Stepbrother Bad Boy's Baby Boxed Set(51)

I hadn't planned on going to Miami. It was just the first plane that was flying out of Logan Airport when I got there. I'd already left the manor, my bag slung into the back of one of the gardener's trucks. The trucks belonged to the manor, so I wasn't technically stealing it, but my license was suspended. If a cop had pulled me over, I most likely would be spending the night in jail. As it was, I got all the way to the long term lot without incident, parked the truck and put the keys in my pocket. Yuki kept extras of all the vehicles, and she could pick it up. I sent her a text message about the truck in case she didn't know, along with the lot and space number, then paid for three days parking with the cash I had in my wallet. I might have been a bastard, but I wasn't going to cause any more problems that I had already done.

Getting off the flight in Miami, I wasn't too sure where to go. It was already late at night, and I didn't want to go through the hassle of finding a hotel room. Instead, I slung my bag over my shoulder and walked into the night, heading towards the beach. Something in the idea of the waves and the timelessness of the ocean was speaking to me.

As I walked through the warm Miami darkness, I thought of all the mess I'd caused. I deserved every bit of pain I got from f*cking Gina and not telling Krystal, even if I had done it before she and I fell in love. That I'd gotten Gina pregnant, and was now going to have a baby was beside the point. The baby was innocent, but I'd hurt Krystal, who was just as innocent. She didn't know about my original plan, how she'd started off as a pawn in a grand game of revenge against my father. She didn't know how something about her had stopped me, and had changed me into becoming a better man. She didn't know how I'd abandoned my plan after realizing I was falling in love with her, and how she'd become a role model for me, and how she'd given me the courage to confront the truth about my relationship with my father, and to repair a relationship that had been broken for almost twenty years.

I was lucky that I didn't get robbed or killed. Miami International is not exactly in the best neighborhood of Miami, and I walked through even worst neighborhoods on my way to the beach. A white boy who looked like me walking through some of those neighborhoods after midnight was asking for it, but maybe it was something in my face or the way I was moving, nobody messed with me. Maybe it was just dumb luck, I wasn't really paying attention nor did I care.

I ended up on the beach about an hour before sunrise, just as the first of the few swimmers who wanted to use the Miami beaches were staking out their spots. The Florida coast is terrible for swimming, with waves that lap the beach like a puppy dog rather than crash, so it wasn't like much was going to happen there. I was staggering by that point, exhausted, and fell asleep or passed out in the shade of an overturned row boat on the beach, I couldn't be sure which.

That had been a day prior. Now, with three days growth of beard, a pretty wicked sunburn and having not eaten too much, I felt hollowed out. It reminded me of the stories I'd heard when I was a kid, and I'd gone to church with a friend for a few months. The Old Testament was full of prophets who just went off into the desert, usually for forty days and forty nights, coming back with some message from heaven, and a raging case of insanity as well. I could understand how they felt, and I'd only been on the beach for two days.

I was watching the waves and wondering how painful it would be to just walk into the waves and not stop, when I heard someone call my name. "Julian? Julian Castelbon?"

I turned my head, my neck creaking and my eyes blinking. It took me a few seconds to recognize the fit, well dressed man coming towards me across the early evening sand. "Dwayne?"

Dwayne Forrester came jogging up and squatted in front of me, looking intently into my face. "Yeah, it's me. Julian, how long have you been out here?"

I waved my hand airily, it was all the strength I had left. "I dunno. Two days? Three?"

Dwayne's face changed in expression, and he took my hands. "Come with me, man. I'm getting you off this beach and taking you to my place."

Part of me wanted to tell him just to leave me there, it didn't really matter if I died or not. But Dwayne had been an old friend, and I didn't want to disappoint anyone else. Besides, at that point I really didn't care. I tried to stand up, and was shocked to find out that I couldn't stand up at all. Falling back on my ass in the sand, I looked at him stupidly, my butt hurting from the thump and my pride hurting even more. Dwayne took a knee next to me and threw my arm around his shoulder. "Okay. On three. You might be dehydrated and heat exhausted, but you're still a big guy. Ready? One, two, three!"

Somehow, he got me to my feet, and the two of us made our way away from the waves to a parking lot, where Dwayne bundled me into a BMW SUV. I watched him start to go around to the driver's side, but before he opened his door, the world swam for me, and I passed out.

I woke up and it was still dark. I was on a white leather couch, and I'd been stripped out of the filthy clothes I'd been wearing and covered with a light cotton sheet to cover my nudity. My skin was bright red from my shoulders to my fingertips, and my face still felt like it was about five inches from a heater vent. My torso on the other hand, was goose bumped from the air conditioning, and I shivered under the sheet. I tried to speak, but only a dry rasp came out of my throat. Trying to move wasn't much more successful, and I had to just lay there in the darkness like a helpless baby.