Homewrecker (Into the Flames #1) (3 page)

***

By the time Saturday night comes along, I am grateful for the distraction of everyone coming over to our place for dinner. It’s a weekly tradition. Gunnar and Dixon barbecue and drink too many beers while Mark bounces in-between them and Lynsey and I as we gossip and drink margaritas while fixing the rest of the food.

“Hey, what the fuck’s a guy gotta do to get another beer around here?” Dixon shouts, coming through the patio doors with empty bottles in his hand.

“I don’t know, maybe say please?” Mark snorts, pulling veggies from the fridge to make a salad.

Dixon tosses the empty bottles into the trash and rakes a hand over his scruffy face. “Find me a chick to suck my cock,
please
.” He laughs. “I’d ask you to suck my cock, but I’m not sure how I feel about stubble grazin’ my balls. I’m all for tryin’ new things and pushin’ boundaries, but I prefer bigger tits than what you’re packin’.”

Mark dumps the veggies on the counter in front of me and flips Dixon the bird. “With a mouth like a Hoover shop vac, the last thing you’ll be worryin’ about is my lack of double D’s.” Grabbing two beers from the fridge, Mark kicks the door closed and smirks before walking out the patio doors.

“Cocksucker!” Dixon yells. “The least you could do after teasin’ me like that is get me a damn beer!”

“With an attitude like that, Dix—” Lynsey says, grabbing a knife from the butcher block. “—the only thing you’ll be getting from him is that beer bottle shoved up your ass.”

“Oh, baby!” He chuckles, skipping after Mark once he grabs a bottle. “Maaaarrrkkkk, come back, sweetheart. I think we need to discuss our relationship limitations.”

“Kennedy, I swear to all that is holy, if that sonuvabitch gets laid again before I do, I’ll fucking rip off his dick and feed it to my pet tarantula,” Lynsey growls, chopping away at the lettuce on the cutting board. Slamming the knife down on the counter, Lynsey closes her eyes and yells, “Mark, don’t forget the rules. Your cock stays in your pants until my vagina is happy again.”

“I’m not sure your vagina will ever be satisfied, so don’t put that kind of pressure on the guy. That’s just mean,” I say, making sure I’m not within arm’s reach of the knife in her hand.

Mark saunters back in the house with a big grin on his face and I can’t help but laugh. “You do realize that maybe if you weren’t such a bitch, someone might want to pet your pussy? Maybe you should offer three for one specials. Fill all your holes at once so no one can hear you bitch.”

“Lyn, you could totally be a theme ride at the store,” I giggle, ducking behind the counter just in time to miss the bag of carrots she throws at me.

“You could be called Whore Mountain. But there’s a different kind of height limit.” Mark wheezes as he laughs. “There will be no peanut sized pounders allowed on this ride.”

“That’s right, only the best for the boss lady.”

“I hate you, bitches.” Lynsey scowls, pointing the knife between us. “You’re both fuckin’ fired.”

“Nonsense! You love us even with your sad vagina.”

Grabbing my glass, I swallow the last of my margarita before reaching for the pitcher, but Lynsey beats me to it. “You get nothing, whore,” she says, tipping it up and downing the last of it straight from the container. “I need it more than you, anyway.”

“Are you guys gonna toss a salad or throw the food at each other?” Gunnar yells from the grill.

Dixon’s head pops around the corner, his eyes searching the room. “I heard the word whore, followed by somethin’ about tossin’ a salad. I’m game, where’s she hidin’?”

“You get nothing either!” Standing up, Lynsey steps up in front of Dixon and grabs his beer, chugging it until it’s gone. “You. Get. Nothing.”

Dixon’s mouth gapes like a fish out of water, his eyes darting from the empty bottle she just handed back to him to everyone else in the room. “I don’t. I can’t. The fuck, dude!” Turning around, Dixon walks back outside with his shoulders hunched in defeat.

I look at Lynsey as she bends down to pick up the bag of carrots from the floor. Whistling, she turns on the sink and grabs a bowl, dumping the carrots in it to wash them off.

“If small children go missing tonight, I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you an alibi,” I say, staring at her in disbelief.

“They won’t be missing. They’ll be caged, like all tiny people should be. And some larger ones as well.”

Hitching my hip up onto the counter, I stare at her until she turns to face me. The look in her green eyes has me afraid she is going to go full on Hulk any second and kill me. “Wanna talk about it?” I ask, clearly able to tell something is bothering my best friend.

“Wanna die?” she warns, slapping the water off.

“Not especially, but are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

“Don’t analyze me, assface.”

Mark steps up next to her, running his hand across her back while trying not to laugh. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk? Let some of that aggression out so you don’t combust since you can’t have an orgasm. I mean, even your twat thinks you’re a bitch lately.”

“I’m sure the beer bottle she stole from me would be glad to help her out!” Dixon shouts, knowing better than to come back in the room.

Turning toward me again, an evil grin spreads across Lynsey’s lips. “How about we pick up where we left off the other night, Kennedy. I think that now’s a perfect time to jump into that discussion. We can all weigh in on it.”

“How about we just talk about Mark. He seems like the safer choice right now.”

“Yeah.” She smirks. “That’s what I thought.”

“Get your asses to the table,” Dixon calls, coming through the door with Gunnar behind him carrying the tray of steaks and barbecued chicken. “Time to put my meat in your mouth.”

“Shit, Dix, I don’t remember fryin’ any cocktail sausages,” Gunnar says, placing the tray on the table. “And if I did, they slipped through the cracks because your sausage was too small.”

Dixon smirks, sitting down at the table with a fresh beer. “Fuck you, man. There’s a reason I’m a firefighter. I’ve been handlin’ a huge ass hose all my life so they knew I had the qualifications before I even started.”

Everyone sits down and I look around the table at everyone, thinking about how far we have all come. Not just separately, but together as well. These are people that I have known nearly my entire life, that I spend almost every day with, and yet we all still lead separate lives. It’s honestly a wonder we all even became friends in the first place, being so different.

Where I am more quiet and reserved, to a point anyway, Lynsey completely lacks any filter. Quite frankly she is completely unashamed about anything she says or does. Gunnar and Dixon have been best friends since playing peewee football, but are complete polar opposites. When Dixon’s parents were killed in a house fire, Gunnar’s parents immediately stepped up and took him in, cementing their friendship into an unbreakable brotherhood. They are like oil and water, like Johnny Cash meets Avenged Sevenfold. Where Gunnar is sweet and almost the All-American boy type, Dixon is the epitome of trouble in ripped up jeans. He is more than willing to tell anyone that his nickname is Tin Man, all because he has no heart and isn’t afraid to break yours. In theory, it shouldn’t work, considering they’re practically from two different worlds, but for some reason, it does. And of course our final piece to our misfit fivesome: Mark. He fell in with us all one day in middle school when Gunnar and Dixon beat a couple guys’ asses for bullying him. For whatever reason, we all fit perfectly, like pieces of a puzzle.

Gunnar looks up and meets my eyes, the brown softening immediately. “Can you imagine our weekend dinners with kids runnin’ around the house, babe?” he asks. “Won’t that be somethin’?”

Suddenly, it feels like the world was just knocked out from under my feet. A baby? No, he said
babies!
Sure we talked about kids in theory, but never planned a when. We aren’t ready for that. I’m not ready for that!

“Children don’t run around, Gunnar,” Lynsey says flatly. “The little spawns belong in cages where they aren’t stealing the life of their mothers. Seriously, isn’t it enough that a woman carries a baby over nine months and it nearly destroys her body?” She shudders. “Then she’s expected to let it feed off her tits and wreck those along with torturing her with screaming, puking, pooping, and God only knows what else they are capable of expelling out of one of their holes in the eighteen years that we’re responsible for them.”

“I think I’m gonna throw up,” Mark says, covering his mouth with one hand as he gags.

“You’re gonna have like eleven kids, Lyn, you know that, right?” Dixon asks, smiling wide.

Lynsey glares at him across the table. “Oh yeah? Well, I hope your dick rots off,” she snaps making him wince and clutch his chest dramatically.

“Lyn, that hurt.”

“Kennedy, are you…” Mark leans over and cups his hand over his lips. “Pregnant?”

Suddenly everyone’s eyes are on me and I can feel the color draining from my face. Grabbing the beer from Dixon’s hand, I chug it, causing him to scowl at me.

“That’s two beers in one night that you bitches have stolen from me. I feel like you owe me a hooker or somethin’ to make up for stealin’ my buzz.”

“Does that answer your question, Mark?” I ask, turning to stare at him and ignore Dixon. “Pregnant chicks can’t drink.”

“Well,” Lynsey says, waving a hand in the air. “They can, but the doctors frown upon it. If it were me though, I’d encourage it. Get a head start, bitch, you’re gonna need that buzz.”

When I turn back to face everyone, Dixon is still pouting over the loss of another beer while Gunnar leans back in his chair, not taking his eyes off of me. I know that probably wasn’t the best way to make it known that I wasn’t pregnant, but it was the first thing to come to mind. Plus, I’m sure the buzz I’ll have after drinking tonight will come in handy when Gunnar wants to
talk
about my reaction. I can see it in his eyes, it’s coming. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for practicing, and babies are cute… as long as I can send them back to their parents. Yeah, one day in the distant future I’d like to be a mother, but that day is
not
today or even anytime soon.

“And I thought it was just me that was against procreatin’,” Dixon says, laughing. “Although, the world would be a much more interestin’ place with a bunch of tiny Dix runnin’ around.”

“Fuck,” Lynsey groans. “Don’t curse the world with more than one of your sorry ass.”

I want to laugh, but I can’t. I want to crack a joke about how the world can barely handle one of him, let alone his spawn, but I can’t. I can’t because I can feel the disappointment rolling off of Gunnar right now. If he honestly thought that the thing missing from our marriage is a baby, he knows better now, even if it wasn’t the ideal way to tell him.

Everyone notices the tension between Gunnar and me, but like the good friends they are, they carry the conversation instead of letting things get more awkward.

By the end of the night, they’ve managed to get a few laughs out of both of us. However, thanks to the alcohol flowing through us all things have eased up a bit by the time the door shuts behind the three of them. Grabbing the rest of the dishes off the table, I slide them into the water and begin scrubbing, thinking that maybe if I ignore the elephant in the room now that we’re alone that it will go away.

I feel Gunnar’s eyes on me as I scrub the plate harder than needed. Stepping up behind me, he wraps his arms around my chest, pinning my arms to my sides so I can’t move them. He drops his face into the crook of my neck, placing a gentle kiss where his lips land. I lean back against him, shifting my head to the side so he can keep doing what he’s doing and watch our reflection in the window.

“Still love me tonight?” I whisper. I’m not really a self-conscious person at all, unless you count when my mother is around. I also don’t think for one second that anything can break the love that Gunnar and I have, but I don’t know what’s going through his head right now. That has me more nervous than usual.

Tightening his grip, he kisses a trail up my neck to my ear. “Love you always, baby.” He rests his head there for a second before propping his head on top of mine so he can watch my reflection like I am his.

“Listen,” I say, turning around in his arms so I can look him in the eyes. “About earlier…”

Gunnar shakes his head. Lowering his mouth to mine, he silences me with a kiss. Thankfully this is how he always gets when he’s drinking. He wants to touch me, to love me, and if it means we can avoid the conversation that needs to happen for a little bit longer, that’s fine with me. The last thing I want to do is have a serious discussion that will no doubt end in an argument because we have both had more than enough to drink tonight.

Pulling back a few inches, he tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear. “We can talk about it later, baby. Right now I just want to take my gorgeous wife to bed so I can love her.”

Later I can deal with. Avoiding the baby talk is fine by me so I follow him down the hallway with hopes that tonight might be the night that he finally lets everything out that I know he’s holding back from me. There are things he isn’t giving me in bed and I know he wants them just as much as I do. I swear one day I will get him to let them loose.