So Toxic(Bad Boy Next Door Book 4)(317)

Three weeks. Fuck.

My guts twist. “My baby? Our baby?”

She turns hard eyes on me. “No. My baby. You weren’t here. You didn’t come back. And you never knew it existed while it was on this Earth. My baby.”

My insides seem to quiver. “While it was on Earth? What happened? What did you do?”

Her mouth hardens to match her eyes. “I didn’t do anything. I would never do that. Ever. I loved that little life with everything in me, with all the love you left behind. About eight weeks in, I started bleeding, and all the doctors could do was to tell me to put my feet up and take it easy.”

My mind races over the anger Lou holds onto about my not coming home. About me leaving her. A wave of nausea washes through me.

I reach for her. “Aw, Lou. Why didn’t you call me? Tell me? I’d have come back. I would never have left you to deal with that alone.”

She brushes my hands away. “Of course I didn’t call you home. I didn’t want you to come back for a baby. I wanted you to come back for me. I fucking loved you, you idiot. I loved you so much, and it cut so deep when you left. But you didn’t love me. You said goodbye to me as though you were gifting me with my freedom.”

I sit at the edge of the bed, dropping my head into my hands. “I was gifting you your freedom. That’s exactly what I was doing.”





TWENTY-THREE





I held in the tears just long enough to get Buck out of the house. Even then, I only took a couple of minutes to grab hold of the ugly monster trying to escape that safe little box and stuff it back where it belongs, deep inside and all locked up.

No way will I let him see me break down. No fucking way.

Aunt Delores was the one who comforted me when I sat by, my baby dying inside me, unable to do a damned thing to stop its tiny life from ebbing away with every beat of my breaking heart. I won’t put her through that again.

I washed my face after my momentary lapse in keeping my shit together, and I went downstairs to see what Russell and Stephens were doing. They’d already gone. I guess they didn’t want to say goodbye.

Fine. Whatever.

Going out of the house was a mistake. The paparazzi are a pain in the ass. I can’t walk outside without someone taking a photo from the bushes or from across the street using a telephoto lens.

All day, Aunt Delores and Sadie have treated me like I might shatter into a million sharp-edged pieces, though I keep telling them I’m fine. Well, I’m fine now. And I’d never let them know if I wasn’t, anyway.

Sadie brings me a bowl of chocolate ice cream. “Here. This’ll make us feel better.”

“Us?”

She shrugs. “Ice cream and chocolate always make me feel better, even when nothing’s wrong. But my boyfriend broke up with me yesterday. So, yeah, us.”

She sits next to me on the sofa, close enough to prop her arm on my drawn up legs. “So, want me to go kick his fucking ass for ya?”

“Who? Buck?”

“Yeah. Or whoever. I’ll do it, you know.”

I smile, shaking my head. “Thanks. I appreciate that. But I like to do my own ass kicking.”




Aunt Delores pulls the remote from my hand. “Why do you torture yourself by watching this crap?”

I frown and, okay, maybe I pout—a little. “Because I’m a masochist. And the news is still talking about me like I’m some skank ho who Buck just picked up off the street—as if he’d have to do that to get laid.”

She sits next to me, pulling me into her arms. “Aw, Baby Girl, you know who you are. The people who love you understand. They’re the ones that matter. Those who don’t know you and don’t understand, they don’t matter, not one bit.”

How many times did she say this to me when I was a teenager with tender feelings and small town hatred hitting me from all sides? Too many to count.

The handful of people who love me unconditionally has shrunk by one or two, but she’s still right. It really doesn’t matter what the world thinks of me.

Now, Buck, on the other hand—he’s really in the hot seat.





I sit with a tumbler of bourbon in one hand, the remote control in the other as I surf from one cable news show to the next. All the entertainment news is the same. Pretty much saying what the paper in front of me shouts. The National Investigator headline mocks me.

SO. TRASHY. Buck Wylder goes slumming and pays for sex.

The only saving grace is that I’ve already signed the contracts with Razor Wire. Fuck. If this had come out a couple of days ago, I’d have been thoroughly screwed.

The kitchen table rocks when Trudi plants her ass on the edge of it, a foot from me. “Buck, I like you.”