Dirty Little Secret by Jess Bentley (42)

Chapter 18

Bella

Far down the beach, I almost think I see them. The sand is hazy, the heat moving the air back and forth so that it's hard to tell where the ocean ends and the land begins. Here, I can listen to the sound of the waves, the cries of the birds, and the wind through the grasses that line the sheer white cliffs at the back end of the beach.

Mountains rise high in the distance, green and drastic, lush and dangerous all at the same time. Everything in New Zealand is just a little bit more extreme, more magical. We've gone days without even seeing another person, just sheep and odd-looking bugs and strange sounds at night.

Emmet adores it. Dillon is… Well, he's being a good sport about it. Every few days we trek back to Dunedin and explore the nightlife, let people recognize us, and generally do whatever we want. It seems to satisfy his urge for spectacle.

I hold their hands, both of them. We kiss, sometimes rudely, in front of everyone. New Zealanders aren't overly polite. They take pictures, make jokes and comments, egg us on. They love the American celebrities being so transgressive right in front of them. In a way, they seem to feel like they own us a little bit, since we were so careful until we got here.

And I do wonder what's going on back home, but not enough to try to find out. We've only got a few days left of our no cell phone oath. Afterward, we will find out everything. We won’t be able to avoid it. Every hashtag, every pictorial, everything that Hannah freaked out about since we've been gone. What Xavier at Random House thinks of my book, if it hasn’t been taken for a movie deal first.

But for now, it's just us in our own gorgeous, private heaven. Anything we want to do, we do. There’s no one here to tell us otherwise. And so we are going to do it.

It's them. I'm sure of it now. They’re on horses, cantering calmly along the wet sand, firmly packed by the water. The third man rides between between them on another, darker horse.

I stretch out on the hammock, flexing my fingers, flexing my toes. These moments of serenity, when I'm by myself with my thoughts, calm and happy… I've never felt this way before. I'm safe. Without the cell phones, there's no chatter to interrupt that feeling. I'm suntanned and satisfied. Filled with emotions that I simply let roll through me like the waves on the ocean, inky blue to jade green. One right after another they come, unceasing, as warm and salty as you can imagine.

At they draw closer, I leave the hammock and step to the edge of the canopy, shading my eyes at my hand and waving happily. I see Emmet wave back at me. He may have been watching me this whole time. He does that.

He's a whole other kind of person here. Not different, just so much more. In Chicago, so much of him was always longing for privacy and the freedom to be the man he is. What I knew of him there was the only part he thought he could show. Here, he’s downright silly. He's sexy and funny and romantic. He's perfect.

Dillon is eager to get back, I can tell, but not because he misses it. He's looking forward, thinking of all the things we will do together. There’s a whole world for us to explore, full of cities and sights and tastes. People to meet. And he is excited to share it with me, he tells me, spinning out tales of all the places we’ll go. All the parties, all the good food and music. All for me.

Little old me. Bella and her beasts. Cinderella with a twist.

As they advance, my heart begins to beat faster, just like every time. I can't wait to touch them again, to hear their voices and taste their soft and hungry kisses. I'm on fire constantly, gradually learning how to mount my desires and emotions, like riding a horse — the one that Hannah was probably referring to when she said I didn't know how to handle men.

Seems she's going to be surprised.

“You're back!” I call out when they’re close enough to hear me. It makes them happy. That's all I want.

They swing down from their horses, looping the reins around the support posts of the enclosure. Dressed all in white, trousers and open neck cotton shirts, they look like they have just stepped out of a fairytale. They're both smiling at me, deeply and truly, sunburnt with dimples that stretch all the way up to their eyes.

“Of course we’re back,” Dillon grins. “Had to come get our Princess.”

“Deacon Burberry,” the third man says, offering me his handshake. His New Zealander accent is clipped and charming.

I glance at Dillon, wondering how he found a religious leader to perform the ceremony. As though he knows exactly what I'm thinking, Dillon just winks at me. He is the master of the spectacle, the magician, always.

“You got the rings?” Deacon Burberry asks Emmet, who nods and plunges his hand into his pocket, drawing out two gold rings with diamonds as big as pearls.

“You could see these from space, pretty sure. Lost the receipt, too,” he quips.

“Perfect,” the Deacon says. “Let's just get in the water, then. Up to our ankles, sounds good. Let's just bring mother nature right into the middle of it, yeah?”

“Yes, let's,” I agree, charmed and dazzled.

Emmet and Dillon stand on either side of me, taking my hands. They lead me forward and as our toes breach the first wave, I can feel how right this is. Deacon Burberry walks backward in front of us, grinning like a fool, his curly, sandy, salty hair falling over his sky-blue eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, right to there,” the Deacon smiles.

Dillon squeezes my hand, and I look up at him smiling, then swivel my head to look up at Emmet too. My two beautiful billionaires. My two, perfect, fairytale princes, here to make some more magic.

“All right then,” the Deacon begins. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to formalize the union of these two fine lads and this beautiful lady. Are we all agreed?”

“Yes, we certainly are,” we all laugh, offering variations on our agreement.

“Outstanding,” he continues. “Emmet Riordan, do you take this lady to be your wedded lass, now and forever, until the sea dries up under our feet?”

The sun is behind him, haloing his hair as he smiles down on me.

“I do,” he answers softly.

“Well that's settled,” Deacon smirks. “And do you, Dillon Riordan, take this fine lady to be your wedded last now and forever, until the damn sea dries up under your feet too?”

I stare at him, noting his glistening eyes, his unabashed smile. I feel his love pouring down on me like rain.

“You bet I do,” he answers without a moment’s hesitation.

“And now you, darling… Do you, Isabella Dolores Cage, take both of these fine, strong Riordan boys as your husbands, equal in your love and respect, for all the rest of your days?”

“I do!” It comes out by itself. As does the mist that springs to my eyes.

The Deacon holds up his hands, arms out, as each wave splashes around his muscled calves.

“Then by the power vested in me, by God and nature and all of whatnot, I pronounce thee married! All three of you! Congratulations!”

Emmet kisses me first, laughing into my lips and hugging me so hard he squeezes the air out of me. Thoughtfully, he releases me so Dillon can kiss me as well, not quite before I’m able to catch my breath. I nuzzle his stubbly cheeks and neck, and he puts one hand on the small of my back and kisses my hair, and finally my lips.

For a few minutes we stand there, laughing in the surf, trying to get our heads around what's just happened. The Deacon salutes us as he gets back on his horse and rides off, wishing us well and hoping that we have lots of babies, he says.

“Can I call you Isabella now?” Dillon asks when he catches his breath.

“Um, I think you better not!” I protest. “Nobody has called me that since I was eleven. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.”

“Oh, Bella suits her better, don't you think?” Emmet smirks, swooping down for another sweet, lingering kiss. “But… How ’bout Dolores? Can I call you Dolores every once in a while?”

I sigh, giving up. “Fine… if it makes you happy.”

“You bet it does,” he smiles.

The sun is hot and bright, and under the enclosure we find the champagne in the small, vintage metal cooler, the plastic glasses, the creamy blue cheese and crusty bread. We don't need much, even though we have everything in the world. Champagne and sun, love and promises.

It's all a perfect fairytale, made just for us.

As we drink our champagne, I try to remember every moment. Without a cellphone or laptop, I haven’t been able to write anything down while we’ve been here. I think I’ve committed a lot to memory, and I really hope so. I don’t want to lose any of it. Not a single second. I think there will be so many more stories here to tell.

 

Extended Epilogue

Bella

 

It was enough going from just me in my bed, a virgin at that, to three? And now there’s… five.

But it’s not what you think. Sure, you have me and the usual suspects, Dillon and Emmet, but the other two in the bed are actually still firmly and sweetly nestled in my tummy. Yes, I’m pregnant! With twins. And it’s wonderful to finally not only be married but to make a little family, odd as we may be.

Twins clearly run in the Riordan genes. The multiple pregnancy has made things a bit more complicated than it might be otherwise, but we’re taking it in stride. Luckily money is no issue, and neither is attention, since there will always be a pair of arms to take a baby when necessary. That being said, we’ll have a nanny on staff because there are times we like to be alone, too.

 

Like right now for example.

“Are you sure it’s okay, for the baby?” Dillon asks, looking at me tenderly, while his hands belie his words. He can’t stop them from running over my body. I nod and reach for him. Undoing his belt-buckle, I smile in anticipation for the pulsating monster I’m going to free.

“I know it is, don’t worry,” I reassure him. “The doctor said we’re good, until I’m in labor.”

And thank God he said so, too. Doing it with these two sex gods has always been off the charts, but with the pregnancy it’s even better. My nerves are so sensitive these days. To have them both at once? How could anyone give that up?

It’s like I’ve died and gone to heaven. Over and over and over again.

Speaking of which, Emmet is standing in the doorway. “Hey, I was out swimming. Are you guys getting started without me?” he growls.

He tosses the beach towel he was holding over the doorknob. “Wait up.” He strides over to the bed, and with his bathing suit bottoms, it’s easy to see that he’s already growing long, thick, and hard. Just the way I like him. I hold out my hand to him and he takes it, then jumps in behind me, curling himself around me like a big spoon.

“You did check this all with the doctor right?” Emmet starts in. Between them, they’ve asked me this for the fiftieth time. “We’re good?”

 

“Yes, of course, I wouldn’t do anything to endanger our babies!” I say, looking at him sternly, but soon my stern face dissolves into a moan as Dillon starts kissing down my swollen stomach to my hips. His lips are warm and soft, his hot breath against my skin giving me goosebumps. He starts to tease my waiting pussy by running across it with his mouth, giving it a short lick with his tongue, then trailing across my hips, while I squirm eagerly. It’s a sweet torture, being tantalized by Dillon. Emmet takes the opportunity to put his arms around me and cup my newly heavier breasts. He’s tweaking my nipples with his thumb and forefinger as he kisses the back of my neck.

“Fuck, Bella, you’re so sexy pregnant,” he breathes. “You’re always hot, but you’ve never been hotter.”

It’s paradise.

I love to grind my backside into Emmet’s front, letting his shaft rub against the smooth skin of my ass, feeling his desire for me. A low growl emerges from him as he returns the favor, sliding his thickness around and between my cheeks. He fits me so perfectly, as Dillon does. They’re my bookends, my counterparts.

Dillon’s tongue snakes its way between my nether lips, circling my clit. He covers my sex with his mouth and sucks on it gently, pulling the flesh between his lips. The pleasure is so intense I cry out and Emmet pinches my nipples and bites my neck in response, heightening the already stratospheric feelings.

“I want it,” I mewl, as their soft, hot bodies move against mine. “Don’t make me wait!”

“You be a good girl,” Emmet says against my ear, his lips tickling me. “We love touching you. Your new body, your amazing curves.”

I can’t take it, I have to have them both. But they make me wait, savoring their time with my body. Finally Dillon’s finger slips inside me, curving just enough to hit the point of greatest pleasure, and he moves in rhythm with his mouth against the bloom of my sex. I lean back toward Emmet and he takes my nipples between his lips, grazing them with his tongue and teeth. I feel the pressure build inside me and before I know it my heightened senses are at their peak, and the twinge inside me turns into a torque of pleasure.

“Wow,” Dillon smiles at me when my screams subside into cries and whimpers. “That must have been a good one.”

 

“Amazing,” I sigh happily. “I don't know how I lived without you two.”

 

“Well let’s not waste any more time,” says Emmet as he spreads my cheeks. “I’m going to be gentle. You’re eight months, and I don’t want to knock anything out of place.”

 

“It’s fine,” I grin, wiggling closer to him. “Do as you like.” The fact is, I need him inside me. Soon it’ll be too hard even to position all of us in bed together. We need to do this while we can!

“I’m going to fuck your tight pussy this time,” Emmet says.

“I want you to,” I return, as I feel myself get even wetter. “Come here, Dillon,” I say, and he moves so that he is on his knees near my face. His body is perfect: thick, cut legs lead to narrow, muscular hips accented by a perfect V, a narrow waist opens to broad shoulders by way of an eight-pack of abs. And of course, the centerpiece, his dusky cock, thick with veins. On its own accord my hand reaches for him, and the skin of his member feels like a caress against my palm as my fingers tighten around him.

Just then Emmet squeezes his massive cock between my legs, and rubs my slit with the velvety head. I moan, filled with desire and anticipation. To be filled by them both..

Gesturing to Dillon, I open my lips and he nods, leaning his hand on the bed behind me for support. Taking his length in his hand, a little pearl of precum appears on the head. My tongue comes out, and he rubs the salty liquid against my lips as I do my best to slurp him inside.

His breath catches in his throat as I wrap my tongue around him, reaching out and grabbing his firm ass cheek to pull him closer to me. The head is in my mouth, pulsating and thick, and then I feel Emmet enter. Soon they are thrusting into me in rhythm, and in turn, I am opening like a flower for them. Each nerve ending in my body is on fire, filled with light, and my eyes roll back in my head in the deepest pleasure.

Emmet’s thrusts become wilder, harder, and as he reaches around my leg to rub my clit with his palm, just as he presses into my puckered hole with his thumb. The orgasm hits me all of a sudden, just as Dillon cries out and floods my throat with his seed. My channel undulates over Emmet’s shaft.

“You’re coming on my cock,” he murmurs before jerking his own prize into me. “It feels so amazing.” When he pulls out and I see the last stream of pearlescence arc over and onto my leg. I reach back and hold him as he quivers the end of his orgasm.

“You’re so wet,” he says dreamily, his hand coming to rest between my legs. “Wait, you’re actually really wet,” he says, suddenly sitting up. “Um, babe…”

“What?” I turn to him and he motions to the bed. “Did I squirt?”

“I think it’s more than that,” Dillon says, leaning back and looking. “Did… could…”

“Did my water break?” I ask, looking from one to the other.

“I think maybe?”

Dillon jumps up and starts shoving things into a knapsack. “What do you need, Bella?” he asks, his face full of worry. “Pants? Got pants, pyjamas, undies…”

“Are you guys serious?” I ask, propping myself up on my elbows and glaring at one and the other. Then I look down and realize how much fluid we’re really talking about, and suddenly a contraction hits. My breath rushes out of my mouth as I grab my stomach. “You are serious,” I say when I emerge from the pain. “The go bag is in the closet.”

Emmet runs to the ensuite bathroom and comes back with a hot wet towel, sponging me off while Dillon throws him a pair of thick, soft sweat pants and a tee-shirt for me.

 

“I guess we’re going to the hospital, baby,” Emmet smiles, and Dillon runs over and kisses me hard, then holds up the ‘g0-bag.’

“We’re going to be daddies!” he says, and I struggle to get to my feet and put on the clothes. Dillon tries to run a brush through my hair as I pull the track pants on. I’m scared, but I couldn’t feel more cared for. Emmet is running downstairs to get the car, and Dillon turns to me.

 

“You ready for this, my darling?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I smile weakly as he takes my arm.

* * *

So, I’ll save you the gory details, but I did give birth that night. It was lucky since the babies were early, they were a little smaller than normal. Not that it was easy. But the doctor delivering us was okay with both men being in the room, so I had as much support as a woman could have. And they were amazing afterward too.

We were all snuggled up on the bed together, and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. One baby in each arm, and a man on each side. I know it’s an unusual relationship, to say the least, and we do occasionally get some looks in the street, but I’m not sure why. I would think that every woman would love to have two beautiful brothers like Dillon and Emmet give them their happy ever after.

We named the twins Henry Anders Riordan and Daniel James Riordan. Hannah sent a big package covered in tons of cellophane and a huge blue bow. We ended up donating the contents to the local Sally Ann and recycling the plastic, but Dillon sent her a thank-you note anyway. It was kind of him, I suppose, but I know that Hannah just wants to get in on my success.

 

The novel is done, and I can’t wait until it comes out to the world, so that everyone can learn everything about what it’s like to have your own fairy tale come true -- how things aren’t always what they seem, and wicked witches can be disguised as good fairies. And, of course, that even two men that seem beastly at first can be your Prince Charmings.

* * *

“Dillon, can you get Henry?” I call. “He’s awake. I can hear him in the crib,” I call out, holding my cell phone to my neck to muffle the sound.

“Already on my way,” he calls back. I’m so glad I can count on them. While they never seemed like family men from all the stories in the tabloids, Dillon and Emmet have fallen in love with Henry and Daniel.

As for me, I am surrounded by the masculine. Having two twin husbands, and twin baby boys, well -- such a life would have seemed completely impossible before. But they thrive on creating magic, my husbands. And all their tricks seem to revolve around making me happier and happier. Maybe we’ll try for a girl next time, just to even the score a bit.

“We’re prepared to offer you a healthy advance on your second book,” I hear over the line, snapping me back to the present. “We just need a precis for the shareholders, so if you can send it back with the contract, we should be able to take this thing to the next level.”

I try not to let my astonishment and happiness come out too much. I want to seem cool and professional. But as I agree to the terms, I’m dancing around the kitchen, and as Emmet stands at the door, his mouth stretches into a smile and his eyes widen.

“The publisher?” he mouths at me. He gives me a questioning thumbs up. I nod and thumbs up him back, phone cradled by my ear. He does his own happy dance and as I wrap up the phone call, he hugs me hard.

 

“Dillon,” he calls out, and then immediately covers his mouth. “Are the babies sleeping?”

“Probably not anymore,” I say and then the baby monitor squawks. Sounds as if they’re both awake.

“Come help me with the babies,” Dillon’s voice comes through.

We both run up the stairs to share the good news, and are met by Dillon changing Henry’s diaper.

“Can you grab Daniel?” he says, and I lean into his crib and pick him up. He snuggles right in, little face screwed up with the effort of being awake.

“Is he wet?” asks Emmet. He has a diaper ready in his hand.

“Man, you guys are on it,” I smile, and lay Daniel’s little body on the changing table, and Emmet takes over.

“Well, tell him,” Emmet prompts.

 

“Oh right! Dillon! I got a great advance for my next book!”

“Isn’t mommy the smartest?” Dillon croons to Henry. “Isn’t mommy the best writer of them all? She sure is! She sure is!” Henry laughs at his antics. Dillon picks him up and walks over, and Henry stretches out his arms to me. I take him and breathe in the sweet smell of baby, and Dillon kisses my cheek tenderly. “You’re a superstar, Bella. I’m so proud of you. And, I can start planning the book launch party.”

 

“Ahh! Thank you! I’m so excited.” I spin Henry around as he laughs some more, and soon we’re all dancing in the room, trading partners and babies, grinning and cheering.

I know it was a huge surprise to everyone that the first book did so well. It seems to be the ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ of its generation, striking people at the core with the possibility of magic in their lives, once they accept their authentic selves.

I bet Hannah is furious, I think. It’s not the first time the thought has flitted through my head. We still haven’t talked, and we probably won’t ever again. She’s still pissed that she couldn’t lay claim to my book. Apparently all the leeway and clauses that she had placed in my contract were enough to disabuse her of the notion that my book belonged to her.

I never went over the terms that closely, but the things I thought she had given me as perks were really just measures to keep me at a contractor type status, and so her attempt to snowjob me and claim my work as belonging to the company had ultimately brought her down. I had the best lawyer money could buy, as well as the will of the people on my side.

I guess people did really fall in love with the person, the ‘character’ I let them know during the love story with Emmet. And since we all fell in love for real, they weren’t ever let down, except for the ones who can’t understand that love can exist between three.

Eventually TurnPost ended up settling the countersuit and left me with control over my words, which is all I ever really wanted anyway. The settlement was a benefit, but since marrying the boys, I don’t really have a need for any more money. Still, a portion of it took us on a vacation to Fiji and that’s nothing to scoff at. After all, I do like to contribute to the household, and give my husbands, who give me so much every minute of every day, a little magic back.

 

Deleted Scene

Bella

Dillon leans on his arm against the wall, giving me one of those sexy, disarming looks that somehow slides its way down my body right into my panties. My knees give out slightly, and I shuffle a little on my feet to try to hide it. For some reason I don’t want him to know the effect he has on me.

“Maybe we should go upstairs,” he says softly, reaching one hand out to me. His forearm is strong, veiny, tanned. He’s rolled up the dark blue sleeve of his shirt to just the right point where I’m dying to see more. The collar of his shirt is open too, and hints of his chest are showing. I want him bad. I might as well just admit it to myself even if I don’t want to admit it to him.

Something buzzes in my back pocket. I’m so lost in desire for him that it takes me a minute to realize it’s my phone.

“Just a sec,” I say, as I look at the screen. It’s his brother, Emmet. The other most handsome man I’ve ever seen in my life. “It’s your bro. He wants to know what we’re doing.”

“Yeah,” Dillon, says, turning. He walks over to the bar cart and pours a couple drinks. “He said he’d try to come by if he finishes his meeting early enough.”

My stomach jumps. Is he saying what I think he’s saying? “He did?” I ask nonchalantly.

Dillon walks back over, a drink in each hand. “Yeah, sure. We like to share. Didn’t he mention that?” He hands me one. I take it with both hands and sip it gratefully. The brown liquid burns a little and then the fumes filter through my mind. It feels good.

“I-- I -- I think he might have said something,” I stammer. Fact is, even though I thought it might be a joke, I’ve been dreaming of nothing else but to be shared by these two twin brothers. But as a virgin, the whole sex thing is new to me, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

Just add that to the list of things to stop lying to myself about, I suppose.

“So text him back. You can let him know we’re at my place,” he says smoothly. I nod and quickly fire off a text. Just as I’m pressing send, he leans in, and as his fingers go into my hair, he softly kisses my lips. He tastes of a combination of whiskey and salt. His lips are soft, wet, and a little cold from the ice in his drink. I’m stunned and motionless for a moment, then I begin to kiss him back, my tongue tentatively tracing his. He stops, then takes my drink which I’ve been holding, and puts both aside, on the kitchen island.

In one smooth movement, he takes me in his arms and props me up on the island. The marble is cool against my legs, against my ass, and his hands are hot. They roam over me, awakening each part of me they touch, making every cell in my body want him. He tips up my chin, covers my mouth with his, and his kisses grow faster; more voracious. I can’t help but respond. My hands tangle in his hair, then slide over his wide shoulders and down his back. The muscles of his back move under his shirt and I find myself pulling the fabric up out of his pants. I need to touch his soft skin.

“Easy, Bella. Shouldn’t we wait for Emmet?” he asks, grinning wickedly. Then he pulls me toward him and devours my mouth with kisses. I’m moaning, melting into him, sliding my fingers under his shirt to feel those muscles move. Yes, Emmet. I want Emmet too.

I don’t know how long we’re kissing but at some point I feel fingers slide up my leg, when Dillon’s fingers are already occupied, one hand on my cheek and the other cupping my breast, fingers closing around my nipple. I look over his shoulder and I see Emmet. He must have let himself in? He gives me a panty-melting look as he trails his fingers further up my thigh. Dillon turns to him.

“Hey man,” he says to his brother.

“Are we ready to go upstairs already?” Emmet grins. “I know I am.”

Dillon doesn’t have to be asked twice, so when I nod, he spins me around and into his arms. Emmet leads the way as Dillon effortlessly carries me up the stairs down the hall, and into the bedroom. We fall onto the bed, while Emmet is taking off his shirt slowly. It’s a kind of reverse striptease, because he’s staring at me when he does it. He looks so handsome in his pressed shirt, gold watch, and pale chinos. Or should I say, both in and out of them. I watch as he bends, angles moving under his skin, and steps out of the pants, then throws them over a chair. Now he’s in just his shorts. They’re boxer briefs, hugging his lines.

I crook my finger at him. “Don’t keep me waiting.” I don’t know where I got this confident persona from… probably a result of having two gorgeous men act like I’m their prize. Speaking of which, Dillon has slipped off my top and is working on the bottoms, while Emmet lies down beside me in bed.

I’m surrounded by masculinity. Muscles. Clean, musky smells. Stubbly cheeks framing soft lips. And most of all, their hard, throbbing, shafts, pressing against me, wanting to press into me. As they descend on my nipples, each sucking one, I lean my head back and moan. Someone’s fingers slide down over my mound and slide inside, stroking me. Another hand is circling my clit. I writhe, unable to control my body. I want both of them as much as I can have, at once.

And I want it now.

I’ve never felt like this about a man before. Or, I guess I should say, about two men. I’ve always stayed innocent. My virginity wasn’t something I was saving for something special, for marriage or anything. I just knew that getting involved with men was more trouble than it was worth. That being with a man led to pain, most of the time. Nobody was worth that pain.

But I never counted on two men wanting me at once.

That changes the equation. Completely.

 

Copyright © 2017 Jess Bentley

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

 

Prologue

Pierce

New York City, 2014

The water sluices over my skin, hot and steaming. Like it’s purifying me. Taking me away from what happened at the party.

Fists flying, bone crunching against cartilage. My brother’s face, bleeding. Not by my hand — or I don’t think so, anyway. I can’t remember. It all fades when I think about it too hard. I didn’t even want to be there, in the fluorescent lit hotel ballroom, even though it was a party for my college graduation. For my new job at Cochran Securities. None of it seemed like an accomplishment, especially not the job. I’m Pierce Cochran after all, and it’s not exactly surprising that my father hired me at his firm the second I got out of school.

Everyone I loved was there. My mom, my dad. My younger brother, Logan, who got out on leave for this very occasion. And Arie. Beautiful Arie. Teasing lips and sweet, wide eyes. She was the only one I wanted to see.

The blood runs through my fingers.

When I walked in the room, I wished I was anywhere else. I set my own ass up for all this bullshit. The fight, the harsh words. The embarrassment. If I had to guess, this is why I’m currently standing in the shower of my hotel room, washing blood from my fists.

My hands ache. My shoulder muscles are in knots.

I close my eyes and lean my head against the shower wall. It’s cool against my throbbing head. I try to piece together the events of the night. But it’s all smoke and haze, slipping through my fingers like the red blood and water of the shower.

There was whiskey, then more whiskey, and gin with Dad. The final encore was a trio of vodka tonics. That really fucking finished me off. The alcohol took things from reasonable to unreasonable. And Arie. I kept staring at her. Watching her. Going over the supple lines of her body in my mind. I went to her and tilted her head towards mine, telling her that tonight was the night. It needed to be the night. But we fought, like we always do about this one damn thing. She’s been saving herself for marriage, and I’ve been patiently waiting for almost ten years for her to give it up. I think I stalked off to play pool with Logan when she told me ‘no,’ yet again.

Pool with Logan. Lining up my shot and trying to get just the right spin, then whiffing royally thanks to my drunken vision. Logan snickers, then takes aim, sinking three balls with a satisfied grin. He’s kicking my ass, and I hate losing to anyone, let alone my little brother.

Then I look up and see Arie slowly slipping off her sweater, exposing her smooth, glowing shoulders, and the curve of her firm breasts under a thin blue sundress. She’s driving me crazy, making it impossible for me to focus on the damn game. She looks at me with a stare so dirty, I could have fucked her right then and there; I imagine filling her perfect little mouth with my thick cock.

And seconds before, she’s telling me we were waiting. Still waiting.

She does this to me, especially when she’s been drinking. She teases me, even though she has no intention of following through. She makes me want to just… throw her down on this pool table and fuck her in front of everyone. And yes, I know just how messed up that is.

Everything that happened after that is a blur of fists flying and breaking glass.

Two frat boys I don’t recognize saunter into the hotel bar where we are having my party. They’re definitely not with us; they look like they’re on vacation from Iowa, or another flyover state. They definitely aren’t from the city.

The heat of the water burns against my broken, bruised skin, but it eases some of the pain in my throbbing muscles. I watch as blood pools at my feet, and my mind starts to put the pieces of the puzzle back together.

Did I hit them first, or did they hit me?

The guys walk right up to Arie, and they start chatting her up. One pushes a lock of her curly black hair out of her face, while the other runs a finger down the bare skin of her arm. My vision starts to go cloudy with rage.

I set my cue down on the side of the table and take a step in their direction.

Logan puts a hand on my arm. He tells me to stop and take a breath, to think through what I’m about to do, but when I lock eyes with Arie, I know there is no going back. Then I see one of the frat guys reach down and grab her ass.

And I see red.

The last thing I remember before waking up on my hotel bed is the sound my fist made when it connected with the taller kid’s jaw.

Even without clear memories, my body bears its share of physical reminders of what happened. My abdomen and chest are covered in bruises, and I can feel more on my back from where I was probably sucker-punched in the kidneys. I begrudgingly turn off the water, and grab one of the plush hotel towels to dry my hair. When I brush the towel against my head, it hurts, and when I pull the towel away, it’s stained with blood. I reach up and find shards of glass in my hair, as if a beer bottle were broken over the top of my head.

I probably had that coming.

I walk out of the bathroom naked, with every intention of just collapsing back into bed and dealing with my pissed off family in the morning.

But then I freeze.

Arie is swathed across my bed, asleep, her little blue sundress creeping up her beautiful thighs. One glance at her like that and I’m already thinking about all the different ways I could fuck her. I don’t know if that was her intention, but now it’s all I can think about. A soft groan escapes my lips, and Arie opens her eyes, smiles mischievously, and stretches seductively.

“Hey, baby,” she whispers sleepily as she brushes her hair away from her face. I can’t stop staring at the way her filmy dress hugs her curves in all the right places, the way tendrils of her hair fall onto the slope of her shoulders, against the line of her neck. My defenses are collapsing.

“Shit, Arie,” I mutter. My teeth are clenched tight.

I don’t need this tonight. My body is aching, and I know I’ve made some stupid decisions my father will make me pay for tomorrow. But as I walk up to Arie, as I tower over her and see the way her small form is shadowed in my massive frame, I feel myself getting hard. My cock throbs. I reach out and touch the curve of her cheek, soft and warm. She leans into me.

“Pierce,” she says in a hushed voice. Her eyes sparkle, but we’re both on our way to sober right now. There’s something different about this time.

Goddamnit. I’m drawn into her cool blue gaze, and I have to struggle with my self-control not to just grab her, throw her down, and fuck her senseless. Arie raises an eyebrow in a clear effort to appear seductive, but she begins to blush, and she breaks eye contact with me out of nerves. Somehow, this is even hotter. Even the makeup she is wearing can’t hide her shyness, her doubt, the fact that she doesn’t know if she’s making the right decision.

It’s all turning me on so much, I think I’m going to lose my mind.

“What are you doing in here, Arie? This isn’t a good idea if we’re just going to end up in the same place we always do,” I growl. I know I’m being a bit of a dick, but this hasn’t exactly been my night and I’d rather just go to sleep if she’s going to leave anyway. But suddenly, she reaches up and grabs my hand.

“Thank you for protecting me tonight,” she says. Her voice is barely a whisper, but now, I can hear a hint of arousal behind it. She swallows hard, and I see that hint of nervousness again. “I was thinking — we’re getting married soon, anyway. Right? You’re the one for me, and I’m the one for you. And all that.” She blushes deep red when she says it.

I take another step toward her.

“What are you telling me right now, Arie?”

“What do you think I’m telling you, Pierce?” she teases. Arie leans back on the bed and spreads her legs ever-so-slightly, revealing a pair of pink lace panties. The corner of her mouth tilts up in a playful smile, and I am completely overwhelmed by lust. I’ve been in love with Arie since I was seventeen years old, but all I feel for her in this moment is pure, unadulterated lust.

I stare at her beautiful body and let out an exhalation of air before I slide on top of her. I lock my hands on either side of her, trying to sort out where my common sense has disappeared to as my cock hardens and the desire to slide inside of her pulses through me.

Arie stares up at me with a determination in her eyes that I have never seen before. She lets her hands drift down my torso, touching me as if we are meeting for the first time. Gingerly, she pulls the towel away from my hips. My cock is already hard, straining, the skin tight and hot. Her eyes grow wide when she catches sight of it.

“It’s big,” she murmurs. “Really big.”

I wait, and try to breathe in deeply as blood flows to my cock. I can’t imagine anything in the world that could convince me to pull away from her in this moment. And when she bites her lip, when she gasps as her hand drifts over my shaft, I’m an absolute goner. I imagine letting her stroke me, coming all over the expanse of her perfect, pale body. My balls filling and releasing.

But tonight is about something more than that.

I take her by surprise, falling on to the bed next to her and crashing my mouth down onto hers, pressing passionately against her, and tracing my tongue around the lines of her perfect lips. She moans and claws at my chest, grabbing at my neck, like she’s trying to pull me in even closer to her, eliminating all of the space between us. When I pull away, she moans as if I’m denying her oxygen.

“This is what you want, Arie? Are you sure?” I ask, still somehow shocked she’s in my bed right now. As I look down into her crystal blue eyes, my girth throbs. It’s so hard it’s almost painful.

“Yes,” she whispers. “I’ve been thinking about it. It’s all I think about. Maybe if we just get it over with, we won’t be so focused on it anymore. You are my forever guy, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I say. I brush my thumb over her bottom lip. “I’m your forever guy.”

I push my pulsing length against the warmth of her panties. She’s already wet there, like she’s been considering it ever since the moment she told me to buzz off. Getting wetter and wetter until she couldn’t stand it anymore. “You want me to fuck you tonight, Arie?”

“God, Pierce, I said…” she starts. “Fuck. Yeah I do.”

My fingers press against the wet fabric of her panties. There’s heat there, almost molten hot against my hand. I close my eyes and open them again. I’ve imagined this moment a thousand times, and I want to make sure I’m not dreaming.

“You feel so good, baby,” I say. I stroke her with more pressure, moving down to her pussy, and she starts to melt. I pull her panties to one side, sliding my fingers over her slickness, up to her clit and down over her delicate folds. She shudders, hips arching up beneath my hand, like she’s pushing against me, begging for more. Needing it. I slide the lace of her panties down to her knees, and she kicks them off. They land in a crumple at the foot of the bed, and she laughs. A blush rises over Arie’s body, making her turn the most beautiful shade of pink. I let my hand hover over her sex again, and I realize that all the pain has vanished from my body. There’s a doctor’s cure. A goddamn beautiful woman giving it up for the first time. Wet and ready, the hem of her dress pulled up over her hips.

“You want my fingers inside you?”

She nods, pink spreading to her cheeks. “I do.” She arches her hips toward my fingers. “Please.”

I bring my hand to her again, and I thrust two fingers inside of her, unable to control myself. I growl, pressing the base of my palm hard against her clit. Her voice comes out in a soft, strangled moan, and she throws her head back, hands finding her breasts, fingers tugging at her nipples. They’re stiff beneath the fabric, like tiny bullets. I feel a pearlescent bead of precum at my tip.

I work my fingers inside of her, listening to her moan. The soft rise and fall of her breath tells me when she’s getting close, and I pull away, leaving her empty on purpose.

“And you want me to fuck you? To come inside of you?”

She nods. “Yes.”

“I don’t know if I believe you,” I growl into her ear. “It’s been almost ten years, Arie. Why now?”

I plunge my fingers inside of her again. She’s tight. I groan. I’ve known this part of her body many times. I know how to make her come for me, body shaking. But I’ve never entered her, not truly. Never made her mine. I watch as goose bumps spread all over her skin, highlighting her increasing arousal. She gasps for air, as if she can’t breathe, and she licks her sweet lips as she considers my question. I study her beautiful face closely, as if she’s a stranger in my bed. With each passing year, Arie hasn’t aged; she has always looked fresh and young and new. It makes me want to protect her. And ruin her. In equal measure.

Arie’s eyes are closed tight as she processes her pleasure, and she tries to stifle a whimper.

“Things change, Pierce,” she chokes out. “Like I said, I’ve been thinking about it forever. I want it now.”

Arie’s hips begin to writhe from her excitement and she squeezes her thighs together snugly. I nuzzle my nose into the curve of her neck, taking in a deep breath of her as she moans with pleasure. She smells like gardenia on a warm, summer day and it’s more intoxicating than all the liquor I had at that stupid party.

All I can think about is filling her up with my cock, taking her over and over again, letting her feel just how hard she is making me. I want her to know what she’s been missing all these years.

“I’m going to make you scream tonight.”

I don’t know what comes over me, but I reach down and rip her dress off her in a single motion. Arie gasps, but I cover her mouth with my own as I keep caressing her sex, parting her slick folds, making her moans flood into my mouth and increase my hardness ten-fold. I show her no mercy as my fingers explore the soft, warm flesh of her wet pussy.

Our tongues dance as she shivers beneath touch, and I have to pull away to watch her body react to me. I trace my fingers across her warm flesh, watch her squirm when I blow cold air against her neck. I am barely suppressing the urge to bite and mark her flawless skin, to make sure the whole world knows she’s mine.

Arie’s long black hair fans out all around her, framing her face like a dark halo. I snap away her bra, and her beautiful breasts, the breasts I’ve imagined a million times, fall free. My cock stiffens as I take in the curve of her full, voluptuous form. She opens her eyes and stares at me with overwhelming passion.

“Keep touching me, Pierce. Never stop touching me,” she sighs as she closes her eyes again.

I take hold of her chin and tilt her face up so she has to make eye contact with me. For a moment, she looks like a movie star, a painting, an angel glowing from the inside out. I can’t believe this is my Arie.

“I don’t believe you’re ready for this,” I say, hating myself for holding back. This is what I’ve wanted for ten years and I’m going to fuck it up, the way I fuck everything up. There is no reason Arie should still be with me. She’s too good for me. I’m a useless asshole, and everyone knows it. Everyone but Arie.

She just smiles and shakes her head, as if she’s lost in a fog of sex and desire. She isn’t going to back down.

“I'm not kidding,” I say, “I’m not sure what you want but I don’t think you're not ready for this.”

“Shut the hell up and fuck me, Pierce,” she says in a voice more self-assured than I’ve ever heard come out of her.

That’s all it takes to scramble my brain beyond reason.

I move in close, so close we’re almost touching, and I feel the heat behind the warmth of her full lips.

“Your wish is my command,” I say with a growl.

She slides her hand down the rippling muscles of my chest, pausing on my abdomen, drifting lazily over the bruises that have formed from my fight earlier. When she wraps her tiny, soft-skinned hand around my stiff cock, it sends signals to my brain that propel me into a state of pure lust.

I groan as she grips my shaft. In one quick movement, I lift her up with one arm wrapped around her back so I can support her voluptuous frame. I take hold of one of her breasts and cup it firmly, squeezing it, then I lean down to lick her erect nipple.

She moans raucously and begins to stroke my cock with even more eagerness. Her body tenses up, and I set her down on the bed so I can bury my face between her full breasts, comforted by the warmth of her fullness. I tilt her breasts together so I can suck both her nipples, letting my tongue trace them as I pluck them with my teeth, and she writhes underneath me.

Arie caresses my cock to the point where I think I might come in her hand, and my body reacts in kind. My cock is practically burning with pleasure, twitching wildly against her palm, as she coats the head with my own fluids.

I can’t take any more foreplay. I grab her thin wrists and pin her down to the bed. I use my hips, and line up my cock between her waiting legs, pressing the head against her honeyed inner lips. She pants, and her mouth opens every-so-slightly, her breasts heaving with every moan she emits. I can’t help but grin at the anticipation that flickers across her face.

Her sparkling blue eyes go wide as we register what is about to happen. The earth stops spinning and I feel a wildness coiling inside me. Every ounce of self-control is long gone. My whole body is wracked with desire for her.

I take hold of her shaking thighs and thrust toward her soft center in one smooth motion. She cries out and waves of passion spread through every inch of me. She is so tight that I can only get my tip inside of her. If I push any deeper, I know I will lose control and explode inside of her immediately. But I don’t want this to be over right away. Not by a long shot. I want to take my time with her.

I push inside of her a little further and her whole body contracts. I watch as her full lips quiver in a combination of pleasure of pain. Her eyes are clamped shut, and her breath is coming hard and fast. Her pussy feels like it’s on fire.

“Does it hurt?” I ask. I’m panting, holding myself still, beyond all reason. Part of me wants to force myself inside, feel how tight she really is. But I wait. I love this woman, after all.

Her face contorts but she says nothing. Her silence is all I needed to keep going. I probably should slow down, should take her inexperience into account. Instead, I push deeper into her warmth, welcomed by an overwhelming wetness that is only making me harder. I hold her arms over her head, and kiss and bite at the perfect skin of her graceful neck.

“Tell me how it feels,” I whisper into her ear.

“It… it…” she stutters.

“Tell me,” I say again.

The muscles in my stomach shake violently, as her pussy tightens desperately around my cock. I go mad, grabbing her full ass and plunging all of the way inside her. Her eyes open, and go wide, and she cries out. Her pussy grips me like a vise, pulsing around my cock. She’s all smooth walls and hot wetness. I could stay here forever, living in this place that she’s given to me, and me alone.

“Tell me now,” I demand. I pull back and thrust inside of her again, groaning.

Arie bites her lip, hard, to hold back a building scream. I thrust again, harder this time. I don’t care about anything else. All I care about is making sure she knows she’s mine. Arie moans beneath me. I feel more in control of anything than I have in my whole life, as I thrust again and again, without mercy. Arie scratches her nails down the length of my back and let’s out a long groan.

“It feels so full. Oh God. It’s so good. It feels like I’ve been empty all my life and now — shit, don’t stop.” Her eyes meet mine, her lids hooded with lust.

I take that as my cue. I thrust again, falling into a delicious rhythm. Skin against skin. Warm, hot. Every movement an answer to my prayers.

“Pierce, oh God, Pierce,” she breathes. She babbles, and some of the words sound like my name. Her rapturous cries alone are almost enough to make me come. I pause and bring my mouth to her nipples again.

“I can feel you all through me,” she pants.

“You're so fucking tight,” I say, grasping for purchase on the headboard. I pull back, then thrust forward and fill her pussy again. Her burning, soft warmth encircles my painfully hard cock and sends a flash of light to my head.

“Fuck me, Pierce!” She screams. “Oh, God, Pierce!”

The headboard slams against the wall as I power into her. Her beautiful black hair falls around her face as she screams my name in violent throes.

“Pierce!”

The lamp on the bedside table falls over, and the light bulb shatters. I let loose a torrent of curse words. But it’s not enough to stop me — I am intent on possessing her, and taking her virginity. I slam my cock in and out of her pussy as if it is mine for the taking. I cannot stop fucking her. I am intoxicated by the way her entire body pulses as I rhythmically push and pull inside of her, feeling her fitful shudders of desire.

Suddenly, there is a flurry of knocking on the door outside. It’s insistent, but not enough to distract me from the task at hand. Arie doesn’t even seem to hear it; she just wraps her legs around my waist as I shove inside of her again and again, grunting like a maniac.

The knocking becomes more furious, and now angry voices are shouting my name. It sounds like they might knock down the door, and I’m not about to give up this moment for anyone. I wrapped my arms around Arie’s waist and pick her up as I stand up from the bed. Then I walk her around to the other side of the bed, get down on my knees, and set her down on the floor on her back. She still doesn’t seem to be fully aware of what is going on outside the door, and I’m glad for that.

I lean down and kiss her slow and deep, sliding back inside of her, feeling her wetness.

“Fuck me, Pierce!” she cries out.

My vision becomes blurred by a lusty fog, and her ecstatic moans make it more difficult to hear whatever is going on outside of the door. I feel like it is only a matter of time before they bust inside, but so far, so good.

I probably should care that a group of men are shouting my name, and identifying themselves as the police. But I don’t.

Being inside of Arie feels too amazing; I grit my teeth together and close my eyes, hoping to shut out the world. I don’t want to be interrupted, don’t want this moment with her to end. She hugs around my neck, and I feel like I am stretching her to her breaking point. I can feel the tight clenching of her pussy warning me she is about to come, and come hard, so I shove myself balls deep into her warmth, and I feel a familiar fluttering in my sensitive cock.

“Mr. Cochran! We are coming in! This is your last chance to open the door of your own free will!” The voice on the other side of the door is pissed, at the end of its rope. But I’m also at the end of mine and nothing is going to stop me right now.

I lower my face to Arie’s, and I see she is totally lost in her own world, too far gone in a haze of pleasure.

“Oh God, Pierce,” she cries as she comes. “Come inside me. Please — fill me up — ”

“Shit,” I groan. “That's it, baby. Come for me.”

The door flies open as she rides my cock to the end. I can’t do anything but let loose a long, guttural howl as I release inside of her. We both explode in ecstasy, just as a pair of handcuffs slam closed around my wrists from behind.

 

Part One

 

Pierce

New York City, 2014

“I’m tired of your shit, Pierce. This isn’t just about your drinking, or the cars you keep destroying, or the fact you can’t seem to control your temper. You treat Arie like garbage! Not to mention that now you’ve exposed our company to a huge amount of risk because you decided to pick a fight with the wrong people.”

I’m sitting in my dad’s office in Lower Manhattan, overlooking Washington Square Park, and trying to look as if I’m paying attention. He’s rattling off something about “joint and several liability” and “stocks dropping,” and I’m just watching the traffic go by outside. My head is killing me — probably because of the concussion I was diagnosed with by the EMT after I was booked the night of my party. It turns out that the one of the guys I started the barfight with was the son of a senator from Montana, and they aren’t just pressing charges for assault — they’re threatening to sue. I spent the night in jail, and haven’t heard from Arie since. I suspect she’s more than a little pissed that a bunch of cops saw her naked on a hotel room floor, panting like crazy after I took her virginity.

I can’t say I blame her.

I’m still staring out the window, when Dad says something that draws my attention back in a hurry.

“We’ve caught a break, however. Senator Doherty has made us an offer. If you get your shit together and join your brother Logan in the Navy, they’ll do us a favor and drop the charges. And they won’t sue.”

My head spins around so fast, I get dizzy, and my temples begin to throb even worse. “Whoa. What the fuck did you say? If I do what?”

“You heard me. You’re going to get over this damn concussion, you’re going to get your affairs in order, and then you’re going to enlist in the Navy. I’ve already spoken to a friend who runs the BUD/S program in Coronado, and he’ll be expecting you for the start of their next six-month training. They’re rushing you through enlistment so we can get this nonsense off our plate before we announce our IPO. And let me make this crystal clear, Pierce John Cochran. I don’t care how miserable you are, or how much pain you might be in. You will finish the program.”

I know my mouth is hanging open like an idiot. I can’t seem to form any sort of coherent sentences. Cochran Securities Ltd has been in our family for three generations, and now my father, James Cochran, is taking the company public for investors. It’s all he’s been worried about lately: keeping our image squeaky clean so we can avoid any scandals before the announcement. My getting into a bar fight with a senator’s son? That definitely doesn’t fit into his plan. But forcing me to enlist in the Navy? Hell, nah.

“This is fucking insane, Dad. No way. I just graduated college. I’m supposed to work here, with you. And what about Arie? You’re telling me to just leave her?” I can feel the bile rising in my throat. Logan has always been the boy scout, the good kid. He always wanted to be in the military. But me? I’m not cut out to serve and protect… anyone. But dear old Dad holds up his hand, cutting off my rant.

“It’s all settled, Pierce. There is nothing more to discuss. And frankly, Arie is a lot better off without you. You’ve been a drain on her for as long as I can remember. She deserves someone who won’t string her along.” He’s not even making eye contact with me now. He’s looking at something on his computer and scanning sheets of paper on his desk. I’m getting increasingly pissed.

“String her along? Do you have any idea how long I waited…”

My father shakes his head, his disappointment palpable. “I’m not talking about just fucking, Pierce. I’m talking about being a man, about stepping up and taking responsibility for your actions like an adult. You’ve never done that for her. You’ve never done that for anyone in your life. And it’s time for you to do it. You wouldn’t be of any use to me here acting the way you do now. And you damn well won’t be of any use to Arie.”

I start to protest, but I can tell by look in his eye that the conversation is over. It was over the minute he made up his mind about me joining the Navy. I stand up from the chair across from my father and leave his office with my shoulders practically drooping down my knees. When I get out of the building and onto Fifth Avenue, I grab my cell from my back pocket and dial Arie. She answers, her voice hesitant.

“Hi, Pierce.”

I take a deep breath. “Arie, can you meet me at the coffee shop next to my dad’s building? We need to talk.”

* * *

When Arie walks into the coffee shop, she is wearing what looks like four layers of clothing, including a giant baggy sweater, even though it’s May and hot as a whore’s ass outside. When she sits down across from me, she crosses her arms over her chest and doesn’t make eye contact. I feel like an asshole, though I’m not a hundred percent sure why.

“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

She looks at me like I’m a massive idiot, then hugs herself tighter. “Half of the NYPD saw me naked, Pierce. At any given moment, I could run into a cop who has seen my tits. So, you’ll excuse me if I don’t feel or look my best right now.”

“I don’t… I mean, I guess I’m sorry but you can’t really blame me for that.”

Her face turns bright red and I see a kind of anger in her eyes that I’ve never seen before. “What do you mean I ‘can’t blame you?’ Who the hell else should I blame, Pierce? You had every opportunity to warn me what was about to happen and instead you just let me be humiliated. There were reporters at my house, Pierce!”

My stomach drops. “Reporters? Did you tell them anything?”

When she slaps me across the face, I’m more shocked by it than anything. Suddenly, every eye in the coffee shop is on us, and I try to smile at them. “It’s fine. We’re fine. Mind your business.”

But Arie is seething. “Are you kidding me right now? All you’re worried about is whether I outed you to reporters as the naked guy that was dragged out of The Carlyle? How can you be so selfish?”

“Practice,” I answer absently. “Look, I have to tell you something.”

She doesn’t seem to be listening to me, so at the same time, we blurt out what we came here to say.

“Dad is making me join the Navy.”

“I can’t see you anymore, Pierce,” she says, before I can say anything else.

“What?” we sputter over top of each other.

“You’re breaking up with me?” I ask, suddenly incredulous, even though I was here to do the sam.

“You’re joining the Navy? What? Did your Dad offer to pay you?”

“Well, that was uncalled for. No. I don’t exactly have a choice. If I don’t enlist, that senator and his douchebag son are going to sue my father, and by extension, the company. It’ll ruin his IPO. You know he’s not going to let that happen, so as soon as this fucking concussion heals, I’m gone. But back up for a second here. You’re dumping me? You’re dumping me?”

Arie pulls her sweater tighter around her and shakes her head with a sad smile. “You make it sound like I’m breaking up with the perfect Prince Charming. I just can’t do this anymore, Pierce. You made your priorities more than clear that night in the hotel, and they don’t involve me, or my feelings. Or my safety. So yes, I’m dumping you. Prince Pierce Cochran, he who deigned to date the garbage man’s daughter all these years. The scholarship student. I know you probably think you were doing me a favor, but…”

Tears start to form in the corners of her eyes, and my stomach hurts in a way I’m not used to. Is this guilt? Is this what guilt feels like?

“Hey… It’s not like that. It was never like that. I… I love you, Arie.”

She shakes her head again. “I don’t think you know what love is, Pierce. But maybe you’ll learn. One day.”

With that, she gets up from the table and walks out of the coffee shop, without so much as a backward glance. And I’m left sitting alone, consumed by an emptiness I didn’t even know I was capable of feeling.

I let her walk away, and I have a sinking suspicion I will regret it for the rest of my life.

 

Arie

New York City, 2014

Since I left Pierce sitting in that coffee shop on Fifth Avenue a month ago, there’s not a day gone by that I don’t feel sick about it. It’s not that I didn’t love him, that I don’t love him, but after that night in the hotel… there’s no chance he’s going to grow up. He’ll just never be the kind of man I need him to be, and I can’t change that. I can’t force him to take responsibility for his own life.

Mr. Cochran apparently still thinks there’s hope for him, making him join the SEALs. I can’t picture it. Pierce was never good at taking instructions, or advice, or responding to any sort of authority, so the idea of him surviving six months of extreme training is above and beyond anything I can imagine. Since it worked out really well for his little brother Logan, I’m not entirely surprised that Mr. Cochran hoped it would do the same for Pierce. I know what Logan went through during his time in California, and it was no joke.

The truth is, since the hotel, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Pierce. I don’t exactly miss him. The last few years of our relationship felt kind of like we were on auto-pilot. Neither of knew how to get out, so we just kept going, hoping the other one would do something to save us. Even if it’s over, and the humiliation of the hotel room is fading, I’m not sure that the lingering haze of our relationship will ever fully leave me.

It’s ten in the morning, and I’m sitting behind the counter at my Uncle’s auto shop. Nobody’s called yet today, and there’s no simple work like oil changes to keep me busy, so my mind is obsessing over what happened with Pierce. I’d like to figure out something to do to keep my mind off him and to help my uncle and cousins keep this place afloat, but I look around and there’s nothing. It’s a tough city to succeed in at the best of times and my family has always struggled.

The only reason that I could even afford to go to the same high school as the Cochran boys was because I got in as scholarship student. Then, while Pierce was off at Columbia studying, I was working three jobs to afford night classes at a tech school. Now, at the ripe age of twenty-four years with no degree, here I am swimming in student loan debt, spending my days arguing with people over coupons for lube jobs.

Not to mention my boyfriend is gone.

This is not how I imagined my life would turn out.

I’m totally lost in thought when my Uncle Sal walks into the lobby from the garage, wiping the sweat away from his forehead with a grumble.

“Hot as hell today, huh, Arie Belle?”

I nod, leaning into the desk fan to try and clear some of the nausea that has been plaguing me since the summer heat set in. I seem to have lost my tolerance for it this year.

“It feels worse than usual this year. And earlier than usual too. I just want to go jump in the Hudson, sewage and all,” I say as I wave an order for parts in his direction. He walks up and takes it, then eyes me suspiciously.

“You look a bit green, Arie. Are you sure you don’t have the flu? Should you go home? I can call your Aunt Marie down to cover the phones.”

I shake my head. “I’ll stop by the clinic in the drug store on the way home, just to get checked out. They don’t charge as much as a walk-in and I’m… between insurance policies at the moment.”

Uncle Sal frowns and reaches into his jeans pocket, coming back with a fifty-dollar bill. I try to shove it away, but he won’t let me. “We both know I don’t pay you enough, Arie. The least I can do is slip you some cash to see a doctor. Working in this sauna has probably given you heatstroke.”

I cross over from behind the reception desk and give Uncle Sal a hug. But the minute he squeezes me, I feel my stomach start to roll, and I run for the wastebasket, where I empty the contents of my belly in one swift hurl. When I turn around, I’m not sure if my cheeks are burning from fever or from embarrassment. Uncle Sal just shakes his head and points toward the door.

“Would you get out of here, kid? Please? I’m calling Marie. Go to the doctor!”

I grab my bag and squeeze his hand as I walk out onto Avenue C with an achy sigh. The heat outside is no better, and the buildings are blocking any airflow, so it’s even more oppressive on the city streets. I love New York, but sometimes… I wish I could pack my things and move to a ranch in Wyoming. Sure, you can’t get a decent Pad Thai at three in the morning, but at least there is always fresh air.

After walking six blocks to the pharmacy I’m informed that there’s a two hour wait. Since I don’t have a smart phone, unlike the rest of even the most destitute New Yorkers, I pick up an eight-month old magazine to pass the time. The celebrity gossip is as new to me as it would have been when this thing first came out. The time creeps by slowly. It feels like a lot longer than two hours before I’m finally called to the cubicle. I sit down nervously, my stomach pitching like I’m on a boat. The nurse practitioner looks at me with bored eyes and taps her pencil against the desk.

“What are your symptoms?” she asks.

“I think I have heat stroke or something. The last few weeks, I’m dizzy and nauseous all the time. Headaches. It’s not debilitating or anything, but I’ve thrown up a few times.” I scrunch up my face, trying to remember. “And thirsty. Oh my God, I’m thirsty. All the tiem.”

The nurse twirls the pencil around in her fingers. “When was the date of your last period?”

“What? Oh, I don’t… I don’t know. Last month I guess? The month before? Honestly, I’ve had a lot going on, and they’ve never been that regular. I guess I haven’t been keeping track. But why would that matter if I have heat stroke?”

The nurse gets up for her chair with a weary sigh and disappears down one of the aisles of the pharmacy. She comes back a moment later holding a box, and she hands it to me without a word. It’s a pregnancy test. I look at it nervously.

“I don’t need this! There’s no way...” I bite my lip. It was only one time.

“Have you had sexual intercourse recently?”

I feel my shoulders inadvertently slump. “Well. Yes. But…”

“Did you use protection of any kind? Are you on birth control?”

My mind starts spinning. I find that I suddenly incapable of understanding words. Where am I? What is protection? Birth control? Shit. She sees what must be an expression of pure panic on my face and softens a little.

“Honey, just take this and go in the bathroom. Bring it back out to me when you’re done. When we know the results, we’ll go from there.”

I take the box from her with a shaking hand and wobble my way to the bathroom at the back of the pharmacy. There’s a dick drawn on the wall, and I stare at it while I take the test. I keep staring at the wall for a long time after that. I’m not even sure how long I’m in there. Without looking, I shove the little cap back on the pregnancy test stick and hide it inside the box. When I finally get up and exit, the door to the bathroom slams a little too loud. The nurse looks up at me. It looks like she’s been drawing doodles on an old prescription pad, but I can’t be sure. She gestures to me, and I walk towards her. It feels like a mile instead of a few feet — that’s how unsteady my feet are. The queasy feeling in my stomach could be from anxiety. But it could be from pregnancy. I could look at the test, but I don’t. If I don’t look, maybe it won’t be real. Instead, I put the box down in front of the nurse, who sighs heavily.

She takes the box from me and points back at the chair.

“Have a seat. It will only be a couple more minutes. We should wait the full three minutes to be sure.”

I don’t hear anything but the second hand ticking away on her watch. Time is moving in slow motion, and the bottomless swamp of chaos that is my life only seems to be getting deeper and more overwhelming with each passing second. Finally, I hear her tapping the desk with her pencil, trying to draw my attention back to the present.

“Honey, the test is positive. You’re going to need to make an appointment with an OB in the next day or so to confirm with bloodwork, but given your symptoms and what you’ve told me, I think it’s pretty likely you’re pregnant.”

I’ve had sex one time and one time only, and my luck, I get pregnant. Fuck. I should have known. I should have thought. All I wanted in that moment was him. And here I am.

Pregnant.

Pregnant.

The word is the last thing ringing in my ears before the spinning in my head becomes too much.

When did I eat? Was it this morning? Last night?

Bile rises in my throat, mixing with the cold, metallic taste of fear. I close my eyes to steady myself, but it doesn’t work.

My vision turns to black, and I pass out, collapsing onto the scratchy pharmacy carpet.

 

Pierce

Location: Classified, 2015

The rotor blade on The Nightstalker helicopter escorting us to our destination is humming quietly above, and I’m trying like hell to focus on the mission at hand. We were given almost no details before leaving our installation in Mina Salman, Bahrain. We were only told to prepare for a covert reconnaissance mission with limited human interaction. We were also outfitted with our underwater demolition equipment and given a dossier on hydrographic reconnaissance under an unnamed arms manufacturing facility. All of this adds up to mean we’re about to get into some crazy shit.

I am secretly grateful that Force Master Chief Wallace, my dad’s buddy from his days at Cornell, made it his personal mission at BUD/S to kick my ass.

I hadn’t been in Coronado for more than six hours when Wallace cornered me in the mess hall and told me he was going to break me like a horse. I fought him like the bastard I was, but by the time we got to Hell Week, half way through Phase One of physical conditioning, he could have saddled me up and ridden me like a pony. I tried to quit on at least seven different occasions. I was pretty fucking close to giving up when, after four hours of sleep, we were forced to lay on our backs in freezing cold water until it felt like we were going to die of hypothermia. But Wallace told me if I could survive Phase 1, I could survive anything. I kept that in my mind, pressing forward, keeping on. I was changing. I needed to change. For my dad. My mom. For Arie. Wallace said it was time for me to stop being a selfish loser. To prove I was more than the sum of my privileged parts, and commit to a greater whole.

In the middle of the shivering, so hard I thought I was going to die, something clicked. Wallace was right. Only a fourth of the people that come into BUD/S actually finish, and I wasn’t about to scrub out. I wasn’t going to quit or fail at something again, like so many other times in my life. After that, the next seventeen weeks flew by, as I trained in undersea and land warfare, learning how to engage in hand-to-hand combat underwater, or how to rappel silently in a small brush of trees. At the end of it all, I was standing in front of my friends and family in my Navy Uniform, graduating from the program and meeting the teammates who would have my ass in the SEALs for years to come.

The next day, I was given my assignment. I’ve been bouncing from location to location since then. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been successful at. Sometimes I think it could be the thing that changes me for good, that leads me back to Arie. But that’s all wishful thinking. The humiliation on her face is still crystal clear in my mind after all this time.

Tonight, I have no idea where we are. Once we left the airspace above Bahrain, we could have been anywhere. They usually don’t give us full mission details until we’re airborne, but tonight seems especially covert, which means it’s likely a high-stakes situation. Our mission leader, Daniels, is focusing exclusively on his briefing packet, and isn’t paying any attention to us, so we’re all trying to get in the right headspace for whatever may be lying ahead. There is no question that we’re nervous, but part of being a SEAL is shoving down those nerves and choosing instead to run on pure adrenaline. At the moment, I’m having trouble accessing the adrenaline, so it helps when Daniels finally looks up and addresses us.

“All right, guys. Time to rally. ETA to destination, ten minutes. We’re going to enter the facility from the water underneath. Giles, you’re on demolition. You’ll be blowing the gate blocking our entrance. Minimal noise if we can help it. Want to stay as stealth as possible. Cochran, you’re on mapping. Coordinates have already been uploaded to your tracking device. Once Giles blows the entrance, we’re going to follow you in. You have ten minutes to full prep. I’m sorry for the last minute debriefing, but nothing about this was planned.”

Giles straightens her shoulders and leans forward. “Sir, what exactly are we after tonight?”

Daniels turns around his tablet and shows us a photo of a well-dressed man standing next to a fireplace. He’s also American, which gives all of us pause. You can feel the mood in the Nightstalker change.

“This is Foreign Minister Archibald. According to our intel, Archibald has been using his position as a government ambassador to broker arms deals with some very bad people. All you need to know is that it is our job to get into this manufacturing plant and stop him from completing his latest deal. If we can snatch and grab without running into anyone else, all the better. If not, so be it. But our mission is to get Archibald, and bring him back to the good old USA to answer for his crimes. Understood?”

“Sir, yes sir!” we all respond in unison. Everyone goes quiet again as we begin to read over the details of the plan. Odds are good that this plan has been carefully staged down to the last possible eventuality, but it’s not normal for us to be kept out of the loop until the final moments like this. That makes me uncomfortable. But when the helicopter begins hovering over the water a solid half mile from our destination, my feelings don’t matter anymore. It’s time to suit up, jump out of the idling bird, and swim the rest of the way to the arms facility, all the while hoping no one sees us approach.

The swimming is the easy part, despite the chop of the water around us. We stay in a tight formation, ignoring the burning in our lungs, in our muscles, and focusing only on doing our job. After what feels like an hour, we can see the base of the massive building start to come in to view. Giles gestures for us to hang back as she swims onward to set up the underwater charges. Once she gets them in place, she’ll have less than a minute to swim away as fast as her legs can carry her, and this is after the distance we’ve just swum to get to the gate.

Everything happens in an instant. All at once, Giles is swimming double-time back in our direction, and a billowing cloud of water chases after her. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed that the gate isn’t equipped with an alarm. In a single-file line, we swim through the hole that has been blown in the gate, and one-by-one, surface, removing our re-breathers. I reach into the pack on my back and pull out my mapping device. It starts blinking gently, showing us the way through the underground vents we are currently in and up into the room where, apparently, the meet is going down.

I gesture for everyone to follow me forward once we’re properly armed, and we inch through the knee-deep water, step-by-step, until we come to a set of stairs leading up. The door blocking the stairwell is locked, but our newest recruit, Morrison, is on it in a flash, using a handheld blowtorch to destroy the lock. I pull back in front, and we make our way up the stairs, down a series of dimly lit corridors. Everything is quiet as we approach what the map tells me is the main holding area for the weapons facility.

In fact, it’s too quiet.

I barely have time to raise my hand to let the rest of the team know that I want them to retreat before gunfire descends on us from above. It’s an ambush, and whoever gave us the intel for this mission was badly prepared, because Archibald is nowhere in sight. Instead, we are surrounded by men we can’t see, shooting automatic weapons at us faster than we can get out of the way. In my peripheral, I see our second-in-command Amari fall to the ground, and Giles grabs his arms and drags him back into the last corridor we exited. Morrison gives up any guise of stealth and begins yelling for air support, when out of the corner of my eye, I see Archibald, sneaking around a corner and out a back door with a briefcase in his hand.

My instincts kick in, and I make a move to chase after him. Whatever is going on here, I refuse to walk away from this clusterfuck empty-handed. But I don’t make more than a few steps away from my team when I collapse in a heap on the cold cement floor. Nothing makes sense; I can’t seem to separate one flashing light from another. The Nightstalker is outside the building now, firing directly into the catwalk above us where our attackers are stationed. But why am I on the ground?

Why can’t I feel my leg?

Why can’t I move?

The last thing I see before I lapse into unconsciousness is Morrison’s face, and his voice shouting at me, “We’re going to get you out of here man! Just hold tight! Giles! Get me something to stop the bleeding or he’s going to lose the leg before we can get him on the chopper!”

After that, everything is dark.

 

Arie

New York City, 2016

It’s four in the morning, and I wake up to the sound of crying. Again. Except this time, it isn’t Chloe, my little girl. My own tears stir me from a miserable, nightmare-fueled sleep. For the last view months, I’ve been dealing with horrible stomach and back pains that leave me curled up in a ball on the floor. At first I thought it was the stomach flu, but then I started losing weight and the pains just wouldn’t go away. It’s been steadily getting worse, but between trying to take care of Chloe and working at the garage full-time, I’ve done my best to ignore it.

I can’t ignore it anymore.

I get out of bed and check on Chloe, who is sleeping peacefully in her crib next to me. We live in a studio apartment, so I have to tip-toe to the kitchen to avoid waking her up. As has become my ritual, I drink down half of a bottle of goopy pink stomach medicine to try and combat the pain. But the vile liquid stopped working a while ago, so I’m not sure why I even bother.

When Chloe was born, my family didn’t understand why I refused to tell Pierce about her. I’m not sure why they were confused. Pierce can barely take care of himself, so I knew telling him about the baby would just add a whole lot more drama to both of our lives. Besides, she’s my responsibility, and he’s away with the SEALs, which is exactly where he needs to be to take care of his responsibilities. I vowed to raise her myself — whatever it took. Yet now, as I lay on the cold tile floor of the kitchen, I can’t help but wish I had backup, someone to help me as I try to deal with my body betraying me to this misery.

Three days ago, my aunt and uncle forced me to go to the doctor, concerned about my rapid weight loss and the fact that my skin was starting to tinge a strange shade of yellow. They scraped up every penny they could to pay the bill. They even said they’d take care of the bills after that, but that didn’t exactly make me feel better. It’s like they knew something was wrong. Really wrong. The doctor ran all sorts of blood work, then sent me for a CAT scan and a really uncomfortable biopsy. Even though it was all over in the course of a few hours, I knew the medical bills would be obscene. As I leave the doctor, I realize I’m already more terrified about the money than what the results might show.

In four hours, I have to pack up Chloe and all of her things and go back into the city to find out the test results. I can already hear her cooing in her crib, starting to wake up. My favorite part of the day is when she wakes up, all smiling and happy, excited to start the day. I always kiss the inside of her neck, where it smells like sweet milk and baby powder. It always makes her giggle, and she gives me that toothless grin, perfect and pure. It almost makes me forget about the creeping dread I feel at the idea of being sick, at not knowing how we will make rent. She is the only thing that keeps me going.

Should I have told Pierce? No. I’ll never be able to count on him.

Chloe lets out a little whimper, and I drag myself up off the floor to get her morning bottle ready. My pain doesn’t matter. Only Chloe matters, and it’s time to start the day.

* * *

Chloe and I are sitting in a sterile doctor’s office in downtown Manhattan, waiting in silence after a nurse has taken my vitals. The nurse is extremely kind, almost treating me like a China doll, and it makes me nervous. Chloe is on the floor, trying to lift up on her knees and crawl. I take her and sit her up when the door budges, holding her steady. I bend my body in half to keep her steady, ignoring the creeping pain in my body. When Dr. Arnold walks in, he wears a strained smile on his face. He sits on a rolling stool across from me and sets his hands on his knees, making extended eye contact, as if he’s steeling himself for something. My stomach curls into a snake of anxiety.

“Arie, we got your results back yesterday. I’m going to need to refer you to a specialist to confirm, but…”

I feel like I’m going to throw up. For the third time today. “What? Just tell me. I’m a big girl. I can take it.” I smile and shrug, like he’s about to tell me I just have a stomachache.

“Your test results indicate that you have a mass in your pancreas. It’s most likely contained at this point. But the preliminary exam seems to indicate that the tumor is malignant.”

Cancer. He won’t say it. But it’s there, on the tip of his tongue. I can almost see the word hanging in the air between us.

My head starts to swim, and I think there is a very good chance I am going to pass out. I lower myself onto the cool tile floor to sit with Chloe. There’s a very real chance I’ll fall right on top of her from the chair if I’m not sitting right next to her. I focus on her voice.

“Da,” she says. She holds up a piece of a wooden puzzle, as if to show it to the doctor. “Da,” she repeats. “Ta.”

I swallow hard before I speak. “How? Are you sure? What does that mean? What can we do? How much will...”

I know I’m asking more questions than he can answer but I’m afraid if I stop talking, I might replace the words with sobbing. He bends down awkwardly and puts a hand on my shoulder, an action I don’t find remotely comforting.

“Arie, this is why I need to send you to a pancreatic oncologist. You need to have the results confirmed by someone who knows this disease inside and out. I am not that person. I’ve already set an appointment up for you with the best doctor at Sloane-Kettering. You’re seeing her tomorrow.”

I shake my head. “No, I can’t tomorrow. I have to work. I need someone to watch Chloe. Maybe next week. But I can’t go tomorrow.”

He squeezes my knee. “Arie. You can’t wait a week. You have to go tomorrow.”

“What? Why? What are you trying to tell me? How long do I have?”

Dr. Arnold looks down at his feet. “I can’t tell you that with any certainty, Arie. I’m not an oncologist.”

“Bullshit. You’re still a doctor. Tell me how long I have.”

He glances over at Chloe and takes a long, slow breath. “I can absolutely not make estimates in your case. But in the average case of pancreatic cancer, once discovered, the patient survives three to six months with treatment. Could be months. Could be years. There’s no way to know for sure.”

Chloe grabs my finger and shakes it in the air like a toy. I drink in the small sounds she’s making, trying to make a memory of her.

A deep pain grows in my throat. Its taste is acrid and salty all at once. The taste of anger and sadness, and the horror of realizing that if I’m gone now, there’s no way she’ll ever remember me.

 

 

Pierce

New York City, 2016

It’s my seventy-seventh morning waking up in my childhood bedroom, and while the pain is getting more bearable. But the indignity being back in my parents’ house is harder to take. I ease up out of my bed, and try to stifle a groan as my leg refuses to straighten, a common occurrence when I get up in the morning. After the raid in the weapons factory that night, I know I’m lucky to have a leg at all. Bullets from an assault rifle tore through my calf muscle, my knee, and my tibia, leaving it with multiple fractures that had be surgically repaired in Germany. Rods, screws, and all manner of other medical devices now fill my leg, and the odds of me ever walking without a limp again are slim-to-none.

One thing I will definitely never be doing again is running missions with the SEALs.

I was given an honorable discharge, a Purple Heart for getting wounded in action, and a pat on the shoulder by the President. Now, I’m back in Manhattan, trying to recuperate — to “focus on healing,” as my mother says. But all I’ve been able to do is wander around the house, missing my teammates. I feel lost, even more lost than I did when I left for training. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I went from having no purpose, to having the greatest purpose in the world, back to having no purpose again. And I hate the feeling of being useless. My father assures me that as soon as I am able, there is a position waiting for me at CSL. Yet, I can’t help but feel like it’s not enough. Like I was meant to be more. To do more.

I look up at the paint on the ceiling. It’s blue like the sky, but it’s chipping now. I’ve looked at it every day for two months, and it’s starting to drive me insane. I close my eyes and inch myself out of bed, walking slow. I moved off of my cane last week, but on some mornings, I still feel like I need it. The pain grinds in my leg, but I grit my teeth and suck it up. That’s the only thing I can do.

I walk down the spiral staircase, something that takes me a lot longer than it used to, and make my way to the kitchen, where I find Logan making an omelet in his boxers. He’s home on leave, and decided to stay at the house since I’m here. It feels like we’re both teenagers again, and for a moment, I forget that we’re not.

“Why are you up so early, Lo?” I ask as I hoist myself up onto a bar stool.

He turns with a yawn, then slides the omelet over to me and sets about making himself another one. “You know how it is. Nothing wakes you up earlier than a night of irresponsible partying and promiscuous sex.”

I roll my eyes. My brother is the last person in the world who would ever be irresponsible or promiscuous. That was always my job. “What were you really doing?”

He flips the new omelet in the air and catches it in the pan perfectly. “Blind date. It was a bust. You should have come with me. She had a friend that was… interesting. I really wish you’d come out with me occasionally, Pierce. It wouldn’t kill you to get out of the house.”

I know he’s right, but the truth is, I have almost no interest in going out and partying, even the lame way Logan does it. And it has nothing to do with my leg, or the fact I’ve lost my ability to relate to the average person. It’s because the idea of dating just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. Not since Arie. Not since the way I treated her.

After we broke up, but before I went into BUD/S, I went on a sort of… woman bender. I thought I could fuck Arie out of my system, and I turned it into an Olympic sport. I slept with nearly any woman who would have me, thinking that eventually, I might forget how horrible I’d been to the only woman I’d ever loved. And I had been. An absolute asshole. Not a day goes by where I don’t regret everything that happened between us those days. When I close my eyes each night, I see one of two things: either the flashing of gunfire that ended my Navy career… or the look on Arie’s face when she turned and walked out of the coffee shop.

I’ve thought about looking her up a dozen times, but I can’t imagine a single scenario where she’d want anything to do with me ever again. I was a selfish, arrogant, useless bastard, and she was better off without me then. She is definitely better off without me now.

“Earth to Pierce!” Logan is waving a spatula in front of my face, and some stray egg falls on my arm. I pick it off and flick it at him.

“What? What did I miss?”

“Everything. As usual. Come out with me tonight! I’m going to this new whiskey bar in the East Village. I’ll even pay for your drinks, even though you make more than me.”

I snort. “I don’t make anything, Logan. Right now, I just sit on my ass and watch movies all day.”

“Bullshit. You watch soap operas and we both know it.”

I wave my hands at him to shut up. “We don’t need the whole house knowing my business! Besides, those shows are addictive. And they’re my only vice now. Cut a guy some slack.”

Logan rolls his eyes. “So, you’re going to come with me?”

I shake my head. “Negative. I have physical therapy today, and I’m always exhausted after PT. You go and have a good time without your no-good older brother tagging along. Maybe you’ll meet some pretty college girl who can take you back to her place,” I say with a wink. I know Logan isn’t the one-night-stand type, but I like teasing him anyway.

“Yeah, right. I’ll probably just try out their artisan whiskey, embarrass myself in front of a pretty bartender. Then I’ll come home, dejected and drunk.” He laughs.

“That sounds about right.” I barely avoid getting hit by a dish towel that Logan chucks at me. “But really. Have fun. Maybe next time.”

We both know the odds of there being a next time are non-existent. But as long as I say it, we can continue to pretend it may happen one day. In the meantime, I have to get ready for physical therapy, and that means preparing myself for two hours of unimaginable pain from which there is no escape.

What woman could say no to all of that, right?

 

Arie

New York City, 2016

“I’m sorry, Miss Blanchard. I don’t understand. You want me to do what?”

I reach into my purse and take out my bottle of pain pills. The only way I make it through the days now is by swallowing as many as I can at a time while remaining functional for Chloe. I had to stop breastfeeding before I started chemo. She’s eating food now, holding her own bottle. I’ve wept so many times I can’t count. I hope there’s love in Pierce. I hope there are things I never saw, never got a chance to see.

Right now, we’re in a lawyer’s office in the Bowery, and Chloe is bouncing happily on my knee. Her thirteen-month birthday was yesterday. I won’t make it to see her turn two. I’m trying not to look directly at her, afraid I might burst into tears. Again.

“I need you to draft papers that designate all parental rights to my daughter to her father. They need to take effect immediately, and I need you to arrange to have her brought to him as soon as possible.” The words come out in a horrible rush. I hope he doesn’t make me repeat myself again.

The lawyer, a squat little man with sausage fingers and a mustache, looks at me like I’m crazy. “Miss, far be it from me to turn away someone who needs help. But have you thought this through? Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. ‘This too shall pass,’ as the poets say.”

I roll up my sleeves and show him the multiple holes in my yellow skin from all of the injections and IVs I’ve had in the last three months. I pull back my knit cap to reveal my patches of missing hair. “Mr. Bailey, my doctors said I had three-to-six months to live. We’re just past three months today. I’ve informed them I want to stop chemo, because it’s obviously not working. My family is in no position to take care of my daughter, and her father is. He comes from a wealthy family, and he can give her the life she deserves. I want to make sure she’s provided for, and doesn’t end up in foster care. So, this is the way it has to be. If you won’t do it, I will find someone who will.”

The lawyer can’t make eye contact with me anymore. As soon as people find out how sick I am, they usually resort to awkward platitudes or completely shut down. I’m not going to give this man the chance. I don’t have time.

“Sir, I need you to do this today. I have all of her things with me. It is important that she be settled with him as soon as possible. But I also have a very important caveat that you must make sure is included in the papers.”

He looks up from the desk with one eye, then quickly looks back down and shuffles papers nervously. “What would that be, Miss Blanchard?”

“Pierce can never know who Chloe’s mother is. It’s for the best. I want them both to move on with their lives. I know he will want proof Chloe is his, and that’s fine. But there is no reason for me to be involved in the equation. Is that understood?”

Bailey looks up in earnest this time. “Miss Blanchard…”

“Arie, please.”

“Arie. I have to be honest with you. I’m troubled. What possible harm could there be in Chloe’s father knowing that you are her mother?”

I cough, and the cough causes excruciating pain in my abdomen. I am so tired of being sick, and I’m tired of being tired. Everything is weighing on me, and the only thing that is keeping me going is Chloe. I know once she is safe, I can finally stop fighting this. And that’s all I want right now.

“Mr. Bailey, I am poor. I am beyond poor. I have been forced to borrow money from some very questionable men just to pay for my medical treatments. I have gone to great lengths to ensure that those men have no idea I have a family, let alone a daughter. Once I am dead, there is nothing they can do to get their money back, no one they can hurt. If Pierce doesn’t know who Chloe’s mother is, he can’t make any connections that might get him, or Chloe, hurt. So, please. Just do this for me.”

Bailey sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. “All right, Arie. I will help you. But let’s make one thing very clear. I don’t want any dirty money making its way into my accounts. Nothing that started out in the pocket of a loan shark. So… I’m going to do this pro bono.”

Tears well in my eyes, and I feel guilty for being suspicious of him. “Thank you, Mr. Bailey.”

He nods. “Call me Roger. We’re going to get this sorted out for you, Arie. We’re going to make sure your little girl is safe.”

It’s the first piece of good news I’ve had in months, and for a moment, I feel at peace.

 

Pierce

New York City, 2016

It’s my first day at CSL, and I feel like everyone is treating me with kid gloves. My dad has appointed me head of Overseas Logistics and Security Maintenance, which sounds a lot more complicated than it is. But truthfully, I’m far more qualified for it now than I was before, when I had nothing to my name but a degree earned with straight C’s and a bad attitude. At least now, when people contact us looking for help organizing security details in Europe and the Middle East, I have the experience to advise them properly.

It doesn’t change the fact that I feel like I’m in over my head, especially since I have no assistant yet. My father’s assistant keeps running back and forth, trying to help me acclimate. It’s not even 10am, and I’ve already had a total of seven people come in and out of my office, expecting me to know answers to questions I don’t even remotely understand. My head is spinning, and my leg is starting to ache a little more than I care to admit, so I opt to take a few seconds just to set my head on my desk to regroup. I hear an insistent cough from just outside my office door. I know I should sit up, and be professional, but I just don’t have it in me.

Instead, I raise my voice enough that they can hear me even though I’m still face down.

“Whatever it is, if you could take it down to Melody at James Cochran’s office, I’d appreciate it. Just a little swamped at the moment.” I’m sure I look like I’m full of shit, but hey. It’s my first day. But the person just coughs again, and doesn’t move.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. You’re Mr. Pierce Cochran, correct? Mr. Pierce John Cochran?”

I finally look up, and when I do, I’m not entirely sure what to make of the scene that lays before me. A man stands in my doorway, a chubby man in an ill-fitting suit with the twirled mustache of a cartoon villain. And he’s holding a little girl. She’s somewhere between one and two years old, and she has curly blonde ringlets, and huge green eyes. Eyes that look a lot like my own.

“I am. I mean. Yes? The company daycare is on the third floor. I’m not sure what I can do for you up here.” Even as I say the words, I know that’s not why this man is here. Everything in my heart is telling me that my day is about to get a lot more complicated than dropped phone calls and missed staff meetings. The man walks into my office and sits down without being asked, as the little girl smiles and giggles in his lap. He looks equal parts exhausted and amused.

“Mr. Cochran. My name is Roger Bailey and I am a private practice attorney that handles mostly real estate and the occasional wills and trusts. But recently, I had a new client come to me with a very interesting request, and given the nature of that request, and the timeliness of it, I couldn’t turn them down. So, Mr. Cochran, here we are.”

I try to remain calm, and focus on the lawyer, instead of the little girl, who I swear is looking straight through to my soul. “And may I ask who exactly the other half of ‘we’ is?”

He bounces the little girl on his knee, and she laughs in a way that feels familiar, yet entirely foreign. “This is Chloe Louise Cochran, your daughter.”

The silence that fills the room is louder than anything I could possibly say. I’m not even sure how long I am sitting there, just staring at the little girl. Eventually, the lawyer gets impatient and clears his throat. “Mr. Cochran?”

“My daughter? That’s ridiculous. She’s what? Two-years-old? Where has she been all this time? Who is her mother? And how do I know I’m really her father? This could be a shake-down.”

Bailey reaches into the briefcase at his side and pulls out a stack of papers, sliding them across the desk to me. “Ridiculous or not, Mr. Cochran, it’s the truth. You are welcome to have a DNA test conducted to prove parentage but I’m sure you’ll find that everything is in order. As far as the identity of little Chloe’s mother, I’m afraid that’s confidential.”

“Confidential? What the hell do you mean confidential? You have to tell me who her mother is!”

Bailey points to the paper at the top of the stack. “I don’t, actually. You see, the mother was in a very… precarious position that left her unable to care for the girl, and it was her wish that Chloe be allowed to move on without you coloring her life with memories of her mother. So, you will find that all traces of the little girl’s parentage unrelated to you will be impossible to find.”

“How did you manage that?” I sputter out.

“Never you mind. All that matters now is that Chloe is cared for, per her mother’s request of me. And I am quite sure that you don’t want to see this sweet little angel, your daughter, end up in the system. Can I count on you to make sure that doesn’t happen, young man?”

I sit, staring at this squat little man, holding a perfect little baby with my facial features, and have no idea what to do. I can’t even remember ever holding a baby, let alone considering becoming a father. I feel like I’m going to be sick, and can’t seem to be able to form any kind of coherent sentence. Everything coming out of my mouth is gibberish.

“I don’t. I can’t. Where. How. I’m just. I’m here. You. But she. You. Me. Why. Uh… yes?”

The next thing I know, Chloe is sitting in my lap, Bailey is handing me his business card, and walking back out my door as suddenly as he appeared. I look down at Chloe, her long eyelashes fluttering and her little hands reaching out to me, and I do the only thing I can think of. I pick up the phone on my desk and dial.

“Mom? Can you come to the office?... No, now. It’s… an emergency.”

 

 

Part Two

 

Arie

New York City, Present Day

I’m curled up in a hospital bed in Sloane-Kettering hospital, frantically pressing the release button on the device that administers my pain medications, but nothing is happening. I know it’s too soon for another dose, but the drugs aren’t working anymore. It’s taking more and more of them to even make a dent in my pain. The doctors are absolutely baffled by my condition at this point, mostly because I was supposed to be dead six months ago. Yet, here I lay, hospital bills mounting, pain getting worse, and no closer to any answer than I was when this whole nightmare started.

Worst of all, I haven’t seen my daughter in six months. I have no idea how she is doing, if she is happy and healthy, whether Pierce is taking good care of her. I made Mr. Bailey promise to cease all contact with me after he handed Chloe over to Pierce, but now that I seem to be clinging to life in spite of every diagnosis, my dreams are plagued with thoughts of the little girl I gave away. What if I did it for no reason? What if I live to be a hundred, just miserable and in pain the whole time? Is that any kind of life for a little one anyway?

If I’m not thinking about Chloe, or how sick I am, I’m thinking about the loan sharks from whom I borrowed money to pay off the first round of bills. I put all my chips on being dead before I’d have to pay them back, and now…I’m still here. Not only do I owe some very violent men close to $75,000, but I’ve added over $100,000 to my mounting debt. So far, the hospital has been cutting me some slack because I paid off the initial bill — they certainly didn’t care where the money came from the first time. But I don’t think their generosity will last forever, and the longer I live like this, the more money I am going to owe. Being sick and terrified? That’s no way to get better. If getting better is even an option for me.

My day nurse, Alicia, comes into my room with a syringe and a bowl of broth. I feel my body go stiff at the thought of eating, but they keep trying to make me eat anyway, even though most of my nutrition comes in the form of IVs these days.

“Honey, you’re never going to force that machine to do anything it doesn’t want to. But I got permission from Doctor Gould to give you a little booster. She’s going to be down soon to talk with you. In the meantime, is there any chance today you can take a few spoonfuls of this broth? Even one?”

I shake my head and curl up into a tighter ball. “No, thank you. Just the medicine.”

Alicia sighs. We have the same conversation every day and I never change my answer, but it doesn’t stop her from asking. “All right, sweetheart. Here is your shot,” she says as she injects the drugs into the IV line. “Close your eyes until Doctor Gould gets here.”

It’s only seconds before a wave of dizziness washes over me, and I don’t care about my pain anymore. All I care about is sleeping. The drugs make it impossible for me to keep track of trivial things, like the time, or what day it is, so when I hear my name, I have no concept of how long I’ve actually been asleep. I open my eyes and see Doctor Melanie Gould sitting next to me on the bed. Her long red hair is swept up in a stylish braid, and her usually tired eyes seem to be alight with an excitement I’ve never seen in her before.

“Arie, I need you to wake up. I need you to confirm you’re with me. We need to have a talk.”

I shake my head a little, trying to wiggle loose the cobwebs of sleep. “Yes, I’m awake. What is it?”

“Arie…I have something very important to tell you. You don’t have pancreatic cancer.”

For a second, all of the blood in my body stops flowing. “I… what?”

“I’m going to be straight with you, Arie. If you had pancreatic cancer, you would have been dead by now. So, I’ve been running some tests and looking through all of your scans and charts. I believe you have something called intestinal ischemia, or more specifically, acute mesenteric artery ischemia. Basically, you have blood clots all through your intestines, causing blockages. It has all the same symptoms of pancreatic cancer, but it takes a lot longer to do you in. You had a mass in your pancreas, but once that was removed, that part of your illness was all resolved.”

I try to sit up, but the pain stops me, so I just prop myself on the pillow and reach out for Doctor Gould’s arm. “What does this mean? Am I still going to die? Is there a way to treat it?”

“We’re going to have to do surgery to confirm, and if I’m right, we’ll have to remove the clots, and possibly remove damaged sections of your intestine. You may have to be on medications to prevent infections, and future clots from forming again. But Arie… if this is the answer, then you won’t just live. You’re going to feel 99% better again in less than a month.”

She barely finishes her sentence before I burst into tears. I never imagined a future in which I’d be alive, let alone feel normal again. The concept is so overwhelming I can’t even process it. A flood of thoughts and emotions overtake me all at once, and then, two thoughts win out.

Oh god… the loan sharks.

Oh god… my Chloe.

 

Pierce

New York City, Present Day

I hear the sound of a crash from the kitchen, then a scream, and I almost knock over my laptop trying to scramble up to my feet from the couch. The last time I saw Chloe, she was sitting safely in the confines of a playpen just on the other side of the living room, playing happily with her blocks. I took my eyes off her long enough to answer some emails from the office, and apparently, that was all she needed to jimmy open the lock on the playpen gate and toddle her way into the kitchen. By the time I get to her only seconds later, I find her on the floor, covered in the flour and sugar she has somehow knocked off the counter by yanking down a dish towel. She looks up at me with a grin, and I have to stifle down every ounce of exasperation I’m feeling at having to give her a bath for the third time today.

If it isn’t already clear, I have no idea what I’m doing. In fact, I have less than no idea. Sometimes, I think I might have been reverse engineered to the point I am incapable of taking care of a child. On the day the lawyer dropped Chloe off at the office, I’d called my mother to come help. Of course, little did she know, I had intended to hand her Chloe and request that she watch her. Just until she was eighteen or so. Mom had walked in my office, cooed and fussed over what a beautiful baby Chloe was, said how happy she was to have a grandchild, and then smacked me across the back of the head with a well-manicured hand.

“You made this mess. You figure it out. I’m not a babysitter. And I’ve already raised two children. I’m happy to be a grandparent, but you’re the father.”

Dad had not only backed her up, but made it crystal clear that anything other than welcoming my child into the family with open eyes was going to be a PR nightmare (thanks, Dad). So that night, Dad had all my things moved over to a penthouse apartment owned by the company in a newly-renovated high-rise in midtown, bought me a bunch of baby stuff I had no clue how to use, shook my hand, and told me, “Good luck, son! See you at work tomorrow. Be sure to utilize our fabulous company daycare program!”

Seriously. Thanks, Dad.

I wish I could say I feel like Chloe’s father, that there was some kind of instantaneous bond and I knew she was mine from the moment I saw her. But the truth is, sometimes I still feel like I’m living with a tiny roommate who screams at me for food and wakes me up in the middle night for no reason. Of course, the family insisted on a blood test, which unequivocally confirmed she is mine, but there are days when I look at her and she feels like a stranger.

Maybe if I’d had time to adjust to the idea of being a father. But as it stands, she may as well have been left on my doorstep in a basket. I know things will change, maybe even soon, but right now? Being a single dad sucks. After work, all I want is a nap, a beer, and five minutes to myself to watch a football game. Instead, I have this tiny creature literally crawling into my lap and biting me. Which she has done. Several times.

As I get Chloe into the bath and begin rinsing the partially-formed cake batter out of her curly blonde tendrils, my phone starts ringing. I see it’s my mother and put it on speaker.

“Hello, Pierce? It’s your mother, Carol.”

Why does she announce herself like we’ve never met before? Every damn time.

“I know who you are, Mother. What is it? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

She lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Well, darling, Your father and I have decided that you are spreading yourself too thin and need some help with Chloe. We’ve placed inquiries with a local agency about hiring someone to come in and watch her nights and weekends, just at first on a trial basis. Then maybe full time if you all get on well enough. Your father thinks it’s a little unseemly for his grandchild to be using the free employee daycare, though I think he’s being a proper snob about it.”

“When isn’t dad a snob?” I ask as Chloe starts blowing bubbles off the top of the bath water, making herself laugh hysterically. “He told me to use the daycare, you know.”

“You know him. He doesn’t quite know what to say when it comes to Chloe.”

“No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know much of anything about how to interact with his kids, let alone his grandchild.” I sigh and lean back in my chair. The weight of the world seems to fall on me. The daycare at work is good, and my parents are in my shit, complicating things again. I guess I’m the one who had the kid. And the shitty grades in college. And the naked arrest. I bite my lip.

“Fair enough, poppet. You may be getting some calls from applicants for the job so just make sure to answer your phone. And hire someone quickly. Your father says things are about to get even busier at the office now that you have this government contract.”

I roll my eyes. “Is there anything dad doesn’t tell you? That was supposed to be entirely confidential.”

“You know your father. Kisses to Chloe!” She hangs up before I can say anything else, and I know this wasn’t so much a conversation as an edict. For all their talk about me taking responsibility, my parents still treat me like a child more often than not, and it only got worse when I came back injured. In this case, however, I can’t say I’m upset. The idea of having someone to help me with Chloe is undeniably appealing, and it would give me the opportunity to get back to work full-time, instead of just “whenever I can manage it,” like I am now.

I tuck the phone into my jeans and turn back to Chloe, who holds up her wet arms in the air and waves for me to pick her up. While she is walking really well for her age, she still doesn’t talk. Not even half-formed words or baby talk. We took her to a doctor, who said she may have delays in her speech due to all of the changes she’s endured, as well as any possible trauma we can’t really know about. Once a week, I take her to a speech therapist who works with her on developing her language skills, but so far, not a peep. Mom thinks she’ll just talk when he’s ready, and I’m happy not to rush her. She cries or babbles when she needs something, and until she’s prepared to talk, that will have to do.

I dry Chloe off and put her in a pair of pink cartoon character pajamas, and we plop back down on the couch in front of the TV, where I put on her favorite Disney movie. It was Frozen last week. Now it’s Sleeping Beauty. She does something that sounds like humming when the Tchaikovsky music plays, and her little fingers reach up and curl into my hair. It isn’t long before she falls asleep in my arms, and as her tiny chest rises and falls, and her little eyelashes flutter while she dreams, I feel a knot form in my chest.

It feels a lot like love.

 

Arie

I take a deep breath as I open the heavy wooden door to the bar on Avenue F where Danny told me to meet him. The truth is, I’m lucky he wanted to meet me in a bar, and didn’t just show up at the hospital the day I walked out. I don’t even know how they found out I’d been released, but I guess that’s why these guys are so good at their job, and why they always get their money back… one way or another.

I’d only been out of the hospital for a few days when my cell phone started ringing. First it was Leo, the loan shark I’d borrowed the money from in the first place. When I explained my situation and asked for more time, I was not-so-delicately informed that I’d had more than enough time, and my time had run out. Then Danny started calling, and Danny didn’t sound like he much patience for anything. Danny would probably steal the rosary from a nun if it would get him a few bucks closer to getting his money back. And Danny was the second-to-last stop before the end of the line, in which a man with a gun followed me into an alley and decided teaching me a lesson was more important than money.

Disappointing Danny meant my life was over, once again. For someone so young, lately a lot of people have been telling me I’m going to die.

When I walk in the bar, every eye turns and stares at me, like I’ve invaded some sort of private club and their withering glances alone will be enough to send me back into the street. But in the corner, a burly man with a beard leans over from a booth and gestures for me to join him, so I assume that’s Danny, though I’m not sure how he knew what I’d look like. To be fair, I have a feeling there isn’t much these men don’t know about me by this point. I just hope they haven’t dug deep enough to find out about Chloe. Bailey promised he’d do everything in his power to make sure she could never be traced back to me, and he seems like a man of his word.

I sit down across from Danny, and he just stares right through me. When he speaks, his voice his thick with a Newark accent, and it booms throughout the bar.

“I’d ask if you want to join me for a beer, but you shouldn’t be spending any money right now.”

“I appreciate your concern for my finances,” I mouth off without thinking. I half-expect him to kill me right there, but he snorts.

“You’re a sassy one, aren’t you?”

I shrug, not wanting to push my luck. “Just tell me why I’m here. What do you want?”

“You know what we want, Arie.”

“Obviously. But I just got out of the hospital. I was broke before. Where do you expect me to come up with $75,000 out of nowhere?”

“You should have thought of that before. I ain’t stupid, girlie. You thought you’d take the money from us and then kick off before you had to pay it back. And fuck, that may have worked. But here we are. And you look pretty healthy to me. So, you have two options, as far as I can tell,” he says as he finishes off the bottle of beer in front of him.

I raise an eyebrow. “And what are those?”

“Well, you can try to run. People do that. But we will find you. And we will kill you. Or you can give us our money. I don’t care how you get it. But you have a month. Normally, we’d give a person in your situation a week. But because of all you’ve been through, my boss is feeling generous. At the end of that month, if you don’t have the money, we’re going to have another conversation, and it’s going to be a lot less fucking pleasant than this one. Have I made myself clear?”

My stomach drops, and I feel as sick as I have since this whole mess started. “Crystal.”

Danny nods, gets up, and walks out, leaving me sitting alone at the booth. There is less-than-zero chance I can come up with that kind of money. It wouldn’t matter if they gave me a week, a month, or a year. I owe the hospital even more than I did before, and they will only leave me alone for so long. My aunt and uncle are barely making ends meet and are lucky to make rent on the shop and their apartment every month. I have nowhere to go, no one to ask for help. Part of me begins to think that as long as I know Chloe is safe, it might be best for everyone if I just…

No. I didn’t come this far, survive all of this, just to give up now.

Then I remember my last resort from before, the man who saved my ass with Chloe.

Bailey will know what to do.

* * *

“Quite a pickle you’ve gotten yourself in, again, Miss Blanchard,” Bailey says as he twists his moustache around his pudgy finger. I watch as he flips through a rolodex, which is an item so foreign to me I actually had to search my mind for what it was called. He stops in the middle, then lifts his phone and dials a series of numbers far too long to be a local call. After what feels like forever, he grins and laughs.

“Hola, yourself, old friend! How the hell have you been? How’s the weather in Troncones?... Yeah, well, if I can ever afford to retire, I’ll be sure to come visit. Listen, I need some information on a pair of loan shark heavies working out of the Bowery named Leo and Danny… More information? Hold on, man.”

Bailey turns to me with a raise eyebrow and covers the receiver on the phone. “Where did you hook up with these nogoodniks?”

I think back to when I got involved in this mess for the first time. My Uncle Sal used to have a problem with gambling, and he spent a lot of his time at an off-track betting parlor in the Bowery where he thought my Aunt Marie wouldn’t be able to find him. It didn’t even advertise that it was an OTB, and from the outside, it just looked like a regular, crappy sports bar. When my debt started piling up, I started hanging out there, trying to look nonchalant, and hoping someone would catch on that I needed help. It didn’t take long for Leo to find me, and offer me the kind of “help” that got me where I am now.

“It’s a tacky Irish pub called Barney O’Toole’s Pub and Grille. I doubt an actual Irish person has ever set foot in there,” I say as I nervously fidget with the strap on my purse. Bailey nods, and uncovers the phone.

“Yo, Johnny. Still there?... Yeah, she went to O’Toole’s… Oh, yeah. I know exactly what that means. But is there anything you can do it about it?... Seventy-five large… Man, I don’t know, hold on.”

I can see that Bailey is starting to get annoyed at his associate’s questions, and I’m getting more and more nervous with each passing moment. “How much time did they give you when this Danny guy gave you the last ultimatum?”

“A month.”

Bailey looks impressed. “A month? Wow, they must like you.” He turns back to the phone. “She said a month… No, she can’t get the money. Why do you think she’s here?... Uh-huh… Yeah… Okay… Really?... All right man, well, thanks for your time. The next time I’m in Mexico, we’ll get some margaritas.” Bailey hangs up the phone and turns to me.

“Johnny says you’re fucked.”

I drop my head on the desk with a thud. “What the hell man?” I mumble into the wood.

“Well, you managed to get involved with the one loan sharking operation in the city run by Sebastian ‘Angel’ Cannizzo. That would be Sonny Cannizzo’s son. I’m sure you know who Sonny Cannizzo is?”

I groan as I picture the man dubbed by the papers as “The Last Great Mafioso,” being lead off to prison with a giant grin on his face and a cigar between his lips.

Bailey pats my head awkwardly with a giant hand. “Hey, listen. It will be okay. I might have another idea.”

I look up with a groan. “What possible other solution could there be? I can barely afford the medications that are keeping me from getting sick again. I owe the hospital more money than I owe the son of a mob boss. I guess I could revisit my Brooklyn Bridge idea…”

Bailey grabs a handful of my hair and gently lifts my head up so he can look me in the eye. “Don’t you talk like that, you hear me? No matter how bleak things seem, they can always get better. And we’re going to find a way to make things better. So, since you had me hand off your little girl to the Cochran family, I’ve been keeping an eye on things, from a distance mind you, just to be sure they’re doing right by her.”

Tears well up in my eyes. “Thank you,” I squeak out.

He waves a hand at me. “None of that. They may have money but that doesn’t always guarantee they’re good people, you know? Anyway, I got word through a few back channels that Pierce is looking for a nanny for Chloe. And maybe, just maybe… you could take a crack at applying for the job.”

I almost laugh, except it’s not quite as funny as it should be. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, Roger, and I can give you about fifteen different reasons why. First, I’m Pierce’s ex-girlfriend. He’s never going to hire me to work for him. Second, I’m Chloe’s mother. It hasn’t been that long. She will remember me. The last thing I want after all of this is for these criminals to know I have a daughter, after I all I went through to make sure she was hidden from them. Third…”

“Jeez, enough!” Bailey says with an exaggerated eye roll. “Do I have to think of everything? You tell Cochran you’re desperately in need of a job, and you’re counting on him as an old friend to help you out. I bet you dollars-to-donuts he won’t turn you away. And even if Chloe recognizes you, you can play it off as your skill as a caregiver. The last I heard, she hadn’t started talking yet. So, you might have caught a break there.”

My breath catches in my throat. “She’s still not talking? Why?”

“Search me. I don’t know everything happening in that high-rise. He’s taking interviews now. Just go. It will be a safe place for you to hide out until I figure a way out of this mess, or you find the money to pay off Cannizzo. If, in a month, neither of us has come up with an answer, then we’ll get you out of town.”

I groan again. “Danny said they’d find me if I tried to run.”

“Hogwash. If you skip the country, they aren’t going to chase you over $75,000. In the end, they’ve got bigger fish to fry. But, that certainly won’t stop them from killing you over it if you stay. Listen, I have to ask, before we move forward with this… nanny plan. Is there any chance you can just ask Cochran for the money and then pay him back? I don’t think he’s going to kill you if you take a few years to return on the loan.”

My stomach is in knots at even the thought. “Absolutely not. I refuse to end up in another situation where I owe someone money I can’t pay back. Maybe Pierce won’t bludgeon me in an alley, but spending the rest of my life in debt to people who could buy and sell my whole family ten times over is no way to live.”

“Cannizzo won’t bludgeon you in an alley either. He’ll just shoot you.”

I realize Bailey isn’t being cruel, just matter-of-fact, but it’s doesn’t make me feel better. I must make a face because he sighs and runs his hands through what remains of his hair.

“Sorry, I’ve just been doing this job for far too long. I don’t always think before I open my fat yap. Alright, Arie. Let’s try my plan. Go straight to the Cochran building in Midtown. Pierce and Chloe live in the penthouse on the top floor. I think this is the perfect opportunity for a little reunion, wouldn’t you say?”

I don’t know if Bailey is right, or if this plan is as batshit insane as I think it is, but at the end of the day…

What other choice do I have?

 

Pierce

“Have any of the appointments I set up for you arrived yet?” my mother asks me over Skype. I can just see her perfectly made-up face from where I am standing in the kitchen, as she shouts at me from the computer in my makeshift office off the living room. I am trying to feed Chloe as I scramble an egg for myself, but I can already smell it burning and I know there is zero chance I will eat this morning.

“Mom, I don’t have time for this. Can you reschedule these nanny interviews? Chloe has an appointment with the speech therapist, I need to go to CSL and schedule out meetings with those security firms visiting from Yemen. There is just way too much going on today for me to worry about trying to find someone who meshes with me and the baby,” I say as I dodge a spoonful of rice cereal that Chloe flings in my direction. I may not be the world’s best father yet, but I have become a damn ninja when it comes to avoiding things being thrown at me.

I can hear my mother sigh from the other side of the room. “Fine, Pierce, I will cancel the interviews, but I’m going to reschedule them for the weekend and I don’t expect to hear another word about it. Understood?”

I turn to face the stove and roll my eyes. My mother still treats me like a child.

“Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me, mister.”

My jaw drops and I turn back around. “How in God’s name did you know I rolled my eyes?”

“I know everything,” she says as she disconnects from the video chat. I shake my head and hand Chloe a cup of apple juice. I may not have been given a stay of execution on the nanny interviews, but at least I have a reprieve, and it will give me time to get things done today. I pick Chloe up out of her high chair and am just about to make my way to her bedroom when there is a buzz from the phone that connects the penthouse to the doorman. I walk to the phone with Chloe on my hip and answer with an awkward shoulder balance move.

“Morning, Thomas,” I manage to croak out to the day guy as Chloe tries to pull the phone away from me.

“Good morning, Mr. Cochran. I have a young woman down here, says she has an appointment with you. Something about being a nanny for Miss Chloe.” His voice is impatient — people just dropping by don’t go over well with the older gentleman, as it makes his job of screening guests more difficult. I can’t say I’m any more thrilled about it than he is.

“My mother was canceling all of those appointments. Can you let her know that Carol Cochran will be calling her to reschedule, please?” I bounce Chloe on my hip and listen as Thomas relays my message. When he returns, his voice is exasperated.

“She says she’s come a long way for the interview and it’s very important she see you today, Mr. Cochran. Would you like me to send her away?”

I look at my watch and grumble to myself. I have exactly enough time for a twenty-minute interview, but that is it. “Never mind, Thomas. You can send her up. What is her name?” I hear him ask, and then shout in his gruff manner, “I can’t understand you when you mumble, young lady! Oh, forget it… Mr. Cochran, I will send her up.”

I laugh and hang up the phone, then take Chloe to her playpen, where I give her a few toys to fiddle with before putting on a t-shirt. I’m still in nothing but my pajama pants since it’s already been “one of those mornings,” and the last thing I need is some snotty au pair thinking that selling pictures of me is a quick way to fame and fortune.

The elevator from the lobby leads right up to my apartment, but only with a special key, so when I hear the door ding in the foyer, I assume that Thomas has let the woman straight up into the penthouse. Once I’m sure Chloe is safe, I pad toward the entryway, stifling a yawn, and trying to plaster on my best fake smile.

“Good morning, and thanks so much for…”

And then, my voice catches in my throat. The whole room goes hazy, as if a thick San Francisco fog has somehow rolled into my apartment. Standing in the elevator, looking just as shocked and terrified as I’m sure I do, is Arie.

Her once-curly black hair has been cropped short into a very becoming straight ear-length structural cut, and she looks thinner than I have ever seen her. Her emerald green eyes don’t seem to be sparkling the way they used to, as if she has seen as much in the years since our parting as I have. She clutches an over-sized messenger bag close to her side that seems to be on the verge of overflowing, and she is practically swimming in an oversized pink sweater that drapes over a pair of dark skinny jeans. She looks tired, but to be fair, I’m sure I do too.

“Aaa… Arie? Is that you? Is that really you?”

She shrugs with a sad smile. “In the flesh! Jesus, Pierce. You look exactly the same. I can’t believe it.”

“I doubt that’s true,” I say quietly, instinctively reaching down and touching my thigh. “What are you doing here? Thomas said there was a woman here to apply to be my nanny? You can’t be here for a job.”

Arie bites her lip as she steps out of the elevator and pulls her bag closer to her side. “As a matter of fact…”

I slap my forehead and gesture for her to come in. “I’m such an asshole. Where are my manners? Please, come in. Can I get you something to drink? Juice? Coffee? A Bloody Mary?”

She laughs as she follows me through the foyer and into the kitchen. “You know, in all the years we were a couple, I don’t think you once offered to get me anything. I’m starting to wonder if I’m in the right place.”

“A lot has changed, Arie. More than you can imagine.” I see a flash of something cross her face — something different than sadness. It’s more like deep melancholy. But she forces a smile.

“Coffee would be nice, but don’t go too far on that Bloody Mary. How have you been, Pierce? I heard a little bit about what happened in the Navy, but not much. You were injured?”

I hand her a cup from my instant-brew machine, and slide over the cream and sugar, which were still on the counter from earlier. “You could say that. A raid went bad, and I took the brunt of it. Now I work for the firm, and walk a little slower on my way to the office. What have you been up to? I looked you up on social media a few times over the years but never found anything. Are you one of those rare sorts that actually keeps their private life private?”

She laughs and starts to say something when I look over her shoulder and notice that Chloe is trying to crawl out of her playpen. She is smiling from ear-to-ear, and waving her hands around, as if she wants to meet this new person in our apartment. Arie turns around, and then spins back around just as quickly.

“Oh, you know. This and that. I’ve been around. I take it that is your little girl? I can’t believe you’re someone’s daddy, Pierce.” Her voice sounds wistful, and it makes me sad for reasons I can’t pinpoint.

“I can’t believe it either most days.”

“How did you end up a father? What happened to her mother, if I may ask?” she inquires with her eyebrow raised. I sigh and lean back against the counter.

“It’s a long story. For another time. But it’s just Chloe and me at the moment. Arie, I’m going to be blunt. What the hell are you doing here? It’s not that I’m not thrilled to see you. I am. But are you really here applying for a job? Why in the world would you want to work for me?”

Arie hoists herself into a bar stool with a little more effort than seems appropriate given how small she is, and she gives me another sad smile. “Things have been rough for me, money-wise. Life-wise. I’ve been working at Uncle Sal’s shop when I can, but they are having trouble paying me, and I am in… debt. Loan debt. I was never able to finish school and I’ve had an impossible time finding a job. Then I heard from a friend of a friend that you were looking for a nanny for your daughter and I thought, well, you know I’m trustworthy. And I know I will make a great caretaker for your little girl. It seemed liked the perfect solution for both of us I guess.”

I watch her talk, and it feels like she’s been practicing this speech for a while. I may have been an inconsiderate jerk when we were together, but I know her well enough to know when she’s in a state over something. And she’s definitely in a state now.

“I don’t hate the idea. But I can’t pretend I don’t feel a little weird about you working for me. You being my employee… it feels odd, I guess?” I glance over at Chloe again and she’s still smiling, waving to try and get Arie’s attention. “But it looks like the squirt likes you and I’m not going to argue with her judgment. If she wants you to stay, you’ll stay. How does $4000 a week sound to start?”

Arie’s cheeks go red. “That’s a lot of money, Pierce. Maybe you could pay me a little less and… let me stay here with you?”

I choke on my coffee. “You want to stay in my apartment? Here? With me? Like… live with me? Together?”

“I don’t want to get married, Pierce,” she says with a laugh. “Lots of people have live-in nannies. Don’t they? I assume you have more than two bedrooms in this palatial top-floor penthouse?”

“Well, yeah. Of course. But I wasn’t exactly expecting to have someone else living here. I’m not averse to it. I guess the idea of us living together, after all our years as couple, is a little…”

“Weird?” she says with a smile, finishing my sentence. “Seriously, Pierce. If I have my own room, you will barely know I’m here. I’m just in the middle of a bit of a transitional period, and if I could stay here, it would save me the stress of having to find an apartment. You can pay me half of what you were planning, and I will be on hand to watch Chloe day and night. If you think about it, it works out best for everyone.”

I can’t argue with her logic. “All right, you have a deal. When can you move in?”

She holds up her bag. “Yesterday.”

“Wait, that’s it? That’s all of your stuff? No boxes? No suitcases?”

“I travel light these days. Now, why don’t you get dressed and go to work and let me get acquainted with this little beauty?”

I finish off the last of my coffee in a long slug and nod. “That sounds like a plan. And Arie?”

“Yes?”

“It’s good to see you again.”

I don’t think I’ve ever meant a sentence more in my life.

 

Arie

As soon as Pierce is out of the apartment and I see him leave the building entrance via the security camera, I run over and grab Chloe out of the playpen. When I pick her up and squeeze her to my chest, I burst out crying, unable to hold back the wellspring of emotion that has bubbled over at the sight of my baby girl. I never imagined I would ever get to see her again, so the fact that I am holding her in my arms is almost too much for me to process. When Chloe reaches up and touches my face, as if she is surprised she is seeing me again too, I think I may never recover from the pain of the love I am feeling.

I spend the rest of the morning in the living room with Chloe, just watching her play, making her snacks, and pretending that I hadn’t just missed the last six months of her life. But she looks so different, almost like she’s grown up into a whole new little girl. Her white-blonde hair is sandier now, and her green eyes sparkle even more emerald, with the same air of mischief that Pierce’s have always had. I am so enamored just watching her, I have no idea how much time has passed when my phone rings and startles me.

I look at the screen and see it’s Bailey.

“So? What happened? I’ve been on pins and needles all day!” he shouts into the phone. I can hear the cigar moving around between his teeth, and it almost makes me laugh.

“I’m working here. He hired me.”

“That’s fabulous! And did you tell him you needed an upfront on your next fifty paychecks?”

I sigh, and look over at Chloe, who is happily watching a TV bigger than our old apartment. “I can’t do it, Roger. I just can’t. I’m going to work here for the next four weeks. Pierce said he’d pay me $2000 a week, so that’s $8000 by the time Danny comes calling again. Maybe if I show them I’m making a good faith effort to get them their money back, they will see some repayment is better than no repayment at all?”

I can hear the gentle hum of Bailey thinking to himself. “That’s certainly an idea. But just in case. I’m going to get you that expedited passport. Stay in touch, you hear?”

I agree to call him as soon as I have any new information, and hang up just as Pierce comes walking back in. He has his suit jacket draped over his arm, and he looks exhausted. I realize I still have no idea what time it is.

Pierce sits down on the floor next to Chloe and twirls a lock of her hair around his finger, then gives her a kiss on the cheek. I get a feeling in the pit of my stomach that gnaws at me uncomfortably. It pangs of guilt.

“So, what have you ladies been up to all day today?” he asks as he tries to draw Chloe’s attention away from the TV. But she doesn’t bite, more interested in the dancing pastel-colored ponies on screen than either of the adults in the room.

“Nothing too exciting. Just getting to know each other, really.” Suddenly, Chloe turns and looks at me with a smile, almost as if she’s in on our secret. It’s disarming. “How was work? Anything exciting happen?”

Pierce lays back on the floor with a groan, then stretches out his leg. His pant leg creeps up just a bit, and I can see intense scarring around his ankle. It makes my heart ache.

“Just the usual day at a high-priced security firm. Trying to send people to help prevent the destruction of innocent civilian populations in faraway countries. Finding bodyguards for overpaid actors. Stocking understaffed militaries with equipment they can’t afford otherwise at massive discounts. You know. Those old chestnuts.”

I raise my eyebrow at the last thing but suspect he’s messing with me. “Do you ever have to go overseas yourself?”

Pierce sneaks up behind Chloe and pulls her into his lap, tickling her as she squirms to get away with a smile. “Occasionally, but never anywhere dangerous. I mostly just train people here, organize units, and sign new clients when I can. It’s nothing like what I used to do.”

I see a hint of sadness in his eyes. “Do you miss it?”

“Well, that’s a complicated question for another time. Speaking of complicated questions, Chloe and I are supposed to go to my parents’ house for dinner tonight. Do you want to join us?”

I flinch and he catches it, and he laughs. “You don’t have to!”

The last time I saw James and Carol Cochran was on the night of Pierce’s graduation party, and it remains the most humiliating night of my life. I hadn’t even considered the prospect of having to face them again when I agreed to this insanity, and now that it’s on the table, I feel panic setting in. But there’s also no way I can possibly avoid them for however long this goes on. If for some reason the Cannizzo family agrees to my payment plan, I may be able to stay in Chloe’s life forever. That means telling the Cochrans the truth. Better they know I’m here now if that’s even a possibility.

“No, I’ll go. I guess I owe them an apology, huh?”

Pierce turns back to me, his face deadly serious. “Arie, you don’t owe them anything. Not a goddamned thing. If anything, I owe you an apology. For how I treated you, for the horrible way I behaved that night, for not standing up for you to my family… The list could go on and on. You deserved so much better, and I was the asshole that didn’t realize it until it was too late. Don’t ever apologize. To my parents, to me, to anyone.”

I tilt my head away so Pierce can’t see the tears forming in my eyes, and I nod. “I guess I should change for dinner,” I say trying to change the subject. “I don’t think your parents would appreciate me showing up in a Van Halen t-shirt and jeans.” I look down at the outfit I changed into after Pierce left and remember when he gave me the shirt a million years ago. It’s a lot baggier now than it was when we were kids. Pierce just laughs.

“If you change, I’ll leave you here. Besides, Logan will get a kick out of knowing you still have that shirt. I think I stole it from him first.”

Pierce gets up from the floor with a chuckle and heads for his bedroom to get out of his work clothes, leaving me to imagine what it will be like to have dinner with the Cochrans for the first time in years.

 

 

Pierce

“What in God’s name is the matter with you, son?” my father whisper-shouts at me from behind the desk in his study.

We’d been in my parents’ brownstone for approximately five minutes when my dad informed me there was urgent company business we needed to attend to in the other room. As soon as he shut the door, he was on me like a giant grizzly all over its prey.

“I know you have a lingering… affection for Arie. Hell, we all do. But damn it all to hell, Pierce. The girl has a pretty negative history with our family. Did it ever occur to you that she might be back for some sort of revenge for the way you treated her when you were kids?”

I have to bite back a snotty comment, and a snort laugh, both of which would sent my father into a rage. “It wasn’t that long ago. I was pretty horrible to her as an adult. Let’s not blame it on us being kids. Besides, Arie isn’t like that, dad. She would never do that. I think she’s just fallen on some hard times, and she knew I’d never turn her away.”

“We both know that’s not true. You absolutely would have turned her away five years ago.”

I am unable to stifle an eye roll, and dad gives me a look that makes it clear I get only one of them before he’ll have me on my ass. “You’re right, of course. But here we are. And I want to help her now if I can.”

“You just don’t think the timing is a little suspicious? I mean, this is part of your job, Pierce. To question everything, to assume everyone is hiding something.” I can tell my father has probably already started running background checks on her, which is his second favorite pastime after playing golf. But I wave him off.

“You can be suspicious of whoever you want. But not Arie. Anyway, Chloe loves her, and right now, that’s all that matters. I can focus on work, Chloe will have someone with her during the day to help her adjust to a normal schedule. It’s time.”

Dad can tell the conversation is over, at least as far as I’m concerned, so he hands me a glass of single-malt scotch and opens the door to the study, allowing me to leave. When we get to the living room, we find Logan playing on the floor with Chloe, and Arie sitting on the couch with my mother. They are both crying, and Logan is just shaking his head.

“It’s like some sort of maudlin women’s meeting in here. Please save me,” Logan says as he hits himself in the head with Chloe’s toy hammer. Our mother throws a needlepoint pillow him.

“We aren’t maudlin! We just haven’t seen in each other in years, and there was a lot to catch up on. And isn’t her haircut beautiful? Have you told her how beautiful her hair looks yet, Pierce?”

Arie’s cheeks turn red and she gently pats my mom on the leg. “You’re too sweet to me, Carol. You always were.”

My dad gives a gruff cough, indicating that he is done with the sentimentality. “Shall we adjourn to the dining room for supper? It’s getting late and we don’t want to keep our precious Chloe up past her bedtime, now do we?”

Dinner goes fast, and consists mostly of Logan talking about his next deployment, as much as he’s able to anyway. Chloe plays with her food, my mom plays with Chloe, and my father watches Arie like a hawk, as if she’s going to give away some sort of secret if he stares at her hard enough. For a moment, I regret bringing her, thinking that it was a mistake to reintroduce her to my family so soon after she reappeared in my life. But from the look on Arie’s face, you’d never know anything was wrong.

She looks absolutely elated.

She is watching, and listening, to everything, like she hasn’t been around a family in a very long time. She eats her roast chicken in complete silence, barely seeming aware of anything happening around her, yet simultaneously taking everything in. There is a small smile on Arie’s face through the whole meal, even when my dad is grumbling about work, or Logan and my mother are bickering about whether or not he’s going to be home for Thanksgiving. When my mom turns, and addresses her, she doesn’t even seem to hear.

“Arie, honey? Did you hear me?”

Arie stops with her fork her mouth, the sound of her name finally bringing her back to the present. “I’m sorry, Carol. I didn’t. What did you ask?”

“We haven’t seen you for so long. What have you been up to for all this time?”

Arie takes another forkful of rice and gives a little shrug. “Oh, you know how it is. Busy with nothing and everything. Working. Not working. Helping my family at the garage.”

“Why the hell are you so skinny, Ari? I wouldn’t have recognized you if Pierce hadn’t told me who you are,” Logan says as he hands Chloe a piece of bread. I scowl at him, both for the comment about Arie’s weight, and for giving Chloe something she’ll barely be able to chew through. Luckily, mom smacks him on the back of the head.

“That was rude! Tell Arie you’re sorry.”

Logan rubs the back of his head and grimaces. “It wasn’t an insult. I was just stating a fact. Arie used to have those pinup model curves. Now she looks like, well, a runway model. I’m not saying she’s not beautiful, it’s just… aw, hell. I put my foot in it, all right?”

“And you can stop talking about her like she’s not here, you jackass,” I say as I deepen my scowl. But Arie just laughs.

“It’s really not a big deal. I definitely lost weight, but you never know. If you keep feeding me amazing food like this, I may get those curves back. Soon rather than later,” she says as she eats another mouthful of chicken. My mother reaches over and squeezes Arie’s hand.

“And if you don’t, it’s no one’s business but your own. Now, onto more interesting topics of conversation. Are you and my son dating again?”

I choke on the beer I’m drinking, and Arie bursts out laughing. “Was something I said that amusing?” mother asks, looking dreadfully confused.

“Mom, why do you have to be so damn nosy all the time?” I cough out, wiping beer off of my chin.

“I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question. She’s moved in to the apartment, she’s taking care of my granddaughter, you two have history. What other conclusion could I possibly draw?”

Arie smiles and shakes her head. “Carol, it’s nothing like that. Pierce was just kind enough to help me out when I needed it. We’re old friends. Nothing more.”