Abraham
I fucked Ani.
Ani.
The words ran over and over inside my brain as I lay there on top of her, her body still clasped tightly around mine.
I needed to pull out. I really did.
I didn’t want the condom to come off or leak or something—not that I saw that happening anytime soon since I seemed to still be hard as a fucking rock.
I’d just come so hard I’d practically blacked out, and I was still hard.
Jesus.
I couldn’t tell if I should be dancing a jig or crying into a beer over the fact that I’d just had the best sex of my life in the back of a Toyota 4Runner with my foster sister.
But was she really my foster sister anymore? I mean, she had been at one point, but that was years and years ago. I’d never even lived with her, if we were going to get technical about it.
I groaned as I felt her hands run tentatively up my back and then slide into the long hair at the nape of my neck, and I couldn’t stop myself from canting my hips forward, making her squeeze my dick in response.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow move, and when I glanced up, the homeless guy who’d been hassling us earlier was standing a few feet from the back window.
“Motherfucker,” I hissed, pulling out of Ani quickly and ripping the condom off my dick. “Get dressed. We’ve got company.”
I buttoned and zipped my jeans as Ani squeaked and pulled frantically at her tank top. Shit, I hadn’t even taken it off all the way. Her hands were shaking as she tried to pull her jeans up her legs.
“Hey, it’s fine. You’ve got tinted windows,” I assured her, reaching out to help her. She was freaked the fuck out, and I felt like an asshole for fucking her on a public street where anyone could have seen her.
“I’ve got it,” she barked, slapping away my hands as she got the jeans around her hips. “Just go.”
I rocked back and stared at her as she found the flannel she’d had tied around her waist in the bar and pulled it up over her arms.
“Go,” she said again, pushing my shirt into my hands.
For less than an hour, I’d forgotten what a bitch she was, but within minutes of getting her off, I remembered exactly why I couldn’t stand her. At least I didn’t feel like an asshole anymore.
I picked up and tied off the condom I’d dropped on the carpet, then used my other hand to find the keys I’d set in the armrest, unlocking the doors when I found them. I watched in satisfaction as our Peeping Tom noticed the lights flashing and raced back to his spot down the street.
“Don’t get out, just climb over the seats,” I said to Ani as I climbed out of the backseat, still holding her keys. I didn’t want that dumbass seeing her get out of the car. Usually, I could keep my temper at bay, but I knew if the fucker said anything, I’d go over there and beat his ass.
There was something vulnerable about a woman after sex. A softness that I didn’t want anyone seeing on Ani that night but me.
I closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side to open her door and hand her the keys.
“Ani—” I called when she wouldn’t look at me.
“It didn’t mean anything,” she blurted, glancing at me and then away. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone about your weird little hang-up with biting.”
I was trying to be nice. I was trying to be a good guy. But the moment those words came out of her mouth, any fondness I’d felt about her and the sex we’d just had completely vanished. There was nothing wrong with asking someone not to bite you during sex—but I knew she must have caught on that it wasn’t just a preference. It made my damn skin crawl.
“Thanks for the fuck,” I spat back, feeling nothing but satisfaction as she flinched at my words. I tossed her keys into her lap and slammed the door shut. Fuck her.
I didn’t turn back around as I walked away, but I listened closely for the sound of her SUV starting and pulling away. I wasn’t about to leave her ass in the middle of Portland after some guy had stood next to the car listening to us have sex.
I rounded the corner and almost ran straight into my friend Jay.
“What the hell are you still doing here?” he asked in surprise around a lit cigarette. Then he pulled the cigarette from his mouth and inhaled deeply through his nose. “Never mind. Know exactly what you were doing. Might want to clean the pussy off your beard if you’re goin’ back inside.”
“I’m not,” I replied, inhaling Ani’s scent. Fuck, I was going to have to smell her for the entire hour-long drive home.
“Who was—”
“Ani.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Pretty much.”
“Was it—”
“Best I’ve ever had.”
“In her car?”
“Yep.”
“Damn.”
“Call you later.”
“Will do.”
Jay nodded as I moved past him, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. He was probably my best friend if I didn’t count my twin brother Alex and my cousins, and with just a few words from me, he’d known how completely I’d fucked up.
Ani and I had never gotten along. I didn’t know if it all stemmed from the fight we’d had when I thought she was stealing shit from my parents’ bedroom or if our personalities just clashed—but I couldn’t remember a time when we’d ever agreed on anything.
No, that wasn’t true. A little over a year ago, my sister Kate had gone through some major shit when she was pregnant with my youngest niece, and she’d been completely inconsolable. Ani and I were on the same side then—we’d both wanted to cut Shane’s dick off.
But I couldn’t remember any other time over the last fourteen years that we’d gotten along at all.
Ani was opinionated and rude and pushed her nose into everyone’s business like she had a right to be there. Tonight in the bar had been a perfect example. She’d been curious about what I was doing, but instead of asking me or just leaving it the fuck alone, she’d followed me all the way into Portland. It wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment idea, either. It took almost a full hour to drive from my parents’ house to Jay’s bar. She’d had plenty of time to turn around, but she hadn’t.
My hands clenched around my steering wheel as I pulled onto the highway.
If she would have just turned around, I wouldn’t still be hard as a rock thinking about the way her cunt had clamped down on my dick when she came.
I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, turning up the radio in my truck.
It didn’t matter—that’s what she had said. Like I was going to get clingy or some shit. It was fine as fuck with me. I wasn’t going to repeat that shit anytime soon.
I remembered the feel of her teeth against my skin and shuddered, my dick growing softer at the memory of the sensation.
Never again.
* * *
Monday mornings always blew. I had a ton of paperwork to go through before I headed out to talk to our side rod—the guy who was in charge at different logging sites. I was tired, pissy, and I never got as much done as I thought I would.
When I walked into our small office, I was already in a completely fucked-up mood before I’d even realized that there was no coffee in the pot and the place was completely silent.
“Hello?” I called out, gripping my thermos tighter as I moved toward the offices. The door had been unlocked when I walked in, so someone must have been there.
“In here,” my uncle Mike called, then cursed as I heard a loud rustling.
“Hey, where is everyone?” I asked, watching as he picked up unopened mail from all over the floor.
“Your dad is with your mom today, Trev is at that meeting he had with Mark from the mill, and Ani called in sick, which is why I’m trying to open up this mail,” he answered, grabbing letters by the handful and dropping them back on top of his desk.
“Ani called in sick?” Was she fucking avoiding me? That was real goddamn mature.
“Yup. Looks like it’s just you and me today.”
“I’ve gotta head out to some sites and meet—”
“Nah, Trevor can do that today if you want. He’s already out there.”
“Yeah that works,” I said distractedly, tapping on his door frame. “You need anything?”
“Nope, I’m gonna handle this mail and then head on home. Ellie’s making me lunch.”
“It’s seven in the morning.”
“Your point?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.
“No point.” I lifted my full hands in the air and backed out of his office.
My dad and uncle had started our logging business over thirty years before and were mostly retired now. When Trev and I had begun taking over, they’d balked a bit, but they were glad now for the extra time to spend with their wives and sit in front of the television.
They weren’t the type of men to go golfing.
In Oregon, the logging business is really close knit. Everyone knows everyone, and your business’s reputation and the reputation of the loggers you hire play a huge part in how many jobs you get. That meant, at first, the old-timers at the mills wanted little to do with Trevor and me, even though we’d been working on crews for years and they knew us. Thankfully, our dads had stayed on for a while, and eventually we’d earned a good enough reputation that we were bidding on and winning jobs pretty frequently.
It helped that Ani ran our front office, and half the men that came in and out of there had a damn crush on her.
Where the fuck was she?
I settled down into my old computer chair and scrubbed my fingers through my beard. This was ridiculous. If she couldn’t handle seeing me at work, how the fuck was she going to be able to sit through Friday night dinner when everyone was there?
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and called her, grinding my teeth together when she didn’t answer and I got her voicemail.
Fuck it. I had shit to do, and I didn’t have time to baby her. I hung up without leaving a message and started going through the files on my desk. I had jobs to bid or my guys weren’t going to have any wood to cut.
* * *
The week passed by slow as hell. We were busy, so there was a ton of stuff to do, but Ani hadn’t come into work all week and it was messing with my head. Every time the front door to the offices opened, my stomach churned with nerves until one of the guys passed by my office. I was getting to work early and staying late—but Ani didn’t stop by once.
It was driving me insane. I was barely sleeping, and when I did, it wasn’t deep. Part of me thought it was a good thing that she’d taken the week off; it gave us some time to get our heads straight before we had to deal with each other. But the other part was fucking dying to see her. I wanted to know where we were at. Were hostilities at a standstill or were things worse than they were before?
She needed to grow a pair and just face me already.
I walked into my mom and dad’s a little late Friday night, dragging ass. I hadn’t wanted to go to dinner. I just wanted to head home, grab a beer, and sit in front of the TV in my underwear—but I wasn’t going to be the one who didn’t show up.
I’d been where I was supposed to be that week. I wasn’t going to be the one who flaked out on family dinner.
“Hey, Mom,” I called as my mom came out from the kitchen.
“Dinner’s on the table,” Mom said with a smile, looking me over closely. “You’re late, and you look tired.”
“I am tired,” I replied, kissing her head as I reached her. “Long week.”
“Well, let’s fill you up and then you can head on home.”
I followed her to the dining room and let my eyes sweep over the table. Dad, Trevor, Aunt Ellie, Uncle Mike. I tried to keep my face blank as I realized Ani wasn’t there. I was fucking pissed. She didn’t even show at family dinner?
I stewed as we started dishing up the homemade mac and cheese. My aunt must have cooked that night because mac and cheese was her specialty, not my mom’s.
“Where’s Ani?” I asked when I couldn’t take it anymore. I immediately wanted to bite back the words.
“She had some other stuff planned tonight,” my mom said with a shrug, like she hadn’t guilted me into changing any set of plans I’d ever made that would land during family dinner.
“She wasn’t at work all week,” I said, staring at my food like it was the most important thing I’d ever seen. “She go on vacation?”
I glanced up at my suddenly quiet family and looked at their faces around the table. “What?”
“She had some stuff to do this week so she took some sick leave,” Trevor said flatly, not even looking at me as he spoke.
“Sure she did,” I said under my breath, shoveling a forkful of food into my mouth.
“What?” my mom asked, turning to me.
“Nothing.” I shook my head, then looked quickly at my aunt. “This mac and cheese is good, Auntie.”
“Thanks, honey,” Aunt Ellie said with a smile, turning to my dad to talk about…whatever it was they’d been talking about before I interrupted.
I couldn’t focus on anything happening around me. My skin felt tight, and my head was beginning to throb at my temples from clenching my jaw so hard.
“I’m gonna head out, Mom,” I finally said when I couldn’t sit there a minute longer. I was being rude, and I always stayed to help with cleanup, but I was so wound up I knew there was no way I was going to be able to stay at my mom’s for another hour to do the dishes.
“Okay, you go home and get some rest,” she said, reaching out to rub my back and making me feel like an absolute dick for pretending that was why I was leaving.
I said my good-byes and headed out the door before anyone else had stood from the table.
Then I drove across town to the little house Ani had bought six months ago. It was a fixer-upper, built in the 1930s, but what it lacked in looks and function, it more than made up with charm. It was actually kind of perfect for her since she had four men in her life that were good with their hands and willing to pitch in. The first thing she’d done was paint the outside, which didn’t make any sense whatsoever but she’d said she wanted to come home to a pretty house, even though the floors inside had been covered in olive shag carpeting and she’d had no appliances in the kitchen.
I pounded hard on the door, and the minute it opened, I started railing.
“You don’t show up for work all fucking week and then you bail on family dinner? What? Are you avoiding me now? Let’s just be adults—” My words faded out as what I was seeing finally sunk in. “What the fuck is wrong?” I asked, immediately taking a deep breath when it came out sharper than I’d intended.
Her hair was wet like she’d just gotten out of the shower, but her face was pale as a ghost except for dark circles under her sleepy eyes, and she was hunched over a little like an old lady. She looked like shit, and she was wearing flannel pajamas at seven o’clock at night.
“Hey, I’m not feeling well,” she said, giving me a crooked smile. “Can we talk about this in a few days?”
“No,” I replied stubbornly, stepping forward so she was forced to move farther into the house. “What’s wrong with you?”
She sighed and winced, motioning for me to close the door, then turned and started hobbling toward her bedroom.
“Hey.” I reached out and grabbed her arm, stopping her halfway down the hallway. “What the hell is going on?”
“I had to have surgery—not a big deal, okay?” she said, pulling her arm out of my grip. “I’ll be back at work next week, but right now I feel like shit. So could you just go?”
I followed her as she shuffled into her room, and watched as she sat gingerly down on her bed.
She looked up in surprise when I shut the door behind me, then her lips twisted in a wry grin. “If you’re back for a repeat, I’m not really up for it,” she said sarcastically, smoothing her hand down the wispy dark hair that was beginning to dry.
“What kind of surgery?” I asked roughly.
Why hadn’t anyone told me she’d been in the hospital? I was so fucking confused that my mind was racing. Was she really so pissed at me after we’d fucked that she told them not to tell me? We were family, our lives were entwined, hell we even worked together, and no one had thought it was important to let me know what the fuck was going on?
“None of your business, Abraham,” Ani answered flatly.
“That’s bullshit.” I looked her over trying to find where the hell she’d been cut open—I grew nauseous at the thought of that—but I couldn’t see anything except the pajamas that she was practically swimming in. “You had surgery, and no one fucking told me?”
“Because it’s none of your business.”
“Fine,” I snapped, pulling my phone out of my pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling Katie. Maybe she’ll tell me what the fuck is going on.” I had just pulled up my contacts list when my phone was slapped out of my hand.
“She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t need to know,” Ani hissed, glaring at me as she leaned forward, her hand braced gently against her belly. “Just go the fuck home, Bram!”
I lost it. Before she could step away, I was unbuttoning the first button on her pajamas and moving quickly to the next. “I have to find it? Fine.” My hands were shaking so bad I could barely unfasten the second button.
“Bram,” Ani finally said gently when I’d reached the fourth button. “Bram, stop.”
I paused, clutching the sides of her top in my hands, and glanced up at her, my heart racing. What the fuck? What the fuck was wrong with her? Did she have cancer? Did they have to take something out of her? Her appendix? That wasn’t a huge deal. Or was it something worse?
“Just tell me,” I ordered, working hard to keep my voice steady.
She stared at me for a long moment, then finally spoke.
“Oh, you know, routine hysterectomy.” She tried to say it jokingly, but on the last word, her voice broke, and she started to cry.
My stomach rolled. “Aw, baby. Don’t,” I murmured, the words coming without any thought. I leaned down and slowly lifted her into my arms as she sniffled, trying to get herself under control.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured as I laid her down on her bed. “It’s not a big deal. At all. I don’t know why I’m crying.” Even as she said the words, her voice hitched and more tears ran down her face. “I just took a pain pill—Vicodin makes me weepy.”
“Shhh.” I stepped away from the bed and turned out her bedroom light, leaving the room dark except for the moonlight coming through the window.
“Thanks for turning out the light,” she said, sniffling. “I’ll see you Monday, okay?”
I nodded my head as I kicked my boots off.
“I’ll even bring coffee since I know you’re too lazy to make it yourself so you haven’t had any all week.”
“All right,” I replied as I pulled off my shirt and dropped my jeans to the floor.
She sniffled again as I rounded the bed, and sobbed once as I climbed in behind her, curving into the shape of her and wrapping my arm around her chest so I wouldn’t touch her incision.
The dam broke then.
She moaned as her sobs burst out of her mouth, and I pulled a pillow in front of her so she could press it against her belly as she curled into a ball. I didn’t know what to do for her. I thought about calling my mom, but I knew that Ani must have sent her home or she would’ve already been there hovering.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as her sobs finally seemed to calm. She hiccupped and groaned, and I placed my hand over hers on the pillow, holding her steady against me.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” I said softly, kissing the back of her head.
She went quiet. She didn’t say anything for so long that I thought she’d fallen asleep until she spoke again. “I can’t have babies anymore,” she said sorrowfully, her hands clenching into fists against the pillow.
I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t a bad thing. I wanted to ask why the hell it mattered. Why she was so upset about it. Why she’d even want to bring kids into our fucked-up world in the first place.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I just ran my fingers lightly over her hands until they relaxed and gripped mine. “I’m sorry,” I said simply.
She nodded, and a few minutes later, she fell asleep with her fingers threaded through mine.
Ani wasn’t a crier. She didn’t show a ton of emotion normally, preferring to mask any discomfort or sadness with a sharp tongue and a sarcastic remark. I understood that about her, because she and I were a lot alike in that respect.
I used my chin to smooth the hair at the back of her head out of my face and closed my eyes, refusing to think about why I wasn’t hopping out of bed and getting the hell out of there.