Talkin' Trash
Page 43

“I’ve had people on it for a couple of months,” I admitted. “There’s nothing there. Not a single thing. It’s like she’s a ghost. Hell, even with her and Rome having a baby together and her being in his life for four years, he doesn’t know anything more about her. It’s like she only existed here for a few years while she raised her son. Before Rome’s son died of leukemia, Tara left, stating that she couldn’t do it anymore. But, I’m beginning to think that there’s something a whole lot more going on than we’re seeing.”
Conleigh grunted. “I wish I knew what it was. I’m not sure what to do.”
Her admission was one that I agreed with.
On one hand, I was so angry at her for doing what she did that I wasn’t sure that I’d ever be able to let it go. But on the other, I was looking at this woman, who looked like she was beaten down and broken, and I was wondering if there was anything that I could do to help.
However, at this point, I wasn’t sure that anyone could do anything to help but her.
I had a feeling that whatever it was that she could do wasn’t going to be anything good.
I pushed through the door to my house and closed it behind Conleigh after she entered.
Her face started to take in the house around me, and I winced.
“So…you’ve been redecorating,” she said, trying to lighten the mood.
I snorted. “Sure. If that’s what you want to call it.”
She walked farther into the room, stopping beside the couch and picking up a bag of half-eaten pita chips, placing them on the coffee table.
“I hope your bed doesn’t look like this,” she admitted.
“I haven’t changed the sheets since the last time you were in them. My pillow barely smells like you anymore,” I blurted. “Conleigh, I can’t do this.”
She frowned. “Do what?”
“I can’t be here with you if you don’t think that we can fix things,” I spouted. “We need to be able to fix what I broke if we’re going to make this work.”
She came at me then, her anger palpable. “There’s nothing to fix. Not between me and you. We’ve never been the problem; it’s always been everyone else. So, no, there’s no fixing what’s wrong with me and you, because it was never broken. What does need to be fixed are my reactions to things that I can’t control. I know that you wouldn’t ever set out to purposely hurt me, but it’s going to happen again. You’re too big of a name for the media not to spin things in the most unflattering or untruthful ways, and I’m going to have no choice but to react to that. And I’ll apologize for that now, because it’s going to happen, and I’m not going to be able to control it.”
I pulled her into my arms. “I’ll quit football.”
She smacked me on the upper back, causing my skin to sting.
“You’re not quitting, fool. If you quit, who will I watch in their tight football pants?”
I snorted and dropped my head into her neck, inhaling her scent deeply.
The feel of her so close was causing things inside of me to stir, and I wanted nothing more than to start ripping her clothes off right then and there.
She obviously agreed with me on that, because she pushed back from me and started to rip at her clothes.
The articles of clothing that she had covering her were hastily thrown next to a few articles of mine, and suddenly I had a hot, naked woman in my arms and I was carrying her to my bedroom.
I hadn’t lied.
My room was a pigsty, and I hadn’t cleaned anything in months, including my sheets—just like I’d told her.
Yes, it was probably gross, but I couldn’t force myself to do it with the smell of her still barely clinging to the sheets.
The moment she was down on her back in my bed, I followed her, roughly shoving at my jeans as I did.
Once I had them down low enough to get my cock out, I reared up and lined my cock up with her entrance, sinking inside a breath later.
As she fully surrounded me, I realized that she was right.
What we had was right. It didn’t need to be fixed.
I just needed to believe in it.
And once I was inside of her, I did.
She was home, and always would be.
Chapter 21
I didn’t know he was planning to breathe so loudly when I married him.
-Conleigh to her mother
Conleigh
A man glowered at me, and I had the distinct feeling that he was set on not liking me from the start.
I was at a party that the Bear Bottom Guardians were hosting, and I was uncomfortable as hell about being there after everything that had happened between Linc and me.
“Wade,” he rumbled. “My name is Wade.”
But, with his leg up in a cast like it was, we were both stuck with each other, so I played nice even though his glare was disconcerting.
I nodded. “Is that your real name, or your nickname?”
He frowned and looked at me a little more closely. “Real. Not all of us go by nicknames. Some of the given names are pretty weird as it is. Though Bayou goes by his middle name, but that was before the MC came around. His real name is Benson.”
That was true.
There was Linc and Hoax, Bayou and Wade, Castiel and Liner—both of whom weren’t here yet but were supposed to be coming. And those were just guys I knew their names. There were more men in the MC, but since I’d seen Linc in person last at one of the parties that they hosted, they’d added quite a few new members.
“So, you were shot in the leg?”
That was the one and only time Linc had called me over the last two months, and I’d listened to that voicemail over and over again, willing myself to forgive him and move on.
Now I wished I had listened to my inner self and gone with what I’d known was right, and I wouldn’t have wasted another month being mad over something that hadn’t even happened.
“Yeah,” Wade grunted. “What’s it to you?”
“Don’t be a dick,” Hoax growled. “Just because your wife hates you doesn’t mean that you have to be mean to every woman that you encounter.”
I snorted.
“Just tell him how you really feel, Hoax,” I snickered.
Linc’s phone, that I was once again holding, rang for a third time, and I growled.
Wade lifted his eyebrow at me and said, “Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“It’s not my phone,” I admitted.
“Answer it,” Hoax grumbled, his eyes closed where he was laying back on the couch. “My head hurts like a motherfucker.”
I snorted and pressed ignore, but I did open up the phone and clear the missed call, frowning when I saw the local number.
“Huh,” I said. “Weird.”
“What’s weird?” Linc sat down beside me, making the couch dip awkwardly so I had no choice but to rearrange myself so that I was laying against him or risk face planting into the man on the other side of me.
Hoax opened his eyes from where he was planted in the seat beside me and glared at Linc. “What part of ‘I have a headache’ did you not understand?”
“The part where I wasn’t here for that conversation,” Linc muttered. “You look weird without your cast on.”
I looked at the arm that had once been cast and felt my lips twitch.
As long as you weren’t comparing one arm to the other, he looked perfectly normal. It was when both arms were crossed across his chest, like they were now, that you could see how pasty white one arm was compared to the tanned skin on the other.
“Not like I can help it, fucker,” Hoax growled. “Go fuck yourself.”
Hoax had healed fully, other than random headaches he occasionally got, like the one that he was currently fighting. Apparently, they were so debilitating that he wouldn’t be able to work or drive until it went away.
Which made me feel awful.
“You should go get your headache checked out,” I admitted. “It could be that you have something else wrong.”
Hoax grunted. “I’ll ask the pretty nurse next time I see her.”
I snorted. “The pretty nurse told me that you were too scared to go anywhere near her.”