Chapter Eleven
Roman
Three days later, things have fallen back to normal and I’m actually at my security office, getting some backed up work done. My phone buzzes on my desk and I reach for it without looking at the caller ID. The voice on the other end is not the one I was expecting.
“Roman?”
“Janine,” I say her name, stating the obvious. “Do you have something for me?” I cut right to the chase, not wanting to give her any opportunity to talk about anything other than what I’d contacted her for.
“A lot, actually.” I hear the sounds of papers being flipped. She sighs heavily. “Roman, can you tell me exactly where you obtained the copy of Hollis’s birth certificate?”
“Leo said he got it from the local high school that we all attended.”
“Yes, her mother would’ve had to have had it to enroll her, and it was verified as an original how?”
“The hospital named on it was called, and they verified that was the one on file.” I sit up a little straighter, not very sure of where this is going.
“Well, Roman, I called the County Register of Deeds and it was never filed with the Clerk of Court.”
“What does that mean? It has the official seal of the court on it.”
“It means the hospital never filed it with the clerk. It was either a hospital clerical error or it was forgotten on purpose.” I slump under the weight of this news and how it’s going to crush Hollis even more.
“And,”
“Oh, fucking wonderful, there’s an and?” I sharply cut her off.
“Yes.” She pauses, waiting for me to have another outburst no doubt. When I don’t, she continues. “There was never a social security number applied for or issued to a Hollis Keaton.”
I let the information sink in, then I’m flooded with a million questions. “But how is that possible? I thought the hospital was the one that filed the birth certificate with the application for the social?”
“In most cases, but not always. It’s at the parent’s discretion. Yes, it’s easier for the social to be applied for by the hospital, but the parents or the mother, in this case, can choose to apply for it at a later date.”
“And it was never done?”
“No.” Her answer cuts through me, and the long tunnel I’ve been running down, chasing after Hollis’s past, just got a lot darker and longer. I flip through the various papers and black and white photos in the folder I have laid out in front of me on my desk, feeling hopeless for the first time in my life. I’ve been lost before, but I never lost the hope I would find my way back.
“More than likely, since her last name doesn’t match her mothers, it’s a fake too.” I didn’t know what I expected Janine to find when I’d asked her to look into this for me, but never in a million years did I expect for it to be this bad.
I ask another question I’m sure is going to have an answer I don’t want to hear. “Is her mother’s name even real?”
“Yes. I researched the mother too, and that’s what took me so long.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “She was, in fact, from the town on the birth certificate, which was the only thing in any of the documents you sent me that is the truth. So I would start there, Roman, but I wouldn’t get too ahead of myself. Take it from me, things like this can take years, even decades to shake out.” I shrug off her warning. We don’t have decades, we have weeks. I plan on marrying Hollis on the date she’s set to walk down the aisle to become my wife. Come hell or high water, it’s getting done that day.
“So why wasn’t the social flagged when Leo called about it?” I feel like I’m running in circles.
“I looked into that too. He only called about the number, he never gave a name, and we provided that along with date of death. An oversight on our part, and I’m sorry about that or we could’ve known this years ago. I’m faxing you over all my notes and findings.” She pauses. “And Roman?”
“Yes?” I pinch the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. The full-blown ache that’s has been threatening to hit me finally does.
“I’ve started the social application process for Hollis. I used her given name, since that’s the one on her birth certificate.”
“Thank you, Janine, you’ve been a wonderful help. And congratulations on your new job,” I tell her out of respect for the woman who had given me her body and offered me her heart, but I’d turned my back on them both when Hollis had pushed her way back into my life. Sure, I had a girlfriend at the time, on the surface, but the only woman I’ve ever truly been faithful to in my life was, and will always be, Hollis.
“You’re more than welcome, Roman,” she says, making me remember the sweet girl she’d once been before I’d made her a jaded woman. I hang up, not seeing the need to draw out her humiliation any longer than necessary.
Immediately, my fax machine begins to buzz and spit out several papers. Retrieving them once it’s done, I settle back into my chair and add the new papers to the folder, looking at the same things and reading the same words I have for the past week and a half.
I still need to talk to Ima, and then plan a trip to this town that looms over both our heads. I hear the door in the other room open, and then a knock at mine.
I look up to see Cruz stick his head in. “Busy?” He doesn’t give me time to respond before he walks in and settles himself in a chair across from me, looking a little worse for wear after the beat down Eno had given him. “Good, I’m bored out of my fucking mind. Leo just threw me out of the garage.” He gestures with his thumb in the direction of the mechanic’s shop. “I thought Oz was a grouch, but damn, Leo.” He leans back, propping an ankle on his knee. “So whatcha got there, some double top secret case you’re working on?” The sides of his mouth turn down as he lifts his eyes, trying to see the papers I have scattered over my desk.
I kick back in my chair, mimicking him. “No, nothing like that. This is personal.” I watch as my statement peeks his interest.
“Oh, trouble in paradise kind of personal?” He chuckles. The Bastards love giving us all shit about being attached, having our dicks owned, pussy whipped if you will.
“Not really, but in some ways, yes.” I watch this time as his face pinches in confusion. I laugh and decide to throw him a bone. After all, the man’s just trying to have a conversation with me. And besides, he knows Hollis and her history, I suppose, with all the time they’d spent together in the past. “Okay, okay.” I sit up, looking back down at the papers on my desk. “Hollis asked me to find her father.”
He has much of the same reaction the others had when I told them what Hollis had asked for, but I push through his surprise. “We have this information.” I point to the mess on my desk. “All her documents are fake. The only thing we know for a fact is that she was born and her mother was a real person.”
He stands and takes the folder I’d just stuffed full of all the papers and settles himself back down in his seat before flipping it open. “That’s it? That’s all? There’s nothing else on her?”
“Nothing,” I say flatly. His words drive home the dread I’ve been fighting off.
“Hmm.” He’s totally engrossed in the sparse contents of the folder he has splayed in his lap. He picks up one black and white photo at a time, studying them intently. He stops on the third one and tilts his head, examining it a little longer than the others. He looks up at me, his lips parted, like he has something to say. Instead, he looks back down at the photo. “Hmm.”
“Hmm what, Cruz?”
He turns the photo toward me, and I see it’s one of a young Hollis, not much older than Caden, holding her mother’s hand while they both smile at the camera. “This woman looks familiar.”
“That’s Hollis’s mother.” I sit up and rest my forearms on my desk. I know better than to get my hopes up. They’re copies, and unfortunately, bad ones at that.
“How old is Hollis?” he asks, still looking at the picture.
“She just turned thirty-five, we think,” I reply.
“You think?”
I nod toward the next document sitting in the folder. “Her birth certificate was never filed. The only thing we can verify is her mother did exist and her name was Neeta Fletcher.”
He picks up the next document, whispering Neeta’s name under his breath, like he’s calling to a hidden memory somewhere of the woman in the photo. He stops when he reads over the birth certificate. “Motherfucker. Now I know where I know her from.” His hand drops to his lap with a thud. “That’s the exact same hospital and town I was born in.”
~~~~~~
Roman
Cruz and I had spent the rest of the day trying to figure out how Hollis’s mother had gotten around the system, where the kind of money needed to do so came from, and how in the hell Hollis didn’t remember Cruz. When we finally figure out our exhaustion is getting us nowhere, we call it a day, making plans to get back at it tomorrow. He says he has a few people he can call, then he walks back over to the clubhouse and I head home.
I’m left with more questions than I have answers to, but now I feel like I can breathe. I’m not sure how to tell Hollis all the things I’d found out today, but she needs to know that she’s never existed as a person on paper, and it’s going to break her heart even more.
~~~~~~
I walk through the door of our house way after dark, and I’m surprised to see a set of tapered candles burning on our dining table with a lone glass of amber liquid sitting between them. The sounds of a blues song plays softly, filling the air around me along with the feeling of sex. My cock begins to react to the mood Hollis has set for me. But then I worry, am I too late? Did she expect me sooner?
I lay my keys down as quietly as I can on the table just inside the door, looking around the house for her. I want to find her, not yell out for her to come to me. I retrieve the glass and take a drink as I follow the pale light of the candles she has burning through the house. I follow them up the stairs and stop when I turn the corner to our room, nearly dropping the glass I have in my hand at the sight before me.
Hollis is standing with her shoulder leaning against the doorframe of our bedroom, her curvy body dimly lit from the candles that burn around us. She lifts one leg and slowly drags the top of her foot up the back of the other leg.
She’s covered from head to toe in black lace, and the heels she’s wearing are screaming for me to fuck her. Her long hair falls in loose curls around her small shoulders. She smiles at me, and the candlelight dances across her beautiful face.
I watch as she lifts her hand, her fingers pulling at the ribbon that holds the lace robe she’s wearing free. She lets it fall to the floor, and the lacy garment pools at her feet. I gasp, I fucking gasp for air.
The corset she’s trussed up in stops right under her plump breasts, pushing the full globes up, showing off their perfection. It laces down the front to a pair of barely there panties that hug her round hips. Her legs are clad in thigh-high stockings, held up by a pair of garters. She runs a finely manicured nail down her cleavage, stopping only to tweak a nipple, letting out a moan that lands right at the base of my cock.
I set my glass of whiskey down, and take my erection in my hand, hoping to calm the storm raging in my body. I watch as she begins to walk towards me, slow and seductively, neither of us saying a word, only our hard breaths filling the air around us. She stops only inches from me, and I smell her light perfume as she reaches for the hand between my legs. Taking it, she brings it to the apex of her sex, singling out my index finger that she drags through her bare folds. Crotch less panties. Jesus Christ, this woman’s going to kill me.
She’s wet, dripping actually, and as we reach the top, I feel the swollen little nub and give my finger a wiggle, making her gasp and her body jerk.
“You been waiting for me, baby?” I ask as I take over, distracting her by pushing a finger inside her so deep, I have to bend at the waist. I lower my head to her neck, letting my lips drift over the sensitive skin. I can feel her pulse quicken as I glide them up to her ear. “You naughty woman,” I whisper as I gently slide my finger in and out of her, her pussy growing wetter with each pass in and out.
“Roman,” she whispers her surrender to me, and I feel as she begins to tighten around my finger. Her hands are on my shoulder and she’s biting her lower lip. My eyes are locked on her face that’s glowing with the pleasure we share.
My thumb begins to rub circles around her swollen clit as I continue to push my finger in, and slowly draw it out. I catch her as her legs give out from under her with a scream.
I take my hand away and pick her up, wrapping her legs around my waist. “Was that good, baby?”
She lays her forehead on my shoulder. “This was supposed to me seducing you.” Her voice is breathy.
“You did,” I tell her, laying her on her back.
I look down at her, tugging my shirt over my head. She props herself up on her elbows to watch me, a satisfied smile on her face. Her eyes devour me, and I feel my skin heat at the way she looks at me. I unbutton and push my jeans and underwear down over my hips and kick them off, standing in front of her naked and bare. This woman owns me heart, body, and soul.
I fall, letting my hands catch me right before our naked bodies touch. “Put my dick inside you, Hollis.” She reaches between us, and we both watch as she guides me into her. I flex my hips and bury myself to the hilt, both of us letting out loud groans at the sensations flying though us. I’ve fucked a lot in my life, but I’ve only made love with one person, the one that’s laying under me. Her nails bite into the skin of my back as I move in and out of her.
She rolls her hips, fucking me. The heels she’s wearing dig into my ass, and I feel her tightening around my dick, pushing me to come along with her.
“I love you,” she cries out as her body jerks, her hips bucking wildly with her orgasm. No longer able to hold it, I give it my all with the last pump, spilling my soul into her, leaving nothing of myself as an individual, only wanting us to be blurred lines.
I rest on my elbows above her, both of us breathing heavily. Kissing her lips, I feel her smile. “I love you too,” I tell her, and I’m rewarded with a larger smile. “But I have to ask.” I push up and look between us at the sexy as fuck body lying beneath me. “What got into you?”
“I thought we could use a distraction,” she says sweetly.
I lower myself back down onto her, feeling the heat between us. “Well, feel free to distract me like this anytime.” I fall to the side and land on my back. She lifts herself up and leans to look down at me, tracing the ink I’ve marred my body with.
“How was your day?” she asks, her eyes following the motion of her finger as it travels over my chest.
I pause, not wanting to break the moment we’re in with what I have to tell her. There’s a time for that, and it’s not right now.
“It was just a boring day in the security business.”