Chapter 12 #2
“No, I’m only four months along,” I replied dryly. “I’m having twins.”
The clerk’s eyes widened. “No way!”
I bit my tongue to stop myself from pointing to the big white letters that read “Twin Mom” on my sweatshirt. The machine pinged that it had accepted payment from my card, so I snatched my precious donuts before that man breathed any more of my air.
When I got back into the car, Beau tossed a look at my bag of donuts.
“Say anything and I’ll put you in the trunk,” I warned.
He rolled his eyes, but pulled out of the parking lot.
“You remember Anthony Dauphin?” Beau asked as he drove back onto the highway. “He graduated two years before us.”
“Wasn’t he quarterback before you were?” I asked as I pulled out a donut.
“Sure was,” Beau responded. “He was valedictorian too.”
I savored the pillowy bite of my donut instead of asking any follow-up questions. The conversation reeked of “sore loser” and I had already dealt with one jackass before noon.
“The morning of his graduation,” Beau continued, clearly not taking the hint that I wasn’t interested in his high school soliloquy, “he made a post bragging that he plagiarized his valedictorian speech. He wrote, ‘I cheated all through high school, why stop now?’”
I hummed as I chewed my donut. I had never followed Anthony on his socials, but I would have never guessed he would have fully admitted to cheating his way to the top.
“I never had a problem with the guy until then, but the post really pissed me off,” Beau said. “So, I got a bunch of the ranch hands together and we egged his truck during the graduation ceremony.”
I swallowed my bite. “Well, did you get vengeance for your precious morals and values?”
“Not until today,” Beau replied. “From what I heard, Anthony never faced any repercussions for being a deceitful shit. He graduated from college just fine and then got himself a big fancy job…”
I caught the twinkle in Beau’s blue eyes in the rearview mirror. “…securing contracts at Herringbone’s corporate office.”
My donut was halfway into my mouth when I gasped. “That was him?”
Beau held up a finger like he was an old man about to give a lecture. “A dishonorable person is mold in a mansion’s walls. Unless you scour them out of your life, they will destroy everything you have.”
I couldn’t say Herringbone was destroyed…yet, but Anthony Dauphin did cost them $98 million. Now I wanted to egg his truck too.
“Grandpa raised me to believe that honesty and honor were more important than anything else, but…” Beau took a deep breath. “…I had still wanted to take Katie back after she lied about the pregnancy. Does that make me a hypocrite?”
My stomach dropped. Why was he asking me?
I pretended to intensely search my bag for the perfect donut. “Um, I don’t think so.”
“I almost unblocked her number and called her last year,” Beau said. “But then I just thought of when we went shopping for nursery furniture. She held her lower stomach the whole time, knowing nothing was in there, and…” He sighed. “Even after all that, I just…couldn’t let go of her.”
My gaze dropped to the floorboard as I ate another donut.
Watching him sit on his kitchen floor and nearly cry over a woman he had once deeply loved had been hard enough to witness.
I understood why he had told me about Katie, but listening to him talk about her again sent a horrible prickle crawling down my neck and I had no idea why.
Maybe his pain made me uncomfortable. Broken hearts have barbs—anyone close enough can feel them.
“I never had another girlfriend after her,” Beau said pensively. “You’re the first person I’ve slept with in years who knew my real name.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You had a fake name for fucking around?”
I instantly felt bad for laughing at him, but luckily he gave me a little smirk back. “Go to any club in the city and anyone there will tell you my name is Jake.”
“Jake, rhymes with fake.”
His smirk softened into a real smile. “Never thought of that.”
I picked up my pink water cup and set down my bag of donuts. “Did you know that I’ve never had a boyfriend?”
Beau took his eyes off the road for a split second to toss me an incredulous look. “You serious?”
I nodded as I took a sip of raspberry water. My dating apps were for hookups only, not commitment. After my dad left and the string of Mom’s boyfriends that followed, I was forever put off on the idea of being completely vulnerable to someone.
Mom had fallen for so many men and none of them ever did us any good.
“I never wanted anything serious and anything serious never wanted me,” I answered. “Besides, I’m not Ashley.”
He made a face. “What do you mean?”
I was about to ask him if he was serious. Ashley had been pretty and charming since junior high. All the boys wanted her, but she only had eyes for the shy running back who had helped her with her math homework.
I might have never wanted a relationship, but it still didn’t feel good being invisible next to Ashley.
“You remember me from high school,” I answered. “I was a potato in a hoodie! No boy wanted anything to do with me.”
He sucked in a long breath and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I’m going to say this as politely as I can…”
My fingers clutched my cup. “What?”
“We were teen boys, Adams. Everyone wanted something to do with you.”
“Explain.”
Beau held his fist over his lips, staring ahead as if a billboard with the correct response was just over the horizon.
“Your hoodie couldn’t hide what was underneath it,” he finally responded.
Oh.
Back in high school, I had strangled my growing chest with sports bras because anything that would fit me properly was out of our budget. When cooler weather came around, I figured I could get away with only wearing a tight tank top and a hoodie over it.
Guess not.
I scoffed. “Well, if my tits were that great, why didn’t I have a date for prom?”
He rested his elbow on the console between us. “Any guy was probably too scared to ask you. You were, and still are, very intimidating.”
I crossed my arms. Good. I could never stop men from leering at my big tits, but at least my resting bitch face kept them from invading my life.
Beau was my one slip up, but he was just the father of my children.
He wasn’t a partner, or a boyfriend, or even in that nebulous zone of being a friend with benefits.
Hell, I didn’t even consider us actual friends. We were merely two people irrevocably yoked by circumstance. Just because we could be civil on one car ride didn’t make us anything more than co-parents.
“I was never scared of you, though,” Beau said with a smirk.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m clearly not trying hard enough.”
“I remember sitting behind you in English class junior year,” he said. “You used to go off about all the macabre shit that some dead poet wrote about and gave everyone the creeps. I was only annoyed, but I never wanted to move because you smelled good.”
“Glad to know you’re still a douche—wait, what did you just say?”
I turned to him, but he responded with only a shrug. “Whatever soap you used back then…I don’t know, it was really strong.”
“My Island Passion body wash?” I asked. “I got it from the dollar store.”
“I always thought it smelled like summertime,” he said. “Sometimes I would lean forward to flick you on the head so you would shut the hell up, but then I would smell that fruity, tropical scent and just…”
Slowly, Beau’s hand that rested on the console rippled into a fist, as if he were grabbing an imaginary ponytail.
Heat flooded my cheeks in an instant. I squeezed my legs together, as if to trap the tension that had suddenly built there.
I stared at the approaching city skyline, but I couldn’t stop the rush of mental images of his fist in my hair, of me taking his cock into the back of my throat, and of him gasping and pleading for mercy as I sucked his soul out.
Oh, no. Oh, no no no no.
I took a gulp of my icy water to try to douse the dirty thoughts out of existence, but my growing libido was becoming a powerful itch I had to scratch. Scientifically, it made no sense that I was so horny when I was already pregnant, but I couldn’t keep ignoring the problem.
Thank God I had my vibrators back in my room.
After a silence that was so tense Beau had turned the radio back on, we had finally made it to the appointment. The babies were fine. I was gaining weight at a good rate. Dr. Ornelas even praised me for keeping up with my water intake.
And as soon I was back behind the locked door of my bedroom, I took care of my urges—over and over.
Though the thought of Beau and his big hands and his little whimpers kept creeping into my fantasies, I refused to cross the hall and knock on his bedroom door.
But one night…the temptation to break down the “we’re only co-parents” wall called to me. Instead of giving in and risking losing myself in his sheets, I pulled out my phone and did a deep dive of Beau’s socials.
And I found Katie.
He hadn’t deleted any of their photos from college, not even their engagement shoot.
And just as I suspected, Katie was an Ashley.
She was thin and perky with a pearly white smile and long blonde hair down to her waist. Her ruffled floral dresses mad her look perfectly delicate.
She probably came from a good family that went to Europe at least once and wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up.
And the way Beau looked at her in each and every photo…
I slammed my phone onto my nightstand and rolled over in bed.
Katie was his type. I was the high school rival he wanted to mess with.
Beau was not my boyfriend. He was not my lover. I would not fall into the trap of believing we were anything more than temporary roommates.
Even when he had texted me to meet him in the garage to get the onion fried burgers I had been craving, I had refused to consider it a date. He was doing the bare minimum to provide for the woman he knocked up, nothing more.
Beau’s giant truck had finally come back from the shop and was waiting for me in the garage, so I mentally prepared myself for the struggle of climbing in. Before I could even grab the door handle, Beau ordered me to stop and back up.
Reluctantly, I did as he asked, even though my growling belly was making me homicidal.
The truck’s engine started with a roar, as expected, but then the truck slowly lowered closer to the ground and a step on the passenger side unfolded—a step just for me.
Beau rolled down the window of the passenger door and gave me a soft smile. “OK, now get in.”
I returned with a little smile of my own, just to be grateful, and put my foot on that first step.
Just because he could be nice sometimes did not make him my boyfriend. Beau had wanted a Katie and got stuck with an Olivia. He could live in my fantasies when I had to take care of my pregnancy libido, but I wouldn’t let him in anywhere else.
I couldn’t risk it.