Chapter 51 #2
“Don’t stress, we’ll be home in a minute.” Brody raced along Main Street and then took the steep hill upward into the exclusive neighborhood that housed the Sinclair mansion.
“It’s not my home, and I doubt your dad would like to see me there,” I muttered. On one hand, it would be embarrassing to get kicked out of the house by John, if he was home. On the other, maybe I could grab some of my stuff.
We passed through the imposing metal gates and drove up the driveway.
Brody got out without a word and made his way around to my side of the car. As soon as he opened the passenger door, I smacked him with my crutch.
He just chuckled, then reached inside and lifted me into his arms.
Inside, he kicked the door shut, and I listened for sounds of life.
“We’re alone,” he said.
Heat crept through me at the glint in his eyes. He looked like a starving man whose food of choice was me.
He put me down, and I smacked him again on the chest as hard as I could. My frustration at the last few days of commanding messages and nothing else was welling up and running over.
“Fuck, I’ve missed you.” Brody had the audacity to smirk at me. Then he stepped closer and pulled me into his arms.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Hugging the woman I love, what does it look like?”
My head swirled. Confused, hurt, hopeful. None of it made sense.
“The woman you love who was rotting in the hospital, and you didn’t bother to come and see, or call—”
“I had to go to New York, I told you. I messaged you.”
“Yeah, ‘get some rest’, ‘go to bed’, ‘eat all your lunch’, ‘stop watching true crime docs and getting anxious.’ What kind of messages were those? Did you have a live feed of my hospital room?” I joked and then nearly died as he nodded.
“Of course I did. All the rooms in the private suites are fitted with CCTV. Though, rest assured, I was the only one watching. I’d never allow anyone else to.”
“You were watching me?” I repeated, my face hot and scratchy. Some of the choicer things I’d said about Brody and his father in the last few days replayed in my head. Hmm, maybe he’d brought me here to kill me and get rid of the body in the backyard…
“I’m always watching you, heathen. I can’t look away,” he murmured, tucking my hair back behind my ear.
I shook my head. “I don’t understand you. You’re always watching, but you go and get my mom in trouble, and you care about me, but you don’t care if my sister is kicked out of her special school—”
“Who said I didn’t care? Of course I care. If you care about it, I care about it,” Brody said simply.
I let out a long, incredulous breath. The panic and disappointment in my chest were gradually morphing into relief and hope.
“I won’t lie about wanting our parents to get divorced. I wish it had happened fucking yesterday. That marriage never should have happened in the first place, though I’ll always be grateful for it, as it brought you to me.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “And you do know that I’m not going to continue our… situationship or whatever you’re calling it, while my mother is destitute on the street and Cici loses her place at school?”
“First of all, call our relationship some ambiguous bullshit term again and I’ll put you across my fucking knee and spank some sense into you.
You’ve been warned. I won’t tolerate it.
Second of all, your mother and sister won’t be destitute.
Of course I’ll take care of them. They’re your family. I’ll always take care of them.”
“I don’t understand.” I gave up on trying to figure this mercurial man out.
He sighed. “I went to New York to speak to my father. That was part of taking care of your family. He needed to understand something, and now he does.” He gazed down at me. “Come on, we have to sit, because I can’t stand watching you in pain.”
“Yet you watched me for days stressing about our… relationship.” I rolled my eyes at his ridiculous threat of spanking me if I called it a situationship again, but also not trusting that he wouldn’t do it.
We sat in the sitting room. The doors were open to the pool, the weather warm, sun filling the space. The scent of lavender from the pots lining the walkway drifted to me.
“I had a PI follow your mother initially because, yes, I didn’t want any of you in my family. I’ll admit that. It was, however, before I knew you. Once I did, once I… realized what we were, I didn’t call the PI off because I needed to not be legally bound to you.”
I blinked at him. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Call me old-fashioned, but I believe it’s still frowned upon to marry your sister, step or not.”
“Marry,” I repeated, numb.
He nodded. “So, you see, I had to find a way to drive your mother and my father apart. I figured that as soon as they were divorced, you’d rejoin the family in a different capacity. Wife.”
I could only stare at him.
“I was going to put it to my father, make sure your mother was well provided for— though that wouldn’t matter once we were married—and explain to him how I’d provide for her and your sister, but it wasn’t going to be some big dramatic thing.
Then thanks to a mix-up, my father got the photos of your mother and her boyfriend prematurely.
I apologize for that, though you’ll come to see, it wasn’t solely my fault. ”
He paused.
“Well? Go on, don’t leave me hanging,” I protested. I was still reeling from the shock of Brody talking so casually about marriage. I needed time to recover.
“So, I had an attorney look into the prenup. Airtight, of course, including that damn morality clause, which your mother broke. But then my PI came through with something else. Something he’d discovered while watching your mother.”
“What?”
Brody smirked at me. It was that good old arrogant smirk that had always driven me crazy. The smirk of a guy who planned to win at everything he did.
“My father broke it first.”
Shock hit me, followed swiftly by fury. “Your father was cheating on my mom already?”
Brody nodded.
“Who with?”
He laughed. “You might not believe this, it’s pretty unexpected but—Arthur.”
I stared at him. “Arthur?” I repeated. “His assistant, Arthur?”
Brody nodded. “One and the same.”
I sat back, stunned. “But he’s been his assistant for years and years.”
“Two decades to be precise, and I’d reckon they’ve been together at least that long.”
“So, my mom was the beard?” I asked.
Brody nodded. “As was my mom, I suppose. I don’t know if she ever really knew why she was so lonely in the marriage. Cal and I certainly had no idea.”
“So… your father had a long-term partner, married my mom, and never let her know about his arrangement, and continued to sleep with Arthur the entire time?”
Brody nodded. “So, you see, the prenup is null and void. He broke it first, and your mother deserves every penny of the big fat settlement he’s going to offer her to not go public with all of this.”
I shifted my gaze to the backyard, where bees moved lazily over the swaying stalks of purple. The last of the season. Next season, it would be winter, snowy and cold. When everything went to hibernate, and not even the sun could break through the clouds.
But this time, it looked like I wouldn’t be alone.
Brody took my hand, bringing me back to the present, and all my worries about our relationship and the future burst inside me, an overfilled water balloon, and I was crying.
“What the hell?” Brody murmured and pulled me onto his lap, careful not to touch my foot. “Why are you crying? I’ve been trying to fix everything so you don’t cry.”
“I’m just so… relieved,” I bit out.
“About your mom?” he prodded.
I nodded. “And about… you.”
“Me? What did I do?”
I let out a strangled laugh. “Except for disappearing for days, not telling me what was going on—”
“I was texting you,” Brody pointed out.
“And it wasn’t enough! I needed you here, I needed your voice, I needed…” I trailed off and used his hand to cup my cheek. “I needed this.”
Brody smiled, a slow grin that lit up his face like a sunrise. “Fuck, you’ve got it bad for me, heathen, haven’t you?”
“Ugh, you’re so full of yourself.”
“And you’re so into it, cheer captain, tell the truth. You’re crazy about me.” He tilted my face back and forced me to look at him. “Absolutely wild.”
I rolled my eyes, wiping away my tears.
He laughed, the bastard, and kissed my ear, then leaned his mouth close and spoke in a low whisper.
“You do know it’ll never hold a candle to how I feel about you, right? There’s no competition between us as to who cares more. I’m the winner. I’ll always be the winner. You can never unseat me. I’m sorry, I know you hate to lose.”
He trailed soft kisses along my jaw, slowly making his way to my mouth.
“Don’t cry, it breaks my fucking heart.”
“Well then, don’t disappear on me. It breaks my fucking heart,” I repeated.
He nodded. “Understood. Now, I’m going to take you upstairs, to our bathroom, and run you a bath with these salts I got in New York. Potassium and magnesium, they’re great for recovery,” he muttered, peppering my face with kisses while he spoke.
“You’re such a health nut,” I murmured, finally relaxing against him.
“Hmm, especially your health. It’s my new top priority, so prepare for rehabbing that foot, and gym workouts, and stretching routines, and plenty of saunas and cold plunges. I need to make sure you’re here with me, for as long as I can keep you.”
“That sounds awful,” I murmured, my breath catching as he nipped at my neck, his teeth deliciously sharp. “But I guess I’ll do it, if we’re together.”
Brody pulled back and smiled, sending my heart thundering. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be than literally anywhere with you. I really fucking felt it in New York. By your side is my home.”
I had no answer for that, because what could you say to words that took your breath away?
Then he stood and lifted me against his chest.
“Now, let’s go and strengthen your muscles with a nice soak.” He carried me toward the stairs. “So I can fuck you until they give out.”