Page 36 of Secrets That Bind Us
Even though they always told him he was special and important, this made himfeelspecial and important. Besides, he had a new friend to play with! One that could do magic tricks and disappear!
Chapter Seventeen
Dean
Present Day
Fire Chief Jason Hicks drops the barbell after his set of deadlifts with a huff, sweat making him gleam and glisten like a fucking glazed cinnamon roll, and I know I look the same.
It’s humid in the gym. It smells of sweat, and just a bit like poor decisions and regret. Dark eyes catch mine in the mirror where we check our form. As we switch, I hand him the straight bar so he can do reverse lunges while I deadlift. I take his place, and he takes mine, the challenge in his eyes for me to lift the weight he has.
Easy.
Why?
Because Verity’s thighs are thicker, and her ass fits her jeans better. Even though somehow, I just know she probably works out in her house- probably has a treadmill in her study, a yoga mat, and whatever else. I just want to be able to throw her around like a rag doll, no matter what weight she carries.
I used to work out in case of emergencies, like if I had to lift someone out of a dire situation. Now, I want to be able to use my mass to fling her around and make her feel tiny. I’m not large by any means. My waist is still lean and narrow, but my thighs, chest, and arms are a lot bigger and more defined than they were thirteen years ago. Plus, working out helps my bad leg- a form of physical therapy I’ve kept all these years. It helps me that I’ve been athletic my entire life. Football in the fall, baseball in the spring.
“So you stopped things with Lace?” Jason asks, brows furrowed.
I roll my eyes. Fucking Lacy. “A while ago. And you know that.”
“I do know that. I was just making suresheknows that. The way she pranced around town…” he trails off, lunging forward, grimacing. Then, the old bastard grins at our reflections. “You talk to her yet?” He asks when I finish my set, and we switch again.
I laugh, telling him about Noah and Verity’s rambling about the hamster/gerbil situation, and how, when she turned to me, her whole face was red, her eyes were wide, and her mouth hung open while she checked me out. Her eyes landed on the juncture of my thighs, and she inaudiblygulped. But I felt that pull. That need. That hunger. Just like I felt it at fourteen. At fifteen. At sixteen. At eighteen. It won’t ever go away.
What I left out was how badly I wished I could’ve been there during the chaos, trying to catch a gerbil with her. I left out the part where I wanted so badly to tuck the runaway strand of her hair behind her ear, push her glasses up her face, and taste the coffee on her tongue that she’d probably dripped mindlessly on her shirt before running after said gerbil.
Black coffee, whipped cream only.
Why? Because it cools down the coffee and sweetens it at the same time. It’s the same way I’ve drunk my coffee since that weekend in Austin years ago.
A pang of nostalgia hits me while watching Jason finish his set, adding more weight to the bar for me with a sly smirk on his face. “How are the boys doing?”
I shrug. “It’ll be a good season.”
“You thought more about the position the school board offered you?”
I drop the weight and sigh. I was offered a position to coach Adelaide’s High School football team next year, but it feels too permanent. Like an anchor keeping me here. “Lace said they’ll only be here for a year. I don’t want to take on something and let the team or the town down.”
“Because if she goes and leaves again?”
“I’m goin’.”
Jason grunts- not in discontentment, but in thought. “I’d hate to lose my best friend, but I’ve watched you grow from being an angry, sulking kid to the town Sheriff, always improving, and I have to say I’m a little jealous you figured out the important thing so early.”
I cock a brow and tilt my head before reaching down to grab the straight bar to place it across my shoulders, as he bends to grab the barbell. “What’s that?”
Jason grins again, giving me that wise owl look when the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Ain’t nothin’ more important than the future family you’re gonna have. You made the changes with the woman in mind, and there’s nogoing back for you. Seems to me Noah already likes you. The rest will fall into place.”
I look back on all my failures, and my heart lurches. There was a time when all I wanted was my parents’ approval after the accident. Especially since it had been my biggest fuck up and derailed my entire life. But after a while- after… after going to New York to find Verity and seeing her there withhim- I came home and realized I no longer cared about my mom or my dad’s approval. I mean shit, a dirty cop and a junkie? Nah. I wanted to be someone Verity would be proud of having on her arm when she finally left Micah. Which I knew would happen. Call it intuition or arrogance, but I just knew it wouldn’t last.
Maybe I wouldn’t be a bigshot artist like him or an NFL player, or a racer, but I’d be…honest. I could be an honest man. So, I got to work. Went to community college, stopped helping my uncle strip cars for extra cash, and solely worked on motorcycles. I continued my physical therapy regime, tried and failed to go into the Marines due to my injury. I said, “fuck it,” and went into the Police Academy and started coaching Pee Wee football in Adelaide.
Coaching Pee Wee was also a way for me to get used to being around children. If Verity had a kid, I was gonna raise it as my own- because fuck Micah Henderson.
Dead or alive.
