Fire & Brimstone: A Neighbor from Hell (27 page)

Chapter 51

              “I think you broke your boyfriend,” Melanie announced with a sigh as she walked into her room and dropped down on the bed next to Rebecca.

              “Don’t care,” Rebecca muttered beneath the pillow where she’d planned on staying for the rest of her life since everything outside this room no longer made sense to her.

              “Are you going to tell me what happened?” Melanie asked, stealing her pillow so that she could get comfortable on the bed, forcing Rebecca to grab the other pillow and stuff it angrily beneath her head as she laid there trying to make sense of the world.

              “Are you going to tell me who knocked you up?” she countered with the hopes that it would end this conversation.

              “Aidan,” Melanie said with a sigh as she shifted to get more comfortable. “Your turn.”

              “Aidan?” Rebecca asked, frowning with confusion as she tried to figure out who that was, because the only Aidan that she knew was-

              “Yup, the annoying bastard,” Melanie said, nodding her head while Rebecca laid there, staring at her friend as though she’d lost her goddamn mind, mostly because she’d lost her goddamn mind!

              “What the hell are you talking about? You hate him!”

              Melanie nodded in agreement. “Which makes this situation so wonderful, huh?” she said with mock amusement, making Rebecca’s stomach drop.

              “Does he know?” she asked, rolling over onto her back so that she could stare at the ceiling with Melanie as she reached over and wrapped her hand around Melanie’s.

              “No, but he will just as soon as I figure out how to tell someone that I hate that I’m carrying his child. Should be another Hallmark moment,” she mused as Rebecca lay there, realizing that her situation was just petty bullshit compared to Melanie’s. At least she was in love with Lucifer, which was a hell of a lot more than Melanie had apparently.

              “Do you want me to go with you when you tell him?” she offered, not really looking forward to what promised to be an incredibly awkward moment, but for Melanie she would do it.

              “No, I’ll figure it out eventually,” Melanie said with a shrug as they continued to lay there, staring at the white ceiling. “Now it’s your turn. What did Lucifer do?”

              “He sort of proposed,” she said, testing the words and not really sure if shouting them at her counted as a proposal.

              “Wow,” Melanie said, not really sounding surprised. “Was it romantic?”

              “Not really,” she said, laughing as she thought about that horrified expression on his face a split second after he’d shouted at her.

              Sighing, Melanie gave her hand a squeeze. “It’s for the best anyway. I was going to ask you to move out anyway,” she said with a shrug.

              “I see,” Rebecca murmured, thinking about Lucifer and how it would feel to spend the rest of her life with him and when she didn’t panic or feel sick to her stomach, she smiled.

              “You’re going to marry him, right?”

              She shrugged. “If I don’t get a better offer.”

              Melanie nodded in agreement. “He’s really lucky to have you.”

              “I know,” she said, nodding solemnly as she sat up.

              “Where are you going?” Melanie called after her.

              “To get some information,” she said, heading for the door even though she had absolutely no idea what she was looking for or who she should talk to. She just knew that she needed to figure out a few things before she made Lucifer the happiest man alive.

*-*-*-*

              “Umm, exactly what are you doing back here?” Aidan asked as he sat there, staring down at his beer while Jason and Trevor sang their rendition of “War” with the help of Lucifer’s mother.

              “I-I tried to make her leave,” their father said, sitting there, looking horrified as he watched his wife sing her heart out.

              Shaking his head, because he had no fucking clue why he was here, he grabbed his brother’s beer and finished it off. Before he’d swallowed the last drop, he was signaling for another round.

              “I just needed a place to clear my head,” he said, deciding that the waitress was taking too long and swiped his father’s beer.

              “And you willingly chose a karaoke bar to accomplish that?” Aidan asked as he searched the plates covering the table for a morsel of food that might have escaped someone’s notice, but there was nothing left.

              “That and I got your text,” Lucifer said, gesturing for a second round of appetizers when the waitress dropped their beer off, which is probably why it took him a few seconds to realize that Aidan was frowning.

              “What text? I didn’t send you a text,” he said, pulling out his phone only to shake his head with a muttered, “Fucking assholes,” before he shot a glare at the two large bastards on stage.

              “So, I’m guessing that you didn’t need my help to drag mom out of here,” Lucifer said dryly as he rubbed his hands down his face and groaned.

              One day he was going to kill those bastards.

              “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Aidan said, gesturing towards their mother who didn’t appear as though she was going to willingly give up that mic anytime soon.

              “I thought you would have left after dinner,” he said, deciding that talking about absolute bullshit was better than focusing on his latest fuck up.

              “We tried,” Aidan bit out, looking close to losing his fucking mind, which he honestly couldn’t blame him for.

              Christ, he’d only been here for a few minutes and he was already close to losing his fucking mind. He wasn’t sure how he would handle three hours stuck in this place.

              “That was so much fun! Let’s do another one!” their mother said, gushing with excitement as Jason and Trevor led her back to the table.

              As soon as they saw him, their expressions turned calculating. After they helped his mother to her seat they sat down across from him.

              “Well, well, well, look who we have here,” Jason murmured as Trevor grabbed his beer and took a sip.

              “We’ve been waiting for you,” Trevor said, placing his beer back on the table so that he could gesture to the waitress for more food. With a confused look on her face, she scribbled something down and headed back towards the kitchen.

              “Uh huh,” Lucifer said, really not caring until Jason opened his mouth and let him know that his night was far from over.

              “Our other guest should arrive in just a few minutes,” Jason said, grinning.

              “Then the fun can really begin,” Trevor said, not smiling, but looking just as pleased.

              “You called my girlfriend?” he asked, deciding that it would be for the best if he clarified things first.

              “Texted her,” Jason said, relaxing in his chair as he gestured towards the other end of the table.

              “Telling her what exactly?” he asked as he shifted his gaze to the other end of the table just in time to see his mother drag his father, who looked absolutely terrified, towards the computer set up next to the stage, most likely to pick a song that would haunt them for the rest of their life.

              “That we didn’t want her to miss the fun,” Jason said right around the time that a Backstreet Boys’ song came on and he heard his father mutter, “Please kill me.”

              Nodding, Lucifer shifted his attention back to Trevor and Jason, deciding that his father was on his own and asked, “You realize that I’m going to kill you, right?”

              Jason snorted at that. “I’ve known that since you were two and tried to shove me into oncoming traffic.”

              “As long as we have an understanding,” Lucifer murmured absently as he suddenly found the woman that he loved jumping onto his lap with a satisfied sigh and a smile that really said it all.

              She was going to fuck them all over tonight.

Chapter 52

              “God, there are just so many possibilities,” she said, smiling as she looked around the table, letting all the possibilities race through her mind.

              It was just like Christmas morning…

              “I will give you a thousand dollars if you drink this,” Aidan said, placing a large glass of beer in front of her and as much as she would love an ice-cold beer to make this night absolutely perfect she was going to have to pass.

              “I’m good,” she said absently as she shifted her attention to the stage, noting that Mrs. Bradford seemed to be having the time of her life while Ethan stood there, frozen on the spot, pale and looking like he was either going to pass out or puke.

              Possibly both.

              “Two thousand,” Aidan said, a bit hysterically.

              “You’re really willing to risk my health just so that you could get out of some quality time with your family?” she asked, shaking her head in mock disgust even as she had to wonder if they had anything on tap that she could have.

              “In a heartbeat,” Aidan said, and she didn’t doubt him for a second.

              “We’d just drag you back here,” Trevor said with a wink as he sipped his beer before Jason added, “Again.”

              “Bastards,” Aidan muttered, finishing off his beer as she sat there, trying to decide where to begin.

              There were just so many possibilities…

              “What are you doing here?” Lucifer asked, reminding her that she’d actually come here for a reason.

              “I came to talk to you,” she said, shifting her attention to Jason and Trevor, who just sat there, watching her with a look that she knew all too well.

              It was the same look that she got when she was about to screw someone over only this time it was aimed at her, which just wasn’t going to work for her.

              “So talk,” Lucifer said, wrapping one arm loosely around her waist as he signaled the waitress and asked for two Cokes, which was probably for the best. Although, to be honest she wasn’t sure that she was going to be able to get through this conversation without a little liquid courage.

              “We have an audience,” she reminded him as she shifted on his lap so that she could put her arm around his shoulders.

              Shifting her gaze to Aidan, she realized that she might have to sacrifice him. Not that she had a problem doing that since the bastard had knocked up her best friend and abandoned her. Yes, she was aware that he didn’t know, but that didn’t matter to her. Melanie was her best friend so she owed her, her loyalty no matter how crazy and irrational her reasoning may be.

              “Why don’t we go home and talk about this?” Lucifer suggested, but she wasn’t having that, not after getting a second chance to see this thing through.

              “No,” she said, shaking her head as she finally shifted her attention to Lucifer, “this is fine.”

              “I don’t want to talk about this with the nosy bastards listening in,” he said, pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes so that he could cup her face in his hand and gently trace her bottom lip with the pad of his thumb, nearly making her give up her plan.

              “We’re not listening in,” Jason said, gesturing for them to continue.

              Biting back a smile, because she was definitely going to fit in well with his family if he ever got the nerve to propose to her again, she decided that it was time to get things moving. If she left it up to him, she knew that he would do everything in his power to make the moment absolutely perfect and that wasn’t what she wanted.

              She just wanted him.

              “We can talk about this later,” she said with a reassuring smile as she scanned the large restaurant, taking in all the possibilities.

              “We should talk about this now,” he said roughly, looking like he was going to be sick, which was probably a good reason to put this talk off for a little while.

              At least until he stopped looking like he was going to be sick, which she had to admit was a tad insulting. Not that she was going to let him back out of his proposal, intended or not, he was hers.

              She opened her mouth to tell him that there was nothing to worry about, because she’d decided to bestow upon him the honor of marrying her when he opened his mouth and let her know that he was going to be difficult.

              “I want a do over,” he blurted out, making her sigh as she picked up her Coke and took a sip.

              Yup, definitely going to be difficult.

              Since she wasn’t in the mood to argue with him, and knowing that it was pointless because he wouldn’t listen thus forcing her to take matters into her own hands later, she simply regally waved her hand and said, “Granted.”

*-*-*-*

              This just wasn’t going to work, he decided with a heavy sigh as he scrolled down to the next picture, but the next suite wasn’t going to work for him either. The furniture wasn’t right, the window wasn’t big enough, it didn’t have the view that he wanted and the white rose petals were going to clash with the bedspread, he thought with another sigh as Rebecca shifted on his lap.

              The next suite wasn’t going to work for him either. No, this hotel was definitely unacceptable, he decided as he closed the webpage on his phone and opened another one. Maybe he should look for a hotel on the beach instead of one with a city view, he thought, but then quickly dismissed it when he realized that it would make it harder to find the perfect restaurant, fresh flowers, a limo service, bakery and a decent chocolatier.

              “I’ll be right back,” Rebecca said, giving him a kiss on his cheek as she climbed off his lap and headed to god only knew where to fuck someone over.

              “Okay,” he said absently, debating between bringing her to Boston or Manhattan for the weekend.

              If he brought her to Boston he could take her for a walk through Boston Common, but then again, if he brought her to Manhattan he could hire a horse drawn carriage to bring them through-

              There was a heavy sigh and then his phone was gone and he was sitting there, wondering where he’d gone wrong all those years ago when he’d shoved the bastard in the street for touching his crayons. He should have followed through with another shove, but the annoying bastard had managed to pick him up and carry him back to his mother before he’d had a chance to follow through with his plans to make the bastard pay for putting his red crayon next to the blue ones.

              “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked, blinking down at his empty hand and deciding that he’d give the bastard until the count of ten to return the phone or he was going to-

              “I could ask you the same thing,” Jason said as he turned the phone off and tossed it on the table.

              “You know what I’m doing,” he said, reaching for his phone, but Trevor beat him to it.

              “You’re not there yet,” Trevor said quietly as he put the phone in his pocket.

              Clenching his jaw together, he said, “Give me my fucking phone.”

              “You’re not there yet,” Trevor repeated.

              Lucifer glared at the bastard. “I’m there,” he swore as he held his hand out only to have the other bastard fuck him over.

              “He’s right. You’re not,” Jason said, pissing him off even more.

              “
I’m ready
,” he bit out, ready to kill both of them with his bare hands if they didn’t hand his damn phone over so that he could plan the perfect fucking proposal to make up for earlier. Then he was going to-

              “Because you’re willing to kill us?” Trevor asked, shaking his head as he sat back in his chair. “That doesn’t make you ready to get married. That just makes you a Bradford.”

              “If it makes you feel better,” Jason said, pausing to sit back and make room for one of the four waitresses reloading their table with plates of appetizers, “you’re close.”

              “I’m already there,” he said, forced to sit back as several plates filled with chicken tenders, onion rings and mozzarella sticks were placed in front of him.

              “Because you’re planning on kidnapping your girlfriend and whisk her away so that you can orchestrate the perfect proposal?” Jason, the know-it-all bastard guessed.

              “And what’s the problem with that?” he asked, hating the bastards more with every passing second.

              “Bradfords don’t propose,” Aidan said as he shoved a mozzarella stick in his mouth.

              “We really don’t,” Jason agreed as he selected a chicken tender.

              “We wait until we lose our fucking minds before we take the next step,” Trevor said as he gestured with his beer towards the stage where Lucifer’s mother was wrapping up a song and looking like she was ready for round two while his father stood there, white as a ghost and mumbling what he suspected was the song or a plea for mercy.

              “To your right,” Trevor said, making him frown as he shifted his gaze to the right and found the woman that had turned his life upside down leaning against the bar, smiling at something that some asshole standing way too fucking close to her was saying.

              “Who is that?” Aidan asked, which was exactly what he wanted know.

              “Is that Rebecca?” his mother asked, apparently taking a break from her newfound love of karaoke to grab a drink.

              “I thought you went home,” his father mumbled, sitting down so that he could bury his face in his hands and whisper, “God, I wish she’d let me go home.”

              “Me too,” he said when Rebecca pushed away from the bar and headed for the stage.