Fall Guy (46 page)

"Not
here," I say
when her hand cups my dick, already completely hard.

"We can be so quick," she says as she nibbles my earlobe. "I've missed you."

I stifle a groan. "If Lee Early caught us even like this, he'd put a bullet through my brains, no question. I can't even believe you convinced them to let you stay over with me."

She leans back, her arms linked around my neck and rolls her eyes. "Yeah, it wasn't easy. But I've been on good behavior, my community service is all done, and I think they love you. I mean, they're still pissed as hell at you for dragging your feet. But now that they know you, they love you as much as I do. Well, almost as
much." She grinds on my lap
and smiles this wicked smile that just turns me on more.

"Stop it before I need a cold shower." I kiss he
r and move her firmly off me
, trying to focus on anything that will make my dick chill out enough so that I can speak to her gra
ndparents without needing to keep
something in front of my pants at all times.

I
mentally focus on baseball stats,
gather her bags
,
and we head down to say another round of goodbye
s, but these are way less drama-
filled, both because the
Earlys
are more easy-going people and because this is all good for them. Evan will
only be gone two days, and then I’ll drive her
back. I will stay hundreds of miles away indefinitely. It's as perfect as they could have hoped for.

"Why did the only school that offered mason work have to be seven hours away?" Evan grumbles as we buckle into the truck.

"It's the best school for the kind of stonework I want to do," I remind her. "I want to be good at this. I want to start to make a life for us, Evan."

"How do you always manage to say exactly the thing that makes me feel better?" She rolls her window down and lets the cool wind whip through the cabin as we start up. "Are you sure you can drive this thing?"

"Are you
insult
ing my driving skills? I’m practically a professional driver." I make sure I
double check my blind spots
after bragging to her. I'd
been driving a sleek little car for so long, my ability to maneuver something this big is rusty, and I need to give it my full attention.

By the time we're an hour or two and a thousand radio station changes in, Evan starts to poke at exactly the thing that's making me have a minor panic attack
every fifteen minutes or so
.

"You look nervous." She passes me a piece of gum, but I shake my head and hold the steering wheel tight, eyes fixed on a road I've never traveled down before.

"I've never really done this kind of stuff. I might suck," I admit out loud. As soon as I say the words to her, a little bit of the edge wears off.

She turns in her seat and takes off her sunglasses. "You will be amazing. You'll be the top apprentice at the school. No one works harder than you do, Winch."

A long minute ticks by before I ge
t up the guts to
add, "I've never lived away from my family."

She unbuckles her seatbelt and slides across the bench seat, buckling the center lap belt over her curvy hips before she leans her head on my shoulder. "It's scary."

She doesn't go on or give me some speech about how much better off I'll be without them or why it's good that I'm finally doing something on my own. She gets that I just want to feel scared and sad and nervous as fucking hell for a minute.

Because that's
how I feel, and I can only admit it to her.
I’m not used to feeling any of this, not about my own choices and future, anyway
.

"I don't know what my father will do," I tell her. "He's relied on me to run so much of the business. I do so many things around there. I'm afraid Colt will get pulled in. Or he'll ask Remy, and it will all get screwed up." I tighten my hands around the steering wheel. She rubs my arm
in a, slow, comforting path
from my elbow to my wrist, over and over.

"And I'm afraid for Andre, you know?" I add
, even though I know I’m just being an irrational ass
. Evan nods and I
keep talking, filling the silence with all my usually-bottled-
up confessions. "Why the hell did
n't he take the damn money? He'd
be in art school now, not suited up for boot camp. He's tough and all, but I don't know if he's cut out for all of that."

"I hear you." She wraps an arm around my waist and squeezes.

"And I'm scared for
Benelli
. Ithaca basically told us all how she had some guy, someone she lo
ved that she gave up on. What if
he's the one, you know?
I can’t imagine giving up on the one.
I'd be lost without you."

Evan rubs her face on my arm and kisses my bicep, sighing deeply.

"Am I crazy for worrying about all this?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "You worry because you care about them. You care because you're an amazing person. But I think you should have a little faith in them. You guys are strong people, you know? And you all have to fight your own battles. No one could have done this for you, Winch. You had to decide to fight for us and your future, even t
hough it was hard. Your brothers and sisters
will all have to make their own decisions, too. And live with them." She nestles down next to me. "And I'll be around. I can always stop by and help if anyone needs it. I'll keep an eye on them."

Her saying that makes my heart thump kick-drum loud in my chest. Even after all the h
ell my family put her
through, Evan still offered to help th
em.
For me.
I love her for that. I love her for
a million reasons, but I especially love that.

"I love you, you know that?" I turn and kiss the top of her head.

She moves closer to me. "You better," she says around a long yawn. "I love you, too."

She's asleep before I can communicate any more worries, so I just let them all run through my brain, sharp and real, sad and bittersweet. And, even though it hurts to do it, I'm glad. I'm glad I can feel it all and let it go, let it move on and not control my life.

I glance down at the phone balanced on my thigh. It doesn't ring anymore. I had the number changed and, for a while, I just didn't give it to anyone. By the time I leaked it out, the people who'd tried to call while I was unavailable found other sources, and my family had already been informed that I wasn't available to respond to their every beck and call anymore.

The end of that life isn't easy to accept. It had been mine for so
long,
it had become comfortable to me. I understood who I was and how I belonged, even if I didn't like it.

Now?

There's so much risk, so much to lose. I'm
not the one who’
s
going to fix everything, I won’t be
the hero who comes by and sweeps up everyone else's mess
es
. My life as a fall guy is getting put further behind me every single day, and it's time I live on my own terms, make and clean up my own messes, have my own adventures.

It feels freeing and, at the same time, a little fucking scary to live without any more excuses.
To live freely.
To live my own life, my own way.

Evan lifts her drowsy head when we're ten minutes away from my new place. She looks around sleepily and says, "It looks like the ghetto."

My laugh is nervous in my own ears. "I have to live on a pretty small amount of money for a while."

"Why didn't you just take the money your parents offered you?" she
asks,
no accusation in her voice.

I flip my eyes
from my GPS to the half-falling-
down street signs that mark the roads. "Youngblood money always comes with strings attached, Evan. You know that."

When we pull up at the
apartment, she inhales
in a sharp, worried breath.
"Winch.
Are you sure about this?"

I get out of the truck, walk around to open her door, and let her step into my
arms. I kiss her forehead,
then
move my mouth down to her lips. "Just for a little while," I say, low, just for her ears.
"Just
til
I get a good job.
I'm
gonna
do it, you know. I'm
gonna
move on and up before you know it. I swear."

"I know that," she says, her lips close to mine. "I believe in you."

That's all I need to hear.

I keep those words in my head as we open the door to my apartment and notice the scuttle of small brown bugs. Evan
screams and
pushes me back
out into the street and we drive
to the closest hardware store and pick up roach spray, scrub brushes, rubber gloves, buckets, soap, a whole bunch of cleaners, and lots of bleach.

When we come back, Evan starts to go to work like a maniac, scrubbing and spraying every surface she can reach, opening all the windows, and double scrubbing when she's done. I bring in box after box and admire the sweet curv
e of her ass as
she scrubs low down by the avocado fridge.

"Are you checking out my ass?" she asks over her shoulder.

I'm kneeling down to open a box
, but I turn towards her. The place is so
small,
the kitchen is
pretty much
located in the living room, blocked by one long counter with chipped laminate. I move her way, until I'm right behind her, hands on her hips, bent low to kiss her neck. The sound of
her moan rattles through me.

"I'm totally checking out your ass," I assure her. "I'm always checking you out."

She glances at me over her shoulder, her eyes wide and her lower lip caught between her bottom teeth. My hands go tight
on her hips and I press
closer to the curve of her ass.

"So, is
all this
'woman scrubbing your house on her hands and knees' turning you on?" Her eyes
narrow,
and I see the spark of passion that I love so much in her.

"I like my woman to know her place," I tease, and, when she tries to turn and slap at me, I slide my hands up her shirt, along the soft, smooth skin of her stomach, and under the sweet swell of her tits. I lean over her, my chest pres
sed to her back, my lips brushing up and down her neck
.

"You're a chauvinist pig," she says, her voice hitched on a gasp.

"I'm your chauvinist pig,"
I correct. "Would you like to christen this apartment with your c
hauvinist pig boyfriend?" 

I pull
down on the lacy fabric of her bra until her nipples poke out, hard under my fingers. I press tighter against her and she turns in my arms, kissing my mouth.

"This apartment is still filthy," she says, wrinkling her nose. "I'm not doing it on this floor."

Her hand runs down the front of my pants and rubs my dick through the fabric of my jeans. I grind my teeth
and
work my hands faster, unclasping her bra, pr
essing her shirt up, flicking open
the button on her shorts and yanking the zipper down.

"There must be somewhere clean enough." I kiss her neck and down her shoulder, stretching her pressed-up shirt to the side.

"There's nothing, Winch. The only thing
s I cleaned so far are
the cabinets and the counter. We didn't even bring the mattress in or go over the bedroom at all."

Her body against mine makes
my brain go cloudy, and all I can focus on is the word
'counter.' I lift her up so her legs are snug around my waist, and drop her on the scrubbed-down countertop.

"Winch," she whispers, glancing around and biting her lip. "We can't just do it on the counter."

I'm busy kissing her perfect neck, working her thin shirt over her head, throwing her bra to the side. "It's super clean," I answer. "I watched you scrub it down with, like, eight different cleaners."

"It's not the cleanliness thing. It's just...oh. Oh, please do that...again."

I'm not sure if she's talking about the way I just sucked her nipple into my mouth or the stroke of my thumb against the wet slide of her clit, but I do both again because she asked so sweetly and I love making her happy. She wraps her arms tight around my shoulders, moaning and breathing heavy for a minute, before she backs up and
rips my shirt over my head, then
reaches down to undo the button on my jeans, her breathing quick and raspy.

I pull my hand out from the leg of her shorts and she whimpers in protest. "I thought you didn't want to do
this," I tease her.