Providence Series Books 5-7 Read online

  “Cole!” Taint bellowed. I was sure that if he could, he’d have been running out of the door. Thankfully, the rash and blisters from the poison oak that covered his dick meant that no quick moves could be made, so he’d have to suffer it while I stole his escape intentions.

  Flinging open the door, I almost knocked Layla down as she opened it at the same time to see what the problem was. A quick sniff of the stench that had followed me had her pulling back quickly, shoving Cole through the door and slamming it shut behind him. I moved around his side and tried to open it, but the bitch was still holding it on the other side. Every time it opened an inch, taunting me with the freedom behind it, she would tug hard and it would close, trapping me in with the noxious smell.

  “What is that?” Cole choked out, lifting his top over his nose and mouth.

  “Your son’s ass!” I snapped, giving the door another desperate tug. “Are you using your legs? That’s against the rules, you evil cow!” I sounded almost hysterical as I screamed at Layla and tugged harder on the handle.

  “How is there still more?” Taint yelled. “Why does it smell so bad?”

  “How do I know?” Tom sounded panicked. “Maybe it’s broken? Cole!”

  Giving him a shove in their direction, I gave one last tug and accepted that the Belieber the other side wasn’t ever going to let me out. So, I did the only thing that I could and ran into the study, opened the window and jumped out.

  That wasn’t enough though. Layla needed to learn a lesson, a very shitty lesson. Walking quietly up behind her, I grabbed the waistband of her shorts, making sure I included her panties, and yanked them up as hard as I could.

  Her shriek of, “Cooter!” was met with no mercy, and when she let go of the handle, I reached around her and opened the door. The waft of death that escaped made me lose my grip on the fabric, so I adjusted my plans slightly. Giving her a shove, I lunged for the door and slammed it shut behind her, holding on for dear life.

  Chapter 6

  Sonya

  I learned something new about the Townsends that afternoon. Because they were such a lighthearted family, it was easy to assume that they would be like that in all situations. I knew now from the way that Tom had reacted to me being kidnapped that they were capable of being dark. In fact, I still didn’t know the true depths of how dark Tom could actually be. I knew he was still stewing over everything that had happened and was working on finding the man responsible. What he would do if he ever came face to face with him though was an unknown.

  Brett had been missing since the day after the party and I assumed that he had gone to Houston for something business related. Tom had told me what he’d heard being said that night, but it couldn’t be right. Him and Sabine were so happy together and just…flowed as a couple. Where one would move, the other did the same without realizing. They were always in perfect unison, so a divorce just didn’t make sense. They also couldn’t keep their hands off each other and were constantly reaching out, even to just skim the other one’s hand.

  Then again, Brett’s disappearance might also have had something to do with the fact that the night of the party, Gramps had gotten a couple of the security guys together, hogtied a drunken Brett and had then driven him to a clinic to get Scrotox.

  From what I’d heard, the sound of screaming and him yelling threats at his grandad proved he’d been one pissed off guy as they stuck him with Botox in his nuts. Can’t say I blamed him. It sounded like agony and I had to wonder why someone would do that voluntarily – unless they ruined a signed copy of a book – and how it had even been discovered.

  I’d gotten a text message from Tony asking me to meet him at Layla’s and assumed that it was to discuss my dress. None of them accepted that I wasn’t telling anyone what it looked like and they took every chance they had to try to break me down. I’d tried some of my reasons like – what if someone else wore a similar dress, then it would look awful? But they’d laughed it off like I was the crazy person thinking someone would wear a dress similar to mine to my wedding. I thought it was reasonable given the theme of the wedding.

  I’d agreed to let Tom plan it all, aside from my outfit. My parents were selfish and self-obsessed, so he’d said he wanted to do this for me to spoil me. I appreciated it and was pretty excited about it all even if I’d only been given a matter of weeks to get myself ready for the day. A Halloween wedding was something that I’d always wanted, and I couldn’t wait to see his face.

  As I got to the door to Layla’s home, the world spun, and I felt slightly off balance as I reached for the door. Maybe I had an inner ear infection? I’d had Labyrinthitis, an infection far inside the ear that affected the balance, a couple of times. Sometimes it went away on its own with the help of travel sickness medications, sometimes I’d needed antibiotics too. It changed based on what was going on around it in the ear. I needed to get rid of it before the wedding though. It wouldn’t look good if I walked toward Tom looking drunk off my ass or holding onto the side of my head crying.

  Taking a deep breath, I slowly opened the door and almost fell when it was ripped out of my hand from the other side.

  “About time,” Tony snapped, as he grabbed me and pulled me inside. Marching us through to the living room, he plonked me down in a comfy chair, pulled up the leg rest and then gave me a piece of cake. “We’ve been waiting.”

  I was so focused on trying to clear the spinning in my head as well as figuring out why I had the cake that I didn’t see who was in the room until they started all speaking at once.

  “Which one of us is walking you down the aisle?”

  “I get to walk you…”

  “I’m walking her!”

  “Bitch, I will cut you…”

  This went on for a while as they argued amongst themselves, so I decided that upping my blood sugar with cake might be the cure for my dizziness and dug into it. It was freaking amazing and after the fifth mouthful, I was feeling much better.

  Cake fixes everything, never run out of cake – mental note to self!

  I was just wiping the last of the frosting off the plate with my finger when they all turned to me. I almost choked on the yummy goodness at the looks on their faces.

  Tony, Gramps, Grams, Layla, Jack, Colette, and Taint were all lined up and glaring at me.

  “What did I do?”

  My eyes almost popped out of my head as they all crossed their arms at the same time and continued to glare. I wasn’t sure what to say. I was also equally unsure if saying anything would make them lose their shit at me.

  What if they didn’t think I was good enough for Tom? The thought really hurt as the insecurities left over from my parents’ inability to give a flying fuck about me came back. They would always be there, but on the whole, I wasn’t as crippled by them as I had been before I’d met Tom and Layla.

  “Well?” Taint snapped, tapping his foot.

  “Well…what?” I asked slowly, not wanting to spook the animals into attacking.

  “Which one of us is it?”

  Staring at him in confusion a bit longer, I tried valiantly to come up with a good response, but when you don’t have one fucking iota of a clue what someone is talking about, let alone seven people, there really wasn’t anything that you could do apart from look confused – which I’m sure I was doing perfectly.

  It was Tony who explained. “Which. One. Of. Us. Is. Walking. You. Down.” he spoke as slowly as he could until he got to the end, “The fucking aisle?” he shouted, stomping his foot.

  “What?”

  Maybe I was having a blonde moment? Maybe my dizziness was the sign of something worse going on in my head?

  “Don’t play dumb with me, missy-soon-to-be-Mrs.,” Tom’s mom Colette spoke up. “Which one of us is doing it? They’re old and perverted,” she pointed at the grandparents.

  “Hey!” Grams said sounding offended.

  “Thank you!” Gramps said at the same time, smacking Grams ass. Hashtag life goals on that one. />
  “Layla wants you both to skip down it like kids,” she said, ignoring the old people who were now kissing each other.

  “I told you that in confidence. I wanted to surprise her!” Layla huffed.

  “Tony…what was it you wanted to do?” she turned to the brooding hunk of handsome who was looking a bit sickened by what the grandparents were doing. I will not look. I won’t. Dammit, I did, and now the cake wasn’t sitting so well inside me.

  “I just wanted to make her the princess that she should be. I love her!” He said it in such a quiet voice I almost started bawling. This man was everything that the world should be – perfection!

  “And we,” she gestured between her and Jack, “Want to do it because we love you too. And also, because a girl needs her family to proudly pass her to her husband on her wedding day.”

  I couldn’t help it when I lifted hands - that still had frosting on them - to my face and started sobbing into them. What they’d said meant everything and had also been everything I’d been missing my whole life. The only people I’d been able to invite were some friends and some of the staff who had helped raise me. My parents fucking sucked! And who drove a yellow BMW?

  It was a hard decision to come to as I continued crying.

  “Do you think she knows that she has icing on her eyelid?” Taint mumbled.

  “Do you think she cares?” Layla replied.

  It was Tony who took my hands away from my face and lifted one frosting covered finger to my mouth, followed by another and another. I saw his hand move, and a new piece of cake appeared in front of me.

  Decision made.

  Picking the piece of cake up and taking a big mouthful, I looked at the row of worried faces.

  “Might wanna cut back on the cake, Chica,” Layla said hesitantly as I took another huge bite. “Your ass still has to fit into the car on the day.”

  “Yours still has to fit into a tent after it when we go camping,” Tony snapped back at her.

  The family had decided that before the worst of the weather hit, we were all taking a post-wedding camping trip to a place where they’d been going for years. I was dreading it – I had never in my life ever wanted to go camping. There was something unnatural about sleeping outside with bears, snakes, and spiders. Then not being able to shower? And my hair relied on hair straighteners otherwise it looked scary. And did they know how easy it was to get food poisoning while you were camping? And it would be November – that meant fucking cold weather, maybe even snow.

  So, to sum it up – I was dreading this damn trip.

  Before she could argue back with him, I laid it all out. “Jack and Colette – I appreciate your offer hugely, but I can’t choose you. I would love for you to give me away, but as I’m joining your family, I would love for you to receive me instead. Does that make sense?” Colette wiped a tear and sniffed as she nodded smiling.

  “We can’t wait to call you ours,” Jack mumbled, sounding choked up.

  “Layla, you’re my Maid of Honor. You’re standing beside me and leading me to your brother. I need you there waiting for me and silently reassuring me that it’s all okay.” Layla started tearing up and smiled at me.

  “Hurst and Linda – I was hoping that you would actually lead me there. As in drive me to my new family and life. That’s when I’ll be at my most nervous and I need you to help me with that.”

  “I’ll use my new car!” Hurst clapped his hands as Linda smiled at me. He’d gotten himself a new Mercedes two weeks ago, and this thing was like his baby. He’d proudly downloaded the ‘Mercedes app doohickey’ onto his phone and was constantly checking on the welfare of his car like it was a baby monitor.

  Turning back to the two other men who were standing rigid, preparing themselves for my decision, I changed my mind on my initial decision.

  “I want both of you to give me away – if you’ll do it?”

  They both had twin stunned looks on their faces as it sank in.

  “Both of us?” Tony questioned, looking intrigued by the idea.

  “Both of you.”

  In a short period of time, I’d become close to both of them…in very different ways. Tony was my male version of Layla. We laughed, we argued, we had fun, we cried over movies together; he was my best friend. Taint had saved me and even though we argued constantly, he was like the brother that I’d always wanted. Having them both walk me down the aisle toward Tom would make the day perfect.

  Looking at each other and then back at me, they both nodded in agreement. My day was now complete.

  Tom

  Sonya was at Layla’s house and I was bored shitless, so I’d come to see my brothers who were all sitting have a beer on his porch. Maya had taken Crystal out to get some new shoes because apparently her feet were growing faster than a herpes outbreak.

  “I don’t ever want to see him again,” Brett growled, referring to Gramps. “Fucking Scrotox. Do you have any idea how much that shit hurt? I don’t even examine my nuts that closely to care if they have ‘stress lines’ and shit.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t have said you wanted a divorce,” Cole shrugged. “I bet Sabine loves it. Have y’all worked shit out?”

  “I didn’t say I wanted a divorce?” Brett said sounding confused. “I love my wife.”

  “Yeah, you did. You said you’d spoken to a lawyer and wanted a divorce,” Cole replied.

  “From my family,” Brett snapped. “When Gramps dangled his balls in my face, that was it. Do you know how insane y’all are? It’s like a real-life nightmare being part of this family a lot of the time.”

  Shrugging, Cole picked a piece of dirt off his jeans. “No can do, you’re stuck with us. Plus, you’re part of the insanity!”

  “What other grandparent thinks getting Botox in your junk solves supposed marriage problems?” he asked.

  It was a fair question and one that I think would be best answered with the word – none.

  “So, what else do you have to do for the wedding?” Ren asked, changing the subject as he relaxed back into his chair and lifted his feet onto the porch railing in front of us.

  Deciding that his position looked comfortable, I copied it and sank back into the thick cushions of the lounger.

  “The music.” I took a mouthful of beer and thought over the one task that was causing me the most problems.

  “For the dance?” This came from Brett who was looking at my brothers with a gleam in his eye. I guess they had experience with this shit, so they might have good music ideas.

  “The dance, the church music…” Running my hand through my hair, I blew out a breath and tried not to panic.

  I’d done the flowers, the cake, my tux, the catering, venues, literally everything without a problem. Music was apparently my nemesis.

  “So, the music is for the wedding march, the procession after the wedding and for the first dance?” Brett clarified, getting my hopes up with how eager he sounded.

  Nodding my head, I took another mouthful of my beer. I hated the brand that Ren bought, but I needed it desperately after planning a wedding in a mosquito’s fart sized time frame.

  I made a grave mistake right then though, I just didn’t realize it.

  “It has to be really special and memorable.”

  There was a short lull in the conversation and if I hadn’t been intent and focused on picking the label off my bottle without leaving any of the gunky shit behind, I would have seen the silent conversation between them all. I also would have been able to tell them to go jump in the lake and drown. Unfortunately, I had half of the label already off leaving no skid marks behind and it had become a matter of principal to finish the job.

  “We’ll do it,” Ren clapped me on the shoulder making me rip the label just as I was nearing the end of its reign of attachment to the bottle.

  “We’ll make sure it’s memorable, man,” Brett added as I sat staring in horror at what had just happened to my project.

  I wasn’t sure if I had some sort o
f obsessive-compulsive disorder type issue that was just aimed at this one bottle and label, but I was about to explode when their words hit me. The realization that the biggest pain in my ass, since a bullet tore through it, was being taken off my hands was such a relief I almost forgot my bottle mission.

  “And really special,” Cole added as he searched through his phone, presumably for music.

  For the next hour, we went through song after song and finally made a list. I stupidly assumed that what we’d chosen definitely would be played – why would I have ever thought otherwise?

  I forgot that I’d made a few mistakes at their own weddings, one involving Scottish whiskey. I completely forgot that I was dealing with Townsends and being one of them I should have known what they had planned.

  Fucking weddings created bridezillas, and bridezillas had vaginas. Vaginas were renowned for causing men’s brains to go dead in their tracks. At least, that was one of my excuses for this monumental error.

  Later that afternoon, I walked into my living room to find all the ladies of the family sitting chatting while Cole sat rocking on his chair.

  Leaning against the doorway, I listened in and immediately felt sorry for the guy.

  “So, did you ever have those period pains that felt like you had a hellhound in your womb?” Layla asked, sitting forward in her chair.

  “Yes! And that Satan was trying to rip it out of your asshole at the same time.” Maya muttered playing with a tampon.

  In front of them, on the coffee table, was an assortment of tampons and pads. It was Cole’s worst nightmare.

  “I don’t know about you, but my periods used to be really heavy. When I first got mine, I thought I was dying!”

  They continued discussing it in great detail as Cole sat shivering and looking like he was going to pass out. We’d discovered his phobia of anything to do with menstruation very early on when they started learning about reproductive health at school. At first, we thought it was just him being dramatic, but then he fainted in class when they discussed it and he was diagnosed with a legitimate phobia. Yet another thing to add to the list of freaky shit that my family had going for it.