I could do this.
When they were finally in place—although not as tightly pressed against me as my panties usually were—I let out a sigh of relief. It wasn’t comfortable-comfortable, but it wasn’t the hell I’d assumed it’d be.
That all changed when I put my jeans on. Why hadn’t I worn a skirt or a dress, or even a pair of MC Hammer pants? I didn’t own them, but I could have had them delivered in time for this appointment, for the love of Pete.
I ended up doing a whole new walk of shame out of the shop to my car, one that was interrupted by three friends of my parents, all stopping me at different times to shoot the shit and prolonging my hell.
My weekend routine was shot to shit given that every task took me five times longer to finish it. And by the time I went back to work the following day—obviously wearing a maxi dress. I couldn’t hide the pain if I had pants pressing against it—I still wasn’t in a good way.
“You make up with Canon?” Evie asked as I wobbled through the front door, her eyes focused on my crotch.
Holy shit, could they see the piercing through my clothes?
“She’s walking like she sprained her cooter—again—so you could be right,” Sayla mused.
Yeah, after my one night with Canon last weekend, I’d come into work walking awkwardly and like I’d sprained my vagina. They’d accurately guessed who was responsible for it, even though I hadn’t said anything, because they knew I wasn’t the sort of person who’d have let anyone else touch me. I had admitted to fucking it all up, though, so there was that.
“Nah, it can’t have been him,” Heidi said as she walked out of the kitchen with a cup in her hand.
Man, pregnancy was a good look on her. Her cheeks had a beautiful glow on them, and she looked happier than I’d ever seen her look.
Then what she said sank in. “What do you mean?”
Sitting down in the chair her sister did her client’s hair in, Heidi swung it around to face me. “Bond had to go round to Canon’s place over the weekend to pick up some papers for work. Apparently, he went with Cason to some cocktail convention thing in Vegas.”
Cason was the guy who was responsible for the delicious cocktails they served at Kleins. Every month, he’d come up with something new for them that matched the cakes Heidi made for them. He was also hot, as in all the way smoking hot, so there was that, too.
Two men that looked like Cason and Canon alone in Vegas?
If I could have sat down and cried, I probably would have. It was just as well, then, that I couldn’t do that—at least, not without giving away that I was having issues down there. And since when did I refer to my cooch as ‘down there?’
Canon fucking Klein had broken me into pieces, and he didn’t even realize it.
CHAPTER 9
Canon
Wednesday…
“So, how was Vegas?” Bond asked, leaning back in his chair, and wiggling his eyebrows at Cason and me.
Seeing as how we’d had the same long weekend, I had to figure that Cason’s pained expression and rough appearance matched my own. I had no idea how we’d managed to get on the flight yesterday, or even how I’d gotten back to my home.
Still, when I’d woken up this morning, I swear I felt my soul leave my body when I opened my eyes and saw the bright sun shining through my window because I’d forgotten to close the fucking curtains.
“Good,” Cason rasped, pressing his fingers into his temples and groaning. “Dying.”
Snorting, Bond reached into his desk, pulled something out, and threw it. The item turned out to be a bottle of Tylenol, which I only realized when it got within blurry sight distance, just before it bounced off my forehead.
Whatever was left of my soul went screaming out of my skull as something exploded inside it. The whimper that came out of me as I leaned forward with my palms pressed against where a missile had just hit me was one I hadn’t heard since I was little.
Back then, I’d been creeping through the house one night to get the remaining Candy Corn—you either hated them, or you loved them. I went fucking nuts for the things—and Jarrod had jumped out, intending to scare me. What he’d achieved as he’d swung his hands up in the air was a fist to my nuts, one that damn near crippled me. The whole house had woken up as I’d laid on the floor screaming and whimpering. And just to make the moment worse, my dad had eaten the Candy Corn right in front of me.
Ironically, the pain in my head was nowhere near what I’d experienced back then, but the reaction was almost identical, except I was holding my skull, not my balls.