Page 5

Chapter Five

Griffin’s Beach Lex

L ex Nichols walks into the clubhouse and looks around. Her husband walks up and wraps her up in his muscular arms. He kisses her, moaning in appreciation of having her here so early.

“Hey, beautiful. What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for Venom, but this is a great distraction.”

Thrusting his hips against her, he smirks. “I can give you one hell of a distraction.”

She looks into his eyes and smiles. It still amazes her how far they’ve come after everything that’s happened between them.

A mobster ex-fiancé, dead brother, cheating to push her away, infidelity suspicions thanks to a slutty mother, getting pregnant, married in a hospital room, getting pregnant again, splitting up, filing for divorce, getting back together, moving to Summerville, moving back, and taking in two teenagers. And those are just the highlights.

It feels like a long-running soap opera when she takes the time to play it all over in her mind. By all accounts, these two should not be together right now. But here they are, together and happy.

“What?” Colt asks.

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

Her lips touch his briefly before saying, “Us.”

“Oh, I’m always thinking about us.”

She slaps him playfully. “Not like that. Okay, maybe I am now, but that’s not what I meant.”

The way this man loves her makes her feel like she lives in a dream.

At least when it comes to their relationship.

It wasn’t always this way. In fact, there was a point she thought he’d fallen out of love with her.

There will always be a small bit of insecurity there, but the way he looks at her every time he sees her now reminds her how much he loves her.

“Where did you go so early this morning?”

Shit. She didn’t think he’d notice. “Um… I had an appointment.”

“A doctor’s appointment?”

“Yeah.”

His eyes light up, and Lex feels terrible disappointing him. “Are you—”

“I’m not pregnant. Although, considering how often you mount me, you’d think we’d have an entire fucking football team by now.”

“Are you sick?”

Venom, Colt’s Sergeant at Arms, walks out from his apartment. “We can talk later. I need to steal Venom.”

“Hey, you’re here. I was waiting for you,” Venom says with a small smile.

Colt holds a hand up to her friend, signaling him to wait. “Lex, what’s going on?”

“I’m not sick, so take that out of your head right now. I need to go and do this, but I promise, we’ll talk tonight?”

“It’s nothing bad?”

“I don’t think so, but you might have a different opinion.”

Frowning, he sighs. “Not really making me feel better, baby.”

“I’m nervous to tell you, but when I do, I hope you’ll keep an open mind and understand why.”

“You suck for this,” he says but kisses her. “Venom, take my wife and go and do whatever the fuck you’re going to do. I’m just gonna sit here thinking about all the worst-case scenarios until you bring her back.”

She laughs and taps his cheek. “I’d expect nothing less, baby.”

“What exactly are we doing?” Venom asks.

“You up for a field trip?”

“Sure,” he says with a shrug and follows her out to her Mustang. “Hey, Lex?”

Turning, she’s taken aback at how shy he looks. Something she’s never seen when it comes to Venom in all the years she’s known him. “Yeah?”

“Um… Is there any chance you’d let me… you know… drive this someday?”

“Sure. Wanna drive on the way back here?”

His eyes light up, and she hates how unfamiliar he still is when it comes to even the simplest forms of generosity. “Really?”

“You break my heart when you look at me like that over something so insignificant.”

He smiles and looks happier than he’s been in a long while. His breakup from Marnie Banks has been rough on him, especially with her moving to Griffin’s Beach to follow him.

Though Lex may not know the specifics of why Venom feels the way he does about himself, she knows that it has something to do with his mother. And if she ever gets the chance to meet the woman, she plans to make her pay for every terrible thing she ever did to this broken soul.

“Where are we going?” Venom asks.

“Well, I could have asked Colt to come with me, and he would be happy to do it, but I thought you could use some violence to help with the conflict waging war in your head.”

Tilting his head, he snorts. “You think I’ll get to hurt someone?”

“I’m about ninety-nine percent sure you’ll get to hurt someone.”

“You’re like a fairy godmother. Now, where are we going?”

“Lucas and Hailey’s old house.”

She pulls down the street she’s driven down countless times to see the home Lucas and Hailey ran away from. The house that was hell compared to living in an empty one with no electricity or running water. It still bothers Lex to think about.

After Hailey’s mother killed herself, she lived with her father and stepmother. Lucas’s mother. Their father died in a car accident, leaving them both with Iris who later married Harold, an alcoholic who beat them while she turned to drugs to dull her demons.

“Oh, this motherfucker. I came with Grayson to get the mother’s signature to sign over guardianship to you guys. I scared that asshole so bad that he shit himself. This will be fun,” Venom says as he climbs out of the passenger seat.

They walk up to the door, and Lex knocks. Pulling her hand back, she cringes at the weird film coating her knuckles. “Gross.”

“Wait until you see the inside,” he says. “This place really needs to be condemned.”

The door opens, and a large man with brown teeth answers. Teeth as in more than one, but there are more missing than present.

His stretched-out tank top looks like it was once white, and it barely covers his beer belly. The boxers look even worse and as though they were used as toilet paper recently. His stench makes her gag, and she leans back to take in a breath of fresh air.

“What the fuck are you doing back here?” Harold barks. “We signed the fucking paper.”

“I need to talk to your wife,” Lex says as she fights breathing through her nose.

“And who the fuck are you?”

She forces a smile. “I’m the woman raising the children you abused. God, it’s like you can taste that smell.”

“You’re the bitch who destroyed my wife when she found out you adopted her son? She almost OD’ed because of you!”

He leans in so close that she has to fight back the vomit rising in her throat. “Wow, your breath would peel paint off a car.”

“You ain’t seeing my wife unless I get to have my way with you first, Blondie,” he says. His smile shows all six of his teeth. Six.

“What the fuck did you just say?” Venom growls, pushing his way into the house and forcing the morbidly obese man backwards. “Don’t you ever talk to a woman like that, motherfucker.”

Fear fills his eyes, and he backs down. “She’s asking a favor. Thought it was worth a shot to get something in return.”

“You couldn’t even find your dick under that tub of lard you call a stomach. Insulating for the not-so-cold winters we get? Planning to hibernate like a fucking bear?”

Lex chuckles but stops the moment she sees the needles, empty alcohol bottles and cans, and garbage covering almost every inch of floor. The only areas not completely overrun with trash are the pathways he uses to move around.

Cockroaches and maggots crawl everywhere, including the walls. It makes her want to cry knowing this is where Lucas would be living right now. How long did they live here before running away? And was it as bad as this?

“Where is she?” Lex asks.

“She’s on the corner of Go Fuck Yourself Drive and Blow Me Avenue.”

Venom’s fist hits him so hard he flies back into the wall and breaks through what looks like a closet behind it. Shaking his hand out, he stares with disgust. “This asshole’s covered in the same shit as the door.”

Looking around, she doesn’t see anyone else, and she carefully walks up the stairs. If Iris isn’t in the living room, there’s only one other level she could feasibly be on. Assuming Harold hasn’t buried her in the backyard.

God help me if she’s in the basement. There’s more mold in this house than a science lab. I bet they’d find new kinds in here that have yet to be identified.

“Iris?” Lex calls out.

“Who’s there?”

She follows the voice and walks into a room in even worse shape than the first floor. “Iris Lawrence?”

“It’s Bernard now. Who are you?”

“I’m Lex Nichols. I adopted Lucas.”

A wail fills the air, and Lex just rolls her eyes. “You took my baby away from me!”

“No, you and your husband sent him running for the fucking hills. You’re just lucky my husband didn’t explain the full extent of this shithole to me when he first brought them home. This wouldn’t be our first meeting otherwise.”

“What do you want?”

“I want Hailey’s jewelry. Her mother’s jewelry she inherited after you pushed her to kill herself.”

Sniffling, Iris studies Lex for a moment, but she leans over and reaches under the bed. She almost falls and knocks her head on the bedside table. Lex sees how much hair Iris has lost, and she’s practically bald.

“I lied.”

“Excuse me?”

Sliding a jewelry box from under the bed, she sits up and holds it out. The track marks on her arms are impossible to ignore. “I told Hailey I threw out what I couldn’t sell. I didn’t.”

“Why’d you lie?”

“Because I hated her mother. She was going to take Vick from me, but I never expected her to down a bottle of pills because of me. And I sure as hell didn’t expect Vick to find out and hate me for it. He told me he hated me the day he died, you know.”

Lex takes the box, using a clean-ish section of the comforter to wipe it off, and she knows there will need to be some heavy sanitation done. “Thanks.”

“Wait,” Iris calls as she turns to leave.

“This is a health hazard to stay in too long, so make it quick.”

“Do you think Lucas will ever forgive me?”

This woman has to be high as a fucking kite to think she deserves any type of redemption. “Probably not. Not when you choose to stay like this.”

“I miss my son.”

This, she believes. “He’s a good kid despite everything you and your shitty husband have done to him. Too good, honestly.”

Her lip trembles. “But… he’s okay?”

“He’s great. Better than we imagined, and he’s a great big brother to his siblings. I suspect his instinct to protect them comes from wishing he could have done the same for his mother who chose shooting shit into her arms every day over him.”

“Promise you’ll always get to take care of my son.”

“Bitch, I have taken care of him since I met him. And he’s my son now.

You have no one to blame but yourself for losing the best thing you’d ever done.

Now, I’m going to leave because I’m pretty sure I’m inhaling forms of fungus that have no cure because scientists have not discovered them yet. This place is disgusting.”

She walks out and down the stairs as quickly as possible. The desire to shower in bleach has never been more overwhelming, and she tosses her keys to Venom as they step outside.

They take a deep breath of fresh air. “Who the fuck lives that way?” Venom asks.

“It kills me to know this is where they lived before they ran away. No child deserves a fraction of that house of horrors,” Lex says with a shudder. “And I need a shower. That was fucking disgusting.”