Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Sophia
I watch as Eric’s fingers drum against the steering wheel in time with the music playing from the truck’s speakers.
In the last fifteen minutes alone, his playlist has moved from country, to a mix of hip hop and R or maybe he’s afraid of the vulnerability. His eyes stare ahead at the road.
I know what he’s about to say. I know exactly where this is going, but I try to shove the thought away; I try to tell myself that there’s no way that it could be what I think it is.
There’s no way that someone would do that to a child.
My stomach tightens, making my heart still in my chest while he speaks.
“I got pretty good at avoiding ‘em,” he continues. The cords in his arms flex as his grip pulses against the wheel. His voice quiets while he speaks; just a little, just enough to tell me that he isn’t okay.
"The other kids got hauled back there and locked up if they made too much noise. Three, four days at a time, depending how pissed Lloyd and Maeve were. They’d come back out so damn hungry, they’d eat and drink until they hurled.
That was the only house I ever got placed in that was completely—”
“Quiet,” I breathe.
He nods. “Thirty years ago, and it’s still the worst thing I’ve ever seen, heard or smelled.”
He was seven years old.
He wasn’t even a whole person yet.
My eyes burn, my chest so tight that it screams in pain while I stare at him; the microscopic droop in his brow, the way that he pulls just a touch of his lower lip between his teeth, like he’s chewing on it.
“I got out of there and ran to a neighbor’s house to ask ‘em for help,” he continues.
The pulse in his neck races, and the movement in his chest becomes sharp, ragged while he relives the memory that I unwittingly dragged him back into.
“A bunch of cops showed up a couple hours later and took us all out of there. I had thought I was doing the right thing going across the street, but the Maddens got back after I ran and no one would tell them where I went, so they…” He clears his throat as the words fade away, the muscles at the back of his jaw flexing as he takes a long, harsh breath, and I’m almost certain that I can physically feel my heart cracking in two.
With one hand over my mouth, I try to choke back the sob that wants to force its way out of me along with my lunch, and I can feel hot tears spill down my cheeks. I reach with my other hand to the back of his neck and squeeze. “Eric…”
“My leaving cost them. So when they let him out, as soon as I learned how to shoot, I flew back there and emptied a magazine into Lloyd’s ugly fucking face. And I never felt bad about that one, either.” He finally looks at me. “Some people just deserve to die, Sugar. Some people are just evil.”
“Stop the truck,” is all that I can manage to say, the words barely clawing their way past my lips.
In the now painful silence of the cabin, he turns the wheel, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles are white, and the skin of his fingers has turned red.
The truck slows to a stop at the shoulder of the road.
My hand stays on the back of his neck, massaging it while we sit in silence, his eyes not moving from their distant stare ahead of us.
I can see his heart slamming like a hammer against his shirt, and I wish with everything in me that I could reach inside of him and calm it.
Right now, he’s seven years old again. He’s trapped inside of that house, watching his friends get dragged away into cages, and I have to pull him out of there.
My free hand reaches for my seatbelt, pressing the button to release the latch, and I pull it away from my body.
I climb over the center console and into Eric’s lap, pressing my chest against his while I straddle him.
His hands settle onto my lower back as his cheek rests against my head and I wrap my arms tightly around his shoulders, squeezing his body with mine.
“You think that what happened to them was your fault, but you saved them.”
“Sophia—”
“It wasn’t your fault, Eric.” I move my hands to his shoulders to that I can look him in the eye. He’s not far away anymore, he’s here; back in front of me. “What you did was brave. And scary. And—”
“Pickleback.” The word is little more than a whisper that hangs between us, but it fills the cab all the same, weighing a thousand pounds.
Eric’s jaw clenches, the muscles flexing over the bone while his molars grind against one another, and his throat bobs with the pain that he swallows down.
“I love you,” I tell him, kissing his cheek.
“I love you.” I move to the other side of his face and kiss him there, too.
I bring my hands to his face, cupping his jaw on either side, and I stare into his beautiful, icy blue eyes.
A thick layer of glass coats them, and his body tenses under mine.
“I love you,” I tell him one more time as I press my lips to his.
“Sugar, I...”
“I know that you can’t say it back. That’s okay. Even if you never can, it’s okay, because I know. And I can say it enough for the both of us.” I press my lips to his, feeling a tight breath leave his body, taking some of the tension with it. “I love you.”
One of his hands climbs up my back until it tangles into my hair, the other following the curve of my ass, and he pulls me closer to him, tucking my head into the crook of his neck. I don’t have to wonder what he’s saying to me.
I haven’t had to wonder since the moment I watched him scribble out those stupid menus.
“We don’t have to go tonight,” I tell him, sitting up to face him. “We can just go back to your apartment and watch a movie or something. Or I can go home if you need to—”
His lips meet mine mid-sentence, slow and gentle.
“It’s alright, Sugar. Don’t you worry about me.
” He flashes me a winning smile, a direct contrast to the tears lining his eyes, and he lifts his thumb to his mouth, wetting it against his tongue, gently swiping it just beneath my eye to clear away the mascara that my own tears smudged.
I take my time climbing back into the passenger seat, not really wanting to separate from him. Reaching forward, I turn the volume control knob and crank his music back up for him while we ride.
·
His friend’s house is huge; marbled flooring that seems too clean for a house with two young kids, expensive-looking art is hung on the walls and sculptures of different shape and style sit on most of the surfaces inside the main space, shelves included.
Roughly four hundred thousand family photos are distributed among the art pieces.
“Come on,” Eric tells me as he drapes his hand around my waist, resting it at my hip. “You got more Fowlers to meet.”
As we move into the living room, we’re met with the sounds of laughter. Colt and his wife come into view, along with a little girl, a young man who looks about Rowan’s age, and a baby on the floor, sitting up and cooing at the people around her.
“Uncle Davis!” The little girl shouts, running toward him with her arms outstretched. Eric squats down to catch her as she slams into him, lifted into the air in his arms as he stands. “You’re late.”
Pressing a kiss to the side of her head, he tells her, “I know, Macie darlin’, I’m sorry. We got caught up.” He gently sets her back onto the ground and ruffles his fingers through her hair, then he places his hand between my shoulder blades.
After saying a quick hello to Colt and Rowan, complete with a big bear hug from the latter, the baby is placed into my arms. She coos and squeals her own little greeting while Eric brings the younger man over.
I could swear that I’ve seen him somewhere before, and the wide-eyed expression on his face tells me that he’s thinking the same thing about me.
Eric drops his hand to the small of my back, rubbing the tips of his fingers over the fabric of my shirt. “This is my...Sophia.”
“Emmett,” the guy says, extending his hand to me with a smile plastered onto his face. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You too,” I tell him, matching his smile.
He and Eric exchange a hug, clapping their hands against each other’s backs. All of us move to the kitchen to make up plates from the spread of food along the counters; there’s pizza, wings, salad, decadent desserts – there’s enough food here to feed a small army, set up buffet style.
Taking our plates back to the living room – which makes me exceedingly nervous, because this house is spotless and the furniture looks really fucking expensive – we settle into the seating.
Eric cozies right up next to me, his thigh pressed against mine, and he rests one hand high at my inner thigh.
Showing me off, but making sure that everyone – me, included – knows who I belong to.
The conversation flows freely between all of them, and it sends warmth spreading across my chest to watch Eric with his friends. No, they’re more than just his friends. He has parents, but these people, sitting around this coffee table, are the most important people in his life. This is his family.
He brought me to meet his family. To his real home.
He offers them those easy smiles that split his face in two, crinkling up the corners of his eyes; and every time that he laughs, his fingers flex around my thigh, sending a bolt of heat up my spine.
I meet his touch with my hand wrapped around the back of his neck, gently scratching at his skin, and every now and then I move my fingers up into his hair.
“The specific!” Macie shouts, getting frustrated that neither of us have guessed her word yet. “There’s sharks and,” she checks her card again for the list of taboo words, “turtles.”
“Finding Nemo?” Eric asks, and the little girl runs her hand over her face. “The aquarium!”
“No!” She shouts. “The specific!”
“Oh!” I slap my palms together. “Ocean!”
“Yes!” She throws the card down and runs past the table to wrap her arms around my neck, pulling a loud laugh out of me.
Eric picks the card up and practically doubles over with laughter of his own, the other adults joining in with him. “Darlin’, that’s the pa-cific.”
“Alright,” Emmett says, standing to grab a card of his own. “Move over, kid.” He turns to face his teammates - Colt and Rowan - and he flips the timer over, running through a series of hints while they shout out their guesses.
We play family-friendly games until it’s time for the younger kids to go to bed, which the older of the two puts up a fight about – a fight that she inevitably loses, carted off to her bedroom by Eric, followed closely by her parents.
I smile, watching the scene play out. The little girl beats her tiny, ineffectual hands against Eric’s back in protest while he carries her out of the living room and past where I can see them, but I can hear him laughing long after they’re gone from my sight.
I love his laugh.
After what happened on the way here, hearing it is like a beacon of warmth and peace.
Hours more pass while the adults play games together, mostly dissolving into gossip, and where Eric is concerned, vulgar humor that has us all howling in laughter.
As the night winds down, all of the guys disappear into some far-off part of the house that I have no idea how any of them navigate, and I stay behind with Rowan to help pick up some of the dishes we’ve dirtied, carting them into the kitchen.
I use my foot to open the dishwasher – probably not the most elegant thing to do when you’re in a mansion, but oh well – and I start loading them up.
“So what do you think of our little patchwork family?” Rowan asks as she reaches for some tupperware containers in a tall cabinet.
“You guys are great.”
“Good, because we like you too,” she says with a nod. “I expect to see you around more, then, you know. You have our big man child pretty smitten.”
“I don’t think I’d say—”
“Smitten,” she emphasizes. “Cloud nine, heart eyes, kissy face emoji, head over heels.”
I laugh, trying to ignore the blush heating my cheeks, while I drop the last of the plates into the dishwasher rack and close the door. “Thank you for having me tonight,” I tell her. “I had a lot of fun.”
“Here,” she says, grabbing one of the cell phones from the counter – I assume hers. She taps in a password and hands the phone to me. “Put in your number and we can text without the guys being around. Only so much we can say in front of all that testosterone, right?”
“Right.” I punch my information in and hand her phone back to her with a smile, offering my phone in return so she can give me hers.
“Alright, Sugar,” Eric says, stretching his back as he walks into the kitchen. “It’s past old man Fowler’s bedtime, we ought to haul off.”
He moves toward Rowan, sharing a hug with her that ends in a peck on the cheek, and he tells her that he loves her.
It comes so easily for his family that I almost second-guess myself, and my own confession to him earlier tonight.
I stuff the thought down with the confidence that I know what he’s been telling me. I know him.
As we walk out of the front door, heading for his Silverado, he bends down behind me and drapes his arms around my shoulders.
I smile under his warmth and ask him, “Your place or mine?”