Until Tom, Finding Forever (Providence Book 5) Read online

  Keeping my eyes tightly shut as I burrowed deeper into the bed, I focused back on the birds and smiled. Life out here really was perf…my thoughts were rudely cut short by the bed shifting, giving me my first clue that something was different, as in - really different. The low growl that accompanied it made me grin for a second as I decided that I was still sleeping and had brought a werewolf shifter into my dreams.

  The second growl, followed closely by the word “shit” being hissed, had my eyes snapping open. Me and Layla were close, but I had my own room at her house while were staying here - and she definitely didn’t sound as masculine as that.

  Taking in the furniture and the room itself, I gripped the bedding ready to jump out and run screaming from wherever I was, until I recognized a pair of boots scattered across the floor and the t-shirt lying beside them. I quickly tried to remember what had happened last night, but mornings really weren’t the best time of day for me, and my blood type was caffeine which at that moment I didn’t have any of in my system. I did, however, have alcohol, and that wasn’t conducive with anyone’s memory at any point.

  At least I recognized the clothes, so I couldn’t be locked away in a room with someone waiting to saw me into pieces or torture me until they could make my skin into an outfit. Right?

  Just as I was calming enough to make a more dignified exit from the bed, the sound of a drawer opening followed by stomping made me turn my head just as the bane of my life, Tom Townsend, slammed open his window and leaned out of it.

  What the fuck had I done last night?

  I almost swallowed my tongue when his bare ass filled my vision, but it was beaten by the face full of all things Tom’s balls and cock - from behind - that I got as he leaned out and screamed, “Shut the fuck up!” Before shooting off a few rounds into the sky.

  My screams joined the birds as I shot out of the bed and legged it down the stairs. Thankfully, I was smart and stopped to grab the sweater hanging on the banister, pulling it on as I threw open the door.

  It wasn’t the human being standing there with a shit eating grin on his face that stopped my escape. Not at a Townsend house, oh no. It was the Dalmatian, big red dog, tiny pig, freaking turkey, some type of dog sized horse, a cross between a rat and a dog and the dog on wheels that stopped me. Watching them walk into Tom’s house in a uniformed line, I shook myself out of my stupor and went to take my next step, promptly tripping over my cat who was bringing up the rear of the animal conga line. This shot me right into the Townsend patriarch himself - Grandpa Hurst.

  “Hmmm,” he hummed as he took in my no doubt disheveled state. “Make-up down face, Tom’s top,” he noted, then his eyes stopped on my hair. He reached up and plucked something out, then brought his hand back down between us. “Turkey feather in the hair.”

  Fuck. My. Life

  I didn’t hang around for any more conversation. I put my hand on my ass, that was only just covered by the stolen sweater to stop it flying up when I ran, and legged it back to Layla’s – praying that I didn’t come across any more Townsends on my way.

  Life, as we all know, is unfair though and every last one of them seemed to be out and about at the crack of dawn to see my escape of shame, and hopefully not my crack. Some laughed, some stood open mouthed, some even waved. My hands were too busy holding both the front and back of my t-shirt down after I’d unfortunately discovered that the front flew up when you ran for your life too. This discovery had been made when I’d flashed a random squirrel who had made a startled shrieking noise and scarpered. Poor little guy was probably scarred for life, being flashed as he played with his nuts.

  After what seemed like a hundred miles, I ran through Layla’s door and up to my room where I dove on my bed and hid under the covers.

  It took a good ten-minutes for my breathing to return to normal because I was a F.O.R.D. – Fucker Only Ran Downhill – so exercise wasn’t my strong point. Who wanted to be all sweaty and gross, when they could just be not sweaty and gross? I walked, wasn’t that enough?

  Once my heart felt like it had returned to a normal rhythm and I wasn’t breathing and panting like an escaped convict, I thought over last night.

  I remembered the bottle of Tequila. I remembered changing the subject of conversation a lot. Damn those Townsends were determined people. I remembered someone making margaritas and drinking them out of baby bottles. I don’t remember why, but I remember being very comfortable lying out on the couch and the baby bottles playing a role in my consumption of alcohol. I remember seeing who could drink shots out of the bottles the fastest. And now that I was actually thinking and not using every part of my body to refill my lungs with the oxygen that I’d run out of because of my morning marathon length run - I could feel sore parts on my body that I hadn’t felt in years. It wasn’t as sore as when I lost my virginity to my high school boyfriend, Gary Ficker - the cherry picker. I found out too late that he had picked the cherries of quite a few of the girls and was a complete asshole. This was more of a pleasant ache.

  The sound of hammering at my bedroom door forced a squeak out of me as I hunched down deeper under the covers on my bed.

  “You certainly can’t run for shit,” Layla yelled through the door. “And you can’t hide. Gramps has called a family meeting for the ladies in an hour downstairs. Up and at em, you lush!”

  Groaning, I weighed up whether or not I could escape from here and take my chances against whomever had it in for the Townsends. Then I figured it was unlikely, so I started to weigh up whether or not I’d actually be able to barricade myself in here with something that would keep the Townsends out. Again, unlikely. So, I decided to sulk for a bit, dreading what was going to be said during the “family meeting”, before hauling my ass into the shower where my hangover decided to make itself known.

  I need caffeine, badly!

  ****

  “So, to stop pregnancies, because you all breed like rabbits and I’m starting to fear for the safety of the world,” Gramps’ eyes landed on me and Layla as he pointed to the condoms on the table in front of him. “And you two need to pay more attention than the ones who’ve already reproduced,” he added, before picking up a squash and trying to pull the condom down it - again. “See, you put the thingy on the top, and…” the condom went flying and hit the side of Coleman’s head. Not one person laughed when it slid down slightly before coming to a stop on the top of his ear, the unrolled part still attached to his hair. I’m pretty sure that I heard even Gramps gulp.

  Reaching up slowly, he plucked the rubber from his head, and then pinched the bridge of his nose with his non-condomed hand.

  “I thought that we were going to have a self-defense lesson,” Layla whispered across me to Ebru, Cole’s wife, who was sitting on the other side of me.

  “I thought we were gonna go shooting or something,” she whispered back. Given the situation that the family were in, they had a good point.

  “Have you ever seen a Die Hard or a horror movie where they won because they used a condom?” Layla snorted, then stopped. “You know the cliché scenes where the big boobed chick is running in just her underwear, it’s dark, the music has changed, and she’s just out there running away from the dude with the knife?” We all nodded because whether you watched the movies or not, you knew about those scenes. “Well, imagine me running in my bra and panties, dude with a knife right there. Then turning around with a rubber in my hand and suffocating him.”

  “Maybe we should have this talk with the men again?” Gramps asked Coleman. “I don’t think that this is working.”

  Nodding, still not saying a word, Coleman started to walk toward the door, leaving Gramps with the vegetables and rubbers.

  Sighing with relief, I went to stand up to go and hide back in my bedroom, but Layla grabbing my hand stopped me.

  “Oh no. If he’s giving Tom an education on safe sex, we can’t leave,” she chuckled. “We could hear the giggling coming from his room while we were sitting downstairs last time
.”

  Layla’s grandad burst out laughing so hard, that the zucchini in his hand snapped in half and went flying across the table. Huh, why hadn’t he used that one for the condom demonstration?

  “I couldn’t help it,” he got out in between snorts - not caring for the other half of the poor penis vegetable still in his hand, as he smacked it repeatedly on the table. “You should have seen his face! We only had a squash to practice on and he kept looking down at his crotch and back up at it.”

  Why did they always go with the squash?

  “When was this?” I felt my feelings growing for the little boy who didn’t understand that his penis would never look like that or be that b...

  “Ohhh, about three years ago!”

  No, my mistake. Tom Townsend really had gotten into the gene pool while the lifeguard wasn’t watching.

  Close call.

  Tom

  She’d been avoiding me all day and I was over it. I did warn her that I was done with holding back yesterday. My memory of last night was a little bit hazy after we played ‘Star Whores’ – which was where you put these glow in the dark condoms, that Maya got from China to see if they worked, on a cucumber (or whatever vegetable you could get your hands on) and pretend that they’re light sabers. It seemed a good idea at the time, but I pitied whoever stumbled across the mass of glow in the dark vegetables today - especially as we’d then had a competition to see who could get them to stay in the tree after they threw them.

  Although, one thing that I really wanted to see was the watermelon that we’d managed to get one of the condoms onto. We played dodge-the-glowing-cock-ball until it hit Mark Montgomery, Maya’s cousin and a close family friend, in the head and knocked him out. I really hope that he’d come up with a good excuse for those bruises that didn’t involve any part of the truth.

  It was bugging me though that I couldn’t remember what had happened with my pretty girl. We’d both been naked and evidence showed that we’d done more than just sleep together, but what had we done?

  I’d avoided Gramps calls for a family meeting ‘man-style’ and had decided that I was just going to pretend that she hadn’t run out of my house like her ass was on fire this morning. So, I was on my way to Layla’s and I was going to take her out on the ATV’s.

  Walking through Layla’s front door, I came to an abrupt halt as I remembered the little asshole whose nuts had been cut off the day before. There was no telling how long it would take for the hormones to run away from their home in Hades, or if the operation was a success. So, when the little chunk of shit walked up to me and started purring as he weaved his body on his stubby legs around mine, I braced expecting his nose to touch his asshole again as he prepared to launch at my balls. When it didn’t happen, I moved my hands away from my crotch and very slowly reached down to touch him. Again, all I got were purrs and some head rubs along my finger, so I picked him up and popped him on his back in the crook of my arm so that I could stroke his stomach.

  “And if I even see that dick face of a brother of yours again…” Sonya yelled over her shoulder as she came barreling out of the kitchen, stopping when she saw me holding Dante like a baby. Her eyes softened at the sight, and then her shoulders slumped. “Ah, fuck it!”

  Grinning, I knew I had her. Seems like the little fucker had worked after all. Almost like he heard me, the furry shit bit my finger, reminding me that he was still a bastard who wanted his tummy stroked – balls or not.

  “Wanna check out my ATV’s?” I’d come here with a purpose, and dammit I was sticking to that purpose.

  “Does that stand for something rude? Like ass to vagina?” her face scrunched up at the thought, and I almost dropped the cat. Not that he’d ever let that happen, that little fucker was quick with his nails.

  Hearing Layla laughing her butt off in the kitchen, I walked past Sonya and passed the kitten to my sister. Almost falling off her chair to get away from him, I ended up putting him on top of her phone which was lying on the table, knowing full well that she couldn’t go without the thing for longer than twenty-seconds, so she’d have to pick him up to get it.

  Now I regretted the decision for him to be allergy friendly – i.e. nut free. Maybe he had enough asshole left in him to attack her, even just a little bit.

  Looking down at the purring psycho, I gave him his orders. “You ever wanna knead my turkey again, you’ll attack her like the little killer that you are. Kill!”

  Now, I just had the beauty who was lecturing me on her kitten not going near my turkey. She needed to know what an ATV was - and also that ass to vagina was just disgusting, and really unsanitary!

  Chapter Five

  Tom

  I felt like I was stuck in Groundhog Day as I gingerly walked across the parking lot to the doors of our medical center, trying my best not to heave my balls up through my body and out of my mouth. In fact, I’m pretty certain that they were now situated in either lung, they sure as shit couldn’t be where God had intended for them to be on my body.

  With every excruciating step that I took, I was aware that not only was my pretty girl witnessing this, but that the security team that shadowed us constantly were probably recording it and enjoying every second immensely. A man and his nuts needed to die in peace - they should know this seeing as how they had theirs where they were meant to be, instead of in the frontal lobes of their brains like mine were.

  “I told you to be careful where you were driving, but you just had to show off, didn’t you?” Sonya repeated. I’d been hearing this lecture since it happened, and I still wasn’t any closer to being able to talk, so I just replied with a cough as I spent the next minute trying to move my leg forward, making sure that my thigh didn’t touch my nut. I was only capable of moving it an inch forward at a time, so it was taking forever for me to get to where the drugs had better be waiting for me. “Maybe if you tried crawling?” She suggested, but that involved more movement and I just couldn’t.

  “Well, looky here,” a voice squealed from far behind us, making me jump and then groan. “Ooo, what happened?”

  “You forget the lube again, boy?” Gramps yelled. Just what I needed – Gramps and Tony seeing me like this or even knowing what had happened. Was I not suffering enough?

  “Nah,” Sonya called back, and if I could have smiled at her defending me without worrying that a testicle would come flying out of my mouth, I would have. She ruined that in the next second. “I told him that ‘harder’ wasn’t a good safe word, but would he listen?” she yelled, just as the doors in front of us opened. Every last one of the patients in the waiting room heard, and then turned to look at me. Some looks were judgmental, some were amused, and then there were the others that looked like they were interested in whatever the fuck they were thinking I had gotten up to.

  Carefully lifting my foot a millimeter at a time so that I could step up onto the pavement that was in front of the entrance, I gritted my teeth against the pain that stabbed back through me. I had no option but to continue on regardless of whether I looked like a demented pervert because I needed drugs, and stat.

  I eventually made it up to the reception desk, ignoring the snorts and whispers going on around me. Having something to lean on was a relief, as was lifting one of my legs slightly off the floor.

  “Can I help you?” The snooty bitch behind the desk asked. At least she sounded it - I wouldn’t know, I was too busy staring at the ground and breathing deeply to look up.

  “I’m guessing you can see that he needs to be seen by a doctor, right?” Sonya snapped from behind me, rubbing my back. My dick gave a quick jerk in my pants, making my knees give out with the pain. Go down you bastard!

  Just as Sonya was giving over my details, Gramps hobbled up behind me and leaned on my back. Bursts of light were shooting across my vision and I was breaking into a sweat.

  “Musta been some session, boy!”

  I wanted to hurt him, I truly did. In fact, if I wasn’t doing my best not to puke then pas
s out onto where it would inevitably land, physics and all that, I would have at least elbowed him in the gut. Sadly, I needed all of my focus and energy on not barfing a testicle up. I wasn’t sure I was going to survive this and ending it all by drowning in my own vomit just seemed like a final embarrassment that I didn’t need.

  “And what is the problem?” Snobby twat asked.

  “He broke his balls.”

  Gramps pulled away from me with a hiss. “Was it the rocks in the grass?”

  Of course, he’d done this before.

  Some more talking went on over my head, but I was starting to see a black tunnel closing in. Death was apparently coming to take me. I’d been shot in the ass and now I’d burst my nut sacks. You can only cheat death so many times, and I’m not sure that you could bleed out from a gunshot to the butt cheek, but I’d seen Final Destination – death was coming. My ass had cheated it, and now I was going to die from death by gonad.