50. Bay
FIFTY
bay
Reeve’s hand slaps my ass as I make my way to the front door, chasing me around for the last two minutes with cupcake mix on his fingertips because he wants to taste them off my lips.
“Stop it, you child,” I chide lightly as I spin around just for him to collide into me. His strong arm wraps around my hips to keep me from stumbling, which only gives him access to lean down and press a possessive kiss to my lips.
“Child?” he repeats through a muttered whisper. “Baby, shall I remind you that the way I fuck you isn’t, by any means, the workings of a child.”
I slap at his bicep, just to watch his boyish smirk illuminate his features and literally melt my heart in my chest.
It quickly fades, though, when he wipes vanilla cupcake mix on my bottom lip and delves down to suck it away.
I chuckle as his teeth sink into the soft skin there, pulling at it before he clasps both of his lips around mine to taste the substance off of me.
“Fucking better than putting it in those stupid cup things,” he mutters, and it didn’t take him much to forgive my mishap with Levi and Nessa during the Titan fight.
In fact, his response was fucking me over the hood of his car and making me tell him how much I was his.
Easiest makeup of my fuck-up ever.
“Then how will you eat cupcakes, Reevie?”
“A few different ways,” he vouches, skimming his insatiable fingers down to my ass. “I can do it from the front or back, just let me know which—” The doorbell rings annoyingly again, and I had already forgotten that was the whole reason for me coming to the door in the first place. “You want me to go tell them to fuck off?”
I glance back up at Reeve who holds the first serious expression I think I’ve ever seen him wear.
“No, I got it.”
He follows me as I pivot, reaching for the knob and yanking open the navy blue door when I find the last person on Earth I’d ever thought I’d see in South Shore let alone my front fucking porch.
Vivian Muncy .
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Reeve asks for me, gripping the edge of the door frame and pressing his chest to my spine. “The mall is that way.”
“Reeve,” she greets placidly, not moving an inch in a forest green jacket that almost hits the cement. Her medium brown curls are pulled up in a bun with a Starbucks cup in her hands as if this is a friendly jaunt and we’re homies when that’d be a cold day in hell, to say the least. “I’d ask the same, but you always seemed to enjoy the most pathetic groupies the most.”
Reeve chuckles, unaffected by her shitty comment. “I guess not, Viv. Because I still haven’t fucked you yet.”
Her upturned nose wrinkles in disgust at that notion. “I’m definitely not interested?—”
“Yeah, yeah”—Reeve waves a dismissive hand in the air—“I asked you what the fuck you’re doing here, so answer the question, so I can slam the door in your face.”
Vivian’s brown eyes fall to me, and I don’t like the confident glow that holds in them. “I came to see Bay.”
“For?”
Cairo’s little flame holds a pregnant amount of silence to irk my ever-loving nerves before gracing us with a shitty-ass smile. “To let her know that she has approximately thirty days to move out of her home before my daddy kicks her out.”
“What?” I ask, at the same time Reeve presses with, “The fuck are you talkin’ about?”
Vivian chuckles lightly, as if this is all a game, but I think she has something else that’s about to make me lose my entire shit in two seconds. “The bank is finally foreclosing. It’s going to a sheriff sale.”
I was right.
My body lunges for her at the same exact moment Reeve snatches me up by the waist and keeps me pinned to his front.
“Torin!” he hollers out as I push down at his forearms to free me.
She’s fucking dead.
I will take her wannabe Prada-looking, Starbucks-shitheaded ass out for fucking even mentioning my house.
“Vivian.” The authority and no-bullshit tone of Torin’s voice set my current thoughts at the backburner of my actions. “How can we fucking help you today? We didn’t order any Mary Kay makeup or any of the other stupid shit you like.”
Vivian slices her too-easy gaze to Pretty Boy, who lines up at my side like my own personal solider. And I think I see some of that confidence slip. “I was here to tell Bay?—”
“You’re not here to tell Bay anything,” he leers, towering over her like he’s about to squash her into being part of the cement. “You want something, you go through us. You want to fuck around with someone, you go to someone else. You want to fuck up my girl’s day , Viv…and I will fuck your entire life. And then some.”
God, I wish in any other scenario that I could appreciate Torin’s word and how hot he sounds, but this is my family’s home.
Where Dad has to come home to and my sisters.
“It’s done,” Vivian divulges. “The house is gone.”
“Bullshit,” Torin claps back. “I’ll buy the bitch and be done with this shit.”
There’s something in Vivian’s eyes that tells me it’s impossible. I don’t know what the hell is involved in a sheriff sale—don’t care, but it sounds final.
“You can try,” she deadpans before her haughty focus back to me. “I wanted to remind her that she doesn’t fuck with mine .”
“Geezus Christ, Vivian, if this is about Cairo again?—”
“She kissed him.” She points an accusing and fun-filled finger at me. “She touched my man after I told her to stay away from him. I will not be made a fool?—”
“You already are,” Torin recites. “So whatever you did, fix it now. ”
“No.” She takes a step back, as if she needs it for her own personal safety. “This is a lesson.”
“I’m done,” I vouch, shoving at Reeve’s stronghold again and demanding he let me go. “I’m going to kill you, bitch.”
She quirks a brow at me, which only unleashes an unhealthy amount of rage through my veins.
I’m serious when I say I will let Levi murder this bitch if she’s believing for a second or conjured some fucked up plan to kick my family out of this house.
“Next time,” Vivian grounds out with a twisted expression. “You’ll remember not to touch what’s?—”
“Let me go, Reeve,” I growl, because if he thinks I’m allowing her to pick up the phone to my dad’s mortgage company and fuck things up, she’s going to be black and fucking blue by the time I’m done.
“I got this, Wildfire,” Torin says calmly. “No need to catch a charge over this waste of space.” Vivian rolls her eyes before pivoting around, but Pretty Boy isn’t done yet. “If you did some shit that I can’t reverse, Viv, you’re dead. And not even your father can save you from the things I have created in my head right now.”
“Cairo would never allow?—”
“Cairo will join in ,” Reeve cuts in. “You’re a stupid bitch, Viv. A really, really stupid bitch.”
“Whatever silly shit you did,” Torin says. “Put a stop to it. If my girl has to pack up and leave this house, you’re gonna be departing yours in a body bag.”
Vivian pales a bit, but she doesn’t cower back. “You can’t threaten me. My father is the sheriff, Torin.”
“And I’d give a flying fuck because…”
She shakes her head as if keeping all the things Torin is capable of doing, but doesn’t spill a word else.
Instead, Reeve backs us both up while Torin moves for the porch, and I hear Vivian yelp in surprise, almost tripping over her feet, and flees for her pearly white car.
“We got this,” Reeve says in my ear. “Don’t worry.”
I want to believe him.
But something in me is telling me that she’s done something that no one can take back or reverse.