Chapter 11 #3
Right there in front of all their friends, Truck claimed her.
That was the only way to explain it. He didn’t seem to give one shit that everyone could see them.
He devoured her mouth as if he’d never have it again, and Mary reciprocated.
She’d always been a bit reserved with him, not wanting to lead him on, but right then, Mary didn’t care.
She loved Truck. Loved him as she’d never loved anyone before.
As she’d never love anyone like this again.
She wanted this man by her side for all time.
After a long moment, Truck pulled back abruptly.
He was breathing heavily, and if Mary wasn’t mistaken, she could feel his thick, hard cock under her ass.
She licked her lips again and tasted Truck there.
She felt her libido return with a vengeance.
She wanted this man. Was desperate to feel him deep inside her.
“What’s going on?” Annie asked, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
Mary jerked in surprise. She hadn’t even heard the noise around them, she’d been so focused on Truck.
He smiled at her obvious befuddlement and ran a hand over Annie’s head. “Looks like you have a new baby brother.”
“Really?” she asked, sitting straight up and almost clipping Mary’s chin in the process.
“Really,” Truck confirmed.
Annie leaped off Mary’s lap, almost sending her tumbling to the floor. Only Truck’s hand on her back kept Mary from falling.
“Yipee!” Annie yelled, jumping up and down. “IknewitIknewitIknewit!”
Mary smiled at the little girl’s enthusiasm.
“When can I meet him? I want to show him my Army man. Oh no, I left him at home! Rayne, I need to go home and get my Army man so I can show him to my brother!”
“You’ll have time to do that later,” Rayne said, grinning from ear to ear.
“A brother,” Annie said a little more sedately. “I’m so happy.” Then she burst into tears.
Rayne gathered her up in her arms and beamed at Mary.
“I have no idea how I could’ve forgotten that beautiful little girl,” Truck said into her ear. “But more importantly, I have no idea how I could’ve forgotten how it feels to have my mouth on yours. To feel you squirming in my lap like you were earlier.”
Mary knew she was blushing, but she had to be honest with him. “It hasn’t been like that between us before.”
Truck didn’t respond verbally, but instead raised one of his eyebrows in question.
“It’s…complicated,” Mary finished lamely.
Truck’s hand ran up and down her arm in a gentle caress. “It doesn’t feel complicated now.”
Mary shook her head. “No, it doesn’t.”
She would’ve said more, but just then a voice rang out above the boisterous celebration in the room.
“Mary?”
Mary turned toward the voice—and froze. Literally every muscle in her body clenched.
“What’s wrong?” Truck asked urgently, obviously having felt the tension in her limbs.
“Nothing, I’ll be right back.”
Mary awkwardly climbed off Truck’s lap and made her way toward the nurse standing in the doorway to the waiting room. “Hey, Donna. How are you?”
“I’m good. The question is, how are you?”
“Fine.” She gestured toward the room. “I’m here because my friend just had her baby. There were complications and she had a C-section, but the doctor just told us that she and her baby are fine.”
“Awesome,” Donna said. “You missed your appointment.”
Mary grimaced. She knew she had. She was supposed to come back and talk to her doctor about the reconstruction surgery.
She had to make a decision on what to do, but she’d skipped the appointment because of everything happening with Truck.
If she was honest with herself, she’d been glad to have an excuse to ditch it.
She had no idea what to do and didn’t want to even think about it.
“What appointment?” a deep voice asked from behind her.
Mary pressed her lips together in annoyance and spun around to face Truck. “Nothing.”
“Doesn’t sound like nothing if you skipped an appointment with a doctor,” he said, frowning.
“I’ll call to reschedule,” Mary told Donna, then turned her back on her and grabbed Truck by the arm and towed him away from the other woman.
The last thing she wanted was Donna blurting out what the appointment was for, or anything else about her cancer.
She hadn’t gotten up the courage to tell Truck about that yet, and she didn’t want him learning about it now.
“Mary, talk to me,” Truck said as he allowed her to move him away from the doorway and off to the side of the room.
“It’s not important.”
“Everything about you is important,” Truck said in an intense voice, leaning closer to her.
Mary didn’t know how to respond. She simply stared up at him.
“You’re not going to tell me,” he said in surprise after a moment.
Mary shook her head.
“Out of everyone, you’ve been the most honest with me from the start. You got on Ghost’s back for keeping shit from me. You’ve told me bits and pieces here and there, giving me my life back, and now you’re keeping something from me?”
“It has nothing to do with you,” Mary told him, knowing the bitch was creeping back into her tone, but she couldn’t help it. This was too soon. She was enjoying being normal with Truck. She didn’t want that to end. Not yet.
Truck took a step back at her words. “Nothing to do with me? Everything that affects you has to do with me,” he said, sincerity lacing his words.
“You’ve only known me a few weeks,” Mary said lamely.
“Bullshit,” Truck fired back. “We’ve known each other a hell of a lot longer than that. I might not remember details, but I know it here,” he said, putting a hand over his heart. “Talk to me.”
“Now’s not the time,” Mary told him.
“Then when is?”
“I don’t know!” Mary yelled—then paled when the conversation in the room died down. She looked around and saw that everyone was looking at them. Great, just great.
Feeling trapped, Mary fell back to her old ways. She did what she always did when things got too intense. She retreated behind the shields she’d put up and spoke without thinking.
“I’d think you have enough to worry about with your own health issues,” she said.
“Your headaches aren’t going away. In fact, they’re getting worse.
Have you talked to your doctor about that, huh?
What about your commander? You can’t go back to work if your head feels like it’s gonna explode, can you? ”
She could see Truck’s jaw flexing as if he was grinding his teeth together. She flinched, realizing that she probably shouldn’t have outted him like she had. No, she didn’t want to talk about her missed appointment, but she also didn’t want to throw him under the bus in the process.
“Your head’s been hurting?” Beatle asked.
“Shit, Truck. That’s not good,” Ghost added.
“The last thing you want is to lose any more of your memory,” Coach added.
Truck glared at Mary before turning to his friends and holding up his hands. “Easy, everyone. I’m fine. The doc said I’d continue to have some pain for a while. It’s not as bad as Mary’s makin’ it out to be.”
She felt worse and worse as Truck fielded questions about his health.
The old her would’ve been glad she didn’t have to talk about her appointment and happy the attention was deflected from her.
But she’d promised herself she would try to curb her bitch tendencies.
She hadn’t meant to out Truck, but she had anyway. And now she felt like shit about it.
Rayne came over to her as Truck was reassuring his friends. “Did you do that on purpose?” she asked.
Mary didn’t even try to pretend she didn’t know what Rayne was talking about. “No.” When Rayne looked skeptical, Mary went on. “I didn’t. It just came out, I wasn’t trying to get him in trouble with the guys.”
“Why?”
“The nurse wanted to know why I hadn’t rescheduled the appointment I’d skipped.”
“And you haven’t told Truck about the cancer yet,” Rayne correctly deduced.
“Nope.”
“Oh, Mare. You need to.”
Mary sighed. “I will.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, okay? I want to enjoy being just me. Not the poor woman with no boobs who almost fucking died.”
Instead of being put off by Mary’s harsh words, Rayne glared at her. “Boo-fucking-hoo,” she said.
“What?” Mary asked in shock.
“You heard me. We’ve already had this conversation, but it seems as if we need to have it again. I want to know where my kick-ass friend went. The girl who never let anything get her down. Who was like one of those fucking weird Weeble toys.”
“Huh?” Mary couldn’t get over the fact that the shoe was on the other foot, and Rayne was being a bitch to her.
“You know…Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down. Mary, I’ve always admired you because when the shit hits the fan, you don’t stand there and cry about it. You deal. But you are not dealing with this cancer situation at all.”
Now Mary was getting mad. “You don’t understand.”
“Bullshit. I do.”
“No, you don’t. You haven’t almost fucking died—twice.
You haven’t had your tits try to kill you so you had to chop them off.
You’ve got a killer fucking body with beautiful curves that your man loves to put his hands all over.
I’m still too skinny, I’m flat as a board.
Excuse the fuck out of me for wanting Truck to keep looking at me the way he does now. Without pity.”
“He’s never once looked at you with pity,” Rayne fired back. “If you’d open your eyes and see him, you’d know that. He loves you, Mary. Not your body, not your boobs.”
Mary wanted to keep the bitch up, but couldn’t.
She wanted to believe Rayne, so fucking badly, but she was scared.
Scared that the second she let down her guard, Truck would come to his senses.
Or he’d remember everything. How awful she’d been to him when she was sick.
How he’d seen her at her lowest. How he thought she’d married him only for his insurance when the fact of the matter was that she’d married him because she loved him.