Page 51 of Ly to Me (Devils of Alliston Springs #1)

Lyra

The Eagle

I woke up the next morning with a start.

Laughter broke out from somewhere in the house, but it was loud enough to echo into the bedroom past the closed door.

I gathered the bedsheet around my naked body, my limbs a bit shaky as I walked over to the window facing the driveway and pushed the blinds aside.

I’d know that truck—ostentatious in both size and number of stickers along the back window—anywhere.

Grant .

Boots clomped with heavy footfalls beyond the door and I held my breath, staring at the knob. Only when another door—the hallway bathroom, I realized—closed, did I exhale. It’s just Grant. Or Carver. Not him .

“He can’t get you here, stupid girl,” I muttered to myself as I shook the chill from my bones and gathered my phone before heading to the bathroom.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you tried, there was no running from your past. Especially not when it fucked you up so bad that letting yourself love and be loved by someone else was the hardest thing you’d ever do.

But, here I was, against all odds, back in the arms of a man I shouldn’t have ever left. Back where safe was becoming less of a dream and more a reality.

Checking my phone, I saw only one notification—a single text from the only person I’d relied on for the past ten years.

Sophia: Good morning, you beautiful bitch! I wanted to check in on you. Signs of life, and all. I’d be more concerned if I wasn’t sure that guy on the phone was probably fucking your brains out, keeping you away from me. If that’s the case, I’m fine waiting.

Me: Morning, Soph. I’m good.

Sophia: That’s all I get? I’m good?

I snickered as I dropped the sheet and started the shower.

Me: I’ll call you in

My phone lit up in my hand as Sophia’s name flashed across the screen. I sighed and answered, putting it on speaker phone.

“Was ’bout to say I’ll call you in a bit.”

“Not good enough. Are you okay? Safe? Good doesn’t tell me what you’ve been up to since you left me.” An invisible fist collided with my chest, her words bringing up a cycle in my life I should’ve never started. “Is that mystery guy, Carver Roland—”

“He’s not a mystery, Sophia. He’s…umm. Please don’t freak out.” I stepped into the shower and set the phone on the ledge—the one now cleared off because it seemed Carver installed that shelf he told me he’d ordered. I smiled as I said, “He’s my husband.”

Sophia was silent for a beat before bursting into a fit of laughter. “I’m sorry, repeat that?” she said, trying to control the laughter still spilling from her.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, then grabbed one of the soaps Car bought for me. “You heard me.”

“Have you been married this whole time? Is that who you were runnin’ from when I found you?”

I paused, biting my tongue, fighting back tears. “No. It’s recent.”

“You’ve only been there not two weeks and you decided to get married? And it isn’t to that Jamie guy?”

“Jamie is an asshole and possibly one of the worst people I’ve ever met in my life.”

“Okay. Jamie equals asshole. Got it.” She made a clicking sound. “Is marrying Carver some new way you’re trying to make money, because I could always lend you whatever you need. Without a marriage and all.”

It took nearly a year for me to find out Sophia only worked as a waitress and lived in a shitty apartment because she wanted to. She could have been living in a mansion this whole time, but refused the lifestyle granted to her at birth.

“I don’t want your money. I tell you that all the time. Just your friendship is valuable enough.”

The truth didn’t come easily past my lips, and it startled me a bit that it was becoming easier to do so by the day—to let people in. To tell them my truths.

Spreading the soap along my skin, I tried not to think of all the things my husband did to me last night after I told him one of my biggest truths. I nearly groaned as I recalled all the ways he wouldn’t stop touching me, whispering in my ear that he loves me while filling me—

“Hello. Earth to Lyra. Are you even still there?”

“Sorry, Soph.” I cleared my throat and started washing my hair. “Remember how I said I grew up here?”

“Yeah…” Her voice trailed, then a snapping sound jolted me in place. “Oh! You knew him? Holy freakin’ shit, Lyra, is he the one who messed you up for other guys?”

My brows pinched together. “What makes you think I was messed up for other guys?”

“Because you refused to date anyone. Ever. Like I told your husband— and no, I won’t get over that term, by the way—you haven’t looked at anyone with actual interest since I’ve known you. They were always a means to an end.”

“I dated some of them,” I retorted.

“Please, no you didn’t. They got you things and you may have left the house to go meet them somewhere but I wouldn’t call what you did ‘dating.’”

She wasn’t wrong. Not about any of it.

“If you must know—” Soapy bubbles fell to the tiled floor in clumps as I washed my hair. Helen was right—my hair did take forever to clean. “Carver was my high school—”

“Sweetheart,” Carver finished, making me nearly jump in place. He leaned against the doorframe, a cocky smirk fixed on his lips as his eyes roamed my naked body, heating like we didn’t have sex all night long. “Hey, Sophia. Thanks for taking care of my girl while I couldn’t.”

Sniffling sounds echoed in the shower from the phone. “No, stop it. What?”

“She cries a lot just like you, huh?” Carver said low, but not low enough.

“We don’t cry a lot,” Sophia and I said in unison.

“What she said,” Sophia added.

“Right.” My highschool sweetheart crossed his ankle over the other, watching me wipe a stray tear from my cheek from his earlier sentiment. “Came to tell you Grant is here, so please don’t come out wearing just my t-shirt this time or I’ll have to rip his eyes out of his head.”

“You sound busy. I’m just…gonna go.”

“Bye, Sophia,” Carver purred, stepping into the shower to where the water didn’t reach. He grabbed the phone and started typing on it.

My brow arched. “And what are you doing, husband ?”

He cocked a smirk, one that made me want to rip his clothes off and jump his bones all over again. “Adding my number to your phone. You know, in case you need anythin’.”

“What if I don’t need you for anything?”

He stopped typing, his chin still angled down toward my phone but his eyes meeting mine, making them appear dark and devilish. “That wasn’t what you were screaming last night, wife .”

My cheeks burned as I stepped back beneath the water. “Doesn’t your friend care that you’re in here, botherin’ me right now? Shouldn’t you be entertaining him?”

Carver snorted. “Grant never needs entertainment. He is the entertainment.”

The time flashed on my phone as he set it back down on the ledge. I cocked my head as the words he’d said to Hayes in the truck came back. “Is Hayes here, too?”

“No. Why?”

“You said he’d have time or something around ten. And your other friend is here.”

Carver rubbed his jaw with his palm. “Best not to bring that up around Grant. He uh…he wouldn’t like knowing where Hayes is right now. We’ll keep it at that.”

I shrugged. “Okay, so, what is Grant doing here? You didn’t tell me yesterday.”

“You didn’t ask.” Carver reached his hand back, then lifted his shirt from his body.

Men like him shouldn’t ever be clothed, though as much as I wanted to fuck him, I had a feeling that wasn’t why he was removing his shirt.

“These need work.” He pointed to a few of his tattoos, pulling my eyes from the thick ridges of muscles that lined his stomach.

“Some touch-up. Grant is a tattoo artist. He did most of mine.”

I turned the shower off and tilted my head to the side, wringing out my long hair.

“I’m not gonna ask why you won’t just go to a shop and get that done because it seems you prefer the work to come to you.

” He smiled like the devil he was. “So can you tell me what I’m supposed to wear with your friend here?

I’d hate to see his pretty grey eyes get yanked out. ”

Carver’s jaw worked and I teasingly pushed his chest with my fingers as I walked by him to exit the shower. But before my toes hit the floor, I was scooped up and tossed over Car’s shoulder.

“Hey!” I shouted as he stormed through our room to the closet. “Put me down, you caveman.”

He smacked my ass, making me yelp. “I only have Grant and Hayes, and I’d prefer not to murder them because you find some part of them attractive.

” He set me back down on the floor and quickly wrapped a towel around my still-dripping body, then left me in the closet.

I was about to holler for him when he stepped back inside, lifting a bag between us. “Got this for you.”

I took it and peeked inside. “Where’d you get more dresses?”

He scratched the back of his head, making too many veins along his arms pop. That bed over his shoulder was so close. Too close. “Grant has a sister, so I asked if she had a few things you could borrow. Y’all are about the same size.”

I shook my head to clear it and pulled a dress out. “This still has tags on it.” Peeking inside again and jostling the bag, more tags came into view.

“Grant’s parents try to make her dress up and I guess she prefers not to.”

“She a child?” I held the dress up to my body and arched a brow. “A large child?”

He scratched his stubbled jaw. “Nah. She’s a few years younger. Twenty, I think?”

“You didn’t sleep with her, did you?”

His hand fell to his side as his jaw worked furiously. “Fuck no.”

“So, she’s a blonde, then?”

“Red-head,” he corrected, narrowing his eyes on me. “And Tallie, which is her name, is my best friend’s little sister.” Something happened as he looked at me, making his angry features fall. “I’ll see if she can come by sometime. You two would actually get along real good, I think.”

“Tallie?”

“Tallulah. But only Grant calls her that.”

I gave a long hmm . “If I didn’t know any better, it sounds like you’re trying to set me up with a friend.”