“I heard a funny story from Ariana about you the other day,” I drawled, smiling wickedly at her.
Marcus had FaceTime’d his cousin, Ariana, to see how her brother, Archer, was doing when he couldn’t get through to him on the phone. Because I’d been in the background working on my laptop, he’d introduced us, and we’d exchanged numbers. That’d also led to me mentioning I’d met Sadie and loved her, and all of the stories had come out.
But there was one in particular that I loved.
“She’s a liar,” Sadie clipped. “An absolute fibber galore.”
“Is that a fact?”
Looking between us, Santana snickered. “What did you find out?”
Winking at her, I turned back to the very red-faced woman, who was staring at the sky.
“Well, come to find out, Miss Sadie here had an accident involving that pain free wax stuff you get ads for on social media.”
“They lie,” Sadie hissed. “That stuff isn’t pain free. It’s like pulling the skin off your nunney and ripping your soul out your vagina.”
Santana blinked. “You tried it?”
“Oh, did she ever. She put it in for a little bit of extra time, then poured the whole thing all over her chimichanga.” Santana winced, and Sadie bit her fist.
“It was awful. The first pour felt kinda soothing, but that second one was like lava.”
I bent down and shoved my face in Bronte’s neck, laughing so hard I was struggling to breathe.
“Are you meant to pour the whole thing on? Don’t they give you a spatula to spread it?” I heard Santana ask her, sounding like none of it was making sense. “How did you get it off?”
“With scissors,” Sadie snapped.
Pulling my head out of Bronte’s neck, I wiped under my eyes. “They had to cut it into strips and then pull it off. She waxed her tortilla shut, and her thigh was stuck to it at the same time.”
I was laughing so hard now no sound was coming out, which was worrying because there was definitely no air going into my lungs. It felt like something was compressing my chest, but I’d be damned if I could stop.
“You’re an arsehole. I had skin missing, Addy. Can you imagine not only waxing your clam bald but also clearing it of any skin, too?”
A high-pitched wheeze came out of me as I tried to draw oxygen in, and I was only just in time to pass Bronte to her mom before I fell out of my chair and landed on my knees on the ground.
“What the fuck happened?” Marcus barked, but even that couldn’t stop me.
The mental images from what Ariana had told me and what Sadie had just said were too much.
“She’s mean, that’s what happened,” I heard Sadie grumble.
“She found out about the wax story, did she?” Elijah chuckled. “Hey, pixie. How’re my girls?”
Let me just say, watching a man with the woman he loves and with his kid was a beautiful sight, and Elijah Townsend-Rossi was an insanely attractive man to me. So it made it even better when his eyes would go soft, and he’d talk to them in the tone that was theirs alone. The fact I was missing it right now wasn’t my biggest problem. Nope, I still couldn’t breathe.
Footsteps crunched next to me, and then I heard, “Fuck, Santana, are you okay?”
Remy had joined the party.
“You might wanna get your girl up, Marcus. She’s turning a funny color,” Elijah noted, and I hoped to dear god he was talking about me and not one of the horses.
A hand squeezed between my stomach and my thighs, and then I was being lifted, and my back was resting against Marcus’ stomach.
“Baby, I get it’s a funny story, but you gotta breathe. Take a deep breath in,” he whispered in my ear.
Beside me, I heard Remy saying something similar to Santana, but instead of calling her baby, he used the word ‘girl.’ That made me kind of sad. I couldn’t see into the future, but I knew he was either going to have to man up and apologize and treat her like she deserved, or he was going to lose her for good.
It was the latter that sobered me up and helped me come back down to earth.
Tipping my head back to look up at Marcus, I smiled when I saw the amusement warring with concern on his face.
“Hey,” I rasped, kissing him on his jaw. “Everything okay?”
Cupping my cheek in his hand, he used his thumb to wipe under my eyes and then skimmed it across my cheekbone. “It is now.”
He had no idea what he did to me with those three words because I knew exactly what he meant by them. I had moments when it felt like I was suffocating under my work, or I would think about what’d happened with Hayes and panic in case someone on the ranch had done it. During it, he’d walk into the room or text me, and it felt like I could breathe again, just knowing he was thinking of me and had looked me out.