Chapter 2 #2
“Now, where to?” I ask, scanning the two-story complex, which only houses a dozen units. With the sun starting to set, the sky is ablaze in oranges and pinks. It’s been ages since I’ve seen it without any bars or stainless steel mesh marring the view, and I can’t get enough of the sight.
“Number eleven.” She points up and trudges toward the stairs on the right side of the complex with her purse clutched to her chest like she’s afraid I’m going to mug her.
My eyes are glued to Mirabeth’s little round asscheeks as I follow her up the stairs.
She’s still limping and dragging along her high heel, for which I feel partly responsible, having sent her running earlier.
I’d like to help by hauling her up over my shoulder, but then I’d just end up rubbing myself against her legs.
Since I’m wholly uninterested in accidentally knocking up a random woman, I firmly plan to keep my hands—and my dick—off of her.
The second unit to the left of the landing has a sky-blue door and a sunny yellow, half-circle doormat painted to look like a lemon.
Beside it is a two-seater outdoor wicker couch with yellow cushions, along with a three-tiered planter of cacti, the gentle breeze stirring the colorful wind chimes hanging above.
My heart squeezes in my chest at how homey it is, a complete one-eighty from the “home” I just spent the last five years surviving.
It’s what I gave up when I went to prison for helping my brother, even knowing that my fiancée would end our engagement.
She told me she wouldn’t wait around for me, and she meant it, heartlessly moving on in less than a month with someone I never thought I’d have to worry about.
Instead of handing Mirabeth her keys, I unlock the door and push it open for her.
“Wait!” she says, grabbing the doorknob to shut it quickly. “I need to talk to him first before I introduce you.”
“He who?” I demand, my hackles rising. “You have a man your mom doesn’t know about?
” Wouldn’t it be just my luck if the wife I’m given turns out to already have a suitor?
“You tell whoever he is to get lost, or I will,” I say dangerously, bending low to get in her face, crowding her against the door.
“You’re just going to have to deal with each other,” Mirabeth says impudently, though she’s quaking in her one heel.
“No.” I refuse to share space with another man so long as I live, unless it’s my future son moving back home if he ever falls on hard times.
“I can’t and won’t stop you from dating, even though our marriage agreement includes an infidelity clause, but if he wants to stay here, then he’ll have to wait until I’m gone in three years. ”
“You try telling him that and see how far you get.” She falls back into the apartment when she opens the door and calls out, “Merlin?”
Adrenaline surges through my veins when Mirabeth spins and is back to screaming with terror again.
She jumps up and throws her arms over my shoulders, her knees gripping my sides as she tries to climb up my body to get away from the threat, knocking my hat off.
I stumble backward against the wrought iron railing, supporting her with my hands on the backs of her thighs beneath her dress.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she screams directly in my ear while twisting to look at the man at her back. “I promise I’ll never leave you again! Just don’t hurt me!”
The hell is going on?
This is the most human contact I’ve had with anyone other than a hug from my mother and sister during their visits, and my body responds accordingly. Apparently, going back to prison is something I’m willing to do, because I pull Mirabeth off, ready to step in and defend her.
Chest heaving, hands fisted, ready to grind someone into dust, I’m confronted by…a cat? The fat orange cat flicks his tail with annoyance as he sits like a good boy just inside the door.
“Aww, here kitty, kitty.” I’ve always wanted a cat, and I crouch as much as I’m able to without splitting my jeans so I can hold out my hand, letting him sniff my fingers.
Merlin, so the name tag hanging from his galaxy-printed collar says, purrs deeply when he rubs his furry cheek back and forth across my hand. He collapses on his side and rolls over onto his back, allowing me to scratch his soft, white belly.
“That is so not cool, Merlin,” Mirabeth says, her crystal blue eyes teary as she watches me scoop the cat into my arms, and he nuzzles against my chest. “I feed you everything you want, pet you whenever you want, even though you’re always biting me, but he’s the one who gets to scratch your belly?”
When Mirabeth’s small chin quivers, I gently drop Merlin on the floor, ignoring the bomb that apparently went off in her apartment, which is even smaller than my brother’s had been on the ground floor.
After scooping my hat up and shaking it off, I hook an arm around Mirabeth’s shoulders, urging her inside.
The right side of the apartment is dedicated to what looks like a home office, complete with a drafting table, a rolling chair, and a metal bar screwed into the wall that serves as a makeshift closet above a rickety plastic dresser with fabric drawers.
Above the drafting desk is a crookedly mounted TV that faces her platform bed on the left side of the apartment.
The mattress is squeezed in between the exterior wall and a breakfast bar—no stools, no room—with a pass-through window into the off-white kitchen.
Altogether, it’s hardly larger than my prison cell, but at least the lone glass window in her office is clear of a security screen.
I picture myself sitting at the desk or out on the stoop on the wicker couch, watching every sunset, in total awe of being free again.
Mirabeth drops down on the bed, sitting atop a mountain of rumpled clothes and linens.
The mess makes a muscle in my brow tick relentlessly, and I see it the second Merlin decides he’s going to lunge at her.
I snap my fingers and point toward an open door to the side of the closet, and he twists his head, darting away.
“You just snap your fingers and he listens? He never listens to me,” she says, disbelieving.
I shrug, since I have no good explanation. “Sorry, princess.”
She looks up and up, her face in line with the straining button on my jeans when I stand before her. Color rises in her cheeks, and she tangles her fingers together on her lap. “Um…so what do we do now?”
I have to breathe in deeply a few times, willing my cock not to rise.
I lean over her until she flops back on the bed to avoid our chests touching, her eyes going wide enough to show the whites.
Oh, how lovely she is, flat on her back with her neck arched, lips parted, heart racing.
I can sense it. See it in the way her breathing turns shallow, and I brace a hand on the mattress above her shoulder.
“Now, we put this laundry away,” I say, grabbing the upturned white basket from the head of the bed.
“Come on,” I say, motioning for her to get up.
“I’m beat, but I can’t sleep with all this mess.
” I hate how she flinches, my voice unintentionally harsh, but I don’t apologize as I start sorting the laundry into piles.
“It’s not that messy,” she says, scooping up her bras and panties, snatching the sexy little pink boyshorts dangling on the crook of my finger. “And I can do it. You go…go somewhere else.”
Holding my hands up in surrender, I back away, following the sounds of Merlin yowling from the matchbox-sized kitchen. I stop and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Do you not have any concern for your health?”
“What?” she asks from the other side of the wall.
I grab the pot of congealed macaroni and cheese from the stove, the glass cover crooked by a large spoon glued to the mess inside, and I storm across the three feet it takes to get to her bedroom. “I hope you weren’t planning on saving this for later.”
She frowns, balling up her T-shirts. “I’m not going to throw out perfectly good food.”
“This is not—” I inhale deeply and lower my voice. “This is not ‘perfectly good food’. It’s spoiled, and you’ll make yourself sick eating it.”
“It’s fine. I have a stomach made of steel,” Mirabeth says when she swerves around me.
“It is not ‘fine’. Your digestion is probably—what are you doing?”
“Putting my laundry away, duh,” she says, shoving her shirts all willy nilly into the middle dresser drawer without a single regard to orderliness.
“How can you live like this?”
“Like what?” She appears genuinely clueless as she looks around her apartment.
“This,” I say, setting the pot on the breakfast bar so I can bump her out of the way, remove her T-shirts, and start folding them properly. “Like a—” I bite the word pig off before I can utter it and hurt her feelings.
“You were going to say ‘pig’, weren’t you?” she asks, her chin quivering again, making my stomach clench oddly.
I don’t know why I care enough about her feelings to lie when I say, “No. I was going to say…disorderly child.” Crap, that wasn’t any better.
Mirabeth slides her eyes away and hugs herself. “I’m not a child.”
Believe me, I know that, I think as I force my eyes to stay above her neck.
Still not facing me, she says, “And if you don’t like it, you can find somewhere else to live.”
“You know I can’t,” I say, wishing, for some reason, that she would look at me.
“It’s you and me for the next three years, princess.
” Trying to be gentle, I grab her shoulders and guide her toward the open bathroom door on the back wall.
I’m loath to think what state it’s in. I’m surprised and supremely comforted by the fact that it’s the one space that’s clean and tidy in this place, as is the litter box tucked in the corner near the stackable washer and dryer.
Mirabeth grips the bathroom doorframe on either side. “What are you doing?”
“I need you to take a bath or…or…do whatever you need to do to get ready for bed.”
“Are you seriously implementing a bedtime routine like you’re my dad?”
I roll my lips and grit my teeth before I say, “No, like I’m your husband.”
“Fake husband.”
“Legal husband,” I emphasize, “even if neither of us wants me to be.” I give her a little push. “Now, stay out of my way and let me handle this.” I close the door on her scoffing, reassess the apartment, then get to work.
A sense of peace settles in as I put my own mark on what is now my home.
Out of everything I find and organize, it’s the plastic tote hidden beneath Mirabeth’s bed that I find most interesting.
I leave it where it is, though, since she hid it, even from herself, for a reason.
I’ll keep this secret of hers, in case she’s embarrassed, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to forget it. Oh no, I definitely won’t.