We headed back downstairs and grabbed a couple of glasses of iced tea, then took them out to the pool deck to enjoy the night air. We curled up on the double lounger that had quickly become our favorite place out here, and Allie laid her head on my shoulder.
"Have you ever thought of recording that song?" she asked softly. "I know it's obviously not Storm Front's typical music, but I think people would love it."
"I thought about it briefly at the time, but it was too soon. I don't want to release it for profit, but if you're OK with it, maybe we could release it and donate the proceeds to a worthy cause."
She raised up on one elbow to look at me. "I think that would be perfect, honey."She leaned over and gave me a sweet kiss, then laid back down on my shoulder. "Do you have a charity in mind?"
I hesitated, not wanting to upset her again. "I would like to donate to a fund that helps families with children who are struggling with medical bills during or after the death of a parent."
She sighed, "I think that would be perfect. You know, I was so worried that I would have to use all of the life insurance or sell the house when Alex died. His insurance was good, but it didn't come close to paying everything. I kept waiting for a huge hospital bill, but they apparently wrote off what insurance didn't pay after he died. I called about two months later, when I hadn't received anything, and they said the account had a zero balance. I didn't believe them - I was sure they'd made a mistake - but they sent me a statement showing zero balance due."
My body had tensed as she talked. Oh shit, I was so fucked. She was gonna be pissed when she found out, but I knew it would be even worse if I didn't say anything and she found out later.
"Um, OK, please don't get mad, but the hospital didn't write it off," I began, and she jerked back to look at me. "I, uh, overheard you arguing on the phone with the insurance company a couple of months before he died, and I knew those greedy bastards weren't paying nearly enough. So, I made arrangements to pay the balance, so you didn't have to worry about it." I winced at the look on her face as I finished my confession.
"You what???" she demanded, her eyes narrowed, and mouth pinched into a tight line.
"Look, there was no fucking way I was going to let you lose everything just because those greedy motherfuckers didn't pay as much as they should have. You had enough to worry aboutwith raising Gracie, I didn't want you to have to worry about money too."
"But, Nico, I can't even imagine how much that was. You shouldn't have - "
I interrupted her, determined to shut this budding argument down. "Allie, the bottom line is that I have more money than I know what to do with, and there was no fucking way I could have let someone I cared about go through even more shit than she already was. I paid it, and I don't miss even a single penny of it. Now, we're not gonna argue about this, Sunshine."
She glared at me for a moment, then her face slowly softened, and she leaned over to kiss my cheek. "You're an incredible human being, Nico Peretti. Thank you."
She laid back down on my shoulder and I wrapped my arm tightly around her. "So, that was a fight, right? Does that mean we get to have make-up sex now?" I asked, only partly joking.
She snorted out a laugh and smacked my chest lightly. "Not on this lounger we aren't. I'm not taking a chance on my naked ass making the cover of the Daily Dish."
"Nope, you're right. Nobody sees this sweet ass but me," I said with a growl, grabbing a handful and squeezing. God, I loved her curves. She giggled and squirmed against me, and I leaned down to nip at her ear. "You'd better stop moving against me like that, sweetheart. You're making me hard." I grabbed her hand and moved it to the bulge in my crotch. She gently rubbed my cock through the denim, and I groaned and bucked my hips up. I gave her a swift tap on her ass, making her squeal. "Behave yourself, woman."
She laughed and moved her hand back up to rest on the middle of my chest, and we laid there quietly for a while, enjoying the closeness and the quiet of the night. My phone rang suddenly, startling us both. I rolled over on one hip to fish it out of my back pocket and saw Matt's name on the caller ID.
"Hey man, what's up?"
"Uh, I need to talk to you. I would have preferred doing this face to face like a man, but the fucking paps are forcing my hand here. Are you somewhere private that you can talk?" he asked, sounding serious and maybe a little nervous.
I nudged Allie aside and sat up, shooting her a questioning look. "I'm here at home, sitting with Allie. What the fuck is wrong?"
At my words, Allie's gaze sharpened with worry.
"Nothing is wrong, exactly, but this isn't the way we wanted to tell you. Becca and I have been seeing each other. We were going to tell -"
I froze. "What the fuck did you just say to me? You and Becca??? You've been messing around with my little sister?"
I jumped up off the lounger and started pacing around the pool deck. I was gonna fucking kill him. Matt was a total manwhore, worse than I ever was, and he thought he could fuck around with Becca?
Allie jumped up and grabbed my arm, halting my pacing. She put her palms up in a pleading gesture and whispered, "Just calm down!" It registered in the back of mind that she didn't look terribly surprised.
"Just fucking listen, OK?We aren't just messing around, man. We're together, I mean, we're a serious couple. We were going to tell you as soon as the shitshow about you and Allie calmed down, but some fucker with a cellphone snapped pictures of us on the beach and sold them to TMZ. They realized who Becca was and reached out to me for a comment before they run the photos tonight."
I inhaled deeply through my nose and exhaled through my mouth, trying to calm myself down before I reached through the phone and castrated my possibly former best friend.
"Allie is here with me. I'm gonna put you on speaker, hang on," I pulled the phone from my ear and tapped the screen, and grabbed Allie's hand to walk back inside.
"How serious are you, Matt, because if you're just using her as one of your fucktoys, I swear - "
"Don't you fucking dare talk about your sister like that, man!" he roared through the phone, and I stopped walking, looking down at Allie with a resigned shake of my head.
