Giving In (The Sandy Cove Series Book 1) (27 page)

Cruz grins sadly at me, and I shrug my
shoulders.

“I was still away at school, and when I told
Chad I wanted to keep the baby he gave me a million and one reasons
not to. It wouldn’t look good for such prominent families in our
society to have a child out of wedlock. His parents would disown
him, even though our dads are golf buddies. He convinced me I
planned it, I trapped him, and he told me that the whole town would
look at me as a whore if I trapped Chad Knox into having a
child.”

Cruz shakes his head, and his eyes grow
dark.

“When I stood up for myself and told him I
wanted to have the baby, that’s really when things got ugly.”

He told me I wasn’t worthy of carrying his
child. I was worthless, and I believed it. He twisted my thoughts
and my feelings, and that’s when I knew that the only way out of
this was to do what he said and get rid of it.”

“And you believed all that?”

I nod. “At the time, yes.” Cruz’s stare bores
into me, his nostrils flaring. His hands are flat against the top
of the bar, but I know him and I can tell his anger is
building.

“Just get rid of it? Those were his words?”

Ashamed, I nod, looking down at my hands tangled
together and sweaty from nerves.

He adjusts himself in his chair, finding a more
comfortable position, probably to tell me he wants nothing to do
with me, and that I’m a disgrace.

But again, he surprises me with his actions.

He stands and comes over to where I’m sitting.
He places his arm underneath my body and lifts me up, cradling me
in his arms, and takes me into the living room. He sits on the sofa
as I sit in his lap, forcing my head to rest on the broadness of
his shoulder. I feel so safe with him, like nothing in the world
could ever harm me again.

“Tell me the rest,” he whispers to me
softly.

“He didn’t go with me to the clinic. Willow took
me to one near school. I wanted it done there so the risk of my
parents finding out would not be a possibility. So we went and
after it was done, Willow took me back to our apartment and within
an hour I started not to feel right, and all the… All the blood
started to pour out of my body. Clumps.”

Cruz senses my panic, so he strokes my hair and
tells me to relax.

“Willow called Craw and he came right over. He
was at the same school as us, and they took me to the hospital
where they performed surgery. They told me that I could have bled
to death because the clinic I went to was not sanitary even though
it looked it.”

Kissing my ear, then my temple, he asks, “So is
that why you looked so uncomfortable when we went to the hospital
for Baby Matteo?”

I look up at him confused. “How did you
know?”

“Well for starters, you were dangerously pale
the whole time and I caught you several times counting the tiles on
the waiting room floor. You must have done it a half dozen
times.”

“That’s how I calmed myself.”

He smiles at me. “That must have been really
hard for you to see Bella in that room, and I’m guessing that’s why
you wouldn’t hold the baby.”

I touch the tip of his nose. “Score one for the
big guy.”

“So I was in the hospital for a few days,
telling my parents I went to Florida for Spring Break with the
girls. Willow paid for the whole hospital stay in cash from her
trust fund so we didn’t have to use my parent’s insurance then they
wouldn’t know.”

He brings me in closer to him, holding onto me
for dear life. I hear him say against my ear, “My God what you must
have been through.”

“They only left my ovaries. Apparently they work
just fine. I’m in therapy. Have been for a while now. His name is
Dr. Goldberg. He knows all about you. He even told me once he
thought I had feelings for you.”

He brings my face up towards him and looks in my
eyes.

“Really? Well I’ll have to meet him someday,
won’t I?”

He kisses the tip of my nose. Such a simple
gesture, but one that I adore.

“Turnip, your parents seem to be incredible
people who I think would have helped you and understood. Fuck Knox
and whomever else.”

I agree with him.

“But that’s not all there is.”

He looks startled. “There’s more?”

“Yes. When I came home I told Chad what happened
and here I found out he was with someone, and he didn’t want her to
find out about me. That’s why he wanted me to get rid of the baby.
I didn’t see him again until a few weeks later at the country club
with his face bashed in.”

“Why was his face bashed in? Not that I’m
opposed to having his face bashed in, but continue.”

“Craw did it after I tried to kill myself.”

He quickly moves me off his lap and rests me on
the couch, pacing in front of me. His hands go immediately to his
hair, tugging it like he does when he’s upset or nervous.

“I don’t understand how and why you could do
that to yourself. Out of all this, Turnip. You… You are so smart
and so caring and so fucking beautiful, why you would want to end
it all over some mother fucker like Knox. And I’ll fucking kill
him, Harlow. I swear it.”

I stand up and take his face in my hands.
Willing him to look at me.

“I’m fine. I took pills. Craw found me. They
pumped my stomach. I didn’t take enough to kill myself anyway. I
can’t even do that right.”

That’s when he walks away from me. Going into
the bathroom and slamming the door. It seems like he’s in there
forever. I knock on the door.

“Cruz. Are you ok?” The door swings open and he
engulfs me in an embrace, squeezing the air from my lungs.

“Don’t you ever joke about something like that,
don’t you ever think you’re not worthy of anything, cause you are,
you’re everything. Do you hear me? You. Are. Everything.”

I cry on his shoulder, relinquishing so many
pent up emotions, months of anguish, but yet a sense of relief.

“Oh, baby, don’t cry. Please, it’s ok. I’m so
glad you told me. Please baby, look at me.”

He brings our faces close together, leaving his
eyes closed, running his thumbs over my freckles.

“I know. I’m sorry I kept it from you. I should
have told you sooner.”

We stand here like this for what seems like
forever. He lifts his head and looks at me with such amazement in
his eyes.

“You let me call you baby. And you did it
without telling me not to.” I smile making it seem to him he made a
break through, which in fact he did.

“Want to know why I hated it?”

“Pftt, you might as well. I know everything else
right?”

“Chad called me it, and every time he did it
made me sick to my stomach. Every time he tried to get me back,
even the night I met you last summer, he said it. He was there that
night with another girl, but he still cornered me when she wasn’t
around. Every time he tried to convince me that he was the only one
who would love me, he called me baby.”

Cruz steps away from me, megawatt smile present
and accounted for.

“Good, I’m glad you told me, ‘cause I like
Turnip so much better anyway.”

***

I’ll kill that mother fucker. I’ve killed
people in battle before, I don’t think I’d have problems killing
Chad Knox. As much as it pains me to say, and as much as I hate
what Knox did to her, Harlow’s smarter than that. What kind of hold
did this asshole of all assholes have on her?

She appears on the outside to be so strong. See,
she has this way about her, the kind that makes you feel like
you’re the most important person in the world. No one has ever made
me feel like that. Only her and that’s why she’s mine.

It’s not easy being away from her, especially
after the last visit when she told me about what happened to her,
and the reason why I want to kill Chad Knox.

When I’m on duty, I dig out my phone constantly,
so I can look at a picture of her. I miss seeing her face. I’m
pretty sure I’m bordering on stalker because I sleep with her
pillow from Willow’s parent’s house next door. I stole it once she
left for her new job in August.

Huge. Pussy.

Yea, well the girl does stuff like that to me.
It smells of her. Even, after all this time, it has a few stray
strands of her hair still on it. Before I drift off to sleep, I
inhale the scent that lingers, and I feel close to her.

Unbelievable, right?

Renting the house from Porter’s parents is
great, but lonely. Max will come down sometimes to hang, or play a
gig at Jax when he has a break from school, but mostly it’s just
me. On my days off I work out or I take a run on the beach, which
is as cold as a witch’s tit. November isn’t kind to Sandy Cove. I
pick up overtime when it’s available, just so I have something to
do, so that I’m not constantly thinking of her. On my
not-so-consecutive days off, I go see my nephew. He’s got to be the
cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen. Before, he was just this blob,
eating and shitting, sleeping and shitting again. Now he actually
smiles at me, even blows those silly raspberries out of his mouth
everyone gushes over. I have to be the constant joke between Bella
and Tony about Harlow.

Bella knew how I felt about her, that I better
not fuck it up, be good to her, and Bella is constantly saying,
“See Antonio, I knew it, that girl changed him.”

Truth is, yes, she did. And that fact continues
to make me a pussy. Do I care? Do I mind? Abso-fucking-lutely
not!

As I sit here in my patrol car in front of Jax,
I think back to the night I told her how I felt about her. I would
have never pictured us being together. I mean she hated me at one
time. Crushing my balls, punching me, and thinking I was a
man-whore. Which I was. I was the biggest man-whore known to man,
but things change.

Harlow’s ring tone sounds in my ear and it’s
freaking one a.m. on a Wednesday. I can’t imagine why she’s awake,
but I just have to smile, knowing when I answer it will be her
voice.

“Hey there, Turnip. Why up so late? You
o.k.?”

“Hey baby. Yes, I’m fine. I just missed talking
to you today and I couldn’t sleep. How are you?”

When she calls me baby, I think it’s the
sweetest fucking thing that comes out of her mouth. That and that
tongue of hers when she’s kissing me.

“I’m bored out of my mind. Did you have a good
day at school?”

“Yes. It was great. Those kids are cool.”

“I can’t wait to meet them someday.”

She’s silent, and I can hear the rustling of the
sheets beneath her, and fuck me, but I wish I were between those
sheets with her.

“Turnip? What’s going on?” The tone of my voice
goes up an octave when I ask.

“Well… How about that someday being sooner than
later?”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you come to career day on the twenty
fourth? It’s the week before Thanksgiving.”

I tell her to hold on and I dig out my schedule
for that week. I don’t have off, but I tell her that I can try and
switch with someone. She sounds disappointed, and I am too, but I’m
still going to try.

“Babe, I know this is hard and it’s not the
ideal situation, but I’m trying here.”

I can tell she’s crying.

“I know, I know. I just… I just miss you so
much, and even though I’m not alone, I feel like that.”

She hurts my heart, and I want nothing more than
to be with her, right now.

“Me too, sweetheart. Me too.” I hear a sob
escape her.

I need to lighten the mood a little and
quick.

“Wanna have phone sex?”

She laughs. “You’re insatiable, you know
that?”

“Yes ma’am, I do.”

So I let the game begin, but as much as I’d love
to pull out Morty and give him some exercise, I’m working and that
would be illegal, so this will be all about Harlow.

“So what are you wearing?” I whisper to her.

In a seductive voice she tells me, “My plaid,
flannel pajama pants, and my dad’s old college t-shirt.”

“Ohhh, that’s so hot, babe. Tell me more. Are
you wearing granny panties too?”

She laughs, then moans, playing along well.

“Oh, yea. They are two sizes too big and ivory
cotton. They even have worn patches on the ass. You like that?”

“Yea, I do. Are you wearing fuzzy socks
too?”

“You know it, and my favorite sports bra with
the sweat stains.”

“Oh, God Turnip, are you trying to make me come
right here in my patrol car?”

“I’m also wearing zit cream and my eyebrows and
upper lip need to be waxed.” Her voice, breathy like Marilyn Monroe
or something like that.

“Oh, when you talk about facial hair, it’s the
fucking sexiest thing ever.”

I continue to hear the sounds of her either
snuggling further down in her sheets, or she’s sticking her hands
down those flannel pants she’s wearing.

“Talk to me, Cruz. I need for it to be like
you’re right here with me. I’m touching myself, but I want it to be
like it’s your hand.”

I have zero problem with her request, but I have
to keep myself under control. I can always take care of business
when I get off duty.

“Ok, babe. Think it’s my hand, touching you,
softly, stroking your thighs, my fingers inching towards the
middle, and I can feel how wet you are already.”

She whispers, “Oh, yea.”

This is going to be harder than I thought.

“Now I know what you like, you like to be
teased, so I will tease you. I’m lightly running my thumb across
your clit. Do you feel that?”

Breathlessly she says, “Yes… Yes I do. Keep
going.”

“Now I do it a few more times, in constant
circles, just to get you heated up. I’m reaching up and I’m rubbing
my hands all over those gorgeous tits of yours. You like?”