Young Truths (Young Series) (33 page)

With that, I shake my head, slide my phone into my pocket, and head back outside, wondering what my brother-in-law has in store for me.

There aren’t a lot of fancy gourmet restaurants near where my family lives. In fact, there are none. The closest we have is a steakhouse about an hour away from the farm where the best dressed person is wearing a clean, pressed flannel shirt, jeans with no stains, and boots that don’t completely reek of manure. We used to come here for birthdays and special occasions, and I can’t remember the last time I walked through the doors.

The building is a farmhouse—big surprise. Very rustic. The food is fresh, delicious, and simple. There is only a one-page menu—one side lists the steak, chicken, and burgers; the other the handful of side dishes. Every table has a bucket of peanuts and fresh bread rolls that, according to Matthew, rival the ones Bonnie used to make.

Matthew is relaxed for a change, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and successfully blending in with the locals. He’s laughing as he helps Tyler open peanut shells without making too big a mess. When I woke from my nap, I found him outside with Jimmy brushing the horses, feeding the chickens, and even trying to herd the pigs back into the pen. Jimmy was perched on the fence during this last chore, laughing his ass off as my dear husband slipped and slid around in the mud, falling on his own ass more often than not. By the time he gave up, Matthew was covered from head to toe in things I don’t even want to think about, and Tyler and Madison had the privilege of hosing him off in the middle of the yard, a task they both took immense pride and pleasure in.

“What are smirking about?” he asks me, turning back towards me.

“Your adventures in farming today,” I tell him, unable to keep the amusement out of my voice. “You’d think you’d never seen a farm animal in your life.”

He tries to glare at me, but his eyes tell me he’s fighting his own laugh. “You’re going to show me out to tip cows while we’re here, right?” he asks, reaching for his fifth roll. “I’ve been jonesing for a lesson for years.”

I snort a laugh. “We’ll see,” I reply.

Beaming at me, he turns towards my sister-in-law and they begin a discussion about Matthew’s work. Dinner is wonderful as expected. Lisa, the kids, and I can barely get through our entrees after the bread and peanuts, and we watch Matthew and Jimmy as they seem to take it as a challenge to see which of them can eat the most. I have a feeling they’re both going to have stomachaches tonight. The kids split a piece of cake for dessert and when the bill shows up, Matthew, unsurprisingly, makes a grab for it. Jimmy immediately objects while my husband ignores him.

“Give it up, Jimmy,” I advise, wiping the chocolate off Tyler’s face. “He’s not going to let you pay.”

Scowling, Jimmy relents, grudgingly thanking Matthew for dinner. I roll my eyes at Lisa, excusing myself from the table to change Olivia in the bathroom before we head home. As we pass the bar area, I get the feeling of being watched and glance casually to my left, finding only couples and families enjoying their meals. Until my eyes slide into a corner of the restaurant. I can’t quite make out who is sitting there in the shadows, but my attention is diverted when Olivia spits out her pacifier. I turn back, looking down, and start to bend to grab it when a little boy leaves his table to hand it to me. Thanking him, I turn back towards the shadowed table, not seeing anyone sitting there anymore.

“Mommy’s losing her mind, Olivia,” I mutter to my daughter and head into the restroom. As I rinse off her pacifier, I notice something about it that I never noticed before. There seems to be a tiny pulsating light at the base. Further inspection shows me what looks like a very tiny computer chip that I seriously doubt is part of the standard manufacturing. “Really, Matt? GPS in our daughter’s pacifier?”

Pocketing the pacifier and gathering my daughter in my arms, I return to my family. Something on my face must give me away to Matthew because his smile slips a little. “What?” he asks quietly, reaching out to take Olivia from me.

I shake my head. “Nothing,” I say, smiling as I convince myself I’m getting too paranoid. “Though we’ll be talking about this when we get home...” I reach into my pocket and place Olivia’s still-flashing pacifier in his palm.

He has the decency to look sheepish. “I’m overprotective. What can I say?”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “Tyler’s watch?” I ask. He nods slightly, eyeing the area between my throat and chest. Glancing down, I find what he’s looking at immediately. “My necklace?” My tone is incredulous and we both look up to see whether we’ve caught Jimmy and Lisa’s attention as they walk several feet in front of us. “You put a GPS chip in my locket?”

Actually, I don’t know why I’m so surprised. I haven’t taken off this necklace since I opened it last summer and I probably won’t anytime soon. At the time, I believed it was the last thing Matthew would ever give me—he purchased it for our third wedding anniversary, but I left him before he could give it to me. He left for Italy before I even located the wrapped box and note he wrote for me. I didn’t actually open the locket until a couple weeks after he supposedly died in a plane crash. Inside the heart-shaped locket, he’d placed a tiny picture of the two of us on our wedding day on one side and a picture of Tyler not long after he was born on the other. Matthew borrowed the necklace from me not long after Olivia was born and when he brought it back, the picture of Tyler had been replaced with one of Tyler holding his baby sister for the first time.

Again, I roll my eyes, realizing that’s probably when he installed the GPS chip.

“And what about you?” I ask as we reach the car.

“What about me?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.

I shrug. “You can track our movements whenever you want to. If something were to happen to us, you’d find us with minimal effort. But what if something happens to you? How am I supposed to find you?”

He stops and stares at me for a moment as though this possibility has never even occurred to him. Though I’m not sure which comes as news—that something might happen to him or that I might want to find him one day. “I don’t know,” he answers slowly, his brow furrowed. “I never—”

“Why is it that you have zero hesitation when it comes to our safety, but when it comes to yours, you have no concerns?” I ask him, shaking my head. “Matt, if something were to happen to you, we’d be just as devastated as you would be if something happened to us. The plane crash is a perfect example: Everything stopped for me and I don’t think I could tell you what I did on any given day because everything was a blur for me until you came back. And after everything that’s happened, I would be worse than devastated if I lost you again.”

Again, he looks at me like this is news and finally gives me a slow smile. “I love you, you know,” he whispers, bending his neck to press a long, sweet kiss on my lips. “And if it’s that important to you, I will give myself a GPS chip.”

“Good,” I say simply, setting Olivia’s car seat onto the base in the backseat.

Buckling Tyler into his seat, Matthew sends me a smirk before climbing into the driver’s seat. Once I’m settled, we follow Jimmy back to the farm.

“Kids asleep?” I ask as Samantha joins me on the couch. She nods, curling up beside me. “Reluctant as I am to do anything that might upset this very comfortable arrangement,” I glance down to where she’s pulled her legs up against her chest and wrapped an arm around my waist, “I need to tell you something.” Her entire body stiffens in silent response. “Marcus called today to inform me that the police no longer consider me a suspect in Lucy’s death. The fingerprints found in her apartment aren’t mine.”

She relaxes significantly and the look she gives me suggests she assumed we were going to talk about something much worse. “Well, we knew that,” she says matter-of-factly.

My eyebrows shoot up. “Did we?” I ask, rolling my eyes at myself. “I mean,
I
knew they weren’t mine, but you...”

I inwardly protest when she pulls away from me. “What about me?” she asks. “You told me the night you were questioned they weren’t yours and that you’d never even been to her apartment, and I trust you. I might have doubted it for a second that night, but not since then.”

I stare at her for a moment, reveling in the thought of how far we’ve come in the last six months in terms of trusting one another. At that point, I don’t think I’d ever felt more devastated than I did to learn somebody had sent Samantha a video depicting Natalie and me in my office at Young Technologies doing things that were so not workplace appropriate. To make it even worse, they’d edited the video so that the camera clearly showed an early sonogram of Olivia on my desk. It took me weeks to feel as though I’d regained her full trust again. Now she’s telling me she never really believed I could have been rekindling an old romance with an ex-girlfriend, despite evidence that stated otherwise.

“Thank you,” I whisper, pulling her against me and holding her close as my breathing turns uneven.

She looks up at me in concern and bemusement. “For what?” she asks.

I shrug, uncertain myself of what I’m so grateful for. “Everything,” I breathe after a few moments. “For giving me a million chances that I probably didn’t deserve. For putting up with my bullshit day in and day out. For our children. For loving me. The list goes on and on.”

Her eyes turn watery as she straightens up, pulling away from my hold just enough so she can straddle my lap and before my brain can process what’s happening, she’s kissing me deeply, passionately and it’s all I can do to return her enthusiasm. Wrapping one arm around her lower back and pulling her as close to me as she can get, I know where this is going to lead; only now am I realizing exactly how badly I missed this sort of connection with her since Olivia was born. And I love that she seems to have missed it just as much. She’s practically clawing at my shirt, her lips on my neck as her hips grind slowly into mine. My head falls to the back of the couch, my hands moving beneath her shirt on their own accord.

Unable to resist any longer—it’s been almost two months, after all—I move until her back is on the couch and I’m resting on top of her, hooking her leg over my hip as my lips pave a trail from her chin down to her chest. “Should we go upstairs?” I ask her, answering my own question as I slip her t-shirt off.

She shakes her head. “Olivia’s asleep,” she murmurs with a groan. “Don’t want her to wake up.”

I chuckle at the breathiness in her voice. “Here it is, then.” We make quick work of the clothes between us and within minutes, my head is between her legs while she fists my hair and her back forms a near perfect arch in response to what I’m doing to her. Nothing has ever felt more right to me than being with her like this, breathing her in, tasting her, listening to the little gasps and moans she emits when I do something she likes. I wonder vaguely how I ever managed to survive five years without her, without
this
, and I realize just how much of that time I spent trying to replace what I’d lost when she left. I knew I’d never be able to replace her, but that didn’t stop me trying at every possible opportunity. No one else ever came close to matching up to Samantha.

As I sink into her body, I wonder if it was like that for her as well. Was she hoping that at some point she might be able to fool herself into believing Saunders could replace me? By her own admission, she had every intention of saying yes to his marriage proposal so she could have some semblance of stability in her and Tyler’s lives. Of course, my sudden reappearance in the picture blew that plan to hell—she hardly hesitated to end things with him to be with me again. And I can’t deny how cocky I become whenever I think about it. There could never be anybody else for either of us and we both know it. I know without a shadow of a doubt there is nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to ensure we’re never apart again.

So far, our vacation has been picture perfect. For the first time in far too long, Matthew seems to be genuinely relaxed and more himself than ever. Several things can be attributed to his mood change, I think—the distance between us and our troubles; how he and my brother seem to have bonded; our renewed sex life... Whatever the cause, I would do just about anything to ensure he remains that way long after we return home.

Currently, I’m sitting on the front porch of my childhood home bottle-feeding my daughter and watching my husband limp across the yard to catch up with Tyler and Madison while they play some imaginary game. I smirk at the memory of how he acquired that limp and wish desperately that I’d thought to bring a video camera to record the events so I could share them with Claire. As it is, I’ll never let him live it down.

He’s been begging
me since we got here to take him cow-tipping and last night I got tired of the puppy dog looks he gives me whenever we talk about it. It was midnight when we snuck out of the guesthouse hand-in-hand and giggling like teenagers out past their curfew. For a while, we just leaned against the fence that keeps the cows where they are supposed to be, talking about everything and nothing all at once. I once again explained the proper cow-tipping method, even offered to do one myself as an example, but much to my amusement, my genius of a husband decided a brief verbal tutorial was enough to make him an instant expert. To his credit, he crossed the cow pen without making a sound and seemed to find his victim immediately. I remember him looking over at me with a huge, cocky grin on his face as he stretched his legs, back, and neck exaggeratedly, and I’d rolled my eyes at him, knowing exactly how this would play out. When five minutes passed and all he’d done was set his stance more firmly on the ground, I rolled my hand in a
get on with it
motion. He scowled and placed his hands on the cow... Right as José the goat made his presence known.