Something Gained, page 18
"Are you going to be staying around here? I mean, I don't want to offer you a job and have you up and leave on me."
"I'm here to stay. Murry is getting too old to run the farm on her own. The old lady won't admit it, but she's having a hard time keeping up as it is."
"You got everything worked out with your probation officer to work here?" I have to be on the safe side, considering what we have been through in the last year.
"Yeah, my PO knows I'm looking for work. It's actually part of my probation to find work and become a tax-paying citizen."
I spend the next thirty minutes talking with Liam. We agree that I'll give him a chance to prove himself in the shop and he'll start tomorrow. I watch him head back to the old beat-up pickup truck I recognize as the one his grandmother drives around town.
"I didn't know Liam was getting released from prison early," Remy said, moving up beside me to watch our newest employee pull out of the parking lot.
I move in behind Remy and wrap my arms around her, pulling her against my chest. I love the feel of her body against mine. "I didn't either."
"Do you think he's changed? I mean, really changed? We can never be too careful bringing someone with a violent history like his around Jamie." She paused and moved a hand to cover the flat of her stomach. "Either of our children."
It still makes my stomach flutter to think I'm going to be a daddy again. "I don't think we have anything to worry about. I had a good talk with Liam, and he seems like he's a changed man. I think he's worth giving a second chance to. Don't you think that people deserve a second chance?" I asked, leaning in to kiss the side of her neck.
"If they're good people, then I do."
"Considering you gave me a second chance, that must mean you think I'm a good person as well?"
"You're a good person and a great dad," Remy said, turning in my arms to face me. She slides her arms around my neck, holding onto me. "You stepped into Jamie's life as if you have always been in it, and you're going to be just as great with this one." She said, glancing down toward her stomach.
"Who knows, maybe in the future, I'll be a good dad to many more."
She laughs. "Can we get through this one first?"
I grin. "I guess that would be smart. I'm excited, is all. Excited to see you grow round with my baby and crave all those weird food combinations."
"If it's anything like when I was pregnant with Jamie, I didn't have any weird food cravings."
"I hope so. I want to experience everything with you."
"That's good to hear because, like it or not, you are stuck with me." She said, pulling me forward as she reached up to place her lips on mine. "I've been waiting to be with you since I was a little girl, and nothing would make me happier."
I smile down at her. "That's good because I'm going to love you until my last breath."
I watch tears gather in her eyes. "I'm going to hold you to that."
And she did.
Something Promised
A Meadow Valley Book
Releasing 2022
Liam—
Fuck happiness.
I can't remember a single fucking time in my life where my happiness wasn't ruined by some fucked up factor of life. Not once can I remember being in peaceful ignorant bliss. No. Being happy is for assholes. What the hell did that stupid emotion ever get me? Additive to drugs? The loss of my family and friends? Being alone? Oh yeah, and my favorite one of them all. Time in a cement room with bars on the door and windows.
Nope. Happy people can Fuck. Right. Off.
In my thirty-three years of living, I can remember two times ever feeling real happiness. The first time was when I was ten, and my grandma and pops came to visit the city where mom and I were living. They picked me up on Friday after school and took me to Toys 'R' Us and told me I could pick out any toy I wanted. I picked a double set of automatic Nerf guns with a value pack of foam bullets. I wanted my best friend Paul and I to play war. We went out for dinner and Ice cream, and later that night, we got to swim in the hotel pool. It wasn't until the next day that I found out my grandparents picked me up because my mother had OD'd on pills. I had nowhere else to go except to leave my life behind and move in with them.
The second and last time I was happy was when I was in the ninth grade, and the girl I was dating, April, let me fuck her. I thought I was in love. But as Monday morning rolled around, my friend Grayson informed me I was the fifth guy to sleep with her. What I thought we had was bullshit.
Nope, there is nothing good that has ever come out of being happy.
I've been content and have been able to find peace with myself, but those things weren't happiness. Maybe that's how I made it where I am right now—on a cramped shit-smelling greyhound bound for another form of prison. I try to ignore the crying baby two seats in front of me, as well as the man with COPD smokers cough behind me. I turn my gaze to the streets outside. The halfway house I'm scheduled to live in for the next six months is in downtown Seattle. If parole boards don't want ex-cons going back into old habits, why are halfway houses in the shittiest parts of town? The places where five bucks will get you a fix?
Setting us up to succus my ass. Setting us up to be repeat offenders.
Fuck, I hate this city. Always have. Why in the hell did I ever move back here? After mom died and my grandparents took me to live with them in Meadow Valley, I rebelled hard. I was getting into fights and doing shitty in school until I dropped out my junior year. I wanted out of the sticks and back into the city where all the ordinary people were. I wanted to be free of rules and go wild. And I did. For two years, I ran the streets of Seattle, living with friends and surfing on couches, finding odd jobs to eat and get high. Man, I was an idiot for thinking that was the best life.
I had two years of running those streets. It all came to an end one drunken wild night when I was high as a kite and saw some random girl getting assaulted in the alley behind the bar. The fucker had dragged the poor drunk girl behind a dumpster like trash to rape her. I didn't know her, but I knew what he was doing to her wasn't right, even in my condition. After yelling at him to leave her alone, I pulled the fucker off the crying girl and knocked his dumb ass around. Fucked him up a little.
Okay, maybe it was a lot because the next thing I know, I'm getting silver bracelets slapped on me and my ass hauled in. The cop said I was under arrest for assault on the girl. She came clean two days later and admitted it wasn't me who raped her, but I did assault the fucker who had raped her.
Fuck. I should have gotten a fucking medal for not minding my own business, but no. The fucker died due to the injuries I caused by kicking his ass, and they sentenced me to ten years for second-degree murder. A lighter sentence thanks to the girl who stood up for me in court and thanked me for killing her rapist. I got paroled after seven on good behavior.
I would have never gotten that early release for good behavior if it wasn't for meeting Ethan.
Ethan was five years older than my twenty-year-old self when we became cellmates. Ethan had already been inside for two years by the time I came along. The two of us hit it off right away since we were so similar. We both enrolled in AA and NA, and we both studied and got out GEDs. I went on to learn a trade, and Ethan took college courses. There isn't anything else to do when you're locked up but read and work out. Which, we did plenty of that.
Ethan kept me out of fights and out of trouble. When I first went in, I could have gone one of two ways. Pick a side of the race war that raged on in the prison system or listen to Ethan and keep my head down, get on the good with the guards, and do my time. I choose head down. That's not to say I wasn't in my fair share of fights because we were. I watched Ethan's back, and he watched mine. After a few years, we were more like brothers than friends. He told me all about his mom and little sister, Teagan. And I told him about Grandma Murry and her farm. And how when I got out, I was heading back there to help her live out her days. I'm finally going to be the grandson she deserved. When my pop passed away, Murry lost her soulmate. She was all the family I had left in this world, and I was damn sure going to make it count.
I have to get through these next six months. My probation calls for me to stay in the city for half a year. After that, I can transfer the remaining year and a half of my two-year probation to a local office in Meadow Valley. Murry drove into the city and attended all my hearings. The old lady spoke out and helped convince the board to release me into her care. And by God, they did.
But before I headed back to the farm to live my days out as a peaceful farmer, there was one thing I had to do first. One promise that I intended to keep.
About the Author
B.S. Schmitt is a romance writer of all subgenres. Her writing focuses on all areas of relationships where love is love. Her books feature both LGBTQ+ and Straight romance.
She has been telling stories since she was twelve years old and has been involved in many writing groups and judged nationwide writing contests.
She lives in Washington state with her husband and four-legged sidekick.
B.S. Schmitt, Something Gained
