CHERISH (14 page)

“Come on. I’m dying here. Turn it over, babe, it’s been longer than two minutes.” I pat her legs and kiss her again. The sweet softness of her lips is new every time and if I had my wish, she’d be naked right now with my dick inside her and then we would look at that girly dip stick from a better angle.

“Are you sure?” She squints one eye and crinkles her nose.

“Just do it already.” I drag one hand from her leg, up over my forehead and down my neck trying to squeeze away some of the giddy tension.

“Okay. Here goes.” She takes a deep breath, shrugs her shoulders and squints her eyes as she flips the stick over.

Both of us look down, eyes pinned on the little window of the twelve-dollar plastic device that has just changed our lives.

We sit in stunned silence. I bring my eyes up to rest on her face, her lips to be precise. I stare at their lush fullness. They part, her tongue and front teeth take turns working the corners to shoot fucking fire down into my pants.

I know I should be thinking about rainbows and butterflies, sweet romantic thoughts of us swinging our kid between our outstretched hands as we walk down some forest path somewhere. Of me hanging circus wallpaper or some other Home Depot dad kind of thoughts.

But, no. You know what I’m thinking? How badly I want those sexy lips wrapped around my cock. How badly I want to breathe in the scent of her and swallow her flavor in celebration.

I wonder if she will taste different now. And I don’t want to wait to find out.

It's like she knows what I'm thinking. Promise shifts in her chair and I dance my hand under the hem of her denim skirt, pushing just to the place where I feel her legs touching. Knowing a few inches higher and I’m in my own kind of heaven.

She meets my eyes, opens her mouth. “I’m pregnant,” she stutters, and her eyes widen.

I realize we are in the middle of a storm. And sure, I feel selfish that everything else falls away, but I want her so bad.

“Yes, holy fuck,
yes
!” I take her mouth hard, pushing my tongue inside and lifting her off the chair into me. Spinning us away from the table, all I can think of is getting her ass to the bed where I can show her exactly what I’m feeling right now.

Her body is soft, accepting me, her hands around my neck. Then she tenses and her hands slide to my shoulders, giving me the slightest push.

I pull back from our kiss, my head on fire. Breathing like I just ran up eight flights of stairs.

“What is it, babe? What's wrong?”

Her breath falters. “I want to go see my mother.”

Promise

As I saw those two purple stripes on that pregnancy test, something popped inside. All I could think of was talking to her.

And not about any motherly advice
.

Nope. She will never be allowed near my baby, but there are things I need to know. Questions I want to ask. Things I suddenly want to say, whether or not she cares to hear them.

They need to be set free, and whatever magic just happened inside of me–creating a new little human being–it's set wheels in motion and I feel like I just grew a set of my own balls for once. Big ones.

We're making our way down the hall at the police station. Beckett is clutching my hand so tightly my fingers tingle and turn a hint of purple.

“Don’t huff and puff,” Beckett growls with a grin on his face.

He spears me with his most determined stare but I don’t care. I need to talk to my mother.

“You were the one that said Northrup could wait,” I say in a waspish tone and Beckett looks down at me with eyebrows arched high. “You don’t scare me with that stern Daddy look, big man.” I adjust my tone somewhere between honey and vinegar and his eyes twinkle.

“He
can
technically wait.” Beckett guides us through a metal door which opens up into a large room full of cubicles. The sound of keyboards tapping, indignant voices and the smell of burnt coffee bombard my already overwhelmed sensory system. “But I told you, let’s get all the information he has on your mom. At least that way we're armed with something when we see her.”

He exchanges holding my hand for draping an arm around my shoulders, but on the way he drops his hand for a moment and pats my behind playfully. He smells so good. I remember him always smelling like some fresh forest combined with salty, spicy cologne, but today his scent is so sharp, my ovaries feel like they are exploding.

Beckett let me know on the way here that he intends to spend some quality time talking to Jeremy this afternoon and that I am not invited to join them. I hate to admit it, but I think he's making the right call. We need to find out what Jeremy knows, but I don't need to know the mechanics of extracting that information.

I have no idea how long he'll be there, but Beckett called Bruce before we left the apartment and made arrangements for me to spend the time with him.

Bruce got a rare day off and Beckett didn't have much trouble convincing him to spend it babysitting me. I gave him grief for doing it, but the truth is I miss Bruce terribly. I’ve been so busy these past few weeks leading up to the wedding, we haven’t had much of a chance to just hang out and enjoy each other's company. Even silence with Bruce is fun. I don’t know how he does it, but he can make you smile through a root canal. Which is ironically what this day feels like already.

First, we were so high and giddy after the shock of the pregnancy test result. I'm still not even sure I'm comfortable with that. Then, the clouds of reality set in for the duration. First Northrup, then mom, then Jeremy. Ugh, I can’t think of a worse line-up for any day. I'm going to need Bruce.

Beckett and I are a single moving unit as he guides us through the maze of desks and cubicle walls covered in computer-gray fabric. The noise here is like radio static and it smells of stale coffee and donuts. Along the back wall are small private offices, sectioned off behind glass walls with metal vertical blinds all bent out of shape.

He stops us in front of a door that has a sign reading, “Detective No thrup,” the shadow of the missing ‘r’ visible in old, yellow glue that obviously failed to hold it in place.

I lean over to see Northrup through the glass. He gives a wave, motioning us into the office. As always, Beckett opens the door and lets me in first, his hand falling to the small of my back and guiding me forward before he steps in behind me.

I swallow hard as Beckett pulls the chair out in front of Northrup’s desk for me to sit, taking his usual place, standing sentry behind me, hands on my shoulders, thumbs moving softly against the back of my neck.

“Hey.” Northrup nods and shuffles through a stack of manila folders on his desk, pulling one out and heaving a tired sigh as he opens it, exposing a small stack of pages, loosely clipped together and with messy handwriting scrawled on the front.

“Can I see?” Beckett holds a hand out.

“I’m not supposed to let you read it. Open investigation.
Investigations,
I should say.” He looks at me for a second and my gut tightens as I bite my lip.

“Then why are we fucking here?” Beckett turns his voice hard as his hands freeze in the air, waiting for the detective to cave.

Which he does.

“Okay, but just read it here. It doesn't leave this office. You can’t take it or have a copy. But, read it and I’ll give you the highlights.” He holds it out to Beckett.

“Fine.” Beckett gives my shoulder a squeeze before taking his other hand away and I hear him start to thumb through the pages.

“Where is she now?” I ask, my eyes intent on Northrup as he settles back in his squeaky chair, entwining his fingers and laying them across his rotund belly.

“She’s at CPS, last I heard. Her and the guy she’s with. They just bounced in there this morning, raised holy hell, then disappeared. Came back a couple hours later.” He gives me a sympathetic smile, both of us know how they spent the ‘couple hours.’

“What does she think she’s going to accomplish at CPS?” I ask.

“Got me. I can’t see they have any reason to entertain her bullshit. As you well know, she has no custodial rights. But I do think they
are
interested in just how the relationship with Mr. Spicer developed and why she never declared him as the father on the birth records.”

Beckett stays silent behind me, but pages rustle and I crane my neck around to see his eyebrows knit together and his lips tight.

“What does it say?”

He doesn't get a chance to answer.

“Now, remember, this is just her version of events that occurred a very long time ago.” Northrup interjects and I glance at him before turning back to Beck. Holly already had a loose grip on reality, and we're all clear on the fact that her drug and alcohol use has done nothing to help that. She can barely understand what's real on a day-to-day basis, let alone a reality from so many years ago.

Northrup continues. “It says she and Louis dated a couple times. Then, basically, if you want to wade through all the other bullshit in there, that on their second date, Louis took her back to her apartment and–” he winces, like there's a bad taste in his mouth “–he raped her.”

Beckett tosses the stack of papers back on Northrup’s desk with a loud thud.

“That’s it? We already knew her version.”

“I think you missed something.” Northrup gathers mom’s statement and flips a few pages, turns it back around and points to a paragraph.

This time I reach forward and take the papers.

My eyes absorb the lines and a shiver spiders its way up my arms.

“What does it say, babe?”

Northrup helps me out. My vocal chords seem to have been ripped from my throat.

He sighs. “It says that Mr. Rendell was ‘helping’ her out. Meaning he was giving her funds in exchange for spending time with her. And her daughter.” Northrup looks at me. “Mr. Spicer became aware of the situation. That's when the two of them began a ‘relationship,’ as she says. Even by her own account it was two dates, hardly a relationship. And I'm not sure
date
is even the most accurate description.”

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah, and, I’m sorry, ma’am, but your mother was more interested in telling her story than protecting her own ass, so it's pretty clear to me that there was no
relationship
. What is clear, is there
was
a relationship between Mr. Rendell and Mrs. Henderson. He was very young, just started at CPS. When we asked Mrs. Henderson some questions about the events of the night in question, there are some inconsistencies. She seemed more focused on Mr. Spicer’s sexual orientation and that she and Mr. Rendell seemed to find that unacceptable.”

“But, if he was gay, then why did she say they had a relationship?”

“Well, as I said, her story is inconsistent. At one point, she indicated she was in love with Mr. Spicer, and he violently assaulted her that night. Then, later on, she changed her story and said that he rebuffed her advances, which made her indignant and she called him some, ah, homophobic slurs which I will not repeat.”

“I’m so confused.”

“Yeah, that’s how we felt.”

I shake my head, trying to find some thread of sanity to follow in the chaos that is Holly Henderson. I cannot believe that woman is my mother.

“Anyway, at some point he attacked her, or so she says. Shortly after that, Mr. Rendell brought him before the review board. The dispute was settled, but Mr. Spicer was transferred to the North Office, and from Mrs. Henderson’s account she then moved away shortly after and never saw him again.”

“Okay, let me get this straight. You’re saying he may or may not have raped her. You’re saying Holly’s story is full of shit and you have no real idea what is truth and what is lies. We know that Jordan is Louis's son because we have the DNA test, so we know they had sex at least once. We just have no idea if it was consensual. Also, Rendell and Holly had something going at the same time and there was no fucking love lost between him and Louis. So, all of this information gets us exactly . . . where?”

“In a steaming bucket of beats-the-shit-outta-me. Except,” the detective wags a finger prophetically in the air, “that Holly Henderson may not have been raped. I have serious doubts about her story, and right now, that’s all we have. Her story.”

“What about Rendell? You talked to him?”

“Nope. He’s lawyered up. And I can’t say anything about his case because it involves you, ma’am.”

It’s still like a bad dream that I am part of the investigation into the loft fire, but since no one seems all that interested in questioning me any more about it, I push it out of my mind and focus on Jordan.

“I just care about my brother. I didn’t do anything wrong so I have nothing to hide.” I cross and uncross my ankles, listening to Beckett’s deep breaths. I sense that we've got all we're going to out of Northrup. “Can we go?”

Northrup nods as he pulls half a pastrami sandwich from inside his desk drawer and takes a bite.

My face turns hot, my hand flies to cover my mouth and I’m off the chair at a jack rabbit’s sprint.

“Where’s the ladies room?!” Beckett shouts as he turns to follow me down the hall.