“Yeah, okay.” I cleaned up the food, putting the leftovers in the kitchen and tossing out the garbage. When I returned, he was lying on his back and the covers were pulled over his waist. “You mind if we share your bed?”
“No. What’s mine is yours, Cat. Okay?” I met his intense eyes. “If I have it, and you want it, it’s yours. Tell me you understand.”
“I understand,” I whispered, wanting him. As it was, we couldn’t have sex. He was still in so much pain, he wasn’t well enough to give it to me as hard as I wanted it. As hard as it was to admit, I ordered myself to cool the tension. Slow down my train and let his catch up.
I turned off the lights and crawled beneath the blankets. It was tempting to slide close to him and lay how we had in the hospital earlier. I wanted to hear his heartbeat. I wasn’t a woman who denied herself. I had little that spun my desire, that when I found something that tempted me, I took it without looking back. This man was different than the rest.
Falling asleep was difficult. I was hyperaware of him. Every shift of his body, every deep breath, every sigh from his lips, I wanted to touch, see, and feel. Instead, I lay there and thought about how to help him. He needed help the way I needed it when I met Klay, and the way Madison needed help the day she met him too. Brando needed Klay. It was that simple. We would go to Portland, and our trains would follow.
I awoke the next morning and fell on my back, yawing and stretching out my body. It was the first morning in weeks where I didn’t feel sick to my stomach. There was a sound, like running water, and rage unfurled in me. I tossed the covers aside and stomped into the bathroom. Sure enough, I could make out Brando’s naked body through the glass shower doors.
“What the hell, dude?”
He glanced over his shoulder and glared. “I’m naked,” he pointed out needlessly.
“I thought I told you not to do things on your own. You’re breaking the rules.”
He turned back, keeping his hand on the shower cubby for balance. “You looked so cute sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you. You need your sleep.”
Cute? I was many things, but cute probably wasn’t one of them. Worse, the bastard made me blush. Heat snaked over my cheeks. “Let me know next time,” I snapped, slamming his door closed after I stomped out. “Men,” I grunted, heading to his kitchen for coffee.
I started a pot and then opened his fridge, studying the few items I’d picked up over the few weeks. In this case, two sparkling strawberry waters, a liter of half-and-half, and our leftover food from last night. Shrugging, I grabbed a slice of pepperoni and waited for my coffee to brew. The entire time, I listened for him.
He could fall. He could slip. He could get hurt.
I made two coffees after finishing my pizza and walked them down the hall to his bedroom as he was coming out of the bathroom, hand gripping his towel. He leaned against the wall and wheezed, eyes squeezed shut.
“Damn it, Brando,” I growled, setting our coffees down. “Don’t move. I’ll get you some clothes.”
“Thank you,” he slurred, which made me sure he outdid himself.
I opened his drawers and found a loose pair of white boxers. “Just boxers okay?”
“Yes.”
I kneeled at his feet, boxers in hand. He looked down at me, shame and pain burning in his eyes.
“Don’t be stupid,” I warned. “I’m here to help you. Let me help you, Brando.” I held his boxers out. After a minute, he stepped into each leg carefully. As tempting as it was, I didn’t look when he dropped his towel until I pulled his boxers over his hips. “I should dry and clean your wounds now.”
He nodded, shuffling over to his bed and falling down to sit. He put his head in his hands. I didn’t know what to do. Feeling helpless made me feel anxious, and the two emotions together made it hard to think. I got the first-aid kit and began drying and cleaning his wounds. Other than gagging a few times, I thought I did a good job. All things considered.
When I moved, his hand shot out to grab my wrist and pulled me back. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“My items that are in evidence can be picked up today. Ethan put your name on the sign-in sheet. Can you please go and pick the items up for me?”
I didn’t know why, but his question made me want to cry. It was the strangest emotion, but I thought it had to do with the fact that he’d probably kill himself to get that safe. “On one condition.”
“What?”
“You let me put some sweats on you, some food in you, and you drink that coffee. And you don’t move an inch out of this bed until I get back.”
“Deal,” he murmured, giving my wrist a squeeze before letting me go.
I found a pair of dark blue Denver PD training sweats and kneeled for him once more, pulling the sweats over his ankles and then up his shins. He stood. I pulled them up to his waist. I saved him the pain and avoided eye contact. I got him into bed and then brought him some pizza.
“Cold pizza for breakfast?” He gave me a sad smile and set down his coffee. “The five-year-old in me is rejoicing.”
I didn’t smile back. “I’m going to get some things at the grocery store while I’m out. You need anything?”
He shook his head. “Do you need any money? I could write you a check.”
I shook my head too and patted his thigh. “I’m good. Don’t move.”
“I’ll probably nap after I eat this. I didn’t sleep well.”
You and me both. “When I get home, we’ll talk about Portland?”
Even in that tense, painful bubble, I could taste his longing. “Nothing to talk about. I made up my mind.”
I finally gave him a smile, leaning close to press a kiss to his stubbly cheek. I didn’t know what would happen, but that was often my life. I didn’t know that I would be homeless at fourteen. I didn’t know that I would be raped at seventeen. I didn’t know that I would meet Klay. I didn’t know that I would become the woman I was.
And I didn’t know that I’d meet a man like Brando. But in that mixture, there was a lot of bad and there was a lot of good.
I had a feeling Brando Hawkins was a little of both.
Chapter Seven
Brando
Sitting still was torture.
But thinking was worse.
My mind went rampant, as though being home let the monsters loose. I sat in bed and tapped my fingers on Cat’s pillow. She’d left almost two hours ago. I’d grown tired of CNN and flipped through the channels, settling on an animal show. The African Serengeti seemed endless, and it made me envious. I wanted to get up, to run without losing my breath, to be far away from myself.
I had this horror in the pit of my stomach that it was time to stop running, or that sitting still for so long would give the memories I ran from a chance to catch up. I’d be able to think better once I had my safe.
My body existed in a blanket of pain. If I sat still, it was manageable. Showering had been ten times harder than I thought it would be. Truth was, I couldn’t do this without Cat. I didn’t even want to try. She was the only part of my life that felt right. One look at her and I didn’t feel so fucking lost.
But I was lost. There would come a time when Cat moved on. The thought shouldn’t burn as badly as it did.
Cat got back home seconds from my implosion. I listened intently to the sound of her in the hall. There was grunting and sighing, and then finally, there she was, my safe in her arms.
Her neck strained under its weight, but she held on. I was struck watching her. I was struck, and I was done for. She carried my safe in for me, and there was no going back from there.
She set the safe down on the bed near my feet and gasped in relief, rubbing her forearms. “That thing is heavy.”
I struggled to slide to the end of the bed. The moment I reached for the keycode, she left. I punched in the code and opened the lid and sighed in acute relief. Without the code, the investigators couldn’t get inside. I closed the safe and punch
ed in the code, feeling much better.
The bullets in my back had been worth it.
I pushed to my feet and took my time walking down the hall and into the kitchen. Cat was hauling in grocery bags. She hoisted them onto the counter. When she did, one bag fell over, and a jar of Nutella fell out, rolling to stop on the edge of my counter.
I grabbed for it and twisted the top, ashamed by how hard it was to free the fucking top. My strength was shot. I managed to get it open and leaned my hip against the counter, scooping out a huge fingerful and lobbing it into my mouth.
I needed to put on some weight. Cat frowned at me, her brow quirked, but she didn’t comment as she started unloading the groceries.
“Madi usually does the grocery shopping. I hope you know how demoralizing it was feeling up apples.”
I smirked, picturing her tattooed arm shooting out next to the Fuji apples. I couldn’t stop laughing at the idea of her feeling up fruit.
She glared at me across the counter. “You don’t get a fucking apple now.”
I pressed a sticky Nutella finger to my side to stop the ache laughing caused. I held up the jar in a peace offering. “Nutella?”
She snatched it from me and dug out a spoon from my drawer. “Doesn’t fix everything.”
Unable to help myself, I grabbed for a shopping bag and began unloading it. My mouth refused to stay shut. “When do we leave?”
She rested her hip on the counter and appraised me, hand pausing in the middle of bringing the spoon to her mouth. “How do you want to do it? Fly or drive?”
“We can drive my Charger.” I felt a spark of anticipation at the idea of being stuck in my car with her all the way to Portland.
She nodded, licking the spread from her bottom lip. “We’ll surprise Klay. That way he doesn’t have time to think too hard about having a cop living in his house.” She set the jar down and twisted the cap. “We can leave whenever you want. But you have to promise you’ll take it easy. We’ll stop every few hours so you can take a walk?”
She sounded like my mother. A doting badass that cared as much as she ruined, and it killed me in the worst way. I wanted to slam her against the fridge and kiss her at the same time I wanted to scream. “I promise, Catherine.”
“That’s a good boy,” she purred, a teasing glint in her eyes as she passed me.
I wondered if she had to be that way. Had to be the boss, had to have control. I knew she’d suffered from sexual assault at some point in her life, and I also knew that no matter how well she was doing now, unfortunately her attack might still play a large part in her choices and perception when it came to men. I would never push her, never force control. She had no idea that in that moment, I gave her every ounce of control I had in me.
Plus, the idea of her on top of me only made my cock hard. It flooded me with a strange feeling, something I’d never considered feeling before. It made me feel relieved. Relieved that someone had the control and wouldn’t ruin it the way I did.
“Hmm,” I murmured, studying her ass in the black jeans she’d put on before she left. They were like latex, skin tight. When my eyes shot to hers, hers were glowing knowingly. “I think you’re right. Your ass is first.”
She nodded. “Handsome and smart. That’s rare.”
I chuckled at her audacity. “You’re probably right.”
“I am about most things.”
“Oh,” I moaned, wanting to rearrange her cockiness. “Beautiful and misinformed.”
“Misinformed?” She snorted, pulling out a twelve pack of eggs. “I take it back. Handsome and nothing else.”
“Now that’s probably more accurate.” I settled on one of the bar stools pushed up to the island, watching her search for something until she gave up and spun around.
“Non-stick frying pan?”
“Don’t have one.”
She frowned at me, putting her hands on her hips. “Do you not cook?”
I shook my head. “Not often enough to have non-stick pans. I bought this place a year and a half ago, and I never really lived in it.”
“Why not?” She opted for a silver pan instead and grabbed the butter off the counter.
“Work. My life was my job.”
“Was?” She spooned butter into the pan and then lit the gas stove, the tick, tick, tick of the burner followed by a rush of blue flames.
Admitting that out loud felt mildly dangerous. It was one thing to feel lost inside. It was exposing to admit out loud. But she’d seen me in far worse positions. “I’ve spent the last two years consumed by Madison’s abductor, and the three months before that, I spent them looking for her. A few months ago …” I shouldn’t be doing this. The public didn’t know about the fifteen unearthed bodies yet. They knew we’d found more victims, but they didn’t know the extent.
She talked into the bowl she cracked eggs into. “I won’t tell Madison,” she said softly, smart and beautiful.
“We found fifteen more bodies.”
She spun around, an egg in her hand flying out of her hand and onto the floor. Her mouth opened wide and her face paled. “What?”
The horror on her face reminded me of every single reason I couldn’t go back to that case. “He wasn’t just an abductor and rapist. He was a serial killer. I couldn’t do it. The moment I killed him and solved Madison’s case, my soul refused to go further. Those fifteen skeletons pushed me over the limit. I was taken off the case the night I was shot.”
“Oh my …” Her hand covered her mouth. “You mean, if Madison hadn’t escaped …”
“She’d be one of those bodies,” I finished for her.
She puked into the sink. She grabbed a napkin off the hook and wiped her mouth, breathing through her nose. “I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t be able to do that. To unearth fifteen broken souls. To know that I couldn’t save them, I could only give them a voice. That’s for a different kind of person. One who can still see the good in the bad. That’s not who we are, is it, Brando?”
It was the first time in my entire life that someone got me. The first time I didn’t have to say what I was feeling, she already knew. I wanted to beg her, to ask for a little warning when she crushed me. Instead, I found solace in her dark brown eyes. In her.
“You like your eggs scrambled?” she asked quietly, turning back to the now smoking pan. Her fingers trembled as they reached for a new egg.
“Yes.”
“We’ll leave at the end of the week, okay? This will be good for you. Get away, clear your head. Are you on permanent leave?”
“Until further notice.” I didn’t tell her that I resigned from my position at Denver PD last night. That I hadn’t called Ethan, I’d called Captain Gutierrez, and it hadn’t gone as smooth as I’d wanted.
I knew it would kill me, but I grabbed a rag off the oven handle and did my best to bend to clean up the egg she dropped. “No,” I growled, when she reached for my arm. I couldn’t take this helpless box I’d been crammed in. Most of my survival came from being able to take care of myself. I got this far because I had no choice.
“Damn it, Brando,” she hissed. “It’s okay to need help, you know? Fucking men and their tough bullshit. You know who’s tough? Me! Don’t do that again.”
I gritted my teeth and rose, tossing the eggy rag in the sink. “There. All cleaned up.” A wave of unbalance hit me; my vision blurred. I didn’t want to admit she was right, or even that I was wrong. I went back and settled at the bar, shielding my eyes from the light as I tried not to pass out.
It went on that way until I thought I couldn’t take it anymore. She watched me like a hawk, never letting me do anything on my own but to shower. At the end of the week, I felt stronger, but in many ways, I felt weaker. I lost my breath so quickly, it scared me even to laugh. And with Cat, it was hard not to laugh. She’d reach into my pain and turn it inside out, leaving me chuckling breathlessly more times than I could count. I wanted to tell her that every time she made me laugh when I was rotting, was one more
reason for me to notice her. I’d never been so aware of another human being.
I listened to her at night when we slept, finding extreme comfort in her breathing. She mumbled in her sleep occasionally, but I couldn’t make out what she said, and she never repeated herself. That was true when she was awake too. She said things once, and if I didn’t hear it, I missed out.
I’d been home five days before my mind could no longer work past the things I dreamed about. Every night I dreamed about falling into a puddle of my own blood in my backyard. But in my nightmares, the thugs got away with my safe, and Cat wasn’t there when I woke up.
What terrified me was that the most horrifying part of that nightmare should be losing my safe.
But waking up without Cat hurt far worse.
The air was bitter cold, and the clouds churned in the sky.
I watched from the curb of my place, putting my hands in my pockets as Cat got out of the Uber. She paused and spoke to the driver, a small flirtatious smile lifting her lips. I studied her smile and then my eyes shot to the driver, narrowing on him. Fucking prick looked like a baby. Cat would eat him alive.
She winked, and her lips moved, but she was too far into the street for me to hear what she said. Her jeans were the same color as mine today, dark denim. She wore one of my black fleece Denver PD hoodies ‘for kicks,’ and her hair was in a French braid down the middle of her skull.
There was something between us. It was as alive as we were. But there was also something called self-preservation, and I thought it had a far bigger mind than our emotions did. For all I knew she was just being nice. When we got to Portland, I’d be on my own. I wanted to get away with her, and there was something between us, but that didn’t mean there would be.
“What are you doing out here?” she demanded, glaring at me as the Uber driver drove away. I saw that she’d tucked a piece of paper in her pocket and I instantly got heartburn.
“I missed you,” I teased, but my lips were pressed together and I wasn’t in the mood to laugh. I was in the mood to run. I really did miss her. That’s the fucked up part.
Hard Love Page 7