Finding Never (22 page)

I
sigh.

“
Don't
freak, okay?” I say which probably makes things worse. Ty
bites at his lip.

“
Is
this about me?” he asks, and I give him a look. He raises his
eyebrows at me and shrugs. “Sorry, but I don't see why you
can't just tell me. I mean, it must be pretty fucking terrible if
you can't just spit it out.”

“
Ty,
stop,” I say, but he's already gone silent, fallen into this
thoughtful darkness that is as attractive as it is scary. I wonder
briefly what he was like as a whore. Did he talk to his clients?
Did he even know their names? Did they cuddle afterward? I shiver.
One day, I will have to know the answers to these questions. As of
right now, I'm content with pushing them back. One thing at a time,
please. “It's not the worst thing in the world,” I say
honestly, knowing that to me, the worst things in the world are
molestation, rape, torture, and murder. I mean, compared to those
things, this is cake, this is easy.

Yeah,
right.

“
Is
this about Noah?” Ty asks, freezing like a deer in the
headlights. I roll my eyes and grab his arm. My fingers tingle when
they touch him, even through the fabric of his coat.

“
Come
on.”

Ty
follows me down a short trail that cuts straight across a field and
into the park. There's a road to get here by car but folks rarely
use it. The trail is deep and cuts through the dry grass like a
wound. This is the kind of park that everyone walks to.

The
sky is about as gray as it can get, solid, uninterrupted. No
sunshine peaks through and no clouds float by, but something about it is
a bit mystical, like it's this otherworldly vortex, something that
could suck me up and take me away. I look over at Ty, at his pinched
lips and his worried eyes, and I know that I don't want to be sucked
up or taken away; I want to be right here, with him, even if it's
hard. That's what makes it worth it. I take a deep breath. I can
do this.

“
Swing
with me?” I ask him as I watch his eyes sweep across the bare
limbs of trees, follow a flock of dark birds into the sky, and come
to rest on the playground to our right. It's a big, plastic colorful
thing with two slides, one yellow and one purple, and a green tunnel
with small, grimy windows that Darla and Maple refused to leave for
the longest time. They just sat in there and stared at us while we
waved and encouraged them to come out. Finally Beth had to go up and
get them. Strange kids, my relations.

“
Let's
go up there,” Ty says as he points at the platforms above us.
There's a ladder leading up to them along with a small rock wall. Ty pulls his
hand away from me and has halfway scaled the damn wall before I even
get over there. I watch his ass as he tries to wedge his big boots
onto the fake, rubber rocks and try not to laugh.

“
You're
certainly something, aren't you?” I joke as I take the easy way
up and crawl into the tunnel on my belly. Ty gets stuck about three
quarters of the way up and has to do a bizarre little jig to get his
foot on the platform and join me. When he does, he's panting for
breath. “Out of shape much?” I ask him jokingly and he
grins.

“
Guess
so,” he says as he squats in front of me and reaches for my
hands, pulling me out of the tunnel and into his lap. “I
haven't worked out in weeks. I think I'm getting a beer belly.”
I reach my fingers under Ty's coat and shirt and feel the hard
planes of his abs. No way in hell. I shake my head.

“
Not
even close,” I tell him and he smiles, but there are no dimples
there. He might be joking around with me, but he's worried,
terrified maybe. I can only guess what he's thinking, but if his
mind is on Noah Scott, nothing good will come of it. I take a deep
breath and open my mouth to say it, to just blurt it out for all the
world to hear.

I'm
pregnant, Ty. I'm pregnant with your baby, and I don't know what to
do. We're finally getting our lives together and now this happens.
Will you help me? Can you help me? I love you, but I'm not sure I
can handle this.
I put my hand on my belly and part my lips.

“
Wait,”
Ty says as he grabs me by my upper arms and flips me over, lightning
quick, pressing my back into the rubber platform of the play
structure. It happens so fast that I nearly get the breath knocked
out of me. He holds my wrists down on either side of my head and
just stares at me like even he doesn't know what he's doing.

“
Before
you say whatever it is that you're going to say, can I show you
something?” he asks as the fog of his breath tangles and dances
with mine in the crisp winter air.

“
Ty,
you don't – ”

He
cuts me off.

“
Please.”
He says the word like it's a question, but it's not. He's not
asking my permission. Ty is telling me that he's going to show me
whether I like it or not, so I better be ready for it. “I need
to show you how much you rock my fucking world.” And then Ty
is kissing me hot and hungry, down my neck and back up again. He's
biting my lip and making me bleed, brushing his lips across the
beating pulse in my neck, the one that throbs like crazy when he's
around.

“
Ty,
stop,” I say because we're on a playground for God's sake, but
he doesn't. He doesn't stop. He adjusts my wrists so that he's
holding them with one hand, and although I probably could fight him
if I wanted to, I don't. I don't want him to stop, not now, not
ever.

Ty
reaches under my shirt and coat and somehow, through practice or
skill or instinct, finds just the right way to reach under the wire
of my bra and cup my breast just so, massage it in strong, calloused
fingers, make me moan into the empty air. Sure, people could show up
at any moment and catch us, but that's half the fun. My body is
humming like a musical instrument, plucked into life by Ty's hands,
and I can't stop the symphony.

“
Never
Ross,” Ty scolds as he positions himself between my legs and
unbuttons his pants. “Tell me, why the fuck aren't you wearing
any underwear?” I close my eyes and wait for him to push into
me, to take my breath away, to breathe new life into me.

“
I
don't like wearing underwear, you know that. Not even under
scandalously short skirts.” Ty makes a wicked, nasty growling
noise as he frees his cock from his pants and plunges it into me. I
cry out and my back arches off the platform; my hips rise to meet
Ty's as he thrusts hard and fast. I think he believes he's proving a
point, that we're good together, that we're
perfect
together,
but I already know that. He's trying to claim my heart, steal it
away from the blonde haired boy who's already lost it. What Ty
doesn't know and what I should tell him is he's already claimed me,
filled me up with all of him and made something new. It's as
intriguing as it is terrifying, and the only way I'm going to be able
to understand it is by telling him.

“
Ty,”
I try to speak, to just get the words out, but I can't. I can't move
because he is; he's moving inside of me and breaking me into pieces
and putting me back together all at once. He fucks me until he comes
and then he fingers my clit with his ringed hands, proving that once
again, I was wrong. Boys like Ty really do know where it is and how
to use it. “You're not such a bad boy after all,” I
breathe as he brings me closer and closer to orgasm. He laughs at
this and bites the skin on my neck until it almost hurts, pulling
back at just the right moment and leaving me tingling.

“
I
never said I was a bad boy. That was you. I'm just a man that
thinks you're the shit.”

“
How
romantic.”

“
I
never said I was that either,” Ty tells me and then he's
letting go of my wrists and flipping me over, pulling my ass into the
air and pushing so deep into me that I think I can feel the dark,
twisted wrappings of his soul. “But I sure do love the hell
out of you.”

And
that's just about all the talking either of us can handle as we join
our bodies and souls together in the most inappropriate setting
possible. Whether he knows it or not, Ty will always be my dirty,
little bad boy, and that's just the way it is.

While
this is happening, while I'm experiencing one of the most exciting,
most invigorating moments of my life, Noah Scott stops by the house
like he's done a hundred times, finds out where we've gone and hikes
over to see us, bitch-Never at his side. While Ty thrusts into me,
vigorous and passionate, I hear her barking in the background, but I
can't see straight or even think, so I don't realize what is going
on. I don't realize that my high school sweetheart, the boy I left
behind, the one who still wants me but doesn't yet know that I don't
want him, is standing there at the edge of the wood chips seeing
everything.

From
across the park, Noah Scott watches and knows that he's lost.

32

Noah
Scott is sitting at my mother's kitchen table eating a bowl of
cereal. He looks up at me when I come in and pause with my white
robe wrapped tightly around me, my body sweetly sore from the night
that Ty and I spent together. His blue eyes look into my hazel ones
and I don't know what to say.
You're too late. I loved
you once, could've loved you again, but Ty is my tortured, twisted
other half and we're too wrapped up together to be separated now.

I
open my mouth to speak when Noah scoots his chair back across our
yellow and white linoleum floor with the little chickadees on it. It
creaks and makes me cringe, at the noise, at his eyes, at him coming
across the room with purpose. Noah pauses in front of me with a
gentle, easy smile that Ty will never have and looks at me with eyes
unclouded by uncertainty and pain. He loves me, too. I can see
that, but he doesn't understand me, not anymore. Noah Scott cannot
understand Never Ross, no matter how hard he tries.

He
puts his hands on my shoulders and leans in, nice and light, like a
fluffy white cloud floating through the too-blue sky. Ty is like a
rain cloud, fat and pregnant with a storm, full of crackling thunder
and explosive lightning. I close my eyes and wait for it, wait for
that last, perfect fairytale kiss, the one that will seal my fate and
lock me away from Noah Scott forever. It never comes. He puts his
lips next to my ear and whispers to me.

“
Goodbye
Never Ross.”

When
I open them, he's smiling but I think I can see the slight shimmer of
tears in his eyes. Mine fill, too, and I have to look away to let
him go. I have Ty now, and I can't be selfish. I can't keep Noah on
the same leash forever. It's time for him to get out, to find
somebody else, someone that can give him all the love he deserves
without a side of crazy. Fortunately for me, I have someone that
needs both.

“
Morning,”
Ty says through a yawn, shuffling up behind me and pausing as he
notices that the screen door is swinging back and forth in the
morning sunshine. He doesn't say anything or ask any questions, but
he does kiss me on the top of my head and move over to the table
where Noah's empty cereal bowl still sits. Ty picks it up and
empties it into the garbage disposal. I stare at his strong back, at
the long, lean muscles and the smooth skin and I wonder how the fuck
I'm going to tell him what I absolutely one hundred percent
have
to tell him.

I
use the sleeve of my robe to wipe at my eyes and sit down at the
table, my stomach roiling and threatening to open up on me, spill
right across the perfect white top of this table.

“
Good
morning,” Beth says as she slides in the door with a bag of
groceries in either hand. Ty takes them from her before she drops
them and spills bottled sweet tea across the floor. I can see it
sticking up out of the bag.

“
Gram
would have your ass red limned and sore as a prickly pear cactus if
she knew you were buying your sweet tea pre-made.”

“
Who's
going to make it?” she asks as she ogles Ty's body and makes
the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight. “You?”
Beth puts the offensive beverage in the fridge and ruffles Ty's
hair. “You are such a sweetheart,” she tells him as he
helps her unpack the groceries with an unlit cigarette dangling from
his lips. Shit. Fuck. Damn. I want one so bad, my mouth is
watering. But now I have to quit. Or maybe I don't? I can't
possibly know until I talk to Ty about it. I can't now though, not
with Beth hanging around the kitchen like a protective mother. She
keeps throwing me these looks, trying to determine what Ty knows and
what he doesn't know. I look away and ignore her.

The
park yesterday was a failure in some ways and a success in others. A
smile quirks my lips for a second and falls back into a frown. We
had
the
best sex on the planet yesterday, on top of a
children's play structure for God's sake, but that doesn't mean he's
going to be Father of the Year. Hell, how would I even know if he
was? I barely remember my dad, and I've hated him for a long time
for things he didn't even do. Besides, it's not as if Ty or I have
had the best mothers either. How would I know how to even be one? I
can't have a baby, not now, but I also can't decide anything until Ty
knows. His reaction could change everything.