12. AUTUMN
CHAPTER TWELVE
AUTUMN
It’s weird.
After the ups and downs of the last month, things have been different between me and Briggs. Less antagonistic. More friendly.
Gentle.
It’s unsettling.
Even if I like the new dynamic a lot.
More than I should.
“Everything okay?” Briggs asks from his place at the stovetop, where a pot of noodles boils while he sautés some vegetables for our dinner.
Yes, he insisted on cooking me dinner.
No, I’m not swooning and freaking out about it internally.
The doorbell rings, snapping me out of my dreamy haze of observing his forearms flexing with each flick of the wooden spoon on the pan.
We exchange baffled stares.
“You’re not expecting anyone are you?”
“Nope.” Taking a sip of my wine, I reluctantly hop off the bar stool I was occupying to watch Briggs move around the kitchen. Because, damn, he looks good in an apron. In anything really. And nothing at all. “Guess I’ll see who it is. Probably someone selling solar panels or something.”
“Or Mormons. If you need help getting rid of them, just holler.”
Chuckling, I press a kiss to his shoulder as I pass him. “I forget you’re natural people repellant around here,” I joke. “Which sucks for them because it’s their loss.”
I catch the flush to his cheeks, something I’m sure he’d try to play off as heat from the stove if I called him on it, but I know better.
Briggs is surprisingly susceptible to compliments. It’s actually really cute—a description most people wouldn’t attribute to the gruff behemoth.
The walk from the kitchen to the front door is a short one. My apartment isn’t huge, since I decided to downsize most of my belongings after the divorce. Part of my whole ‘start fresh' mantra.
Swinging the door open without checking the peephole, my smile immediately evaporates. “Mom. Dad. What are you doing here?” I wrap my cardigan more tightly around myself as I cross my arms over my chest.
Poor Briggs. He’s still in the kitchen finishing dinner, unaware of the speeding train heading straight for him in the form of my parents… and fucking Jason?!
My ex stands behind Mom and Dad with a sly smirk on his face. Like a kindergartner who tattled to the teacher and was excited about witnessing the trouble about to ensue.
“Autumn Marie, is that any way to greet your family?” My mother sniffs and shoos me aside as she pushes inside the foyer, followed by my dad and Jason.
“Sorry,” I murmur, properly chastised and feeling like I’m fifteen again. Counting to three in my head, I release a heavy breath then try again. “But this is an unexpected visit. Isn’t it polite to warn someone before stopping by?”
I know she had to have taught me that at some point. All those etiquette lessons couldn't have been a complete waste of my time.
“So you could make up an excuse to avoid us?” Mom counters, and I grimace because she’s not wrong.
“Hey, babe, is everything okay out—” Briggs stops in the hallway, caught off guard by the trio of visitors. His gaze bounces between me and the group staring slackjawed at his appearance. “Oh, hello, Briggs O’Hare.” He offers his hand in greeting, but no one takes him up on it.
“Seriously? Dad?” I look at him because he’s all about the handshake. He spent an entire afternoon lecturing me on the proper technique. How to keep my hand on top of the other person’s to prove dominance or whatever.
Briggs is stubborn and doesn’t retract his hand, forcing Dad to finally accept it.
He doesn’t offer it to Jason. Or my mom, who turns her head away with an upturned nose.
“Who the hell are you?” Jason asks. He shoves between my parents to stand off against Briggs. Like he’d stand a chance in any sort of physical confrontation. Briggs has twenty pounds of muscles and five inches on the man.
“You have trouble hearing? I just fucking said.”
I cover an unexpected laugh. Briggs doesn’t filter his words, but his immediate comeback still surprises me.
Jason’s eyes narrow, while my mom steps in to smooth things over with a hand to her former son-in-law’s arm. “I think what Jason means is what are you doing here? How do you know our Autumn?”
“My Autumn.” His possessive claim sounds way too good to my ears. “She just finished a long work day and needs to eat dinner. I’m making sure she’s taken care of.”
Jason scoffs. “She can take care of herself.”
Which, yes, he’s correct, but my ex-husband also never made it a priority to handle any of the mental load when it came to our home and practice. Hell, he’s still not bearing one-hundred percent of the responsibility of the practice with how often he calls me for help.
“Let me guess, you never saw the divorce coming,” Briggs snarks, and that time I can’t resist giggling without an attempt at hiding it.
Briggs shoots a wink my way, and fuck me, I’m about two seconds away from melting into a puddle of heart eyes and goo.
“How dare you…!”
“What a horrid…!”
“There’s no need for insults…!”
Three different gasped exclamations bounce off the walls as my parents and Jason stand appalled. Frankly, I’ve never seen a more comical sight.
But they’re cutting into my evening with Briggs, and there’s only so long I can handle their judgment.
“I think it’s time for you to go,” I say, attempting to shoo them back out the door they stepped through a mere five minutes ago. “You interrupted a date with my boyfriend.”
Whoa, did I just say that out loud?
Briggs and I haven’t discussed our relationship becoming anything more than friends with benefits even if we have been spending more time outside of bed than in it lately.
“Boyfriend? You can’t be serious. You’re dating this… this beast?” Jason waves his hand at Briggs’s hulking form.
“She’s fucking me, too,” he says with a smug grin. Striding forward, he corrals the stunned trio back, back, back, until the door finally shuts and locks on their dazed faces.
Briggs turns towards me with a chuckle. “That was fun.”
“You’re taking this better than I expected.”
“Am I? Guess my girlfriend doesn’t know me as well as she thinks she does.”
I tuck a stray curl behind my ear, nervously fidgeting with it before dropping my hand. “You caught that, huh?”
“That this is a date, and that I’m your boyfriend?” His large hands land on my waist and pull me into his chest. “Yeah, kind of hard to miss.”
“Sorry, I know we haven’t discussed—”
“Autumn?”
I pause. “Yeah?”
“Shut up.” His lips slam over mine with a groan, and instinctively, my arms wrap around his neck, my legs hugging his thick waist as he hefts me off the ground.
“You’re so rude,” I huff, breaking the kiss for a moment before diving back in.
“And you talk too much.”
“Like I said, rude.”
Too bad his attitude turns me on.
I’m not sure when it stopped being annoying and started becoming foreplay between us. When my need to be bad as a form of freedom morphed into feeling free to be myself with him—good girl or not.
Maybe when he calmly talked me through my tattoo.
Or when he shared his vulnerability about women and how they’ve treated him in the past.
Either way, when Briggs pins me to the wall, grinding between my thighs before managing to bury his cock deep in my pussy, I forget about the hows and whys and focus on the possibility of what if.
What if this is real?
What if that myth about soul mates and heart sparks crossed county lines from Suitor’s Crossing to High Ridge?
What if Briggs and I are meant to be, no matter how rocky our start?
God, I like the sound of that.