Chapter 18

November 2^nd, 2020

The next morning Andy woke up before anyone else. Taylor had been allowed to remain on the bed, in Lauren’s arms all night, and the two were still intertwined when Andy awoke. He suspected Niko would be up shortly, and Lauren not long after that, although she might sleep a bit longer what with Taylor pressed up against her. Aisling wouldn’t be up for hours.

Andy had gotten decent at extracting himself from the bed, but this morning it didn’t take almost any effort at all. He grabbed some sweatpants and a t-shirt, pulled them on and then moved out of the bedroom and onto the balcony which looked out onto his driveway, just as the morning sprinklers turned on down below. He sighed, leaning against the railing, shaking his head.

“You’re still worried,” Niko said as she moved out onto the balcony with him. “Worrying’s not going to change anything.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Anything I can do to lighten the load?”

“Nah,” Andy said. “By this time tomorrow it’ll all be done one way or another, so I’m trying not to think about it.”

They stood together quietly for a moment before she laughed. “Not working, is it?”

“Nah,” he said, joining in the laugh with her. “But I’ll make it work.”

Niko decided to take a couple of personal days and called in to the base, telling them she needed a few days to deal with some private matters. She didn’t know when the dropoff was going to be arriving, but she figured that Andy might need some help and wanted to be around to help him through any chaos.

A few hours later Taylor awoke and was truly in agony, her ass hurting like she’d ripped it open, so Lauren also decided to take the day off and tend to her. She wasn’t actually wounded in any serious way, but as predicted the high sensitivity of her nerves post imprinting process had all the sensations cranked up to a hundred. Andy could even see a little hint of regret in Lauren’s expression before she steeled herself back up to not let Taylor see even a moment of weakness.

Aisling offered to help Lauren, but Lauren insisted that Aisling just go about her normal day, so the redhead had gone down into one of the living rooms to work for the day, although she told Andy that she’d come help once the women arrived.

All the girls seemed to think Andy was walking on pins and needles, but at that point Andy was less worried about the women arriving and more worried about the upcoming card game. He spent most of the morning watching poker videos with the hole cards covered, practicing trying to read people’s expressions. He hoped it would keep his mind off things, and it mostly worked.

It was just after two o’clock in the afternoon when the military truck rolled up his driveway. “Here they come,” he said, watching from the balcony as they started to help the two women from the back of the truck. “Oh fuck. Shit. Shit shit shit shitshitshit!”

“What’s the problem?” Niko asked him. She’d come to join him on the balcony when the truck had been buzzed in at the gate.

The first woman to get out of the back was the blonde Niko had described to him earlier, Sheridan. She was a lithe woman dressed in yoga pants and a sports bra. And she stretched as she got out, folding one of her arms behind her blonde mane of hair, bending like he’d never seen before. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, and certainly she was a very attractive woman. But she wasn’t the problem.

No, it was the woman who got out right after her that had sent him into a tizzy.

“Shit, I thought you said the other one’s name was Teri?!”

“It is,” Niko said. “At least that’s what she told everyone. Why?”

“Back when I dated her, she was going by Erin,” he sighed.

Sure enough, the second woman looked much like she had when Andy had dated her nearly a decade ago with only a handful of notable changes. She looked older, certainly, but she’d also dyed her hair a dark chestnut brown, hiding those golden locks of hers. She also had a large tattoo on her right shoulder which he could see through the sleeveless dress she was wearing. It was a stylized bird of paradise, and it appeared that the wings curved back under the dress along her skin. That was new. She was a little curvy, but a bit less curvy than she’d been when they’d been together. Still as notably busty, though.

“You dated her?” Niko blanched visibly. “I’m sorry, Andy, if I’d have known...”

“No, I know you didn’t know, Niko. But let’s just say I won’t feel bad at all about passing her on to one of the other men.” They walked into the bedroom and headed out into the hallway, starting to head downstairs. “I hadn’t been out here long when Erin and I started dating, and we were together for a little over two years while I was just getting started out here, working in corporate communications for eBay while I was writing the first few Druid Gunslinger novels. She hated them so much, constantly telling me I was wasting my time and that I should just focus on climbing the corporate ladder at eBay.”

“You’re fucking kidding.”

“I wish,” Andy said as they walked down the stairwell. “After that she started telling me she didn’t like the way my friends treated her, which is to say they wouldn’t do everything she said without question. I finally got to the point where I was so sick of her bitching at me about how I wasn’t living up to her expectations that I broke up with her a week before Valentine’s Day. Packed up all her shit for her and threw her out of the apartment.”

“That’s uncharacteristically cold of you, Andy.”

“Oh yeah?” he said, stopping walking. “She had it coming. The place was entirely in my name, and I’d spent the better part of half a year trying to convince her to put her name down as a co-renter on the lease, and she wouldn’t do it. I moved out of that apartment at the end of next month and didn’t leave a forwarding address, just so the bitch couldn’t find me, because she kept harassing me. I didn’t just move apartments – I moved cities. Hell, I moved whole regions of the goddamn Bay. Back when I was dating her I was living up in El Cerrito, so I moved fifty miles south and hoped I was fucking done with her.”

“What do you mean by harassing?”

The doorbell rang, and it made Andy wince.

“She showed up drunk at least a dozen times. Broke into my car a few times. Broke into the old apartment once. Tried threatening my friends to find out where I moved to. After that failed, she tried tailing me home from work for a while, until after about a year or so she finally left me alone.”

“What a hot mess.”

“That’s an understatement,” he said as they headed down the stairs. “Yeah, let me tell you, Erin Teresa Donegal and I are over and done with, and there is no way in hell I am letting that deranged terror into this family.”

“Ah Andy, love! There you are!” Erin said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “I see you’ve moved up in the world since the last time we talked. I’m so excited to be joining this little family you’ve been given.”

“Don’t unpack, Erin,” Andy said. “You aren’t staying.”

“The hell I’m not!” she said, her voice level raising to an uncomfortable volume. “I was given the option of what man I wanted as a partner, and I chose you, so it’s a done deal. No more running away from your problems anymore.”

“I don’t have to accept anyone sent to me, Erin, and I’m certainly not going to bring someone into my family who hates my friends and trashed my car.”

“Oh my god, are you still upset about that? It happened almost a decade ago. When are you going to let it go?”