Page 31 of Ugly Duckling (Content Advisory #6)

Twenty-Four

I might be laid back, but I can lean forward real quick.

—Sutton’s secret thoughts

SUTTON

Gunner was treating me like I was spun glass.

He’d carried me into the house.

He’d carried me into the bedroom.

He’d then carried me into the shower.

Washed my hair.

When he’d reached for my razor, I slapped his hand away. “I got it, Gunner.”

He blew out a breath. “When I got that call, I thought that it was happening again.”

I frowned up at him. “Thought what was happening again?”

The way his eyes looked made my chest hurt.

“That I was losing someone else that I loved.”

I wilted. “Oh, Gunner.”

“I’m scared,” he breathed. “Every second of every day. The more people that enter my life that I love, the worse it gets. Sometimes, when I let my mind focus on the what-ifs too long, I want to run away. I want to escape and hide in the woods with no cell phone service so that I’ll never know if something happens to y’all. ”

I buried my face in his neck. “I’m okay. I won’t leave you like that, Gunner. And no one else will, either.”

He shook his head. “You can’t know that.”

“No,” I agreed. “I can’t. But I can promise you that you’ll only live half a life if you let this consume you.”

He looked away, causing the water that’d been pounding his back to spray me directly in the face.

I sputtered, and he looked back with a sheepish grin. “Sorry.”

I reached for the bar of soap. “Make sure that I don’t fall over while I do this.”

He made sure that I was steady as could be, and I spent the next five minutes shaving and telling him about what had happened.

“Even worse, they took out my new car. I haven’t even made the first payment on it,” I grumbled.

“Do you remember anything about the car? Did you see a face?” he asked.

“Nope. Nothing.” I groaned. “Her boots!”

He squeezed my hip and said, “I’m sure they were picked up. Don’t worry about the boots.”

“They were so cute, though,” I whined.

“I imagine that we can buy more,” he pointed out.

“Logic and I don’t work well together,” I teased.

After shaving had commenced and I was fresh as a daisy, Gunner carried me out of the shower and sat me on the counter with a towel wrapped around my body.

He bent down on one knee so he could get a better look at my ankle, which was already starting to turn black and blue.

“Gonna hurt like a bitch tomorrow,” he mused as he ran the pads of his thumbs up the length of my ankle. “Want to fix it faster?”

I hesitated. “I don’t like how you just asked me that.”

His lips curved up at one corner as he replied.

“It’s going to hurt like a bitch. But I had this trainer teach me how to work on my own ankle.

I was prone to turning them when I was playing ball.

She taught me how to work on it because we shared a trainer with another school, and sometimes she couldn’t get to me super fast.”

“What does it entail?”

He spent the next five minutes explaining about accordions, tendons, and lengthening accordion tendons back out.

It made not a lick of sense because the pain pills I’d taken at the hospital just before he’d gotten there had finally kicked in, and they were knocking me on my ass.

I could barely keep my eyes open.

After promising that he could do whatever he wanted to do with me in the morning, he carried me to bed completely naked, and I only vaguely realized as my eyes were falling shut that we weren’t in my room. We were in his.

I woke up to a cute little girl poking at the bruise along my forehead.

“Suttie,” Lottie whispered.

It felt more like a yell thanks to my pounding head.

“Hey, Lots,” I whispered back, though in an actual whisper and not a toddler whisper. “When’d you get here?”

She gave me a toothy smile. “Now.”

I smiled and hugged her to me, twisting her so that she was tucked up with the blankets.

It was when I felt the cool air on my bare backside that I remembered that I was completely naked underneath the sheets.

I hastily tugged the sheets back over my bum, then looked over at the man at my side.

“Daddy’s not awake yet?” I asked her.

“He’s sweepy.” She shrugged. “Hurt?”

I nodded as she lightly touched the bruising again. “Is your Uncle Parker cooking us waffles?”

“Yep!”

That had the man at my side cracking an eye open.

He took one look at the two of us staring at him and a slow grin built on his lips.

“My girls.”

My girls.

So.

Awesome.

“We had a little Beanie Weenie arrive while we were sleeping.” I paused. “I need to borrow one of your shirts.”

His eyes trailed over my bare arms before he said, “I’ll get one.”

He got up and stretched his arms high over his head, the muscles in his back, arms, and thighs rippling as he did.

“Daddy has no pants!”

I giggled. “Daddy, you better put some pants on.”

He had on underwear, but apparently that wasn’t enough clothing for Lottie.

He reached down to the end of the bed and snatched up a pair of gray sweatpants.

He slipped them on and turned enough that I could see his obliques.

Oh, yum.

“Let me run to the bathroom, and then I’ll take her. You can get dressed then.”

It took him a few minutes, and while he was getting ready, I asked Lottie how her trip was.

There were lots of fish, dogs, and rocks involved.

“I got you rocks!”

“You did?” I gasped. “What kind?”

She took off, and I used her time away to slip into the t-shirt at the end of the bed.

A black t-shirt with Angel Security on the left breast pocket engulfed me, but I didn’t care. Especially not since the t-shirt smelled like Gunner.

He came out of the bathroom at the same time that Lottie came in carrying a freakin’ boulder with her.

“Hereeee!”

Gunner stopped just in time to narrowly miss that same boulder hitting his toes.

As it was, it dug a huge divot into the wood floors a foot from his feet.

“Wow,” Gunner drawled. “That’s a big rock.”

“It’s so pwetty!”

It was actually one of the ugliest rocks that I’d laid eyes on, but it was beautiful because Lottie had picked it out for us.

“I can see that.” He dropped down onto his haunches. “Give me a hug, Beanie Weenie.”

She gave the best hugs.

I was actually slightly jealous, so I crawled out of bed and hobbled toward them before throwing my arms into the mix.

Gunner lifted one arm from around Lottie and threw it around me, pulling us both just a little bit closer.

“Love you,” he whispered.

And since I didn’t know if he had said it to me or Lottie, I didn’t say it back.

But I wanted to.

I loved him, too.

I got to see Parker, Parker’s wife Kayla, and their two children.

They were the sweetest family ever, and it was more than apparent that they loved Gunner and Lottie like they were a part of their own immediate family.

We’d talked a lot over waffles and bacon, and when they were finally leaving, I was sad to see them go.

But I didn’t have long to be sad because not long after we shut the door on Parker, it opened right back up again to allow Apollo to come walking through like he owned the place.

“I fucking hate DC,” he declared as he came rushing into the kitchen that Lottie, Gunner and I were in. “Give me 635 traffic all day long.” He looked around the room. “Are there any more waffles?”

I pulled one out of the plastic bag I was about to zip up and placed it on a plate before popping it into the microwave.

As I did this, Gunner slid the syrup across to him as he said, “Might as well keep those others out. Webber and Hush are on their way over.”

Hush was Jasper Madden, and the one man in the Truth Tellers that I could say I knew the least.

He was quiet—hence the name “Hush”—and barely spoke even when he was spoken to.

He was very intriguing to me, though.

It was always the quiet ones that surprised you the most.

The door to the house opened and closed again, and then Hush was there.

Lottie, who was busy rearranging the letter magnets on the fridge, looked up and squealed. “Jazzy!”

Hush winked at Lottie. “Hey there, Beanie Weenie.”

“Why do y’all all call her Beanie Weenie?” I asked the room at large.

And why did I just pick up the nickname and roll with it?

“She loves ’em,” Apollo said. “Eats them straight out of the can.”

“Gross,” I mumbled. “How did y’all figure that out?”

“When she was a baby, Audric had dropped her off with us at the clubhouse because he had an emergency job he needed to take at work. She was hungry, and the only baby-appropriate items we had were Beanie Weenies. She loved them, and the rest is history,” Hush murmured.

That was the most I’d heard that man talk ever.

I was impressed.

He had a raspy, deep and strangely melodic voice.

I idly wondered if he could sing.

Based on the timbre of his voice, I bet he could.

“So what brings you here?” Gunner asked as he put the rest of the waffles onto a plate and warmed them up.

Apollo took the first waffle and smothered it in syrup while he started talking.

“Looked into the wreck last night like you asked me to,” he explained. “Aleah was driving.”

I groaned. “Of course she was.”

“Oh, and the Combs put a hit out on you,” Apollo continued as he took a large bite of his waffle.

“On both of you. Got the hit pulled down, and I’m sorry I didn’t catch it earlier.

The only person they were able to get to agree to the hit was Aleah, though.

Which, I think you’ll be happy to hear, her husband wasn’t very pleased to find out about.

Yates left her on the side of the freeway.

She stole the car that she tried to hit you with yesterday.

When she couldn’t get you, she took out your car.

Tried to collect twenty minutes later. The Combs are already in custody.

Aleah has a BOLO—be on the lookout—for her. Yates is cooperating with the police.”

“Wow,” I breathed. “That’s…”

“These waffles are fantastic,” Apollo said as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb on us. “Will your uncle share the recipe?”

“It’s Krusteez.” I pointed at the bag on the counter. “You can buy it in bulk at Costco.”

“Sweet,” he said. “I’ve been craving one of their chicken hot pocket things in the food court. Hush, you gonna eat all those?”

Hush shared his waffles with Apollo.

I made eye contact with Gunner, and he could only shake his head and mouth, “Wow.”

Apollo was right on all counts.

The news of the hit that was taken out on “Star baseball player turned hero security specialist” made the five o’clock news.

Even weirder, my social media clients found out that I was dating him, and we were declared a match made in heaven an hour before I got ready for bed.

Lottie was curled up between us, dead to the world, when Gunner said, “This is the weirdest thing.”

“I agree.”

Before he could say anything else, his phone beeped and he frowned. “The club is apparently having a get-together tomorrow night at the lake. Do you want to go?”

I looked at my swollen ankle, which seemed to hurt even worse after he did his torture on my tendons, and said, “As long as you have a chair that I can sit in, I’m down for anything.”

Famous last words.