I wanted a home cooked meal, but the kitchen that Amanda and I shared just wasn’t that great, and Johnny had yet to invite me over to his place since watching over him the night he had a concussion.
I’d been too chicken shit to ask him if I could go to his place, too.
So, he wasn’t entirely in the wrong here.
I felt him inhale deeply before he sighed.
“The other man was caught and booked—the one who helped with the ass whooping I received.” He paused. “My mind is just preoccupied with that. He ratted pretty quickly on his brothers. With all five of them pointing fingers at each other, this will be a nightmare of a case for assault with them each accusing the other.”
Though that was something that he hadn’t shared, I knew it wasn’t what was bothering him.
“Was that the phone call you received last night?” I asked casually, letting my fingers slide along his belly.
He had a scar on his right side, mid-belly. A scar likely from having his appendix out, yet he hadn’t confirmed it with me. I just knew that my grandfather had one very similar to his that was in an identical location.
Johnny was very tight-lipped when it came to discussing how he had been injured.
I breached the subject carefully, and each time he gently shut down the conversation before I could get any real information from him about his past…or anything, really.
It was as if he was deliberately trying to steer me away from asking any questions about him, his life or his past at all—and preventing me from really getting to know him in the process.
I’d asked once, and only once, if he’d talked to his parents after his attack by those five brothers, and he’d shut me down fast.
Again, he used my body and my mouth for other, more constructive things instead of talking. Things that were quickly becoming a part of my daily routine along with the normal stuff like sleeping, eating and drinking.
But it was getting to the point where I was starting to get angry at all of this evasiveness.
I wanted to really get to know him. I was starting to fall in love with him, and I felt like I at least deserved to know a little bit about him.
I mean, that wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
I didn’t think so.
But today, he was more distracted than he’d ever been.
He didn’t laugh a single bit at anything that Dean on Supernatural was saying.
Not even once.
Who the hell doesn’t laugh at what comes out of Dean Winchester’s mouth?
Johnny Mackenzie, that’s who.
“What’s your middle name?” I asked suddenly.
“Mitchell.”
I was so surprised that he actually answered a question instead of dodging it that I turned in his arms and stared at him.
“What?”
He tilted his head away from the television and stared at me with confusion written all over his face. “Mitchell.”
“Your middle name is Mitchell?” I asked, surprised.
He nodded once. “Yep.”
“Huh,” I said. “I would’ve expected it to be like Rocket, or Blaze.”
His face tightened. “What’s wrong with Blaze?”
I shook my head. “Absolutely nothing. I just think Mitchell is such a tame name. You’re all energy and excitement. I would’ve expected a much more powerful name, that’s all. It doesn’t really fit you.”
He grunted. “My sister’s name is Blaise.”
I started to giggle. “That’s much better. I bet she’s a spitfire, too.”
Johnny’s face went electric. “Blaise is a spitfire. She’s four years younger than me, and she’s decided that her calling in life is to be in the Army. Mom’s pissed because they just spent all this money on her degree—and before you ask, she’s about twelve hours shy of getting her Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing—only for her to go into the Army. I don’t think my mom’s pissed so much about spending the money as she is about her baby girl going into the military.”
“What’s wrong with the military?”
His free hand came up and he fingered the scar at his throat—the one that I so badly wanted to know how he got.
“That would be my fault,” he admitted. “I nearly died over there when a piece of metal embedded itself into my throat. There were some complications, and she didn’t like the way that it was handled. She disagrees with some of their policies when it comes to getting soldiers the aid that they need—whether it be medical or psychological—and she just doesn’t want her baby to be subjected to the same treatment that I was.”
“What kind of treatment were you subjected to?” I asked hopefully.
My hand on his abs instantly felt the tension in his muscles as he realized that he was answering questions that he hadn’t intended to answer.
Instead, distraction mode came on, and I could practically see the change in his demeanor.
Not that I didn’t love the way he distracted me, but now was not the time for distractions. Now was the time for answers.
Lots of them.
I quickly scrambled off of him, just missing kneeing him in the balls by a scant inch and stood beside the couch staring down at him.
“You will not distract me!” I bellowed, waving my hands around wildly.
His eyebrows raised, and he settled back on the couch with his hands behind his head, staring up at me with amusement written all over his stupid, plump, sexy lips that I would kill to have pressed against my…shit! Distracting!!
That cocky fucking smile of his!
It got me every freakin’ time!
I narrowed my eyes at the man on my couch and then turned my back on him to gain the ability to think past my traitorous vagina.
“We need to talk about these evasion tactics of yours that you use when you don’t want to talk about anything personal,” I said. “We also need to talk about the fact that we’ve been dating for two weeks now, and I just learned your middle name.”
“If you’d have asked about my middle name, I would’ve told you what it was,” he drawled.
I turned back around to him and glared. “You knew my middle name the very first day we met. It’s only fair to share!”
“No,” he paused. “The only reason I knew your middle name was because I pulled you over. It’s not a common practice for cops to give their middle names to people that they pull over—you’ll have to trust me on that since you don’t often pull people over.”
I gritted my teeth and glared. “You’re so…mean.”
He laughed and sat up, and I would like to add that I didn’t stare—very long—at the way his abs rippled with the movement of his body.
I took one single glance, and then looked away, staring at the afghan at his back.
“I’m not mean,” he countered. “I’m right and you know it.”
I didn’t like his smug attitude at all.
I turned and walked over to the t-shirt he’d discarded the moment we walked in the door—apparently, he hated wearing shoes and shirts if he didn’t have to. Though, that I had to deduce on my own.
Once I had it in my hand, I picked it up, balled it into my hands, and then tossed it at his face.
He caught it, but the tails of the shirt swung around and caught him in the cheek anyway.
I tried really hard not to smile.
“Very mature,” he said as his lips twitched.
I didn’t laugh.
I was still quite pissed.
“Why don’t you talk about yourself?” I asked. “You know everything there is to know about me—the fucked up, and the even more fucked up. Everything. I don’t think there’s one single thing that I haven’t told you about. Hell, you even know that I sleep with a stuffed animal at night—and not even Amanda knows that I still do that.”
He looked down at his hands that were now linked together between his splayed thighs.
Then he sighed.
“If I tell you, you’ll run.”
I frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“That night with those brothers?”
I nodded. “Yeah?”
“I pulled them over, but it didn’t have to turn out the way that it did. What I failed to mention was that they’d goaded me, taunted me about being a veteran. They saw the tattoo on my arm, and then asked me if I was dumb because I couldn’t do anything else with my life but go into the Army.”
I frowned.
“You’re not dumb. In fact, you’re one of the smartest men I know,” I admitted.
And he was.
That was no lie.
He shrugged, dismissing my words as if they meant nothing. “I probably could’ve handled my mouth differently, but I didn’t. And look at where it got me…where it got you, too.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I mean, on one hand, he was right. However, I wasn’t a politically correct type of person. I never had been, and it was unlikely that I ever would be. If someone had said something like that to me, I would’ve reacted the same way—I actually had reacted the same way.
“I know that you know that I was arrested…but did you ever find out why?” I asked curiously.
He frowned. “No. You told me it was something to do with being a youth.”
I nodded. “When I was seventeen, I was asked to the prom by the most popular guy in school.”
He nodded as if it didn’t surprise him in the least that I had been asked to prom by the most popular boy in school.
“Well, after I was nominated for prom queen, I won. Then, when I got up on stage before my date could arrive, they threw eggs at me and ruined the dress that I spent months saving for. And, after I tried to leave, my prom date cornered me and tried to rip my dress off of me because I owed him,” I continued.
Johnny’s fists clenched, and his eyes narrowed.
The tips of his ears turned red, too.
It was absolutely adorable.
But he didn’t say a word, he just waited with barely concealed violence for me to continue.
“He ripped my dress at the knees, but I was able to get away from him by using a nerve strike that I read about in a book in the library.”
Johnny’s lips twitched at my words.
“I immediately went and stole a bottle of whiskey from the nearest convenience store, then walked—because I didn’t have a car— back over to the school parking lot and set his car on fire.”
Johnny burst out laughing.
“Does that sound like someone who deals well with being insulted or humiliated?” I asked him. “The people in this town have a reason to hate me. You, on the other hand, don’t have that to deal with. So, you got pissed at some assholes and your mouth got away from you. Big fucking deal.”
“Having a tracheotomy, even one that was temporary like mine, got me kicked out of the military.” He paused, his neck tightening one more time. “I didn’t handle it well, and I left my parents’ house because all they fucking did was worry about me and over me, trying to run my life, despite the fact that I’d been an adult for a very long time.”
I snorted. “My grandfather tried to pay off my college debt, and he did that by calling the school and pretending to be my husband. Trust me when I say, I’m no stranger to overbearing family…but they really do mean well.”
He grunted. “I need to call them.”
“So, call them,” I challenged.
He sighed. “It’s not that easy.”
“This is that easy. You can do it. I know you can.”
He grumbled something under his breath. “Honestly, I’m scared to. I don’t want to hear my mom cry.”
I walked over to where he was sitting, and then straddled his lap.
“I’ll help you,” I informed him. “Where is your phone?”
He handed it to me, and then gave me his password to put in.
I did and smiled when I saw the background picture.
“That’s an awful shot of me,” I told him.
“Not really. I just like your ass in it,” he teased.
I giggled, then hit the phone app, freezing when I saw the first name on the list of incoming calls.
“Rosie?” I asked, showing him.
He sighed.
“Was that the call you got yesterday that got you pissed?” she asked.
“This Rosie and that Rosie aren’t the same person,” he admitted. “This Rosie,” he gestured to the phone. “Is actually Roland. He was dubbed Rosie as a joke when he tried to pick up this chick at a bar and blushed fifty shades of red while he tried to do it. He was rejected, and each girl that walked past him that night got the same reaction out of him, which was why we nicknamed him Rosie.” He hung his head. “Rosie’s not in a good place these days.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, placing the phone on the arm of the couch.
“The Army let him go with a medical discharge just like they did me, but Rosie doesn’t have the same support that I do, and he’s a lot worse off,” he explained. “Not just physically, either. Mentally.”
“You’re having problems integrating back into society?” I asked, my concern for him filling my voice.
I never would’ve known that Johnny was having any problems at all. He was usually so upbeat and bright.
“I’m having problems controlling my temper. At night, I barely catch two hours of sleep—which is why I’m always game to take the night shifts. Sometimes, it’s easier to hide from my demons during the day—and that seems to be the only time I can grab some shut-eye.”
“That’s why you won’t stay over when I ask you to,” I surmised.
He shrugged. “I don’t want to wake up to me stabbing you in my sleep.”
My brows rose. “That’s a little extreme, isn’t it?”
At least, I hoped it was.
Surely, he wasn’t serious…was he?
He looked down at my hands. “I have this one reoccurring dream. It’s me fighting with a fucking child bomber. He was trying to pull the pin on a grenade, and I was trying to wrestle him to the ground while also trying not to hurt him. When I pulled the grenade from his hand, he pulled a knife. I ended up stabbing him with his own knife when he tried to stab me in the face.”
I waited, knowing that there would be more.
“Woke up twice like that, of course, I didn’t actually have a knife, but in my dream, I was swinging, and both times, I wound up punching the nurse and then my mom. I punched my mom in the face, June,” he whispered.
My belly sank.
“How long ago was that?”
He shrugged. “The first time?”
I nodded.
“When I was first hurt, so about six months now. The second time? About three months ago. I’ve been here a month. That was the reason I left there.”
He sounded so forlorn.
I didn’t know what to say. I mean, it wasn’t okay. But also, how did he ever expect to get over it and move on without talking about it?
“So, you left. You didn’t tell your parents you were leaving, and now haven’t talked to them since you’ve been here?” I questioned.
Did I have that correct?
He nodded.
“Why?”
“Why?” he repeated.
I nodded. “Yes. Why?”
He opened his mouth and closed it. Then growled and closed his eyes as he let himself flop back on the couch. “Did you not hear the part where I tried to kill my mother?”
“I heard that part. But I also heard you describe what sounds to me like PTSD, which I’ve heard almost sixty percent of all soldiers have when they come home. You’re not alone. And it most certainly does not make you a weak man to need to talk to someone about it. So, talk to your fucking parents who are worried about you.” I poked him in the chest, right between his pecs.
He opened one eye
and glared at me with it. It was quite the impressive glare, actually.
I tried not to smile.
The man thought he was so intimidating. Which I guess to someone who wasn’t me, someone who hadn’t seen or experienced his gentle side, he would be.
I thought back to the first time we had sex. He’d literally had the hardest time trying to have sex with me that first time. I had to do almost all of the work just to get him to climb over the last hurdle of touching me.
It was really quite endearing, so I’d never be able to look at him and be filled with fear. Even if he was trying to be intimidating—something he’d never be with me.
“Why does it matter to you that I want to take a break from my parents breathing down my neck?”
I hesitated.
“Honestly?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Because you have good parents. You have two people who genuinely care about you and truly want only the best for you. For you to succeed at whatever you decide to do with your life. They just want you to be happy. They’ll stand beside you no matter what, through thick and thin…and I can’t believe you’d turn your back on that,” I said honestly. “If I had something like that? I’d hold onto it with both hands. My grandfather has terminal cancer…did you know that?”
Johnny didn’t say a word.
“In a couple of months—they said he’s got six, but it could be a lot less—I’ll have no one.”
Something on Johnny’s face changed.
Then, suddenly I wasn’t on top of him anymore. Our positions were reversed. Now I was the one laying on the couch, and he was the one on top of me. His hips were between my legs, and he was staring down at me with an intensity that had the power to undo me.
“You’re wrong,” he whispered. “You will have someone. You’ll have me.”
Then he brought his mouth down on mine.
His tongue swept over my lips, teasing them to part. His hands found my hair as he used it to guide my face into position, and then he kissed me like I’d never been kissed before.
This was something new for him.
He’d never been on top—always so conscious and cautious of my fears—which were pretty much non-existent when it came to him. Though he never asked if something was all right, he always assumed it wasn’t.
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