Forever Mine (Providence Series Book 1) (21 page)

He lifted me up from my chair gently. He was so right; I did love doing that. Not only was Cole repulsed by anything menstrual, but he had a huge fear of Clowns and Spiders. I’d had endless hours of fun with all three of those things; the first time had been as revenge for the lake incident. Although I wasn’t a huge fan of spiders either, living in tropical countries guaranteed a healthy phobia of those eight legged bastards, but at the moment messing with Cole was just what I needed.

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After lunch I returned to the office back to happy, I’d had Cole’s Coke delivered to him with a tampon in it. In fact, it had been in there for so long that almost the whole drink had been absorbed by the tampon. He’d screamed like a girl and had swiped the thankfully plastic glass to the right, flinging the tampon on the window where it landed with a massive thud and squeakily slid down to the floor with Cole standing pointing at it and gagging.
 

The owners of the Diner had been in on it and hadn’t been upset by the sticky tampon track mark down their window, instead, they’d been holding their sides behind the counter and laughing their asses off. After that I’d got a picture of a group of circus clowns and half way through the meal while Cole was calm and talking about his weekend, I’d flashed the picture at him and held it until he focused on it fully. He’d let out yet another scream, making the rest of the patrons jump, and had pushed himself back away from the photo. What had happened had been one of the most hilarious things I’d ever seen. After he had pushed himself back, his front chair legs had left the floor, and the hind legs had got stuck on a slightly uneven tile making it tip backward. As Cole was still screaming and had put his hands in front of his face to block the view of the clowns and save himself from ‘certain death,' when he fell-he went back and landed still sitting in his chair and his scream at the time thud out of him like a pubescent choir boy. Yes, I’d felt bad, but he’d put Wasabi in my toothpaste on Sunday, so it was only fair. Unfortunately, I’d laughed that hard that I’d had to make a pit stop at Scarlett’s for some panties, but it was worth it.

Ren and I had discussed Andy before Cole arrived, and I was going to let the Mackay's know as they had been aware of the situation before I left. They had some great security guys working for them so they might be able to keep an eye on his whereabouts.

Now that I had that squared away, I was starting to realize how much I was going to miss Ren while I was gone. He’d become so important and vital so quickly, and the thought of being away from him, even for a couple of days, made my stomach ache. We’d promised we’d talk daily, and I knew he was at the end of the phone whenever I wanted to speak to him, but it wasn’t the same. I needed to suck it up because it was guaranteed that we’d need to spend time apart often, so getting the first time out of the way this quickly would make it easier next time; wouldn’t it?

Ren

I spent the day slamming things around in the garage being an asshole to anyone who came near me; that was mainly Cole though so I didn’t feel guilty. He was walking stooped over and milking his fall in the Diner to the max; he’d even had Mom bring him in some cookies; shit for brains.

At this precise moment, I was testing the weight of the wrench in my hand and picturing it shutting him up for thirty minutes.
 

“I’m serious Ren; I need to go to the hospital. I think I’ve fractured a disc in my spine or one of those bone things,” he whined. I gritted my teeth, mentally changing where my wrench would make an impact with Cole’s body, and instead thought about how many surgeons it would take to remove it from his ass. I turned and glowered at him, giving his colon a warning, but apparently the tip in his chair had knocked the sense out of him because he just humphed at me. “What's up your tush-tush man? You’ve been like Layla when she has PMS,” cue the shudder, “since lunch.”
 

“Maya’s going back to Florida.”

“What the fuck?” Cole shouted above me, and I looked up to see him waddling out of the garage in the direction of Maya’s office. If I hadn’t been in such a bad mood, I’d have been laughing my ass off watching him walk like he’d spent a productive night on Brokeback Mountain.
 
I couldn’t find it in me to laugh, though, so I did the next best thing and took my phone out to record it for later. “She’s going back to Palm Beach; what about her business? What about us?” He fumed as he waddled towards her building. What the fuck was he talking about?

“Dude, did you hit your head? What the fuck do you mean ‘what about us’?”

“Why the fuck aren’t you stopping her? I mean, you love her, and you’re just letting her move back there?” He’d stopped walking suddenly and was up in my face, well as up in it as he could get with a broken ass.

“Wait, who said she’s moving back there? It was only meant to be for a week?” His words sank in, and I was feeling sick. How could she leave me? She’d said a week maximum hadn’t she?
 

All of the questions were still running through my head when Cole slapped me on the back and started walking like Gollum back to the garage, and shouted over his shoulder, “Dude, it's just a week, you’re acting like she’s moving back there. You need to get a handle on that because that shit’s just embarrassing!”.
 

I could feel my eye ticking which wasn’t a rarity when it came to Cole, and felt the weight of the wrench still in my hand and looked up to gauge where would hurt him the most, and pitched it hitting him right in the ass. I heard the clang of the wrench hitting the sidewalk and Cole’s howl of pain as I walked past him collecting my new favorite wrench on my way.

“I’m telling Mom,” the mouth breather whined behind me.
 

I felt better already; I should have done this hours ago.
 
I just needed to figure out what to do between now and when Maya left to make sure that she knew exactly what she meant to me and how much I loved her; I needed to make plans. She was going for some girl time with Christie after work, so I had time to get some shit started. Pulling out my phone as I walked, I put it to my ear after I’d found the details that I wanted.
 

“Mace, you got any free time man?” This was perfect!

18

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Ren

I’d arranged to pick up Maya
from my parents once I finished at the garage, but I called and said I’d be a little later because I had to finish off a priority vehicle; the truth was I was heading to see Mace. He owned the best tattoo parlor in three counties and had featured in magazines all over the world. Normally his waiting list was around four months, but he’d recently taken on other artists who were almost as good at tattooing as he was so his workload was lighter.
 

With some of the weight taken off his shoulders, he’d created a dedicated piercing lounge; it sounded seedy, but it wasn’t. In every artists space, there was a television near the ceiling in the corner with tattoo shows playing on it, the beds were luxurious, the place was visibly sterile, and each customer had total privacy and luxury.
 
In the piercing lounge, Mace had put a soft leather sofa for customers to relax in or for friends to wait while the piercings were carried out in a partitioned off area. The room was relaxing and had almost a luxury home lounge feel to it because apparently the statistics showed that customers found piercing more distressing than tattooing; Cole and I had spent hours discussing it, and neither of us could understand why.
 

Since Ava had agreed to supply Mace with jewelry for his piercings, that side of the business had increased hugely; the only issue was the Mace-Ava situation. No one knew exactly what was going on between them as neither would talk about it, but you’d have to be blind not to see the sadness in Ava’s eyes and even I as a guy knew that if Mace didn’t figure it out ASA-fuckin-P, he’d lose her forever. There was only so much she could take, so it was no surprise when I walked into the place to see Ava walking towards me.
 
What was a surprise were the tears in her eyes as she dumped the box she was carrying on the front counter and walked past me and out the door.
 
That’s when I heard Mace yelling her name and the sound of a female moaning coming from the piercing lounge. I’d known Ava for as long as I could remember, and even with Mace being my best friend I felt like beating the shit out of him for what he’d just put her through; fucking some chick in his shop when he no doubt knew that Ava was dropping off shit.

The moaning stopped, and there was a crash as Mace ran past me and out the door yelling Ava’s name. Seconds later he came back in, raking his hands through his hair and looked up at me with the most miserable look on his face that I’d ever seen, and that said something since he and Gia hadn’t had the best childhood.

“Fuck,” he growled looking at the door to the lounge again. Going back into it, he came back out with fucking Francheska of all bitches in the world. Was she trying to ruin everyone’s life? She’d almost fucked Maya and I up before we’d even started, then the night we’d gone out to dinner, and she’d let that shit pour out of her over the table, and I’d had to do some quick thinking to stop Maya running away from me for good. Now she was fucking Mace and Ava up. It was also Mace’s fault; he should never have given into it, especially not with that bitch.
 

“Thanks handsome for taking such good care of me,” she squeaked in the nauseating baby voice that I’d hated for the last 14 years since she started using it in High School. She reached out to touch Mace, but he jerked out of reach and just handed her the bill, and her post piercing advice sheet and waited for her to get her credit card out.
 
She knew I was there the whole time and kept turning to look at me and lick her lips. The last I’d heard about her, she’d been seeing that twat Richard, who’d tried flirting with Maya at Jilly’s. The guy was a Dick by name and dick by nature, and he and Francheska were perfectly suited to each other though I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that Mace had just fucked her in his shop when he had Ava and when he never did that. In fact, I don’t think he’d fucked anyone since he got out of the Marines?
 

“Mmmmm, Ren!” Francheska groaned out, sounding constipated instead of the sexy that I figured she was going for.
 

I held my hand up stopping her from going further as I shook my head. I wasn’t interested in anything that came out of her mouth, not even the winning lotto numbers or who was going to win the Super Bowl. Knowing that I wasn’t going to bend, she leaned into Mace to kiss him, but he pulled away, so she missed him and stumbled.
 

“Thanks for this afternoon baby,” she winked and walked out in a way that reminded me of Cole’s broken ass walk earlier.
 

Hearing the tinkle of the bell over the door, I turned back to Mace and asked the question that was burning my tongue. “What the actual fuck M? Do you know what you’ve just done?”

“Nothing fucking happened! She came in to get her nipple pierced, and I was the only one free, so I took her through, and suddenly she starts moaning and fucking sounding like she was in a porno. I would never touch that sausage wallet, and you know that; and Ava…fuuuuuck!” He’d been on a roll with more words than I’d heard him talk in years as he tried to explain, but the last thought hit him hard, and I looked up to see him pulling at his hair and looking tormented.

“She looked destroyed Mace.”
 

I didn’t want to rub it in or make him suffer even more, but he needed to know what he was up against. I mean, if I thought he was fucking the skank, then Ava sure as shit thought he was fucking her and, with her loving him, it was a mess.

He looked at the big box on his counter pensively and seemed to make a decision because he shook his head, picked the box up and jerked his chin toward the piercing lounge leaving me to follow behind him.
 

“We’ll get your shit sorted, and then I’ll go find Ava,” he said as we entered the lounge and he placed the box on a counter that held jewelry for every type of piercing in it.

I described what I wanted, and Mace added his input too and in the end, we worked out a design that was perfect. Mace said he’d let me finalize a couple of details, and he’d see me in three weeks because I wanted to do it while she was away so that she saw it when she got back. I could see that Mace had been eager to go after Ava, and I had to get back to my girl who was at ‘mine’ according to the text I’d received from her twenty minutes ago, so we finished up quickly. It was time to get home to my baby.

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“Maya,” I shouted as I got through the front door only to be met with silence which was unusual. Making my way through the house, I took in the work that had been completed that day. Things were coming together nicely, and I had to admit I liked the work that she’d done so far; the colors were me, and the structural changes were perfect.

As I got closer to my bedroom I could hear the sound of the shower and started stripping my clothes off; leaving a trail of clothes behind me. I could see her washing the shampoo out of her hair and knew that with her routine she’d be reaching for the conditioner next before washing her body, the best part. Walking up behind her, I put my arms around her and pulled her to me as she screamed and jumped.