31
Piety
I didn’t have time to go to the store last night. Or rather, I’d been too afraid to. I was still trying to convince myself that I’d just eaten something that hadn’t settled well on my stomach.
I had to go through with it. I knew that, but maybe it was just a flu. I’d already thrown up two other times, again aggravated by some awful smell coming from the break room.
Felisha brought in crackers and more ginger ale, so the second and third time, a sleeve of saltines were waiting for me.
She’d also given me a questioning look, and I’d just given her a weak smile in her return. When she only shook her head, I knew exactly what she was thinking.
Now, hours later, stressed out and drained, I sat on the couch, curled up against Kaleb as I rubbed the inside of my wedding ring with my thumb.
“Are you feeling alright?” he asked.
I was about ready to blurt it all out when a fist pounded on the door. I scowled, wondering who it was. But I already had a bad, bad feeling. There were only so many people it could be.
“Piety,” my father said through the door. He knocked again, harder. “Open up. I know you’re there. Carlos told me you were here. We need to talk. With you and...Kaleb.”
The distaste in his voice had me shaking. Furious, I stormed over to the door and threw it open.
He opened his mouth to yell, and I reached up, poking him in the chest. “Yes, Dad. We do need to talk. Who in the hell do you think you are?” I demanded. “You paid him money to leave and never say a word to me? What kind of man does that to his own daughter?”
He glared at me, but said nothing.”
I threw up my hands. “And you lied.”
That got him going. “I didn’t lie,” he insisted through gritted teeth. “I haven’t said a word to you since the reunion.”
“Fine, you had Stuart lie.” I rolled my eyes. “It amounts to the same thing. He’s your mouthpiece and does all the dirty work for you anyway.”
“Piety, can we take this inside?” my mother asked, stepping up and placing herself halfway between my father and me.
I barely resisted the urge to roll my eyes again. That was my mother. Always worried about what people might think.
“Fine,” I said. Turning on my heel, I stormed back into the loft, leaving the door open behind me so they could trail inside. I went back to the couch but didn’t sit down. I knew better. I was too familiar with my father’s intimidation tactics, and I knew how this would go.
I looked at Kaleb and held out my hand. He took it and placed himself at my side. He had risen the moment he heard my father’s voice, and he lifted his chin, meeting my father’s gaze squarely.
“How can you stand there and look me in the eyes?” Dad demanded.
“It’s not hard. I don’t have any respect for you, so why should I have a hard time looking at you?” Kaleb said.
“When you take a man’s money, you give him your word, and you want to talk about respect?”
Kaleb scowled. “I didn’t do you wrong. I did Piety wrong. I gave her my word long before you and I made any sort of agreement. Besides, I didn’t make the agreement with you. I made the agreement with your… mouthpiece.” Kaleb tilted his head. “If it makes you feel better, I can apologize to him.”
“Stop it,” I said, cutting between Kaleb in my father. “Dad, I can’t believe you did that.”
“You’re angry with me?” he asked. “This no good con artist took our money, the money we paid to protect you, but you’re mad at me?”
“I don’t need your protection, and Kaleb isn’t a con artist.”
Dad scoffed. “He took the money easily enough.”
“I took it for my sister,” Kaleb said flatly.
My dad turned his head, staring at Kaleb as if looking at bacteria under a microscope. “Your sister?” he asked, the doubt thick in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Let me guess, she’s suffering from some sort of terrible disease, and you need the money because she sitting in the hospital?” Scorned ripped from his words and he shook his head. “Do you even know anything about this man, Piety?”
I was about ready to scream from frustration, but Kaleb threw a bucket of cold water on the entire thing.
“As a matter of fact, my sister is a prostitute and a drug addict. I took the money to pay off her dealer. I was hoping to get her into rehab, but that didn’t go over very well. She took what little money I had left and ran off with it.”
Mom spoke up, her face white as her fingers danced at the base of her throat. “Let me get this right. You’re a stripper, and your sister is a prostitute? And you wonder why we didn’t want you around our daughter?”
“Mom,” I said. Horrified, I reached out and touched Kaleb’s arm.
“You’re wrong,” he said. “I know exactly why you didn’t want me around Piety. I’m not good enough for her. But then again, neither are you.”
Dad’s mouth fell open in shock. Mother’s face went red. Kaleb didn’t back down.
“You see, she’s got a heart that’s bigger than anyone I’ve ever met. You two are too concerned about appearances and how things might look. She worries about people and how things will affect them. I don’t know how the two of you managed to combine your DNA and create this magical creature.”
He turned from them and looked directly at me. “Frankly, she’s amazing. You’re right, I’m not good enough for her. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to work my ass off trying to be.”
“You are unbelievable,” my mother whispered.
“Don’t, Mom.”
She ignored me. “You have no idea who we are. How dare you judge us.”
“That’s rich.” Kaleb snorted. “You don’t know anything about me either except for the fact that I stripped for money to try to help out my baby sister.”
“A baby sister who is a drug addicted prostitute,” my father said with a harsh laugh.
“A baby sister who lost her mother and father when she was eleven. Do you have any idea what that’s like?” I asked, unable to stay out of the conversation any longer. “Kaleb’s been raising her since she was a kid. He wasn’t able to go to college because he’s too busy working his butt off to take care of her.”
Uncertainty flickered across their faces, but my parents didn’t know how to back down. “Just go,” I said when my dad started to open his mouth. “We’re not doing this. We’re not.”
“Piety…” Mom began, “we just–”
“No,” I shouted. “I care about him. You have no right to interfere. This is my life, and I’m going to live it. I’m not living it just to be some sort of paragon that you can put up on a pedestal and show off when it’s election time. It’s my life.”
I turned away until I heard the door shut. Kaleb came up behind me, his hands squeezing my shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. This has been a long time coming.”
“Still, I haven’t helped.”
I smiled up at him. “Actually, you have. This all needed to come out before it completely ate away my soul.” I sighed, the stress I’d been feeling earlier was now magnified tenfold. “You know what? We should just pack and go to Vegas. We need to figure out how to help your sister. I can get the next few days off from work.”
32
Kaleb
She was quiet.
She had been quiet ever since last night, ever since her parents had left. The fight between them…
Closing my eyes, I wondered if there was now a rift between them so big it might never be repaired.
I hoped not.
They were overbearing – assholes, really.
But I could tell they loved her, and I know she loved them.
I felt guilty for my part in all of this, and that part was huge, but at the same time, I was…amazed. Nobody had ever stood up for me like that, had ever fought for me. I was the one who went to bat for people.
I know my
parents would have had my back, if they’d lived. But they’d been gone a long time. It was like a different life.
For too long, it had just been me and my sister, and I was always the one carrying the weight.
Now, I had someone who had stood next to me and stood up for me.
I didn’t know how to handle it.
Finally, unable to handle all the chaos inside me, I looked over at Piety. She was sipping from a glass of club soda, staring down at the book on her lap.
She hadn’t turned the page in ten minutes.
I reached over and took her hand. She started, and the club soda sloshed over the rim.
“Lost in thought?” I asked, reaching for a napkin to clean up the spill.
“I guess.” She smiled up at me.
“I…” Blowing out a breath, I tried to think of the right way to say what I needed to say. “I’m sorry for the problems I’ve caused between you and your parents.”
“You didn’t. The problems were already there. You just helped bring them to the surface.” She sighed and put her book down, shifting around in the seat to face me. “My parents love me. I know that. But I have no doubt that their love comes with…” She bit her bottom lip and considered her words.
“Strings?” I offered.
Her smile was sad. “Yeah. Always conditional. And they don’t understand me. They never have. And they’ve never stood up for me the way you have. You think I’ve got a big heart, but they think I’m an alien for just…caring about people.”
She lifted my hand to her lips, kissed the back of it.
“You do have a big heart.” I crooked a grin at her. “So big, I sometimes think you might be an alien.”
“Stop it.” She tipped her head back, laughing.
Some of the tension in the air dissolved, and I stroked my thumb over the inside of her wrist. “I can’t tell you how many times I wished my parents were still here, still around to deal with this mess with Camry. But then I look back and realize how lucky I was to have had nthem for as long as I did. They always had my back. They supported me. That’s worth…a lot.”
“More than gold, I think,” Piety said, her voice sad.
“Yeah. I bet it is.”
She turned her head back to me, and we stared at each other.
“I haven’t had anybody stand by my side the way you did since they passed away. It means a lot. Thank you.”
She squeezed my hand. “Nobody has ever stood by me like you have, other than Astra. So…same goes.”
We lapsed into silence for a long time, then she laid her head against my shoulder and opened her book. As she read, I thought about how much things had changed since the morning I woke up in her bed.
“The bed,” I said against her mouth.
Piety laughed. “Who needs a bed?” She pushed my shirt up and scraped her nails down my sides.
I gasped and caught her hands. “No.”
She giggled. “You’re ticklish. I love it.”
“Bed,” I said again.
Instead, she twisted out of my grip and curled her arms around my neck, pressing her mouth to my chin. “No. Too far. Way too far.”
She shot a look at the bed, and I had to agree. She was right. That bed was too far away. The whole other side of the suite. In a different room entirely.
“Okay, you’re right. Right here.”
I boosted her up into my arms and carried her the few steps into the dining room, laid her out on the formal table. In my wildest dreams, I never would have imagined a hotel with a formal dining room. In my wildest dreams, I never would have imagined Piety.
I caught the hem of her flirty little skirt and pushed it up to her hip, leaving her bare from the waist down. Hooking my fingers in the silken scrap of her panties, I slid them down her legs. “I want to…”
“Then do it.” She caught my hair and tugged me closer, arching her hips up.
I smiled at her, then licked her, opening her folds.
She gasped, lashes fluttering down.
Pressing my mouth to her cunt, I caught the nub of her clitoris and sucked on it. She moaned, and when I twisted two fingers inside her slick heat, she began to move up against me.
I did everything I knew would make her moan and sigh, those little sounds I loved to hear.
Rising, I freed myself from my jeans. As I came down over her, I said, “I don’t even remember what it’s like not to want you. I don’t want to.”
“Come here,” she said, the words both a plea and a demand.
I did, spreading her thighs and settling between them. Wrapping a hand around my cock, I passed back and forth over the heat of her.
“Stop teasing me.”
“But it’s so much fun.”
“Keep it up, and I’ll go without panties for the next two days, and you won’t get to so much as touch me.” She gave me a wicked smile.
“Oh, now that’s playing mean.” I guided the head of my cock to her entrance, and when I thrust inside, both of us shuddered. I groaned, and she cried out.
“I need this,” she said. “All the time.”
I needed her – all the time. I was starting to wonder how I’d even existed without her.
33
Piety
Light filtered in through the curtains. We hadn’t gotten around to pulling the blackouts before we fell asleep the night before, tangled around each other.
The light wasn’t what woke me though.
It was the incessant, annoying chimes from my phone.
Only one person would be that persistent.
I groaned, throwing my forearm over my eyes. If I grabbed a pillow, buried my face in it, and tried really hard, I might be able to block her out.
A grunt next to me made me realize that wasn’t going to happen. Astra wasn’t just being a nuisance to me. She was annoying Kaleb too.
Sighing, I grabbed the phone and squinted at it, my eyes struggling to adjust to the light. It was too early for conversations.
It didn’t matter that it was ten o’clock back home and my body was still on that time. My body wanted it to be midnight, making it totally acceptable to still be asleep.
But logic and want never seemed to align.
Swiping a finger across the phone, I muted the notifications, then went into my messages. I did it just as the next one came in. Without bothering to read any of them, I sent her a quick greeting.
You are such a pest sometimes. I was sleeping!
Her answer was a smiley face and LOL.
Yeah, she could laugh.
Scrolling back up, I read her messages.
With a grimace, I propped myself up. Somebody had told her that my parents had been to the loft.
Yeah, it wasn’t fun. Kaleb told them about his sister. You’d think he’d confessed to being a serial killer.
Astra texted back with another emoticon, but this was a sad face, followed by an angry one.
That pretty much sums up how I feel. I didn’t want to deal with their drama so we just came back out to Vegas. We have to figure out how to help her anyway.
I eyed Kaleb next to me and then slid out of bed.
Astra texted me twice, but I ignored them as I slid into the bathroom and took care of some necessary business. Once that was done, I moved into the main area of the suite and curled up on the couch, reading her texts.
She wanted to know why and how things had changed with Kaleb. It was too long to go into detail about that on the phone, so I summarized.
My parents lied. They had Stuart pay Kaleb off so he would leave – he didn’t go to them. They went to him. It still sucks that he just disappeared, but he was feeling desperate. His sister is in serious trouble.
As I waited for her to receive and read, I stared at the door.
Her answer took a few moments, and when I read it, I saw why.
It was…long.
So let me get this straight…your parents had their dipshit lawyer claim he’d blackmailed them. Am I right there? And
you’ve spent the past few weeks feeling like a piece of shit because you put them in that position. Or that’s how you felt. But it turns out that THEY set the whole thing up and were the ones who went to him? What sort of shit were they smoking?
I started to laugh, muffling the sound behind my hand. But just as I went to respond, another text popped up.
And why the hell didn’t he get in touch with you and talk to you sooner? I don’t want to hear this shit that he felt like he shouldn’t. You were busting your ass to help him. Doesn’t he know that?
He didn’t though. I texted her back.
He doesn’t have what we have, A. I’ve always had you. You’ve always had me. Ever since his parents died, it’s just been him and his sister. She was a kid, always relying on him. I don’t think he knows how to rely on somebody.
This time, the little emoticon she chose to represent her mood was one sticking out his tongue. I could almost hear the raspberry.
I stuck my tongue out at the phone.
“Astra?” a deep voice bellowed.
Startled, I almost dropped the device.
Jerking my head up, I eyed Kaleb, who was standing in the doorway, wearing a pair of low-slung jeans, and looking sleepy-eyed and completely beautiful. “Yeah. She…um…she spent the night with a friend last night. Got my note, wanted to see what was going on.”
My gaze strayed to his chest, then back to his eyes only to find him grinning at me.
“We’ve got things to do today.” My mouth was dry, but I knew if I wasn’t careful, the two of us would end up naked and all over each other, so my gaze went back to the phone – and the message that had just come through.
He seems to know how to rely – or at least TRUST you. So whatever you’re doing, keep it up. And keep me posted. Later, PS!
I texted bye to her and then tucked my phone into my lap, watching as Kaleb made his way over to the coffee pot, a giant yawn cracking his jaw.
“What do you need to do today?” I asked softly.
He shrugged restlessly. “I’ve texted Camry again. I texted her last night when we got in, but I didn’t hear back from her. Who knows if I even will.”