Fireball (Cheap Thrills #1)(38)

This left me with a burning pit in my gut though. How did I tell Tabby? Why the hell had I left it this long?

To compensate, I was doing everything I could to prove to her that I really was a good guy. Everything I’d done was genuine, but I’d opened myself up to her faster than I’d ever done with anyone before, telling her about my mom and my tattoo. All I could do was hope that she remembered all of it when I told her the truth.

Pulling up in front of her house, I shut the engine off and started at the wheel for a second. My plan was to take her out for dinner, bring her home and tell her. I had my cuffs in the compartment between the front seats of the vehicle just in case too.

Mind made up, I got out and walked around the front of the truck and onto the little path that led up to her front door. My house was the total opposite of Tabby’s. Whereas hers was quaint and eye-catching, mine had three floors and was just a house – that was the best way to describe it. It just looked like bricks and cement with some windows pushed into it. My garden at the front was now fake grass because I never had time to cut it. At the back, I’d had all the grass pulled up and pilings from the gold mining in Alaska put down. I had some plant here and there, but that was it. I hadn’t updated the inside, perfectly happy with the light brown walls, varnished wood floors, modern kitchen, and white bathrooms. But seeing Tabby’s and how she’d brought extra life even to the garden, with splashes of bright pink here and there, the addition of some stones along the side of the path that glowed in the dark (scared the shit out of me when I first saw them), I realized that for the last three years I’d been living a boring life. I got up, worked, worked out, socialized here and there, slept…that was it. Even the relationships I’d been in had been as lackluster as that with no emotions involved. It’s not that I didn’t like the women I’d been involved with, but they’d never made me feel what Tabby did. For the first time I was excited to see someone, planning how I was going to do it, and things stood out that I memorized to show her – it was all just different, like I suddenly had color in my life.

I couldn’t lose her. In fact, I wasn’t going to lose her. I’d do anything and fight anyone, even her, to keep her in my life.

I just needed her to understand what I had to tell her.

Tabitha





“Welp, if you can do it then do it is what I say. He’s a great guy, good looking, has a good heart, and obviously thinks my little sissy is the shiznet, so he’s ok by me,” Jose said down the phone into my ear. “Isn’t that true, Livvy? Isn’t the sheriff giving our Tabby a big old d…”

“Jose,” I snapped, stopping her. “You can’t say that to a baby. She doesn’t know what a dick is. At least, not a penis one. She heard her dad talking in the womb, so she knows that kind of dick, but still.”

I changed it to speakerphone while I put the finishing touches to my makeup. Putting mascara on with a phone wedged between your neck and shoulder wasn’t conducive to maintaining your vision. Any woman who has even tapped her eye with that wand knows not just the pain, but the trauma of having mascara swimming over your eyeball and collecting in the corner of your eye for the rest of the day. Mascara gook in that little space wasn’t a good look. And don’t even get me started on doing it when you’ve got a big old brace on your hand, something that I was no longer wearing because my hand was already feeling better and I preferred to be able to move it normally.

“I was going to say dose of loving,” Jose sighed. “Why must your brain always be in the gutter?”

She was talking shit. Normally, my brain was in the gutter, I had a filthy sense of humor and could turn a lot of things into an innuendo. However, since we’d met, Jose hadn’t been hit with nearly a tenth of my filth potential, which meant she had been about to say the word dick.

“Uh huh, you might want to open a window. I’m sure the strong scent of bullshit isn’t good for the baby.”

I could hear rustling from her side of the phone, followed by the sound of something being wound up. When a lullaby started playing, I realized she was putting Olivia down for a nap.

“Ok, baby can’t hear me saying this to you,” she whispered.

Lips twitching, I almost lost sight of where the wand was in relation to my eye when I glanced down at my phone. “Why are you whispering then?”

“Because. Ok, I’m switching to video.” Just then my phone started making the incoming video sound, so I tapped the screen with my free hand, giving her a wave when I saw her grinning at me. “I can only see your boogers. Move your phone so I can see what you’re wearing.”

I’d had my phone laying down on the dresser which meant she was staring up my nose and at the bottom of my chin. Adjusting it so it was now leaning against the wall, I tilted my head back and tried to look up my nose in the mirror.

“Do I really have boogers?”

“Dunno, your boobs blocked it out. Hey, how big do you think yours will get when you have babies?” She gestured to her new bodacious ta-ta’s, courtesy of milk and Olivia. Not like you could miss them to be honest, they were freaking huge.

“I don’t want to think about babies, Jose. I want to think about getting through each day, living my life, and just being Tabitha Newton for a while.”

She stayed quiet for a second and then sighed and rolled her eyes. “You’re so full of shit. The sheriff tickles your twat, admit it. And you’re trying to convince yourself that he doesn’t, but he totally does,” she leaned closer to the screen and pointed downward mouthing ‘twat tickling’.