I brought my hand to my mouth and chewed on my thumb nail. “I was kidding, you know that right, Brando? You’re not mass-produced beauty. You’re The Last Supper.”
His eyes slid closed and his shoulders hunched. It made me wonder if his pain was purely physical. I wanted to make him smile for longer than three seconds.
His hand shook as he brought the coffee to his lips.
“I can synch my phone to the TV. We can watch a movie together?” I offered, grasping at straws. I wasn’t a movie date kind of girl. I was a tequila shots and sloppy kisses kind of woman.
“I don’t want you to leave, Cat. But there’s a million other places that deserve you more than I do.” He struggled without asking for help to reach far enough to set his coffee down. He gritted his teeth and slid down to lie on his back flat.
Fighting the burn in my eyes, I ignored him. I turned on my Wi-Fi and linked my phone to the device on the television. I scrolled through the movies until I found one I knew we’d both hate. Some chick-flick fest better left to the Madison’s of the world. Without asking permission, I dimmed the lights to practically dark and closed the curtains as well. And then I crawled into his hospital bed with him.
There was enough room for me to lie on my side. I rested my head on his shoulder—careful of his wounds—and lay my hand on his waist. I felt his head move, and then his chin and cheek pressed softly against the top of my head as his arms came around me.
“This movie sucks,” he whispered fifteen minutes in.
I laughed breathlessly. “Want to watch Sons of Anarchy instead?”
“Is that a trick question?”
Mona came in half-way into episode one, gave us a knowing smile, and then dropped off his food, closing the door after her. I didn’t pay attention to the show. There were far better things to focus on. Like the sound of his heart.
It was beautiful. Strong, the heat of it seeping through his skin and warming my cheek where it touched. I loved how it pounded a little harder when the arm I had pooled over his waist moved an inch. I affected him, he affected me—how long would we last until we both gave in to this strange pull between us?
“I smell like pits and balls,” he stated partway into episode three.
“I smell like sugar and spice. It cancels it out.” I snuggled as best as I could into him. I loved this part of being with a man. The shared warmth and the connection.
I felt him shift and then his nose was in my hair. “You smell like my shampoo. You showered at my place?”
“Is that okay?”
In response, the hand he had on my back slid down my spine to rest on my hip. “That’s okay.”
Late into the afternoon, Doctor Nino came in. His weathered face was kind yet clinical. All business with a smattering of emotion.
“Heard your catheter was out,” he greeted, flipping on lights and blowing apart our slumber party. “If you can walk from this room out the door and to the soda machine at the end of the hall, I’ll discharge you before midnight.”
Brando not only made it to the soda machine, he even made it back to his room. Doctor Nino and I stood close enough to catch him if he needed it, and Nurse Mona followed behind him with a wheelchair. I would have been jealous of her clear shot of his ass in his open-back gown if I weren’t so damn excited.
“I’m going to write you a prescription for the next month, maybe two, but I’d prefer you to start tapering off. If you need it longer, we’ll talk. Mona’s going to show Mrs. Hawkins’ how to clean your wounds or you can hire in-house nursing care if you decide against that. My number one rule is to take it easy.” His eyes were no-nonsense. “You’re going to get out of breath easy, and you’re going to get lightheaded because of that. Your lung needs to heal before you start going back to normal. If I let you out of this hospital, you have to be on bedrest for at least thirty days. You get up and take short walks, and then lie right back down. Deal?” He held out his hand.
Brando had managed to get back into his bed. He looked green, having exerted himself. “Deal,” he gasped, shaking Doctor Nino’s hand. I made a note to take the doctor’s advice with me. Brando obviously wasn’t going to heed his warning.
Nurse Mona tested my gag limit showing me how to clean his wounds. I insisted on watching, not touching. The raw, bleeding flesh of so many wounds turned me into a nauseous mess.
“Have him sit up if he can. If he can’t, he can lay on his right side. Gloves, always. Disinfect the wounds with the alcohol, clean them of any puss and oozing with an antibiotic cream, dry them as best you can, and then apply fresh gauze. Some of them were stitched, so clean the outside of those. Apply butterfly bandages to the wounds that are wide open. Unfortunately, you can expect quite a bit of scarring, Mr. Hawkins. But I suspect you can cover the scars with tattoos.” She let Brando sag back down when she was done.
At that point, we were both green.
“I’ll bring you in some clothes and a first-aid kit with a list of what to buy and cleaning wound instructions just in case,” Mona offered. “Give me a second.”
“Excited?” I asked him once we were alone.
He didn’t respond other than to look at me. He didn’t look excited. He looked like he was empty, and in pain, and on the edge. He looked like he didn’t care about anything. He barely reacted as Mona helped him dress in black sweats and a plain white shirt with the hospital’s logo on the front. She helped him into a wheelchair and then she and I wheeled him out. The entire time I wondered where his family was, and what he’d do if I weren’t here. Even Ethan had stopped stopping by. No one called. No one seemed to care.
Why was Brando alone in this world?
Mona helped me get Brando into the front seat of my rental, which was a feat considering how high the Tahoe was. The moment he was in the front seat and Mona closed his door for him, it felt like he was all mine.
“Where to first?” I asked, trying to break the dark, depressing tension swirling around him. “The gym?”
His head hit the seat and lolled to the right, cutting off my view of him. Driving out of the parking lot, the street lamps shone into the car, and gleamed on his throat. There was a thick marring of scar tissue under his jaw. It was hidden so that the normal shadow of his jaw covered it, which was probably why I hadn’t seen it in the hospital. In the light from the streetlamps, it looked gnarly. Like someone had tried to cut his throat from his ear to his jugular.
The thought chilled me. I sat back, swallowing hard as I drove out of the hospital. Brando was a book of secrets. I wasn’t sure I wanted to unearth them all. To have one secret, I suspected I’d have to hear the rest.
Having no idea where else to go, I headed to his house. He was completely quiet. His mood started to affect me, and I felt uneasy. Uncomfortable with so much of our situation but stuck to feel it regardless. I bit my thumbnail as I drove, glancing at him so many times my neck stiffened.
I didn’t know what to do when he started to breathe rapidly. Sweat dripped down his temples; I could smell the musk of fear in his sweat. I placed my hand on his forearm. “Brando? What’s wrong, honey?”
He didn’t respond with words. His left hand scrambled for mine; his fingers wrapped around mine and gripped me. His eyes never once strayed from the window.
“Do you want to go back to the hospital?”
“No.” He sighed miserably. “I don’t want to go home either.” He finally looked at me.
The trapped, horrified look in his eyes screamed lost and broken.
He may not know what he wanted, only what he didn’t want. I understood that way of thinking. It got me through my life until I met Klay. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll give it to you.” The weight of my promise settled over us.
He took a long, jagged breath. His lips parted, and he licked at them, meeting my eyes fleetingly before skirting them away. “Stop the car.”
I did, pulling over on the street a block away from his house. The night was indigo, and the streetlamps on this street were spaced
too far apart to offer much light where we were parked. I turned to him, holding his left hand with both of mine. “How about this? We go back to your place and we stay there for the night? We’ll shower, and eat something, and then we can go to bed and figure out what you want to do in the morning.”
He sighed, his jaw tensed with his torment. “I’m sorry I’m so crazy. I don’t want to be here anymore, Cat. I don’t want to be a cop. I don’t want to be myself. I don’t want to go back to that house and put on those suits and hide. I’m so fucking tired of hiding,” he confessed.
I brought his hand to my lips and kissed the back of it. I knew what he wanted. The same thing Madison did when Klay took her out of Denver. He wanted to be somewhere else. “You want to come with me back to Portland?” The moment I asked, his entire demeanor changed.
Relief crashed into him and his body sagged. But his eyes tried to deny how much he wanted that. “I can’t ask you to help with that.”
“Then don’t ask me. Friends help each other, Brando. You’d do the same for me, for Madi, right?”
He didn’t answer, deflecting my words with a glare pinned on our conjoined hands.
“You can move in with Klay and Madi and me. Get away. Figure things out. Heal. Be … you.”
He nodded slowly, scrubbing his free hand down his face. “You’re a miracle, you know that?” He turned to me, his eyes glassy. “You’re going to rip my heart out someday, we both know you will, but for right now, I’m just so fucking glad you’re here.” He brought my hand to his lips and kissed the back of it as his shook.
Swallowing the burn in my throat, I smiled through my tears. He knew. He knew how incredible and terrible we’d be together. Something about that, that he harbored knowledge of us together in his head and heart, turned me on and made me protective of him at the same time. I wanted to do him and hug him. I settled on giving his hand a squeeze. “A miracle, eh? More like a curse.”
He smiled sadly. His rebuttal was in his eyes. He didn’t believe that, and some part of me felt a small piece of my heart fall over the edge of our terrible, incredible cliff.
I let it fall. Didn’t try to save it.
I’d live without it if I could remember this moment someday.
“Let’s get you home for the night.” I drove with his hand in mine.
I helped him out of the car when we got to his place. He rested his weight on me, shuffling barefoot beside me until we got to the front door. I unlocked the door and then helped him inside. He didn’t look around much. Kept his eyes in front of him.
“Where’s my safe?” he asked, after I’d managed to lower him down to his bed. He sagged gratefully, eyes clenched.
“I don’t know. Never heard anything about a safe. I can call Ethan if you want?”
“It’s probably in evidence.” His eyes flew open and rage simmered in them.
I sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off my shoes. The man was shot, his entire world was up in the air, and he cared about a safe? Either there was a shit ton of money in that safe or something else. Something worth losing his life over. I closed my eyes when I realized the truth. He hadn’t been protecting himself the night he was shot. He’d been protecting that safe.
“I know you’re hurting for some real food. Pizza sound good?” I asked, wiping my realization away before it shone on my face.
“How much is that rental car costing you?”
“You don’t want to know.” I rubbed my arms through my shirt. It was freezing balls in his house. “Yes or no on pizza?”
“I want an entire pizza to myself,” he responded, surprising me. “And all the hot wings they’ve got. And if I have the room, I’ll take some garlic knots too.”
“Sheesh. You sound like Klay.” It was a wonder how they stayed so hot, eating like trash. I grabbed the remote off his nightstand and tossed it within reach. Then I pointed my finger at him. “Don’t move unless I’m here to help? Do you hear me, Brando?”
His lips twitched for the first time in hours. “Yes, Catherine.”
I detested my name. It reminded me of a time where things weren’t so hard on the surface, but in the shadows, they were excruciating. It made me think of expensive white dresses I hated and a young, lonely heart. But on his tongue, Catherine didn’t feel so gone and buried.
That terrified me.
I ran back out to get my things and the items Nurse Mona had given us on our way out from the Tahoe. I brought it all back with me to his bedroom and settled on his bed. I searched for a nearby pizza place and then called to put our order in.
“Where are my things?” he asked suddenly. “My cell phone, my badge, my gun?”
I handed him my phone. “Call your partner. I’m going to shower. Don’t—”
“Move,” he finished, scrolling through my contacts. As he did, he frowned. When he spotted me still looking, he wiped his face clean. “I know, Cat.”
I showered in record time. I swept a brush through my hair and dug in my bag for something comfortable and warm to wear. There was snow in the forecast. I dressed in some of Klay’s Bronco sweats and a white thermal, not in the mood to put on a bra. Brando was staring at nothing when I came out.
“Did you get a hold of him?”
“He’s stopping by to bring my things.”
Judging by the stiffness to his jaw, his safe wasn’t a part of those things. “Do you need anything while we wait?”
His red, tortured gaze lolled across the room to hold mine. “Do you need anything from me?”
The rawness in his question brought me up short. “No, Brando. I just need you to get better.”
He turned away; what I wanted wasn’t good enough. “Then what, Cat? My lung heals. My wounds too. I’ll be right back where I started.”
“Where was that?” I crawled into bed beside him, sitting cross-legged as he looked anywhere but at me.
He sighed deeply from the bottom of his lungs. “Nowhere. Everything I’ve done my entire life leads nowhere good. It’s only a matter of time before I take you down with me.”
I was shocked. He didn’t look like the tattooed detective he’d once been. He looked like a man who’d been broken and grew up strong enough to never let it happen again. “Hate to break this to you, dude, but I already took myself down like a million years ago. I can handle myself.”
His eyebrows drew down and his lips curved in the corner. “Dude?”
“What would you rather me call you? Daddy?” When he snorted, I leaned close, giving him a wink. “I’m kind of into that.”
“Into what, exactly?”
“Calling men I … canoodle … with Daddy. Want to try?” I grinned.
He gave me what I needed. A small chuckle. “Can’t say that’s something I’ve done. Try me.” He patted his thighs. “Come to Daddy.”
Oh shit. His eyes lowered with bad toxic glimmer I wanted to fade into. His black lashes created just enough shadow and his dark green eyes shimmered. I didn’t need much more coercion. I moved closer to him and used his headboard to balance before I settled my legs on either side of his. I put my hands on his shoulders and shivered when I felt his come around my waist.
That should have been a warning. That innocent shiver. Men didn’t send tingles down my spine. They sent bruises over my heart. But this man hadn’t done that yet.
“What do you think?” I asked, inching my fingers up to thread into the bottom of his hair.
His hands dipped beneath my shirt and the heat of his fingers on my skin seared where they touched. “I think we need to try a new nickname.”
“Aww,” I pouted, resting my forehead against his. This close up, his eyes were killing me. “Picture it for me, please?”
He nodded once, our eyelashes brushing together ever so softly.
“Me on top of you. I have to be on top,” I clarified, which made him still, but I kept going before he could think too hard about that. “You, buried deep inside of me. My fingers digging into your chest, your hands guiding
my hips.” I exhaled huskily and leaned close, putting my lips over his ear. I could hear his hard swallow and the growing bulge of his excitement rising between us. “You like the idea of your cock inside of me, Daddy?”
Things backfired when his lips found my neck. I felt my power slip; I needed that power. Power kept me safe during sex. But I didn’t feel in danger. I felt protected. It was hedonistic and beautiful, turning my desire upside down. I arched into his hold.
“Better question is if you like the idea of my cock inside of you, Catherine. Because I haven’t liked anything in a long time, but the idea of us together sounds pretty fucking tempting.” His teeth bit down on my pulse, sending a rush of heat straight to my aching clit.
My fingers inched higher in his hair, grabbing large handfuls as he kissed and bit to the collar of my shirt. “I’d do just about anything to turn that idea into reality,” I admitted shamelessly.
Just as his lips began inching across my jaw, there was a shrill dong through the house. It ripped through the moment.
His fucking pizza ruined our moment.
I leaned back and smiled sheepishly. “We’ll work on the nicknames, yeah?”
“Hmm,” he grunted, eyes taking on a glimmer of … disappointment? “Cat,” he started, a spark of confidence flaring in his eyes before it fizzled away. “Yeah. We’ll work on the nicknames.”
We were two trains heading for the other. We’d crash. I knew it, and he knew it. There’d be devastation, and there’d be wreckage, but we’d have had a part in it, and in a messed-up kind of way, I found the idea of looking out over our wreckage kind of beautiful.
I scrambled off his lap, red-faced and heart pounding, and left him to pay for the food. I was nearing the last of my funds. I needed to get back to Portland and Guns & Ink as badly as Brando wanted to get away. I struggled to carry the food to his room and left to get napkins and two glasses of water. He dug in immediately, stuffing food down his throat like a crazy person—and ignoring me—as I settled beside him and turned on his television, trying and failing to zone out to old episodes of Breaking Bad.
“I’m tired,” he announced; the clock by his bed showed it was almost four in the morning.
Hard Love Page 6