Chapter Ten
Simon
It’s been two months since Vivian started working at the auto body shop with us.
We’ve been tiptoeing around each other after our last conversation.
It’s more like she’s been avoiding me. I’m not sure where we stand, but I’m doing my best to give her the space she needs.
Still, I’m feeling more like myself, even though I don’t remember the accident at all.
I can’t remember the weekend and all the drama that led to Vivian hating me.
If Vivian knew how I was fucking obsessed with her but hid it, we wouldn’t have been through all this.
Maybe I’m paying for holding back my feelings.
I should have confessed it a long time ago, but then I would be suffering.
Every fucking smile she gives to someone else tears at my heart because I want them tossed my way.
It’s unacceptable that she can leave here and hang out with her friends, as if she’s not torturing me all day long.
“Son, I’m going back home for a little while. I’ll be back to check on payroll,” she says, kissing my cheek.
“What was that?”
“Lunch.” Her smirk makes me wonder what she’s playing at by bringing only Vivian lunch. I love my mother, but sometimes she’s a mystery that only my father understands.
My mother leaves out the back exit after coming from upstairs, having dropped off something that smells fantastic.
My stomach growls, and I’m a little annoyed that she brought Vivian food and not any for me.
I love my mother’s cooking, and I only packed a shitty sandwich for lunch.
My stomach rumbles, but I focus on my work project.
I’m in the middle of filming an assignment for my professor, but Vivian makes me so damn distracted, I forget myself. The semester is almost over. One more month, and I’ll be done. I have to remind myself of that every time I get so wound up.
Then my sexy Vivian comes sauntering my way. I set down my tools and turn off the camera.
“Hello, Vivian,” I grunt out, fighting the growing arousal.
“Hi, Simon. Your mom brought us some lunch.”
“ Us lunch?” She conveniently left that out. “Did you want to go upstairs and eat it in the office with me, or…”
“I’ll join you in a moment. Let me wash up really quick.” Fuck, I’m not wasting an opportunity to speak with her.
I walk back to my station to ensure everything is turned off. I hurry into the office, and she has it set up at the table my parents usually share their lunch at. “Mom thought of everything.” We get through our meal, making small talk.
“How is school?” I ask her.
“Good. I’m almost done.”
“Are you planning on becoming a baker?”
“You remember that?”
“I’ve known you your entire life, Viv.” I shake my head.
“I’m not sure. I only do it for fun. I used to help out at the bakery.”
“What stopped that?” She looks around the room.
“Oh. Yeah…” I want to say that I’m sorry about that, but having her here is so damn worth it.
There’s a bag for cleaning up the food and as we do, I see a small emergency bag that says just in case . “Your mom was prepared for everything, including this?” She lifts out two condoms. I gasp and snatch them.
“I can’t believe she did that.”
“Are you kidding? I’m surprised your mother hasn’t put up a neon sign that I’m up here and single.”
I let out a deep rumble. “You’re not fucking single, Vivian.”
“I think we’ve been through this.”
“Fine. We have no need for these,” I say, tossing them in the trash.
“Well, I’m glad we cleared that up.”
“Trouble, we haven’t cleared shit up. We don’t need them because when I get inside of you, I won’t be sliding a condom on. You’re mine, and I’m yours.”
“Fuck. Why do you have to say things like that?”
“Does that bother you?”
“Yes and no.”
“Tell me why, and maybe I’ll let you go without a kiss like you need.”
“Because you make me horny. That’s the truth, and like you said before, I’m too young and we have too many unresolved issues.” She might have turned eighteen when I was recovering, but she’s still in high school and I’m in college, miles apart.
“I only said the too young part. The other shit I’d love to get through.
” I can’t believe I did anything too serious because it’s not in my character.
Despite forgetting that weekend, it didn’t mean I would have abandoned my morals.
I wouldn’t have cheated on her, and I wouldn’t have dared to lay a hand on her, so there wasn’t anything I could have done that wasn’t forgivable, or so at least I believed.
“I told you the truth. Now if you’ll excuse me. I need to use the ladies’ room.”
“Okay, but we’re going to talk about this later.” She slides right past me, brushing my shoulder, although she did her best not to touch me at all. I smirked because it wasn’t like she didn’t want my touch. If I wasn’t afraid of pushing too hard, things would have ended different here today.
She doesn’t come back right away, but I hear the door so I go greet the bastard so he doesn’t meet my woman first. As I get to the entrance, that’s when a woman I don’t recognize enters the workshop, and she’s dressed inappropriately for the weather and the shop.
A grumble comes from me because I have a feeling shit is about to go down. The look in her eyes is full of deceit and calculation. She quickly adjusts it when I say, “Pardon me, ma’am. How can I help you?”
“Excuse me, handsome, but my car broke down just down the road and I need a tow.”
“Why didn’t you call for one?” I question. Something about her feels like a fucking set-up, and a sense of unease washes over me.
She tilts her head and then pulls out her cell before she waves her phone at me. “It’s dead. I guess I’m just having all around bad luck,” she mutters, smiling at me with too many teeth. I nod and then I whistle—two heads lift up from the vehicles they’re working on.
When they step over to us, they wait for my direction. “Hey, Petrol, Tommy. This lady…I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”
“It’s Mackenzie,” she says with a purr, attempting to flirt with me as she refuses to even look at the other two. I do my best to hold back the vomit in my throat. I’d been happy to have lunch with Vivian; now I regretted it as I felt it coming back up.
“No offense, pretty lady, but you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Tommy says with a chuckle behind his gloved hand.
“Why? He’s clearly not married.” She looks right at my hand, smirking with a brow raised.
“Should have tried another name. Where did you get that one from?” Petrol asks.
“Because that’s his mom’s name,” my mother huffs, crossing her arms. Seeing my mother only makes the situation wilder. This woman is playing a stupid game.
A barking laugh comes from behind me, and I already know it’s my father. “Nice try, little girl, but flirting with a man and then using his mother’s name isn’t the best idea, and we know damn well that’s not your name.”
“Hey, Pops,” my brother says, walking into the shop.
“You,” she hisses.
“You know her?” I ask them.
“Yes, she’s from Colorado. She’s the one who lied to Viv about being with you that night.
Then, she had to take it back, otherwise she would have seen who ran you over.
” I remember hearing something like that from the police when they were questioning me, but since I had no memory, they dropped it.
This was the woman at the center of it all.
A deep rumble starts to build in my chest as my temper elevates, but I’m interrupted by Trouble.
“Bitch,” Vivian hisses behind my brother, who reaches out and holds her back. The thought of my brother’s hands on my Vivian sets my teeth on edge. Every single day, I fight this insatiable attraction to Vivian that I can’t describe.
I stare at my brother’s hands, and he visibly recoils, loosening up his grip, but then Vivian practically pounces, forcing my brother to react. My thoughts go haywire when Vivian’s in the vicinity.
“Calm down, Viv. He’s not interested,” he whispers. She’s going to get his ass beat when I get better, and he can almost feel it with the way he cracks his neck.
Damn right, I’m not interested, and I want this woman out of my family shop before I have her thrown out. “Take her back to her broken-down vehicle and see her on her way, please,” I say.
I turn to the woman and say, “And ma’am, stay out of Steeleville. We don’t need your kind here.”
“What does that mean?” she says with a gasp, as if she’s offended, but I don’t give a damn. I’m already annoyed with the situation with Vivian, and now this woman from Vail is here to cause problems.
“No lying whores,” Vivian answers, pushing against my brother’s back, making me so fucking blind with jealous rage. It’s foolish, but I should be the only one to touch her.
“Trouble,” I snarl, getting more and more pissed that she’s in my brother’s arms. I need to get to her, but then she lets me have it.
“Oh, so this is a fucking repeat. She shows up, and suddenly it’s back to the old fucking Simon.” The vitriol coming from Vivian’s beautiful lips takes me by surprise. This woman must be the reason she is mad at me.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, needing to know what happened. There is no damn way I betrayed my woman. No way in hell.
“She’s just jealous of us.” With everyone around, this girl is doubling down on her bullshit after she made up a fake name.
The dumb bitch has no idea how close Vivian is from going insane, and how close I am from letting her loose.
I won’t hit a woman, but I’m not afraid to send a Steele Rider bride after one.
“She has nothing to be jealous of. I don’t know you.”
“You still don’t remember me or that night.
Me leaving your bedroom, the hotel shower.
” Guilt floods me as a dream of me pinning Vivian to the hotel room door in a towel surfaces in my mind.
Could I have mistaken the dream for a memory?
No. I Googled the resort, and that is their room, but I wouldn’t cross the line with Vivian, and I sure as hell wouldn’t touch a stranger.
“So, you do remember her?” Vivian mistakes my guilt and snaps. “I was right the first fucking time.” Right the first time? She shoves my brother away and rushes upstairs to the office, slamming the door behind her.
“Get her the fuck out of here, now,” I bark. They march that chick from Colorado out of there.
“Damn it, Son. You better fix that shit. You were moving in the right direction.”
“I put protection in there for a reason,” my mom says.
“Dash,” my dad snarls.
“What? Come on—he’s your boy. We’ll be new parents again as well as grandparents months apart,” she huffs.
“At least they’ll grow up close,” I state.
“Not if you don’t fix this.”
I throw open the door to find her packing her bag while she does her best to hide her tear-stained face from me. Damn it, I fucked up. After all this waiting and healing, I forgot to stop being an ass. She’s not a little girl anymore.
“Are you crying, Viv?”
“No, I’m not,” she lies to me, quietly sniffling.
“Bullshit.”
She whips her head in my direction, glaring with a mix of anger and pain. “Look, what the hell do you care? Mr. West, I don’t want to see you anymore. Leave me alone.” A wave of memories hit me at once. A brutal one practically slaps me in the face, shocking me like a cold splash of water.
“Wait. Say that again.”
“Why do you care?”
“Not that part, the other one,” I growl, inches away from her pretty lips. “Say it again.”
“Leave me alone,” she whispers, the vehemence gone, but the memories return.
One by one, the entire trip to Vail washes over me.
The two days of one bad event after another flood my brain, and then that bitch from the front desk who has just come into my damn garage using my mother’s name because she’s that fucking obtuse.
“You’re mine, Trouble, but there’s some important shit that I need to take care of before anyone is aware that I have my memory of that weekend back.
” I bend down and do what I’ve been craving.
“After all this time, no more waiting, and no more forgetting. Don’t tell me to forget you again, because that shit isn’t going to happen.
” I fist her hair, tipping her head back, and kissing her lips violently.
She moans against my mouth, whimpering as she clings to me.
Her words slip past my lips. “Simon.”
“Music to my ears, my gorgeous Vivian.”
A knock on the door interrupts us. “Son, we’re sorry about the interruption, but Miles wants to meet us at the Clubhouse. He’s been digging into your hit and run.”
“That’s good, because a memory is coming to me and an image of the bastard who ran me over is coming to mind. He’s connected to the hotel and that broad that was here. Petrol should be taking her to her vehicle.”
“They can’t be that far.”
“I’ll call him.” I pull out my phone and dial his number. The second he answers, I speak in a hushed, commanding tone. “Only yes or no answers.”
“Okay.”
“Are you still with that woman?” I say calmly.
“Yes.”
“Good. Make an excuse to bring her back to the Clubhouse.”
“Oh…Yes, okay,” he says with a chuckle.
“Good. I need to call Law.”
“Actually, he’s by the vehicle, writing a ticket.”
“Great. Offer her a drink. I don’t want her to know anything about shit.” I end the call and then turn my attention back to Vivian. “Baby, I’ve got to handle this. Stay here until I get back.” I can see my mistake before the words fully exit my mouth, but it’s already too late.
Her face hardens she bluntly states, “No.”
“No?” I asked, knowing that I’m about to have our first fight as a couple.
She stepped closer, got in my space, looking deep into my eyes when she says, “You’re not leaving without me.
The last time this bitch got in between us and we parted, something bad happened.
” Her words come out hard and brutal, but underneath, I understand there is nothing but pain.
We almost lost each other. I could have died and I sure as fuck lost my mind for a while.