It hadn’t.
“Okay, this one is going to piss you off,” I murmured, grabbing for the wipes.
I was right. The cold wipes meant an end to our quiet diaper changes, and by the time I was done and picked her back up, she was so loud that I was sure the people in the kitchen thought I was torturing her.
Popping one of the pacifiers in her mouth and bouncing from side to side, I calmed her down. Biting the inside of my cheek, I slowly let out a breath through my nose, trying to calm the anxiety and tension that thrummed under my skin. She was fine and I was fine.
But Liv wasn’t.
I cleared my throat and straightened my shoulders, trying to ignore the way Liv’s scream seemed to echo in my ears. The sound hadn’t been one of fury or surprise, it had been pure fear. I swallowed hard, trying to make myself think of literally anything else. She’d been so happy, practically floating out of the nursery when Cane had called her downstairs to help him with their sound system. I huffed out a frustrated breath. They’d wanted to listen to Christmas music. It was the only reason she’d been downstairs.
Maybe, if she hadn’t gone down there—no. I shook my head as if to clear it. No maybes. No what-ifs. I knew where that led, and it was nowhere good. Logically, I knew that if Liv would’ve been upstairs with us, all of us would have died. I wasn’t supposed to even be there tonight—but Liv was—and whoever killed her and Cane would have searched until they’d found her.
Sucking in a sharp breath and then blowing it out through my lips as if blowing out a birthday candle, I tucked my phone into the waistband of my yoga pants, grabbed the dirty diapers off the bed and ventured out of the room. I couldn’t just stand there in the silence with my thoughts, even if I felt weird walking through Mark’s house.
I didn’t belong with the people in the kitchen. I didn’t know them. Yet, they’d saved my life. I didn’t know if there had been anyone in the house by the time they’d arrived, I’d ask for the details later, but in the end, it didn’t really matter. They’d come for me. For us. It was a debt I’d never be able to repay.
My stomach churned with anxiety as I made my way down the hallway.
“Come on, man,” a guy’s voice said. “You know you were fucking out of it tonight.”
“Subpar work at best,” a different voice stated.
“Cut him some slack,” Ephraim said. At least I thought it was him. “Have you seen her? Jesus.”
“Watch it,” Mark barked.
Ephraim laughed.
“We get it,” the southern guy drawled. “There’s history. But you were about as useless as tits on a boar tonight.”
“Won’t happen again,” Mark said flatly.
“Hey,” the woman said in surprise as she came around the corner almost running into me. “Everything okay?”
“Peachy,” I muttered. “Just tossing these in the garbage.” I lifted up the dirty diapers.
“Go on in, they’re just giving Chief shit.” She gestured with her head toward the kitchen. “I’m Lu, by the way.”
“Cecilia,” I replied.
“They’re a rowdy bunch, but they’re all softies. Don’t let them intimidate you.”
I laughed. “They don’t scare me.”
Lu smiled before sliding past me. She strode down the hall like she knew exactly where she was going, and I felt a small twinge of something. Jealousy? Sadness? I couldn’t decide, but whatever it was needed to disappear.
“Hey,” I said as I rounded the corner.
Ephraim, Josiah, Mark and the southern guy were sitting around the table, beers in hand. A man I didn’t recognize was sitting on the island between the cooking area and the table. Another unfamiliar man was sitting on a bar stool, pointed toward the table with his elbows on the island.
“Everything alright?” Mark asked, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the table.
“We’re good,” I said with a nod. I lifted the diapers and cocked my head to the side.
“Under the kitchen sink.”
I nodded again and moved to throw them away.
“That’s Wilson sitting on my counter,” Mark said. “Eli’s the one sitting on a stool like a normal person, and Grizzly Adams here is Forrest.”
Looking at the group, I wanted to explain to them how scared I’d been, how I still felt shaky, how I was trying to think of anything else except the fact that my best friend was dead on the floor of the house she’d dreamed about her entire life and it all felt like such a gigantic waste. I wanted to tell them that I didn’t know what I would’ve done if they hadn’t showed up when they did. That even though I had talked myself into believing that I’d do whatever I had to in order to get me and the baby girl out of there safely, history had shown that fear paralyzed me and I probably would’ve stayed in that closet forever.
Instead, when I opened my mouth, the only thing that came out was, “Nice to meet you guys. Thank you so much for tonight.”
“Our pleasure,” Eli said.
“While I wouldn’t say it was pleasurable, per se,” Wilson countered, “I would say that it was satisfying. You’re welcome.”
I stared at him for a second. He looked like a normal guy. In his twenties. Short hair. Dressed in black like everyone else. But his speech was almost formal, and I couldn’t detect an accent.
“Glad we got you two out safe,” Forrest said in his southern drawl. “Unfortunate that we got there too late for the party, though.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Only one man there when we showed,” he explained, leaning back in his seat. “And he was already on his way out with a box of shit.”
“It was a robbery?” My mind swirled with confusion. Had I hid upstairs while some random druggy killed my friends? If there was only one person, I could’ve done something. I could have stopped him. Familiar guilt and shame rolled over me like a wave.
“No,” Mark said, shaking his head. “The box wasn’t filled with shit he could hock or sell.”
“Your friends had expensive taste,” Wilson added. “But nothing of any value was touched. Her engagement ring and earrings were still on.”
“Husband’s Rolex and cufflinks were, too,” Eli said.
“We’re real sorry about your friends,” Forrest said gently. “By the time we got there, they were gone.”
Raising my fingers to my forehead, I rubbed at the headache forming above my eyes. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. The memory of Liv’s scream replayed over and over.
“Has your pop called?” Mark asked, watching me closely.
“I don’t think so,” I replied, reaching down to check my phone. “Shit. It was still on silent and I missed it.”
“He’ll call again,” he said.
“Yeah.” Just as the silence grew long enough to be uncomfortable, my phone rang. “Speak of the devil,” I said.
I turned toward the living room as I answered.
“Hey, Dad.”
“You’re okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay. We’re at Woody’s house now.”
“Thank Christ.”
“How far away are you?” I asked, anxious for them to arrive.
“We won’t be there until early afternoon,” he replied. “But we’re making good time. Might be able to shave a little time off.”
“Be careful and don’t rush,” I said quickly.
“Don’t worry about us,” he murmured. He sounded tired. “We’ll be there as soon as we can, Bumblebee.”
“Okay,” I whispered, my throat tight. God, I just wanted them to get there. It had been years since I’d been so homesick for my parents.
“Your mom says she loves you,” he said. “I’d put her on the phone, but then we’d never get out of here.”
“It’s okay.”
“We’ll see you soon, baby.”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” he said before the line went dead.
I took a minute to compose myself before t
urning around to face the men again. Shaking my phone side to side, I attempted to smile, but I was pretty sure it was wobbly as hell. I walked back toward the kitchen, but when I met Mark’s eyes, my footsteps faltered.
I couldn’t interpret the look on his face.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard you call me Woody,” he said quietly. His lips tipped up at the corners, and suddenly, it was as if we were the only two people in the room. I knew that look. I’d seen it a million times. I used to crave it like a drug addict. A Mark Eastwood addict. My belly swooped, like I was on the downward slide of a roller coaster.
Oh, shit.
Chapter 4
Mark
“I’m uncomfortable with the amount of emotion in this room right now,” Wilson muttered seriously to Eli, making him laugh.
“We only have two diapers left,” Cecilia said suddenly, glancing at Wilson as she readjusted the baby in her arms. “And almost out of wipes.”
“Make a list, and one of the boys’ll go pick some up for you,” Forrest replied easily.
“Why us?” Eli asked.
“I have no fuckin’ clue what to buy a newborn. Send Lu,” Siah muttered, pointing at her as she came back into the room.
“Why would I know what to get?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “What? Because I’m a woman?”
“You have a niece,” Siah argued.
“That doesn’t mean I know what to get.”
“I’ll go,” I cut in before they really started arguing. The two of them could happily argue about the color of the sky for hours. They got off on that shit, but it irritated the hell out of the rest of us. “Uh, make a list like Forrest said. I’ll grab you some paper and a pen.”
“I can just go myself,” Cecilia argued, lifting her hand to wave me off. “Do you have a Target or something around here?”
“You gonna walk?” I asked, getting up from the table.
“Well, if it’s close enough, sure,” she said slowly.
“I was bein’ sarcastic,” I muttered as I searched through the junk drawer by the back door. “You’re not walking to the store in the middle of the night.”
“There a reason the two of you can’t go together?” Forrest asked dryly, amusement lacing his words.
I paused, bracing my hands on the countertop. Jesus, I needed to get my shit together. Never in a million years would I have thought that seeing Cecilia again would rattle me so badly. I knew it would hit me hard. The way things had happened, the way I’d loved her and the way the ties between us had been severed meant that it would never be easy to run into her. I hadn’t been concerned I’d see her in San Diego because I was barely ever there, but I’d braced for it every time I was in Oregon. I thought that I’d be able to handle it.
Maybe it was the situation we were in that was making things so difficult. The fear I’d felt. The fact that she was standing in the middle of my fucking kitchen holding a goddamn baby.
“That would work,” she said cautiously. “Is that okay with you?”
I turned to face her. Fuck, she looked tired. Tired and scared and sad, though I doubted any of the others noticed it. Cecilia had inherited most of her looks from her mother, but the calm, detached expression she wore was pure Casper.
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “Go grab what you need and we’ll head out.”
After she left the room, Ephraim started chuckling and soon, everyone else was quietly laughing with him.
“Shut up,” I said with a sigh, leaning back against the counter.
“Who would’ve guessed that all we needed to rattle you was a little blonde woman holding a baby?” Lu asked.
“Not just any blonde woman,” Siah said.
“Cecilia,” he and Ephraim sang.
“It’s been a long fuckin’ night,” I replied.
“Gonna be even longer with a baby in the house,” Forrest said with a smile. “You see her? Cute little thing.”
“How could you tell?” Wilson asked. “She was holding that child so close I couldn’t even tell if it had all the requisite extremities.”
“It’s hers, I assume?” Eli asked me.
“Better be,” Josiah said. “Or it puts that nursing Madonna vision we found in the closet into a whole new freaky perspective.”
Eli grinned.
“Yeah, she’s hers,” I replied.
“What’s her name?” Lu asked Cecilia as she came back into the room.
“Oh.” She looked down at the baby. “She doesn’t have one yet.”
“You haven’t named your kid?” Ephraim said in surprise.
“I’m waiting to see what fits her personality,” she replied, the words sounding almost like a question.
“Good luck with that,” Eli said uncertainly.
“I think you should name her Cecilia,” Lu said, hopping onto the counter next to Wilson.
“So they’ll have the same name?” Josiah shot back.
“Men do it all the time,” Lu replied with a shrug. I could tell by her tone and the set of her shoulders that she was just winding up, and I didn’t want to be there for the eventual debate.
“You ready?” I asked Cecilia.
“Yep. Hopefully, we don’t get pulled over,” she said as she strode toward me. “I left her car seat behind tonight.”
“Shoulda thought to grab it,” I replied, opening the door and letting her go ahead of me.
“We’ll lock up when we leave,” Ephraim called.
“Sounds good,” I muttered. I wasn’t even sure if he heard me over the sound of Lu defending the merits of Cecilia naming her baby after herself.
“Good thing I have a back seat,” I told Cecilia as I led her to my truck. “Probably safer for you two to ride back there.”
“Good call,” she said. “Thanks for taking me to the store.”
“No worries.”
I opened the door and spotted her as she climbed in one-handed. I was trying not to stare at her ass, but it was impossible not to notice the shape of her. She didn’t look like she’d just had a baby. Sure, she was a little curvier than she’d been when we were kids, but that was normal. No one stayed the same size as they were at eighteen. If anything, Cecilia looked even better now that she had a little extra meat on her bones. She’s always been beautiful, but she’d matured into something even better.
I let out a slow breath as I closed the door behind her, determined to stop thinking about the damn shape of her body. It didn’t matter what Cecilia looked like. She’d be gone as soon as her parents came to get her and then she’d be out of my life again, and things could go back to the way they’d been before her pop called me.
“You know, I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to get at the store, either,” she confessed after we were on the road. “I mean, hypothetically, I know what she needs to survive. Diapers, clothes and food. But what kind? And how many?”
“You’ll figure it out,” I replied, glancing at her in the mirror. “You just need enough to last until tomorrow, right? Once your parents pick you up, you guys can go back to your place and grab the rest of her stuff.” Shit, I was an idiot. “Or we can go over right now, if you want. I should’ve asked if you wanted me to take you home. I guess I’m so used to imagining you in Oregon, I didn’t even think about the fact that you have a place down here.”
“That’s okay,” she said, looking out the window. “I don’t really have anything for her at home.” She huffed. “I’m woefully unprepared.”
“We can go to the store first,” I offered. “Get you set up before I take you home.”
She was quiet for a while.
“I’d rather stay at your place, if that’s okay,” she finally said, her voice low. I knew the effort it took to ignore her pride and utter those words. “Just for tonight.”
“No worries,” I replied, relief hitting me harder than I wanted to admit. “I already made the bed. Someone might as well sleep in it.”
We were quiet for the rest of the ride a
nd I tried not to think about the fact that Cecilia Butler, my Cecilia, was sitting two feet from me, and I was backsliding into shit that I thought I’d put behind me years ago. It had taken me a long ass time to get past the fact that she was no longer in my life. Looking back, I’d always assumed that I’d taken it so hard because we’d been so young when it all went down, but now I wasn’t so sure. Puppy love doesn’t make a man lose focus during a job that he’d done for years.
“So, you guys are mercenaries?” Cecilia asked as we walked into the brightly lit store a few minutes later.
“Something like that.”
“Something like that, or exactly that?” she asked as I grabbed a cart.
“We work for a government contractor that primarily does jobs overseas,” I clarified.
“And you’re the boss, right?”
“No,” I replied. “We’re a team.”
“But you’re the leader.”
“Not really.”
“They call you Chief,” she pressed.
“Just a nickname.”
“But it seemed like Forrest was in charge tonight,” she mused as we headed toward the back of the store. “He was in charge tonight, but they still deferred to you most of the time.”
“No one is in charge,” I said, leaning my elbows on the handle of the cart. “We’re not on a job. When we’re on a job, yeah, I usually take the lead.”
“Mmhmm,” she hummed.
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“Not really,” she shrugged. “Come on, baby stuff is this way.”
I followed her as she navigated the store and purposefully didn’t let my gaze drop below the middle of her shoulder blades.
“Bingo,” she announced when we hit the diaper aisle. “Okay, newborn size…shit. There’s like forty different brands here.”
“Doubt it matters,” I replied.
“How would you know?” She sounded slightly panicked.
I stared at her. “They catch shit, Cecilia,” I said slowly. “They’re all gonna end up in the trash anyway. Any of them should work.”
Craving Cecilia Page 4