats. You finally went and broke her.”

  That nearly broke me, let me tell you. The only thing that’s kept me going is the pictures that Rosetta sent of the ultrasound that Alex had recently, letting me know that I have two little boys on the way. I almost shit myself when she told me that Al was naming them Axel and Brick, after kids in her favorite TV show. No way. No kid of mine is going to have the name Brick. Also, I kind of suspect that Axel is just a play on Al’s name, especially since in the show it’s spelled “Axl,” while Brick is some kind of indirect insult aimed at me. Think P instead of B.

  “I know that, Z. And I understand that their loyalties are difficult because they can’t choose a side. The truth is, I wish they’d choose her side, because I don’t deserve forgiveness,” I tell him, walking past him with the sander so that I can clean everything out of the room.

  The house is nearly complete. I’ve painted it all, sanded down all the trim, had electricians and plumbers out to fix and update things, and even hired a tile guy, because I may be good at a lot of things involved with construction, but bathrooms aren’t it. Everything else, I did either myself or with Ares’ and Z’s help. Now it’s just the last touches that need to be added, and then I can start thinking about furniture. It just freaking sucks that I won’t get to let Alex pick it all out, the way that I wanted her to.

  My chest aches at the thought of living in this house, a house that I now realize I bought because she used to stare at it every time we drove past it. Hindsight, huh? Finally knowing the truth of things after it’s too late to do anything about it.

  “They aren’t choosing sides. No one is. Even Rosetta isn’t angry at you anymore, Chilli. She told me to tell you that she’s sorry that Alex isn’t being nicer.”

  I shrug and walk down the stairs, avoiding looking at the runner, where blood still stains the white carpet. The night of my failed wedding day, I came out here, got shitfaced, and fell down the stairs. That’s nothing unusual for me, since I frequently seem to fall for no good reason, but what strikes me about that episode is that after I stopped mid-fall, my nose busted and spewing blood, I didn’t worry about my face, my raging headache, or the fact that I was ruining the runner that I had specifically saved for Alex. I cried like a baby on these stairs because it finally hit me that the home that I was making for us was as empty as I felt.

  Okay, so it was a pity party for one, but it shook me up enough that I got up, ignored my throbbing nose, and started to get to work. I don’t know what I’m going to do now that it’s all done, since I’ve sort of been using this house as a distraction, ironically, to forget her, the same way I started off months ago. Only now, instead of forgetting her, I want her here so badly that it’s hard to breathe when it sinks in, bit by bit, that that is not happening.

  Alex, it seems, is moving on. She’s back at work, and she’s decorating the nursery, after Nate put up a wall and made her one big master into two smaller bedrooms. She’s done with me.

  “Alex doesn’t have to be nice, Z. She doesn’t have to be anything. Don’t you guys get it? I fucking stood her up at the altar,” I hiss, stopping in the kitchen to put the sander back in its box and grab two beers for us.

  “You didn’t mean to! I bet that if she knew that you were looking for closure, she’d get it and forgive you. Hell, if you told her that you ran all the way to the church on a broken ankle, she’d definitely forgive you!” he yells, looking down at the boot that will be on my foot for at least another month.

  I’ve never cursed my clumsiness as much as I did that day. Running out of the hotel where I’d met with Raquel, I pulled a classic Chilli and went headfirst down the entry steps, busting two bones and tearing a tendon.

  Not that it matters. Because it doesn’t. I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and I know it. I knew it then.

  “It doesn’t matter, Zeus. The end result is still the same. I stood her up on the most important day of her life.”

  “Goddammit—you didn’t. You just ran a little late. Tell her that, Chill. Call her. Show up at her office. Do something!” he begs, his frustration with me nothing new.

  The only one who doesn’t seem to hound me or ignore me is Ares. He just blows in, spends hours painting or refinishing things, and then leaves as silently as he came. Whatever he’s working out must be eating him alive, too, because this kitchen is all Ares.

  “What do you want me to fucking do, Zeus? I’ve called and left so many messages that it would surprise me if she didn’t have a restraining order put on my ass. I’ve told her all that I can tell her, and she still won’t talk to me. And I don’t blame her,” I hiss, falling back against the counter with a grunt. “She deserves better than me. Someone who will—”

  “Raise your kids?” he asks softly, cutting me off sharply. “Someone who will sleep in her bed and touch her? Someone who will wake up in the morning and make her coffee and change diapers and be the husband and father that you were going to be?” he asks, every word taunting me until I feel a wave of white-hot rage filling me at the thought.

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Do what? Remind you that you didn’t lose your balls a month ago? Tell you that everything worth having is something that you need to work for, and if, in our cases, you can’t earn it, then you steal it? What? You think that Rosetta just looked at me one day and said, ‘Gee, he’s hot—I think I’ll marry him and have babies with him’? No way! We have nothing in common, man, and she hates nearly everything I like. I had to work for her, Chilli. I had to trick her into thinking that I was what she wanted, and then when she finally looked at me? She was hooked, trapped, and already caught.”

  “I don’t want to trap Alexandria! I want her to—”

  “Just choose a man who’s let her down in the past, based on faith and love alone?” he sneers, shaking his head just as Adonis comes around the corner, looking haggard and as tired as hell.

  “He’s right, you know. That shit doesn’t work—not with these women. You have to make them want you, need you, and love you, and then, when you’ve got that, you need to lock that shit down as fast as humanly possible.”

  “Addy—”

  “Don’t start arguing with me, you idiot. I’m tired, Cleo is driving me crazy, thanks to your clumsy little mistake that’s set me back another month, and that goddamn Waters merger deal is killing me. Get your woman back so that you can come back to work, and for God’s sake, do it fast, before Paris singlehandedly takes it all over,” he snarls, walking over to the fridge to grab a beer.

  Once he’s ripped the cap off, he lowers himself onto a stool at the island, yanks at his already messy tie, and leans his elbows on the granite. For once, my perfect big brother doesn’t look as put together as he always seems to be, and it raises the question…

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Me? Nothing. I’m just trying to stop Paris from running a coup on my ass, I need to figure out why Ares is never at work, and I have to field neurotic fits from Cleo when she realizes, randomly, that she’s a commitment-phobe, just like you. But, unlike you, she doesn’t want to end up—how did she say it? Ah, yes: ‘old, alone, and crying herself to sleep while her balls get old and saggy.’ I believe that those were her words, but she was actually referring to your balls. My baby doesn’t have those nasty things. And now I have to stay awake for hours to make sure that she doesn’t do something nuts, like haul my ass to Vegas for a quickie wedding that would kill our mothers—what’s that look?” he asks me when I feel a grin spread over my face, completely transforming me.

  One minute, I’m moping against the counter and feeling sorry for myse
lf, and the next, it’s like a ray of sunshine has hit me and is filling me up. That’s the answer! Goddammit. That is so the answer. It’s sneaky and wrong and so something that Alex would do that it’s perfect! Alex can’t fly now, which puts a crimp in my plans, but that can be worked around.

  I see Zeus narrow his eyes before he starts to smile, slowly, cheekily, and knowingly.

  “I’ll call Rosetta.”

  Well, now, maybe her little friendship with the mayor is finally going to come in handy.

  Alex

  “I said that I don’t want to go to Vegas for your stupid girls’ night out. Look at me!” I rail, my hands going down to my stomach, thinking to myself that these babies are determined to be born two months early, no matter what I have to say about it.

  I’ve been having contractions, or what Dr. Payne calls Braxton Hicks, for hours, but instead of slowing down, I feel like things are getting worse as the minutes pass by. I actually thought that my water broke about an hour ago, but it turns out that I just peed my pants a little. Stupid bladder. And now these morons think that I am hauling my big ass onto a jet to go to Las freaking Vegas in order to watch Céline fucking Dion strut her perfect, bony ass all over the stage.

  That is not happening. It really isn’t.

  “But—but it’ll be fun,” Mindy offers, her eyes narrowing a little when I shake my head and refuse again.

  “Fun? I just pissed my pants an hour ago, I farted against my will because I have gas that the books don’t tell you about until it’s too late, and my freaking feet don’t even fit into freaking slippers! And you want me to get on a plane? I cannot travel right now,” I hiss, slamming the door in their faces and waddling back to the couch.

  Nate is out on a date, thank God, or I’d probably have him arguing with me, too. It’s also a good thing because just then, the door swings open, Rosetta shoves a lock pick kit back into her jeans pocket, and all five of them stalk in looking as determined as hell.