Dancing in Kyle’s arms feels unreal. The way his hands run up and down my back. The way they pull me closely against him. The way he rubs tiny circles on the exposed flesh of my shoulders. I feel like it’s all a dream. A dream from which I hope I never awaken.
On the drive to the reception, we had decided not to tell anyone. This is Piper and Mason’s day, not ours. But who are we kidding? With the way we’ve been dancing all night, we’re not fooling anybody.
Caden asks to cut in and dance with me. I laugh when Kyle hesitates. He doesn’t want to take his hands off me. But he acquiesces. After all, Caden is my brother.
“I’m glad you could make the reception,” I tell Caden as he spins me around. “How was the game? Did you win?”
He pastes on a big smile. “Five to four,” he says proudly. “I hit a double in the bottom of the ninth to drive in the winning run.”
I harden my hold on him. “That’s great! I’m so proud of you. I wish . . . I wish Mom were here to see what a success you are. Even if she wasn’t the best mom, she still would have been proud of you, kid.”
“You’re all the family I need, Lexi. We’ve got each other’s backs now. I promise I’ll never let anything bad happen to you again.”
“I’ll always be here for you too, you know. I’m not going anywhere,” I say.
He cocks his head, looking at me sideways. “I thought you were moving to Maple Creek to live with your boss.”
“Nope.” I can’t help the large smile that travels up my face. I sneak a glance over at Kyle, who is watching me intently.
Caden follows my gaze. “Well, I’ll be damned. It’s about time Kyle came to his senses. I knew it was only a matter of time.” He leans down to kiss me on the cheek. “I’m happy for you, sis.”
“Hey, now.” Kyle walks up and steals me away from my brother. “I’m the only one who’s going to be kissing her tonight.”
Caden extends his hand and Kyle shakes it. They nod at each other in that way only males can understand. And I’m not sure, but I think volumes were just spoken between them.
“You told him,” Kyle says with a raised brow after Caden walks away.
“He’s my brother.”
“It’s fine. I told Chad and Ethan, too.” He gives me an innocent shrug of his shoulders as his mouth curves indulgently.
An hour later, after the cake has been cut, I tell Kyle I simply have to sit down. I’m exhausted and my feet are killing me. I haven’t worn heels since the day I ran away from Grant. I always had to wear heels for him. He insisted on it. It’s one of the reasons why I haven’t bought any since. Well, until now. And the heels are high and the shoes are new—a deadly combination.
Kyle checks his phone for the time. “Ellie will be getting tired and hungry,” he says. “We’ve been here for hours. We’ve done our duty. Why don’t we pick up Ellie from the daycare and head out?”
I love how we’ve only officially been together for four hours, yet he can already read my mind.
We say our goodbyes to the bride and groom and their entourage and then head down the hall to where a daycare had been set up for small children. We find Ellie asleep on one of the babysitters. I gently pick her up as Kyle gets out his wallet to tip them.
I smile. They probably think we’re a family.
I look up at Kyle and he winks at me. Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s thinking the very same thing.
We walk past the security guards who are just inside the front door. Kyle takes Ellie from me and lets me hold onto his elbow as I navigate the many front steps in my ridiculously-high heels.
When we reach the base of the stairs, he nods to a bench by the front walk. “You and Ellie sit here. The car is a half-mile away.” He leans down and kisses Ellie on the head before he gives me a warm peck on the lips.
“Thank you,” I say, taking him up on his offer.
Almost instantly, Ellie lays her head on my shoulder and falls back to sleep. I gently rub her back, letting my tired eyes close as I daydream about what tonight has in store. What tomorrow will bring. What the rest of my life will be like with Kyle Stone in it.
“Well lookie fuckin’ here,” a low, gravelly voice rumbles out of the darkness, sending shivers of familiarity up and down my spine.
My heart falls into my stomach. Bile rises into my throat. My eyes snap open, putting me into the nightmare I’ve always feared. I look over near the bushes to see Grant walking towards me.
I want to get up, but I’m frozen to the bench. And even if I weren’t, I can’t run, not in these heels. Not with Ellie in my arms. I look behind me, but all I see are empty stairs. Two dozen empty stairs. Too many that stand between me and the security guards inside the building.
I try to calculate how long Kyle has been gone. I think it’s only been a minute or two. He parked far away. Too far for me to yell. I look around and see no one else in the vicinity. I’m utterly alone. Alone with the man who’s been hunting me.
I start to hyperventilate.
“What’s wrong, baby?” he asks. “Feel like you’ve seen a ghost?” He nods over his shoulder in the direction Kyle was walking. “Looks like we have at least a few minutes to take care of business before your baby daddy comes back. Shit, Alexa, you sure didn’t waste any time turning into a little slut, did you?”
I look down at a sleeping Ellie, putting my arms possessively around her.
He draws his eyebrows together and stares at Ellie. “Wait,” he gruffs, scrubbing a hand across his jaw. “Wait just a goddamn minute.” He points at her. “Just how old is she?”
I don’t speak. I can’t. I feel myself holding Ellie tightly and she starts squirming in protest under my grip.
Grant paces back and forth on the sidewalk in front of me, pulling a flask from his back pocket. He takes a long drink before looking at her again. “Is that my fucking kid?”
I momentarily hear music coming from inside as the doors to the reception hall open. Thank God. Someone must be coming. Maybe Grant will run away. But he doesn’t back off. Instead, he sits down next to me and puts his arm around my back, gripping my neck like a vise.
“Say anything and I’ll hurt her,” he growls at me.
I want to vomit at his words. I’ve never been so scared in my life. Not when he was hitting me. Not when he was holding me down to have his way with me. Not even when he stabbed me with his precious trophy.
Then I hear a familiar voice. Ethan. Oh, God, Ethan, please see me. Please don’t just walk past me and keep going.
Ethan is talking, but I don’t hear Charlie respond. I come to realize he must be on the phone. Maybe he just slipped out of the reception to take a call.
As his voice comes closer, Grant’s hold on me becomes tighter. “Shhhh,” he whispers in my ear, the stench of vodka rolling off his breath.
Ethan comes down the last step, barely faltering in his stride as he passes us on the sidewalk. He looks at us as if we’re of no consequence, his eyes falling on me for only a second. He even tips his chin at Grant. Barely a minute goes by and he finishes his call and walks over to us. “Hey, buddy, do you have a light?” he asks Grant, while reaching into his pocket.
“Don’t smo—,” Grant starts to say, when all of a sudden, before I even realize what’s happening, Ethan has Grant face down on the sidewalk, his knee in his back as he brings Grant’s hands up behind him, securing them with a zip tie.
“Oh, my God!” I scream. “Ethan, it’s Grant.”
I get up off the bench, holding a still-sleeping Ellie as I back away from the two men.
“Yeah, I figured,” he says. “Damn lucky timing, huh?”
He digs his knee into Grant’s back, causing Grant to curse. “She’s my goddamn wife, you son of a bitch!” Grant yells, a vein near his eye bulging as his face grows red. “Do you have any fucking idea who you’re dealing with?”
Ethan leans down, close to Grant’s ear. “I know exactly who you are, you piece of shit.”
A car pulls up to the curb and Kyle runs out, summing up the situation as he makes his way to me. “Lexi, are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
Ethan pulls Grant off the ground and forces him to sit on the bench that I vacated.
“I’m okay. He squeezed my neck, and he threatened to hurt Ellie, but we’re okay,” I tell him.
Kyle walks over and gets in Grant’s face. “You will never fucking touch her again or I’ll kill you. Do you hear me?”
Grant smirks. “Maybe you shouldn’t talk that way in front of my kid.” Then he studies Kyle. “You’re that doctor I talked to a while ago. You lied to me, you asshole.” He looks back and forth between Kyle and me. “Have you been fucking my wife?”
Kyle’s hands ball up into fists and Ethan puts his arm out to hold him back. “Kyle, why don’t you call the police?”
Grant laughs. “I am the fucking police.” He leans forward and stretches his bound hands out behind him. “None of this is necessary,” he says. “I didn’t come back for her. I don’t even want her anymore. I came here to get her to sign the papers.” He nods to an envelope in his breast pocket that is now crumpled and torn.
Kyle takes it from his pocket and opens it, quickly scanning whatever’s inside. He looks over at me, surprised. “They’re divorce papers,” he says, walking them over to me.
“You think I’d want to stay married to that frigid bitch?” Grant spits. “Although, now that I know I have a kid, maybe things have changed. What’s my daughter’s name, Alexa?”
I squeeze Ellie to my chest, refusing to tell him anything. She wakes up crying. She’s hungry. It’s late. Behind Kyle’s protective stance, I pace around, bouncing Ellie in my arms, but she’s inconsolable. Her cries become wails. I try to soothe her, talking to her as I sign my words.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Grant shouts over at me. Then he looks to Kyle. “What the fuck is she doing?”
“She’s talking to her, dipshit,” Kyle says.
Grant watches me. His eyes ping-pong between my signing hands and Ellie. Then his eyes go wide in realization and his head falls back as he laughs up at the sky. “Are you kidding me?” he asks, shaking his head. “Is the kid fucking deaf?”
Kyle and I both remain silent, Kyle staring at Grant with hatred seeping from his every pore.
“I don’t want no gimpy kid,” Grant says. “The one I have with Tara isn’t defective.”
Kyle lunges at Grant, and Ethan has to hold him back once more. Grant tries to get up off the bench to challenge Kyle, but Ethan pushes him back, holding him down by his shoulders.
I stop pacing and look over at Grant. “Tara. She’s the one from those letters in your study.”
His jaw tightens and his shoulders tense, just like they used to right before he would hit me. He’s pissed knowing I went through his things.
“You have a kid with her?” I ask, from behind my protectors. “The woman you had on the side all those years?”
He laughs at me. “You were the one on the side, baby. Not her.”
I study him in confusion. “Then why did you even marry me, Grant? Why not her?”
He shrugs. “She was already married to some rich lawyer from Ft. Wayne, Indiana.” He nods to the papers Kyle is still holding. “But when he found out she was knocked up with someone else’s kid, he tossed her out and divorced her. I didn’t want a bastard kid, so I said I’d marry her. But I had to get you to sign the papers first. Christ, Alexa, you crawled under a fucking rock and died,” he says, almost as if he’s proud of me for being able to hide from him. “I’ve been driving here one weekend a month for a year, following your goddamn brother around. I thought I got close when I found out you pawned the ring. Guess I should have given you more credit. I didn’t think you were smart enough to dodge me all this time.” He looks between Kyle and me again. “But then again, maybe you’re not. Maybe doctor-boy here was helping you all along.”
“But . . . why wouldn’t you just tell Caden you wanted a divorce? You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble,” I say. You could’ve saved me a lot of heartache.
“And miss this joyful reunion?” he asks with smug smile. “Now what would be the fun in that? I mean, now I get to charge your friend here with false imprisonment. And let’s see, I guess I can charge you with kidnapping.”
I gasp. Tears well up in my eyes as I hold a sniffling, crying Ellie.
Kyle reaches into the diaper bag and gets out a bottle, handing it to her to calm her down.
“You want the gimp?” Grant asks Kyle, laughing. “You can have her.”
Venom spews from Kyle’s eyes as he walks over and punches Grant in the face. Grant’s head snaps to the side and blood flies out of his mouth, spattering the sidewalk. He spits blood onto the ground and then wipes his mouth on his shoulder. “Add assaulting a defenseless cop to that list,” he says.
“You want to talk charges? Let’s talk charges,” Ethan says, hovering above Grant. “How about beating your goddamn wife. Raping her. Assaulting her here tonight by grabbing her neck. And let’s not forget threatening her child.”
“Rape?” Grant asks, like he honestly doesn’t think what he did to me ever qualified. “Yeah right, she was a willing participant.”
“And you’re sure a jury would see it that way?” Ethan asks. “What do you stand to gain here, Lucas? If you take her to court, what, you’re going to ask for custody? Of the kid you don’t even want?
“And let’s talk about these other charges you say you want to bring against us. The way I remember it, you were holding Alexa’s neck and threatening her child. Kyle walked up and hit you and then I cuffed you to keep you from hurting anyone.” He turns to Kyle and me with raised brows. “Is that how you guys remember it?”
We both nod.
“So you see, you have a choice here,” Ethan tells him. “You can get what you came for, or you can be a stubborn ass and fight us out of spite. But let me tell you something, Lucas, you don’t want to mess with us, because I promise you, all your dirty cop connections can’t buy you half of what we can afford. Between her brother and the rest of us, we can get the best team of lawyers money can buy without even breaking a sweat.”
Grant’s eyes bounce back and forth between Ethan and Kyle, and then he looks at Ellie. “How much is she worth to you?”
“You really are a sick fuck,” Kyle says, running a hand through his hair.
Ethan stands between them so Kyle won’t take another swing. “I don’t think you understand,” Ethan says to Grant, with a harsh chuckle. “Do you really want to be burdened with eighteen years of child support? Deaf children can be expensive. Private schools. Instructional camps. Elective surgeries. Do you really want to take that on?”
Grant looks over at me and his face falls. I’ve never seen the man look defeated. He’s always won. He’s won everything he’s ever done. The only thing he hasn’t won is getting the best of me. And he knows it.
His eyes are cold and hardened with anger when he nods to the papers in Kyle’s hands. “So, are you going to sign the fucking papers or what?”
“She’ll look them over tonight,” Ethan says, tucking one of his business cards into Grant’s shirt pocket. “You can meet us at my office at noon tomorrow. At that time, Alexa will sign the divorce papers and you will sign papers recusing yourself from being that child’s father.”
Grant shakes his head in frustration. He knows we have him beat. “Fine,” he says, with a lifeless tone to his voice. “Can you get me out of these fucking cuffs now?”
Ethan looks at us and gestures to Kyle’s car. “As soon as they’re gone.”
Kyle takes Ellie from me and puts her in her car seat. Then we get in and drive away. Kyle reaches over and grabs my hand. “Tomorrow,” he says, giving my hand a squeeze. “Tomorrow is when everything changes.”