JARVIS

by Becca Fanning

  When he opened the door, she wrinkled her nose. “This is where you live?”

  “Lived. Past tense.” He winked at her. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked, staring around the room.

  “It’s like a…” She frowned. “I don’t even know what it’s like.” Then, she clicked her fingers. “Hell, I do know what’s it like. No one lives here.”

  He huffed. “Well, that’s a lie. I’ve lived here a long time.”

  “That’s my point. It’s not a home. You’ve been living in a…” She was lost for words. “I mean. There’s not even a rug, for Goddess’s sake.”

  “Who needs a rug?”

  “I need a damn rug. It’s so barren, Jarvis.” She bit her lip, and bizarrely enough, felt tears prickle her eyes.

  He’d been living here like this for so many years, and all because of her.

  She knew she’d been selfish. Every year she’d spent away from him, she’d felt the loss of him in her life. Not just as her mate, but as a companion. The Goddess wouldn’t have pressed them together, after all, if they weren’t supposed to be friends as well as lovers, as well as everything else.

  But in all that time, even knowing she was thinking of herself, of her goals and her desires and not his, she’d lived a good life. She’d made friends and she’d lived in nice places. Her homes had been just that. Homes. No matter how many times she moved, she always decorated. And even if she knew she was going to be somewhere temporarily, for less than nine months maybe—like the time she’d been living in Nice, France—she’d made the best of her apartment.

  But this?

  It was so stark that her heart ached.

  She felt her betrayal from his side of the fence. Which she knew made no sense, especially when it boiled down to nothing more than a lack of furniture, but it meant so much more than that.

  “Hey,” he chided. “What’s wrong?” He stepped away from the chest of drawers where he’d been gathering clothes and dumping them on the bed and approached her.

  As he neared though, he saw tears in her eyes and the move prompted him to wrap her up in his arms.

  She shivered within his embrace. She’d been missing this, him, for so long that it had become almost second nature to her to feel the loss of him.

  But he hadn’t experienced that. He’d just felt the hopelessness of each year passing without the Goddess giving him his other half.

  He lived in a bedroom. With a bed, a chest of drawers, and a TV. That was it. The walls were white. The linen on the bed was navy blue. And the TV was huge, taking up nearly all of the back wall.

  That was it.

  Nothing more, nothing less.

  She knew bachelors led simple lives, but this was beyond a joke.

  “Don’t be upset. This was only somewhere to lay my head, Cinda,” he tried to reassure her, but his reassurance did nothing more than make her feel even worse.

  How could it not?

  He was trying to make her feel better when all of this was all her fault.

  She began to cry in earnest now. And maybe the tears were self-piteous, but she didn’t think they were. They were for the lost years. His lost years.

  She knew he’d led a fulfilling life. That the shelter was his grand oeuvre and it wasn’t like he wasn’t busy with the brewery—she’d learned he was the damn CFO of the company—but that wasn’t enough.

  Just like her journalism hadn’t been enough.

  The Pulitzer had reaffirmed that she was doing the right thing. That her word held meaning, that people could read what she put down on paper and feel. But it hadn’t taken her need for him away.

  She clung to him. Her arms sliding around his waist as she pressed herself tightly into his hold.

  It took an endless amount of time for the ability to speak to hit her, and when it did, she whispered, “We can look into building at the estate.”

  He reared back at that, obviously not expecting those to be the first words to come from her mouth.

  “What? Why?” he asked, frowning down at her from his great height.

  If the Goddess had matched them together so perfectly, then really she should have made Cinda at least another five inches taller. Minimum. After eighty years together, they’d both have to visit the chiropractor for chronic neck fatigue.

  “We’ll live at the estate,” she repeated before nuzzling back into his hug.

  “You didn’t want to live there ten minutes ago. What the hell changed since we left the Council room?”

  “I realized how fucking selfish I’ve been, and how I’m still being that way.”

  He froze. “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth, Jarvis. This is how you’ve been living all these years…” She shook her head, and the move had her forehead scraping against his soft shirt. It made his scent over the essence of laundry detergent blossom in her nose. “I have to say that because it’s the truth. It’s the whole truth.”

  He sighed. “We don’t have to live at the estate. Ignore Mars and Kiko. They’re used to living where they work. I have to travel into Houston every day, anyway. That’s where the main distribution HQ is for the brewery. It’s not like I need an excuse to ride to work. Hell, we all love being on the backs of our hogs.”

  She shook her head. “No. You need a home and I want to give one to you.”

  This time, he pulled back and grabbed hold of her chin to make sure he could look her square in the eye as he asked, “I don’t understand where this is coming from, Cinda. I want you to want to live on the estate. When you’re ready. Not a moment sooner.”

  “And that’s because you’re the most wonderful mate in the whole freakin’ world, and I’m just the worst.” Her wail had him looking even more confused.

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Apparently not,” he replied, laughing a little at her exasperation.

  “Look around, Jarvis. Look how you’ve been living. And all because of me.”

  “What’s wrong with it? It’s clean, isn’t it?” he asked, tilting his head to stare around the room like he didn’t already know the contents numbered three.

  “It’s not a home, Jarvis. I want to make you the home I’ve denied you all these years.”

  He shook his head. “You’re my home, Cinda.”

  “And that just makes it so much worse,” she wailed again, pulling away from his hold now to wrap her arms around herself. She stalked away from him, heading to the window to look out onto the miserable view ahead.

  How they all lived here, she didn’t know.

  The estate was the Clan version of suburbia. Just the notion made shivers of horror rattle along her spinal column, but for him she’d endure because he’d had to endure this barren starkness for too long.

  He growled a little, and she cocked her head to look at him out of the corner of her eye. “Cinda, I want to know what’s going on here. I feel like we’re having an argument and I don’t know why.”

  She closed her eyes. “A mate is softness. She’s home. She’s love and kindness. Warmth.”

  He snorted. “Since when are you any of that?”

  That had her brow puckering and she shot him a glare. “I can be kind.”

  “Since when?” he hooted, laughing at her glower.

  She glowered harder. “I’m trying to be selfless here.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not doing that great a job of it, babe,” came the amused retort.

  “That’s because you keep interrupting,” she huffed.

  His lips twitch. “Do go on, Miss Martyr.”

  It was her turn to growl. “This room looks like someone died in it.”

  “How the hell do you figure that out?”

  “You know when someone’s murdered,” she immediately put in. “And they send in those special cleaners to get rid of the blood and shit?” When he nodded warily, she continued, “Then, they get like basic furniture so that the next renter, who would have to be desperate to live somewhere someone was
just murdered, can forget the fact someone died in their living room.”

  “So, this whole…” He blew out a breath and waved his hands. “Whatever this is, is because you think my room is a little cold?”

  “Exactly. It wouldn’t be if I’d been living here.”

  “Babe, you wouldn’t have been living here. Having you and Mundo together is an impossibility. We’d have always had to live outside of the clubhouse.”

  “That doesn’t matter. My point is, there would be cushions. A fucking rug. Dear Goddess, I don’t know,” she rumbled, “a couple of throws on the sofa. Shit that makes a place home.”

  He sighed. “I don’t need any of that.”

  “Of course you don’t. You don’t need it, but it’s nice to have it.”

  “That reasoning is one hundred percent female.”

  “Exactly. You’ve been lacking that all this time.”

  “Well, that’s a truth I can’t hide from.”

  She pursed her lips. “Well, you won’t be lacking it from now on.”

  He grinned. “I’m grateful to hear that. Does that mean I have those fucking throw cushions in my future too? You know, the ones that you put on the bed when it’s made?”

  She couldn’t help but laugh at the look of amused disgust on his face. “Yes. Yes, it does. So freakin’ many of them that we need another bed to store them on when we’re asleep.”

  He rolled his eyes. “This being mated business is hard work. Throw cushions and rugs. You do realize that’s more shit to clean?”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “You need to hoover more. Dust shit. Living like this is easy. Low maintenance.”

  “Yeah, it’s also post-murder scene chic. That’s nobody’s idea of elegant.”

  He went from gawking at her to roaring at her. This time with laughter. She watched as he, honest to Goddess, slapped his knees as humor rocked him.

  Her lips twitched at the sight of him, but her She Bear was supremely satisfied because this was what she wanted from her mate.

  His happiness.

  Goddess, she’d loved this man from afar for so fucking long that it seemed impossible to her to believe that she’d nearly fucked it all up by being selfish. Just because the mate bond was infallible, didn’t mean she could forget its preciousness.

  She’d always known he’d accept her back into his life because he had no choice. That was the mate bond. But he could have made it harder for her. Could have made life miserable.

  Instead, he’d been selfless. He’d watched over her, protected her. Let her get used to him once more. He’d learned her from scratch, allowed her to learn him from scratch too.

  His generosity was more than she deserved, and because of that, she felt no compunction in being the first to admit, “I love you, Jarvis.”

  That had his laughter braking to a halt. He froze, mid-roar, and stared at her like he’d swallowed an orange. His throat worked, like he was trying to talk.

  She wafted a hand. “You don’t need to say it back. I don’t need to hear the words from you yet. It wouldn’t be fair. I’ve known you all this time, and I’ve known all of that time that I loved you. But you haven’t had all those years. I can give you time.” As he stepped towards her, her words seeming to draw him out of the stasis he’d fallen in, she cautioned, “Not too much time, mind. I only have so much patience.”

  As he neared the window, he held out his arms. She took a step forward and was immediately encircled by him. All of him.

  He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and against her hair, whispered, “I love you too, Cinda.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t have to say that,” she repeated. “All these years, I’ve been anything but lovable towards you. I don’t deserve your love, but I swear to the Goddess, that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that I’m worthy of your love, Jarvis. I will. I’ll spend the rest of my days being worthy of you.”

  He froze, then she felt his gulp because his Adam’s apple rubbed against her cheek. “You don’t have to be anything other than you, Cinda. You’ve been a pain in my ass for as long as I’ve known you, but do you know what? You’ve never been far from my thoughts. I can’t say I loved you the day you came into the shelter. You’re Mundo’s kid sister, and a pain to boot, but you’ve never let me forget you either.” He sighed. “I don’t love you because the mate bond means we have to love one another. And I have no doubt that what I feel now will only deepen with time, and that these feelings are probably only a fraction of how you feel after knowing what I am to you for all those years, but I do love you. I knew it when you told me you’d tried to help Leah at the shelter. When I watched you serving lunch there the other day. When I saw you spill coffee all over your desk and you stood on the chair like you were going to drown in it. I knew I loved you when you boasted about how well you can parallel park. And I loved you even more when, tonight, you had that social worker eating out of the palm of your hands because a girl you don’t even know, from a situation the MC is involved in not you, needs to find a home within the Clan.” He shuddered. “How could I not love you?”

  “I’ve lied to you for so long,” she whispered, closing her eyes, afraid to believe in his words even though they were so beyond sincere, she felt them to her bones.

  “Yes. You have. And that will take time to forget and forgive, but forgive I will. It’s time to forget the past, sweetheart, because we’ve got too much time ahead of us now. Too much to do, too many things to keep us busy for that to be at the forefront of our days.” He sighed. “I told you that I held back on Claiming you to be mean. I regret that. When I saw you flinching at my touch, it justified my actions, but as every day you gentled towards me, I knew I was being selfish. That’s the thing. It’s hard to stop that because we’ve been alone for so long. Now, we’re not alone, and we’ll never be alone ever again. That’s what matters, baby. That and nothing else.”

  Her big gruff brother in an MC was nothing more than an old romantic at heart. His words told her that, but they resonated with a truth that had her melting into him.

  She believed he loved her then, and she also believed that everything would be alright. Because he’d make sure of it.

  She sighed, loving his scent, loving his arms around her, and loving him. Period.

  They stood there for endless moments. She didn’t know whether an hour had passed or five minutes, but the spell was broken at the sound of a motorbike ramming its way down the road to the clubhouse.

  The sound of the engine had them both jerking to attention, simply because the stupid bastard on the back of the bike was driving so fast, on a dirt road, that he could have slipped or anything.

  “Open the fucking gates!” the rider hollered and Jarvis pulled away to open the window as the prospect hesitated.

  He stuck his head out the window and hollered, “Erick. Open the fucking gate! It’s Kon! Can’t you see that from his bike?”

  The kid jerked to attention, opening the gates so Kon, Cinda’s nephew, could ride in. “What the fuck’s the matter with you, boy?” Mundo called out the minute Kon roared to a halt. “You want to give your momma a reason to hide the ignition key to your bike again?”

  Kon practically leaped off his ride, and he didn’t bother removing his helmet as he cried out, “Dad, it’s Jayden.”

  Mundo, who’d been wiping his hands on a dirty rag, froze. “What about him?”

  Cinda’s heart stuttered to a halt as her nephew’s next words hit home.

  “I think he’s dead.”

  FIN

  Also by Becca Fanning

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