Happy Sunday, friends! Here is your updated chapter for the week. Fair warning, I am not sure is you will get a new one next weekend, but I will do my best. Next Saturday is my birthday and I will be out of town, and to be completely honest, I will likely be drunk and and writing (usually) goes better when I am sober. I will do my best! Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this chapter. As always, a HUGE thank you to those of you who reviewed the last chapter. I love you guys!
Anyway, please enjoy! And review. Please review.
Everyone in the chapel watched as Kozik obediently followed Tess out of the room. To say that they were stunned would be an understatement. Every last one of Kozik's brothers found it hilarious that the headstrong, smooth-talking, charming Kozik had become so hooked on their office help that he followed her like a shadow and was leaving the party at 10 PM instead of 10 AM, the next day. It would take a hell of a woman to do that. but that's exactly what Tess was; a hell of a woman. After the kiss she had stumbled in and planted on him, any man would be a fool not to follow her.
Opie groaned once he was sure Kozik was out of earshot. He was happy that Tess seemed to push things forward, but they had a pool going, and the fact that she had chosen tonight to act on her feelings left him in a rough place. "Why did it have to be tonight, of all nights?"
"Because tonight was my night," Chibs shot him a shit eating grin from across the table. "And I think that means all of you assholes owe me $100. Each."
"Wait a minute now," Piney began to argue, always reluctant to give up money. "We don't know anything is actually happening. We were betting on action. That wasn't real action. Maybe she kisses him like that all the time."
"Give it up, Pops," Opie rolled his eyes and drew his wallet from his pocket. "That was more action than you ever get. Shit for the two of them, that was more action than a Die Hard movie. Just give this dick the cash, or he will never shut up."
Piney grumbled his protests about getting plenty of action, but he got out his wallet as well. Opie, Piney, and the two Prospects handed Chibs their money. He made a good show of counting it, before tucking his gains away in his pocket and standing from the table. "Thank you, boys. Hopefully, not a damned one of you has learned your lesson from this, and all of you will continue to make ridiculous bets with me, which I will win, because that's what I do."
"I hate you," Opie grumbled as he got up from the table. "I am going to go find Lila, see if I can get something good out of tonight."
"Have fun," Piney called after him, cracking open a bottle of Patron.
Chibs soon followed Opie from the room, in search of his own wife. He was surprised by the number of people spread across the main room. What had started out as a family dinner had quickly blossomed into a full fledged party. Some mechanics were gathered around playing darts. Gemma was holding court with a group of women by the bar. Unser was trying to play pool with Chuckie, but it looked as if that was going poorly. Kerrianne and Maeve and Ellie were sitting on the couch, side by side, looking at something on the laptop in front of them, laughing hysterically. It looked as though everybody was having a great time, but Fiona was nowhere to be found.
"Kerri," he called over to his daughter, interrupting whatever was so hilarious. "You seen your Ma anywhere?"
Kerrianne shrugged, wiping tears from her eyes, still trying to overcome the laughter. "She took the baby into the back awhile ago to feed him. Maybe she's still there? I don't really know."
Her attention immediately went back to the screen, as if Chibs didn't exist at all. She was most definitely a teenage girl. He rolled his eyes and headed towards the back, figuring that was his best chance of finding his wife. It didn't take him very long. When he opened the door to his own dorm, he found Fiona pacing across the room, gently rocking the baby and humming a soft lullaby in an attempt to soothe him to sleep. It wasn't working. She stopped upon seeing him and smiled.
"Hello, Love," she said, sounding tired. "Have you come to share your winnings?"
"A hundred from each of the guys," Chibs replied, dropping a kiss to the top of her head. "That should take care of nappies for little Rory for at least a week, wouldn't you say?"
"Aye, probably, but I was thinking a crib," Fiona told him. "That, plus the hundred I won off Gemma, this wee one will be sleeping in luxury. That is if he ever decides to sleep."
"He giving you trouble?" Chibs asked, noting that the boy was wide awake, fighting sleep with everything he had.
"A bit," Fiona replied with a sigh. "He's tired, but he doesn't want to sleep. There's a lot of noise. Too many things to capture his attention here, I suppose. I am trying to get him settled, but I think I may be fighting a losing battle."
She was right, of course. There was a party taking place in the next room, and getting a newborn to sleep during a party was a futile task at best. It didn't take a genius to figure out that each and every one of them really needed a good nights sleep, and they weren't going to get it here. Chibs didn't even need to consider what he should do.
"Let's go, then," he suggested without any hesitation.
"What?" Fiona questioned, confused at his suggestion. "Where, out there? I doubt that would help, Filip."
"No," Chibs shook his head. "Let's go home."
"Oh," Fiona raised an eyebrow, surprised by his suggestion. "Really? Is that a good idea? I know that you said the Russian situation is handled, but is it really safe to leave here? And what about Maeve? Would it be alright to leave her here, and take him home? And where is he even going to sleep? We have nothing at home! There is so much to do."
"Hey, hey, hey," Chibs soothed, chuckling at his wife's rapid fire questions. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. "We will be safe at home, I can promise you that. We can take the cradle with us, and he will sleep there for tonight. We'll worry about getting him whatever he needs tomorrow. And as for Maeve, she seems alright. She knows that we will be taking him home eventually; may as well be sooner rather than later. He's our boy Fi, and he needs some sleep. So do you, and so do I. None of us are going to get it here, so let's take our Rory home, yeah?"
"Oh thank God," Fiona murmured, resting her head against his chest. "Let's get Kerrianne and go home. It will be nice, won't it? To sleep in our own bed, with our whole family together under one roof?"
"Aye," he agreed. "It really will."
A slight tweak of his wrist pushed Kozik's bike faster through the darkness of the night, though he was in no real rush to get home. The town was quiet, and the roar of the motor was the only thing he could hear. He liked it that way, nothing to distract him from his much needed thinking. Well, almost nothing. Tess was perched behind him on the back of the bike, her arms wrapped securely around him, face buried in his back. That fact was NOT making his thinking any easier.
Kozik was known far and wide as a lady's man. His general preference was to find a willing companion, spend a night or two with them, and never see them again. Going back for seconds was usually completely out of the question. This had always been his style, and it had always worked for him. Sure he had ended up with a daughter and a few minor STD's from this lifestyle, but he had never questioned it, not even once. Not until Tess came around, anyway.
He had known from the word go that Tess was different. She was beautiful, of course she was, but in a completely different way than most of the women he had been with. She lacked the fake tits and bleached hair that his usual partners preferred. It didn't matter, though. She was more beautiful without those things. She was much, much more than beautiful, however. She was smart and she was funny and she was caring and she was loyal. She could more than keep up with him, and that was saying something. Tess was different, and he would be a liar if he said that there wasn't a part of him that knew she was too good for him.
He had had a chance with her before, and he had royally screwed that up. It was stupid to say, but he hadn't realized at that point how much she meant to him. She had been a friend, yes, and he had liked her, but until they had spent that night together and he had woken up next to her, he didn't know exactly how much she meant to him. He knew now. She meant a hell of a lot to him, too much for him to risk fucking it up again.
Kozik had known for awhile now that he loved Tess, but after everything that he had put her through, with leaving her alone the morning after and then showing up with Bambi, he hadn't wanted to hurt her. Then, she had been kidnapped and harmed because of her association with him, and the guilt that came with that weighed heavily on him all the time. When she had been kidnapped, Kozik promised himself that he would make it all up to her. When she came back hurt beyond reason, he vowed to wait for her to be ready, to wait as long as it took. He had been ready to wait months, years even, if that's what she needed, but now, it looked like she was ready.
Nobody had been more surprised than Kozik himself when she had sashayed up to him in the chapel and kissed him square on the mouth. It was most definitely NOT a friendly kiss. It was a kiss filled with hunger and possession. To him, it seemed as if Tess was claiming him, and Kozik was more than fine with that. It was taking a lot of willpower to remind him that, despite the fact that she had kissed him and despite the fact that she appeared to want him, appearances could most definitely be deceiving.
He had tasted the liquor on her tongue when she kissed him. He had seen the tipsy sway in her steps when she walked. He knew that alcohol had a magnificent way of changing things, of making people do things they wouldn't do in ordinary circumstances. As much as he wanted to believe that it was really Tess who had walked up to him, bold as brass, and planted one hell of a kiss on him and then demanded he take her home, he had a feeling that it had been the alcohol doing all the talking.
He slowed the bike down as he neared his place, not only out of consideration for his neighbors, but in an attempt to give himself time to steal his nerves. What he was about to do would most definitely not be easy, but it was necessary. When he was sure he was ready, he pulled the bike in front of his house and parked it.
Kozik was quick to climb off and help Tess. If she had drank enough to randomly kiss him in front of all his brothers, then he knew she had drank enough to make climbing off a bike difficult. Sure enough, she managed to trip over her own feet, and he was barely able to catch her before she face planted into the driveway.
"Nice catch," she giggle from her place in his arms. "What would I have done without my blonde knight?"
"I think you would be sleeping on the lawn tonight," he stood her up on her own feet, but kept an arm around her for support as they shuffled towards the door.
"And that is not where I want to be sleeping, no no no," she declared, her words more than a little slurred. "I think it would be more fun to sleep with you."
"You do, huh?" he asked, a bemused, but strained expression on his face as he unlocked his front door.
"Yes," she insisted with an obvious nod. She looked up at him, and he could see a drunken glimmer in her eyes "And just so you know, when I say sleep, I don't mean sleep. I mean have a lot of really sexy sex."
He internally groaned. She was not making this easy on him. He really, really wanted her. Anybody with a pulse would. But this wasn't the way to do it. She had already been used an harmed and betrayed, and she didn't need that from him. He wanted to do this the right way, and that meant he would need to wait until she was sober. He lead her to the the living room, and she flopped down on the couch.
"Aren't you going to take of your pants?" she asked him, in what she probably thought was an alluring way. In a different situation, he would have found it funny. "It will be hard to do the sex if you still are wearing your pants. Get it? Hard?"
"I get it," he nodded. "But here's the thing. I am really tired and I think you are too. Maybe we can just go to bed and talk about this again tomorrow?"
"But I want you right now," she whined. "What if I don't want you tomorrow?"
Kozik would be a liar if he said he wasn't worried about the same thing. He sighed, "I hope like hell you do, but it can't happen tonight. It has to wait tomorrow."
"You are serious, aren't you?" she asked, suddenly seeming more alert. Her lower lip trembled as tears welled in her eyes. "You don't want me."
"No, Tess," he tried to convince her. "It's not that-"
"You think I'm ugly," she said, the sadness in her voice, breaking his heart. "You don't want me, not after what he did to me. I don't blame you."
"Tess, you shut your mouth right now," Kozik told her, more stern than he had ever been before. "I do want you, more than you know. I do. But I want you to be sober when it happens, and unfortunately, that's not going to happen tonight. I am trying to do the right thing here, which is why I think we should just go to bed."
She stared him down for a long time, tears still on her cheeks. He hoped that she understood what he was trying to tell her. Finally she nodded. "I drank a lot, I think."
"Yeah, you did," he agreed. "It's okay. It happens."
"The room is kind of moving. I don't really like it," she groaned, closing her eyes.
"That happens too," he said, smiling at her. She would have a hell of a headache in the morning, but that was better than what she would have if he agreed her her request.
"Kozik," she murmured. "Can I stay with you tonight? Please? I don't want to be alone. Please don't make me stay alone."
"You're never alone, Tess," he offered her a hand to help her up. "Come on. Let's go to bed."