“Baby, I swear?—”
“I believe you, Hunter. It’s just I had some issues with my form of birth control and had to stop it. Since the fiasco with you, I decided to swear off men. I just didn’t see a reason to go back on it right now.”
“Ty would like a brother,” he purrs, making my heart skip a beat.
“I don’t …”
“I like the idea of filling you with my cum, staying buried inside of you until I’m sure my seed takes root. Your stomach stretched with our child.” His words should scare the hell out of me. I definitely shouldn’t feel a fresh wave of sticky, wetness sliding against my thighs, or the tingling that spreads through my body. “We haven’t had time to talk about our pasts, Harper. Let me just tell you right now, with my history, I wouldn’t want that with any other woman but you. You are it for me. I trust you completely. I trust my son with you. I trust you in ways I’ve neverexperienced before. I don’t worry that you have control over me. I relish it, because that means you’re in my life and that we’re building a future.”
“But we?—”
I don’t get to finish my sentence, because there’s a pounding on my front door that’s so loud it makes me jump.
“What the hell?” Hunter growls, jackknifing out of the bed.
“Hunter,” I cry, trying to scurry off the bed. I grab his shirt and throw it over my head. I look up in time to see him cinching the drawstring to joggers while stalking out of the room. I chase after him, as he heads toward my living room.
“Open up this motherfucking door! I know you’re in there, BB! You son of a bitch!”
“What in the world?” I gasp.
“That’s my fucking ex,” Hunter explains, looking at me, his face filled with rage.
I jump as the heavy pounding noise hits my door again. It’s so hard that the door rattles. There are three small panels of glass at the top of the door and one of them shatters. I can see the top of a baseball bat.
“Get the fuck out here! I want my son!”
“Dad,” Ty cries as him and Slider come running up from the basement.
“Did you tell your mother where we were?” Hunter asks Ty.
“I said get the fuck out here!” his ex screams again. The baseball hits again and I go over to pick up the phone and dial 9-1-1.
Hunter sees me and nods. Then his attention turns back to his son. “Ty, did you tell her?”
“I told her we were moving in with Beau … and …”
“And what, son?”
“That I didn’t want to see her this weekend because I want to be with you and Beau,” he whispers. “It’s not like I hardly eversee her anyway, Dad. I just didn’t feel like fooling with her. I’m not ordered to see her. I only agreed to go now and then because she had a freaking meltdown. She threatened to …”
“What?” Hunter asks, as I whisper that there’s a domestic disturbance and a woman using a bat on my front door to the 9-1-1 dispatcher. I confirm my address before warning her there are children involved.
“It’s nothing,” Ty says, refusing to look at his dad.
I hang up looking at Ty in concern. His body is literally shivering, and he looks pale as a ghost. I don’t want to make matters worse for him, but I can’t just stand here. I go over to Ty and hold him close. I’m more than a little surprised when he gives me his weight and his hand finds mine, taking it in a white-knuckle death grip.
“Tell me, Ty. Now,” Hunter orders, his voice gruff and full of anger.
“She threatened to hurt herself if I didn’t spend time with her,” he confesses and my heart hurts. How anyone could say that to a child—to their own child—is completely out of my realm of thought. The fear and pain that Ty must have felt is so disgusting that it makes my stomach roll. I can hear sirens, even over Hunter’s ex—who is still screaming obscenities.
“I’ll just take the boys to the kitchen. They can help me fix breakfast,” I mumble lamely.
“Thanks, baby,” Hunter says, walking toward me. He reaches over and ruffles his fingers through Ty’s hair. “It’s going to be okay, son. Go with Beau.”
“Dad, I don’t want Mom in trouble. She doesn’t handle stress well. She might?—”
“That’s not your worry, Ty. You’re the kid here. It may not seem like it, but your mother is a grown-ass woman. Her problems are not your weight to bear. Go along. Let me deal with this. It’s going to be okay.”
