DECEIT (B723)

by Hazel Grace

  “Bishop would’ve been too held up in an office.” I compel a cheap giggle. “He’s not much of a tourist anyway.”

  Bishop lifts a brow. “Really? Because I remember on one business trip we spent it eating off every food truck and stand in Venice. You recall Vegas, don’t you?”

  An ear-piercing silence encases us, and I scowl at him while my words come out with nothing but honey.

  “That’s because I had to practically drag you around.” I step backward, forcing Alexander to get back in the house. “Thanks for stopping by and letting me know what happened. I’ll see you—uh, I’ll see you when I see you.”

  “Lunch tomorrow?” I can’t tell if this asshole is serious or just fucking with the man behind me, but the answer is going to be no.

  No more private times.

  No more getting wrapped up in his grip.

  No more anything.

  “We’ll talk,” I reply because I got nothing.

  “Yes, please,” Alexander chimes in, and I wish he’d just shut up. “She never eats, and I could use some help making sure she does. Emmy is probably tired of my text messages by now.”

  “Oh, I bet she is,” Bishop affirms. “She hates being nagged.”

  My eyes widen at his rudeness. “Stop teasing.”

  Bishop’s blue eyes snap back to mine. “I’m not.”

  Alexander chuckles like this is a game. And that’s all I want him to know it as. Bishop would murder Alexander in his sleep, and it’s my responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen.

  “Bishop’s got jokes,” I deadpan.

  “It’s good to have fun on the job.” Alexander’s hand finds my right hip, and Bishop’s blues snap to it like a shark to blood. They reduce and turn murky, being tested to the limits.

  “Good night, Bish,” I relay. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  He pivots without another word, leaving me with a silent fuck you as I cover my mouth with the roar of nausea that just crashed into my frame.

  “You alright?” Alexander’s hands come up to my biceps, and my stomach knots again.

  I don’t get to answer him because I puke all over my front porch.

  The most recent definition of an idiot on Google has to have a picture of my face next to it with the stupid fucking shit I pulled two nights ago at Emmy’s.

  I was jealous as fuck.

  I had checked her Instagram hours before, finding a new snapshot of her but not taken by her. Me, being me, I saw the image of the person behind her camera in the reflection of her sunglasses as she puckered up those plush lips and held up a peace sign.

  It was a man.

  And that man was Alexander.

  It was a harsh reality that I decided to ignore or assumed would never happen. I missed the fuck out of her when I was away—I always did. There won’t be a day in my lifetime where Emmy wouldn’t be a forming thought.

  Whether she was still employed with B723 or not.

  Emmy was part of me.

  She was someone I always wanted more of.

  She was simply everything.

  And now, sitting with my second family around a table while Ledger bitches at us for “taking matters into our own hands” (this is mostly my fault), I shamelessly stare at the woman who did exactly what I didn’t want her to do.

  She was going to slay me as no one else has, and I was obviously helping her.

  The white and pink plaid button-up that she’s wearing is too big for her. Then the black tank underneath that purposely exposes the bottom half of her stomach and light blue jeans that cover that perfect ass of hers that I’m obsessed with.

  She appears exhausted, another reason that my brain goes a million miles per hour and hasn’t looked at me the whole time we’ve been in this room. She usually checks the table to get everyone’s vibe, but Emmy is staring off into space like she’d rather be anywhere but here.

  It’s mutual.

  I would willingly do anything else or even speak to Mills just to be annoyed and pissed afterward than be present to this shit.

  “I didn’t gather this group together so that you all could go running around like you own the damn country. You don’t,” Ledger storms at the head of the table in his full pressed black suit. “This shit is going to end.”

  “We took out bad guys,” Mills retorts. “Yeah, they weren’t assigned missions, but—“

  “You know what the fuck I mean,” our commander snaps, his face reddening. “No killing or apprehending unless I say.” He stands from his seat and rakes his hand in his hair. “You all are working to stroke me out.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” Kyson mutters at my side and, I’m not sure what crawled up his ass, but I roll my eyes anyway.

  “These were family matters,” Marty chimes in. “No bodies were left behind.”

  Ledger points accusingly at him. “You killed the son of the ex-mayor. He had a family. They’re still searching for him.”

  Marty shrugs because he doesn’t give a shit. I wouldn’t either.

  “We appreciate you looking the other way,” Blue quips. “But if you really believe that with some of our backgrounds that we’re going to let the pigs and newbie detectives take care of shit for us…sorry, commander, but that’s not going to fly.”

  “Then you and I can have a private conversation about it in my office.” Ledger looks around the room. “Anyone else have any smart-ass comments they wanna make? I have another chair.” He’s answered with silence and doesn’t say goodbye to anyone on his way to the door. “Blue, five minutes. And keep your fucking gum out of your mouth.”

  On cue, a soft pop sounds from the bubble she just let snap, and Mills chortles like a child.

  Emmy is the first one to rise and begin to leave the room when I follow her out. My chest is almost to her back as we exit, and she feels me. Her whole body is taut and when we get far enough away and down the hallway, she whirls on me.

  “What?”

  “Mhm, Emmy, you know what I want.” I erase the distance between us, and she flushes pink like the flowers I picked out and dropped onto her front steps. “I want your boy toy gone.”

  “Ah, you’re back so now we’re issuing out commands? Sorry, dickhead, but I didn’t get any text messages or phone calls while you were away.”

  “I was giving you space.” I don’t know if there’s a rule for how much time has to pass for something like that, but I needed it too.

  It didn’t mean that I magically disappeared as part of her life when I crossed the pond.

  “Cool—“ She steps away, and I notice against the lighting above that she looks paler. “—then back off and give it to me.”

  My brows knit. “You can fuck off with the attitude, Emmy because I wasn’t greeted the way I wanted to be when I got back. I’m not saying you should’ve thrown a party but at least showed me that you noticed.”

  “Oh, I noticed. It was quiet.” I roll my eyes. “I’m not playing this game with you right now. I’m tired.”

  My blood runs to boiling temperatures, and I ball my fingers into tight fists. “Keep mentioning that motherfucker, and I will kill his ass tonight, Ems. Watch me.”

  “Didn’t you just hear what Ledger said?” she sneers. “No more bullshit.”

  I snort because when it comes to Emmy, there are no rules. Just bad decisions and the best sex of my fucking life.

  “Do you think I care?” I challenge. “What are you gonna do, rat me out?”

  “No, I’ll maim you.”

  A curl of my lips makes her scowl. “So you’ll be wrapping those pretty little hands around my massive cock while you take a dull knife to me?”

  “Yep.” She meets my full-on stare and lifts her chin defiantly.

  I lean in, smelling that peach scent of hers, and I exhale as I say, “Will you kiss me when you do it?” Emmy steps back but meets the wall. “Bleed out on those hands as you bite down on my lower lip. You want to inflict pain on me, Emmy? Make sure you tease me with that tongue,
baby. I’m a fucking sucker for how you taste me. Just like you did with your rich prick.”

  “Stop.”

  “That’d be a first.”

  Emmy scowls at me. “You done yet?”

  “What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”

  She averts her gaze. “No.”

  “Then, tell me—“

  “Bishop!” Ledger bellows out, making Emmy and I both jump.

  Motherfucker…

  Without moving from my spot, I peer over my shoulder to find what Blue keeps mentioning as the Silver Fox, striding purposely in my direction.

  “You’re on my shit list.”

  I shrug. “I’ve only been back seventy-two hours.”

  “And still a pain in my ass.” Ledger readjusts his suit jacket and straightens his spine to calm himself.

  It’s for Emmy’s sake.

  The old ass has a soft spot for her like everyone else around here.

  “I found a good rehab facility for your friend, Camilla. She’ll be able to check herself out in sixty days, but…it’s a start.”

  My eyelids want to slam shut but I coerce them to stay open, as to not show Ledger that I did not prefer for him to mention the woman that Emmy would surely lose her shit over.

  The one I’ve been trying to tell her means nothing to me anymore.

  “Thanks,” I gripe. “Kyson is taking care of transporting her.”

  “She’s it, isn’t she?”

  My brows knit. “She’s what?”

  Ledger’s wrinkled features are a mixture of pity and still pissed off as I feel Emmy begin to slide away from me.

  My fingers wrap around the belt loops of her jeans because I’m not trying to hide shit from her. I’m just getting Camilla help and distant from my fucking family.

  When Emmy told me that she saw her at my house that night, setting off the alarms, it made it quite clear that Camilla didn’t receive the message.

  Even though Emmy beat her ass, it was Em that I was worried about, not the blonde blast from my past. I never called and checked up on her but kept pining over my wife, whom I’m still in love with when I was gone.

  So, when I took the job to Germany, I asked Ledger to help me out. I didn’t have time to deal with it, nor did I want to. Camilla required help with no one to do it for her, so I was doing my good deed for the year.

  After this, I never wanted to see her again.

  “The woman you left in Pittsburgh,” Ledger replies. “When you joined the military.”

  I inhale a deep gulp of air before I nod. “Yeah.”

  “Did you need me to send her—“

  “No,” I carp out. “She just needs a nice place. Nothing more, thanks.”

  Ledger studies me for a moment then bows his head. “Alright. Call me if you need anything else.”

  He takes off, and Emmy’s hand latches onto mine. Her fingernails digging into the flesh of my knuckles.

  “I said tease me with your tongue,” I complain, returning my focus onto the little fireball to my right. “Not your nails unless you’re running them down my back.”

  “You stupid son of a bitch.” Her fist pelts into my gut, knocking surprise into me but not much pain because she doesn’t have enough room to cock it fully back. “Get the fuck away from me.”

  “Now, Em—“ Her tiny palms slam into my chest, and she shoves as hard as she can. I allow myself a few steps away before I’m in her personal space again because she’s trying to leave me. “Listen to me, Emmy. I’m getting rid of her.”

  She scoffs. “Sure you are. And when those sixty days are up, guess who’s gonna be checking her ass out and running right back to your house saying she’s changed and that she’s sorry. To take her back and that she misses you so much and I’m not fucking doing this with you, Bish, I can’t. I don’t have the mental space, and I’m not going to play second best to some cunt who broke your heart so bad that you couldn’t love me or—“ My hand clamps onto her biceps and finds that she’s trembling.

  “Calm down, baby,” I coo gently, stopping her from holding her breath as she speaks. “She’s gone the moment Ledger gives me the word.”

  “I don’t buy it,” she retorts. “She’ll never let you go.”

  “But I let her go...a long, long time ago.”

  She shakes her head, strands of blonde hair falling into her eyes, but she doesn’t bother to move them away. Instead, she peers up at me with tears glistening in her eyes.

  I want to stab myself for creating them.

  “But you didn’t want me. Not in the way I needed you to. You can tell me to go fuck off, but you didn’t to her. She knows she has a place, a soft and gentle one when it comes to you. She can do no wrong and I’m treated like a second-class citizen in your world. I’m tired of it.”

  “Emmy, I just told you that—“

  “Do you love me?” Her question should have a simple answer. It’s yes. It’s always been the word yes.

  However, when the word enters my brain, the red and piercing screeching of alarm sirens ring off in my head.

  They warn me to tread lightly.

  That I’m stepping into a similar situation where heartbreak could be the lead ending to this story.

  Except I jumped with Emmy like I have with no one before in my life.

  I married her.

  I craved to give her everything. Children, a happy life and home, and my last name if she wanted it.

  My first thought was the one I’ve explained a hundred times. I needed to tell my family that she was mine and I was hers. Which meant extra caution and watch of my wife would be expected. Her being part of B723 and my spouse made her the golden nugget that everyone had to respect and secure at all costs.

  There were no other options.

  “You see,” she utters in almost a whisper. “Nothing has changed, but everything remains the same to you.”

  I close my eyes. “Baby, I—“

  “I’m pregnant,” she sneers so viciously that my eyes snap open from the deep intensity of her words. Her light brown eyes clamp onto me and hold me still as she constricts around me so tightly that I can’t make any air enter my lungs.

  My body bows in her direction, wanting to comfort, kiss, and speak from somewhere far and dark within my soul. But she continues, and the following comment does change everything.

  “And it’s not yours.”

  Two days ago…

  “Wow…” Mills runs his hand down the stubble on his face as he sits on the edge of my tub and purposely averts his gaze from me. “I honestly didn’t…I guess I assumed Bishop wasn’t your type.”

  So, I needed someone to talk to.

  I went to the grocery store earlier, minding my own business, when an elderly woman approached me and grabbed my hand. She smiled, her bright green eyes still vibrant as the day she was born, and said I looked absolutely radiant.

  She also dropped another adjective that has had me freaking out ever since.

  Glowing.

  She said I was glowing.

  There is only one reason why I’d be doing that unless I was shot up with a shit load of radiation or had Christmas tree lights shoved up my butt.

  Kyson was so out of the running to go to because of how close he is to Bishop.

  Marty will kill Bishop.

  Wade would have Bishop assassinated.

  Reagan is out of town for a wedding she is planning, and having this conversation over the phone while I pee on a stick isn’t ideal.

  And Stormi, Marty’s wife, bless her sweet soul, but she’d rat me out quicker than a toupee on a windy day.

  So I went to the only other person who wouldn’t judge me too harshly and who I trusted with my secret—Mills.

  “His broodiness got me, I guess,” I mutter, trying to focus on peeing but can’t because I have to.

  “I’m not against it,” Mills ventures, reading the back of one of my shampoo bottles. “You’d be good for him…but I don’t know about the other way around.
”

  Oh, buddy. Lemme tell you about how we got married.

  “He has the emotional availability of a fucking rock,” I pledge.

  “It just takes a while for him. I guess he got his heart pretty tore the fuck up over this blonde chick. The one we picked up at that daycare, remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  The bane of my existence and love life. The reason he’s not able to love me or show me any emotional outlet besides fucking me and bringing me pink flowers.

  Wow, you’re a bitch. He’s trying.

  “Well, I guess they dated, high school sweethearts and shit. She started snorting coke, and Bish tried to get her off it. Long story short, she wouldn’t stop for him and risked her relationship with him. I suppose he did a lot of stuff to keep her away from it. Ended up killing her rapists and—“

  “What?”

  Mills glances at my lavender wall. “They were high school sweethearts and—“

  I wave a hand in the air. “No, I know all that, the last part.”

  “Rapists. She was raped by two guys. Kyson and Bishop took care of it, of course, it got bloody. Bishop was pretty torn up about it. And it went all downhill after that.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Ky. He told me that when Bish graduated, he left her. Wanted a new life and took off for the military. Never looked back, I guess.”

  “I knew he had a hard past with her, but…” Heavy guilt, the weight of an eighteen-wheeler falls on my chest. “He never spoke about the rape.”

  “Would you? Bishop is a lot of things, but he’s loyal. I can’t blame him for wanting to cut ties.”

  “Right.”

  “Are you sure you want me in here?” Mills asks, suddenly changing the subject. ”This is weird, Em.”

  “I need you to be a girlfriend right now, so…you’ve dealt with worse.”

  He shrugs as I place the pregnancy test between my legs. “I’m not going to any doctor appointments with you. Bishop can do all that. Or Alexander.”

  “Wow, you’re making me sound more of a whore than what I already feel.”

  “Stop,” Mills groans. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I’m not pregnant so…this is just all precaution.”