by Harper Sloan
The overwhelming stench of cheap perfume and fried foods is the first thing I smell when I walk through the bathroom door. It’s like being slapped in the face with it. Why don’t chicks understand that they don’t need to bathe in that crap? We don’t want them because they smell like the makeup part of the malls. You know, the part of the store you avoid because you feel like if you don’t stop and smell that stupid white card they might start running after you. Less is more. One of the things I crave the most about Chelcie is the subtle, sexy smell she has. I can’t even explain it. I can even smell it in here—just barely, but enough that my cock is straining to find her like some damn beacon.
Like fresh berries and the mouthwatering undertones of crème brûlée.
Goddamn. I can feel myself growing even harder. Visions of her underneath me as I slowly drive her body over the edge, smelling her on top of that lotion she is always rubbing into her skin . . . Fuck. I have to physically stop myself from storming up to her and taking her against the wall.
There she is.
She hasn’t seen me yet. She’s standing at the sinks, dabbing a wet paper towel against her face. I can tell that she’s been crying. Her eyes are slightly swollen and red. Her nose and cheeks have a blush to them that, if she wasn’t cleaning up the evidence of being upset, would cause the desire racing through my veins to hit a raging boil.
I watch in fascination as she lowers the paper towel, looks at herself for a few beats in the mirror, and smiles. This isn’t like the smile she had in the hallway. No, this is a smile I’ve been on the receiving end of before. The kind that makes me feel like the sun is shining on every inch of the darkness I’ve been trapped within. It is impossible not to feel touched when she turns that smile on you.
I find my own lips tipping up slightly. What can I say? It’s infectious.
She takes a deep breath, holds her hands to her stomach, and closes her eyes. I watch as her lips move slightly as if she is speaking before she smiles again.
Reaching down, I adjust myself quickly before she has a chance to notice that I’m here. Once I’ve curled my arm behind my back, I silently turn the latch and lock us both inside.
“Chelcie.”
Her eyes snap open and a look a horror and panic flashes over her features before she quickly hides it. A feeling of frustration washes over me that she is once again closing herself off to me. I have not one damn clue as to why she’s been acting like this lately. At first, she would walk on eggshells around me, but then again, everyone else did as well. Then, as we got to know each other better during the weeks she spent helping me research Dominic, I felt like she had finally let those damn walls down.
That she had finally started to let me in.
And then, last week, those walls didn’t just come up; they were enforced with a strength I just couldn’t wrap my mind around.
How did things change so rapidly?
“Chelcie,” I repeat when she doesn’t make a move to talk.
“You shouldn’t be in here, Ash. Aren’t you busy?”
Ah, so this is the way she wants to play it.
“Are you jealous?” I bait.
“Ha! Hardly. I don’t want to deal with another one of your groupies.”
“I don’t have groupies, Chelcie.”
I take a few steps and mentally grin when I see her chest start to rise and fall faster. Her eyes keep darting from my face to the door behind me. I let my lips curl into a smirk at the thought of her trying to run from me.
I’m done letting her run.
“Why have you been avoiding me?”
She looks confused for a second before I see those damn walls getting thicker.
“Don’t,” I firmly state. “Do not even think about making those goddamn walls any fucking stronger, Sunshine. No more of that. Why have you been running from me? I come into a room you’re in and you leave. I call and you don’t answer. You’ve been there for weeks and now nothing.”
“I’m not running. I’ve been busy.”
“You can’t even look me in the eye, so don’t give me that line of crap.”
Her eyes narrow, and I watch in rapt fascination as she stands a little straighter, marches right up to me—toe to toe—and jams her finger into my chest. “You . . . you SHIT! Why would I want to be around you, Asher? Huh? So you can throw some more insults at me? So you can show me just how little you think of me, of our friendship?! Or maybe, just maybe, I need another little self-esteem knockdown.”
When she stops talking, her cheeks are flushed, her chest is moving even quicker than it was before, and those eyes I love so much are blazing with her anger. What in the hell did I miss here?
“Uh, Sunshine, I have no clue what you are referring to.”
“Of course you don’t, Ash. How could you possibly remember something that happened when you were so drunk you couldn’t even stand up straight? Let me ask you this. Do you remember what happened to give you all those damn claw marks on your body? Don’t even think about lying to me either. Let me guess. Another one of your skin-and-bones groupies?”
“I don’t have groupies!” The words are heavy with the angry power I feel forming in my gut.
“Yeah, okay, then you have an army of sluts. Easy bitches that you fuck every day or hour—I don’t know. But I know I’m sick of watching it.” She rolls her eyes, but not before she can hide the flash of pain.
“And why is that, Chelcie? Is it because you wish it was you? Because let me tell you, I wish it was you. Every. Single. Time.”
Her gasp echoes against the walls. Even the noises from outside the door of the busy restaurant seem to mute themselves. It’s just us in here.
These are the moments you look back on when you’re knocking on Death’s door and smile. These are the moments when you can just feel in your gut that something life changing is happening.
And I thank Christ that I’m sober enough to remember this.
“That’s right, Chelcie. You. Do you really want to know how I got scratched up? It’s because the last woman I had, unfortunately, didn’t like it when I said your name when I came. I can’t change the past, and Lord knows I’m no monk, but I’m done. Done with the drinking, the other women, and I’m damn sure done fighting this attraction we’ve both been dancing around for three long months.”
She gasps, and using it to my advantage, I crash my lips down to hers.
Feeling her lips against mine—finally—is like finding water after years of a drought. It feels like coming home. It feels like I just got shocked with the highest voltage of electricity. The tingles shoot all the way from where our lips are joined straight to my dick.
Her hands shoot up to my sides, tightly fisting my shirt. I run my hands up her arms, curl them around her neck, and tilt her head to give me a better angle. To feast deeply on her lips. When I lick her plump lips and they open on a moan, I feel her melt into me. I stand there and pour every bit of lust I’ve had building into this kiss. Every promise of what is to come.
We stand there, ignoring the world around us while I take her in a kiss so powerful I have to lock my knees to keep from buckling. Damn, the things this woman does to my body.
I vaguely hear the pounding against the door. Between the wet sounds of our mouths mating together and our joined moans, it’s hard to focus on anything else. When they get louder, I feel her stiffen under my hands and I know the moment has been ruined. I pull back, not removing my hands from her neck, and rest my forehead against hers. My eyes closed while I try to calm the inferno that’s taken over my system.
I don’t even have a second to go from fucking her lips with mine before she rips herself from my hold. Reaching out, I grab the counter and steady myself before looking up at unexpected anger.
“How dare you,” she says coarsely. “I refuse to be another notch on your belt, Ash. You aren’t hurting for attention, obviously, and I see the girls you sleep with. I know I’m not as tall as they are or as skinny. Lord knows you made it pe
rfectly clear just how chubby you see me. You had a clear shot at someone easy not even ten minutes ago. Don’t you dare come at me with your . . . that . . . Fuck! I don’t even know how to get this through to you. You hurt me, Asher. You hurt me, and I don’t know if I can stop thinking about it long enough to be nice to you. So yeah, I have been avoiding you. You don’t have to do me any favors by pretending to be into the chubby, lonely girl, okay?”
“Chelcie, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I knew I had been spending more time drunk than awake lately, but until this moment, I didn’t realize just how bad it had become. Ashamed isn’t a strong enough word for how I feel right now.
“I wouldn’t imagine that you do, Ash. That’s what happens when you wake up drunk and then work your hardest to get even drunker. You know I thought we were at least getting to the point of friendship, but you don’t sit there and insult your friends.”
The pounding on the door gets louder while we just stand there. Knowing I can’t let her leave without at least trying to explain myself, I turn and throw the lock before yanking the door open.
“Chill the fuck out,” I spit at the shocked-faced ladies waiting to get inside the bathroom.
It’s not going to be long before they have Heavy himself coming to see what the issue is, so I turn back to Chelcie and work hard to get the right words together.
“Fuck!” Her eyes widen at the brutal force I spat that word out with. “Sunshine, I’m sorry. I wish I could remember what I did to make you look at me like that.” I move closer, pulling her into my body so that I can feel her against my skin again. “I’m fucking sorry.”
She looks at me, her expression screaming disappointment. “You might be sorry now, Asher, but how do I know that the next time you’re drinking you aren’t just going to do it again? I’m not at a place in my life where I can afford to not know which version of Asher Cooper I’m dealing with.”
I go to open my mouth and reply, but she quickly stops me. Her lips press against mine with the softest kiss. I take a deep breath in and hold it, feeling her against me, smelling her desire, but knowing that, if I try to do anything, I’m just going to prove to her that all I want is to be between her thighs.
“You can’t treat me like one of your groupies, Ash. That hurt. But hearing you basically call me the chubby girl that you would do if you had to . . . Well, that sliced me deep and I just can’t open that back up right now.”
She kisses me again before pulling herself out of my shocked arms and disappearing through the door. Meanwhile, I just stand there wondering what to do next.
CHAPTER 9
Chelcie
Monday morning came way too quickly. I’ve been in a pissed-off, somewhat depressed fog since my run-in with Asher. I spent the weekend in bed vegging on every single thing I could find that could fall into the junk food category. Ice cream, candy, peanuts, pickles . . . Okay, maybe pickles aren’t junk food, but you tell that to my little bean.
I’ve been lucky so far. I’m just about to hit the halfway mark of my pregnancy and my bump is finally starting to look more like I have a baby in there and not ten courses of Chinese takeout. Every time I look in the mirror and see the evidence of the life growing within my body, I’m overcome with a love I’ve never known was possible. That is of course quickly followed by a crying hormonal fit for a good hour.
Between the crying and the weird depression jags, odd food cravings, and unbelievable sex drive—minus the sex—I feel like my body has a mind of its own. I go from elation to fear in two-point-five seconds. And at the heels of all of that is guilt. Guilt because I still haven’t talked to Asher.
At first, I didn’t want to tell him because I didn’t know him. Then, after I got to know him and realized my attraction to him, I was more scared to tell him than anything. What if he thinks I was just another one of Coop’s whores? Or what if he thinks I did this on purpose? Irrational—that’s all it was. Because when you strip all the bullshit away, he deserves to know and I am a huge bitch for not telling him.
So that’s why I woke up this morning I made a promise to myself. I have exactly three weeks to tell him. In three weeks, I finally get to find out if I’m having a boy or girl, and I feel like Asher needs to be a part of that. He needs to know so that he has time to decide if he even wants to be part of that.
God, I hope he does.
Of course, today isn’t going to be that day. I promised Dee that I would try one more date before I gave up on it for a while. The last idiot I attempted to go out on a date with showed up with a car so full of trash that I couldn’t even make out where he was sitting. I wasn’t even sure how he was able to drive that damn thing. There was trash for days—clothes, bedding . . . Hell, I think he had food stuck to his windshield. Of course, that should have been the first clue that I needed to run. He got out, walked around the car, and gave me a huge hug. The only thing I noticed was the overwhelming stench.
So . . . I proceeded to vomit all over his feet. His socks—with holes—and-sandals-wearing feet.
And the worst part was that he didn’t even seem to mind. He smiled, half of his teeth missing, and tried to kiss me!
Needless to say, I all but ran back to my car and hauled ass out of the parking lot. I had to pull over twice to strip the clothes from my body and frantically brush ants off of me.
And then I shamelessly ran back through the lobby of my apartment, past a blushing Joe, and straight to my place—where I took the hottest shower I could safely have while trying to talk myself out of a bleach scrub.
So this afternoon is it. If this date is another date from hell, I’m done.
I wisely told Dee that this date was going to be a lunch date; that way, if it turned out to be another disaster, I wouldn’t have to have my whole night ruined. I talked to date number three, Phillip, on the phone last night. He seemed pleasant enough. Very polite and soft-spoken. He didn’t refer to himself with any weird nicknames, and most importantly, he knew that I was pregnant and didn’t seem to have a single issue with it.
Famous last words, it seems.
Pulling up outside the local burger hot spot, I immediately see him standing against the wall next to the front entrance, our designated meeting spot. He has the tall, sleek build of a runner. Slim hips, flat stomach, and strong shoulders. His hair is clipped short—just enough length for me to run my fingers through his blond locks. I can’t see his eyes from here, but if I remember from the terribly grainy picture he sent me, they’re a warm hazel.
I take in his straight-laced clothes—typical country-club-type polo and dress slacks, all the way down to his loafers.
Okay, that might be a point in the negative column. I’m so used to looking at the guys in their tough-guy boots that loafers throw me off for a second.
Shaking my head at my own foolishness, I climb out of the car and make sure that my clothes are in order. It’s harder these days to find things that don’t show off my stomach. I decided to go with a nice pair of black slacks and a loose-fitting blouse. Nothing that draws attention to my growing stomach.
“Chelcie?” he questions when I get closer. His friendly, open face lights up when he spots me.
“Yes, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Phillip.” I go to offer my hand, but he pulls me into a friendly hug. Errr . . . okay, maybe another negative. I don’t hug.
I awkwardly pat his back a few times and pray that he isn’t going to keep me in this hug crap for too long.
“Not a hugger, huh?” he laughs, pulling away with his warm smile still in place.
Well, thank God I didn’t offend him. So far, so good.
“Yeah, sorry. Must be weird being on the other end of an anti-hug person.”
We both laugh and make our way into the restaurant.
It doesn’t take long to get a table, and for once, there isn’t any awkward silence or overly flirtatious behavior with the staff. He seems genuinely interested in what I have to
say.
“So, Phillip, tell me a little about yourself. You mentioned that you own a construction company?” I grab my water and take a sip, waiting for him to answer. I’m shocked that I’m actually enjoying myself.
“Please call me Phil. My father is Phillip, and I feel like I need to have a sweater vest on when people call me by my full name.” He flashes his bright, white teeth when he smiles at me. Damn, he might be as close to perfect as I’m going to find. “Or then again, it could be my mother yelling at me.” He laughs at his own joke, and I smile, waiting for him to continue. “I opened up my company about ten years ago. I worked through college building houses, and it just seemed like the right thing for me. I knew what I was doing and had years of connections to get the jobs done cheap. We do everything from small home repairs to complete demo and remodels. It’s fun, and I love working with my hands. Just kind of fit.”
“It must be impossible to work in the Georgia heat during the summers. I couldn’t imagine working outdoors. But then again, I pretty much sprint from air-conditioned building to air-conditioned car when it goes over eighty.”
“It’s definitely not a walk in the park, that’s for sure. I’ve been lucky, and my company does well, so the majority of the heavy work I contract out. I spend most of my working hours in the office, telling others how to do their job.”
We’re interrupted for a second when our food arrives, and a comfortable silence settles around us. The noise of the other diners around us fills in the blank in conversation. We make eye contact a few times, his eyes heating with blatant desire.
“Do you mind me asking about the baby’s father? I don’t mean to overstep. I just want to know what I’m dealing with.” He actually blushes at that, and I can’t help but smirk at his obvious discomfort in asking.
“I don’t mind. He . . . uh, he passed away earlier this year. It wasn’t a planned pregnancy, and unfortunately, I never had a chance to tell him.” I can feel the familiar tears burning my nose and threatening to fall from my eyes, but I quickly blink them back and push off the nagging guilt that my child’s father isn’t ever going to be here.