I reopen my eyes and affix my gaze to my father. With furrowed brows I plead for him to explain to her that Baylee is my love, not some criminal. He frowns and nods, a knowing look on his face.
“Parking is a nightmare around here,” another voice complains, interrupting our exchange when he enters the room.
A middle-aged man with a receding hairline strolls in with his hands on his hips. I become fixated on his unusually long fingernails—too long for a man—on each hand. Black. Dirty and filthy underneath. And crawling with bacteria. Who the fuck doesn’t clean under their fingernails?
My dad is saying something to Stark about Baylee, but I can’t take my horrified stare from the man who takes those same disgusting fingers and retrieves a discolored toothpick from his front pocket. He pops it into his mouth between his teeth and starts gnawing on the thing like he’s a goddamned beaver.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
The sound grates on me but the sight is much worse.
Moisture forms on his lips and I shudder to think of how many millions of disgusting microbes are infesting that mouth of his.
He pinches the end of the toothpick to whittle between two of his teeth. I want to look away from this sick show but I’m completely glued to his revolting behavior.
When he slips the toothpick from his mouth, inspecting the end of it, I gag.
A small chunk of something mushy sits on the tip. His tongue darts out and he slurps it off causing my stomach to clench in protest.
What kind of fucking pig did they let into my room?!
The room spins and my world goes dark as I attempt to force the images out of my mind. But the vision is already permanently etched there. I can almost sense the toxic microbes from inside his mouth tainting the air around me and my lungs ache from the very idea of that shit finding its way in there. I can practically feel it crawling inside of me, contaminating every inch of my insides.
I gag again and again.
A commotion resounds in the room. Shouts and voices. I ignore it all as I try to calm my heart, which is clawing painfully in my chest to get away from the contaminated air I’ve breathed in. Just when I think I’m about to pass out, a cold blast enters my vein. At first, I assume it’s something horrible and toxic, but then it travels quickly and blissfully up my arm, leaving a numbing wake in its path. It can’t get to my brain fast enough.
I beg for it.
Crave it.
Need for it to numb the madness.
And it does. Soon, I’m attempting to blink my eyes open to tell them Baylee is my savior, not some monster.
But I can’t open my eyes. I can’t tell them about her.
“I’m cold.”
Her brilliant blue eyes are staring at me. The tube is gone. All that exists is her. “I’ll keep you warm.”
She rewards me with a breathtaking smile. The urge to kiss her is overwhelming. My arm snakes around her and I haul her to my chest. Our lips meet in an unrushed kiss. She tastes divine and I don’t ever want to disconnect from her.
I thread my fingers through her hair and hold her in place while I taste every inch of her mouth. So perfect. So goddamned perfect.
“I love you,” I murmur and then suck on her bottom lip. My cock lurches with excitement against her thigh.
“I love you too, War,” she whispers and lets out a tiny moan that’s my undoing. “Now make love to me.”
Pushing her to her back, I spread her thighs apart and push into her hot center.
The pleasure is overwhelming and the world goes black.
I fuck her into the nothingness of my mind, where she belongs. Where she can save me in a way only she knows how.
“Stay with me here,” I beg as the blackness blinds me.
“I wouldn’t dream of leaving you.”
Black and black and black.
And Baylee.
I’M NUMB.
I’ve stared at her tombstone for a solid hour, trying to understand how this all happened. How I lost my mother when I thought I was helping her this whole time. If she died that first week, why was my father taking the money War was sending? What was Dad doing with it when he should have been looking for me and why the hell is he in San Francisco?
Brandon clears his throat from beside me, jerking me from the thoughts that are on a continuous reel in my head. “You want to grab a bite to eat? It’ll be dark soon.”
My stomach grumbles but I ignore it. Instead, I stare at the grey granite.
Lynn Marie Winston.
Beloved Wife and Mother
The angel wings engraved into the rock are gorgeous. I wonder if Dad paid for it with War’s money. Money I negotiated my body and my companionship for. Of course, once I got to know War and fell in love with him, it hardly seemed like a negotiation or prison sentence.
It was my home.
He was my home.
But still. How could Dad accept War’s money so easily but not tell me my mother had died? The realization that he never once mentioned what happened to her kills me. I want to find him so I can demand answers to all the questions inside my head.