Sweet Chaos (Love & Chaos Book 2)

by Emery Rose

  “Why?” I hedged, reaching for my beer.

  “I’ve given this a lot of thought and I just… I don’t want her to be part of our baby’s life.” Remy rearranged the fruit and avocados in a glazed blue bowl as she talked, needing to keep her hands busy even though it was a useless endeavor. “She never protected us or took care of us and I don’t trust her. She left us at a truck stop, Dylan. What kind of mother does that?”

  The bad kind of mother. That was the day Remy and I made our blood oath. We promised never to leave the other behind. No matter what, we’d always be there for each other. We were six years old, hiding out behind the dumpsters at a truck stop, already street smart enough to know that we couldn’t risk anyone finding out we’d been left behind. It wasn’t the first time it had happened and certainly wouldn’t be the last, but that day stood out in our memories.

  Remy had been scared shitless that I would bleed to death. Being me, I’d slashed my wrist with a shard of glass from a broken bottle to make our blood oath. Always the smarter one, and not as self-destructive, Remy had pricked her thumb to achieve the same goal.

  “Don’t worry about Mom. She won’t bother you.” That was a promise I could keep. Rae St. Clair knew where her bread was buttered, and part of our agreement was that she needed to stay away from Remy. She’d caused Remy enough trouble, flirting with Tristan Hart when she’d paid a rare visit to our high school. Because of that, Tristan Hart had treated Remy like a whore. Then she’d made a move on Shane, not giving a shit that her daughter was in love with him. A fucking clusterfuck, just like everything was when our mother got involved.

  “How much did you pay her?” Remy asked, leveling me with a look.

  Fifty grand. But that was over a year ago, and I suspected she’d burned through that money by now and would be calling for more any day soon. I didn’t give a shit about the money though. If it kept her out of Remy’s hair, I’d pay our mother whatever she asked. I still felt responsible for her, although God knows why. She’d been a shitty excuse for a mother. But sometimes she called me just to talk. And for reasons I couldn’t explain and didn’t care to analyze, I always answered her calls. I still paid her rent and her health insurance every month and I still worried about her even though she’d never done the same for us.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I repeated.

  “Does that make me a horrible person? That I don’t even want her to meet her own grandchild?” She brushed away a tear. I’d noticed that pregnancy had made her more emotional.

  “You have nothing to feel guilty about and you don’t have to justify this to me or anyone else. I was there. I lived through it with you.”

  We had a shitty childhood. You couldn’t even call it a childhood. I don’t remember ever being treated like a child. We moved from place to place on our mother’s whim, always with the promise that the next town would be better. Spoiler alert: A change of scenery had never changed a damn thing. She was still a drunk, still spread her legs for money, and we were the baggage she carted along until her load got too heavy and she left us curbside.

  “I know,” she said softly, brushing away another tear.

  I hated seeing Remy cry. She’d always been so tough, more out of necessity than anything else so this felt… I don’t know, strange. It gave me a tight feeling in my chest. I finished my beer and helped myself to another one, flipping the lid into the swing bin under the sink. My mother… my shitty childhood… the weight of my crushing guilt… they drove me to drink.

  “I think… if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have survived,” Remy told me. “You picked me up when I didn’t want to go on anymore. You fought for me. You were my strength and you were always there. You had my back and you kicked me in the ass when I needed it.”

  I didn’t deserve that kind of credit. I wasn’t there for her when she needed me most. She lost Shane, and he lost everything—his reputation, his pro surfing career, the time he could have spent with his father who was dying of a brain tumor. Every-fucking-thing. All because I wasn’t there for Remy like I’d promised. If I had taken care of Tristan Hart back in high school when he was bullying Remy, Shane never would have gone to prison for manslaughter, and Remy wouldn’t have had to spend seven years being heartbroken. But like so many other things in my life, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it now.

  Bowing my head, I rubbed the back of my neck, so she couldn’t see my face. I didn’t want to talk about any of this.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Remy said. When we were kids, we had twin telepathy. Sometimes, like now, we still had it. She knew exactly what I was thinking about.

  “What’s done is done.” I’d always carry that guilt, and there was nothing Remy could say to make it go away, but she didn’t need to be saddled with my mistakes and regrets. Especially not when she was expecting a baby and she and Shane had found their way back to each other.

  “You saved me from Russell.”

  Another thing I didn’t want to talk about. Another shitty memory to add to the collection. Tripping down memory lane was not my idea of a good time. I’d become a pro at shoving all those memories deep down inside and not shedding any light on them and that’s how I wanted them to stay. Buried. “Like I said, don’t worry about Mom. I don’t tell her shit about your life and she knows not to contact you.”

  “Love you.”

  “Ditto,” I said gruffly as I heard the front door open. Seconds later, Shane joined us in the kitchen. I tipped my beer at him in greeting before I took a long pull. My words were in short supply, and he was mostly used to it by now.

  “Hello lover.” Remy smiled at Shane like he put the moon and stars in the sky. Their love was like nothing I’d ever seen or experienced before. I doubted that anyone would ever love me the way they loved each other. But it made me happy that Remy had found a man who deserved her.

  “Hello trouble.” Shane wrapped his arms around her from behind and kissed the side of her neck then pinned his gaze on me. “When were you planning to tell us that you bought a hotel?”

  “What?” Remy shouted. “Oh my god, you never tell me anything. You bought a hotel? What the hell, Dylan?”

  I shrugged. “Are we putting that baby furniture together or what?” I was halfway out the door when Remy grabbed my arm and hauled me back.

  “Pretty quick reflexes for a double-wide.”

  She wasn’t amused. When I turned to face them, I was met with matching looks of accusation. Shane and Remy looked nothing alike. He had dirty blond hair and the quintessential surfer dude look. She was dark-haired and exotic-looking. But they were so in sync that even their facial expressions had become mirror images. Synchronicity. “It’s not public knowledge yet. Just keep it to yourselves for now.”

  “Since I didn’t even know about it, that shouldn’t be hard,” Remy fumed. She planted her hands on her hips. “Which hotel?”

  “The Surf Lodge.”

  Remy’s jaw dropped, and she tipped her head back to look up at Shane who was standing behind her, his hand splayed across her pregnant belly. “Isn’t that where your parents were married?”

  “Yeah, it is.” He huffed out a laugh. “How did you get Whitaker to sell it to you?”

  “No idea. I was just my charming self.”

  That made Shane laugh. Har har har. A little louder than necessary. “He sold it to me when I told him I was close with Jimmy,” I admitted. “And when I told him I wanted to turn it into a surf hostel instead of bulldozing it and building an expensive boutique hotel, he was all in.”

  “Well, shit. You’d do that?” Shane looked amazed that I’d even consider it.

  I shrugged. “I thought you might want to have some input. Since you stayed in a lot of surf hostels. I was thinking of doing team rooms. Get the Firefly Surfboards name out there.”

  Shane was silent a beat, processing the information. “Why didn’t you tell us about this? Why did I have to find out from Cal Whitaker?”

  I rubbed t
he back of my neck, not sure what to say, other than I would have told him eventually.

  Shane shook his head. “You’re a pain in the ass. Whether you like it or not, we’re family. When are you going to start trusting me?”

  I trusted him as much as I trusted Remy which was one hundred percent, but I’d spent the better part of my life not confiding in anyone. Shit like that didn’t change overnight.

  “I trust you.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  “It’s nothing personal,” Remy said. “He doesn’t tell anyone anything.”

  “My dad always wanted to buy The Surf Lodge,” Shane said.

  I knew that.

  “I told him when I won the world championship, we’d buy it.”

  Knew that too. Jimmy had told me that when Shane was in prison. And that was why I’d bought the hotel. If I didn’t already know that Shane would throw it back in my face and refuse to accept, I’d give him an equal share. But he’d never accept it, would look at it as charity, just as I would so I didn’t even broach the subject.

  “Shane,” Remy said softly, her lower lip trembling, and I was worried she might burst into tears. “You could have been the world champion. You should have been.”

  I drained my beer and turned my back to them, tossing my empty bottle in the trash.

  “Hey. Firefly. None of that. I’m happy. I have more than I could ever possibly have dreamed of.” He held her gaze until she believed that he was telling the truth, and I suspected that he’d had to reassure her on numerous occasions but would continue doing so until he took his last breath if necessary. Satisfied that she believed him, his gaze moved from Remy to me. “My dad would be so fucking proud of you.”

  I hoped so. I’d done a lot of bad shit in my life, but Jimmy had never judged me. He’d supported me and made me dream bigger. Made me believe that I could be something better than a thug or a drug dealer. While Shane had been in prison and Remy had taken off to pursue her modeling career, Jimmy and I had gotten close. He was one of the best men I’d ever known. Shane had been blessed with two good parents and cursed when he lost them both. His mom had been killed by a hit and run driver when he was just a kid. Then his dad had died of a brain tumor a little over a year ago.

  Life was so fucking unfair.

  I left Remy and Shane in the kitchen and followed the music up the stairs to the second floor.

  Stopping in the doorway of the baby’s room, I leaned my shoulder against the doorframe and watched Scarlett shaking her ass to “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo. I smothered a laugh as she sang along giving it a whole lot of attitude and gestures. She was going for it, oblivious to the fact that I was watching. Her back was to me, the paintbrush in her hand forgotten as she shimmied low, her ass nearly touching the floor before she shimmied back up, never losing her balance. It was like a soft porn show.

  I was hard as stone. Again.

  Which was fucking inconvenient, all things considered.

  A minute or two later, Scarlett spun around and let out a yelp, her hand going to her heart. “Oh God, you scared me.” I smirked as her gaze drifted down to the erection tenting my gray sweatpants then returned to my face. She blushed. It was cute.

  “Nice twerking.”

  “Glad you enjoyed the show, perv.” Her eyes lowered to my crotch again. Let’s face it, it was hard to miss and impossible to hide and I was too shameless to care.

  “Like what you see?”

  “I’ve seen better.”

  I gave her a slow, lazy grin and advanced on her until her back was against the wall. “Doubt it.”

  “How would you know?”

  “If Shaggy Doo is anything to go by, your taste is questionable. Let me guess. He has one position in his repertoire. Missionary.”

  “Stop calling him Shaggy Doo. And there’s nothing wrong with missionary.” She rolled her eyes. “Why are we talking about sex?”

  “Why do you keep ogling my junk?”

  Her eyes snapped to mine. “Because it’s prodding me in the stomach. Get it away from me.”

  I laughed and stayed where I was, standing right in front of her, my dick prodding her stomach. She had paint in her blonde hair and a streak of blue on her cheek. That, and the fact that my dick was calling the shots, distracted me from giving more than a quick glance at the ocean scene she was painting. Dolphins? Starfish? Some type of sea creatures. I brushed my thumb over her cheekbone, smearing the paint across her face like war paint. Making it worse, not better. Her lips parted slightly, and her chest heaved. She wanted me as much as I wanted her.

  There was no real moral dilemma for me here. I wanted her. Plain and simple. I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to hear the sounds she made when she was coming on my cock. I wanted to hear her scream my name and beg for more. Was she dirty? Did she like it rough? I wanted the answers to all those questions.

  We were two consenting adults. My relationship with Sienna was over. We didn’t stay friends because we’d never been friends, and our split had been messy and final. I rarely thought about Sienna, and whatever we’d once had felt like another lifetime ago.

  Besides which, Scarlett was nothing like Sienna. She was stronger. More honest. Truer to herself. With an innocence that Sienna never had. It was sexy as hell.

  Frankly, I was coming up empty on reasons why we shouldn’t have sex. My mind was running wild with possibility and my throbbing dick was trying to worm its way out of my sweatpants and bury itself inside her sweet little pussy. It was all I could do not to shove her against the wall and fuck her senseless.

  Until she dumped a bucket of ice-cold water on my fantasies.

  “So, I’ve been thinking…” She gave me a sweet smile, nothing cunning or manipulative about it. “We should just be friends.”

  “Friends.” Never had the word sounded less appealing than it did coming out of my mouth. That was a hell no from me. I’d never been friend-zoned in my life and sure as hell wasn’t about to start now. But I’d let her entertain this little notion of hers until she realized it wasn’t possible to be just friends with someone you wanted to fuck five ways from Sunday.

  11

  Scarlett

  When I told Dylan we should just be friends, I had meant it. Although, judging by the look on his face, it was safe to say that he’d never been friend-zoned in his life. I had even tried to return my birthday present, claiming that it was too expensive to keep but he refused to take it back.

  It was the best gift he could have ever given me. Boxes of plain white T-shirts, Vans, tank tops and denim jackets, a treasure trove of blank canvases for my design-loving heart.

  Nic and I had been speechless when we’d opened the boxes, and since then I’d spent all my free time working on my designs. Whenever I finished a piece, I sent Dylan a photo, surprised that he was interested and even more surprised when he commented.

  He hadn’t forgotten about his offer to set up a website for me so now here I was getting off the elevator on the twelfth floor and stepping through the glass doors of EZ Solutions on a Wednesday evening. The name of the company and the open-plan set-up went against everything I knew about Dylan.

  “May I help you?” a woman with shoulder-length glossy brown hair and trendy horn-rimmed glasses asked me. She was wearing a pencil skirt and heels that showed off her mile-long legs. If I had to guess, she was in her mid to late twenties, attractive in that sexy librarian way. I hated that my first thought was, Have you slept with Dylan?

  “Oh. Yes.” I cleared my throat and wrapped my hand around the strap of my messenger bag. “I’m here to see Dylan. My name is Scarlett.”

  She checked her iPad for confirmation then nodded. “I’m Melanie, his PA.”

  Just how much personal assistance did she give him? I needed to stop thinking like that. Just friends, I reminded myself.

  I followed Melanie to a corner office that I hadn’t noticed, and she knocked on the door three times before opening it and ushering me inside.
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br />   I noticed the longing look she gave Dylan before she closed the door, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t thrill me that he seemed oblivious. But since we were just friends, it really shouldn’t matter. That’s what I had to keep telling myself as I took a seat on a black swivel chair across from his sleek black desk and let my eyes roam over his space. There was nothing personal in his office whatsoever. Just a laptop and a desktop computer. Folders stacked neatly on the corner of his desk. A black pen holder filled with, you guessed it, black pens. Dylan’s office was in one of the new blue glass high rise buildings across from the beach and since he had a corner office, the views were amazing.

  “Why does everyone else sit in an open plan area but you’re locked up in the Bat Cave?”

  “Because I’m me.”

  “So, what exactly do you guys do here? At EZ Solutions?” I choked on my laughter. Anyone who knew Dylan was aware that he was the antithesis of easy.

  He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head and I tried really hard not to notice the way his shirt stretched taut against his muscles with that move. “You think that’s funny, Miss Woods?”

  “Um, yeah. It’s hilarious. You’re not easy.”

  “Are you easy, Scarlett?” His tone was playful but there was an undercurrent of something else in it. Yet another thing I desperately tried to ignore.

  “Nope. I’m a lot of work. I require special care and attention.” Oh my God, I was just feeding into this, wasn’t I?

  He bit his bottom lip and his eyes darkened as his heated gaze stripped me naked. That was how it felt. Was it suddenly hot in here? I swallowed and looked out the floor to ceiling windows behind him as the sun dipped into the ocean, the sky streaked with tangerine and violet. Nature at its most beautiful.

  My gaze returned to him. Nature at its most violently beautiful. He was typing on his laptop, not even looking at me which made it easier to breathe. “So tell me what you do.”

  He peered at me over the screen then gestured with his hand for me to come and sit next to him, so I wheeled my chair around the desk and sat by his side, my messenger bag in my lap. “We’re a software development and consulting firm.”