The following morning, I made the couple of hours drive to my parents’ beach house. When I pulled into the drive, I smiled up at the house. I loved coming here. The smell of the air, the white house that I grew up in, the tree that I used to use to climb out of my bedroom when I wanted to sneak out… it brought back happy memories. I headed inside, grinning. Immediately, my mom tackled me into a hug. I laughed as she squeezed the life out of me. “You lost weight!” she griped, patting my back and sides. I pulled back shook my head. That was always the first thing out of her mouth, followed by… “You really need to find a girl to look after you and feed you properly, Jace!” “I missed you,” I said honestly, ignoring her comment. I had a nice girl, and my mom was going to flip when I told her about Ashley! I’d been holding off telling my family in case I screwed it up and got dumped. She smiled and linked her arm through mine, pulling me into the kitchen where s
“Oh!” she squeaked, as she looked at the picture. She was full on crying now. “She’s so beautiful, and look at you two together! Aww… this is…aww…” she stuttered, swiping at the happy tears that continued to fall. I laughed awkwardly. “Yeah, she’s awesome,” I muttered, stuffing down the rest of my breakfast as they all passed my phone around. When my dad looked at the photo, he whistled appreciatively. “Nice job there, Jace!” he congratulated me, patting my shoulder proudly. My mom was beaming at me. “So, when do we get to meet her? Why didn’t you bring her with you today? Oh, Jace, go home and get her and bring her back with you!” my mom begged, looking at me with the pleading eyes that she used on my dad all the time. I laughed but shook my head. I would love to do that, but Ashley was probably nursing the hangover from hell. Besides that, she had DJ this weekend. “I can’t, she’s busy today.” I shrugged, ignoring my mom’s disappointed face. “Well, what about
As it had turned out, my three adorable, loving, sweet sisters had all grabbed pens at random as soon as I was asleep. Lisa was apparently the one that designed the ‘Ashley’s bitch’ slogan with the arrow pointing to my crotch. Unfortunately for me, she’d grabbed a black sharpie. The guys were going to rip me to shreds at work on Monday if it wasn’t gone by then. I narrowed my eyes at her accusingly. I’d get her back though later, when they were all asleep, they’d all get theirs! I already had a plan, I just needed to wait until they were least expecting it. Paige moaned, clutching her stomach. “Please can we stop talking about it?I can’t laugh anymore, I hurt all over!” she complained, still chuckling. I pulled out a piece of lettuce from my burger and threw it at her, scowling. “As eldest girl you should have been responsible for the pens!” She just laughed harder, shaking her head. “Oh, Jace, I wish you came here more often.” Suddenly, from the corner of
Unfortunately for me, I had forgotten about the secret smiles my parents were shooting each other before bed, so I had no idea I would burst into their room screaming about a cell phone emergency, while they were in the middle of, what can only be described as, ‘the worst sight I have ever seen in my life’. No child should ever have to see parent sex. Ever. The image of it seemed to be burned on the inside of my eyelids, and I couldn’t shake it off. Even now, two hours later, it still just kept popping back in there, making me shudder and wince. It was all incredibly embarrassing. I’d stood there practically screaming “Sorry,” over and over again, with my hands pressed over my eyes, while they both tried to cover themselves up with the sheets. It was, hands down, the most awkward moment of my life. If a bolt of lightning had come down and struck meat that exact moment, I would have been grateful. My dad had just thrown my mom’s cell phone at me, ordering me to leave,while I j
I pulled out of the kiss just as it was getting a little heavy. Ashley chewed on her lip as she looked up at me a little nervously. “I, er, just wanted to say thank you for the other night,” she mumbled. “Toni told me that she heard me begging you to stay and talk dirty to me. Apparently there was something mentioned about spanking. And I, kind of, vaguely remember trying to get your clothes off…” she trailed off, wincing as a blush covered her cheeks. I laughed and nodded. “Yeah, you’re one horny little school teacher,” I admitted, blowing out a big breath as I remembered her saying those things to me. “Sorry,” she chuckled. “I just wanted to say thank you for not doing that. I really appreciate it, and I know that was probably hard for you to walk away from if I was throwing myself at you like that.” I smiled sheepishly. She had no idea how hard that was for me! “Yeah, you made it pretty hard.” “I can imagine.” She giggled quietly before looking at
As I suspected, my workmates found my newly acquired body art extremely hilarious. Even now, four days on, they were still ribbing me about it. On Thursday we were called out for a job. We were briefed on the way there. Eight men had gone into a bank intending to rob it, but the robbery had gone wrong when one of the clerks managed to press the silent alarm. Now, seventeen hostages were inside, and they were currently in negotiations to get them out of there. The on-site Captain had called for backup and I had a gut feeling that things weren’t going to go our way with this one. I sat on the edge of the van, across the street from the bank, listening to the officers all talking about how best to approach the situation and get the hostages out unharmed. A couple of things that the lead perpetrator had said, led them to believe that they had no intention of letting all the hostages live. They had already shot one hostage to prove they were serious, and were threatening to kil
I frowned and turned back to my team. One of them signalled that the targets were all down, so I walked over to the hostages to check for injuries. As I approached the group, I did a quick headcount. There were seventeen in total. I stopped. Hadn’t the reports said that there were initially seventeen hostages, but one was shot? I could see a dead body off to the side, a woman in a bank uniform. So shouldn’t there just be sixteen hostages sitting here? I counted them again. I had definitely counted right. I turned to the side and pressed my walkie, calling through to Captain Richardson outside. “How many hostages are there in total?” I asked, eyeing the group again. “Reports are of seventeen, minus one,” he answered. I quickly raised my gun, scanning the crowd for anyone that didn’t look as if they belonged. My eyes skimmed the group and came to rest on a guy who was shifting nervously and looking away from me. He definitely looked uncomfortable. He looked like he
‘Love's Train’ by Bruno Mars started blasting from my purse, and I smiled, knowing that was Jace’s song that I put on there for him. I grabbed my cell phone, wondering why he was calling at this time; it was only twenty to four.“Hey you, what are you doing calling me this early? Shouldn’t you be at work?” I asked, stopping at the edge of the road and smiling at DJ as he pressed the button for the crossing, tapping it over and over.“Hey, Ashley. Yeah, I should be, but I got sent home early,” Jace answered. Butterflies swooped in my stomach when he called me Ashley.“You did? How come?” I asked as DJ skipped along at my side, swinging my hand back and forth.“Er, it’s just a formality. It happens every time I-” he stopped talking abruptly. “Nothing, actually just forget it. I just called to say hi. How was school today?” Jace asked, changing the subject.As he spoke, I noticed that he sounded off. He’d made no jokes, no slutty comments, no flirting or pet names – something was wrong wi