So. Long.: Bad Boy Next Door (76 page)

TWENTY-TWO

Lou rolls over. Her face pinches as though she smells
something bad. I push the hair out of her face, my chest tightening for the
fiftieth time in the last seven hours I’ve watched her sleep.

Surely she’s not pregnant.
Is
she pregnant?

No. She wouldn’t get drunk like that if she were pregnant.
Would she? No. No. Of course not.

I pull out my phone to quiet the voice screaming
show me
the money
, my manager’s ringtone.

“Yeah, Bob?”

“Two things. First, Razor Wire called. They want to set up a
conference call.”

“Razor Wire Entertainment. Tell me they aren’t canceling the
production. Because that would be just about how life is going right now.”

“No, they want to talk dates.”

“Good. Just text me and tell me when. What else?”

“The other thing is that you’re killing me, Wylder. Fucking
killing me.”

“You’ll live. The fifteen percent you get off my paychecks
tells me you’ll live.”

“Yeah, yeah. I didn’t say I was quitting, I said you’re
killing my ass.”

“What is it now?”

“Well, do a Marine and a campfire mean anything to you?”

Ah shit. “Yeah. Yeah. Pay them off. I don’t care. I’ve got
other shrimp to boil right now.”

“It’s only the one. And I’ve already taken care of it; you
just have to write the fucking check. But it’s costing you.”

“Well, it
was
two on one. Seems like those fuckers
would be a bit ashamed of the fact that they couldn’t kick my ass, considering
they’re supposed to be trained to kill and shit.”

“All some people care about is a pay day, Buck. Don’t you
get it? You’re a meal ticket now. You have to stop using your fists to solve
shit.”

“Whatever it is, just send me an email with the details.
I’ll make sure it’s paid. I told you, I don’t have time for this. I’ve got
fucking Arianne telling me she’s pregnant—speaking of which, how do I make her
have a paternity test? She’s got to be fucking lying. There’s no way.”

Lou stirs at my side.

“I gotta go, Bob. Just take care of this shit, will you? Oh,
and make sure there’s some kind of gag clause in there, no need for the world
to find out about this.”

I couldn’t give a shit who knows, but I don’t want Lou
finding out her Marine buddy’s a douche, looking for a payday after he jumped
in the middle of a fight.

I end the call.

Lou smacks me hard on my chest. “Get out.”

“Hey. How’re you feeling this morning?”

She sits up, glaring at me. “I said get the fuck out, Buck.”

I stand and cross my arms. “No. We have to talk about last
night.”

She shakes her head, rubbing her temples. “Fuck last night.
A bear tore into my brain last night; at least, that’s what it feels like. I’m
not talking about anything. And I don’t want you here—so get the fuck out.”

“You said something. I need to know what you meant.”

She looks up, her eyes narrowing. “I don’t remember most of
last night. Looks like you might’ve gotten your ass kicked. Did I do that?”

“No. Your Marine buddies and I had a disagreement about who
was putting you to bed.”

She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. You’re here, so I guess y’all
got it settled.”

“That’s not what I want to talk about.”

She holds up her finger to stop me. “Just wait. I have to go
scour out my mouth.”

I sit and wait for her to get back from taking care of her
morning stuff. My fingers drum on my pant leg. My muscles tense.

She comes back, falling face-down across the bed, her hands
covering the back of her head. “Whatever it is you want to talk about, can it
wait until this jackhammer in my head lets up?”

I lean toward her, running my hand over her shoulders. “Lou,
are you pregnant?”

She does a push-up, her eyes wide. “What?
No!
Why’d
you ask that?”

“Because you said something last night about a baby. Telling
him
about a baby?
Were
you pregnant?”

She flops back to her stomach, her face buried in the
blankets, her voice muffled. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“You got pregnant? When? With who?”

Her shoulders heave with a sigh.

“Lou, c’mon.”

“It’s none of your business, Buck.”

“Please, tell me. What happened?”

Lou rolls to her back, hands over her face. “Buck, that was
in the past—nothing can be done about it now. No point in rehashing it. It’ll
only open old wounds.”

“Tell me.”

She sits up, her back ramrod straight, shoulders back, chin
high. “Fine. It really doesn’t matter if you know anyway. It doesn’t affect a
thing. Especially now, since I know how you’d have reacted, considering the way
you’re acting about Arianne.”

“Arianne isn’t you.”

She turns a disgusted look on me. “Whatever. Yes. I was
pregnant. About three weeks or so after you left for
Hollyworld
, I took
a home pregnancy test.”

Three weeks. Fuck.

My guts twist. “My baby?
Our
baby?”

She turns hard eyes on me. “No.
My
baby.
You
weren’t here.
You
didn’t come back. And you never knew it existed while
it was on this Earth.
My
baby.”

My insides seem to quiver. “While it was on Earth? What
happened? What did you
do
?”

Her mouth hardens to match her eyes. “I didn’t
do
anything. I would never do that.
Ever
. I loved that little life with
everything in me, with all the love you left behind. About eight weeks in, I
started bleeding, and all the doctors could do was to tell me to put my feet up
and take it easy.”

My mind races over the anger Lou holds onto about my not
coming home. About me leaving her. A wave of nausea washes through me.

I reach for her. “Aw, Lou. Why didn’t you call me? Tell me?
I’d have come back. I would never have left you to deal with that alone.”

She brushes my hands away. “Of course I
didn’t
call
you home. I didn’t want you to come back for a baby. I wanted you to come back
for
me
. I fucking loved you, you idiot. I loved you so much, and it cut
so deep when you left. But you didn’t love me. You said goodbye to me as though
you were gifting me with my freedom.”

I sit at the edge of the bed, dropping my head into my
hands. “I
was
gifting you your freedom. That’s
exactly
what I was
doing.”

TWENTY-THREE

I held in the tears just long enough to get Buck out of the
house. Even then, I only took a couple of minutes to grab hold of the ugly
monster trying to escape that safe little box and stuff it back where it
belongs, deep inside and all locked up.

No way will I let him see me break down. No fucking way.

Aunt Delores was the one who comforted me when I sat by, my
baby dying inside me, unable to do a damned thing to stop its tiny life from
ebbing away with every beat of my breaking heart. I won’t put her through that
again.

I washed my face after my momentary lapse in keeping my shit
together, and I went downstairs to see what Russell and Stephens were doing.
They’d already gone. I guess they didn’t want to say goodbye.

Fine. Whatever.

Going out of the house was a mistake. The paparazzi are a
pain in the ass. I can’t walk outside without someone taking a photo from the
bushes or from across the street using a telephoto lens.

All day, Aunt Delores and Sadie have treated me like I might
shatter into a million sharp-edged pieces, though I keep telling them I’m fine.
Well, I’m fine
now
. And I’d never let them know if I wasn’t, anyway.

Sadie brings me a bowl of chocolate ice cream. “Here. This’ll
make us feel better.”

“
Us
?”

She shrugs. “Ice cream and chocolate always make me feel
better, even when nothing’s wrong. But my boyfriend broke up with me yesterday.
So, yeah,
us
.”

She sits next to me on the sofa, close enough to prop her
arm on my drawn up legs. “So, want me to go kick his fucking ass for ya?”

“Who? Buck?”

“Yeah. Or whoever. I’ll do it, you know.”

I smile, shaking my head. “Thanks. I appreciate that. But I
like to do my own ass kicking.”

Aunt Delores pulls the remote from my hand. “Why do you
torture yourself by watching this crap?”

I frown and, okay, maybe I pout—a little. “Because I’m a
masochist. And the news is still talking about me like I’m some skank ho who
Buck just picked up off the street—as if he’d have to do that to get laid.”

She sits next to me, pulling me into her arms. “Aw, Baby
Girl, you know who you are. The people who love you understand. They’re the
ones that matter. Those who don’t know you and don’t understand, they don’t
matter, not one bit.”

How many times did she say this to me when I was a teenager
with tender feelings and small town hatred hitting me from all sides? Too many
to count.

The handful of people who love me unconditionally has shrunk
by one or two, but she’s still right. It really doesn’t matter what the world
thinks of me.

Now, Buck, on the other hand—he’s really in the hot seat.

I sit with a tumbler of bourbon in one hand, the remote
control in the other as I surf from one cable news show to the next. All the
entertainment news is the same. Pretty much saying what the paper in front of
me shouts. The National Investigator headline mocks me.

SO. TRASHY. Buck Wylder goes slumming and pays for sex.

The only saving grace is that I’ve already signed the
contracts with Razor Wire. Fuck. If this had come out a couple of days ago, I’d
have been thoroughly screwed.

The kitchen table rocks when Trudi plants her ass on the
edge of it, a foot from me. “Buck, I like you.”

After waking up to Arianne crawling into my bed in the wee
hours of this morning, I’m a bit wary. “Okay. Thanks. I—I guess I like you all
right too. Say, you aren’t getting ready to go all cray cray and shit on me,
are you?”

She plasters on a big grin. “No crazy. I’ll save that for
the really rich guys.”

“You’re fucking hilarious.”

“I’ve been thinking about your predicament.”

“My
predicament
? Which would that be? The Marine who
wants to sue my ass for jumping into a fight between me and his buddy? The
crazy stalker who says she’s pregnant with my baby, but I can’t have arrested
for fear of losing my big break? Or the fact that the money I’ve given Lou is
under scrutiny?”

Granted, there is some truth to the last problem, but that’s
because I thought it was the only way to keep her off-stage and get her into my
arms so I could change her mind about us.

Backfired
doesn’t even cover it.

Trudi tilts her head this way and that, as though sizing me
up. “Neither.”

“Shit. You mean there’s another fucking problem I don’t even
know about?”