Last Good Man (A Crown Creek Standalone)

by Theresa Leigh

  I had no idea how even to open the fancy dishwasher, so I washed and dried our plates by hand.

  And turned to see Willa busily sweeping the crumbs off the table and into her hand. Her broken left hand. “Are you seriously cleaning?” I barked.

  She rolled her eyes and kept wiping.

  "Willa!" I crossed the kitchen in two long strides. I caught her around the waist and spun around, plopping us both down in a chair with her squirming—pretty nicely—in my lap.

  "Let go of me!" she cried.

  "Will you stop cleaning?"

  "Let go!"

  "Not unless you promise to stop cleaning."

  She fell silent.

  "You tell me you're going to stop and I'll let you go." I wasn’t so sure I’d keep that promise.

  "You're ridiculous."

  "How about this? Maybe it'll be even easier. Tell me why Liam said you had to let him repay you.”

  I felt her inhale. Was it my imagination or was she warming up? I couldn't see her face, so I risked my grip on her to tuck her curls behind her ears. i watched the curve of her throat as she swallowed.

  "I can't tell you that."

  "Why? Because you'd be lying?" It came out a lot harsher than I meant it to, but her nearness was doing things to me.

  She shook her head so emphatically her curls tumbled loose from behind her ear. “Because it's not my secret to tell."

  It was my turn to fall silent. Her breath was coming quicker now. The fact that she wasn't facing me seemed to make it easier for her to speak.

  "Don't you think…" She took a ragged breath. "Don't you think I'd love to tell you? I know you don't like me, Cooper. I always figured that was fine, that I wasn't missing much with you hating me like you do."

  "I don't hate you." This close to her, those four words felt a lot more intimate than they sounded. I leaned in, barely resting my chin on her shoulder, but it was enough to fill my lungs with the smell of her shampoo. "I thought I did. Yeah. But..." Not looking at her made it easier to say as well. "I don't think I knew you well enough.” She ducked her head and the curtain of curls fell across her face again. This time I released her with my other hand.

  She didn't move.

  I reached up and tucked her hair again. “And I'd like to, Willa. I'd really like to know."

  "What?"

  "About you."

  "You've known me forever."

  "But do I know you?"

  She turned, shifting in my lap. Without thinking, I wrapped my hands around her waist again. Not trapping her this time. Holding on to her.

  Holding her.

  She shifted. And by degrees her head tilted until it rested against my shoulder. “I want to know you too, Cooper,” she whispered. “I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure.” She turned just a little so her breath crossed my ear as she whispered, “Tell me."

  Chapter Thirty

  Willa

  It was the heat rising off of him that lulled me. That’s why I wasn’t struggling. Why I felt so safe. His skin was a long length of soothing heat, even through his clothes. How warm would he be completely naked?

  And then had to catch myself because he had started talking. I’d asked him to tell me something about himself and he hadn’t refused. My breath hitched in anticipation. His face was deadly serious.”

  “Well.” His tongue flicked out, wetting his lips. ”I already told you I was moving out."

  "You did."

  He glanced at me. "What is it with you?"

  "What?"

  "You have this thing you do where you don't push. Like ever. I feel like I could tell you I murdered a man in cold blood and you'd just nod

  I nodded. Then grinned.

  He looked pissed for a moment, then wrinkled his nose. "Okay, so how about this? My dad's a fucking cheater who's been running around on my mom since I can remember."

  I blinked. That was more than I was expecting. "Really?"

  He glanced at me again. "Only Liam knows," he went on. "Liam and you." His voice took on a bitter, sarcastic edge. "It would ruin Fred Grant's good name.” He spat the words like they weren't his own. "You know, if the rest of town knew what he was. So we hide it."

  "You protect him?"

  "I wouldn't call it that. I'd call it maintaining the status quo."

  I thought about how hard Cooper had fought Liam leaving, how he'd tried to convince him that wasn't how it was supposed to work. Cooper had always seemed hell-bent on keeping things the same. He was always bringing up old memories - both the good ones and the very very bad - and comparing then to now. How much of that was from having to cover for his father? Trying to force the past to match the present must be exhausting.

  “That makes sense,” I whispered.

  He was rigid underneath me. Tension sang in his muscles, and the tone of his voice shifted. He was withdrawing even as we were finally connecting. The pain his father had caused him was bearing down on him like a freight train. I wanted to step in front of it before it hit him. “Jake pulled a pan of boiling water onto himself when he was two,” I blurted.

  I squeezed my eyes shut so I didn’t have to see his face. I was close enough to hear him swallow and knew he was trying to piece together what that meant. “His hand?” he finally asked.

  I nodded, with my eyes still shut. “When I was supposed to be watching him.”

  I opened my eyes. Cooper was watching me carefully, but he hadn’t pulled away like I’d feared.

  I held my breath. Maybe it had drawn is attention from his dad. If it had, it was worth it. I waited.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  I could breathe again. “I was boiling water for mac and cheese. You know, the kind that comes in a box? He loves that stuff, though I can’t stand to even smell it anymore. I was tired. Really, really tired from being up with him the night before so my mom could sleep and then having to go to school the next day… so even though I should have known better than to turn my back on him with something on the stove, I did it anyway. I thought he was playing with his trucks in the living room, but…” My cheeks heated. “You saw how small our place is.” The words were coming out in a rush now, and I wondered if this was the first time I’d told the whole story from start to finish. “It’s not like he had that far to go, and he was basically running as soon as he could walk.” I let out a long exhale. “I was at the sink, moving dishes around so I could put the colander in there, and he just rushed right up and grabbed the handle of the pot and pulled it down.”

  Cooper sucked air in through his teeth. I nodded. “His whole side was burned, but it was his fingers that got it the worst. The skin grafts never really healed the way they should have, so he can’t bend them all the way. He gets teased at school.” My throat went tight and I closed my eyes against the horrible truth of it. “He can’t play sports like his friends and he’ll have issues his whole entire life because of one moment when I wasn’t paying attention the way I should have.”

  It was too much to say this to his face. I was safer with my eyes shut… but not knowing what he was thinking, whether his expression was one of pity or disgust, was even worse. I opened them again. “It’ll never happen again, though.” My voice caught. “I swore that—”

  My words died in my throat when I saw how Cooper was looking at me. “What?”

  He brushed his hand along the side of my cheek. And then slowly and deliberately, he pressed his lips to mine.

  It was the last thing I expected him to do. I opened my mouth to protest, but that protest died when his tongue slipped against mine, and the feeling was that of honey poured into my veins. Time slowed down, the better to savor the taste of his lips as he searched, tentatively at first, then taking command, kissing me until I was warm and breathless and convinced I was melting.

  When he sighed and pulled back, I let out an involuntary groan of protest the made him smile and swipe his thumb over my lips. “Thank you,” he murmured, in a low voice I could feel rumbling up from
his chest.

  “For what?” I was dizzy with him, dizzy from him, dizzy near him.

  “Telling me something. So I can finally get to know you.”

  “You’ve always known me.” But I understood what he was saying. Somehow we’d known each other our entire lives without ever really knowing each other at all.

  “I’ve known you were there.” He reached up and brushed a curl back from my forehead, then traced the curve of my brow, brushing lightly over the scar that was forming over it. I shivered under his touch, wanting less and more at the same time. “But I didn’t know you at all. What else did I miss out on, Willa?”

  He didn’t give me a chance to answer. How could I with his lips on my neck, trailing a feathery line down to my shoulder?

  A whooshing sound exactly like the rush of blood in my head hit my ears. Cooper dragged his eyes across my face and to the window that was now streaked with rain. “I guess we’ll have to postpone that wading trip.”

  A shiver ran down my body. “I guess so,” I whispered, and he caught my lips again.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Cooper

  The blood roared in my ears. All the while I was kissing her, I was acutely aware of how fragile she was. That ragged gash in her forehead, the rough scratch of her sling - if I lost control of myself, even for a second, those were enough to bring me back.

  I wanted her.

  But I didn’t want to hurt her.

  The rain kept up all afternoon and into the evening, but we didn’t care. We kissed, we talked, she impressed me with her ability to build a fire one handed, and seemed impressed in return when I showed off my one culinary trick and executed a perfectly flipped omelet.

  The gray light slipped into darkness without us ever seeing the sun, and by then Willa was yawning. After some back and forth about whether she was tired enough to go to sleep, I swept her right up into my arms and carried her upstairs myself. I set her down in front of the big sleigh bed, the covers still rumpled from this morning.

  We both froze. Me because all I wanted to do was tumble her backward into that deep nest of pillows. A day full of kissing and touching her had me suffering a near terminal case of blue balls.

  She froze for a reason she was keeping to herself, but one that I could probably guess.

  No, Willa. Not yet. Not until you’re ready. Not until I know for sure you can handle everything I’m going to do to you. Because believe me, I’m going to do everything.

  “Turn around,” I instructed her.

  The corner of her mouth turned up. “We haven’t gotten past that today?”

  I laughed. “I was trying to be a gentleman, but if you insist.” I slipped my hand under her shirt and lifted.

  Her eyes went dark and heavy-lidded. “Slowly now,” I whispered as she shimmied and twisted. Inch by inch, I peeled up the layer of fabric that had separated me from her skin this whole wonderful, frustrating day.

  Gently, I tugged it up over her head.

  And then she was there. With nothing separating me from her skin but the white cotton of her very practical, but still very pretty, bra. “Fuck,” I breathed.

  Her eyes gleamed with mischief and…was that pride? She sure had every reason to be proud of those. “Nice mouth you’ve got there,” she teased.

  “Wait til you see what else it can do.” I bent my lips to those pert, perfect breasts.

  She shuddered under my hands. Her skin was as smooth as silk under my fingers, but under my lips it was velvet. I could feel her heart beating as I kissed the rise and swell of one perfectly shaped breast before dragging my lips down into the valley between them. She gasped as I bent, then knelt, kissing a line right down the center of her before sliding my hands around to cup her ass.

  She moaned and I swore I could smell her desire. My head was thick with it. I was dizzy and starting to get desperate. If I did what was about to come next, there would be no stopping me. I would take it too far, and I might hurt her.

  “Cooper?” She looked down at me, worried. Anxiety shadowed her eyes. “What are you—”

  I shook my head. Then I placed one single, lingering kiss onto the fabric of her jeans, right at her very center. Her hips twitched and arched a little, pressing into me as her breath came faster. I could do it. I could do it right now. But then I wouldn’t stop.

  I had to stop.

  I pushed back and pressed my lips to hers. Hard and insistent, bruising them, nipping and sucking until I was sure she would still feel this kiss there tomorrow. “Good night,” I breathed against her lips. “There’s more where that came from tomorrow.”

  “There is?”

  “Promise.”

  She looked down, veiling her eyes from me. Then smiled. “Fine then. But don’t think you’re getting out of taking me wading, too.”

  I burst out laughing. “Careful now. You’re going to make me start liking you.”

  “Could have sworn you already did.” Her fingers went to her lips and I watched as she tested the mark I’d left there.

  “You’re right. I do.”

  Then I went to the door and shut it gently behind me.

  I barely slept that night. Even jerking off like a horny teenager - twice - wasn’t enough to calm my frenzied heartbeat. I slept fitfully, if at all, and the dripping of the rain in the gutters woke me up easily well before dawn.

  Another rainy day. Not that I minded being stuck in this palace of a cabin with nothing else to do but discover the secrets of Willa’s body. But she was still sleeping, and I was bored of flicking through my phone. I went over to the bookshelf and pulled down a thick paperback history of World War Two and settled down with some coffee. But I’d barely made it to Pearl Harbor before I snapped it shut again and looked back out the window.

  Willa wanted to go wading. There had to be a place nearby. I should go find it before she wakes up so we can head out there as soon as the rain stops.

  Happy to have found something to do with myself instead of just sitting there with my thumb up my ass waiting for Willa to wake up, I grabbed my hoodie and headed out the front door. Light rain pattered on the slate roof and rushed down the gutters in a lulling shush. I rolled my shoulders aback and noted how easily they moved. Was it being here that was making me feel so relaxed? Or was it being with her?

  Whatever it was, I was smiling like an idiot, and kept smiling as I headed across the wide lawn and plunged into the dark, dripping woods. The rushing sounds of wind and water were all around me, but after a few minutes of hiking, I figured out where the sound was loudest. I picked my way over fallen trees and past moss-covered boulders as the mountainside sloped down and there, just on the other side of a small rise, was the narrowest trickle of a steam.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and considered. Up here, the stream was barely more than damper patch of dirt. If I followed it down the side of the mountain a little, my guess was that it would widen out into some pretty nice pools for Willa to walk in. But there was no way that she could walk safely down this way, not with her arm in a sling.

  I thought for a moment, and a fleeting moment of recall had me turning around and climbing back up to the house. When we’d arrived, it had been dark, but I’d seen the pile of split firewood under the deck where it was relatively dry. We’d used some of it it yesterday, too. If there was firewood, there had to be an axe or a hatchet somewhere that I could use. Just something to clear a better path for Willa.

  I located the hatchet in the back portion of the basement. Mr. Mulligan’s tools were a motley assortment of crap - even I could tell they were more for show than anything else - but the axe was sharp enough even if the handle seemed flimsy. I hefted it in my hand, listening for any signs that Willa was awake and moving around, and when I didn’t hear anything I headed out into the woods again.

  Trailblazing was always my least favorite part of Scouting. But with the gentle rain falling to keep me cool as I worked up a sweat, and the strange music of the drops falling all around
me, I found a kind of peace. After an hour or so, I’d cleared a pretty nice path for us, and what’s more, I found I was right. The stream did widen. I just needed to trim back this sapling and Willa could step into the stream right here. I pushed down the hanging branch to brace it and lifted the hatchet.

  “Ow shit!” The slippery wet handle turned in my hand, drawing a nick of blood. Instinctually I yanked my hand back and that’s when the branch chose to snap back, whipping across my face.

  “Augh!” I clapped my hands to my eye, stumbling backwards. Tentatively, I drew my hand back, horrified to see blood it, but relieved that I could see it all. I touched my eye. Then touched my eyebrow. “Shit.“

  I grunted, grimaced, and swore my way back over the rocks towards the house, but as soon as I got inside, I clamped my mouth shut.

  Willa was still asleep. I needed to get cleaned up before she saw me like this. I rushed to the bathroom and ran water over the fancy hand towel hanging there, but the trickling blood blinded me. I fumbled for the soap, then dropped it with a curse.

  “Are you okay?”

  I let out a long breath before I turned. “Did I wake you?”

  “I was awake,” she said. “What wrong?”

  I sighed. And then turned to her.

  She jumped back. “Jesus, Cooper!”

  “It’s fine!” I held up my hands. “I know it looks bad, but it’s just a scratch.”

  She stepped closer and looked me in one eye, then the other. Then grinned. “You’re going to have matching scars now…“ she observed.

  “I was wanted to be symmetrical,“ I cracked. Then winced as she pressed the wet cloth to my face. “Ow.”

  “Let’s get you fixed up,” she said, gently tugging me to the kitchen table.

  “Willa, I’m fine. You don’t have to help me.”

  Her glare was withering. “Do I hear an echo? Look, the only reason I’m not scooping you up and depositing you in this chair is because I have a broken arm. Otherwise I’d be taking a page from your book.” She pointed at the chair. “Sit.”