Mind F*ck (14 page)

It seems the more my disapproving behaviors increase, the more privileges I lose. Like I said, or so it seems. I’ve been home over an hour, sifting through the remains of whatever Charles, Mary’s husband, and Mr. Smith, our contractor were able to salvage of mine from my side of the house—which wasn’t much, when a knock sounds at the front door a spilt second before the doorbell chimes.

I look back at one of the monitors in an armoire off to the side of the main room, and though I don’t recognize the car immediately, no flags raise in my mind. I can think of any number of reasons as to why an unknown car would be here, my house and the state it’s in being at the top, but what I’m not prepared for is what I get. What I’m not prepared for is a twenty something blond, with a short skirt and an even lower neck line with a nametag pinned to it reading: Candi, who has been sent to start packing away some of my husband’s ‘
files and things.’
.

Honestly, I think I threw up a little bit in my mouth when her pouty lips barely separated to speak the words, ‘husband’s files and things.’

I shudder again and only consider politely covering it up when she walks into the main sitting room, talking around three cardboard boxes she’s obviously packed from my husband’s main room and the adjoining office. “He was so vague, yet insistent. I hope I got everything—“ But whatever internal dialogue I may have accidentally overheard is shut off when she realizes I’m present. “I must have interfered, how rude of me—in my own home, the nerve.”

She looks at me like she’s just tasted something bitter, and I have to fight the urge to slap the bitch right off her face. “I’ll let your husband know, sorry for any inconvenience.” When I clamp down to bite my tongue, I smile around it and nod before turning around and walking first from her field of vision, then the room.

Let
Candi
see herself out.

I huff and roll my eyes upward, before sitting down on the overstuffed down couch, all while attempting to ward the tears away. But to no avail, because they fall, then they seem to never stop.

How did I get to where I am? How?

How did I find myself in the shittiest marriage possible? How did, I find myself married to a monster? How goddammit?

Did everything start changing when we moved? Was that it? Or was it when we lost the baby?

I swear things seemed already off before the baby, but was it really?

Good God, I’m questioning my own fucking sanity. What the hell is wrong with me?

But before I can scratch past the surface of that question, I hear my phone ringing in my purse by the front door.

I blow a breath through my bangs and swipe the tears away quickly before hopping from the couch and running towards the foyer to answer my phone in time, but it goes to voicemail just as I grab it.

“Shit,,” I mutter at the same time my eyes land on a box by the front door and I stop dead in my tracks. Glancing between the box and front door, it takes me a few minutes to conclude that if one were to be standing outside, with the door open and looking into the foyer and main room of the house, the box would be hidden in its current shoved off to the side position.

I glance back at my phone and see I missed a call from my mother, then I open the front door and peek outside.

Yep, my little unwelcome guest is indeed long gone.

When I glance back at the little box of my husband’s files and things, I barely recall my earlier thoughts and the internal chastising I suffered  because of my declining attitude after losing the baby.

The only thing running through my head is a question and that question is this,
Do I want to know?

I feel myself pull away from the box, and everything it represents to me in this moment. And I swear, a pin could drop on the fourth floor of my side of the house and you could still hear it, the house is so silent. I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until the back of my legs brush against the foyer table. I quickly rake in a breath as I blink down at the box and only then do I allow the repercussions of what’ll happen to sink in if I open it.

And all I hear is that same question,
Do I want to know?

Do I?

Well, hell yes, I do.

And before I can second guess myself, I’m carrying the box towards the library at the back of the house.

After I have a good size fire blazing in the hearth to chase away the chill that insists on staying with me, I collect the box and situate it on an end table before curling up on the chair beside it. Then armed with nothing more than a glass of wine, I forge into uncharted territory.

An hour and a half later, I haven’t found a single thing. I huff a sigh out, blowing my bangs out of my face before tapping the papers into a stack, but on the way to setting them back into the box a yellow piece of legal writing paper falls out and lands on the floor.

My brow furrows, and I’m just about to throw the piece of paper in the fireplace when I spot handwriting on the other side.

I glance down at it to read it, but I’m only half way through the letter when I hear the front door opening and it scares the living hell out of me. I fumble with the box and the papers and I’ve barely set the box down on the chair when Liam comes in seven shades of pissed and spitting profanities.

I slip the piece of paper under some investment book setting on top of the table beside my chair because my dress, as tailored to my petite build as it is, doesn’t come with pockets, and I mutter my own profanity.

Shit.

I just wanted a peek at it.

“Liam, you scared me. I didn’t expect you home so soon. Your assistant, Candi, just left with some files.”

“Fuck Candi. And my files! You won’t believe what that Bennett bastard has done, Lexy. I don’t know what he has over Travis, but he’s playing him.” After my husband’s stalked from one side of the library to the other, he stops as if he’s said too much. Then after another beat of time, he turns, narrowing his eyes on the box at my side.

“What’s that?” he demands.

Without hesitation, I answer, “I just found it. By the door.” Inside my head, my alter-ego face plants her palm before asking, “
Why? Why did you give specifics? Jesus, you’d think you were an amateur.”

“I didn’t open it. I just found it. What did who do? Bennett?” I ask before looking back over my shoulder and picking up the box. “You want this by the front door?”

I figure if I keep peppering him with questions, at some point he’ll start answering.

And thankfully, I figure right and he does. “Sure. That’s fine.”

When I come back into the library, I go back to the chair I was sitting in when he came in and position myself as close to the investment book as I subconsciously can.

Liam’s still standing facing the bookcase with hands in his pockets, head hung in exhaustion, and my silly heart twinges for him.

His dark voice reverberates through the room, “Don’t worry yourself with my issues or with Bennett. I’ll deal with it. All you need to know is that there’s a possibility I won’t be staying at the penthouse while the house is under construction. It seems our traveling partner doesn’t fancy hotels—apparently it has something to do with him spending seven years in the slammer.” He shrugs before turning towards me and his sinister smile is so wicked it causes chills to raise on my forearms.

“But like I said, don’t worry—I’ll handle it.”

When his eyes narrow on mine, I’m in the middle of glancing over at the fucking investment book.

Busted. Cold busted.

His head quirks to the side and his eyes narrow even tighter on my hands reaching for the book.

“The Outsiders? Really? I never would’ve never guessed you as a Thorndike fan, baby girl.” He’s standing twenty feet or more away, then suddenly, he’s less than a foot away, towering over me and snatching the book from the end table’s surface. And for a moment,
a moment,
when I see the yellow scratch piece of paper flutter towards the floor, I hope—I hope it will still go unnoticed. But it doesn’t.

And I can’t really explain to you the emotions I felt in the next few minutes, I’m sorry, I just can’t.

I can’t because it’s cloaked in humiliation, and with that I hope you’ll understand when I tell it instead of describe it.

I swear, I think he swipes the damn piece of paper out of thin air, I don’t even recall it hitting the floor, and suddenly the book is flying an inch over my head and crashing against the dark paneled wall behind me and he’s in my face with the paper turned so he can read it.

After half a second, he smirks before twitching his eyes from what’s written to mine. “You read it, baby girl?” The hand holding the piece of paper clamps around my chin as I shake my head once.

“No.” The tears and pain shredding its way through me is too much, it hurts too fucking much. As the tears sear down my cheeks, I think I feel my heart cave inside itself and it causes my breath to shorten and hitch. “No, Liam. You know I don’t meddle.”

I have to keep my eyes closed in order to get the words out. And even then, I barely do because I don’t have the guts.

After counting to ten in my head, I still feel his breath fanning my face. I’m guessing that puts his nose about an inch or two from mine. And for some reason, that’s what it takes to conjure what little courage I possess against my husband and mutter, eyes still sealed closed, “Unless, of course, there’s reason I should start?” I ask.

My face jerks to the side when he tries to shove it backwards as he stands and once he’s reached his full height, I open my eyes and glance at him, watching as he strides to the roaring fireplace and tosses the piece of paper inside and another little piece of me dies deep down.

But it doesn’t hurt as near as badly as it does when he says his next words. “It was just a reminder not to misconstrue the difference between business and fucking.” As he stalks from the fireplace to the door exiting the library he finishes, “At the time I received it, I had full intentions of following that advice, but it seems I’ve not. Hence my being fucked from every goddamn angle.”

Once I hear the front door slam, I count to four and hear his car roar to life.

And for the life of me and my sanity, my mind scrambles to remember what the girly handwriting scrawled across that damn yellow legal scratch piece of paper said…

Something about fuck dolls and business. Something about a 44
th
floor? But it was just signed,
“—S.”.

Who the fuck is S?

Summer Jackson.

I’m barely through the estate gates, and I’ve pressed the button on my steering wheel for voice activate. “Call Travis Jackson.”

My cell is blowing up, thanks to Summer. Hell, but that started before I even walked in the house.

And what,
what
has gotten into Lexy?

I believe it’s time I put a call into Gigi. As much as I detest that woman and her presence, I think little miss Lexy needs a wakeup call more. I’m not sure why Lexy’s mother has always had that effect on her. But she does, and I use it. Fully to my advantage—it’s my ace up my sleeve.

When I hear Travis’ voicemail pick up, I curse, “Shit.”

I generally try to avoid using profanities, it sounds ignorant. Unpolished.

But in case you haven’t noticed, my entire
life
is threatening to
tarnish
, and I won’t have that.

Before I’m able to press the button again and call him at the office, I’m notified of his incoming call and answer, “This is Dean.”

“Hey, man. I’m just heading out, what’s up?”

I get to the point, “I don’t want Bennett in my apartment. Shit’s not good right now at home. Hence my attempt at taking my wife with me yesterday morning on my business trip, and now with the house in shambles—I just can’t. Do you understand?”

His response is quick, “This have anything to do with my sister? Be honest.”

I attempt vagueness, “Somewhat.” I quickly come up with an explanation, “No specifics are known, nor will they be. I know discretion, Travis. Don’t make me ask you again. I don’t like asking once.”

The other end of the line is dead silent for what seems like forever when he finally speaks, “You aware of how much this is going to cost you? You’re going to owe me, man. Had I known we were putting that one-point-seven mil down on a fuck pad for you and my sister,
not
you and your wife, I’d have never gone to the old man for it. You may be pulling in money hand over fist, but brother, between your tastes and coke habits, you’re blowing through it faster than it’s coming in. How long you talking? Surely not the full six months Bennett said this job would take, right? Because your bets and your winnings are already not matching up.”

Six months?

“Six months?” I parrot my thoughts.

“Yeah, six months. Are you listening to me, Liam? You’re gonna fucking owe me. What about that pool house out back? Did Smith finish it out when he finished the house?”

I’m still stuck on six months, so I’m having difficulty following. “Yeah. Of course it was finished. Everything was finished.”

I slow at the red light and pull my cell phone from the breast pocket of my suit and see I’ve missed four calls and eighteen texts from Summer—all the texts in varying phases of dismissal.

Her hearts broken because she thinks I’m dismissing her.

The thought is just dawning on me when I read her last text, so unfortunately I miss everything Travis says before I hear him say, “Alright man, I’ll let Bennett know. He said something about needing some place
homie
, and it was his idea to do the repairs. Sounded good to me.” And then he hangs up.

But like I said, I miss it.
All of it.

The car behind me blows its horn and it jars me to, causing my eyes to fly to the green light, and I stomp on the gas, changing direction in my route.

She’s pregnant?

She’s fucking pregnant?

Summer’s pregnant.

How?!

It’s been over a month.

But before the thought can even gain merit, then fruition, the math adds up.

Four weeks.

Four weeks and intercourse, Liam. That’s fucking how.

As I watch her waltz back and forth across her father’s sprawling beachside property situated in the Hampton’s from one end to the other, I notice the dark clouds coming in from the Atlantic behind her.

And I can’t help the thought,
Then let it be.

If it’s dark clouds and hell she brings with her, and this baby, then let it be. We’ll weather whatever storms.

And it’s here I realize just how smitten I’ve become with her.

I smirk, beaming on the inside. I don’t know if it’s her, the news, or the coke wearing off in my veins, but I feel an odd sense of calm take over me as I make myself known.

“Hey, baby girl. Sorry I missed your calls.” I glance around the property quickly looking for anyone else.

When I don’t see anyone, I move from the shadows and walk towards the beach, keeping my eyes pinned to hers.

She runs towards me and jumps entangling her arms and legs wrap around my neck and waist. “You did miss me.” I chuckle into her hair.

“Shut up, Liam. I didn’t miss you. I don’t know what to do. What about the Lewis presentation? Apparently you haven’t heard just how big this project is, Liam.” She pulls back and looks into my eyes, and I see the stress. But I’m passed what she feels, I’m passed how this affects
her. “
I’ve been working eighteen hour days because I’m behind schedule, how the hell am I going to fit a medical procedure in? And you can only be pregnant for so long before the easy option isn’t an option anymore. I know your wife can’t, but I
can
and will carry it that long.”

Anger, acute and fierce shoots through me. “What’d you just say?”
Who does she think she is? She isn’t taking what’s mine. And this is mine.

“I’m not keeping it, Liam, are you insane?!” she shrieks and looks at me as if I’m who is currently the person spouting crazy shit.

“It?” I ask. “It? I beg your pardon? Summer, stop.” I set her down as calmly as possible and place both hands on her shoulders. Once I gather my composure, I speak, “We need to communicate. We need to talk. I need to know exactly what’s going on, beginning with Travis. So start there, preferably.”

My ability to keep calm in uncomfortable situations has always kept me ahead of the curve in life.

But when her eyebrow cocks and she balances her hands on her hips, I question its effectiveness, “Liam, read my lips, I’m not keeping it.”

I have to tamp the flaring anger down, but I do get the words out evenly, “Right, I understand that, baby girl, and we’ll get to that, but first, let’s discuss Travis and his meddling in your,
our
affairs.” 

“And stop calling me ‘baby girl’, I’m a grown ass woman, not some simple minded halfwit. Understood?”

One. Two. Three.

I count my slow breaths before smiling and speaking, “Yes. Understood.” My eyebrows raise and I motion for her to begin. “Communication, Summer. Travis?” I cue her her lines.

“He’s my brother. He’s protective. You’re married. What do you want from me? It’s as simple as that—and believe it or not, but there’s no conspiracy behind it. Just plain, old fashioned, big brotherly love, Liam.”

And I’d hoped that would be her answer.

I stay on track.

“Very well, and the fact that I am married? How much thought have you given that? Other than the few backhanded comments I’ve heard you spat about my wife, I can’t tell if you’re a fan or not. So do tell, anything in particular you’d like to discuss about her, darling?”

Her eyes cut into mine, then she smirks before speaking, “I favor darling to baby girl, I’ll tell you that. As for your wife, I haven’t given her much thought, so I’m afraid I’m without comment at the present time.”

Her palms skate down my abdomen until they reach my slack buttons and zipper. And as the sound of the storm blowing the ocean up onto the beach covers up the sound of my zipper going down, I close my eyes and give up to the feeling of her hands on my body. And on my skin.

Her fingers skim, running up and down my thighs, combing the light dusting of hair on the front and sides. My moan is swallowed by the sound of the thunder clapping before the lightening illuminates the dark sky, and I forget anything and everything that was in, on, and around my train of thought when this conversation began.

The head of my cock has been slipping past the ring of muscles in the back of her throat for five minutes when my fists drive into her hair and my cum spills down her throat. Without thought or process, I wrench her head back with one hand in her hair and the other cupping beneath her chin, and with my thumb, I swipe the cum leaking from the side of her mouth and smirk.

But that smirk only dances across my face for a moment before she finishes our entire conversation when she speaks around my hand gripping her face. “And if you really want this child, you’ll make it so that I never
ever
need to give her any thought, one way or another.” Her dark cerulean blue eyes pierce mine. “This child won’t be born a bastard, Liam. Don’t skew personal with business, see this as what it is, it’s an opportunity. And the question is, are you ready?”

After she stands and adjusts the mess I made of her blouse, she turns back to me and smiles, waiting for me to button up my slacks. Once they’re buttoned, I step forward and reach out for her hand. When our fingers are linked we slowly start making our way toward the house.

I leave everything that was said before and after her mouth was on my cock because I don’t know what the fuck to make out of it.

So what? She wants me to leave Lexy? For her and the baby?

I hate hesitation. I hate it.

It’s a weakness, and in my opinion one the worse weaknesses.

But still, I fucking feel it.

Hesitation.

Summer’s voice invades my thoughts, “Father and Travis will probably be back soon. I figured it was you on the phone with Trav when he and father were heading out. They have a brandy and cigar meeting tonight with Lewis and his associates.” When we reach the wide stairs leading to the beach house’s second balcony, she stops on the last step and turns, meeting me by wrapping her arms around my neck and brushing her warm wet lips against mine.

And I realize she’s been crying.

My heart thuds against my chest. “Summer, what’s wrong?” I ask, completely oblivious as to why I care.

She buries her nose against the crook of my neck and shakes her head before whispering and breaking my heart, “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”

“Summer,” I sternly say—deciding, here and now, that I need to decide what I want.

I can’t even think about the amount of time and effort that’d be wasted if I just walked away from Lexy.
Years. Years wasted.

But dammit, if starting over and starting over
on top
doesn’t sound appealing as hell either.

Especially with Summer Jackson.