Fat (11 page)

There was a pang deep under my ribs that I couldn’t explain, so I didn’t think about it. Instead, I got dressed.

On the ride to the pharmacy, I enjoyed my newfound freedom to touch Kieran as I chose, to indulge my every urge to be close to him and it was an amazing feeling. I kissed down his neck, nipped at his ear, ran my hands over his thighs.

Who would’ve thought I’d have ended up here?

God, I loved him so much it hurt. If I’d thought being with Kieran was like a razorblade when I didn’t speak of it, it was sharper somehow now that I could. I was so afraid I’d wake up and this would all be a dream. I’d fallen asleep petting his hair last Saturday and I hadn’t woken up.

I inhaled the scent of him and he still smelled like sex—he smelled like us. It was like I’d marked him with it. I liked that.

He followed me in to the pharmacy after we’d parked and I headed straight back to the prescription counter. I’d never done this for myself before, but I’d brought April a few times.

“Plan B, please.”

The pharmacy tech looked at me for a moment. “ID please?”

I handed her my ID and she looked at the ID and at me. “Is everything on here correct?”

They’d never asked April that. I might have lied about my weight.

My guts roiled and twisted. “My weight has changed.”

She leaned toward me, at least making an attempt to be discreet. “Plan B might not be an effective option for you. It’s found to be unreliable for women over one-hundred and seventy-five pounds. I won’t tell you not to buy it, but if you’re worried you might be pregnant, watch your cycle closely.”

I turned to look at Kieran who obviously hadn’t heard her. He was tapping his foot to the elevator music and looking around the store like a kid waiting for his mom to be done shopping.

I nodded, but I said, “Thanks. I’ll take it anyway.”

She rang it up and I swiped my debit card.

Loaded up with the neatly stapled bag, I wondered if I should tell Kieran what the tech had told me. Then I thought about his earlier reaction. There was no reason to drive it into the ground.

It would give him peace of mind. If I ended up pregnant, well, I’d deal with it. I couldn’t even think about that now.

A small, nagging voice in the back of my head said that I could’ve told Brant about it. In fact, I wouldn’t have thought twice about telling him.

They were different men, I had to stop comparing them.

When we were out in the car, I said, “Let’s grab a pizza. I don’t want to take this on an empty stomach.”

“You got it, baby.”

It occurred to me that he didn’t bother to buy any condoms.

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was both familiar and strange waking up in bed with Kieran.

I still wondered if I was dreaming.

But the pounding on the door that slammed through my head didn’t seem to be a dream at all.

“Fucking hell, someone better be dead.” Kieran rolled over and dragged me beneath the covers with him. I’d have been content to curl in his arms and go back to sleep if only the pounding would stop.

He growled and slid out of bed.

He was naked.

“Are you going to get dressed?”

“No. They deserve the wrath of my manhood if they can’t wait until a decent hour.”

I looked at the clock on the table. It was noon. I couldn’t believe I’d slept so long. I started to get up.

“Lass, if you budge just one centimeter off that bed, whoever is at the door is going to die a slow death. I have plans for you today.” He winked at me.

I got off the bed anyway. I wanted to see who was at the door.

Kieran opened the door, giving me a view of his gorgeous, tight ass and our visitor, whoever they were, a view of his…

I recognized her voice. She’d been one of many of the pussy parade as I’d come to call it.

The nasty voice in my head said I could now join their club.

It was cordially invited to shut up. This was my house, and my Kieran.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said. “You weren’t at the club last night and you promised you’d be there for my bachelorette party.”

I was torn between telling him to make good on his promise somehow because it was bad for business if he didn’t. I couldn’t let him screw up at work just because we were together. He said this was what he loved doing and I wouldn’t screw up
Chubbalicious
for him—or anyone for that matter.

But me in girlfriend mode wanted to rip that girl’s eyes out of her head and stomp them into Jell-O. I reminded myself that this was part of dating Kieran. This would have been part of dating Brant, too.

“Something came up.”

She gave him a once over, looking him up and down. “I can see that it did.” I heard her giggle. “And it’s still up.”

Kieran laughed and the sound grated on my nerves.

“Do you need some help with that?”

“I thought I was supposed to dance for your bachelorette party?”

“You were.”

“How does your husband-to-be feel about your fucking other men?” Kieran asked in a soft voice.

“The same way I feel about him fucking his secretary.”

“Are you sure you should be marrying him?”

“I’m sure I should still be fucking you.”

“I’m seeing someone.”

The woman laughed. “So who is the paragon of femininity that finally caught you, Finn? She must be a supermodel.”

I looked down at myself.
Hardly
. I waited with baited breath to see what he’d say, what he’d do. I think I half expected him to go outside and bang her in his car and come back inside like nothing had ever happened. Or he’d tell her to wait for him because he’d had a brain tumor for dinner and hooked up with his homely roommate…

“Most beautiful woman in the world.”

I snorted and almost choked on my own spit, but it sounded like he meant it.

“If things don’t work out, you have my number.”

I debated jumping back into the bed, but I didn’t want to hide that I’d been listening. Hiding things was never a good way to start a relationship.

When he came back to the bedroom, he said, “What did I say, woman?”

I laughed. “Most beautiful woman in the world, huh?”

“Aye.”

“What have I told you about getting cute?”

“And what’ve I told you? I’m already cute.” He winked and snatched me up in his arms as if I weighed nothing.

I curled my arm around his neck. “I could get used to this.”

“I’ll carry you around all day if you want.”

“Yes, that’s what we’ll do. When
Chubbalicious
is a success, you’ll be my cabana boy/bodyguard.”

“If that’s what you want.”

Everything I felt with him was a double-edged sword. Initially, the idea of him being all mine all the time thrilled me. But then I wondered what he wanted out of life, what he was passionate about. He had to be passionate about something besides putting his dick in me. Not that the idea wasn’t great for my self-esteem, but he was a person, a whole entity who existed outside of our relationship matrix.

Jesus. Why did I have to pick everything apart? Why couldn’t I just be happy?

“What about you? What do you want?” I asked him.

“To spend the day in bed with you.”

He was being purposefully obtuse. “As lovely as that sounds, I do have to work today.”

“No, you don’t. Not unless you’re working me.”

“I still have a few things to get done before the launch.”

“I guess I’ll just have to persuade you.” He laughed. “I need you this morning. At least twice.”

“You’re kind of a high-maintenance boyfriend,” I teased, but allowed him to carry me to the bathroom.

“You have no idea, but we’ll compromise this morning.”

He wasn’t kidding.

After a leisurely shower and two bouts of sex, I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to be able to sit comfortably for a week. Everything hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt. The kind that with every step I took, every twinge of discomfort, I remembered what I’d done to put myself in that kind of state.

As I made us breakfast, I kept sneaking glances at him out of the corner of my eye, once again wondering how I’d gotten this lucky.

“If you keep looking at me like that, I’ll have you flat on your back again in about five seconds.”

“Oh my god, how can you go again? I really might die.”

He laughed. “I’m addicted to you, what can I say?”

I blushed and plated our food.

For such a big guy, he moved quickly. His hands were on my hips and he nuzzled my neck. “How did I get so lucky?”

For the first time, I’d gotten something I wanted. I’d had to give up some things to have it, but it was mine. Kieran was all I needed.

I didn’t flinch when he ran his hands down over my belly, he’d seen me naked a lot and he still wanted to touch me, still wanted to be with me. Maybe this was real. Maybe all the stuff I’d been telling myself was true and it was the little voice inside my head that was the damn dirty liar.

“Since you’re working today, I thought I’d go in to work tonight to make up for last night.” He watched me like he thought I was a ticking bomb.

What was I going to say? I knew what he did for a living. So I smiled. “I’m glad you stayed with me yesterday. I don’t know that we’d be at this point—together—if you hadn’t. But I get it. You have to work. We both have to live in the real world, too.”

The tension leached out of him. “Thank Jaysus.” He kissed the top of my head. “I’m glad the girlfriend hat didn’t turn you into some needy freak.”

“Did you think it would?” I guess that still remained to be seen. I don’t know why it was okay in my head for Brant to still work there when he was seeing me, but Kieran… It twisted me up.

That stupid voice was back—God, I was such a fucking psycho. But that voice said that it was because Kieran couldn’t be trusted. A man didn’t simply stop fucking a new woman every night. It takes thirty days to form a habit or break one and he’d been doing this for years.

“I think we should establish some boundaries if this is going to work. What’s okay, what’s not.”

I’d have rather just stuck my head in the sand, but he was right. This was my chance to tell him what I wanted, what would hurt me and what I didn’t care about. Then I couldn’t claim the injured party if we’d hashed it all out, and neither could he.

Communication. That’s what relationships were really about. The attraction and sex were all great, but it would all fall apart without talking about expectations—both reasonable and unreasonable. I knew that.

I had this nervous habit of biting my lip, but my mouth was so raw from our sessions, I stopped myself in time.

“I don’t want you to come to the club anymore,” he blurted.

My first instinct was to think that it was because he wanted to hide something from me. “Why?”

“Because I’ve seen the guys who let their girlfriends come to the club.”

“I didn’t freak out on Brant.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t in love with him, right?”

I processed that. I wasn’t in love with Brant, but I’d thought of him as mine, after a fashion.

“Right?” he asked again.

“Right.” I nodded. “But I know it’s your job. I have to say, it makes me uncomfortable to be told you don’t want me to go.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“I think that goes both ways. I have to trust you’re not going to cheat on me and you have to trust that I understand what your job entails. If I can’t watch you work, we shouldn’t be in a relationship.”

“I know that.” His voice was quiet.

“Then, what—” I braced my hands on the counter. “I see. You don’t think this is going to work.”

“I want it to.”

“It can’t if we don’t trust each other.”

“I certainly don’t want to see you with your hands all over some other man. I know it’s backwards as fuck that I expect you to tolerate it, but I just can’t.”

That shouldn’t have pleased me, but I did. I should have called him on the double-standard, but it didn’t bother me.

“Okay.”

“Really? Just… okay?”

I shrugged. “Why not? It’s not a big deal to me. I don’t need to punish you because of your job or hold my breath for something that’s not important to me just to prove a point.”

“So what is important to you?”

“That you come home after work. I don’t want to be staring at the clock at five in the morning wondering where you’re at or who you’re with. If you change your mind about being with me, that you tell me.”

“I can do that. What else? I know there’s something that you’re holding back.”

There was, but I looked away from him. “I don’t want you to take any more hotel calls. I know they’re more than private dances, strip-o-grams or whatever you want to call them. And I know it’ll eat into your money, but I also know you fuck most of them.”

I’d just said to myself that I wouldn’t ruin Chubbalicious for him, that I didn’t expect him to give up his work for me, but that was a hard limit. I guessed it was my turn to have a double-standard.

“Claire, it was really hard to set that up. If I ever need that income back…”

“Are you telling me no?” I asked quietly.

He shook his head. “I’m asking you to wait until you make sure I’m what you really want, that we’re forever.”

“So it’s supposed to be okay for you to fuck other people?”

“Finn, not me.”

I nodded slowly. “But you told me the other day that Finn was you. You can’t have it both ways. Make up your mind.”

“They don’t mean anything but a zero on a check.”

“Then why would it be so hard for you to just stop?”

He didn’t have an answer for me.

“That’s a hard limit, Kieran.”

“Are you kidding me?”

I could ask him the same. “Really? What about if I put an ad in the paper and started taking money for “erotic massage” or “dancing”? Would that be okay?”

“No,” he growled.

“Why?”

He didn’t answer me.

“Why, Kieran?” I’d raised my voice. “Answer me.”

“They wouldn’t hire you anyway.”

I don’t know if he’d meant to kill me, but he did. There was something in me that withered and died when he said that, but I refused to break in front of him. Instead, I lifted my chin and stared at him until he could meet my eyes.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said.

“You don’t have to apologize for speaking the truth. You’re right. A traditional service wouldn’t hire me, but there are plenty of men who like thick women. Maybe I’ll start my own service right out of the house. Yeah, I think I will.”

“Claire, I just… Christ.” He pushed his fingers through his hair and the look on his face mirrored what I felt inside. “I shouldn’t have—I was defending myself.”

“Against what?”

“Against the truth. No, you can’t go sell yourself. You don’t have to. You can do so many other things. I can’t. This is all I have, all I’m good at.”

“Fucking spare me the sob story. That’s a cop out. It’s a sad little boy who wants everything to be done for him and when it gets hard, he just gives up and goes back to what’s easiest.”

“What’s wrong with easy?” He completely missed my point.

“Nothing is wrong with easy, but you keep acting like you have no choice. Like the life you live isn’t wholly and solely up to you and it is.”