Chapter Twenty-Five

Explosive

Juliana

I don’t want to go up there, I don’t. But Brandon asked me to, and I want to see this little girl he’s crushing on. Judgement, though, I don’t want to face.

I have met them all, been to functions with the perfect nails, perfect hair, perfect Stepford wife smile, as I lived a less than perfect lie. Now it’s time to face the music, and I should be devastated by this. It should make me want to run and hide, and it does, when I allow it. However, three weeks of seeing him, being with Brandon, watching the boy who ran then faced his demons, I know I can face mine, too.

“Wow.” Garrett walks into the bathroom as I sit on the counter, trying to put on makeup for the first time in a couple weeks. “You look...different.”

The smile falls from my face because, as we all know, different isn’t always better. I look back in the mirror as I second-guess myself.

He sighs. “You look beautiful, fucking beautiful, but I’ve been pretty damn spoiled seeing you with your hair knotted up on top, face bare, and dressed in my tee shirts, like every dream I had for all those years. I’ll take you all made up, too, but give me Juliana in the raw any day and you’ll have my dick and heart jumping out at you.”

I look down, feeling my face heating up.

He lifts my chin so our eyes meet. “I’ll take you every way I can get you.”

“Any way,” I correct him.

He shakes his head. “Every way.”

He kisses my head and leaves me smiling and less worried, a lot less worried.

I grab the very plain black tee-shirt in the laundry basket that Mags sent down and put it on over my head before sitting down to pull on a pair of pants.

“Dammit,” I mumble when I realize nothing is going to fit over my cast, nothing but his boxers that I have lived in since being here...home.

He walks in the room and peeks around the corner. “Need help?”

“I need this cast off,” I grumble, giving it one more try, knowing it won’t help.

He smirks. “Gonna have to wear my tee shirt as a dress.”

“Or just stay in.” I flop back on the bed.

He walks over to the closet—well, the corner where my clothes hang on a rod—and pulls down a yellow sundress. “This?”

“No,” I grumble.

He still has it, held out and eyeing it while biting his lip. God, he’s more beautiful, and so much harder. I stop and laugh at the irony in that thought

“What?” he asks.

I look up, shaking my head, trying not to smile.

“Spill it.”

“It’s stupid,” I tell him as I feel my face flush.

“Now you have to tell me.”

“You.” I shrug. “You’re still...you. My hero. The boy who didn’t judge me. The boy who became everything to me. But harder.”

“Harder?” He laughs a little uncomfortably.

“Yeah, that’s what made me laugh, too. Just harder. Your body...all of it. I mean, damn.”

“Damn?”

I nod. “Damn. And your determination...” I look up at him. “I like it.”

“I know you do.” He holds up the dress. “I like this.”

“Then I’ll wear it for you another time. How about something longer?”

He nods then holds up a black maxi dress. “This?”

“Sure.”

***

I’m on his back. Yes, his back, because I think it would be inappropriate for him to carry me cradled in his arms to the bonfire and, as he says, “Doesn’t give a damn.” As we walk out the door, one arm is around his chest, the other has crutches in it.

“This isn’t going to work,” I say through a laugh. “Put me down.”

“It’ll work if you stop squirming,” he grumbles.

“I’m going to drop these things.” I rub my hand over his chest, feeling for the piercing, and when I find it, I give it a tug.

“That move right there will land you on your back faster than me carrying you across the field.” He looks back at me, and I do it again. “I’m destroying you tonight.” His threat entices me.

I look up when I hear the sound of a vehicle and laugh when I see it’s Brandon and...well, Phoenix.

“Wanna lift, little lady?” Brandon asks as they come to a stop a few feet in front of us.

“I got her,” Garrett says.

I interrupt, “Yes.”

I sit in the front, cast to the side, and the men I love are in the back as Phoenix drives us to the lake.

I look over my shoulder at her as I scoot around. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she says, jumping out and putting the key in her pocket.

Brand is standing on one side of me, Garrett on the other, as we walk toward the bonfire. It’s huge, it’s intimidating, it appears all-consuming, yet the kids, all of them, are dancing around without a care in the world as Grayson plays his guitar and sings.

“Let’s get you seated,” Garrett says, rubbing his hand up and down my back.

“Over here, Mom, with all the ladies,” Brandon says, skipping in front of us.

I follow him, even though I would prefer to sit with the kids because there is less judgement.

“You okay?” Garrett asks quietly.

I nod. “I’m fine.”

He sucks in a breath. “Fine?”

I nod.

“Fine’s one of those words that you women say and mean the total opposite.”

He’s not wrong.

“Fine means I’m not fucking fine at all. I’m pissed. I’m uncomfortable. I’m...all the above. But that’s not what matters.” I nod toward Brandon, who is standing by a wooden chaise with padding.

“Fine.” Garrett smiles. “But if it gets to be too much—”

“I’ll still be fine,” I whisper.

He nods.

I sit down and Brandon smiles. “You okay?”

“I am.” I swing my leg up and on the chaise.

“I’m going to grab a drink; what would you like?” Garrett asks me.

“Tea’s fine,” I answer.

“How about you, Brand?”

He smiles. “I’ll have a beer.”

“What?” Garrett and I both ask at the same time.

He leans in and whispers, “Root beer, geesh. I’ll go show you, Dad.”

I smile as I watch them walk away together.

Phoenix comes over and holds out a hotdog. “Mags thought you’d like this.”

I hear a snort and look in its direction. A woman with black hair, red lipstick, and sunglasses covering her eyes shrugs. “Sorry, just messed up.”

“Kat,” some pregnant blonde—I think it’s Jase’s wife—scolds her. “Hush.”

“You see this?” She holds up a glass of wine. “This isn’t hush juice, Carly.”

“Like it would matter if it was,” a redhead, Taelyn, pipes in.

Kat flips her off. “Sit on it, Taelyn.”

I look away from them and take the hotdog from Phoenix. “Thanks.”

Kat leans forward. “So, let me get this straight. You married Gage when you were knocked up with his brother’s kid, he ran off and fucked his way around the West Coast, and you lied for how many years?”

“Don’t be a judgmental bitch, Kat,” Zandor’s wife, Becca, who is also pregnant, pipes in.

“I’m not judging. I’m in awe.” She holds up her wine glass. “You’re my fucking hero.”

“I don’t really care what you or anyone else thinks of me, actually,” I tell her. “What I do care about is how my son gets through this, so I ask that, when he’s around, you keep your comments to yourself.”

She smirks. “You just keep getting better.”

“Back off, Kat,” Phoenix says, sitting down in the chair next to me.

She laughs. “I should feel judged here.”

“You’re kind of being a bitch,” a small, dark-haired woman—I’m pretty sure it’s Cyrus’s wife—whispers.

“Tara, I am only saying what the rest of you are wondering.” She sighs. “Is that being a bitch?”

“It is,” I answer for Tara. “But I will tell you that, like you, I didn’t think before I acted. I didn’t. I wanted Garrett’s son to be raised by Garrett’s family. It was selfish, it was hurtful to many, but I was an eighteen-year-old girl, living in a motel—”

“Juliana, you don’t have to explain. I’ve only known her for a couple days, and I know she won’t lose any sleep over it,” Phoenix says.

“Over what?” Gage asks, handing her a glass of wine.

Phoenix shakes her head. “Girl talk.”

His eyes go directly to Kat. “They said girl talk and you haven’t run yet?”

“I’m a girl.” She laughs.

He looks back at Phoenix. “You good?”

She smiles. “I’m good.”

He leans down and kisses her.

“See? Right there. Tell me that shit’s not awkward as fuck,” Kat says, pushing her shades onto her head.

“What the fuck did I walk into?” Gage grumbles.

“It’s nothing,” Phoenix and I both say at the same time.

“Well, thank God, because I really could give a shit less about the whole sister-wives thing. I just wanted you two to feel the pressure I feel.”

“You feel?” Phoenix laughs.

“I’ve had both your men’s dicks in my hand. There, cat’s out of the bag.” Kat laughs. “I feel so much fucking better now.”

When she leans back, Phoenix looks at Gage. “You let me become friends with a chick you fucked?’

He narrows his eyes a little as if there is some different meaning in that statement than what Kat meant to bring out.

“I may have gone through a time that—”

“Your boyfriend fucked a friend of mine. She was digging him; he was not digging her. I squeezed his sack.” She shrugs. “I hope it hurt, fucker.”

Garrett walks over with a tea in his hand as Brandon runs by, arms full of dark bottles of “Beer.”

“That one, I speared when he was fucked up,” she says, pointing at Garrett.

He looks back at her. “Kat?”

“Yeah, Jesus, I pierced your cock, and you’re looking at me like you don’t even know me. Missed a wedding because of it, too.” She looks at Gage. “Hate weddings, anyway. Dicks, I like them.” She looks back at me. “You like my work?”

My face immediately feels as hot as the bonfire looks.

“No comment means yes.” She raises her wine glass. “You’re welcome.”

“She starting shit?”

I look up at a man covered in ink.

Gage nods. “Your woman needs a muzzle.”

“So, is his dick pierced?” Phoenix asks, to which Gage’s mouth gapes open. “What? She’s had yours in her hand. Stuck his with a...pin.”

“Fucker was bigger than a pin. Impressive piece of man meat.” Kat laughs. “But Ricco’s dick...sweet baby Jesus, it’s—”

“Kat,” the man behind her, Ricco, shakes his head.

“A unicorn,” she whispers.

“Jesus, Kat, will you just—”

“With a turtleneck,” she adds before sitting back.

“You’re uncut, man?” Zandor, Gage’s high school best friend, asks.

Ricco rolls his eyes as he chuckles.

“Love the man or his dick, Kat?” Zandor asks.

“Both,” she smarts back.

Ricco grips her shoulders from behind, and she looks up at him. He winks, and she smiles.

She does have teeth, not fangs, and her smile is actually nice.

Ricco holds his hand out to Garrett. “Good to see you, man.”

Garrett shakes his hand and nods. “You, too.”

He looks down at me. “Juliana, sorry to hear about you getting attacked.”

“She got attacked?” Kat gasps.

I look down.

“She did. Lucky to be alive,” Garrett answers.

“Do you not watch the news back home? Been all over the news,” Zandor tells her.

“It’s depressing,” she says, looking at me. “Shit, sorry about that.”

“It’s fine.” I shrug.

“No, it’s not fine.” Garrett looks down at me.

“It happens?”

“Never again,” he says, eyes narrowing.

“Mom!”

I look over as Brand waves to me.

I wave back and smile.

His eyes go left, and I see a girl, a girl who’s older than him, and she’s very pretty. I give him a big smile and two thumbs up. He grins back and nods. Then he’s off running toward the massive slide and swings.

“Damn, he looks different,” Zandor says, looking at my son. “Bigger?”

“Kids do that. They grow.” Gage laughs. “He’s shot up like a weed in the past month.”

“He was a surgeon? Your boyfriend? He lived with you? Jesus Christ.”

I look over to see Kat is looking at her phone. She must have googled my name.

“I don’t want Brandon to know that, either,” I warn her.

“What’s either mean, Kat?” Gage asks.

“It’s nothing,” I answer, still looking at her. I don’t want her to ask about Gage and Garrett again. I just want normal.

“You okay, Juliana?” Garrett asks.

I nod. “I’m fine.”

He sighs and shakes his head, then his eyes turn toward her.