Chapter 6

Here’s to nipples. Without them, titties would be pointless.

-T-shirt

Baylor

The next day, I walked into Travis’ place and pounded on the door.

“Yo,” my brother said as he opened it almost immediately.

He looked like he’d just woken up, and I found pleasure in knowing that I’d been the one to pull him from his bed like he’d done to me so many times over the last few weeks when there was a call out in the middle of the night.

“What are you doing?” I asked, limping inside.

He frowned when he looked at me. “Your knee hurting you?”

I shook my head. “No, my ball.”

“Why?” he asked as he shut the door behind me.

Not ‘you’re joking’ or ‘you’re funny’ but ‘why?’ Because he knew that I didn’t bullshit around.

“I was checking on this girl whose car wouldn’t start, and when she stood up out of her car, the button on her jean shorts popped off and shot me straight in the ball. My favorite left one.”

“You have a favorite ball?”

That was Hannah, my sister-in-law, who’d asked that.

I nodded my head. “I do. It’s the one that’s closest to my heart.”

It was the truth.

She snorted and walked to the coffee maker. “You want something to drink?”

I nodded my head but grunted out a yes as I walked to the bar and daintily took a seat.

“Why are you here so fucking early?” Travis asked as he scratched his stomach.

I grinned. “I wanted your medical professional of a wife to look at my ball and tell me if I should be concerned with the swelling or not.”

Travis just looked at me.

“I’m not a doctor, Baylor,” Hannah said. “If you want my medical opinion, it would be to go see a doctor who knows more about balls than I do.”

I started to chuckle as I pulled my sweatpants away from my belly and looked down at the boys.

“I couldn’t even run this morning,” I said. “I had to walk the two miles over here instead.”

“Did you take some Midol?” Travis cajoled.

I flipped him off.

“That actually might help,” Hannah agreed. “But honestly, you’d get the same results taking ibuprofen.”

I grimaced.

I despised taking medicines, even over-the-counter ones like Tylenol and Motrin.

When I’d been in my accident, I’d become somewhat reliant on pain medication and had proceeded to scare the absolute shit out of myself one too many times.

Ever since, I’d stayed well away from anything that came in pill form.

Which sometimes hindered me more than it helped me.

“I will if I can’t get this under control by tomorrow,” I conceded.

“You’re not going to visit Pongo?” Travis asked, looking concerned.

I grimaced. “Not today, no. I don’t think I can make it that far on foot.”

Well, I could quite possibly make it that far, but I wouldn’t be able to make it back.

Being sneaky wasn’t so easy at times when you couldn’t drive over there.

I’d tried it once, but since the place I was jogging to was normally accessed by going through the woods to avoid being seen by any security cameras, it meant that to access it by car I would be seen.

And I didn’t want to be seen, which also meant that I couldn’t go see Pongo today.

Pongo being a dog that my ex had won in our breakup. My ex being the US Military.

The one bright side of the day was the woman I couldn’t stop thinking about.

My ball hurt, which meant I kept thinking about how it was hurt.

I couldn’t stop thinking about her and her unicorn warrior panties.

Which happened to be why I missed my sister-in-law’s question.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked once my brother kicked my chair to get my attention.

“Did you hear from Dante yesterday like we did?”

I frowned.

“No. What did he have to say?”

Dante was my brother. A brother who was buried so deep in his grief that it took an act of presidential decree to get him to acknowledge that there were other people on this planet besides himself.

Though, I knew his grief was warranted.

But he wasn’t the only one feeling it.

My brother’s family—his two children and his wife—had gone with my sister home from a family event. On the way home, my sister had been in a car accident that had taken the life of my brother’s wife and children.

My sister had been intoxicated. She’d been high on pills, and, it was determined later, that they had been the cause of her overreaction that had caused her to wreck.

My sister had then taken her life weeks later.

Since then, Dante had been absent from our lives.

Until now, apparently.

“Our brother called him,” Travis rumbled.

“Which brother?” I asked.

I had five, after all. There’d been five brothers and two sisters.

Two sisters had died.

One in a home invasion and the other when she took her own life.

Now it was just us boys.

“Fender.”

I snickered at Travis’ use of ‘Fender.’

Fender was actually Tobias. Tobias had joined an MC—a motorcycle club—named the Dixie Wardens.

Though he may be hours away, he was more present in our lives than Dante was, wherever the fuck he happened to be.

“Okay,” I drawled.

“Dante is finally acknowledging that he has a kid.”

“And he was ecstatic?”

Travis shook his head.

“Yep. I could hear his excitement over the airwaves.” He popped his ‘p.’ “You heard me right. Tobias called Dante to tell him that he found confirmation that he had a kid. Dante called to tell me to walk across the street and confirm this ‘confirmation.’ Except the girl that used to live there doesn’t live there anymore. Which I conveyed to him.”

My mouth fell open in shock.

“Dante would never…”

I was about to say have sex with Travis’ neighbor, because, if I was thinking about the right woman, he would’ve never. At least, that was before…now, I didn’t know what he would do.

“Dante did,” Travis said. “He got drunk over here one night. The next thing I know, he’s walking out of her house the next day, looking pissed off at the world.”

I just shook my head in shock.

“I don’t even know what to say,” I repeated my earlier thoughts. “How the hell…”

Travis was just as dumbfounded as I was.

“To make matters worse, he blocked his number so I couldn’t call him back.”

“Holy shit.”

Holy shit was right.

Dante had a kid out there.

Speaking of kids, I looked over to the living room where I’d seen out of the corner of my eye, Travis and Hannah’s child swinging in his swing in the corner of the room.

“Y’all’s kids are going to be close in age.”

Travis grunted. “Less than a year. I don’t really know anything more than that. I tried calling Tobias, but each time I did, he sent it to voicemail. Either he’s at work, or he’s ignoring me.”

“Probably at work,” I muttered absently. “Tobias is pretty good about answering his phone, and he wouldn’t ignore us after telling Dante something like that.”

At least, I hoped not.

My phone in my pocket started ringing. I pulled it out and glanced at the screen, silencing it without answering the call.

“Gotta go,” I muttered as I gingerly stood up. “Got a repo for the bank.”

“Harold?”

I curled my lip. “Harold.”

As I exited their house a couple minutes later, three pieces of bacon in one hand, and a disposable cup of coffee in the other, I came to a sudden halt when I saw the woman outside getting ready to mow her lawn.

She wasn’t in jeans today.

No, she was in fucking Spandex.

Spandex.

Spandex that was pink, stretchy, and clung to her unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

The closest thing I could compare it to was fucking saran wrap.

“So, what are today’s panties?” I asked, my filter all but gone.

This woman had the power to unman me.

She grinned and said, “I’d have to take another testicle shot at you with my button for you to find out.”

I was pretty sure it’d be worth it.

“Come on,” I said. “My ball is still throbbing if that counts.”

It was, too. Each step I took caused a sharp pain to shoot up into my belly.

I’d never felt something so debilitating in my life, and I’d been hit by a goddamn car.

She immediately reddened at my words.

“If you have to know,” she blushed seven shades of red, “they say ‘Sour Puss’ on them. Happy?”

My grin was slow as it took over my face. “Sure am.”

She rolled her eyes and looked away.

“Do you live on this street?”

I shook my head and pointed to the house that was three down from hers. “That’s my brother’s place.”

Understanding dawned.

“The tow truck.” She snapped her fingers as if she was let in on a secret. “I’ve always wondered if he was the owner, or if he was just special enough to take his truck home,” she commented.

I shrugged. “All of the employees take them home, honestly. The only way they don’t is if they’re still in the probationary period, but everyone that’s working for us right now is off probation.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” I countered.

“Why do they take them home?”

I shrugged again. “It’s easier to have them with us, that way when we get a call after hours, we don’t have to go to the shop before we run it.”

“Ahhh,” she murmured. “That makes sense, I guess. Why would someone be on probation?”

“If they’re new hires or if they’ve done something stupid like lose a car on the interstate.”

She snorted. “That doesn’t actually happen, does it?”

I grinned. “More than you’d think.”

She leaned her hip against the lawn mower almost out of instinct as she started to laugh.

However, the lawn mower started to roll, and she began to fall.

Doing my manly duty, and my manly duty only, I lurched forward, ignoring the twinge in my balls, and caught her before her ass could kiss the ground.

She gasped when I pulled her in line with my body, and her hands went to my chest.

“That was close,” she gasped. “You’re fast.”

I let her go and stepped away, and my knee nearly gave out.

“Goddamn,” I groaned as I doubled over.

She bent down with me, but my eyes were squeezed shut as I tried to breathe through the pain in my ball—which had trumped the pain in my knee.

I really thought that I might die.