“Hey, can you guys keep it down? Mel’s got a headache.”
Brooks being Brooks, turned and looked directly at his brother. “You may want to shove some paper in her ears, because we’re just getting started, bro.” He pulled me into his room and shut the door, like we were kids doing mischievous things.
“I can’t believe you said that,” I said as my towel was being pulled off.
“It wasn’t a lie, beautiful. Knowing it’s bothering him makes me want to go at it all night. I don’t think either of you thought about how thin these walls are. I could hear everything and Branch knew it. It’s time he gets paid back.”
I looked down at his arm. “How’s it feeling?”
He shrugged. “It’s manageable, why?”
I put my arms around his neck and jumped. He caught me and with ease my legs wrapped around him. “Because I also have reasons for wanting to piss him off.”
In reality, our lovemaking, or whatever he was calling it, only lasted about forty minutes. We were exhausted and knew B would be up as soon as the sun came up.
We’d proven our point, which was what we’d set out to do. It didn’t matter if we’d finished anyway, because when Brooks went out to use the bathroom, he came back with a very awake little girl.
I didn’t know whether we’d woken her, not that it mattered. Her bottom lip sticking out showed me that she was scared and it was good her daddy had heard her. He brought her in and put her right in the center of the bed. Since he had boxer-briefs on, and I was still in my birthday suit, I got up and put on underwear and a t-shirt.
In the time it took me to do that, she was already cuddled up against her father, sound asleep. Brooks was watching me, but smiling at her at the same time.
Our time apart hadn’t made him bitter. It had made him love harder. We had his eternal devotion.
I cuddled up next to them and closed my eyes, knowing that this was as close to heaven as I’d ever been. It was what I had dreamed of my whole life.
Chapter 49
For some reason being mischievous had paid off. I woke in a better mood about Branch and Melissa. In fact, after meeting her downstairs at the coffee pot, we started cooking breakfast for everyone.
“So, did you ever listen to my messages I left? I know you better than to think you’d actually delete them without listening.”
I laughed. “I didn’t.”
She took a sip of her coffee. “I was thinking that maybe you should listen to them. I spoke from my heart and I feel like if we’re ever going to get back to being friends, and hopefully sisters, that we shouldn’t have anything holding us back.
She handed me the portable landline phone. “Here, just listen to them.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do I have to?”
“Yes,” she insisted.
I sat at the kitchen table and started dialing the number to retrieve my messages. The last thing I wanted to hear, after I’d already made peace with things, was a whole spiel of reasons why I should forgive them.
When I finally figured out how to do it, I was confused when it said that I had no new messages. Bobby would have probably called several times since he’d been served papers.
I hung up and dialed again, thinking it gave me the wrong box, but got the same results. I hung up and looked at Melissa. “That’s funny. Are you sure you dialed the right number?”
“Danica gave it to me. You talked on the voicemail. I’m sure.”
“Well, there’s no messages.”
“Does Brooks have your passcode? Maybe he listened to them.”
Brooks didn’t have my passcode, but Bobby did. My eyes flashed fear and there was no way I could hide it.
“What’s wrong, Katy?”
“Nothing. Can you watch breakfast for a second? I’m just going to go ask Brooks if he listened to my messages. I’ll be right back.”
I hated waking him, but a message from Melissa talking about them coming to see us would tell Bobby where we were. He’d know I wasn’t home and I was petrified that he’d do something to my beautiful new house, knowing that nobody would be there to call the cops.
Brooks was in my old room with B. She was trying to put on her bathing suit. “Hey, you going swimming already?”
Brooks laughed. “She woke me up asking to jump in the pool. You know me, I give her anything she wants.”
“I need to talk to you about something. I’m kind of freaking out, right now.”
He touched my arm. “What is it?”
I explained the situation, that didn’t seem to bother him in the least. Still, I felt like he needed to know for when we went home. Bobby wasn’t just going to be pissed off when he got those protective order papers. He was going to lash out and since my phone was out of commission, he was going to find whatever means possible to cause me physical and emotional duress.