She lifted her head and propped her chin in her hands. “What am I gonna do?”
Marie nodded, expression becoming businesslike. She was a problem-solver, Leah’s mom, especially when it came to other people’s problems. “Apologize, for starters.”
“Obviously.”
“I can’t tell you how to do that. You’ll come up with the right words, you always do.”
“I didn’t have the right words tonight.”
Marie tilted her head, conceding the point. “No. But I think maybe you were caught off guard.”
Leah nodded. “There had been – some, I don’t know, tension, I guess. Some looks. But I really wasn’t expecting him to ask me out.”
“Did you want him to, though?”
She frowned.
“Leah, do you like him?”
“I just broke up with Jason.”
“Months ago. Are you missing him?”
“I’m…it’s complicated.” By the end, by the time Jason rolled out the dreaded self-exploration excuse, they’d already drifted apart. The heat and the spark had gone, and even companionship had frayed into something tattered and insubstantial. Sometimes, she dreamed they were still together. Sometimes, she turned away from the fridge, his name on her tongue, ready to ask him what they should have for dinner, only to be confronted with her new apartment: outdated and empty. The hollow ache in the pit of her stomach then wasn’t grief or loss. But she’d grown used to be part of a pair, and now it was just her again. It could get lonely, sometimes.
Marie smiled with sympathy. “I know, baby. You two were together for a long time. It makes sense that it’s hard to move on.”
“It isn’t hard,” she protested. “But…I guess I’ve not even been thinking about that. I just wanted to come home, and get back on my feet, and focus on work. On catching up with you guys, and Ava. Dating wasn’t even on my radar.”
“It probably wasn’t on Carter’s, either.”
“Do you think he meant it? That he actually wants to go out with me, and this isn’t some kind of – I don’t know – experiment?”
“I don’t know, sweetie, not for sure. But I’ve watched you two sit in here together. The way he looks at you: that’s not fake. But I can’t say if it’s the sort of thing that’ll last.”
“Gee, thanks,” she muttered, but smiled to soften it.
“You need to talk to him. Start with ‘I’m sorry,’ and then see where it goes.”
Leah nodded, ad slumped back in her chair. “What if I did date him? You don’t have a problem with me dating a Lean Dog?”
“Well, you’re a grown woman, I can’t tell you what to do.”
“When has that ever stopped a Southern mama from trying anyway,” Leah teased.
Marie chuckled, and then grew serious again. “I haven’t ever looked at them as Lean Dogs. They’re people, some wilder than others, who just happen to all wear the same cut. Carter’s a sweet boy. I’ve always liked him.”
“What about Dad?”
“Well. We’ll have to work on Dad.”
Leah smiled. Whatever happened, it was good to know she had her mom’s support.
Even if Carter never spoke to her again.
Twenty-Five
There was an uncertain moment, after Carter straddled his bike and snapped on his helmet, when he considered going to Jazz’s place. She would pet his hair, and call him baby boy. Would get out some wine, or beer, and tequila, and then undo her shirt, and he could pretend he hadn’t just been shot down spectacularly in the middle of a crowded coffeeshop.
But that wouldn’t be fair to Jazz. He couldn’t go crawling back to her, now, after he’d gone to such pains to redraw the parameters of their relationship.
He headed to the clubhouse, because he had nowhere else to go, and he told himself that there were probably girls there…but the idea didn’t interest him at all. The urge to prove his manhood after rejection struck him as a hollow and stupid one at the moment. He felt shriveled, and cold, and sex was the last thing he wanted.
So was company, but when he walked in the clubhouse, he found Boomer, Deacon, and Evan at one of the tables in the common room, drinking beer and playing cards.
Ugh, was his first thought. He shouldered his backpack higher and planned to walk right past them.
But Boomer called out, “Hey, Carter.”
He almost kept going. Paused, and turned.
Boomer, for all his muscled bulk, could look downright boyish at times, his face too-expressive and sweet when he was uncertain. He looked like that now, biting his lip in obvious apprehension, fidgeting with the cards in his hands.
“What?”
“Hey, man, I just wanted to. You know. Say I was sorry. For.” He pointed to his own nose, which looked like it had been broken long ago. “That.”
As apologies went, it sucked. He couldn’t even come up with complete sentences. But his face shone with sincerity, and Carter found himself sighing, shoulders dropping.
“It happens. I’m sorry, too. I didn’t realize you and Chanel were serious.”
Deacon snorted. “They’re not.”
Boomer kicked him under the table.
“Still,” Carter said, and realized that his own apology kind of sucked, too. Maybe he just sucked. “Sorry.”
They traded nods – and, he thought, an understanding. They were both more or less pathetic idiots living out of an MC clubhouse.
He started to walk off, headed for his dorm, but Evan said, “You wanna be dealt in?”
His first instinct was to refuse. But he hesitated. What was he going to do besides get drunk alone in his room like a sad piece of shit?
He tossed his backpack on the couch. “Sure. Lemme grab a beer.”
~*~
Reese ate just enough to take the keen edges off his hunger, and then set his fork down. The food tasted good – everything his sister cooked tasted good, and he was even starting to appreciate food as a source of pleasure and not simply a means of fueling his body – but his stomach was unpleasantly tight, a condition he was starting to worry might be permanent.
Sorry, Tenny had said, and shut the door on his own name as Reese tried to call him back. They hadn’t spoken since. When Reese walked into a common area of the clubhouse, Tenny got up and left without making eye contact. No insults, no cutting looks, no sneers.
Fox had sent him a questioning look. “I think you broke him. That’s not a bad thing, mind.”
But it was for Reese. He wanted things to go back to the way they’d been, and he had no idea how to make that happen.
He’d said yes when Kris invited him to dinner, had even brought her a bottle of wine, after consulting Maggie. Was even having some of it himself, because Kris had insisted, and poured him one, and then another glass. It hadn’t dulled his consternation, though, like he’d hoped. The chicken and vegetables might as well have been cardboard on his plate.
And Roman was here.
Reese supposed Roman was the sort of man that women found attractive, if they cared about that sort of thing. He was in his early fifties, but didn’t look it: golden tan, with tawny hair he wore fashionably long across his forehead. Reese was convinced he dyed it, but Kris had acted scandalized when he’d asked her, one time.
Currently, Reese was studying him, and Roman was studying him in return – looking back, actually. Roman wasn’t one for scrutiny. He was frowning; Reese thought he hoped that those stern frowns made him look intimidating, but Reese could always smell that lick of fear on him. It never quite went away.
“Is the chicken alright?” Kris asked, worried. “I think I put too much rosemary on it.”
“It’s fine, baby,” Roman said, turning to her, laying a hand over hers on the tabletop, an intimate little gesture that snagged Reese’s gaze. “It’s perfect.”
She smiled at Roman, a soft, sweet smile full of gratitude and other, deeper feelings that Reese had never bothered to examine closely before. He’d only known that it was
similar to the smiles Kris gave him, only a little different.
He thought he understood that difference, now. She loved Reese – she said so at every parting, when she hugged him in her careful way and wished him a safe trip – but it was a love different from that she felt for Roman. That was romantic love – the love between lovers.
Thanks to Tenny, he had a whole new perspective on that whole lover business.
Alcohol, it turned out, was not his friend. He’d had just enough wine to loosen his tongue, formerly to tightly leashed, so unnecessary to his daily life. He’d never had a need to express himself before; had never asked questions irrelevant to the op at hand.
But now, he said, “Do you have sex?”
Both of them froze, and then turned to him as one, slowly. Kris’s eyes had gone wide, and Roman’s brows had drawn together. They were shocked.
Seconds passed before Roman said, “What?”
“Do you two have sex?” Reese asked again. “With each other?”
Kris swallowed, and dampened her lips. “Why do you want to know?”
“Don’t ask him that,” Roman whispered out the side of his mouth.
“I’m not stupid,” Reese said. “Everyone thinks I am, but I’m not. I haven’t–” He thought of Tenny, of the night he’d introduced Reese to the pleasures of the flesh, and, in turn, Reese had read him a poem and offered him a name of his own. A real name for a real person. His lungs tightened painfully. “I haven’t been a person for very long,” he continued.
“Oh, Reese,” Kris murmured, her free hand sliding across the table toward him.
“I’ve had sex.” Lots of it. More than he could count. And now, when he looked at his sister giving Roman soft looks, he knew exactly what happened between them behind the closed bedroom door.
“With every-damn-body, by the sound of it,” Roman said.
“Roman,” Kris murmured.
“Does he make you?” he asked his sister, and somehow her eyes widened even further. “Is he like Badger?”
Kris gasped. “No. Reese, no. Not at all. He’s never forced me to do anything.”
A darted glance proved that all the golden tan had drained from Roman’s face. Tenny’s last, parting words returned to him. He asked, Kris, “He doesn’t molest you?”
“Jesus Christ,” Roman hissed.
“Reese.” Kris’s voice quavered. She looked and sounded scared. “Roman’s good to me. You know that.” Scared for Roman, he realized.
And then he glanced down and saw that, unbidden, his hand had curled around his knife. It was only a blunt butter knife, but he’d made do with worse.
The sight of his hand clenched around the handle, the blade gleaming silver, stunned him.
Never before had he been shocked at the sight of himself. Not until now. Not until all those nights gripped by passion, when he marveled at the clench and flex of muscles, the sheen of sweat, the effort in his whole body, spurred by nothing but want and sensation.
Not until Tenny.
Fine tremors stole through him, and he let go of the knife with effort.
“Roman,” Kris whispered. “Would you–”
“Go in the next room? Gladly.” A chair scraped back, and footfalls receded from the kitchen.
“Reese.”
When he lifted his head, he was alone with his sister. She pushed their plates aside and put hands on the tabletop, reaching out to him physically, and with her voice, as she dipped her head to catch his gaze.
“Did something happen? Did – did someone hurt you?”
He frowned at her. “Who could hurt me?” Her question was honestly ridiculous.
She frowned. “What about that guy – your friend. What’s his name?”
That guy. Your friend. She didn’t even know his name. Reese was closer to him, had shared more with him, than he ever had with any other living being, and Kris called him that guy.
His hands curled to fists, and he straightened them.
She noticed.
“Tenny,” he said. “His name’s Tenny.”
“Right.” She took a quick little breath through her mouth. “Has he…?”
“He didn’t rape me.” The word tasted foul on his tongue. He snarled it. Wanted to snarl it at Tenny, who knew better, who knew that it hadn’t been molesting, but who was retreating behind that – retreating behind a screen of something ugly – to keep from telling Reese what was really wrong.
“Okay. That’s good.”
“He…” His throat tightened. “I think he hates me.”
“Oh,” she said, and then her expression shifted. “Oh.” She offered a thin smile. “Did you guys have a fight?”
“I guess that’s what it was.”
“Are you guys…together?” She hesitated. “Like Roman and I are together?”
He thought of that last night, after Stephanie had lied down. When Tenny had kissed him, so wet and desperate, had bitten his lips and breathed wounded sounds into his mouth. Thought about every breakfast and lunch and dinner together, the runs, the ops. They were rarely ever separated. They were friends. Reese had never experienced anything like companionship before; had never had anyone elbow him in the ribs and laugh, and expect him to laugh back. And he’d never known that inner burn of desire before. There had been girls, always, but Reese had looked at them less and less. It was Tenny, over and over, that captured his attention, in the throes. Tenny’s hands on him that left him shivering.
He didn’t know if there was a word for all of that.
He wasn’t sure he knew anything anymore.
He watched sympathy bloom on his sister’s face; once upon a time, he hadn’t been able to read that expression for what it was. He’d learned so much.
And yet he felt like he’d lost something, too.
“Reese,” she said. “I know you – like him. Obviously. But maybe it’s time to start making other friends. Maybe you’d like to date someone.”
He blinked at her, surprised. “Date someone?”
“Yeah,” she said, smile widening, warming to her topic. “If Tenny doesn’t feel the same way as you, then you ought to find someone who does care about you.”
He leaned back in his chair, stunned yet again.
“Just something to think about.”
~*~
As he left, a few minutes later, he heard Roman’s voice behind him. “You didn’t really encourage him to start dating, did you?”
“I did. Why shouldn’t he?”
“Babe, he’s terrifying. I don’t think eHarmony has an Assassin option when you set up your profile.”
The rest of their conversation was lost behind the closing front door, but that wasn’t what Reese was thinking of as he walked to his bike and clipped on his helmet. Kristin had brought him coffee, and that, plus his newly racing thoughts, burned the last of the wine-fog from his senses and left him tingling faintly.
Date? He understood the concept only in the loosest terms, from what he’d gleaned from movies and TV. Meals were involved, tables for two. Talking, and talking about the sorts of things that left both parties laughing and blushing in turn, leaning ever-closer together.
The idea held no appeal, as a superficial exercise.
But.
If Tenny didn’t want anything to do with him…he wasn’t sure he could go back to his former robotic indifference. He felt random stirrings of lust; he didn’t want to be alone, sometimes. He liked the elbow in the ribs and the laugh in his ear.
He’d started working toward personhood, and he didn’t want to go backward, he realized. Wasn’t even sure he could, if pressed.
He had to ride past the under-construction shops on Main Street on his way back to the clubhouse, and cast a glance toward the boarded-up lower windows at Bell Bar: no new graffiti.
It was a quiet night, relatively speaking. Light traffic, the promise of rain on the humid air. As he made the last turn onto the long, riverside road that led to Dartmoor, he saw lightning flare muted and di
stant along the cloud bellies ahead.
And he saw lights out on the water.
He slowed, taking stock. It was a boat. A small, but fast ski boat with a tow bar arching overtop. He could hear the loud drone of its engine even over the rumble of his own – at least until he hit the throttle and continued on.
He thought to catch up to it, an instinctual urge, accompanied by an uptick of concern in the back of his mind – but it was too far ahead.
Its lights shut off, and it moved in closer to the shore, its wake frothing out as it decelerated. It looked like it was headed for the small pier that jutted off the Dartmoor property.
~*~
In between sips of beer, Carter was hit by the realization that he’d never actually socialized with any of the three prospects at the table with him. He only ever spent downtime with Aidan, Tango, and Mercy, and to be honest, that was only because they dragged him along with them, one of Mercy’s great arms heavy as a ceiling joist across his shoulders, towing him inexorably into whatever mischief those three had on the books for the day (usually, it was just Aidan getting into mischief while Tango shook his head and Mercy waded in to save his dumbass brother-in-law). If asked, he would have said that he didn’t like these three, though he didn’t have a reason not to. He’d jumped to conclusions, and he always hated when people did that about him.
“No, fuck it, I don’t care,” Evan said, shaking his head and sliding chips into the pot. He was smoking menthols, rapidly and twitchily, and the whole table was suffused with their particular minty stink. He took a drag and then stabbed the end of his cig in the air, driving home his point. “I won’t work with them anymore, I don’t care what Fox, or Ghost, or anybody says. I’ll scrub floors and run gopher errands all day, but I’m not letting those assholes beat me up for fun anymore.”
“No offense,” Carter said, “but why were you training with those two in the first place?”
“I dunno! I just got lumped in. Which, hello, I’m human, and not a Karate Kid robot, so your guess is good as mine.”
“It’s ‘cause you said you’re a ‘sniper.’” Deacon lifted both hands, cards held haphazardly in one, to make air quotes. “Fox musta thought you had those sweet, sweet special agent skills.”
Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8) Page 24