Need You for Always (Heroes of St. Helena)

by Adair, Marina

  “I told you not to overdo it and what do you do?”

  “I took a brisk walk,” Dax lied. “Just around the block.” And across town. Twice. Outrunning some of the slower-moving cars. “It felt good to work it out.”

  Kyle leaned his entire being into the stretch, and Dax was certain the man was six feet one of solid lead. “Does it still feel good?”

  About as good as waterboarding. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Then I’ll take it a little deeper,” Kyle said and when Dax didn’t call his bluff, he took it from waterboarding to wake me when it’s over.

  On a good day, PT hurt like a bitch. Today wasn’t a good day. Dax was tired, aching, and in desperate need of a beer. Or a six-pack. And not that he’d admit it out loud, but pushing that hard this morning on virtually zero sleep had been a crap call. Especially with an hour of PT on the schedule.

  Dax had overcome pain before. Had been slapped around by some of the biggest hellholes in the world with no hope of getting to a hospital in time and never once thought he’d break. Not even for a second. He’d been shot at regularly, fractured every rib in his body, twice, and stared down death more times than he cared to admit. But right then, lying stateside on some cushioned mat, he admitted he wasn’t sure he could survive Kyle—and those fingers of torture.

  But there he was, flipping pain the proverbial bird, because this was the one stipulation to getting the job in San Jose. He had to complete his recovery before the doc would sign off.

  No clearance meant no elite team. And Dax didn’t have another backup plan.

  So for the next hour he gritted through the torment, listened to Kyle go on and on about how stubborn he was, and didn’t even break a sweat when he felt that first shot of pain move up his leg.

  And after Kyle handed him his ass, he handed him a good-patient lollipop, which Dax was pretty sure wasn’t a compliment, then he held his water bottle hostage until Dax dragged himself off the mat. Which was just humiliating.

  “Stop being stupid,” Kyle said. “You’re on civilian land now.”

  “Tell my trigger finger that,” Dax said and Kyle knew enough to let it go.

  Sending up a silent prayer that he wouldn’t puke until he made it home, he headed toward the patient drop-off area, where Frankie would be waiting.

  Dax held his breath as he went through the ER because, Jesus, nothing said “hug the toilet” quite like a double dose of ammonia and stale carpet. One foot in front of the other, each step feeling like a mile, he finally pushed through the door and nearly wept when he made it outside. Less than positive about making it to the curb without embarrassing himself, he plopped down on the nearest bench and, palming his ball cap in his hand, hung his head.

  A brisk breeze caught the sweat on his skin and he finally, finally, felt himself exhale.

  In and out, he let the cool air fill his lungs, then empty until the ground stopped shifting and his hands stopped shaking. Major improvement over two seconds ago.

  “Hey, Mister,” a small but high-pitched voice said from beside him. “You going to throw up? Cuz if you are, I’ll hold your lollipop.”

  Dax opened his eyes, surprised to find a little person sitting next to him dressed in some kind of uniform. She was reaching for the lollipop he was white-knuckling in his hand. He wasn’t sure what pissed him off more, that a kid in pink glittery wings was able to sneak up on him, or that he looked pathetic enough that she was going to attempt to steal his candy.

  “You selling cookies?” he asked, taking in the sash of badges and patches across her chest. He could go for a box of cookies. And some peace and quiet.

  “That’s Girl Scouts. I’m a Lady Bug.” She pointed to the red-and-black bug embroidered on her top.

  “So is that a no on the cookies?”

  “No cookies, but”—she dug into her pockets—“I got a gumball that I won at the store last week.” She also dug up a penny, pencil shavings, and some pocket lint.

  Dax looked at his watch. Frankie was late, and being this close to a little person was making his palms sweat. It wasn’t that Dax didn’t like kids, he just never knew what to do with them. They were small, smelled weird, and were too trusting for their own good. Take Lady Bug, for example—here she was chatting up a tattooed guy who was asking if she had cookies.

  He turned his attention back to her and wondered what it must look like with her sitting next to him, bright eyed and bobbing curls, while he was dangling lollipop bait.

  He shoved the lollipop into his pocket. “Aren’t you too young to be here alone?” Because that sounded so much better than the cookie question. “I mean, shouldn’t you go find your mom?”

  “Can’t,” she said, swinging her legs, and Dax noticed her red-and-black polka-dotted high-tops. “I’m waiting.”

  “Me too,” he said, not swinging his legs, but searching the lot for Nate’s truck, just in case he’d missed it among the five cars in the lot, because, yeah, St. Helena was a hive of activity today.

  “Want to wait together?” she asked.

  “I’m good. My sister’s almost here,” he said as if that wasn’t the pussiest answer a guy could give.

  “I can wait with you. It’s more fun that way.” Her eyes were straining to see through his pocket, as if she could stare hard enough that the material would melt and she’d catch the lollipop. “We can share the gumball and the lollipop.”

  “Don’t like gumballs,” he said. “And the lollipop is mine.” He’d worked damn hard for it and wasn’t about to hand it over to some kid who had been flitting around in wings all day.

  “I’m here on a field trip to learn first aid with my Lovelies.” And there went the feet again. “Did you know that a cluster of lady bugs are called lovelies? So we are the St. Helena Lady Bug Lovelies Six-Six-Two.”

  Dax wasn’t sure if she expected him to give his rank and file, so he asked, “You’re a bug?”

  “Nooo.” She dragged out the word long enough that the ache in his leg was now piercing his head. That, combined with the look she gave him, as though he were the slow one, was enough to bring back the nausea. “I’m a fairy.”

  “Right. Then can you fly away, fly away, fly away home?”

  She ignored this. “You can only see me because I used fairy dust this morning.”

  “Then how come I can see your wings?”

  This stumped her. Kept her quiet for all of two point one seconds, then she opened her mouth again. “Watch.”

  Dax didn’t want to watch. He wanted to go home. He needed a shower, a beer, and to get laid. Right now he’d settle for ten seconds of silence, but she was already sliding off the bench. Feet together, hands fisted at her side, she wiggled her body and, Jesus Christ, the wings started vibrating and those little freckles on her nose twitched, and she actually looked like a fairy. “Are you watching? Look, I’m getting ready to fly.”

  “Yeah, I see,” he said, giving up. He pulled the cap low on his head and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I need to call my sister.”

  Obliviously not accustomed to social cues, the fairy climbed up on the bench again. “Brooklyn says there are zombies in the hospital and that they eat fairies,” she said as though that had anything to do with the price of tea in China.

  He scrolled though his phone and stopped at Frankie’s number. “Brooklyn sounds like a shit.”

  “That’s a bad word.” She said it all scandalized as if he’d just stolen ten years of fairy magic from her, but she was smiling with glee.

  He shrugged. “Sometimes you got to call it like it is, and she is a shit, through and through.” And then, because she took a lungful of air as if she was getting ready to tell him another story that had zippo to do with the last, he said, “Did you know that zombies can’t walk in water?”

  She went quiet. Really quiet. Quiet enough that he was certain the conversation was over, so he hit Dial. It rang exactly once when the fairy said, “Water, huh?”

  “Yeah, it’s l
ike their Kryptonite.”

  “What’s Kryptonite?”

  “Just take this to scare them away.” He handed her his water bottle. “Somewhere else.”

  “I’m running late,” Frankie said by way of greeting.

  “How late?” Because if she said more than five minutes, he’d consider walking the five miles home.

  “My baby alarm went off.”

  “Your what?”

  “You know, it tells me the best time to get knocked up.” Dax waited for his sister to laugh, to tell him she was kidding, but when she didn’t, he knew she was dead serious.

  “Hold up!” Dax looked at the girl, who was looking back at him. He gave her his hardest do you mind glare. She obviously didn’t, since she swung her legs and leaned in to listen. He cupped the phone with his hand and turned his back on her. “Are you ditching me to get laid right now?”

  Frankie snorted. “Like you haven’t done it. Besides, this is serious.”

  “So is the present situation.” Between Jonah in bed and now his sister, he was going to need to run to the moon and back to get this crap out of his head. “Pick me up.”

  “Give me an hour.”

  “Tell her I can wait with you so you won’t be all alone,” the little girl said, not even bothering to sound ashamed that she was eavesdropping.

  Dax huddled closer to the phone. “That’s a negative.”

  “Sorry, it’s the stress of the performance,” Frankie explained. “Actually, it might be a few hours. Not that I’m complaining. Sometimes he likes to do it two to three times, just to be sure we are being the most effective with our time.”

  “Trauma to the ears,” he hissed. “Make it stop.”

  “That’s the opposite of what I say.”

  Dax closed his eyes. “They’re bleeding now.”

  “Do you need a Band-Aid?” Lady Bug 662 said. “I’m learning how to do that today in first-aid class.”

  “Nate’s here,” Frankie said. “Want me to ask him how long it will be?”

  Dax hung up on another sibling—his second of the day—who reminded him that while they were all happy and in love and getting laid, he was sitting on a bench with a bum knee, an annoying fairy, and no ride in sight—in any sense of the word.

  “Violet!”

  Dax and the girl looked up to find a pissed-off woman standing by the doors to the hospital. She wore a tiny black tank, an even tinier black skirt, and a matching pair of red-and-black polka-dotted Converse high-tops. Nice legs, nicer rack, and a mouth that made men think certain kinds of thoughts. Full and plump and free of lipstick. And he was a man all right, would have been thinking those thoughts if those lips hadn’t been set into an all-too-familiar screw off pose.

  “Pixie,” the girl clarified, not intimidated in the slightest. Dax, on the other hand, noticed that the floor started shifting again, because when Emerson had told him her life was complicated, he didn’t know that meant she came with an eighteen-year commitment who wore fairy wings.

  “What happened to waiting inside?” Emerson asked, shrugging that backpack she always seemed to lug around higher on her shoulder. The thing was bright blue and bigger than the ruck he took with him on his first deployment.

  “There’s a roof,” the girl said, glancing up. “And I was just waiting with Mister. He’s my new friend.”

  “I can see that.” Emerson’s eyes went to Dax for the first time, and he could tell she was as shocked to see him as he was to see her—with her freaking kid. “What are you doing here?”

  “Physical therapy.” He pointed to his knee.

  “No, I mean here. With my sister?”

  “Sister?” he repeated, and what an amazing word that was. Sister. Not kid or mine or daughter. Sister.

  He grinned. She glared. Yeah, so he’d taken an extra-long exhale at the news. So what? “Mister needs a ride,” Violet said, interrupting. “You can take him home while I go back to the field trip.”

  Dax grinned, big and charming. Maybe this girl was magical after all. “Yeah, Emi, Mister really needs a ride.”

  “Nice bike,” Emerson said as she pulled onto Dax’s street. “I especially love the orange boot, really adds that badass alpha flare you seem to be going for.”

  “Oh, are we talking now? I figured blasting the radio was female for ‘let’s ignore each other.’”

  “I wasn’t ignoring you.” Her plan was to slow down to an easy ejection speed and kick him to the curb. The man had parachuted into hostile territory from a few thousand feet up—surely he could handle a two-foot drop at five miles per hour. “Just not a chatty person.”

  There was no point in talking, period. Talking would lead to a proposition, a proposition to arguing, and arguing to sex. And sex with a guy who was leaving was a bad move.

  “Really, because I recall the only thing I could do to get you to stop talking was to put my—”

  “And . . . we’re here.” Emerson pulled alongside the curb, careful to keep her eyes straight ahead out the windshield and not on his hand, which had been gently rubbing his knee since he got in the car. She knew he was hurting. He’d made too big of a deal about walking normal, even opening her door in the parking lot. But she knew better. Knew all of the ways people deflected from their pain—covered it up.

  “Want to come inside so I can thank you properly?” He went to move his leg and winced. Emerson glanced over and wanted to kick herself. He wasn’t in pain, he was in agony—the sweat beading on his forehead was a dead giveaway.

  “How bad is it?”

  He looked down at his crotch and grinned. “Pretty bad. Want to see?”

  She leveled him with a look that did nothing to deter that teasing grin. “Your knee? One to ten, how bad is it?”

  “One,” he scoffed, reaching for the door handle. But when he didn’t make a move to climb out, playing the stupid stoic soldier, she felt her resolve crumble.

  She leaned over, and as he was about to make some smart-ass crack about how close her mouth was to his stupid stick, she gripped his knee with her fingers. And squeezed hard.

  “Jesus, woman!” He tried to jerk away, his whole body jumping off the seat, but she held tight and knew just how bad off he was when he didn’t fight harder.

  “One, my ass,” she mumbled. Then she slowly moved her fingers around the knee and down his calf, following the muscles and manipulating the knots she felt. She also felt just how muscular he was, which said a lot since she was pretty sure, based on the scar, that he’d spent a good amount of time in a hospital bed.

  Her heart pinched as her fingers followed the long, jagged scar that started midthigh and dipped well below his kneecap. It was angry and raw and slowly but courageously healing—a lot like its owner.

  Emerson made the same pass, and this time his body relaxed, sinking back into the seat.

  “God,” he breathed, his head falling against the headrest. “That feels good. Don’t stop.”

  Even though she knew that she should, that seeing him like this melted parts of her that had no business melting, Emerson couldn’t stop. The caretaker in her wouldn’t let her, wanted to help him feel better, take his pain away.

  The at-ease look on his face said she was making progress. Then he turned his head and she saw gratitude in the intense blue pools, and a strange fluttering happened in her chest.

  Not wanting to go there with him, Emerson loosened her grip, but Dax’s hand came down on hers, gently holding it to his thigh, the hairs rough against her palm.

  “Just a little more.” His graveled voice was thick, his eyes begging her to go on forever, so she ran her hand down his scar, because if the slightest touch meant he was out of pain for a second, she’d do it.

  Also because Emerson Blake was a sucker when it came to being needed. Especially by someone she cared about. And no matter how many times she tried to ignore it, she was beginning to care about Dax.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” he asked a few minutes later.

&
nbsp; The honest answer would have been that she’d spent most of her life learning how to help manage her mother’s pain, and the last two years since her passing, managing her family’s. But talking about her mom wasn’t something she did lightly, and somehow the thought of talking about her mom with Dax scared her. So she gave a nonchalant shrug and said, “Something I just picked up.”

  Dax didn’t pry, just gave a small nod and said, “All the BS aside, I need you to reconsider my offer.”

  “For the job or the sex?” she joked, hoping he’d laugh and stop looking at her as though she was special. He didn’t laugh, and the flutters got worse.

  “I’m being serious. You’re in the business of making food for a price, and I am a legit customer who’s in need of some good food. And a ride now and then, and maybe some more of that.” He took her hand and placed it over his scar again. “Don’t overthink this, Emi, I need you.”

  And wasn’t that just the thing to say to a serial caregiver? Because even though the last time she didn’t overthink things she wound up doing the walk of shame, she found herself asking, “For how long?”

  “Just until I finish PT.” And when said like that, so honest and genuine with no underlying innuendo, how could she say no?

  Emerson thought of her hectic schedule, then of the golden ticket, which was still in her purse as opposed to being in the mail, and finally of the journal her mom had left for her. There were a million reasons to take Dax up on his offer and only one resounding reason to say no.

  She had too many skillets on the burner to add a dish as complex as Dax to the menu. Too many people to take care of and too many dreams on the line to mess with a man who had trouble tattooed across his chest. And his biceps, lower back, and the sexy tribal emblem that started right above the indent of his lower rib.

  Emerson looked at their hands, which had somehow become tangled in his lap, noticed how she was leaning over the center console into him and he was leaning back, and became acutely aware of how close their mouths were—how much closer she wanted them to be.

  She snatched her hand back and cleared her throat. “I’ll do it, but there will be rules.”