Text (Take It Off)

by Hebert, Cambria

  Maybe it was a good thing the cops couldn’t find him. He was safer that way. Of course, his safety was the very last thing I cared about.

  Once I showed them the scene of the crime and answered a million other questions and showed them my Wrangler with the ruined tires, I finally went back to the hospital where I took up residence beside her bed.

  It really wasn’t that uncomfortable. I’d slept in worse places.

  She was being released from the hospital soon, and the police still hadn’t brought in Lex. They weren’t going to. Enough time passed that he was likely long gone or in a place no one knew about, plotting out some sick plan.

  It was hard to say. People who weren’t right in the head were very unpredictable. I glanced at Honor, who wasn’t doing a very good job of resting.

  I wouldn’t rest easy, either, if I were her. She was basically a sitting duck.

  “You don’t have to stay, you know,” Honor said, turning her head to the side to look directly at me. “You’ve already done so much. If it wasn’t for you—”

  I held up my hand to halt her words. “Don’t say it,” I replied.

  A smile played on her lips and a mischievous little light came into her eyes. “Say what?” she asked innocently. “That you look like you need a shower?”

  I glanced down at my rumpled clothes and muddy boots. “So you’re picturing me naked over there?” I quipped. “Here I thought the reason you seemed so anxious was because you wanted out of here.” I sat forward, bringing my face closer to hers. “If you wanted to see me naked, you should have just asked.”

  She actually blushed. But even embarrassment wasn’t enough to keep her mouth shut. “Oh please,” she said and rolled her eyes. “Do those corny lines actually work on women?”

  I grinned and sat back. “I don’t know.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t know?”

  “Nope.”

  She pursed her lips. “Do they work on men?”

  I laughed out loud.

  “What?” She shrugged. “I watch the news. I heard all about how the military lifted the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.” She leaned closer to me like she was telling me a secret. I wanted to grab her face and kiss the shit out of her. “I can legally ask you that now.”

  Then she actually wagged her eyebrows at me.

  I bit back a smile and leaned forward once again. Our faces were mere inches apart and our lips were lined up for a kiss…

  “I’m not gay,” I whispered.

  “No judgment here,” she said. “I need a good shopping buddy.”

  Honor moved to sit back, but I gently grasped her wrist and pulled her back. “I’m not gay,” I repeated again, my voice even lower, as my mouth hovered oh so close to hers.

  Everything about her stilled. Her little pink tongue darted out and wet her bottom lip, which was still just slightly swollen from whatever happened to it. I’d never been so insanely tempted to lick someone as I was now.

  “You’re not?” she whispered.

  I shook my head and leaned a fraction closer. “Nope. I’m willing to prove it.”

  She made a small sound in the back of her throat, kind of like a purr. I liked that sound. I liked it a hell of a lot.

  I let our lips hang there, almost touching, drawing out the anticipation of the kiss… Usually, I would instantly go for it, but this was different. Honor was different. I wanted a chance to feel every single thing. Every ounce of desire, every single thread of anticipation. She wasn’t something I wanted to hurry up and get over with; she wasn’t something I wanted to use to pass the time or to make me forget.

  I wanted more than that from Honor.

  I wasn’t sure why.

  Or how.

  But I knew down to my bones that didn’t make it any less true.

  Just when I couldn’t take the distance any longer, the door to the room opened. We sprang apart, looking at each other with a little bit of shock and disappointment written on both our faces.

  “Honor!” called a woman from just inside the door.

  “Mom,” Honor replied, finally looking away from me and toward the woman moving into the room.

  She wasn’t a large woman, maybe five feet four, with chin-length dark hair and brown eyes. She wore a pair of loose, black knit pants with a long-sleeved white T-shirt and a red zippered fleece vest. “Thank God you’re okay,” she said, setting a medium-sized multicolored bag on the end of the bed. She placed her hands on her hips and studied Honor and all her bruises. “You should have called earlier, young lady.”

  Honor rolled her eyes. “I was a little busy, Mom.”

  “You’ve been here all night,” she replied, still gazing at her daughter steadily.

  I didn’t really care for her tone.

  I cleared my throat. “She’s been medicated. She just woke up a while ago.”

  Her mother turned to me. “Are you the one that pulled her out of that hole?”

  My lips itched to smile. “Technically, she was already out of it when I found her.”

  “You’re a Marine?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I stood, holding out my hand. “My name is Nathan Reed. Nice to meet you.”

  Her mother slid a cool hand into mine and shook it firmly. “How much food does someone like you eat?”

  “Mother,” Honor admonished.

  Honor’s mother turned toward her daughter. “What?” she asked like it was a perfectly reasonable question. “He’s huge.”

  I grinned. “I like pie.”

  Her mother looked at me. “What kind of pie?”

  “Apple,” Honor answered.

  I grinned wider.

  Her mother looked between me and her daughter. Then she hugged me. It caught me off guard, and I looked over her head at Honor, who seemed to be just as shocked as I was.

  I wasn’t sure what to do so I patted her back awkwardly. She pulled away and looked up. “Call me Mom. Welcome to the family.”

  Honor made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. I didn’t say anything at all. I was too busy feeling like all the wind was knocked out of me.

  “Mom” acted like she hadn’t just shocked everyone in the room silent and grabbed the bag she put on the bed. “I stopped by your house and got you some clothes and some shampoo.” She gave Honor a long look and then said, “I should have brought conditioner.”

  Honor laughed. “What will the nurses say?” She gasped and put her hand to her mouth.

  To my surprise, her mother’s eyes filled with tears, and then she hugged Honor. I knew the power that her slight arms were capable of, and I winced thinking of Honor’s ribs. Over her mother’s shoulder, I saw the look of pain register, but she didn’t say a word.

  “I’m just going to go unpack what you need in the bathroom,” Mom said, taking the bag and disappearing in the adjoining bathroom.

  She shut the door behind her.

  Honor and I looked at each other. “Her name is Mona.”

  “She told me to call her Mom.” I smirked.

  “She must like you.”

  “How about you?” I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed before I could stop myself. “Do you like me?”

  She shrugged. “You’re okay.”

  “Just okay, huh?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Eh,” she said.

  If her ribs weren’t broken, I would’ve tickled her until she changed her answer. I settled for just looking at her, taking in her rough appearance. Even still, she was beautiful. I couldn’t imagine how much more so she would be when all the leaves were out of her hair and her eye was no longer swollen shut.

  The atmosphere around us changed, becoming charged, more electric. The pull I felt to her was undeniable, kind of like I was an alcoholic and she was my favorite drink. Except alcohol wasn’t a very good habit…

  I had a feeling Honor would be very, very good.

  The sound of something being dropped echoed through the wall by the bathroom. Without taking my eye
s off Honor, I said, “I should probably go.”

  Tension crept into her features, tightening her lips and creating a barely there wrinkle between her eyes. “I’m sure you want to shower.”

  “Showering is overrated.”

  She smiled.

  Her smile did things to me… made me feel lighter somehow. Like all the sticky cobwebs of the past were being swept away. “I’m not leaving here without your number.”

  I wasn’t sure, but it seemed some of the tension in her face eased.

  “You got something to write on?”

  I glanced around the room. There wasn’t even a pen in sight. “I’ll get something from the nurse.”

  Her mother was coming out of the bathroom when I left the room, going in search of a pen. I didn’t really want to leave, but it seemed like I shouldn’t stay either. Technically, I wasn’t anyone to Honor. The only reason the nurses let me in the room at all to begin with was because I was the one who brought her in… and because I can be damn intimidating when I want to be and no one dared tell me to leave.

  But now her mother was here. She was being discharged and would likely go and stay with her family where she would be cared for and safe. There was nothing left for me to do… but go home.

  To an empty house.

  The thought twisted my stomach, but I told myself to man up. At least she was giving me her number. I would call her. I would ask her out.

  Honor didn’t know it yet, but she was about to become a fixture in my life.

  21

  Honor

  “Is he leaving?” Mom asked, watching as Nathan pulled the door around behind him.

  My stomach was all kinds of discombobulated. That man had an effect on me like no other. I felt breathless every time he got close, and it wasn’t because my ribs were broken.

  “He’s coming back,” I said, “which is a shock after the way you just acted.”

  “Posh.” She scoffed (in the language of my mother, that meant she thought I was being silly). “That man is so taken with you he probably didn’t even notice I was talking.”

  “Mom,” I groaned. “This isn’t some matchmaking opportunity.” My mother had a very bad habit of trying to fix me up with every single eligible bachelor she met. It didn’t matter if she knew him or not. One time she tried to set me up with our waiter when we went out to dinner.

  She was positively relentless. But I loved her anyway.

  “I don’t have to play matchmaker,” Mom said, sitting down in the chair Nathan just abandoned. He made the chair look small, but with her sitting there, it looked a lot larger. “The vibes between you two were rippling through this room the minute I walked in.”

  “The vibes?” I said, thinking her colorful vocabulary was likely the reason I became a writer.

  “You know,” she said, wagging her eyebrows. “The mojo.”

  I burst out laughing. It hurt and I collapsed against the pillow.

  Mom started fluttering around, trying to adjust my pillow. When the pillow didn’t fluff up to her liking, she frowned. “Go get cleaned up so we can go. The pillows at home are much more comfortable.”

  She didn’t mean my house. My home. “Mom,” I said gently. “You know I’m going to my house, right?”

  She looked at me like I had three heads. I admit, my eye was swollen enough that I probably looked like I had two. “You are not going home alone, young lady,” she said in a stern, no-nonsense voice.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Shall I call your father?”

  “I’m not twelve. That threat doesn’t work on me anymore.”

  “Posh,” she said again and dug around in her too-large bag and pulled out a cell phone. “I’m calling him,” she said, giving me one last chance to change my mind.

  Nathan walked in the room, carrying a pen and a small piece of white paper.

  “Go ahead,” I told her.

  She pressed a few buttons and then paced over to the window. A few seconds later, my father must have answered because she said, “Eric, you need to give this girl a talking to!”

  Then she launched into some tirade, which she tried to whisper like she was being secretive. I looked at Nathan and rolled my eyes.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, coming closer.

  “She’s mad because I told her I wouldn’t come and stay with her.”

  He frowned. “You should.”

  “Not you too.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone right now.” The way he said it made me think he had some reasons.

  I knew what those reasons were. It was exactly why I couldn’t stay with my mother.

  I sighed. “Look, you and I both know he’s still out there. What if he finds me?”

  “He can’t find you if you aren’t home.”

  “He doesn’t know my address.”

  Nathan rolled his eyes. “Have you ever heard of the Internet?”

  “I can’t put my parents in danger,” I said low.

  He pressed his lips together. I knew he understood. Still, he protested. “Your safety matters too.”

  He was right; it did matter. But I honestly thought I would be safe at home. Lex didn’t even know my name. Finding my address would be very hard if he didn’t know who he was looking for. Unless, of course, if he read paranormal and romance novels, which I highly doubted.

  “I will be safe. At home. I’ll be comfortable there too,” was all I said. God, how I craved the quiet comfort of being at home.

  “I don’t like this.”

  “It’s not your decision.”

  He didn’t like that too well. I could read it on his face. He said nothing else but thrust the paper before me and handed me the pen.

  I scrawled my number across the top.

  “I want your address too,” he said when I tried to hand it back.

  “Why?” I scowled.

  “I’m nosy.”

  “I’m private.”

  “I’ll join sides with your mother if you don’t write it down.”

  Well, damn. Then I would never get any peace. “Fine.” I wrote down my address.

  Nathan took the paper and read it over. Then he tore off the blank bottom section of the paper and wrote something on it and handed it to me. “Here’s my number. You can call me. Anytime. Night or day.”

  “I thought it had water damage, you know, from the rain?”

  “I took the battery out when we got here and let the pieces dry. It’s working now.”

  “That’s good,” I said, glancing down at the number again. “Thanks.” I looked at my mother, who was still talking animatedly to my father. It was a good time for me to escape. “I’m going to go shower.”

  I glanced down at my hands. One was taped up where the IV had been and the other was wrapped, covering my stitches.

  Showering likely was going to be a challenge.

  “Need some help?” Nathan said, giving me a roguish grin.

  I laughed. “You wish.” I pushed back the covers and the air brushed over my bare legs. I hoped my mother brought warm clothes because I seriously wanted to bundle up. And I desperately wanted some coffee. With cinnamon creamer.

  Yum.

  Nathan stepped back as I flung my legs over the side of the mattress and sat up. My ribs protested and I wasn’t looking forward to moving around or seeing the black and blue marks all over my body once I was naked.

  They were only ugly reminders of what I just went through.

  Bruises fade. It’s the internal damage you need to watch out for. The inner thought caused me to stumble a little as I stood.

  But I didn’t fall. Nathan was there to steady me. His hands caught me around the hips, supporting me, as his pine scent whirled around us. I probably smelled like dirty butt, but he smelled delicious. So unfair.

  “You doing okay?” Nathan murmured close to my ear before straightening up to look at me. He kept his hands at my waist.

  I nodded.

  “Come on,” he said gently. “I’
ll help ya.” The southern drawl to his voice washed over me. It was like balm to an open wound. Like music notes to a song.

  Yeah, okay, I could have made it to the bathroom all by myself. Still, I leaned into him just a little bit more.

  You would have too.

  He was so much bigger than me, something I hadn’t paid much attention to when we were on the mountain. My body had always been aware of him, but not like this. It was as if the more I was around him the more hyperaware my nerves became.

  When we reached the bathroom door, he used one arm to push it open and hold it there while I walked ahead. I glanced back at my mother, and she was no longer talking to my father. She stood there watching us, smiling, while holding the phone pressed to her ear.

  Yet another reason I had to go home. She was going to be relentless on insisting that Nathan and I were soul mates or some such crap like that. I was the writer, but my mother had always been a dreamer.

  “Lace,” Nathan said, staring at the panties my mother displayed on top of the sink. I swear if I hadn’t known any better I would have thought she did it on purpose.

  I felt my face blush as I took in the light-peach lace panties with the lavender bow at the front. I wasn’t about to grab them and hide them. Like I told my mother, I wasn’t twelve.

  I tried to think of what one of the kickass heroines in my novels would do. Hell, they would probably tuck the tiny fabric into his jeans pocket and tell him to keep them.

  I wasn’t that bold.

  And I wasn’t about to go commando.

  Talk about uncomfortable.

  “Looking at a lady’s panties is impolite,” I told him, taking in the shower stall with the safety bars all around.

  “I never claimed to have any manners.”

  Well, if that didn’t send heat pooling into my nether regions and make me think of all the naughty things a man like him could come up with… I blushed again.

  He chuckled. “Turn around.”

  “What?” I asked dumbly.

  “Turn around so I can untie your gown.”

  “Uhhh…”

  “Relax, I might not have any manners, but I sure as hell have respect.” He reached around me and felt for the tie between my shoulder blades. He found it and tugged the string as he spoke. “Figured it might be uncomfortable to reach around this far up.”