Chapter 22
JACE
THREE WEEKS LATER
“ J ace!!! ” I hear her scream my name like she’s in pain from the bedroom window, and immediately drop the ax I’m using to chop wood and race inside.
“What is it?” The hall rug skids under my feet as I get to the door and when I see her standing in front of me with her jeans popped open and a pout on her lips, I check her over for injury.
“I can’t fix them up!” She chews on her thumbnail. “My parents are going to be here in less than an hour and I can’t fix my jeans up,” she huffs and when she starts to get flappy about it I quickly step up and take control.
Hey… Hey, babe, you're pregnant, it was kinda inevitable that this would happen.”
“It also means that they’ll probably notice before I get the chance to explain.” She makes another failed attempt to pull the front of her jeans together.
I slide my hand into the opening of them so I can cradle the tiny, little ridge that's poking out the seam. I noticed it a few days ago but I didn’t mention it to her. She's already getting paranoid about her body changing.
“I know…I’m not an idiot, I just wasn’t expecting it to happen this soon. A girl I went to school with managed to hide the fact she was pregnant for seven whole months.” She strokes her hand across her forehead and looks so damn cute when she’s irritable.
“We’ll just find you something else to wear. What about the dress you wore to dinner last week? That was pretty.” I move toward the wardrobe to find it for her.
“It is… but it’s also low cut and I have these stupid blue veins showing.” She lifts up the top she's wearing so I can see her plump, perfect tits plunged together in her bra. They’re undeniably bigger than they were when I first met her.
“I happen to like the blue veins.” I step back toward her and trace the path of one with my finger.
“Jace, I don’t need compliments right now, I need solutions.” She strops over to her wardrobe and I laugh to myself while I watch her pull out each item and toss it on the floor in temper.
“Stop that, none of this is funny!” she snaps.
“C’mon, darlin’, you know what your brat attacks do to me, and these hormonal ones are even hotter.” I quickly duck my head to miss the clothes hanger she launches at my head and when she buries her head in her hands and starts to cry, I realize that she’s not seeing any humor in this situation at all.
“Baby Momma, look at me.” I take a breath and move over to comfort her.
“Baby Momma doesn’t want to look at you, she wants to hide in this closet.” She mumbles the words into her hands as she keeps her face covered.
“I said, look at me,” I whisper softly, taking hold of her wrists and guiding them away. When I see that pout again, I stroke her bottom lip with my thumb.
“Don’t be ashamed of how your body’s changing, it’s doing something real special,” I tell her. “It’s–”
“What if you go off me?” she blurts out, her cheeks flushing red and her eyes filling with tears. “That’s what usually happens, the girl gets fat, the guy gets fed up and stops touching her. I’ve read the forums.” She wipes her tears away and snuffles.
“Go off ya…girl, are you crazy?” I shake my head and laugh again. “ I’ve been waiting for this little tummy to pop out for weeks, not only does it look hot-as-fuck, but it shows the world that you’re mine. The bigger you get the better, in my opinion.” My words manage to coax a tiny, little smile out of her.
“And what about stretch marks?” She plays with her fingers awkwardly.
“Stretchmarks?… Love ‘em,” I tell her without hesitation.
“Don’t be stupid, no one likes stretch marks.” She slaps me feebly on the chest but she’s still wearing that smile.
“I’d like anything if it was on you.” I slide my fingers behind her ear and keep my thumb pressed against that pouty bottom lip.
“Maddison MacKenzie, your body is fuckin’ perfect, even more so now that it’s growing our child.”
“And you’re a suck-up.” She bites down on my thumb and snarls at me.
“I’ve never sucked up to a soul in my life. I’m just telling ya how it is. Now, get that pretty dress on, and let's get ready for your folks to arrive.” She nods at me bravely as I pick it up off the floor and show no signs of the fact that I’m trying to get a handle on my own nerves.
It’s inevitable that Maddison’s parents are gonna hate me, even more so when they discover I knocked up their precious, little girl. Today’s real important to her, she wants to build bridges, and she wants them to be a part of our child's life which means I’m gonna have to find some tolerance.
Unfortunately, that's never been my strong point.
I leave her to get ready and head downstairs, and when I find Eli Kelley standing in my living room, I’m a little taken aback.
“Jace, we need to talk.” The man looks skittish and unnerved, which ain’t at all like him.
“Now ain’t a good time, I got Mad’s parents on their way and I need to–”
“It’s about Billy McGee,” he interrupts, and the look he’s giving tells me that it’s pointless pretending that it don’t mean anything to me.
“What about him?” I'm getting fed up of hearing that damn man’s name.
“He called me last night, out of the blue. Told me he had some information about…” He cuts himself off looking sheepish then quickly makes his way toward my drinks cabinet, and helps himself to a whiskey.
“Called about what, Eli?”
“About what happened with your mom.” He turns back around to face me and when I see that the glass is trembling in his hand, I grab him by his lapels.
“What did he tell ya?” I knew that fucker was lying, I should never have let him go.
“That's the problem, Jace.” He shunts me away and looks real scared.
“I agreed to go to his apartment to find out, and that's when I found him.”
“Found him?” I frown.
“It was like a scene from a horror film, blood everywhere, soaked into the carpets, all over the walls. It was a massacre.”
“Wait, are you sayin’ he’s dead?” I check I’m hearing this right.
“Oh, he’s dead.” Eli‘s hands continue to shake as he raises the glass to his mouth and knocks it back.
“And where is he now?”
“Still fuckin’ dead, and rotting in that apartment he lives in above his store. What was I supposed to do? I can’t call it in to the police, not now that she’s here. I can’t have anything to do with this. It’ll destroy me.”
“Well, you do have something to do with it Eli because he called you.”
“Exactly and, what if, whoever did this to him knows that? What if they come for me too? I told ya what happened to your mom was no fuckin’ accident. It was a warning, and it came from those Gendrys?—”
“All the Gendrys have solid alibis for that night. I checked, and checked again,” I remind him.
“And you think the Gendrys don’t have people like you and Sawyer working for them?” Eli shakes his head. “That family wants the power they used to have and they will stop at nothing to get it.”
He makes a valid point, but I still don’t think it was them who killed my mom. She may have been a kind and gentle woman but she was also strong and savvy, she would never have allowed a Gendry to get in her car.
“I need someone to take care of this.” I can tell from the way he’s looking at me that he’s never gotten his own hands dirty. If seeing death has had this effect on him, there's no way he could cause it.
“Well, if you're expecting that person to be me, you’re gonna be leaving here disappointed. I got shit of my own to deal with today,” I point out, taking the glass out of his hands and ushering him toward the door.
“Jace, Billy knew something about your mom, he was gonna tell me. Don’t you wanna know what that is?”
“Of course, I wanna fuckin’ know but, right now, I got Maddison’s parents on their way here from Denver, and I gotta explain to them that I got their daughter pregnant!”
“Maddison’s pregnant?” His eyes widen.
“She’s sixteen weeks now, and starting to show it.” I smile proudly then remember how serious this all is. “I need to be here today, but as soon as I get this sorted, we’re looking into who did this.” I open the door for him.
“Me and Isabel have been trying.” He lowers his head .“Since the wedding, actually.” The sad smile he makes has me feeling a little sorry for him.
“Look, I’m sure it’ll happen but in the meantime, you're really gonna have to do something about that body.” I haven’t got time for this.
“Doctor’s said it's too soon to be worrying that something’s wrong. That these things take time, but I ain’t getting any younger.”
“Eli, Billy’s body,” I remind him. It seems worrying about the fact he’s yet to knock up his wife has distracted him from the main focus here.
“Fuck…Billy.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. All this is too much for him to take. How the fuck did this man become our mayor?
“Listen, my uncle knows some people, people who can help with that kinda trouble, they’re costly but they’re clean.”
“Who do you think the first person I went to was? He’s AWOL,” Eli explains and something about that puts a nasty taste in my mouth.
“Then speak to Sawyer, he has a few contacts of his own.”
I have to lower my voice when I hear Maddison coming down the stairs.
“Eli, it’s nice to see you.” She smiles warmly as she makes her way toward us.
“Congratulations.” He manages to pull together a smile of his own and when she frowns in confusion, he tosses me to the wolves. “Jace told me about the baby. Maybe you could give some tips to Isabel, we’ve been trying just about everything and yet…no success.”
“Oh.” Maddison looks uncomfortable as she takes my hand and makes a sweet little attempt to crush it.
“I’m sure she’ll be very excited to hear your news. You should come to dinner. She loves to entertain.” I hate the way he takes his time appreciating how good she looks in that dress as he wipes the sweat off his top lip.
“Sounds great.” Maddison doesn’t seem to notice, and when he nods us both a goodbye and backs out the door, I slam it closed behind him.
“Will you stop telling people?” she scolds me. I take my own sweet time to check out how beautiful she looks and I have to bite down on my fist to stop me from hitching that dress up and filling her with cum before her parents arrive. I can’t let her distract me from how serious all the shit that's happening around us is becoming.
Billy McGee is fuckin’ dead, and I’m sure as I can be that it’s because of whatever he knew.