I tell you the new curtains are nice even if they’re ugly as fuck. I want to hold you when you fall asleep every night and kiss you awake in the morning. I won’t be able to concentrate when I’m away, knowing you’re home waiting for me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.” My grip tightened on her before I said, “I also want to know that in the next place you call home, you’re safe. I can’t promise that we’ll always get it right, but I want nothing less than my world revolving around you.” I took her hands in mine and kissed each palm. “Tell me what you want.” I stood there pretending my heart didn’t drop to my stomach when she pulled her hands from mine.
She dug her hand inside my vest before pulling out my lighter. The moment I saw writing on the side, I plucked it from her fingers.
…was to be bad with you.
The confused frown I wore disappeared when I remembered the poem.
All I ever wanted…
All I ever wanted was to be bad with you.
The kiss I pressed to her lips was hard enough to make her cry out. “You’ve fucking got it, kitten.” I softened the kiss before pulling away and getting lost in her blue eyes. “You know what today is, don’t you?”
“No,” she answered as she tried to catch her breath. “What?”
“It’s the day we met. First time I saw your boobs, too.” Slowly, I started pushing up the hem of her tank top. “It was in these very woods where you flashed me, so in celebration of our sixth anniversary, I’m down if you want to repeat history.”
“It didn’t happen then, and it’s not going to happen now.” She stood on her tiptoes, and her top fell back into place as she kissed me. “But if you take me inside, I’ll give you all the second-base action you can handle.”
I started to deepen the kiss when I heard the snap of a twig. Turning my head, I spotted Adan and Adara’s nosy asses peeking at us from behind a tree fifteen feet away.
“You call that hiding?” I yelled at them.
They glanced at each other before turning back and singing, “Jamie and Bee, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
Chuckling, I stepped back as I met Bee’s amused gaze. “You go left, and I go right?”
Her evil grin was her only response before we took off after the squealing twins.
Six Months Later
“ELLIOT MONTGOMERY, THE FORMER CHIEF Executive Officer of MontGlobal, and Chief Financial Officer, Charles Dennis, have been indicted on charges of fraud and the embezzlement of over two hundred million dollars…”
I stared at the haggard appearance of my father as he was led from a building in handcuffs. It was an old clip but one I never got tired of seeing. The first time I saw it, I reached out to my mother immediately after, but she’d made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with me. I could remember her parting words just before she hung up on me.
“You ruined us, Barbette. I have no daughter.”
Shutting off the TV, I got busy putting up, or rather hiding, my camera and makeup. Jamie would be home soon, and I wasn’t quite ready for him to know what I’d been up to the last couple of months. There was a chance it could go nowhere, and I just… I wasn’t sure if I could handle that. Or what I would do if it did. I got the idea from Tyra when I did hers and Four’s Halloween makeup. Jamie had insisted on driving the six hours to check on Tyra after a few weeks of her not answering our calls.
Our summer had certainly been one for the drama books, starting with my father getting arrested, which was actually a cause for celebration, and ending with Vaughn cheating on Tyra. Needless to say, they’d broken up. Or whatever it’s called when your relationship goes from ‘it’s complicated’ to ‘no longer exists.’
Tyra had gotten into Harvard, freaking Harvard, and was now living in Cambridge, which was only ten minutes from Jamie’s old stomping grounds. Ever was halfway to Canada and was the furthest away from home. He tried to take Four with him like Jamie had done me, but she wasn’t ready to be so far away from her mom, who was now in psychiatric care. Vaughn, who’d had several offers from colleges to play football, had rejected them all to work