Chapter 12 #2
It was late, and I didn’t want to overstay an already awkward situation. One that had me nearly weeping on my way out. “I should probably go.”
Ford walked closer and snagged me with that intense glare. “We aren’t done talking, Rose.”
“Oh, I’m done, Ford. Completely finished, in fact.” I angrily explained, while my voice shook.
Connor looked between us, a dip between his brows forming. “Come on, Roy. Come hang out for a while. Please?”
Ford held my gaze, unwavering and determined. I wanted to go lick my wounds in private.
“I just want to go home, Connor. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Not until you hear me out, and you understand what happened here tonight,” Ford snapped.
Pointing at my chest defensively, I said, “I know exactly what happened. I cockblocked you. I’m so sorry, Ford, but I left in plenty of time for you to salvage that.”
“Goddammit, I was never going to fuck her. I was never going to kiss her. Fuck, you’re going to hate me for this too—” he suddenly dipped, aiming for my waist. Before I could even sputter another word, he’d pulled me up and tossed me over his shoulder.
“Okay, guess we’re doing things the hard way. Nice to know you two haven’t changed at all,” Connor droned while Ford began walking toward the kitchen.
“The cellar?” Connor asked, following Ford.
“Ford, I’m going to kill you.” I seethed while I hung over his shoulder, getting the perfect view of his ass. I lifted my head in time to see Connor smile down at me, but it was more of a smirk.
It had been years since I had gone down in the cellar, and I knew the same was true for Connor.
Which was probably why he looked amazed as Ford carried me down the stairs like I was a sack of potatoes.
The drafty air wrapped around me instantly.
Everything was upside down for me, but I saw the shelves that had always been lined up since I was a kid, and I thought I saw a long table with chairs around it, but I wasn’t sure.
“You guys have church down here?” Connor asked after passing the table.
I tried to swing my head back to see, but Ford continued walking past the shelves until we were drawing closer to the back.
“Come on, there’s a heater in the back by some couches and chairs,” Ford replied.
Why didn’t he answer the question?
Finally, Ford flipped me over his shoulder and gently set me down on my feet, but I was so lightheaded, I fell back onto something soft.
Underneath me was a two-seater couch, across from me was a recliner which Connor took, and between the furniture was a space heater.
Ford laid a blanket down over me before taking a seat next to me, spreading his legs wide.
Which only made me think of Jasmine sitting atop him.
“You two seem…the same, but different,” Connor smiled as his eyes bounced between Ford and me.
Ford spoke first, replying with a bit of an incredulous scoff. “It’s been six years since you’ve seen us, Connor…so maybe you don’t exactly have a good frame of reference for it.”
“I’m sorry for that, I really am. I have my reasons, but I’m not talking about how you look. There’s like an animosity between you two…what’s going on?”
Before Ford could say there was always animosity between us, I slid my leg over my knee and bounced it. “Well, right before you got here, I nearly walked in on him fucking Jasmine Hersh.”
Connor’s brows raised like he was surprised. “The cheerleader from high school?”
“Yes, that one!” I said, right as Ford groaned.
“We were never going to fuck because I would never—I didn’t even touch her,” Ford cut off, trying to defend his actions.
I gaped at him, swinging my gaze. “She was straddling you, Ford. She was kissing—”
Connor’s laugh was so loud that it had me snapping my mouth shut and leaning into the couch.
“Wait, are you two together?”
Ford was the first to act outraged. “Nothing is going on between us. Just because I didn’t want to fuck Jasmine doesn’t mean I care about her.”
“Then why did you drag me down here?” I snidely shot back to which Ford glared.
Connor continued to look between us before smiling. “I’ve missed you guys.”
“Why don’t you tell us where the hell you’ve been and why you left without so much as saying goodbye.” I snarked, irritated with them both.
Connor winced and then drug his hand through his hair. “It’s a long fucking story.”
“We knew you were alive, Connor. We just didn’t know where you went.
It obviously wasn’t college,” I softly explained, keeping my old hurt out of my tone.
I didn’t want to marry Connor back then, but when he’d disappeared the next day without saying goodbye, it hurt.
What was worse was when I had asked if I could visit him at his college during a season when I missed him, he’d ghosted me.
When he didn’t reply, I was dead set on making the trip until his mother finally explained that he wasn’t there. That he was keeping it a secret as to where he was, and they weren’t allowed to share until he gave them the okay to do so.
Six years later, we still never knew where he’d been all this time.
“You guys know that Jameson isn’t my biological dad, right?”
Both Ford and I nodded, and I felt the man next to me shift so that he was somehow taking up even more space. I had my legs pulled up, covered by the blanket. My toes nearly touched Ford’s hip and would if he kept moving. I wouldn’t leave first; he would have to.
“Well, I did some research about who my bio dad was…Mom was willing to tell me a few things, but I could tell it was sort of hard for her. So, I looked into it on my own, and it led me back to the Chaos Kings.”
“In Richland…” I stated, trailing off as more alarm bells rang in my head. I needed to talk to my sister.
Connor nodded before launching into his story.
While I was listening, my mind kept going over odd details from Taryn and a few strange ones from Ford. I sensed I was being lied to. I could understand that coming from Ford, but if I were being lied to about his place in the club, that meant my dad was in on it, and everyone else.
But if Taryn was lying to me…
There was no way that I would be able to process that.
My brain seemed to agree because before I knew it, my eyes were drooping and I was nodding off.
I heard bits and pieces of the conversation, and at one point Ford laughed, but I couldn’t keep up.
Not even when his hands trailed over my feet, lightly rubbing the soles.
I think I tried to kick him, which resulted in both my feet being pulled into his lap.
I remembered lying odd on the arm of the couch, and I heard Connor warning me that my neck was going to get a crick in it. Ford hadn’t stopped rubbing my feet, so my eyes fluttered closed and I fell asleep.
Something poked my cheek enough that my eyes cracked open. Where the hell was I? Connor telling me he was moving me because I looked uncomfortable as fuck came back to mind.
Where had he put me?
Lifting my head, I glanced around and came face-to-face with a firm, hard stomach.
Blue denim was under my face and on my arm was a limb, covered in black cotton.
Ford.
Why was I lying in Ford’s lap?
I pulled my arm out from under his, and his hips jutted up the smallest bit. That’s when I realized what had been poking my cheek.
OhmyGod.
Ford was hard as a rock, thickening even more by the second.
I lifted my face again, then placed my hands down on his thighs to try to push up, but the second I began moving, so did he.
His hand came to my head, where his fingers ran through my hair, but the pressure on my skull had me pinned against his thigh, which meant I felt every inch of him harden inside of his jeans.
With another thrust of his hips, I wondered if he were doing this on purpose.
He groaned and muttered something that sounded like my name, which had me trying to leave his grip so I could see his eyes. His head was tilted back, resting against the back of the couch, but he seemed like he was asleep.
Was he dreaming about holding my head like this, while he thrust his hips and…
Nope, I could not even fathom him wanting me like that because I’d be right where we left off yesterday if I did. So, instead, I slid out from under his hold and scrambled to my feet.
His eyes shot open, but he seemed disoriented, like he wasn’t sure why he was in the cellar, and more importantly, why I was in his lap.
“Why was I sleeping on you?” I asked, pushing pieces of my hair back into place.
Ford stretched, and as his hips lifted, I could see the imprint of his hard-on even more than before. “Relax, Rose. Connor moved you before he left, said you were going to tweak your neck.”
“So he moved me so that my head was in your lap?” Why did my voice sound so panicked?
Nothing happened, it was fine. Even if something did, I was an adult, and Ford was…
well, if something were to happen, I wouldn’t be upset about it on a physical level.
My outrage was confined to the pesky emotional level.
He had only ever broken my heart, which made me reluctant to stare at how thick that outline was in his jeans or how good he looked just waking up from sleep, while his eyes still held that droopy, sleepy quality.
Ford smiled up at me. “After I told him to, yes.”
My brows curved as I tried to process that. Since we were in the cellar, it was impossible to see how early it was, but my phone revealed it was just after seven in the morning. I’d slept here overnight. I’d slept in Ford Ryan’s lap overnight.
“Do you know where this couch is sitting?” His sleep-roughened voice scraped against some place tender and extremely aware inside of me.
I hid it by turning my back to him. “In the cellar.”
He slowly got to his feet, and I refused to see if that pipe was still thick against his thigh. “No, this is sitting directly over the door that used to lead down into the tunnels. Which means, this is exactly where—”
“You kissed me,” I whispered.
I wanted to press into the moment and ask all of my questions, but I was so scared that he’d ruin it by being his typical dickish self. Before I had a chance to say anything, he walked closer. “We didn’t finish our conversation last night, Rose.”
“We weren’t in a conversation last night, Ford.”
His smirk was devastating. “You were explaining how last night, while we were talking about our custody agreement of Gus, your boyfriend—”
“He’s not, and never was, my boyfriend.”
Ford stared at me. “You kissed him.”
“He kissed me,” I argued.
“You kissed him back, Rose. While I was standing right fucking there.”
Why was he being so stubborn about this? “You kissed Jas—”
He was in my face within seconds, seething. “I never kissed her. I haven’t kissed any—”
Trailing off, he shifted on his feet, releasing a curse.
“You haven’t kissed what?” I asked on a breathy whisper.
The door leading down to the cellar opened, and footsteps echoed around the space, breaking the moment. Ford stepped back and glanced to the side, likely trying to see who had come downstairs.
“Ford!” That was my father’s voice.
The man in front of me cursed before hanging his head. “This is going to be pretty bad. You might want to head upstairs.”
“But he’ll see me,” I whispered, inching closer to him. The cellar wasn’t huge, but we were currently hidden from anyone who walked down.
Ford’s smile was small, but it was genuine.
“That’s why it’s gonna be bad, Rose. He’s going to know that you slept down here with me, and it’s going to lead to another round of him hitting me.”
I flinched, remembering the last time they’d been in a fight. “He hurt you last time.”
“That’s because I didn’t fight back.”
Dad roared for Ford again, and I chose to fold the blanket that I had slept under last night so it looked less like we’d slept together and more like we were down here talking. My hands were in my hair, adjusting and fixing it when I felt Ford’s fingers raking through the ends.
I froze and stared at him.
“This time, if you’re not here, I can fight back. So maybe slide past him quickly, and then run up there.”
My dad’s voice rose again. “I need to talk to you about Connor’s visit. He reached out to me as a courtesy, but we need to chat about what the fuck he meant by you being down here with Royce.”
“He sold us out!” I mouthed quietly.
Ford didn’t seem surprised, but when he moved to step away from our little furniture circle, I gripped his hand.
“We can run, I bet there’s still a door that leads outside somewhere in here.” I had heard stories about it from Penelope when I dated Connor. He was a baby when she’d slipped through one during an attack from a rival club or something.
Ford shook his head and leaned closer. His mouth was right at my ear and his hand landed on my waist as he said. “All that was sealed off years ago. Tunnels, doors, all of it. There’s no way in or out.”
That didn’t seem safe, but I’d save my breath on that.
It was time to face my father. I glanced around for my jacket so it would hide my shirt and how low the neckline dipped, so there would be one less reason to murder Ford.
Once I found it, I pulled it on and zipped it all the way up to my chin.
Right as I finished, my dad rounded the shelf that had been concealing us.
His green eyes blazed while his jaw locked. “Royce.”
“Dad.” My hands moved to the back of my jeans where I tucked them.
His leather cut hung over his white T-shirt. The short length drew my gaze to his wrist where he had a tattoo of three flowers, one of which represented me.
“Want to explain why you slept down here?”
I wasn’t a child, so I didn’t have to explain myself, but for the sake of him not hitting Ford, I did.
“Connor said he wanted to see us, hang out like old times. We came down here, and I fell asleep on the couch.”
His gaze swung over to Ford. “And where did you sleep?”
Internally I screamed for him to say the recliner and lie. It would be so much easier if he didn’t explain what really happened, but that wasn’t Ford.
He was an idiot.
“Also on the couch.”
Dad’s lips peeled back right as he stepped forward as if he was about to punch Ford again.
I took that as my opportunity to leave. I knew Ford wanted to defend himself, and if this was how they settled things, then I’d let them.
Besides, I had a list to get back to and items that needed to be checked off, and an ex-boyfriend to corner and demand answers from.