Chapter 16
People be like, bear with me, and they don’t even have a bear with them.
— Milena’s secret thoughts
MILENA
Last night I’d slept perfectly.
It was the first full night of peaceful sleep I’d had since I’d moved out of my brother’s house.
Sadly , shortly after finding myself in the best place on Earth — Cutter’s arms— Shasha reminded me that I was babysitting everyone’s kids today so their parents could go out to a booze and shmooze for the City of Dallas .
I’d eagerly agreed to stay home and watch everyone’s kids.
The rest of them were headed to the champagne brunch that would only take just a few hours.
Sadly , only two minutes after crawling into Cutter’s lap, I crawled out of it.
After letting me know that he’d be at the coffee shop if I needed him, and him inputting every number he could think of into my phone, I’d left.
An hour later, I was at Shasha’s place with six children.
An hour after that, I started getting messages from Cutter .
Cutter :
What do you think about this?
I gasped at the amount of work he’d gotten done in just a couple of hours.
I now had floor-to-ceiling shelves on either side of the room. In the middle was a board that would eventually become the back counter where I kept all the machines.
“ It’s gorgeous!” I said aloud, then typed it in so fast that I misspelled both words.
Me :
Tits Gorgonzola !
Me :
It’s gorgeous!
Me :
I was over animated and my fingers didn’t slow down enough to make sense of my words. Then I hit send without reading it, and yeah. That’s embarrassing. Please act like I never sent the first message. Also , please forgive me for my verbal word vomit.
Cutter didn’t respond, which gave me enough time to finish the fingerpainting craft that I was doing with all of the kids.
“ Grandma gets mad when we paint on the counter,” Brando admitted.
“ Grandma isn’t here. Aunt Millie is,” I replied cheekily.
Though , just sayin’, but the Carter matriarch would totally let them paint on the counter if they’d asked.
Likely what happened was that Brando had taken his painting to other places and hadn’t stayed at only the counter. Meaning , he wasn’t allowed to paint at her house anymore without an overabundance of supervision.
“ I think we should make this bigger,” Lola said as she widened her arms, indicating the huge piece of paper that I’d gotten Brecken to source from her school.
We were making a mural to put on the walls of the principal’s office.
Only …
“ Nathaniel , don’t you dare.” I narrowed my eyes at Nastya’s oldest.
“ Sowwy .” He stopped painting his face and grinned.
I rolled my eyes at him and offered the purple to Vivi .
The next fifteen minutes were spent finishing up the paper, then I pulled them all to the backyard and hosed them off with the water hose before letting them run free.
I watched, but I watched with a beer in one hand from Sasha’s fridge, and a cupcake from Maven’s bakery in my other hand. I also watched from the comfort of an Adirondack chair that my sister-in-law had insisted that she needed around a firepit in the backyard.
That’s what I was doing when Shasha arrived.
I looked over at him in his unbuttoned shirt and unfastened tie and said, “ You look rough.”
Then again, Shasha always did when he got home from having to kiss ass.
“ It’s not my favorite thing to shmooze with the elite of Dallas ,” he admitted, then turned. “ I heard today that you’re married.”
My brows rose.
“ What ?” I asked.
His lips twitched. “ From a fancy pants governor’s aide of all people. Apparently , you told them at the prison that you were married?”
My mouth opened and closed, and then I said, “ That was before…”
He nodded. “ Someone important heard, and it’s the talk of the town.”
“ What ?” I asked. “ Why ?”
He looked at his fingers.
“ What would you say if I told you that I need you to actually be married?” he answered with another question.
I opened my mouth, and then closed it. “ What ? Why ?”
He didn’t respond for a long few seconds before he said, “ I have this…business deal.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared, not interrupting.
He looked like he was trying to figure out how to say what he needed to say because eventually I threw my hands up and said, “ Just get it out, Shasha !”
“ I’m going to kill him.”
I didn’t bother to ask who he was going to kill.
I knew.
He knew that I knew.
“ Okay , but that doesn’t explain how you feel like it’s necessary for me to actually be married,” I said, then realized I’d just pretty much condoned him murdering someone for me. “ Shasha , you’re not killing the man. We’ve gone over this before. You won’t kill him, because he deserves to be exactly where he’s at.”
That’s when something on Shasha’s face changed. “ I learned from the warden of that prison, Benson Beauregard , that Lyle Pennington is getting out in three months. The parole hearing has already been held. He’s a free man come mid-summer.”
My mouth fell open. “ What ? He had two more years!”
“ The prison system is overcrowded right now.” He sounded sick to be telling me this, and I closed my eyes as a wave of emotion rolled over me. “ They’re letting quite a few criminals go, and one of those lucky individuals is Pennington .”
Sick .
I felt sick.
The cupcake and beer I’d had prior to Shasha coming home was threatening an uprising.
“ Shasha …”
“ It wouldn’t have to be for long. And it wouldn’t have to be real, per se. It’d just have to look real on paper. I can have you married legally by a judge I have on my payroll. Paperwork will be filed. You just have to act like you’re happily married, that’s all,” he offered.
“ First off, that’s not going to work because Cutter would have to agree,” I declared. “ Not to mention, Cutter’s family and friends probably don’t have the same kind of mindset that our family does. This isn’t something that we can just do and people not know about it.”
“ I’ll talk to Cutter ,” Shasha said. “ I’ll explain why I need him to do it.”
“ This is a big ask,” I pointed out. “ And you haven’t told me why I need to be married yet.”
“ It’s not necessarily being married, exactly. It’s being married to him, exactly.”
“ Why ?” I narrowed my eyes.
“ Because Cutter Clayborne is an interesting man.” He expounded, “ One , he’s sergeant at arms for the Truth Tellers MC , which is one of the biggest motorcycle clubs in the nation. They have chapters all over the United States . Not to mention, they’re allied with the biggest motorcycle club in the United States , The Dixie Wardens MC .” He took the seat across from me. “ Men like Pennington will think twice about messing with me if I’m connected with them. And I’ll need the coverage if I’m going to take that piece of shit out.”
My brows rose at that.
“ And , I don’t know if he told you, but he’ll be particularly motivated to help because his own sister was assaulted like you were. By their own father,” he explained.
My stomach sank.
I mean, I’d assumed, of course. But to have it actually shared with me…
“ Oh ,” I replied softly.
“ That’s why Copper is in prison. For killing their father when he caught him abusing his sister,” he said softly. “ Keely , their sister, is pretty fucked up still. She tries to act like she’s not affected.” he leveled me with a look that clearly said that he thought I did the same. “ But she’s spiraling.”
I imagined she was.
To have her own father…
No , I couldn’t think about it.
“ Copper is set to get out of prison in a few years…” Shasha said. “ But I know a few people that can get him out early if he’ll agree. If Cutter says yes, then they’ll enjoy their first family holiday together in almost two decades. I’ll guarantee it.”
I scrubbed at my face. “ It’ll take away all of Cutter’s freedom.”
“ There’ll be an expiration date,” Shasha said. “ If you both want it.”
I couldn’t imagine him ever agreeing to this…but the fear that was taking root inside of my soul told me that I was going to agree.
I’d do anything to no longer feel the fear anymore.
It was suffocating me.