Lock You Down (Rivers Brothers 2)

His thinness had filled in a bit more. His features had hollowed out. His jaw got stronger.

He'd always been good-looking.

But with time helping to ease some of his anger, he'd become a truly stunning man.

And since he refused to have any social media, there was no way Marley could have known that.

"Squee!" Krissy hissed under her breath as Marley finally moved into the space.

She was our Marley.

But the years had refined her.

The Marley we had known was one for ill-fitting jeans, baggy tees, flat shoes, wild hair, and a bare face.

This Marley, she had come into her own sense of adult style. More mature. But still fresh. She had on a camel-colored faux suede skirt that was almost dangerously short, but she had on black opaque stockings underneath. She paired the skirt with a three-quarter-length black tee, form-fitting, and a pair of black pumps. Her wavy blonde hair that had once been down to her butt was chopped just above her shoulders, still wavy, but more managed. Simple diamond earrings sat on her lobes.

Her face was as gorgeous as ever, but she had learned to make her cornflower blue eyes pop all the more with a little mascara and liner. She'd tamed her brows a bit. She had even put on a pink lipstick.

"Our baby is all grown up," Krissy declared, unable to hold in her excitement.

And her comment got the very serious Calvin's head to lift. First to Krissy, then over toward where Krissy's gaze was.

"Fuck," his breath hissed out of him, his lips parted ever-so-slightly as his eyes roamed over the girl he'd absolutely been into before she'd gone off to college.

There was something about the smile that pulled at Marley's lips--slow, almost a little sultry, that made my gaze slip over to Krissy, the question on my face.

"Oh, they totally fucked before she left," she declared quietly. And, well, sex was Krissy's language. She was fluent. If she picked up on that, then I had every confidence she was right.

"You're back," Calvin said, voice a little guarded for reasons we didn't understand.

"Did you think you could avoid me forever, you bastard?" she asked, smile so cold I felt a shiver move through me.

"Uh-oh," Krissy murmured, lips thinning out as she grimaced.

Calvin looked almost stricken for a moment before he wiped any genuine expression at all from his face, replacing it with the cocky indifference of his youth, something I hadn't seen in years.

"Who'd have thought you'd be so fucking hung up on me?" he asked, getting to his feet with a cat-like grace, stalking over toward her, getting so close that there was hardly any air between them. But Marley was still too stubborn to back down first. "You dress up like this for me?" he asked, smile going wicked as his hand moved out, fingers tracing the short hem of her skirt on her thigh.

"You'd like that," Marley said, pinning him with her signature intense gaze. "I hate to be the one to inform you of this, Calvin, but the world doesn't revolve around you. And mine sure as hell doesn't. I'm here because Reagan invited me."

"Yeah," he said, lips tipping up at one side. "Sure, sweetheart," he agreed, moving past her, but plowing into her a bit to do so, brushing his chest across hers, forcing her back a step so he could disappear down the stairs.

"Giiiiirl," Krissy said, hand pressed to her heart. "You fucked the bad boy!" she said, mouth gaping.

"It was a moment of pure insanity. Five years ago. Clearly, a regrettable decision," she added, but her gaze moved over toward the door where Calvin had disappeared into.

"Someone needs to call Mark," Krissy told me. "I think we have something to bet on again."

Luckily, I had him on my speed dial.Nixon - 8 yearsIt had been a long year.

It didn't matter how stable your relationship was, how pristine your finances, how lovely your home. The adoption process was the same for everyone. Namely, invasive.

We'd been prepared for it.

We'd done our research.

But it was hard to imagine how under a microscope you felt when someone showed up at your door, demanded to see your financial documents, questioned you about parenting, about your own upbringing, about your health.

I'd been grilled about my absent father, about my mother's early death, about my relationships with my siblings. Reagan had needed to explain about her sister's suicide, her own court battle against a convicted rapist.

Reagan had dragged me to her therapist, and, honestly, some time on that couch with her was likely the only way we'd finally made it through the home study process.

"I want them all," Reagan declared, sitting in our kitchen in the wee hours before Jackson woke up. Though he had inherited the early riser gene from his mother. We never had long in the mornings before he stirred, no matter how early we got up.