“Does Manda think I’ve cheated on her?” I asked, looking at the three of them.
“Of course she does! She’s a f**king mess!” Marcus replied, raising his voice again like he was about to go off. This all made sense now. Amanda . . . I had to get to her. Holy f**k. She’d be crushed.
“I gotta go talk to Manda. Now,” I said, stalking past them.
“NO! You’re going to Live Bay with us first. We’re finding this Jill Vick and figuring out why the hell her name is in your phone under ‘Greg,’” Marcus said, reaching out and grabbing my arm.
I loved the guy, but he was not going to make me let Amanda think for one more goddamn minute that I had cheated on her. Fuck that! “I. AM. GOING. TO. AMANDA.”
“Okay, look. I’ll go to Live Bay with you,” Dewayne told Marcus. “I know you’re angry because Amanda is so torn up, but he needs to get to her to fix this. She needs him to fix this. We will go figure out who the hell Jill Vick is.”
I pulled free of Marcus and ran to my Jeep. When I jerked open my door, I remembered where I had heard that name before. “Jill Vick is that brunette at Live Bay with the big fake tits and the pink tips in her hair. She’s been coming on to me for months. I just ignore her and she goes away.”
“I know her! You asked for another server last week because of her,” Dewayne said, snapping his fingers.
I nodded. “Yeah. That’s how I know her name. Rick told it to me when I went and asked him to keep her away from my table for the rest of my life.”
Amanda
“Hey,” Willow said, standing up when her phone rang and putting it to her ear. “He didn’t. I knew he didn’t. . . . Stop it, Marcus. . . . You’re too emotional about this. Calm down. Do Dewayne and Rock believe him?” She was pacing back and forth, and I was hanging on her every word. “See! They believe him. . . . I’m only staying until she tells me to leave. I won’t stay here until I hear from you if she wants me to go.” Willow looked at me and rolled her eyes. “Go figure this out and leave us alone. She’s going to be fine. He’s telling the truth. You know in your gut he is. . . . Love you, too,” she said, then hung up.
“Preston is on his way here. Marcus said he’s desperate to get to you. He swears he’s never touched anyone. And Jill Vick is the waitress at Live Bay with the pink tips in her hair, who Preston asked Rick to move from his table last week. Apparently, she was flirting with him.”
I remembered her. She had really big boobs. I was jealous, and Preston got pissed when she wouldn’t take a hint. I didn’t know he’d had Rick move her, though. “She kept showing Preston her cle**age, or trying to. He wouldn’t look at her, and he kept pulling me closer to him until he was behind me, wrapping his arms around me. But I have big-boob envy, and hers made me feel self-conscious.”
Willow sat down beside me and patted my knee. “I think we have a case of someone setting Preston up. He’s on his way right now. When he gets here, do you want me to stay or go?”
I didn’t want to talk about all this in front of my sister-in-law. “You can go,” I told her. “Thank you for coming, though.”
She nodded. “It ain’t over yet. If Marcus doesn’t get some proof, he’s going for Preston’s throat. Dewayne and Rock are still with Marcus, though, so they should keep your fiancée alive and your brother out of prison.”
If she wasn’t being serious, I would have laughed.
The door to our apartment flew open. “Manda!” Preston called out.
“He’s here,” Willow said, then stood up. “I’ll let y’all talk.”
Willow was walking to the bedroom door when Preston called my name again, sounding panicked.
“She’s in here,” Willow replied, and just as she walked out, Preston came barreling in, looking like a man on a mission.
“Swear to God I have no idea how that number got in my phone, and I’d never, ever f**king ever touch anyone but you,” Preston swore, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me up. “I don’t f**king know that bitch. I just know that’s what Rick called her when I asked him to keep her the hell away from me. She got to my phone somehow. I’ll figure it out, but I need you to believe me. Never, baby. God, I would never do that to you.”
The desperation in his voice as he held me so tightly that it was hard to breathe was all I needed. He was telling me the truth. This was the man I knew. The one who loved me. The one I trusted with my life. My happiness.
He was mine.
“I believe you,” I said, reaching up to touch his long blond locks. “But I can’t breathe.”
His arms loosened a little, and he continued to stand there breathing hard. “Swear to God,” he said again.
“I know,” I assured him.
He was rocking me now as we stood there. I could feel his heart slamming against his chest. This had scared him. All my pain was now replaced with sympathy for him.
“Did Marcus touch you?” I asked, trying to pull back to look more closely at his face, but he wouldn’t give an inch. He buried his face in my neck.
“No. But only because Dewayne and Rock held him back while he yelled.”