Page 63 of Worth Risking It

“Hair bleach, dye, and scissors. Get to it.”

Though her expression told me quite clearly she didn’t approve, she also didn’t argue as I shimmied past her and left her alone. Tugging my jacket closed, I zipped it and went outside, curling my shoulders to my ears. I shuddered against the cold, my feet crunching the snow. Climbing behind the wheel of my truck, I shut the door and started the engine, cracking the window just a bit to light a cigarette.

Turning up the radio, the words of Grenade by Bruno Mars canceled out the silence. My heartrate paused, the corner of my mouth curling with a sad smile. This was Chastity’s favorite song. Many times, before I opened my eyes to what a wonderful human being she was, she had tortured me with this tune, playing it over and over, singing at the top of her lungs, just to piss me off.

As time went on and our friendship grew with her confidence, she even started car dancing, bobbing around her seat, performing her own private concert just for me.

Then, when things shifted and we became lovers, she would lay back, her head resting on the seat, watching me drive, her fingers tracing my jaw while she sang all the lyrics about what she would do for me.

I took a long drag, filling my lungs, my sight zoning out the windshield slowly covering with snow. Christ, I missed her. It had been almost two weeks since I’d seen her. Going from seeing her sometimes twenty hours out of the day, every day, to nothing in ten days was hard. It was too dangerous to take pictures with her, so I didn’t even have any to look at and remind myself of how gorgeous shew was.

Digging out my phone, I pulled up Milo’s contact and called him.

“Hey, what’s going on?”

“Not much. I’m sorry I haven’t come home yet, I just…I been dealing with a few things.”

“No, man, it’s cool. I get it. I can’t even imagine what’s going on in your head.”

The familiar ding of the elevator indicated he and Chastity were back home and not in Florida anymore. A moment later, the creak of a door let me know he was in the basement.

“Hi, baby,” I heard her in the background.

My heart skipped, a weak smile curling my mouth.

“No, no,” she whined. “No phone. Massage time.”

And the excitement crashed, a muted curse falling from my tongue. It sickened me, cramping my stomach to know within ten minutes of me hanging up this phone, they would be having sex. It was a lot easier to deal with her being intimate with Milo when it was just a given fact, not something I knew was happening as it was happening.

I coughed my heart from my throat and took a drag of my cigarette. What the hell was I going to do? If she and I never got caught, could I seriously do this for another thirty, forty years, or more?

What was I going to do when they decided to have their second child? So long as my plan panned out perfectly, I had the first one covered. The second, I would have no choice but to find a woman.

One day, I would have to get married, or at least a steady girlfriend. I couldn’t prolong the inevitable forever.

“Hang on, baby girl. It’s Wyatt.”

“Oh.”

There was a faint pause just before that tiny syllable that knocked my chest like a sledgehammer.

“So, you doing all right, man?”

“Hm?” My pinky rubbed circles between my eyes, my lids clenched, the cigarette dangling in my face. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be home tomorrow by lunch.”

“You sure? No rush, Wyatt. I’d rather you take a few days to yourself and come back with a straight head than come back too early and not all be here, you know?”

“No, I’m good. I’m taking care of a last detail, and then coming home after I wake up.”

“Anything you need help with?”

My sight darted through the driver’s window that was fogging, to look at the front of the house. I doubted Milo would be too thrilled to know I was harboring his runaway sister-in-law. My list of betrayals toward the man I was born to protect was growing.

“Naw, I’m good. I just wanted to touch base with you and let you know what was going on.”

He paused for a moment, his tone gruff when he spoke again. “Hey, man, I’m sorry about Meyers. I wish I could have been there for you.”

My lids closed, my elbow propping on the window to rest my temple to my thumb. The man was like my brother, and I was in love with his fiancée and helping his sister-in-law disappear. Did he know about Meyers and Amanda? Or did he think, like everyone else, it had been a regular, tragic car accident?