One Last Time (COMPLETED)

Since You've Been Gone

Tanner Wells was as big as he was tall; he was, as my father had always insisted, a force to be reckoned with. "Mia?"

The quietness of his voice startled me. Everything about Tanner had always been loud; his voice, his clothes, his personality in general. I hadn't thought he had it in him to whisper.

Lifting my head, I met his dark eyes. "Yeah."

It didn't occur to me until that second that I wasn't only invading the boys' lives but their privacy as well being here. Tanner wasn't even dressed, he wore nothing but a pair of low riding white boxers that didn't leave much to the imagination. His skin, the one thing I'd always found myself envying, was a light brown, contrasting against the only article of clothing he wore. His right hand had found his mop of dark ringlets, one of his eyebrows quirked as he squinted at me in the doorway.

"No way." He said a few seconds later, eyes falling on the carriers in his best friends hands. "There's no way little miss Valedictorian went and got pregnant. Plus, we would have noticed, right?"

It was then, staring at the idiot I'd had the not so fortunate pleasure of knowing most of my childhood, that I realized if I continued to care for the babies, that this wouldn't be the first or last time I'd hear this. Everyone in passing would assume the babies were mine and I wasn't a hundred percent sure I was ready for that.

Parker brushed passed his friend after a few minutes of silence, setting Max's car seat on the floor beside a black sofa in the middle of the sparsely furnished living room. "She didn't. These are Maya's kids."

Tanner looked as if Parker had sucker punched him in the gut, his eyes nearly bulging out of his head. "What? Dude, did you guys—"

"No! Dude, just ew, man. She was like my sister." Parker cut him off before he could finish the question that had been bouncing around in my head since he'd stepped through the front door of my house. "It wasn't like that with us."

Tanner held his hands up in mock surrender and turned his attention back to me. Fortunately he'd kept his distance for the last few minutes, but that momentary restraint was gone. He lurched forward and crushed me against his bare chest, oblivious to the fact that he literally had one small article of clothing separating me from his naked body.

"Crazy enough, I missed you my little walking textbook." He said with a quiet chuckle. And for a moment of completely insanity, I actually fell into the hug and circled my thin arms around his bare torso.

It'd been a long time since I'd had a real, genuine hug. Sure, the night we'd found Maya, Darren had held me against his chest, but that had been far from a hug, but more of a protective brace to keep me from hitting the ground too hard. Our family was very much not one for intimacy or familial gestures. Dad was, in the kindest way possible, a cold jerk. He had been raised in very Roman Catholic household, his own father physically beating it into my Dad until he understood that God came first, then his wife, then the children she bared. Mom, mom was a tough nut to crack. She, too, had been raised in a religious home, but hadn't been anywhere near as harsh and bibley as Dad. But it had been for that very reason Maya had withheld the pregnancy from them; she had feared being disowned, which after seeing Dad's reaction tonight, I wouldn't of doubted even for a minute.

"Don't hate me for asking this. But what are you guys doing here?" Tanner asked, pulling back, but keeping one of his arms loosely draped over my shoulder as he narrowed his eyes at his best friend beside the couch. "Mia and the babies, I mean. This isn't exactly a homey place."

Parker rubbed a hand down his face. "Her dad was being a dick. I offered them a place to crash for a couple days while Mia figures out what to do about everything."