Greetings from Sugartown (22 page)

“I can’t hear a fucking thing,” I say, shifting my weight onto one elbow, and rubbing my ear. “You kinda deafened me with your banshee screams there.”

She absentmindedly slaps my chest, and then stares at the door. “Do you think we were too loud?”

That question goes unanswered, because the heavy double kitchen doors swing open and our entire family stands there, looking in at us.

“Jesus Christ. Every fucking time.” Bob throws up his hand and stalks away.

Holly stands there, laughing her arse off and shaking her head. “Even after all this time, you two never disappoint. God damn it, where the hell is my phone?”

Jack tries wrangling the kids out of the way, but my little Lil is standing there with a perplexed look on her innocent face. “Uncle Jackie, are Mummy and Daddy wrestling again?”

“Yep.”

He ushers her out of the room, and I hear her ask, “Who won?”

Jack replies, “Your mum, kid. Your mum always wins.”

“Yes,” Lil responds. “Go Mummy.”

“Dude, your sister’s a MILF,” Jake says to Sammy.

“Oh my God,” Ana cries, and covers her flushed face with her hands.

“I gonna kill that little punk,” I say.

Sam doesn’t retaliate when it comes to Jake’s observation, not the way he did when Jake insulted Pepper. He just walks away shaking his head, like it’s normal to walk in on his sister and me going at it like rabbits. Come to think of it, between homemade sex tapes and various kitchen encounters of the kinky kind, I guess it is.

Once the doors swing closed again, I glance down at my beautiful wife with her freshly-fucked glow. I know inside she’s mortified, and I’m sure I’ll cop it when we get home, but for now I carefully ease out of her and set my clothes to rights. I give her a hand up, and pluck bits of smooshed-up cake from her dishevelled hair, and then I kiss her full, swollen lips. “I love you … so fucking much.”

“And I love you.” She stands on tiptoes, and wraps her arms around my shoulders, nuzzling my neck

“Always?”

“Forever.”

She places her tiny hand in my outstretched one. I bring it up to my lips, and kiss the rings on her finger. “Let’s go home, Mrs Cade.”

“Okay.” She looks wistfully at her kitchen.
Such a fucking neat freak
. “I guess I can deal with this mess in the morning.”

We make our way out into the diner, and I snag her small hand, thread my fingers with hers, and brush my lips against her knuckles. She gives me a mischievous smile and leads me over to our daughter, who’s occupying a booth and playing with a colourful doll.

“You ready to go home, possum?”

“Yep.”

I scoop her up, tickling the crap out of her. The doll falls to the floor. Lil shrieks and squirms in my arms, an attempt to reach it. I set her down and she gathers up the toy, hugging it tightly to her chest. I look closer at it, realising it lacks the general wear and tear of all Lil’s toys, and think that it must be new.

“Can I see?” I crouch down, and hold out my hand. She eyes me like she’s afraid I’ll rip off its head and pull out the stuffing, before shrugging and finally placing it in my hands. “Did you get this for your birthday?”

“Yep, and I love her to bits and pieces. Her name’s Bunny.”

“Bunny, huh?” I give her a sceptical look and then smile, handing back her treasured new possession. “Good name, kiddo. Did Aunt Holly give you this?”

“No, that man did.”

I cock my head to the side, wondering who the hell she’s talking about. “What man, baby doll?”

“Your friend, Daddy.” Her innocent brown eyes blink up at me expectantly, and then she goes back to playing. I grab hold of her tiny shoulders, and try to get her to focus her attention. Lil looks between Ana and I, trying to understand why my mood changed so swiftly.

“What’s the matter?” Ana asks, sensing my alarm.

“Baby, what man?” I demand.

“The man outside. He had pictures on his arms, like you do, and face fur,” she adds energetically. “He gave me Bunny, and said that she needed a good home to go to. And that he thought I could look after her real good, ‘cause my mum would have taught me how to care for things.”

I swallow hard, and meet Ana’s panic-stricken gaze above Lil’s head. My blood crawls through my veins, slow and sluggish, though my heart is racing.

“Lil, this is real important, okay?” I say, trying to keep my voice clear and even, and free of the dread that’s choking me. “Did he hurt you? Did he say anything else?”

“No. He gave me Bunny,” she says, matter-of-factly. “And he said he’s sorry he hurt you.”

I let out a shaky breath, and sit back on my heels. Ana takes three steps forward and sinks down in front of me, pulling Lil into her lap protectively. She covers our daughter’s ears as she whispers, “Do we call the police?”

“No. If he wanted to hurt us he would have already.” I nod in Lil’s direction. “This was an olive branch.”

“What are you going to do, Cade?” she asks quietly. I can see the worry behind her eyes. I reach out, and gently stroke her cheek with my knuckles.

“Nothing. I’m gonna take my little girl home, and tuck her into bed. And then I’m going to do the same with my beautiful wife, and I’m never gonna let her go, because I have everything I need right here.”

Ana presses a kiss to my fingers and I help her rise from the floor, hanging back to kill the lights as Ana and Lilly make their way to the door. Fate’s been unusually cruel and exceptionally kind to us over the years. We’ve been through hell and come out the other side, a little bruised, a little beaten and a little older, but there’s one thing that’s been constant throughout all of it: I want her. I want all of her, for all the rest of my days. However long or short a time that may be.

I want her.

H
OLY SHIT,
it’s even worse than I remembered
.

It’s funny the things you think when you’re staring down the bowels of Hell. I pull the van to a jerky stop on the shoulder of the road, and gawk at the tiny town spread out before me. It’s eight am, and it’s thriving with life. Cars bustle every which way, school kids are decked out in their blue uniform, chatting animatedly as they cross the road, and the traffic actually stops to allow them safe passage. The shops on Main Street are all freshly painted in pastels. Flowerbeds line the footpath, and brightly-coloured petunias pop out of the soil to greet you. It looks exactly like Stepford threw up. Twice.

Jesus Christ. I’m gonna need a bottle of Jack, and an entire prescription worth of anxiety meds just to get through five minutes in this shithole town.

I ease the car out onto the road—maybe ease is a stretch. What I mean to say here, is I slam my foot to the accelerator and fly down Main Street, doing sixty kilometres in a fifty zone. I would have gone much quicker, but I don’t need the cops riding my arse and asking questions about my newly acquired ride. Technically, if you factor in that my arse-wipe boss hasn’t paid me for a month, I do kinda own some of this van, like a tyre, or the second-hand freezer he installed last month. Though considering I probably owe him damages from punching him in the face, breaking his nose, and stealing his phone so he couldn’t call the cops on me, I guess this could still be considered theft.

It’s not like I set out to steal his ice cream van, but the slimy bastard had rubbed his greasy, chesty Bonds-covered beer gut against my arse one to many times. When his meaty hands slipped under my skirt, and boldly tried to go where no balding, impotent, bogan, fifty-year-old scumbag’s had ever gone before, I put those lessons Uncle Elijah had taught me to good use, and elbowed him in the face. I maybe could have done without the boot to the balls, but violence excites me, and it was a heat-of-the-moment type of thing. Of course, once I’d driven my stolen van home to the shitty Fitzroy apartment I shared with my soon to be ex-boyfriend—on account of him being an inconsiderate, selfish, but hot-as-fuck douche—the gravity of my situation sunk in. I had no money, nowhere to go, and a possible warrant out for my arrest.

Coop, my biological dad, is in LA, so even if I could get him to wire me the cash, it wouldn’t be here before night fell, and I needed a place to stay. I needed to get the hell out of the state. I needed to go home.

Home.

I supress the hysterical laughter that thought produces, and unscrew the cap on my meds. I empty two into my palm and throw them back with the remainder of my flat, warm can of Coke. God damn, do I wish it were mixed with something alcoholic.

I’m busy punching the buttons on the piece of crap stereo when I glance up, and some moron in a fluoro yellow vest and matching hat is standing in the middle of the road holding a stop sign. I hit the brakes. The van swerves and skids all over the asphalt, screeching to a stop just inches from the man, and a gaggle of horrified-looking children and their outraged mothers.

The lollipop man is tall. His wide shoulders barely fit in the fluoro vest, and the sleeves of his shirt strain against bulging muscles. His hair falls into a messy, blonde just-fucked shag around his face, and a set of gorgeous baby blues glare at me through the windscreen.

“What the hell, lady? You didn’t see the gigantic neon stop sign?” he shouts, holding his arms out to either side of him. He lost the sign about the time I imagine he thought I was going to plough into him. “You coulda killed me. You could have killed these kids!”

I ignore the fission of heat that spreads out from the centre of my belly all the way to my cock socket.
I have a thing for the mean ones
.

“Yeah, I saw it. About two seconds before I slammed on my breaks,” I scream back through the partially rolled down window. I unbuckle my belt that sits way too loose over my hips, because my lard-arse boss stretched it all out of shape, and throw open the door. It groans on rusty hinges. “So, little Sammy Belle grew up to be a lollipop man.”

“Do I know you?”

“You should,” I say slamming the door, folding my arms, and coming out from around the vehicle to see him better. “We used to bathe naked together.”

“Pepper?”

“Naww, you do remember me.” I bat my eyelids coquettishly, then give him a devilish grin.

Sam folds his arms, assessing me from my long pastel-pink hair right down to my calf-length leopard print Doc Martens. I don’t miss the way his gaze rakes over the ink sleeve on my right arm. Or the roses on my thigh playing peek-a-boo with my short skirt. His eyes flit back to mine with a grin.

“Huh,” he says.

I frown. “Huh what?”

“You grew up, is all.”

“So did you.”

“I’m six years older than you, darlin’. You would hope I’d have grown up by now.” And there it is, the reminder I spent my entire adolescent life trying not to hear: Sammy Belle is too old for me. Six years too old for me. You might not be thinking that’s such a big deal. Twenty year olds fuck men forty years their senior all the time. But most of those are money-grubbing whores and well, when you’re a horny fourteen-year-old girl lusting after a hot twenty-one year old, who’s only ever behaved the way a brother would, and you throw caution to the wind, remove your bikini top and hurl yourself at him? Yeah, trust me, you’re not ever going to forget something as insignificant as a six-year age difference. The memory of my humiliation comes unbidden into my mind, and I chase it away with an appraisal of my own.