Chapter 21 Knox #2
“Someone’s opening their mouth on something they shouldn’t. But we’re figurin’ it out.”
“I don’t even want to know.”
“I wouldn’t tell you if you wanted to know,” I said.
“You think I don’t get it, but I do,” she said.
“Which part?”
“They part where you have to choose your own family.”
“I’m interested to know how you understand that,” I said.
“My father left when I was a kid. Like yours did,” she said.
I turned my body towards Monroe as her eyes lost itself in the star-studded horizon.
“I never said my father left.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said. “I know how to read between the lines. Anyway, there wasn’t some grand fight or anything.
No shell-shocking reason why he left. He just left.
Went to work and never came back one day.
There was nothing off about my parents or any unnecessary fighting.
We still had family nights out and cuddled together and watched movies.
I was nine when he left. That man gave me a smile and a hug before he left for work, and I waved him off. ”
“Fuck, Monroe.”
“I begged Mom for years to tell me what happened. But all she told me was they just… stopped loving one another. Like that. Like, just overnight or something. But it never explained why I didn’t hear from him.
Why Christmases and birthdays passed without phone calls or presents.
It didn’t explain why all the family pictures were suddenly gone or why his side of the closet was tossed out the next day. I hated that woman for it.”
“You know she was lying to you,” I said.
“Until she got sick, yeah. Cancer’s a bitch sometimes.”
My heart ached for her. I could see her eyes glistening over with tears as her wine glass rattled in her hand.
I reached over for her. Put my hand on her knee to try and steady her shaking.
She was so stoic, despite the tears in her eyes.
Despite the one that had escaped and was sliding down her skin.
“The first time she beat it, she was strong. But the second time, she didn’t have it in her.
She was tired of crying and working all the time.
She was tired of being strong without anyone to be strong for her.
I watched her slip away from me, pound by pound, until the tumors growing in her lungs finally suffocated her one night. ”
“Did she ever tell you what happened to your father?” I asked.
“She did. About an hour before she died. Turns out, we were the other family.”
“What?” I asked.
“Yeah. Can you believe that? All the business trips my father went on and the weeks away in another country doing whatever the hell it was he was supposed to be doing. But he was really with his other family. His first family. Two separate names, two separate lives.”
“Are you fuckin’ serious?”
“As a heart attack,” she said with a snicker.
“My mother started getting curious when a woman’s name she didn’t recognize popped up on my father’s phone.
And like the jealous woman she always was, she got into everything for answers.
Looked through his phone. Went through his emails.
It was why she was so eager to flush him from our lives. ”
“Can you blame her?”
“No. No, I can’t. But unlike you, I haven’t chosen my family yet. I’ve been… wandering around trying to find it. Never planting myself somewhere for very long and never answering more questions than are asked of me. Somedays I feel like I’m running, and other days I feel like I can’t.”
“Monroe, look at me.”
She slowly turned her head to face me, her eyes filled with a deep sadness that made me sick.
This woman didn’t deserve the life she had been handed.
And the more she talked, the more I understood.
I’d picked up a few things from Diesel over the years.
Her becomin’ a lawyer was probably fueled by what happened with her father.
She wanted to prevent people from getting swindled like her mother had been.
I rose my hand to her cheek and cupped it, watching at she nuzzled into my touch.
“I’m sorry, Knox,” Monroe said.
“You got nothing to be sorry for,” I said.
“I’m sorry for yelling at you and trying to get you to change into someone you weren’t. It wasn’t my place. I was just your lawyer. Some… woman who got caught up in your eyes. A nice fuck to return you back to the outside world.”
“Cut that shit out. Right now. You know you’re so much more than that. Don’t you?”
Her eyes danced between mine as a choking heat clamped down around my throat.
I ripped her up from her chair and pulled her into my lap.
Our lips crashed together as my hands slid my pants down my legs.
The nighttime sky blanketed us as her wine glass went crashing to the ground, shattering into tiny little pieces.
I could feel her straddling me. Her hands cupping my cheeks as our tongues lapped against one another’s.
I pulled my cock out and covered our bodies in her flowing gown, then grinned when I felt her nakedness underneath her clothes.
“Oh, the things you do to me, woman.”
“I’m sorry, Knox. Please forgive me.”
I captured her lips as my cock slid effortlessly into her pussy.
On her porch, draped with the twinkling of the stars, she rode my cock in that wrought iron chair.
Minimal movements with her lips pressed to mine.
My cock throbbing against her walls as her pussy sucked me in deeper.
I could feel her arousal dripping along my skin.
Searing her mark into me as her scent wafted around my head.
I was shivering against her body. Pressing kisses into her clothed breasts as her hands ran through the tendrils of my hair.
My hands snaked up and down her naked thighs, guiding her clipped movements as she moaned into my neck.
Her clit raked across my body. Her nails dug into the leather of my cut.
Her lips nipped at my neck as I buried my face into her hair that smelled like lemon and honey.
She encompassed me. Understood me in a way no other person had.
There was a connection between us that needed to be spoken.
Words that were aching to fly off my lips.
My toes curled into my shoes as my cock grew against her walls.
She moved along my lap, faster and faster as her breaths came in short pants.
I could feel her nipples poking into my chest from behind her gown.
I could feel her moans climbing as she pressed deeper into my neck.
My arms cloaked her back and my hands grabbed at her ass, rolling her deeper and harder as I approached my end.
I slammed up into her once, jolting her body as my cock began to paint her walls with my come.
Then, it fell from my lips. As easily and as effortlessly as my come dripped from my cock.
“I love you, Monroe. I love you.”
She kissed up my neck, nuzzling her nose against my cheek. Her body trembled with her orgasm as her pussy milked my cock. Her hips stilled and her hands twirled into my blonde hair and her lust-hazed eyes connected with mine.
And a small smile spread across her lips.
“I love you too, Knox,” Monroe said. “I love you, too.”