I’m naked, and he’s fully clothed. I continue to concentrate on how his heart is beating boisterously loud into my ear. It’s as if his heart is declaring his love for me too.
“I love you, Evan,” I utter the words out loud for the first time. Wow. I never told Grayson I loved him, maybe I was waiting to save my love for someone my heart knew truly deserved it.
He bends down, smile on his chiseled face, and kisses my lips.
“Hey, just because I’ve got some making up to do, doesn’t mean you can’t say it back.” I jab him softly in the stomach.
“Oh fuck,” Evan groans.
My eyes widen. “Babe, what’s wrong?” I ask as mist from the bathtub fogs before us. He pulls his button out from his pants, and frowns all the while doing so. I help him unbutton his shirt. As I pull the linen shirt over one shoulder, Evan grimaces. He doesn’t make a peep, but I gasp. I reach down and touch the zigzagged scar over his abs.
“Oh, baby,” I say, tears prickling my eye ducts. “The other morning, I saw your pills… But I thought I was pregnant, and I left without checking on you.”
“Don’t cry, Reese. You are pregnant with my son.”
My fingers feather over, barely touching the tarnished skin. “What happened?”
“It wasn’t the other day that got me into this predicament. So it’s not what happened, it’s who. Salvatore and McGregor happened.”
“What?” I lick my lips, gazing at a thousand stitches along his golden skin.
“Your grandfather thought it would be wise to test my loyalty to you before he allowed me to see you.” Evan shrugs, “He somehow told your father’s old partner that you blamed him for Milo’s death. With McGregor’s past and how he’d been treated by the LAPD, the Union, and I’m prettysure people off the fucking streets, he went postal. Sal played him. I got a text from your phone.”
“My phone? I only called you the one time, you angrily argued about me coming home.” I place a hand to my forehead and groan, realizing Matteo had to be the culprit.
“Yeah, well when I went inside your place looking for you, McGregor took off on me.”
Moist air funnels through my lungs. “Oh boy, you’ve had a helluva time searching for me, haven’t you?”
“I killed McGregor, besides that, not too much of an issue.”
“You, you killed McGregor for me?” My lips are sucked into my mouth; I bite on the soft flesh and think. “For me?”
“You’re mine, Reese.” Evan says, unbuckling his belt. “I saw him as a threat that needed to be extinguished.”
“Jamie and I murdered a man before.” I blurt. Evidently my heart craves full and utter transparency.
“When? How?”
“We were teens. The guy… he was one of my mom’s boyfriends, I guess she didn’t marry the truly disgusting pigs after all,” I turn toward the tub. Steam bellows in the air due to the rush of hot water. The tub is to the brink. I turn the spouts.
“Talk to me,” Evan is behind me in an instant. This is me running away from a hard conversation and he knows it.
Determining never to have another secret from this man, I turn around. His pants riding low on his narrowed hips. All bruised and banged up, my love for him grows stronger still.
“Tell me,” he urges.
“Oh, Evan, I never want to hide a thing from you. There’s a war raging in my heart and my mind. I don’t even know what just got into me to mention this, since I promised Jamie I’d never tell, even after Riker, he said he didn’t mind—”
“Reese, stop going off on a tangent. Tell me.”
“Mom had gotten mad at her boyfriend for something or the other. She was always temperamental. She’d gone out with her sister. I was home, dumb as I am, listening to earphones, I’m usually smarter when my mom gets into fights, being that certain folks like to use me as a form of retaliation, I run quicker than she does. But not that day,” I shrug.
“Tangent.”
“Alright. The creep let himself into my locked bedroom. He offered me the chance to give him a blowjob, even had a crumply Jefferson in his hand as payment. He took my hard ‘no’ for a soft ‘yes’, and the fucker slugged me in the mouth.” My gander flits away from Evan, he’s angry at the words I’m saying. Do I sound cheap for telling such truths?
Shoving a hand through my tangled tresses, I continue, “Jamie was on his way by. I had forgotten he wanted to see this new Liam Neeson movie. Jamie must have heard and bashed his lights out with a lamp. Jamie didn’t mean to hit the bastard so hard, but … we took the guy’s body across the street. Honestly, I lived in the hood, so it wasn’t too hard to nudge his lifeless body in the right direction. We made it look like…”
“A gang initiation,” we say together.
Evan’s hand grazes the back of my neck, his eyes close and he breathes in the hair at the crown of my head as he sometimes does. “I fucking hate your mother, Reese. There, the truth’s out. I had to say it.”
“I had a feeling. Not many people like her. I’m sorry, I’m sorry she is with your father.”
“He’ll grow the fuck up one day, hopefully sooner rather than later.”
“Yeah, I hope it’s sooner.” I glance away, and then I tell the truth, “I don’t want her bullshit and the dynamics of their relationship to ruin what we have, Evan. That’s happened before with friends of mine. Sheesh, what am I saying? I don’t like her most times either, her love is suffocating.”
“Nobody will come between
