63. Bay
SIXTY-THREE
bay
With a backpack full of shit and a duffle bag with some of my clothes, I opted out for an abandoned train car to stay for the night. It’s cold as hell, but I don’t want another run with Torin and his temper. And I can’t focus on anything but what Emilio is going to do for me.
Also, my terms.
I want a divorce from Ramsey within two years, because I wasn’t going to ever love him, so why bother? No kids would come from this arrangement. I’m not sleeping with him. I wouldn’t give up my friendships with South Shore, nor would I not go there. I didn’t want any involvement on Ramsey’s behalf to be around my sisters.
He wasn’t invited to holidays, birthday parties, dinners, weekends, days where a rainbow came out to grace us with its presence—nothing.
And most importantly, Ellie and Mae would be delivered to me ASAP before Dad was buried.
Which is in two days.
And Levi would be out of jail to help.
Emilio agreed and his only requirement was Friday night dinners at his place and that I would come to his birthday party every year.
Done.
A new contract would be drawn up and given to me to sign as the marriage certificate. That was another thing I didn’t want—a wedding. I don’t want a soiree of more lies in my life. I might have to sacrifice seven hundred and thirty days of my life, but it was worth having my family under one roof.
One that I don’t have yet, but I’ll worry about that when Mae and Ellie are back.
Settling into my metal home and hard floor, I wrap a blanket around me and try to get comfortable. My brain won’t stop running, my heart won’t stop the decline with every heartbeat of what I’ve done thus far because I’m not close to being done.
My plan to annihilate Torin Wildes is so vivid in my mind that I’m scared I’m going to lose a little bit of myself.
That it’s going to eat me alive at one point in a tie for being such a petty bitch.
Yet, who am I kidding?
The downfall of Torin Wildes for me would be like stabbing him straight in the heart while I looked into his eyes.
I can’t do it.
No matter the actions he’s done to teach me a lesson in taking his brother, I don’t have it in me to murder or harm Pretty Boy.
Not only were my sisters and Dad a weakness, but he’s one, too.
My phone buzzes in my hands, drawing me to something else other than my muddled thoughts.
NESSA: You make it to the apartment okay?
The plan that I offered up to her was that I was staying with Hot Rod and Juice, but I don’t want to be surrounded by any more testosterone tonight. Not after all the funeral arrangements I had to get through today…alone.
BAY: Yeah, I’m good.
NESSA: It’s so funny because YOU’RE NOT HERE.
Motherfuck.
I don’t even get to tell her that I will be soon when another angry text appears on my screen.
NESSA: And they said nothing about you staying here either, Bay, so what the fuck? Where are you?
BAY: I’m fine. I need some time alone.
NESSA: Where?
BAY: I’m safe.
NESSA: Bay, WHERE?
BAY: Chill out.
NESSA: I will when I know where my best friend is at.
BAY: Safe.
NESSA: Too vague, try again.
BAY: Dude, the pushy shit isn’t going to work with me. In fact, it never does.
NESSA: This is what I get for not being up your ass. All this shit happens.
BAY: I got it all handled.
NESSA: I’m not reassured right now.
“Bay.” I practically jump out of my skin as a voice outside the box car literally almost makes me pee myself.
Reaching for the 9mm at my side, I slowly rise to my feet and start for the large sliding doors. “Who is it?”
“The only person who gives a fuck about you at this time.”
Reeve.
I back away from the door. “Go away.”
I’d ask him how he found me, but that would mean he’d stay, and I’d crumple at his feet for another way out than to become part of Emilio Wildes’s family.
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me,” he issues out.
“Then have fun with that.”
“All I have to do is slide this door open, McQueen,” he states matter-of-factly. “I’m trying to respect your wishes, but you’re not making this easy for me.”
“Open this door, Reeve, and get a bullet,” I threaten without the means to be able to do it. We both know I’d never shoot him. I’m incapable of it. “I’m done with all of you.”
The loud sliding of metal-on-metal sounds behind the door before it slides open to reveal the man who stole my heart and made me rip my own out of my chest.
He lifts himself up by propping his foot along the ledge and is in my space within seconds.
Always in my space.
My head.
My fucking beating pulse that is now tainted with Emilio Wildes.
The cold steel meets my spine as Reeve sandwiches me between himself and it, causing my breathing to hitch and my brain to scatter.
He’s always going to be a part of me. I will never be fully adored by anyone like I was with Reeve Stanton. He wrapped his mellow-out demeanor around me, and I’ve never felt so damn wanted and loved in my entire life from someone outside my small circle.
“Why are you doing this?” he chides softly, towering over me with knitted brows. “Why are you ruining?—”
“I didn’t ruin anything,” I retort. “He did. He took my whole life and—” Reeve’s lips crash onto mine before he’s lifting me in his arms and wrapping my thighs around his waist.
He smells like a warm summer’s day. The salt from the water wafting around us as if there isn’t a care in the world right now when it’s just him and me.
His tongue delves between my lips and my pussy throbs for him to take me. To whisk me away from reality so I don’t have to do what I’ve said I had to.
It’s the only way. I can’t get Levi out of jail just by batting my eyelashes at Sheriff Muncy. And even if I bent over, he’d still stick with Torin. He’s been wanting to nail Levi for as long as I can remember but could never touch him. Never had the right opportunity to arrest and charge him.
But now he does.
And I’d blow up that jail, worst-case scenario, and go on the run for the rest of my life just to get Levi out of there.
Reeve shoves the fabric of both pairs of sweatpants I’m wearing over my ass and hooks my panties with it as I koala-hold tightly onto his body.
He yanks them down to my knees to where he can freely access me and uses a hand to quickly take off his own sweats.
His cock is there immediately, and I don’t stop him when I should. I don’t utter a single word because I can’t. They’re all anchored in my throat, refusing to give up what shouldn’t be happening.
The results are the same. The getting there isn’t.
I could tell Reeve off right now and not get the selfish satisfaction of one more time. Or I could continue the last charade of our love affair with one more fuck to put away in my memories forever.
“I’ll help you,” he mutters against my lips. “You know I’d do anything for you, McQueen.”
He might.
He could try.
But I’m not going to risk Torin talking him out of it either. I’m also not going to take any more from Reeve emotionally.
I might not be able to be with him anymore, but he needs his family. His boys. No matter how I feel about Cairo or Torin, it’s who he’s grown up with and has loved way before me.
I don’t answer him, meshing my lips back to his so that he just shuts up and ceases all attempts to talk his way through my decisions.
He’s driving into me next, filling me to the hilt as he fucks me hard. Not like Torin with force and the loss of my movement, but the way he wants to ram the ideas he wants to have happen in my head.
Nothing changes this.
Not unless Torin wakes the hell up and, even then, it’d be a God-given miracle. Torin is so stricken by grief that I can’t get through. He loved me and now hates me. But that attraction hasn’t broken and we’re like two opposite sides of a magnet.
“I love you,” Reeve whispers, as my bare ass hits the freezing metal behind me. “Don’t make me give you up. I can’t do that, Bay. Let me take care of you.”
Please stop.
That’s what I want to say.
Tears irritatingly burn the back of my eyes as I lean in and wrap my arms around Reeve’s neck, breathing him in and tucking my head within the safe confines of it.
“You were made for me. You’re all I ever wanted, baby.”
I press a chaste kiss to his throat as he continues…making love to me.
The idea hits me so violently that a shutter takes over my body, making Reeve growl in appreciation that he’s affecting me.
That I feel something for him that doesn’t need a verbal altercation. I love him, I told him I was falling, but adding on to his sentiment isn’t going to make this easier.
“You know I can do this,” he says. “You know I can take care of you. Give me a chance. I won’t let you down, McQueen. I promise.”
And I believe him.
Nonetheless, he doesn’t hold the magical key to freeing my sisters or Levi . Torin does. And time is ticking where I have to bury Dad and grab my family.
“You’re taking care of me now,” I whisper. “You always do.”
“McQueen.” My nickname is a summons as I reluctantly pull myself from his body.
I’m promptly met with hazel eyes and a look of determination. Always that look dawning on his face, because when he wants something, he doesn’t stop until he gets it.
It’s how he got me.
“Kiss me.” The boy doesn’t have to ask me twice as I lean forward, meshing our lips together once more and relishing how he makes me feel whole. How I feel so utterly wanted and loved in his embrace.
Never again will there be a Reeve Stanton.
Never will there be another moment that I’ll have with someone else. He’s my sunshine, the warm breeze on my face, and the place I go to feel peace.
My body surrenders to his touch, the way his mouth moves with mine. I’m at a complete loss with Reeve, but I feel found.
My breathing begins to become strained as the workings of an orgasm warn me of its arrival. Reeve must feel or sense it because he slows for a few seconds before amping back up, driving it from my body as I scream Reeve’s name, clutching onto him for dear life as the world spins around me.
Reeve follows close behind, chanting my name over and over again as he milks every ounce of his cum inside me.
After a few seconds, he slowly sets me to my feet, but keeps his grip on me. Reaching for one of my socks on the ground, he wipes himself clean in easy strokes.
“Reeve—”
“Don’t say anything I’m not going to like.” His hazels bore into me with almost the same velocity as Torin’s, but not quite. He means business, but a whole other sort of venture. “Don’t do it, Bay.”
“I…I can’t wait.”
“I’ll get them.”
“When?” I shoot back. “Levi is looking at time. And I need Mae and Ellie—” I stop myself there because to have to say it again is absolutely killing me.
“They’ll be home. Then you can get them to your dad.”
My gut sinks because he doesn’t know. And, if I tell him, Reeve is going to believe that I’m doing all this just because I’m not in the right mindset.
I’m not.
However, I’m on limited fucking time here.
He reaches up to brush away some of the hair that’s fallen every which way, but I jerk my face away because he’s getting to me again. Reeve is doing that thing where he calms me down so much that if he told me to jump off a cliff, I’d ask him if he wanted me to cannonball or nosedive.
“Stop. Don’t promise me those things,” I protest. “Torin is a petty bitch, and I don’t need you fighting with him about?—”
“Now you’re gonna tell me what to do?” He quirks a brow, throwing back my own agreements. “I don’t fucking think so.”
“It’s done, Reeve.”
“No, it’s not. Give me a fucking chance to fix this.”
“You can’t.”
“I can,” he snaps. “Don’t underestimate me because I don’t go walkin’ around with my chest puffed out all the time and bragging that I have some Titan seat. I don’t need to do that; it’s not my style.”
“Reeve, I don’t need you to act like Superman. I like you the way you are. But there’s nothing you can do right now to get them back, like, right now.”
“You’re not marrying Ramsey.” He pushes his body into mine again and braces both arms on each side of my body. “I told you before, McQueen, you’re gonna marry me. I wasn’t fuckin’ around when I said it.”
And if he asked me, a year from now or two, I’d more than likely say yes.
I could picture a whole life with him. I could see every day with him making me happy, fucking me against every surface and whispering the sweetest and most dirtiest shit in my ear.
I could love him forever. I’m sure of it.
“Don’t make this harder for yourself, Reeve,” I say flatly for the both of us. “It was always a means to an end.”
“I never saw an end. I only see me and you.”
My eyes close on their own, squeezing together to maybe prevent his words from penetrating my brain but they do.
All of them.
“It’s over,” I say off a disheartened mumble. “I need someone who’s going to make moves. I don’t want you.”
“That’s a fucking lie,” he leers in a low baritone that sets my skin aflame. “You just creamed all over my cock for me to go back home and jack off to it later.” My pussy backstabs me and clenches, causing my body to buzz because that sounds so fucking hot. “You wanna see it, baby? Come over”—he leans in, leaving his wicked mouth hovering over mine—“you can watch me stroke it to thoughts of you. How much I can’t take it. How much it’s still hungry for you even when you’re not there.”
“Stop…” It’s a plea because in a few more seconds I’m going to risk getting everything back just to have Reeve with me.
But not Ellie and Mae.
How is he going to get Levi out of jail?
“You want this,” he says, so dangerously close to kissing me when he towers over me. “You want me. You want all the dirty motherfuckin’ things I can do to you. We haven’t even gotten started yet, McQueen. The shit I want to do to you is an endless list. And I’m still gonna do them all.”
“That’s all you want to do is fuck me,” I utter, trying my damnedest to dismiss everything he’s saying to me.
But it’s futile.
It doesn’t even sound convincing.
“You’re right, I do. All the fucking time. But I want to take care of you and your family. I want to become part of your life and for you to wish me there as much I as need you in mine. You wouldn’t want something to happen tomorrow and never get a chance to tell me everything you’ve felt for me, would you? Tomorrow is never promised. However, I can vow that I’m always going to be here.”
“Reeve…please, just stop.”
His fingers feather underneath my chin, demanding I give in and cease all the bullshit.
Except he doesn’t know all of it. Not even half.
“I want to marry you one day. I want you pregnant with my kids, and—” I shove him back because that’s never going to happen.
Ever .
He’s going to hate me the moment I give my life up to Ramsey and they’ll be no turning back after that.
“Goodbye, Reeve.”
He smirks, of course, he does, because he knows I can’t stand it another minute, but he knows he still has a chokehold on me. “I’ll text you in the morning.”
“I won’t answer,” I exhale for the first time since he allowed me some space.
He starts for the sliding door. “Yeah, but I know where you live now.”
“I can move, Reeve, It’s South Shore. I know all the places.”
“Sure, you do, baby. And I know where all your boys are so I can torture one into telling me where your pretty ass is.”
I scoff, though my brain wonders at the lengths he would go just to find me. “How would you do that? No one knew where I was until now.”
He glimpses over his shoulder at me and lifts a brow. “Didn’t they?”
Then he jumps down, leaving me to think about who. Even in jail, Levi still has pull. He has everything, but he’d never tell Reeve where I was just out of spite.
“I love you, baby,” I hear Reeve yell, even though he sounds a bit away.
I love you, too, Reevie.
And I’m sorry.