Chapter 21 Smith
(1 month later)
“Get the hell up.” The blinds in my room were yanked open, splintering light into my eyes. Groaning, I rolled over, tucking myself deeper into my pillows. “Seriously, man. Get up, take a shower… You’re helping me in the yard.”
“Fuck off,” I growled into my pillow. “How the hell did you even get in here?” I squinted back at my neighbor, friend, and old prison mate, Carter Brooks. He had been a few cells down from mine, but we ended up friends, having each other’s backs in there. His stint was shorter. I had another year of hell before my lawyer got me out.
“Come on.” He snorted, giving me a look. “You know working out and peeling potatoes weren’t the only things we got good at in there.”
True. You could pick up a lot of skills in the slammer, like picking locks, little BE, gambling, and embezzling. Though going by my rap sheet, I didn’t need any help on the last one.
“Go away.” I flopped down face-first, pulling my comforter over my head, the air conditioner keeping the room cold.
“No. You’ve had your time of being a hermit. Time to get your ass up.” He kicked my bed. “You’re lucky it’s me. Layla voted to send Dog.”
Flipping over on my back, I glared at him, which made him grin.
I was secure enough to recognize Carter was a good-looking guy. We bonded during our time in prison. Like me, many men and groups wanted to claim their dominance over the new toy. Put the “pretty boys” in their place.
We fought them together a lot in the beginning, cementing a friendship.
We had to show them we weren’t anyone’s bitch. I spent the first few nights in the hole after sending one of those asshole leaders into intensive care. It was life inside—eat or be eaten.
“Get the hell out, man.” I rubbed my hands over my face.
“Not until you get your ass up.” His Texan accent thickened with his frustration.
“Why?”
“Because you have been back for almost a month and either have been a bloody bastard or a recluse.” He hit my leg. “Get up and come outside. That little bugger gnawed through the fence again.”
A groan and laugh came up my throat. Carter and Layla didn’t have a normal pet like a dog, cat, or bird… No, they had a potbelly pig, named dog. One that ate everything.
A sharp pain wiggled in my chest. Funny, Carter had a pig named Dog, and all I wanted was to see a dog named Goat. Floppy ears, white soft fur, sweet brown eyes. Damn, I missed the fluff ball.
“I’ll have a beer waiting outside,” he yelled back as he exited.
“Kind of early, isn’t it?” Not that it would stop me.
“It’s two in the afternoon, asshole.” The door downstairs slammed.
Sighing, I glanced over at my phone on the nightstand; 2:12 p.m. glowed up at me. Sitting up, I grabbed it, seeing a dozen missed calls from my lawyer, but it was the last ones that coiled my blood.
“Fuck,” I moaned, my fingers scouring my head again.
Becca.
She still was texting and calling me, going around the lawyers.
From the moment she showed up in New Orleans, she once again flipped my life upside down, ripping everything good I had out from under me. She promised me if I gave her one week to see if anything was there, she’d sign the papers.
Reluctantly, I agreed.
I couldn’t say the whole week with her up to the wedding was horrendous, though most was, there were fleeting moments I remembered why I fell in love with her, but then I’d recall it had all been fake. Her betrayal was beyond anything we could mend. She tried so hard to get me to sleep with her, probably thinking it would rekindle my feelings, but no matter how hard she tried to seduce me, to get me drunk, the thought of being with her again made me sick.
My cock seemed to crave just one. One I couldn’t get out of my head. Kinsley was all I thought about. In New Orleans I called her endlessly, searching the city when the lady at the hotel told me she checked out, even running to Angie’s.
When I drove up, Angie stood on her porch, her arms folded, head tilted in attitude. “You’re too late.”
“When was she here?” I knew she had to get Goat, and I was hoping to get there before she did.
“This morning.” Annoyance weeded Angie’s tone.
“Do you know where she went?” I could hear the desperation in my voice.
“Doesn’t matter. She left… because you are an idiot.”
My hands went to my hips, my head down like a bad puppy. “I know.”
“My beautiful boy, I warned you.” Angie shook her head, treading down the steps. “This is not something I would normally say about a woman when it comes to you, but that one was special. You fucked up.”
I exhaled, my head bobbing. Didn’t I know it.
“She told me you have a wife.”
I blew out, feeling exhausted. I hadn’t slept any, my emotions strung out like untuned violin.
“Looks like she only brings you misery. Be careful. Seems like she is your weakness.”
“You could say that about Kinsley,” I muttered.
“No, that girl is your strength; you need to change your view of what weakness and strength are.”
Ugh. Damn, Angie. “You know I hate when you’re right.” I rubbed a hand through my hair, the heat of the day sweating my brow.
She chuckled, dropping her irritation with me. “Cher, I am always right.”
I snorted, leaning in for a hug. “Thanks, Angie. It was really good seeing you again.”
“Don’t make yourself a stranger.” She rubbed my back, kissing me lightly before stepping back.
“I won’t.”
“Now stop wasting your time on my doorstep and go get her. Fix it.” She waved me off, heading back into her house full of dogs, love, and warmth.
The only way I knew how to fix this mess was to divorce Becca, but she was set on me giving us a chance first, demanding I take her to the wedding as well, to make me remember what we used to have.
It did the opposite.
I stayed away from the rehearsal dinner and the actual wedding, showing up to the reception with Becca to at least be there for my old friend. Becca clung to my arm, constantly fiddling with her diamond ring she still wore like a red flag to any woman who approached.
But all I saw was Kinsley.
Seeing her was like a bolt of lightning and the sensation of being hit by a semi combined. If I thought I might feel different once I saw her, I was wrong.
I wanted to take her. Claim her up against the wall again. Show the prick touching her that she was mine. But everything went to shit. She wanted nothing to do with me, pretty much kicking me out of the wedding, the Maxwell family, and her life.
Becca thought that made the path clear for us, but when I put her on a plane, telling her if she didn’t sign the papers, I’d be contacting my lawyer, she flipped out.
With my past and her pushing me at every turn, our lawyers were having a difficult time negotiating. I didn’t care if she wanted every penny of mine. I just wanted out.
“Hey? Are you coming?” Carter bellowed through my house.
“Yeah, yeah, keep your panties on,” I yelled down, rising from my bed, dragging myself to the shower.
Once outside in the hot southern California heat, beer in one hand, hammer in the other, my shirtless torso sucking up the rays, I felt better.
“So?” Carter ripped the half-gnawed wood strip from the base. The pig huffed around us, wanting to see what we were up too. “Gonna tell me?”
“Tell you what?” I hauled up a fence post, sweat dripping down my back. Damn, this felt good. Outside, building again.
“I know what it looks like when a girl gets under your skin.” His words froze my blood in the summer heat. He moved out of my way as I positioned the fence plank in place. “Remember Layla wanted nothing to do with me when I first returned.”
“You fucking disappeared on her for three years.” Carter thought it had been better to cut ties when he went to prison, thinking it was better to let her go. She had not agreed with his assessment and was furious and hurt with him. It took her a long time to forgive him, but it all worked out in the end.
“Yeah, but I didn’t give up.” Carter tipped his beer back, taking a sip. “Took me a long time to regain her trust again, but I did, and I have the woman of my dreams now.”
“And a potbelly pig.” I smirked, rubbing the head of Dog as it tried to eat my laces.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Just sayin’ I don’t think you should give up.”
“I don’t even know where she is. She’s blocked my calls and all her social media from me.”
“You know her family, right?”
“Yeah, believe me, her sister doesn’t want to hear from me either.” I finished off my beer. I didn’t want to bother Kyle right now, but Kay might talk to me. She was my one shot.
“If we’re done braiding each other’s hair, let’s finish the fence so Dog here has fresh wood to nibble on,” I grunted.
Carter laughed, knowing soon we’d probably be fixing something else the pig ate.
My gaze wandered over his yard as we worked, appreciating what he had done.
“Ever think about doing landscaping?” I pounded in a nail, the next one pinched between my lips.
“As a job?”
I shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about starting up my own construction company.” The logo Kinsley came up with wouldn’t budge from my mind. It felt like it was meant to be mine. My company. “Be good to have someone I trust to call on for landscaping. You do a decent job.”
Carter followed my gaze. “I don’t know. Never thought about it.”
“Well, just an idea to have in the back of your head if you decide you want to.”
He nodded, returning to the project, working in silence for a few moments.
“Smith?” A woman’s voice came from behind me, locking me up.
Fuck. No. Curving around, my gaze landed on the last person I ever wanted to see again.
Becca stood at the entrance of Carter’s backyard, most likely following my voice. Dressed in a fitted expensive dress and heels, she looked pale and anxious.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I spit out, a snarl hitching my mouth.
“I need to talk to you. You weren’t answering any of my calls or texts.” Anxiety twanged her voice. There was a wildness in her eyes as she wobbled across the gravel and dirt in her heels.
“For a reason,” I replied, my voice cold. “Talk to my lawyer, Becca. I want nothing to do with you.”
“Smith, please.” Desperation and fear coiled her words. Becca was never either.
I gave Carter a look; his head dipped in understanding. I tossed down my tools, striding to Becca, grabbing her arm, marching us to the front to the sidewalk.
“Speak,” I demanded.
“I’m not a dog,” she spat back, but tears filled her eyes.
It wasn’t going to work on me this time. “Get it out now. This is the last time I do this for you. I’m done with your shit.”
“I came to talk to, to plead with you, to remember at one time you loved me. We could still have a future. A family together.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You haven’t spoken to your lawyer?”
“Not today. Why?”
Her red lips pinched together.
“Tell me,” I growled, making her jump back. “Now!”
“Bryan…” she whispered.
I blinked, not expecting his name to come up now.
“What about Bryan?” His name flushed up pure hate for the person I used to think of not only as a business partner, but as a brother. The one who conned and stole my life from me while getting off scot-free.
“He was arrested.” She gulped, panic filling her eyes.
I scoffed, a smile coming to my face. “Good.”
“No.” Her hand shook against her throat. “He and I…” She gulped.
Becca was an exceptional actress; she had me fooled for years, but this felt different.
“What?”
A tear slid down her face. “He coerced me into doing it again… He totally tricked and blackmailed me into it. I swear. We kind of became partners…”
I stepped back, my chest rising, feeling the ground slip under my feet again.
“What do you mean partners?”
“In business…”
“And in bed?” I already knew the answer. I had suspected it back then, my gut telling me the truth, while my heart tried to make reasons why they were together so much. Like when I walked into the office and Becca claimed she had been waiting there for me.
I was such a fool. They were fucking each other while fucking up my life, taking everything from me.
“Sometimes, but I never loved him, not like I loved you.” She tried to touch me, but I jolted away, my jaw gritting in fury. “Smith, please, you can tell them he’s lying, that I knew nothing.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because deep down I know you still love me. You still care. I can’t go to jail. I will do anything. Please, you are a good man. Someone I want to spend my life with. Have a family with. We can have that, you and I.”
“You never wanted to have kids before.” Something deep down curdled in my stomach. “I wanted to build us a house to raise a family in… .and you said no. You didn’t want kids; you said your job was your focus. Loved living right in the middle of the scene.”
“I want it with you now. Please, help me. We can have that home, a family.”
My teeth clamped together, my intuition screeching in alarm. She had been dead set against kids or even having a pet. She liked clean, expensive things and being prominent in her social Hollywood circle, with no responsibilities coming outside work and being the next top interior designer. This wouldn’t flip overnight.
For some reason, my gaze rolled over her slim, bony figure. Becca worked her ass off to be runway thin, but today I noticed her figure was a little puffier.
“I can’t go to jail, Smith.” She tracked my eyes, her hand going to her belly, cupping it tenderly.
Oh. Holy. Shit.
“You’re pregnant.” The accusation shot out like bullets. The revelation hit me with such force it stumbled me back. “It’s Bryan’s, isn’t it?”
“Smith! Please!” She grabbed for me, desperation shrieking her vocal cords. “I want it to be our baby. To raise a family in the house you build, and live the life I know we both want and deserve.”
Flinging her hand off me, a huff tearing through my nose, rage stacked up my ribs like building blocks.
“Let me get this straight. You, me, and Bryan start a business while you two are fucking each other behind my back while we are married. You plan to embezzle and launder money, changing the books so all the evidence points to me. I go to jail, only being released because of my lawyer. You two proceed to swindle the next shmuck, but oh no, he wasn’t as gullible as me and catches Bryan… and let me guess, Bryan tosses your name out as his accomplice. All the while you destroy my life again, ruining the one thing good in my fucked-up life.”
I stepped into her space, vibrating with rage. “And on top of that, you get knocked up by the guy I used to think of as a best friend, the very guy who you helped swindle money from me? And now you come running to me to protect you? Pretending like you love me, and really it was all a mistake, and we can raise his baby as ours… live happily ever after? Did I get it all?”
“Smith…”
“You are FUCKING unbelievable!” I roared, my arms flailing out.
“Smith, please. I will do anything.”
“You knew this was coming, didn’t you? Knew Bryan had been caught, and that’s why you were so intent on getting me back. You wanted to suck me back in and save you. Protect you from your own decisions and mistakes. Well, you reap what you sow, Becca.” My wrath flamed inside, moving me in sharp paces.
“PLEASE!” Her knees dipped; her pleas were so frantic they curled her over. “I’ll tell Kinsley everything I told her in the bathroom was wrong, but—”
“What do you mean all you told her in the bathroom?” My chest heaved with blustering rage, a thin thread of sanity keeping me from tearing the world apart. It would take so little to push me fully over.
“I—I…” Tears gushed down her face.
“What. Did. You. Say. To. Her?” My tone was low and terrifying, and she stumbled back again in fear. “Becca…” Her name came out a warning.
“I told her it was you who embezzled money from the company, that you cut off your father, why he died, and… and…” She hiccupped. I loomed over her, my body pulsating with wrath and violence. “Tha—that the baby was yours.”
As if a fist punched my gut, I staggered back, disbelief overwhelming me, my brain trying to understand what she just said.
“How is that possible? I hadn’t seen you since right after I got out, and it was with our lawyers…”
“I might have suggested we met for a drink, that our connection still too intense to fight our attraction.”
I had seen her for ten minutes before I walked out and hadn’t seen her since the night she showed up in New Orleans. I shook my head in utter disbelief. Would Kinsley believe her so easily? Without even asking if it were true? “How could Kinsley even believe that?”
“I showed her newspaper articles of when you were arrested and later sentenced. And the sonogram of the baby.”
My gaze went back to Becca. Anger bubbled up from the depths of my soul, recalling things Kinsley had said after she came out with Becca, when she said go take care of my family. I lost the woman I loved all because of Becca’s manipulations.
“You lying, deceitful bitch,” I fumed, stepping for her, every bone and muscle shaking with rage.
“I did it because I love you. I saw how you looked at her… I wanted her gone. Nothing between us.”
“Is that why you tried to sleep with me every chance you got? To tell me the baby was mine. Trap me in guilt and obligation to stay with you? Lie for you? You thought the trusting sap who fell for you once would protect you again?”
“I do love you, Smith. That’s never been a lie. Please.” She sobbed, her body bending in distress. “I want this baby to be yours.”
I fucking hated her. Wanted her to burn, but I wouldn’t be the one turning her in.
“You are on your own, Becca. Get the fuck out of my sight and never—I mean, never—contact me again.”
“Smith.” She clung to me, and I shoved her away. “Don’t do this.”
“You have the fucking audacity?” I seethed, my anger stacking on top of me like bricks. I was going to explode.
“I-I love you,” she whimpered.
Right then a wail pierced the air, sirens sounding only blocks away.
“Oh, look at that; they do come faster when you’re an ex-con.” Carter’s voice twisted my head. He leaned against the fence, a smirk on his face as he twirled his cell in his palm.
I blinked at my friend, his gaze meeting mine. I got your back, man. Always.
He knew I would never call, so he did. The truest friend I ever had was the one I met in prison.
“What?” Becca screeched, her head jerked around, then back to me, her eyes saucers filled with pain and terror. “You didn’t!”
“I’m not the liar, sweetheart,” Carter replied, cocky and full of Carter charm. “That’s you.”
“No!” Panic spun her in circles like she was going to run, but in six-inch heels, a short tight dress, and no place to really go, she sputtered, wailing like a banshee.
Lights and sirens came around the corner, coming to a halt, boxing in her car.
“Word of warning.” Carter moved, standing next to me, his attention on Becca. “The itching you feel when you try to sleep is bedbugs and mites. Find the biggest and toughest gal there to be her bitch. Don’t eat the mushroom pie, gives you the runs for a week, and don’t ever pick up the soap if it drops.”
“Rebecca Blackburn. You are under arrest.” Four cops got out of their cars, surrounding the sobbing woman, treating her a lot kinder than what I got. When I had been arrested, my face was slammed into the floor while my friend pointed the finger at me, looking smug when they put me in the back and hauled me off to jail. They both played the victims in court, showing I had been the one “cooking” the books, not them.
They would have probably still been conning me if Bryan hadn’t gotten so greedy. One night heading to my truck after working on site all day, a group of mafia type of men attacked me, spouting I owed them money and next time I would be killed. Instead of going to the hospital, I went to the office, discovering my accounts and books were off. They showed meetings our company never had, businesses we never interacted with, accounts I didn’t know, and shuffled money I wasn’t aware of. I called Bryan to meet me at the office. I was planning to confront him. But he must have known the gig was up and called the police right before he came to the office.
“Smith.” She heaved out my name in a guttural plea as they read her rights, steering her to the back of the car. “Don’t do this,” she cried as they stuffed her in, her eyes black with mascara.
As much as she had done to me, I could feel my strings still being pulled on.
“Don’t.” Carter shook his head. “This is on her. You didn’t call the cops; I did. No need to feel any guilt.”
I looked over at him.
“I heard the whole thing.” He flipped his cell again. “And may have recorded it too.”
“Fuck, man.” I felt such a mix of emotions and contradictions. But the one thing I knew: Carter was someone I trusted with my life. My brother. And in my world, that was everything. “Thank you.”
“Always, mate. I know you would have my back the same way. Bonds you make in there are for life.”
I nodded, watching the police car pulling away, taking my wife to jail. The hours of being questioned and interviewed at the police station still lay ahead of me, court dates and arraignment, but a strange relief relaxed my shoulders, my gut sensing the darkness slowly leaving my life finally.
That there was hope and light at the end of the tunnel.
And that light was Kinsley Maxwell.