Off Her Rockers (Loving All Wrong #3.5) (13 page)

Something was trying to crawl up my throat. Something in connection to the horrible feeling in my stomach. Regardless, my euphoric dream of floating in the Hawaiian shores with Xavier Xander was enough to fade it out.

Xavier playfully knocked me off my floating device and into the salty sea.

“Bastard!” I screamed, giggling.

“Sun’s getting more of your attention than I am. Swim with me.”

Threading my arms and legs, I grinned at him. His blond waves were golden under the sun, water droplets dancing from his eyelashes like tears. I loved him so much. I could feel it, as sure as I could feel my heart beating behind my rib cage that I was going to die with him. He would ask me to be his wife and I would say yes. I would have his kids. Twins. Spoiled blonde twins who would want for nothing because their Daddy was a millionaire and their Mommy a billionaire.

Maybe we’ll live in France, and Mick would still be around to tell them about the great Aline Acy.

We’d be perfect. We’d be happy. We’d be forever in love.

“What’s that look?” he asked, his smile blinding me.

“Tell me you love me,” I whispered above the waves.

Then I saw it. The dreadful gray fin poking out of the water, moving swiftly up behind him, and suddenly he was much farther away from me than he was a second ago.

I tried to swim after him, but I couldn’t. Something was holding me back, paralyzing me.

I tried to call out to him, to warn him, but nothing came. Silence.

Then, the attack happened. The water around my lover colored red. His piercing cry of pain filled the heavens with sorrow. The red sea parted us, forcing unbearable distance between us.

Then,
she
was there; standing on the shore. The redhead. Petite and perfect in a glowing white bikini. An angel.

She waited on the shore with a wheelchair, silently telling Xavier to choose. He looked between us, face contorted with pain. He was closer to the shore than he was to me.

He chose.

He chose the shore.

He propelled away from me, and when he crawled out of the water and to the shore, I understood why. One of his legs was gone. Chewed off by the sea creature.

The redheaded angel had a wheelchair. I had nothing but love, and sometimes love just wasn’t enough.

He reached out to her as if she was his savior. She helped him up, into the safety of the wheelchair.

As she wheeled him away, he didn’t look back. Leaving me behind to drown in his blood.

The horrible stomach feeling returned. Along with the thing, whatever it was, trying to crawl up my throat. Causing a sensation of wetness and complete dryness at the same time. Like gravel after the rain.

My body convulsed, my eyes snapped open, and in a second I was on my feet, tripping over shoes and clothes on the floor and shooting into the bathroom. Dropping to my knees in front of the toilet, I regurgitated all of last night’s mistake.

Uh-huh, today was going to be crappy as all hell.

Until my ribs hurt and my throat felt like chalk, I heaved. Somewhere mid-hurl, Davian came in and knelt behind me, looped his arms around my middle and rested his head on my back, riding it out with me.

Wrung dry, I rocked back into him, head hanging. That’s when I realized I was in nothing but my underwear set from the night before—black thong and a push-up bra.

“Did you undress me?”

I felt his nod against my back. “You asked me to. Said you were ‘hot’.”

Oh, God
. “What else did I ask you to do?”

“Suck your nipples because they hurt.”

Mortification had me groaning. “Did you?”

“I’d never take advantage of you, Ally.”

I knew that. “Thanks for staying.”

He rose, taking me with him. “Take a shower. I made brunch.”

“Brunch?” Turning my head to the side, I tried to catch sight of him in my periphery. “What time is it?”

“Noon.” He kissed the back of my head and walked out.

I turned to watch him leave. In just his jeans from the night before. Hung real low on his hips. The musculature of his back a sight for hungover eyes.

I kept staring, hoping he would glance back and see the desire, but he didn’t.

My head felt like Titanic on my shoulders, weighing me down, so I soaked in a warm bath instead of taking a shower. Enough time to get my wits together and my greedy desires under control.

Nonetheless, my headache was no less intense when I emerged from the bath an hour later. Though I did felt less discombobulated, enough to differentiate between a dream and reality.

Swimming in the Hawaiian waves with Xavier Xander was a dream. Waking up with a disgusting hangover with Davian Hamilton kneeling with me over the toilet was reality.

Having pretty blonde twins with Xavier Xander was a dream. That was over.
Over
. Having a nigh two-year-old son with Davian Hamilton was reality. That happened. Is still happening. That’s
forever
.

I blow-dried my hair, plaited it in two, donned a short white romper, and headed out to the kitchen.

Davian was seated at the kitchen island with my MacBook open, clicking through pictures of me and Jacob.

Once he noticed me, he quickly snapped it shut and stood. “That was one helluva long shower.”

“How did you guess my password?”

A smirk dallied on his lips as he rounded the kitchen island and toward the stove. “It wasn’t
X-A-N-D-E-R
, that’s for sure.”

I fired daggers at his back as he curled his fingers around the handle of the coffee pot and poured some in a mug. No, my password wasn’t
X-A-N-D-E-R
. It was
H-A-M-I-L-T-O-N
. Always had been. Guess I just never thought to change it.

As I climbed onto a barstool, I made a mental note to change my password to something non-men related. Like
fudgepopsiclestick_frappuccinochocolatecake8_7_6
. Would love to see him try to guess that.

With a shit-eating grin, Davian set the mug of coffee down before me, and then transferred a dome-covered dish from the stovetop to the island.

“You ate already?” I asked, lifting the dome.

Taken by surprise, my eyebrows shot to my hairline at the gourmet-style breakfast on my plate. Eggs Benedict with garlic buttered croissants, fish cakes, chocolate covered strawberries, fresh blueberries, and raspberries in a little saucer of frozen yogurt.

“Yeah,” he answered, “You were taking too long.” Grabbing a hand mitten, he flipped open the oven door and pulled out a batch of oversized blueberry muffins. Setting them on the island, he bent again and came up with two china bowls of bread puddings.

All the while, I sat there with my mouth dangling in my cleavage. “Wha—how did you learn to do all this?” The Davian
I
knew, his culinary skills went as far as scrambled eggs and burnt pancakes.

Carefully removing one of the muffins from the baking pan onto my already overloaded plate, he said, “That’s a dumb question, baby. I was engaged to Jessica Stucco, remember? One of the best cooks to ever grace the earth. I couldn’t
not
learn how to cook.”

Like I needed to hear another praise about that redhead, to hear just how much
better
than me she was.

Green with jealousy, I stabbed a raspberry with my fork. “Sounds like you’re still in love. What’s taking you so long to go back?”

Pushing the batch of muffins aside, he said with finality, “I’m not going back.”

“Sure you wanna miss out on all those fabulous home-cooked Stucco meals for the rest of your life?”

Davian knew me well enough to understand I was just being a jealous bitch who wanted all the praises for myself, so he didn’t respond, and instead slid off the bread puddings to me, before picking up a fork and digging into the other one.

We ate without words, and
oh my God
, the food was
so
good. He clearly had a blast in the kitchen this morning while I was dreaming about Xavier.

“I went to San Francisco last week,” he told me once he’d devoured his bread pudding and cleared the dishes. “To see Jacob.”

“I know.” I eyed him across the island. “He’s my son, Davi. You don’t think I’m gonna know you visited?”

Dave was moving to L.A. tomorrow with Jacob, and we’d both fought about who would pick them up from the airport until I,
begrudgingly
, agreed we could go together.

With Davian, I had to be cautious because I was still unclear about his intentions. One minute he was every scrumptious bit the man I fell in love with, and the next minute he was a vindictive jackhole. So no way in hell was I letting
him
pick up Jacob from the airport.

“He’s calling JK Daddy.”

Dropping my eyes to my plate, I stuffed my mouth with bread pudding to eschew responding because I could so see where this was going.

Bracing one hand on the island, he leaned over and used the other to tilt my chin up so our gazes met again. “How am I supposed to feel about
my
son calling another man Daddy, Alina?”

Deliberately slow, I chewed for as long as I could, refusing to swallow, hoping he’d quit burning me with that accusatory stare.

Plain and simple, I did not have the energy for another argument right then. Not when I had a massive headache and
the
crappiest feeling in the world that bore the moniker “hangover”.

I never had a hangover before, but I sure as hell learned my lesson never to drink that much again.

Davian, realizing I had no intention of answering him, let go of my chin and ran his hand down his face. “I don’t want to take Jacob away from you. I don’t want to battle you in court. I don’t want to listen to my lawyer rip you to shreds and paint an awful picture of you. I love you too much to do that.

“But I want my son to know who I am. I want him to call
me
Daddy. I want to make up for lost times. All I’m asking is that you let me keep him for a while, at least until he has no doubt in his mind who I am to him. I can’t afford to see him on a schedule. Not now. Later on, sure, we can do all that. But for now, please, Ally, let me keep him.”

Despite his most recent behaviors, Davian was a decent man. I had no doubt in my mind he would be a great father. Putting myself in his shoes, I imagined how I would feel if Jacob started calling Saskia “Mommy” instead of me. Yeah, it wasn’t pleasant.

Where our son was concerned, I’d wronged Davian in many ways. What he was asking wasn’t unreasonable, but he’d been acting a bit out of character of late, and I could no longer tell when he was being genuine or not. Therein my reservations lie.

He stared at me, waiting for a response.

I swallowed, and then promptly stuffed my mouth again.

Frustrated, Davian threw up his hands. “You’re really gonna do this. You’re
really
gonna let us settle this in court, aren’t you?”

Just then, the elevator pinged.

Both our heads swung to the left. I sat erect, wishing it was and at the same time praying it wasn’t Xavier. He hadn’t returned my keycard, and I hadn’t asked him to give it back, hoping he would use it, surprise me by crawling into bed beside me in the middle of the night.

Waste of hope.

But holy saggyballs, why use it
now
? When Davian was here? He would think we had sex. Think we were back together. All chances of making up would be shot to shit because then he would assume this was what
I
wanted all along. To find an excuse to leave him and run back to Davian.

I waited, heart drumming a haunting tattoo in my chest.

When I heard
no
footfalls whatsoever, I relaxed, knowing by the silence alone who it was. The only reason we were even
aware
someone was in the penthouse was that the elevator made a “ping” each time it opened.

Otherwise, our visitor would be a ghost within these walls.

I went back to finish my delicious pudding.

In the next few seconds, I heard Davian groan. “Christ, Ally, when I said you can run to your cousin, I didn’t actually mean it, you know. I was using reverse psychology. You know that subject I helped you with once?”

“Relax,” I heard Cousin Chad mutter in a surprisingly light tone. “I’m not here to kill you...yet.”

I raised my head, and...
Wow
. Cousin Chad was causal. Novelty. In a simple white T-shirt,
plaid
shorts, and…
push-toe sandals
?? Sandy blond hair all tousled.

Like a cross between Ivy League and surfer boy. Someone who couldn’t hurt a fly. Ha! Funny just
thinking
that. I had never seen him like this before. He seemed…happy.