DECEIT (B723) by Hazel Grace (ebook reader for surface pro .TXT) 📕

not fucking doing this with you, Bish, I can’t. I don’t have the mental space, and I’m not going to play second best to some cunt who broke your heart so bad that you couldn’t love me or—“ My hand clamps onto her biceps and finds that she’s trembling.

“Calm down, baby,” I coo gently, stopping her from holding her breath as she speaks. “She’s gone the moment Ledger gives me the word.”

“I don’t buy it,” she retorts. “She’ll never let you go.”

“But I let her go...a long, long time ago.”

She shakes her head, strands of blonde hair falling into her eyes, but she doesn’t bother to move them away. Instead, she peers up at me with tears glistening in her eyes.

I want to stab myself for creating them.

“But you didn’t want me. Not in the way I needed you to. You can tell me to go fuck off, but you didn’t to her. She knows she has a place, a soft and gentle one when it comes to you. She can do no wrong and I’m treated like a second-class citizen in your world. I’m tired of it.”

“Emmy, I just told you that—“

“Do you love me?” Her question should have a simple answer. It’s yes. It’s always been the word yes. 

However, when the word enters my brain, the red and piercing screeching of alarm sirens ring off in my head.

They warn me to tread lightly.

That I’m stepping into a similar situation where heartbreak could be the lead ending to this story.

Except I jumped with Emmy like I have with no one before in my life.

I married her.

I craved to give her everything. Children, a happy life and home, and my last name if she wanted it.

My first thought was the one I’ve explained a hundred times. I needed to tell my family that she was mine and I was hers. Which meant extra caution and watch of my wife would be expected. Her being part of B723 and my spouse made her the golden nugget that everyone had to respect and secure at all costs.

There were no other options.

“You see,” she utters in almost a whisper. “Nothing has changed, but everything remains the same to you.”

I close my eyes. “Baby, I—“

“I’m pregnant,” she sneers so viciously that my eyes snap open from the deep intensity of her words. Her light brown eyes clamp onto me and hold me still as she constricts around me so tightly that I can’t make any air enter my lungs.

My body bows in her direction, wanting to comfort, kiss, and speak from somewhere far and dark within my soul. But she continues, and the following comment does change everything.

“And it’s not yours.”

Two days ago…

“Wow…” Mills runs his hand down the stubble on his face as he sits on the edge of my tub and purposely averts his gaze from me. “I honestly didn’t…I guess I assumed Bishop wasn’t your type.”

So, I needed someone to talk to.

I went to the grocery store earlier, minding my own business, when an elderly woman approached me and grabbed my hand. She smiled, her bright green eyes still vibrant as the day she was born, and said I looked absolutely radiant.

She also dropped another adjective that has had me freaking out ever since.

Glowing.

She said I was glowing. 

There is only one reason why I’d be doing that unless I was shot up with a shit load of radiation or had Christmas tree lights shoved up my butt.

Kyson was so out of the running to go to because of how close he is to Bishop.

Marty will kill Bishop.

Wade would have Bishop assassinated.

Reagan is out of town for a wedding she is planning, and having this conversation over the phone while I pee on a stick isn’t ideal.

And Stormi, Marty’s wife, bless her sweet soul, but she’d rat me out quicker than a toupee on a windy day.

So I went to the only other person who wouldn’t judge me too harshly and who I trusted with my secret—Mills.

“His broodiness got me, I guess,” I mutter, trying to focus on peeing but can’t because I have to.

“I’m not against it,” Mills ventures, reading the back of one of my shampoo bottles. “You’d be good for him…but I don’t know about the other way around.”

Oh, buddy. Lemme tell you about how we got married. 

“He has the emotional availability of a fucking rock,” I pledge.

“It just takes a while for him. I guess he got his heart pretty tore the fuck up over this blonde chick. The one we picked up at that daycare, remember?”

“Yeah.”

The bane of my existence and love life. The reason he’s not able to love me or show me any emotional outlet besides fucking me and bringing me pink flowers.

Wow, you’re a bitch. He’s trying. 

“Well, I guess they dated, high school sweethearts and shit. She started snorting coke, and Bish tried to get her off it. Long story short, she wouldn’t stop for him and risked her relationship with him. I suppose he did a lot of stuff to keep her away from it. Ended up killing her rapists and—“

“What?”

Mills glances at my lavender wall. “They were high school sweethearts and—“

I wave a hand in the air. “No, I know all that, the last part.”

“Rapists. She was raped by two guys. Kyson and Bishop took care of it, of course, it got bloody. Bishop was pretty torn up about it. And it went all downhill after that.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Ky. He told me that when Bish graduated, he left her. Wanted a new life and took off for the military. Never looked back, I guess.”

“I knew he had a hard past with her, but…” Heavy guilt, the weight of an eighteen-wheeler falls on my chest. “He never spoke about the rape.”

“Would you? Bishop is a lot of things, but he’s loyal. I can’t blame him for wanting to cut ties.”

“Right.”

“Are you sure you want me in here?” Mills asks, suddenly changing the subject. ”This is weird, Em.”

“I need you to