Shit.
Shit.
Shit!
That wasn’t good.
“Then we have a problem.”
He agreed, “Then you have a problem.” He went back to staring at his problem. “I gotta go back. Got work to do. Got a woman to love on, but my gut is saying I’m needed here.”
I turned to watch Bren, too. She was smiling.
“You’re glowing, Bren. Damned glowing…”
Her dad was right, and looking at him watching his daughter, he knew it. He had a slight smile holding firm. It’d been there the entire time. The only time it faded, and it wasn’t gone all the way, was when Channing entered the scene.
“We’ll take care of Bren.”
“I know. That’s not what I’m worried about.”
His gaze was still hard on his dad. It was more than obvious whom he was worried about hurting his sister.
“We’ll watch for that, too.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound appeased, not by a long shot.
BREN
My dad went to Roussou.
Channing went to Roussou.
And my life, weird as it sounds, had a new normal. Again.
The next two weeks, things were boring. Really boring. The only blip of action was that Sunday had her baby, a little girl she named Drayana. Zellman told us after a call to her that she was already calling her baby Dray, and I had to speculate that the nickname was purposeful. It wasn’t long after that phone call that Zellman decided he wanted to head back and ‘be there’ in case Sunday needed anything.
He was still bringing girls home. He was still heading out to parties, and enjoying college life, but Zellman didn’t hear from Sunday one day, and that’d been enough for him. I had no clue if he had midterms or not, but he went to Roussou. We weren’t given any word on when he was returning either, so it was a stay-tuned kind of situation.
As for my work, I was part of the team, but they had benched me because of my concussion.
I also met Bonbon, who decided to come back for a visit.
She walked in, her hair wild and looked like she combed it with a fork. Her eyes were dancing all around, and she stopped, seeing me. “Who are you?”
“I’m—”
She flicked her head to the side, grimaced, and cursed loudly. “FUCKING APESHIT HAIRY BALLS!” Then she looked back at me, her eyeballs taking a second to center on me. After that, she breezed by and said, “My angels said to be nice to you so stay out of my way, kid. Unless you have a fork and a tail, and if that’s the way you party, let’s go a few rounds.”
Everyone was right. She was nuts.
The first day she came in, she was another version of Bonnie, except with graying and white hair. She liked to wear old polo shirts, and mom jeans, with socks and sneakers. Her feet smelled. A lot. It wasn’t a coincidence that the day Bonbon came into the office, it became mandatory to keep the windows open and the fans at full blast. Air needed to be circulated out windows ASAP, and the air-conditioner tended to let the stink stay confined indoors.
Besides always muttering to herself, always shoving her glasses back up the bridge of her nose, she mostly stayed away from me. That wasn’t to say the same for anyone else. She mooned over Big. She brought cookies in for Burly. She watched Brock, sniffed her nose at Hawk, and there was usually an argument behind closed doors once a day with either Bonnie or Gramps. They rotated, apparently.
But Trundle and me, she stayed away from. I wasn’t even sure she knew I was there.
As for my concussion, I had stayed home for the first week. I was allowed back into the office the last few days of my second week, and I only did paperwork. And that meant, if I had to copy, scan, or print something, I was their girl. I ran errands, too. Coffee. Lunch. I ordered pizza if they asked me to. I answered the phones, too, because there was no way they were going to let Bonbon do that.
Someone called in once, and before anyone else could pick up, she answered it, “9-1-1 operations.” And then she hung up, saw us all watching her, and laughed. “They’ll call back, but I made them shit their pants first.”
I kinda loved her after that, but from a distance. A far, far distance.
Big seemed intrigued. Burly stopped accepting her cookies.
As for Cross and me, he was kissing his way up my body right now.
Shoving my legs open, he slid inside, and we were good. We were really good.
“Fuck,” he panted against my throat. “You feel so good.”
Pleasure was licking up my spine, and I ground against him. I scraped my nails down his back in response, and he shivered, as I knew he would. Winding my legs around his waist, I moved against him, almost damn purring. “Fuck me, Cross.”