Page 11 of Ugly Duckling (Content Advisory #6)

“A cookie that’s also going to be in the cookie flight. They give you twelve cookies, Plus, they have a cake taster that I was going to get, too.”

It was then that I remembered that Gunner had his own sweet tooth.

“Was wondering if you’d show,” a cop in uniform said as he walked up to us. “How’s it going, Gunner? Or do I call you Jinx today? You’re not wearing the cut.”

I looked over at Gunner. “Jinx?”

“Club calls me Jinx,” he said as he kept poking the screen. “Auden likes to give me shit.”

I looked over at Auden. “Hi, I’m Sutton.”

He held out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

The way he studied my face had my stomach bottoming out.

So used to the way people took me in, knowing that I was ugly, it was a gut instinct to put some space between us.

I yanked off the beanie and allowed my hair to come down and cover some of my face.

He clocked my reaction and narrowed his eyes.

I pulled my hand away and turned my face, finding Gunner finished with what he was doing and shoving his phone back into his pocket.

He took my face in, along with my hair, and then looked at Auden. “Can we sit in the back and eat today?”

“Sure.” He jerked his chin. “Come on back.”

We followed him into a back hallway that eventually led to an office space.

There was a huge table and chairs in there.

Gunner made himself at home, walking to the fridge and pouring two glasses of milk into two red Solo cups that were sitting off to the side of the fridge.

Auden continued to study me.

“Do I make you nervous?” he asked, calling me out.

“I don’t like people staring at me,” I admitted.

“Stop, Auden,” Gunner ordered. “She’s with me.”

Three words had changed my whole world.

“With you, with you?”

“For now,” Gunner answered. “Why are you here?”

“Stopped for a lunch break,” he returned. “Maven ordered in. Just got through.”

Gunner looked at me and said, “I’m going to grab our stuff. Be right back. Take a seat.”

I took a seat, but only after they left.

My stomach started to settle down the longer Auden was gone.

When Gunner got back with a huge bag of food, all of it fattening and filled with sugar, I said, “He was intimidating.”

“He’s a cop. You were acting funny.”

“I don’t like when people stare at me,” I admitted. “I know I’m not the most attractive person to look at, but staring is rude. They can look away.”

His head tilted. “You’re not ugly.”

I snorted. “Maybe not anymore. But it’s a knee-jerk reaction.”

“You weren’t ever ugly before.”

He was being nice.

“We’ll have to agree to disagree. Even my own father thought I was ugly.”

His brows rose and his chin jerked back like I’d just punched him with an invisible hand on the jaw. “What?”

“That’s also why I settled with Jackson,” I blurted. “I just wanted kids so bad. I wanted a life. I wanted marriage and a companion who would live life with me. But that’s probably for the best. Not having kids. I’m not sure what they would’ve looked like.”

He blinked at me. “What do you mean what they would’ve looked like?”

I didn’t know why I was babbling.

I didn’t know why I was also giving him one of my biggest insecurities.

“My kids will be ugly,” I explained. “That’s why I’ve struggled so hard with the idea of having kids. I’d be signing them up for a lifetime of humiliation like I had. What kind of person would I be signing my kids up for that?”

He growled. “First off, you’ve never been ugly.

I thought you were cute in high school. I was more about easy, though, than quality pussy.

So that’s why I never went for you. Plus, you were this ice queen.

You were better than anyone. You were going places, and boys were jerks.

They didn’t like when the girl they were dating had something more important than them to do. ”

I shook my head in disbelief.

“You’re on something.” I snorted. “It’s nice that you’re sweet and all, but…”

He held up his hand. “Don’t. Don’t talk badly about yourself. I don’t like it.”

I snapped my mouth shut.

“Now, let’s try some cookies.” He opened the first huge box. “Where do you want to start first?”

Thirty minutes later, I was stuffed.

I’d eaten so much cake and cookies that there was no way I’d have room for anything else today.

“What do you want to do?” he asked as we walked out to his bike.

“Take a long, thorough nap.”

“Boring.” He whistled. “But I wouldn’t mind some couch time. I can show you around later when we go for dinner.”

There was no way that dinner would be happening.

But I’d agree to get a little shut-eye.

The bike ride home was a little better than the one on the way there.

It’d warmed up with the sun’s bright rays.

Oddly cold in the middle of October in Texas, I hadn’t packed even remotely well.

I was lucky I’d had the sweatshirt in my car.

When we pulled up in front of his house, he pulled the bike into the garage and shut it off.

“You can have the other space over there.” He jerked his head toward the third garage bay that was set off slightly to itself. “Your car’s small enough that it’ll fit.”

I was driving my mom’s Audi for the time being, mostly because my ex-husband was a complete douchebag and had taken back the car he’d bought me when we’d gotten married.

I’d let him have it without a fight, though.

What was the point?

That was yet another thing on my list—to buy a car.

“Are you sure you want me here?” I asked carefully. “I come with a lot of baggage. There’s no way that my mom won’t want to come visit. And my dad is nosy as hell. He’ll be here every weekend if you let him.”

His head tilted. “Will they babysit?”

I shook my head. “If you gave them the chance, they’d be over the moon.

I was an only child, and they wanted more kids, but my mom wasn’t able to carry another after me.

Apparently, I caused her uterus to rupture, and the doctors highly suggested that she never get pregnant again.

So they gave up their hopes of a big family and focused all their attention on me.

But they love kids. All of their friends’ kids have kids and they’re all about them.

I think that’s why they let me stay with Jackson.

Because they really wanted a grandkid, and they knew that I’d have them if I stayed with him. ”

“But you didn’t,” he said.

“I was able to overlook the face thing.” I touched my chin where I could feel a tiny hairline scar running down my jawline.

“But not the infidelity. I’m not sure how women are ever okay with their significant others cheating.

I told Jackson point blank before we got married that it was a deal breaker for me.

He assumed the risk, thought I wouldn’t find out. ”

“How did you find out?” he asked as he pushed into the kitchen from the garage and shut the door behind us.

“He was stupid.” I scoffed. “He was seeing the nurse who was on the team that removed his testicles. She thought I was his sister. He went along with it, and since I had my own therapy sessions,” I gestured to my face, “I didn’t make as many of his appointments as I probably should have.

One time, my therapy appointment was canceled.

So I decided to just head over and sit in on his appointment with him, and found them kissing in the hallway outside the doctor’s office. ”

He winced. “What did you do?”

I leaned my hips against the counter and felt my legs start to shake.

I immediately came out of the lean and headed for the padded bar chair.

Once I’d climbed up I told him the rest. “I confronted him in the hallway. She was freaked. Had no clue that we were actually a couple. Apologized profusely to me and went running back into her office. I then asked him if he really had doctor’s appointments every week, or if he was just coming up here to see her.

He admitted that he didn’t actually have any appointments.

Everything was taken care of when they removed his testicles.

And he didn’t have any chemotherapy. He just really liked her, and realized that he didn’t love me anymore.

He just didn’t know how to tell me that. ”

The words didn’t hurt anymore.

At the time, I was devastated, if only because of what we’d lost.

Now, I was happy to be free, and not tied down to a man like Jackson.

I would’ve hated having him as a father to my child.

Which was why I should keep taking my own advice and get rid of his stored sperm.

It was doing none of us any good, and maybe if I stopped making monthly payments on storing his sperm, then I’d be happier.

He gestured to the couch. “My legs are getting sorer by the second. Do you want to watch a movie with me?”

“I literally just climbed into this seat,” I grumbled.

He walked over to me and held out his hand.

Butterflies took flight in my belly.

What was it about this man?

He’d always made me feel this way.

In high school, it was easy to ignore it because I was so dang busy I didn’t have time to moon over a boy.

But I was an adult now, and I got to make my own decisions.

I also didn’t have anyone depending on me.

I could rot on the couch with the sexiest man alive.

He set me on my feet and backed away slightly before he said, “What movie do you want to watch? I’ll literally watch anything but The Lorax.”

I snickered. “Your girl a little bit obsessed?”

He looked at me with warm eyes as he said, “You have no idea, Sutton. No idea whatsoever.”

Two hours later, I woke up from one of the best naps of my life.

I slowly peeled my eyes open, then immediately closed them again when the late, setting sun scorched my retinas.

I groaned and turned over, burying my face in the pillow underneath my head.

Except, it was no pillow.

It was a flesh-and-bone man’s chest.

A very defined, very hard, very masculine chest.

There was a silver Saint Christopher medal over his heart, along with a set of dog tags, and my hand was wrapped around all three.

I let them go as carefully as I could and pushed up, my bladder screaming.

He groaned when I pushed off of his belly accidentally and said, “You could’ve done that without pushing off of my overly full bladder.”

My cheeks heated. “Sorry about that.”

I got up, but there was absolutely no speed in my step as I walked toward the bathroom that I’d used earlier.

I heard him groan just as the door closed behind me.

After doing my business, I picked up one of the bath toys that’d fallen from my earlier perching against the lip of the tub, and dropped it before washing my hands and heading back out to the living room where he was still lying.

“Thought you had to pee?” I asked him, poking him on the bottom of the foot as I got close enough. “Are you okay?”

He pulled his forearm from his face and said, “I definitely feel the soreness intruding now. I tried to get up and caught a cramp in my abs.”

He rubbed the spot over his belly with a tender touch.

I turned around and got him a bottle of water, then started snooping through his cabinets.

“What are you looking for?”

“Celtic sea salt if you have it,” I said. “Or, if not that, then regular salt.”

“I have those electrolyte things I think in my workout bag in my car.” He paused. “But the thought of going all the way out there sounds pretty awful.”

I rolled my eyes and snatched the keys he’d left on the counter earlier, then headed out to the car that was in the garage.

I was just pressing the button to unlock it when I got hollered at. “Hey, you!”

At first I hadn’t expected to be addressed at all, so I ignored the calls and pulled open the back door where a black gym bag lay.

I fished around in the side pockets until I found the salt packets he was talking about and had just closed the door to the truck when a murderous voice said, “Hey, sweet cheeks! I’m talking to you.”

I stiffened at the sound of a voice so close and backed into the side of the truck to set some space between us.

He ignored that space and leaned forward. “Tell your boyfriend to…”

He never got to finish his sentence because all of a sudden, the garage door was yanked open and Gunner was out the door before I’d had the time to register movement.

“I know you’re not getting in her face right now, in my own goddamn garage, Dick!”

“It’s Rich…” Dick started to say, but he was roughly pushed backward.

He fell so hard that his back skidded on the ground.

When he rolled onto his back, gasping for air, Gunner hit the button on the garage door and said, “Next time knock nicely on the door if you have an issue. Or, better yet, stop fucking bitching about me and get a goddamn life!”

The garage door shut on the last word, and I stared in shocked silence as Gunner turned to me and said, “Are you okay?”

Was I?

I thought I was okay…

“I’m fine,” I said. “What was that about?”

“That is the asshole who likes to make my life here a living hell,” he muttered.

“I moved here after I retired from baseball in hopes that I’d like the gated community.

Privacy was really important to me. But Dick, the resident dick with the HOA, took it upon himself to amp up his dickishness when he found out I was moving in.

Now he slaps me with fines because my flowers aren’t the right color for the year.

Or he files noise complaints on me because my motorcycle is too loud.

But he does have a no trespassing order on him when it comes to my place.

He knows he’s not allowed to be on my property. ”

“He sounds like a dick,” I said. “I got your salt.”

“Thanks,” he muttered, wincing when he took a step back. “Goddamn, I’m sore.”

I was slightly vindicated that he was as sore as I was.

Though, he deserved it after just deciding to go run a marathon without any training or prep work for it.

“Same,” I told him. “Moreso than I ever thought I would be.”

“Whatever we do tonight, we’re ordering in. I don’t want to leave the house again.” He paused. “Do you want to get into the hot tub?”

“I didn’t bring a suit.” I frowned.

“Wear the clothes you ran in earlier,” he suggested. “Or, wear nothing. It’s not like we’re not adults.”

Famous last words.