Chapter Twenty
Linden
“What the hell did you do to my daughter?” I demand, striding right into Merrill and Edmund’s den. I left Avery with the cook in the kitchen who could pass for someone’s grandmother, and I’m sure I’ll return to her halfway to a sugar coma.
“Excuse me?” Merrill acts as if she’s shocked that I’m here. But we both know that her security alerted them to my arrival a quarter mile down their driveway.
“You said she was stung by a bee! That was not a bee sting.”
“What makes you think you know the difference?”
I don’t. “Don’t insult my intelligence, Merrill. Tell me the truth.”
Edmund is looking back and forth at us like he truly doesn’t know what I’m upset about. Not that it makes him innocent.
“Fine. I took a vial of blood. That’s all.”
Jack was right.
“That’s all? What gave you the right to do that?”
“I am one of the top surgeons in the country, Linden. I am qualified to take a blood sample.”
“I didn’t insinuate that you weren’t qualified, Merrill. I’m asking you why the hell you took blood from my daughter without my permission.”
Her jaw tenses, but she sighs in submission. “I wanted to test her white blood cell count.”
“Why?”
“Abnormal white blood cells can be a good indicator for certain cancers.”
All the hot anger that was cycling through my body is doused in ice water. “Why are you checking my daughter for cancer?”
Merrill glances at Edmund, and I finally register how sad he looks.
“We never told you this, Linden. We don’t like to talk about it to anyone, but we had a daughter before Turner was born,” Edmund admits. “While we were in medical school.”
“Before we were married,” Merrill adds, stiffly.
“What?” All I’ve ever known is Turner being an only child.
“She was five when she was diagnosed with Leukemia. It was a rare variant. She was gone before she turned seven,” Merrill says sadly.
My mouth drops open, and I can’t put it back together.
“I thought if I checked Avery’s blood early, we could figure out if she was showing any early symptoms, just as a precaution.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about your daughter?”
“It was a hard period in our life. Turner was just a baby when she passed. It was easier to tell the world he was our only child instead of explaining the loss of his older sister.”
“You still should have told me about taking Avery’s blood.”
“You’re right, and I apologize.” Merrill is so uncharacteristically apologetic that she must be telling the truth. Grief is a force of nature.
I wipe my hands over my face and through my hair, reigning in the overwhelming emotions I’ve experienced in the past thirty minutes. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry about your daughter.”
Maybe this is what we needed, a peace-making event that humanizes both sides of the party line. Maybe things could become more amicable moving forward.
I turn to leave the room, but stop short of the darkened hallway where I swear I see the shadows move. “There’s a painting that I saw in the house… I thought it was Avery but…?”
“We had our daughter’s portrait painted before she passed. She had blonde hair and green eyes like your Avery.”
Your Avery.
Unease weighs in my gut. “What was your daughter’s name?”
“Her name was Avery.”
My eyes squeeze shut, and any peacemaking energy I have in my body escapes with a single exhale. That name was Turner’s suggestion… He knew the whole time that he was naming our daughter after his dead sister, and he never thought to tell me.
No one cared enough to tell me.
My daughter is named after a person that I never even knew existed, and it feels like a violation and a humiliation ritual all at once. They’ve all looked me in the face for nearly four years and lied.
They lie about everything.
“Just so we’re clear… My Avery is correct. If you ever do anything to her again without my consent, I’ll fucking kill you.”
* * *
Exhaustion greater than anything I’ve felt in months plagues me as I carry Avery inside the dark house. She fell asleep in the car, and I have every intention of transferring her to the bed without waking her.
We can take a bath in the morning.
The bedroom is just as dark as the rest of the house, and when I go to lay her down, my entire body goes still. This is a bed.
Not an air mattress… A bed.
I let my sleepy girl curl into a ball in the center while my eyes adjust to the dim room. Our air mattress is gone, and in its place is a full-size bed… Or maybe it’s a Queen; I can’t tell.
Sheets, bed frame, and everything.
I run my hand over the pillows. The one on top is my pillow, but the two stacked beneath it are new. I pick one up and squeeze it to my chest.
Jack. It smells like him. I hadn’t even realized that I memorized his scent. It’s nearly impossible to distinguish, as if he uses scentless soap and scentless laundry detergent.
Somehow I still know it’s him.
My emotions are scrubbed raw after the evening I had, and I can’t force myself to see this as another violation. Nothing about him being in my home bothers me because it’s him.
He doesn’t know how to talk to me about how he feels. He’s not an emotional person, but I know he did this because he cares.
I just don’t know if he did it before or after I yelled at him and pushed him…
Neither of which I feel sorry about, because I felt justified at the time, but I don’t feel good about it either.
He was only trying to help, and he was right. Reacting outlandishly would have scared Avery, and I shouldn’t have threatened to run him over.
He didn’t even blink, though. Turner would have gone off the deep end as soon as I raised my voice to him.
I put my hands on Jack, and the thought never even crossed my mind that he would hurt me, because I know he wouldn’t.
I squeeze his pillow to my chest, inhaling the scent. I want to see him, but I don’t know if I should apologize for earlier, or thank him for the bed first.
Or maybe tell him he was right about the non-bee sting.
My neighbor is turning out to be someone who is taking up a lot of space in my head.
As if the universe knew I was thinking of him, he’s standing outside when I walk out my back door, cleaning his grill with only his garage light to guide him.
I don’t know what happened to his steaks. I hope I didn’t ruin his dinner.
“Hi.” I rest my elbows on the fence and wait to see if he’s going to tell me to fuck off or not.
“Avery asleep?”
“Yeah, she had a big day.” Silence stretches between us.
“Do you want to explain the bed?”
“No.” He closes the grill and folds his arms over his chest, closing himself off to me in the way he does so often.
“Can I at least apologize for how I reacted earlier? I know you were trying to help. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
“You don’t need to apologize to me, Linden. I was out of line.”
I scoff. “It’s only because of you that I even know what they did to Avery. They were testing her for cancer. Can you believe that?”
He sits in a chair on his porch, bracing his elbows on his knees, not acting surprised by my information at all.
“You can’t trust them, Linden.”
“I know. They lied about having a daughter, too. They let me name my daughter after her unknowingly. It’s sick.”
His head quirks slightly as if that bit of information does surprise him, but he doesn’t ask any follow-up questions.
“They’ve been hiding that secret from me for nearly four years… It’s a slap in the face.”
He nods stiffly. “You cannot trust anything they say, or anything they do. They’re not good people.”
I know that… Why does he know that?
But I guess putting a needle in a little girl without consent is enough to stain someone’s image.
I duck under the fence where the chain link is missing, and take hesitant steps towards him.
“Thank you for caring so much about Avery. I appreciate that you’re looking out for her.”
He tips his head up to look at me. “I’m looking out for you, too.”
Butterflies swirl in my gut as he gazes at me tenderly. He’s missing his hat, and it’s so much easier to read him this way.
“Did you have a spare bed? Or are you sleeping on my air mattress tonight?” I ask him softly, taking another step in his direction until our knees nearly touch and he has to sit up straighter in his chair to really look at me.
He doesn’t say anything, and it’s all he has to say for me to know the answer.
“Are you nice like this to all girls… Or just me?” I let my knee brush against his.
He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Just being neighborly.”
“Hmm,” I hum, reaching for the buckle beneath my shoulder that releases the straps of my overalls. The first strap falls, and his eyes track it.
The second strap drops and his hands grip the armrests of his chair.
The jean shorts slip easily down my legs once my straps are undone, and I’m left standing in my little yellow crop top and lace boy shorts.
His jaw ticks, and he sucks a ragged breath in through his nose as he studies my half-naked body.
But he doesn’t say a word.
I expect nothing more from him as I brace my hands on either side of his chair, and he leans back fully, giving me room to crawl astride his lap.
He doesn’t move a muscle, not to put his hands on me, or even breathe.
“Don’t worry…” I whisper against his ear, letting my lips brush his skin. “I’m just being neighborly.” I pull my shirt over my head, and a strangled noise escapes his throat when my bare breasts bounce free in front of his face.
When my hands reach for the button of his jeans, his eyes finally snap to mine.
“Don’t say a word, unless it’s no,” I plead into his eyes.
He maintains my point of view while my trembling hands release his button and tug his zipper down. Our noses touch, dancing against each other intimately, but I don’t kiss him, and he doesn’t kiss me.
That would make this mean so much more than what it is. A thank you, and a release. That’s all.
Nearly the only indication that I have that he’s on board with this is when his hips lift slightly, letting me tug his jeans and underwear down just enough to get them out of the way, and then his mangled “fuck” when I pull my panties to the side and sink myself onto his throbbing erection.
If it were a little brighter out here, I would have prepared myself better for the intrusion, because it leaves me breathless and aching. I can only imagine what it looks like in the light of day, and I have a feeling that I will be imagining it often after this.
Finally, his hands capture the globes of my ass, and I moan, feeling the strength of his grip as I grind against his lap. My fingers thread through his hair, holding onto him for leverage as my hips rise and fall, fucking him like I’ve been dreaming of doing.
I feel his breath skate over my skin as he buries his face against my breasts, and a whimper escapes me when his lips trail across my nipples. “Fuck,” I cry when he sucks one into his mouth.
My body jerks when the sensation becomes too much, and his big hands take control of my hips, lifting me and dropping me effortlessly until we’re both panting and groaning against each other’s mouths.
Our lips never connect, but I feel like it’s the least of my worries at this point. Kissing was never going to be the tipping factor for my feelings for my neighbor.
As long as I don’t cum, I’ll be fine. This is just supposed to be a gratitude fuck… for him. Just for him.
But as if he reads my mind, or maybe because his own labored breaths mean that he’s getting close, he tugs at my panties where they’re bunched over my clit and the friction zaps through me.
The pad of his thumb dips into my folds before lifting to his mouth, inches from my own, to taste it, and his gaze never drops from mine.
“Oh, fuck,” I whine when his attention doesn’t ease, and his thumb delves down again, demanding more from me, massaging my sensitive nub until I’m twitching in his lap. He studies my face through hooded eyes as my orgasm comes barreling towards me.
My hips writhe against him as my entire body lights up, and my core contracts, releasing a mind-blowing orgasm that he watches with apt focus.
He takes in every little noise and muscle that twitches across my face and body, and only then do I feel his thrusts jerking in wild abandon as he follows my release.
We never discussed precautions, and I definitely didn’t come prepared with a condom, but it doesn’t stop me from grinding against him until every drop of his cum is buried deep inside of me.
He knows it too, and I don’t see an inkling of regret on his serious face.
Fuck. This is bad.
I’m never going to get him out of my head now.