Game Saver (29 page)

I turn sideways and look at my mom and dad, the two people swore to myself I would never ever become, before delivering the final nail in the coffin on my relationship with them. “Reputations are like a house of cards. One swift blow and it all comes crashing down.”

The entire room goes deathly quiet. I swear you’d probably hear a squirrel fart if you listened closely enough. Then the air is filled with the sound of reporters muttering then calling out questions, camera shutters clicking and flashes bright enough to blind us.

But before I can say anything else, my sister decides it’s her turn to make a scene.

“Ah, Jonathan, honey,” Callie calls down to the back of the room, her hand darting to her belly and her knees clenching together. “I think you might be getting your Christmas present early,” she explains, drawing her brows together and grimacing.

“Holy shit!” Cam swears but thankfully, I slip straight into doctor mode, moving towards my sister and hooking my arm around her back, Cam flanking her other side just as Jonathan arrives. Throughout all of this, Mom and Dad don’t move a muscle, both standing there frozen as if they can’t believe that a) their son would have the audacity to say what I did to them in front of the city’s most prominent and powerful, and b) their daughter would dare go into early labor and draw the attention of the evening away from them.

But more importantly, my full attention is on my beautiful sister who I’m guessing is soon going to be a mom. “Jon, call ahead to the OB/GYN and let them know we’re on our way to maternity.”

Callie sags against me and starts panting, exactly how she would’ve been taught in Lamaze classes, clutching her stomach and screaming like a banshee.

“I’ll bring the car around. Meet us out front,” Jonathan says, kissing his wife’s forehead and running through the parted crowd, thanks to Daniel, Noah, Zander, Thomas, and Zach using their initiative and making a path for us.

“We’re going to be grandparents!” I hear my father announce to the crowd behind us, and if I needed proof that I’d just made the right decision in turning my back on my parents, that would’ve been it right there.

Cam and I help Callie out to the lobby, my heart full to bursting for my sister and brother-in-law. Abi and the rest of the gang, follow us out to the driveway just as Jonathan pulls up and rushes out of the car, running around the hood and opening the passenger door.

“Is the front door closed?” Callie says, sounding weirdly calm.

“What, sweetheart?” I reply.

“Is the door closed?” she whispers. Cam looks back to the house then down to our sister.

“Yeah, Cal. It’s shut. It’s just us and Cade and Abi’s friends now.”

“Oh thank fuck for
that,
” she says, pulling out of our hold and standing up straight, brushing down her dress as if she’d just finished the biggest performance of her life.

“What the fuck?” Thomas stage-whispers behind us.

“That’s what
I
wanna know,” Jonathan asks, standing in front of us with his hands on his hips, glaring at his wife. “Tell me you didn’t just fake labor to get us out of your parents’ Christmas party.”

Callie at least pretends to look guilty, considering she probably stole ten years off her husband’s life when she announced she was going to have their baby early. “It was getting boring and Cade needed an out,” she says with a shrug. “So I gave him one.”

I gape at her, not sure whether to throttle the woman or kiss her.

Cam butts in before I can say anything. “You’re a fucking
genius,
Cal. I honestly thought I was about to become an uncle.”

Abi sidles up next to me, and still flabbergasted by the events of the past ten minutes, I wrap my arm around her shoulders, struggling to get my head around it all.

“Oh come on, baby, none of us
wanted
to be there. We only came to watch Cade get his own back on Cade Senior and Annabel. Now that’s done, we can go get drunk!” Cal proclaims.

“Um . . . sorry to be a wet fish, Cal, but um . . . you’re pregnant,” Cam says, nodding at our sister’s stomach.

“Well, yeah . . .” Callie replies in a ‘duh’ voice, “I was meaning you guys. We’ve got a night without parents and you lot . . .” she says, pointing to the group of us as a whole, “don’t have kids to get home to anytime soon—if at all—so let’s bust this joint and go have some
real
fun.”

“She’s right, you know,” Abi says, giving me a squeeze. “It’s Christmas, and we’re free from the Carsen family bullshit, once and for all—so let’s go have some fun. Hey, let’s go crash Matt and Mia’s place. They’ll probably be doing some lovey-dovey shit.”

“Oh, christening their new dining room table,” Dani pipes up from the back.

“Eww,” Zander, Zoe, and Noah reply in unison.

“Right, then. We’ve got a plan. Cock-blocking Matt, celebrating Callie’s fake labor performance, and—most importantly—spending the holidays with those who mean the most to us.
Hasta la vista,
Castle de Carsen,” Abi says with a grin, shooting a mock salute at my parents’ house before lifting up on her toes and planting a big wet kiss on my lips.

“What was that for?” I ask, my hands resting on her hips.

“For being you. For loving me, and finally, for laying down that rather fucking
epic
parting line about reputations. The only thing that would’ve been better would’ve been telling your father to suck it.”

“One must have decorum at these events,” I say in a mock stuck-up voice.

“Fuck ’em,” Abi retorts with a grin.

“Exactly. Fuck ’em,” I say, gliding my hands down to her ass, lifting her up and laying a hot and heavy one on her, on my parents’ steps, in front my family and friends, without a care in the world. One could say it was my final ‘fuck you’ to my past life, ending it in the same way I was starting my new one.

With my tongue down Abi’s throat.

And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

The End

But wait.

You didn’t think I’d leave you without an epilogue, did you . . . ?

Mile-high sex. Up there on the top of my dirty bucket list and right now, all eight inches of Cade is making the wet dream a reality.

“Fuck this is tight.”

“The bathroom or my—” I don’t get anything more out because his mouth is back on mine and my Kegels are clenching round his cock.

Wait! That’s so not a sexy analogy right now, but I’m too far gone to care.

His lips on mine, his tongue waging war in my mouth, and his beautiful member making music between my legs is all I need to get me. Right. Almost . . . right . . . wait . . .
there.

He buries his face in my neck and sinks his teeth into my skin, planting himself deep and literally pouring himself into me.

“Shit. Cramp. Cramp. Ow!” I shriek, trapped between the unforgiving toilet digging into my backside and my man pinning me to it.

“Fuck,” he grinds out as I twist and turn, trying to achieve the impossible feat of straightening my bent leg without unmanning him in the process.

“Ow. Ow.” I’m crying now, half laughing, half sobbing, finding the situation absolutely hysterical whilst also wondering who the hell I screwed over in a past life to see me deserving such wicked treachery as a leg cramp after mind-blowing—albeit uncomfortable—plane sex.

And of course it’s then that there’s a loud knock on the door. “Security. Open up,” a deep voice rumbles, and Cade’s expression turns from a grimace at my pain to wide-eyed fear.

My body freezes mid-stretch. It’s as if we’re stuck in time—well, except for the jizz that is slowly—and grossly—dripping down my thigh. I mean, sex without a condom is hot and all, but the clean up afterwards? Not on your life, Batman.

When our clothing is straight and I’ve cleaned up as much as possible, Cade opens the restroom door slowly and comes face to face with a grinning Thomas, who looks very pleased with himself.

“Motherfucker,” Cade growls, grabbing Thomas in a headlock. I stand there, embarrassed to high hell and waiting for my chance to knee Cade’s best friend in the balls. Unfortunately, I only get the opportunity to slap his shoulder before Cade leads me back down the aisle to our seats, the whole gang giving us a standing ovation amid cheers of “for he’s a jolly good fellow.”

Of course, with nothing else to do but own the moment, I bend over and take a bow, thankful that all of the children that aren’t babies are coming down tomorrow with their grandparents.

A lot has happened in the six months since Christmas.

Cade Senior did win the mayoral race. However, he resigned from office two months later due to a major sex scandal—of his own doing—after being caught accepting sexual favors from a female city hall employee in a video exposé. To say I was shocked would be a lie because, as I learned after the disastrous—for them—Christmas party, when people try to control everything in their lives to the extent the Carsens do, it generally means they have a lot to lose if things were left to happen organically.

Case in point—that one sex scandal rolled into two, then five, and yet like the most loyal wife who has ever lived, Annabel continues to this day to stand by his side.

Callie, Cam, and Cade, however, no longer have anything to do with their parents, including Callie’s daughter, Haven, who is now five months old.

I applied for—and got—a corporate job at my hotel chain’s head office, overseeing human resources and training for three states. It involves some travel, but the perks of free accommodation anywhere there is one of our hotels certainly make up for it. Our destination for this trip, for starters.

St Thomas will be our home for the next two weeks, and we’re not the only ones coming either. Everyone—and I mean everyone—is joining in on the fun and for the next fourteen days, we’re going to be sitting pretty at a five-star resort, drinking cocktails, christening cabanas, and relaxing. Oh, and there’ll be a wedding . . . or two . . . yeah.

See two months ago, Cade called in some favors and cleared out the Skydeck of Willis Tower after dark. There was a picnic blanket, silver-domed plates, a bottle of champagne, and two crystal glasses, and before I could whirl around to ask him what he’d done, he had his hand in mine and was sliding a platinum diamond princess-cut engagement ring on my finger. He didn’t even ask the question. If you can believe it, he asked me to marry him by lifting his eyebrow and squeezing my hand, running his thumb over the ring in its new home at the base of my finger. Total alpha move, but so fucking hot, I literally jumped him right there. Thankfully, my fiancé had the forethought to ask for the cameras to be switched off for two hours, knowing—or maybe hoping—that I’d show him my appreciation in a myriad of dirty ways.

That’s one wedding. The other is for Zach and Dani.

Zach went small and intimate with his proposal, organizing for all of us, along with his mom, to travel to Syracuse, Indiana, to Mrs. Roberts’ house for a surprise party, which started with Dani walking in thinking she was getting a birthday dinner, then getting told to go into the backyard for her present where Zach was on bended knee with just her sisters, brother, and their two moms standing behind him.