15. Chapter 15
Chapter 15
Maci
S utton opens my Jeep door and I jump, focused on the phone call from Stephanie. He smirks, gripping both sides of the door frame and looking me over without speaking.
“My injuries are healing as expected. Thanks for asking.” I manage to answer Stephanie, even though my mouth has gone dry.
He quirks a sexy eyebrow at me. I’m immediately ready for him to bury himself inside me. “We should be hearing from Ha—Mr. Campbell soon with a probate update. If I hear before you, I’ll let you know.”
“Very well. I’ll talk to you soon,” she says, her voice floating through the Jeep speaker, then disconnects before I can respond.
Sutton looks me over. He has yet to share whatever opinions he has about Stephanie. He may think it would bother me, but it won’t. People are entitled to their opinions, and I’m sure most feel strongly about her. I certainly do.
“How was the salon?” He extends his hand, and I accept it after unbuckling myself.
“We had a nice time. It was good to spend time with them.”
“Good.” He kisses the top of my head.
I wrap my arms around his torso as he winds his around me and buries his face in my hair. It’s hard to believe how different life looks after a few short weeks. If someone had told me six weeks ago that I’d be dating someone, moving in with them, and planning a future together, I would’ve laughed in their faces. Now, I can’t imagine my life without Sutton in it.
If they’d have told me I’d be facing charges for murder in self-defense, I would’ve assumed they were unhinged. Yet here we are.
“How’s your mom?” he asks softly.
I shake my head against his chest. “Difficult as usual. She wants to move into Nana’s temporarily.”
He doesn’t respond at first. “Does that mean she took your warning seriously?”
“Maybe? If she has a plan, she didn’t tell me much.” Tucked into Sutton’s arms feels like home. I don’t even care how dirty he is, or what he has on him.
“Are you going to go over there?”
I pull back to look at him. “To see Stephanie?”
“In general.”
Every step I take not to be a victim seems diminished by my fear of revisiting the site of my altercation with Colt.
“Maci…”
“Sutton.” My face remains composed. At least, I think it does.
He smiles softly. “Fine.” His lips brush against mine and I lean up to deepen the kiss, but he pulls back before I gain much purchase.
“I know you just got back, and if you’re tired it’s fine. But I think we need to get away for a bit.”
“Ok.” I assess him, trying to figure out what he has in mind.
“Our first date didn’t go exactly to plan.” He smiles softly when I scoff.
“You mean because my psycho one-night-stand slash mystery stepbrother interrupted us by being even more of a creep?”
His smile stretches into a grin. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“What do you have in mind?” I press my chin against his chest and peer up at him.
“How do you feel about bowling?”
A laugh bursts from me as I back up. “Bowling? You bowl?”
“Why is that so hard to believe?” His jaw sets but his face is otherwise soft, and he still hangs on to my hands.
“It’s not really.” I study him for a moment. “Oh shit. You’re really good, aren’t you? That was your plan to seal the deal on our first date?” I can’t hold in my laugh.
He chuckles. “I like to bowl.”
“You like to bowl. Mm-kay.” He’s right. We need a break from the constant tension. “You don’t get to make fun of me.”
“So what I’m hearing is you need some lessons.”
“Oh no. We haven’t even gotten there and you’re already getting a bigger head.” I feign annoyance and walk around him to go around the house.
He trails behind at a slower pace, and at first, I think he believes my faux anger, until he starts speaking and his tone is taunting. “Are you afraid you’re too weak? The ball will be too big, right? Especially since you’re injured.”
I gape and whip around. His hands land on his hips and he grins at me. I want to photograph him again. I need to start carrying my camera like I used to.
“I’m not afraid.”
He drops his hands and approaches even slower than before. “You should take it easy. I don’t want you to break a nail.”
My eyes narrow. “You don’t have to push so hard. I was going to say yes.”
He grabs the seam of my sweater on each side and yanks me the last couple of feet to him. My arousal is immediate. “I hope you always say yes,” he says, dropping his mouth to my ear. “But you always have the option to say no.”
As if I need more reassurance, he adds, “The ball is within the weight limit the doctor said, and you’re right-handed, so it will be on the opposite side. First sign of a problem and we’re done.”
Those fiery butterflies he often releases in me take flight. He’s so fucking good.
“So, Firecracker, do you want to go bowling with me?”
I just nod, chewing my cheek.
“Words.”
I pull back and look up into his eyes. “Yes, Cowboy. Take me bowling.” I press on my toes and kiss him on the corner of his mouth.
The bowling alley sits in the tiny area of Bull Creek that can be considered industrial. It looks like an abandoned building, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we walked in and there was a giant hole in the roof. From outside, the place looks like it hasn’t been cared for in years. And yet, there are a good twenty cars in the parking lot when Sutton parks near the front.
There’s something nostalgic about the sound of a ball rolling down the lane, crashing pins, and a jukebox playing. The air holds the scent of communal shoes that shouldn’t be comforting, but somehow is. I haven’t been bowling since I was a teenager. Rainy summer days in Bull Creek were for bowling, back when Izzy, Leah, and I were teenagers.
A group of women Nana’s age occupy the two lanes farthest from the entrance. My feet plant as we get to the carpeted walkway, worn from years of use, and I take them in.
Sutton’s warm arm encircles my waist as he stands to my side. “All good?”
“Yep.” I turn to him with a grin. “Let’s do this. I’m gonna kick your ass.”
His eyebrows jump. “Well, this should be good.”
After grabbing shoes, we go our separate ways for a few minutes, searching through rows and rows of dirty, dented bowling balls for the perfect method of destruction. Mine is bright pink out of pure coincidence, but I don’t miss the laugh that Sutton suppresses when I carry it back to our lane.
“Do. Not.” I pin him with a stiff look and drop the ball onto the ball return.
That does him in and he snickers like a teenager. His ball is blue. How typical.
“Ladies first.” He gestures to the lane, having already put our names into the computer.
My cheeks heat at the letters on the screen. Firecracker and Cowboy are playing.
The pink ball glides into the gutter. Defeated, I turn back and wait for the ball to make its trek through the return. The second attempt isn’t much better, but I manage to knock down two pins on the left.
Sutton stands, dragging his fingers along my side as he steps by to get his own ball. I plop down on the plastic chair. I have a feeling I’m about to get schooled.
Sure enough, Sutton has beautiful form and his ball direct hits the center pin, knocking them all down in one swoop. I cover my face with my hands and peek at him from behind my fingers as he returns, grinning at me.
“Well, that was hot.” I cock my head to one side, watching him.
The computer screen highlights my name again. When I approach the ball return, Sutton doesn’t sit. Instead, he leans his head down toward me and asks, more seductively than I would have thought, “Do you want a pointer?”
I turn my head to the right, toward his chest, but don’t look up. The tension is killing me and my breathing shallows. After a short hesitation, I nod.
He gestures for me to approach the lane but follows me this time. I prep the ball for release but don’t pull my arm back, keeping it cradled to my chest.
His warm hand presses against the underside of my arm. “Your follow-through is off.” I want to melt backward into his chest but force myself to remain standing still.
He glides his hand up my forearm, aligning his fingers over mine. “When you let go here,” he pulls my arm down to show where I released the ball previously, “your wrist is twisting. Like this.”
I’m a little disappointed when he releases me to demonstrate with his own arm. “Instead, you need to keep your hand moving upward. Like this.” He extends his arm higher than I did, as if reaching for the ceiling.
I nod, debating fucking up on purpose so I can have another hands-on tutorial. He retreats to wait near the ball return.
Focusing on the arm adjustment, I swing the ball forward. It rolls much closer to center, knocking down a middle section of pins. Elated, I spin around with a jump, immediately regretting the maneuver, which tugs at my healing wound.
Sutton smirks.
After the next frame, I manage to knock down all but one of the remaining pins. We get into a rhythm where Sutton gets a strike and I try for a spare each time. I’m only successful a few times, but I still manage to avoid the gutter more than not.
“Tell me about your dad,” he says as I walk back after a turn.
Oh yeah. “James showed up after my lunch with Stephanie. He saw us while we were out and thought it was time to address things. Long story short, he and Stephanie were stupid happy and eloped. When I was a few years old, his brother was killed in Ireland and he came clean that he has ties to the mafia. Stephanie freaked and ran away with me.”
Sutton and I stare at each other. The pins are reset and waiting.
“That’s not where I thought that was going,” he says, grabbing his ball.
“It caught me off guard, too. I really don’t know where we stand. Him showing up here was out left field.”
“He obviously wants to be in your life.” He takes his turn, earning another easy strike, and returns. “And he’s keeping tabs enough to know where you are.”
“Somewhat. He saw me the night I met Colt. He was surprised, said he knew it was me even though I never ran into him growing up. My family never mentioned him, although according to Randi, she and Nana tried to get him and Stephanie back together.” I roll the ball and return before I see what’s been knocked down. “There’s still a lot I need answers for.”
My heart aches for the years that were stolen from us, anger filling me at my mother’s inability to handle conflict. She always chooses to dismiss emotion because she can’t deal with the repercussions of it.
Maybe dealing with them hurt too much in some of her most important moments. Maybe that’s what she meant when she said I look like him and it was painful. I can’t forgive her for her treatment of me, but a part of me is at least starting to piece her together.
“I’d like to spend more time getting to know him. Our conversations have been very brief—he’s open and vague at the same time. I don’t know much about the club or his life, or what type of person he really is. I’ll never know for sure, but I think he would’ve been a good father. I think he was while it lasted.”
Sutton nods, looking over my face. “I think that’s fair. You just need to be careful. I’ve never heard anything bad or criminal about the club. A few bar fights, but that could be anyone around here.” He smiles gently. “Still, club life is a whole different ball game. And just because I haven’t heard of it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promise.
He gives me a skeptical look I ignore, and I grab my ball for the final frame.