Kneel Down

by Chelle Bliss

His jaw clenched as he tilted his head. “And who do you think I am?”

  I looked at Dale, considering him, raising my eyebrows a fraction while I thought of my answer. When it came to me, I let a smile lift the corner of my mouth, hoping he believed me. “Someone who’d do anything for the people he loves. A protector.” I held my breath, hoping this was still true. “A true friend.”

  Dale dropped my hand, coming to stand in front of me. I could make out the faintest hint of rosewood on his skin and closed my eyes, trying to push down the curl of lust I felt when that scent hit my nose. I’d missed it.

  “I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” he told me, and I jerked my attention to him, hating the frown on his face, thinking this was what my stubbornness had done. This was the mess I’d made for myself.

  “Oh…all right, then.” I looked away from his face, ignoring the way he curled his fists at his sides. How he watched me when I stepped back. I had to navigate around boxes I hadn’t noticed before that littered the living room, some with dark marker scrawls of DEN or KITCHEN written across the sides. “Well,” I said, taking another step away. “I…I hope everything works out with your brother and…”

  I couldn’t find the words. They all got jumbled and tangled in the back of my throat along with the knot of tears I refused to let loose.

  He let me get halfway to the door before he stopped me. He gripped my bicep to turn me around. “You let Carelli kiss you.”

  I blinked, ignoring the wetness on my lashes when my tears broke free, but I nodded.

  Dale ignored my tears, seemed to disregard everything but my confirmation. “And you kissed him back.”

  “No…not really. I stopped him. It wasn’t that long of a kiss.” I was sure Dale would hustle me to his door and escort me out of his life completely.

  “It was long enough. And it…tore me up. I got no rights to say that, but it’s the God’s honest truth.”

  Something wicked and curious flickered to life inside me, egged me on. I couldn’t have stopped the question from leaving my mouth any more than I could have stopped the sun from setting.

  Dale stood so close to me, his mouth hovering inches from mine, his eyes fierce and glaring as he watched me. It reminded me of that night in the hotel when he wanted to show me just how wrong I was about there being nothing left between us anymore. But the tension in his eyes now felt thicker, the stark rawness of it like a live wire I ached to touch.

  “Why did that tear you up?” I stared at his mouth before shifting my glance back to his eyes.

  I let him lead me back into the room when he inched closer, until my shoulders came in contact with the wall next to the den fireplace.

  “You have to ask?” He placed his palm next to my ear on the wall.

  I spotted the twitching of his lips. How he looked torn between devouring my mouth and continuing to glare at me. My nipples hardened at that look. “You know I do.”

  But Dale didn’t seem at ease or convinced that I was ready to hear the truth. He shifted, holding himself farther away from me as though something had just occurred to him. “And what would your man say about that?”

  The subject couldn’t be avoided forever. I knew I’d have to explain myself. I knew that explanation might not be what Dale wanted to hear, but I still had to try. “I don’t have a man.”

  He pushed off from the wall, hands down at his sides, shoulders straight like he needed to prepare himself for a dose of truth that might do him in or fracture any control he might be holding on to. “You and Carelli—”

  “There is no me and Carelli.”

  “Why?”

  I swallowed, wanting him close. I slipped my hand into his hand, inching my fingers over his wrist to pull him back to me. “You have to ask?”

  Something in his expression shifted at my question, like a light around his eyes had been dimmed, then flooded with a shot of electricity, brightening, swelling to illuminate the darkness that always seemed to surround him.

  Dale returned to me, his body so close. His heat warmed me, tempting me, and I felt drunk on it, the sensation just being close to him worked up inside me. He had the smallest birthmark, pale and pink in the center of his bottom lip, just a shade darker than the rest of the skin there. I wanted to taste it. Take it between my teeth. Tease it with my tongue. But I knew there was something I needed to hear before he came any closer.

  The frown he wore when he inclined his head, lips ready to take mine, only lasted a moment before I stopped him, my fingers over his mouth so he’d look at me. “You forgot everything.” He tried speaking against my hand, but I shook my head, keeping him silent. “I know why. But I still need…” Eyes shut tightly, I inhaled, expecting the disappointment if it came, ready for the words if I got them. “Dale…do you…”

  “I want you.” He pulled my hand from his mouth, stroking his fingers over my face. That touch was electric, fierce. “I want only you, and I need you. Not many people matter to me, but you’re one of them. That may not sound like much, but to me, when people matter, it gives you something to fight for. They give you something to live for.”

  I couldn’t breathe, my heart pumping wild and erratic as he stared down at me.

  “Every day I wake up and see you next to me, that’s a day worth living. With you, there aren’t any exceptions. Without you, Gingerbread, there just isn’t any point to all of this.”

  I couldn’t read minds, but I knew Dale Hunter. Words didn’t mean much—actions did. And in his world, in his mind, that was him telling me he loved me. It was the best non-confession I’d ever heard. And, for me, it was enough.

  My breath moved out in a shocked gasp when he finished, and he swallowed it, taking control of me, claiming my mouth, my tongue with his soft, full lips against mine. The force of his kiss bruising, possessing because he knew everything I was, everything I had, belonged solely to him.

  He took because I let him.

  He took because as I kissed him back, with every movement of my mouth against his, I told him I loved him too.

  I didn’t think about the external distractions that had kept us apart. Anything that came at us could be handled. I knew that as well as I knew this man was made for me now and forever. What took center focus in my mind just then was the power in his touch. The way he bent me against the wall, his mouth on mine, his hand tightening against my hip as he brushed himself into me, already swollen and eager for me.

  I wanted to be alone with him, get us naked and aching and finish what we’d started in New York. I thought Dale did too, but just as he lowered his hand to the curve of my ass and his mouth against my neck, a small noise sounded behind us, accompanied by a tinier sniffle.

  Dale jerked away from me, leaning back to stare down at a little girl standing in the doorway that led out into the hall. “Sweet one,” he said, his voice lifting an octave as he pushed off from the wall and squatted in front of her.

  The baby looked between Dale and me, then back again, clinging to a stuffed unicorn under her arm like a lifeline.

  Everything about his demeanor changed when the girl walked to him, hiding in the curve of his big arms, peeking at me behind his shoulder. She was striking, her large black eyes bottomless and almond-shaped and her smooth, perfect skin like the brown hue of a paperbark maple peeling at the end of fall. She looked to be no more than two with short, chubby legs and a round tummy and the largest, blackest bundle of natural curls tied into two big puffs at the top of her head.

  “Gin,” Dale said, bending to pick up the baby. “This is Mercy. My niece.”

  “Niece? But I thought you and Trudy…”

  “No,” he said, adjusting the little girl on his hip. “Tony showed up in Seattle half dead from the DTs with Mercy in tow, and Trudy was trying to get someone to take the baby before anyone with Social Services picked her up.” He shook his head like he still couldn’t believe his ex had been so generous. “The one damn decent thing she’s ever done in her life.” He frowned, tugging
the baby farther up his hip. “That s-h-i-t,” he spelled out the curse, eyebrows lifted, “she said to you in New York was residual mess left over from the drama she invented about you and me being together before our divorce. I’m sorry about that.”

  “So you’re saying she’s still a b-i-t-c-h but not a raging one?”

  “Oh no, she’s still a raging one, but I think maybe there might be at least one decent bone in her body.”

  “But…wait,” I said, remembering his reaction to Trudy’s messages. “You…you didn’t want to pick up the baby when Trudy called?” He’d been so flippant with her, so dismissive, and a fresh wave of guilt burned in my chest. He’d done that because he was trying to make amends with me. God… “The messages she sent… It sounded—”

  “I was supposed to trust her? I had no idea Tony had a baby. I thought Trudy was using Tony and a baby I didn’t know about just to get me back home. You know how hard she tried to get me back after the shooting.”

  She had. Even though I had been avoiding Dale, everyone on the set knew how Trudy had been sticking around, visiting him, trying to get him to take her back. I’d almost been embarrassed for her.

  “She needed another gravy train since her doctor and daddy all got hauled off to jail on bribery charges.”

  I walked closer, smiling at the little girl when she sat up straighter, seeming a bit more comfortable with me now that Dale held her. “How did you find out Trudy wasn’t lying?”

  “Jazmine talked to one of Tony’s old girlfriends, Lia.” He nodded to the sofa, and we sat. We watched as Mercy crawled from her uncle’s lap and went straight for the box of toys near the edge of the coffee table and began to dig each one out. “Lia told Jazmine about the baby being Tony’s and how he’d only just found out a few months before when Mercy’s mama dropped her off at Tony’s job in the middle of his shift. She was going back to jail and had no one to take her.” Dale leaned back, hands in his hair as we continued to watch the little girl play.

  Kit hadn’t been wrong. She was beautiful.

  “Since I was out here and Jazmine was working in the Virgin Islands at the time, Lia was the only one Tony could call for help, but he messed that one up, of course, by stealing from her. She kicked Tony out, right along with the baby. That’s when he started calling me up.”

  “So you and Trudy…”

  “There hasn’t been a me and Trudy for years, Gingerbread.”

  I couldn’t look at him, feeling like an idiot when I thought about how stupid I’d been not to even bother hearing him out when I read those messages.

  Dale touched my face, pulling my attention from the baby kissing an Iron Man doll and rocking it like she was trying to put it to sleep. “Not since you, really. I’ve been kind of done for since the night you downed the rest of that bottle of Teeling and clocked that fat redneck.”

  Dale shrugged, laughing at my stare when I looked at him, my eyes wide at his confession. “You were still married then.”

  “Yeah, baby, but I wasn’t dead.”

  Dale glanced at his niece, watching her for a second before he leaned toward me, pulling on my neck to draw me close, mouth touching once, twice. His large hand was at the back of my head to guide me, and I inhaled, savoring the taste of him, wanting the kiss to never end and then…a sharp cry of “Hey!” came from right in front of us, and we broke apart, laughing.

  “Hey yourself, little woman.” Dale took the doll his niece offered him before she returned to her toys. “Jazmine and I, we’re gonna help Tony out when he gets out of rehab.”

  I moved closer, lifting my knee to tuck my foot under my leg.

  Dale rested his hand on my thigh. It felt easy, natural to have him so close. “There’s no way we’re gonna let him look after her on his own, not until he’s gotten himself sorted. So, we bought a place near Kit and Kane’s.” He nodded to the boxes surrounding the room. “That’s why we’re packing up.”

  “I thought maybe you were…”

  “Leaving?” He stared down at me. When I nodded, shrugging to dismiss how pathetic my tone sounded, Dale shook his head, and his grip on my thigh got tighter. “No. This is home. Why would I leave?”

  We didn’t speak for a few seconds, both keeping whatever we thought to ourselves as we watched Mercy play, her focus now on a book with bright shapes and textured pages that kept her attention.

  Dale moved closer, slipping his arm behind me on the sofa before he spoke again. “What about you?”

  “Me?” I glanced at him, my brows knitting together.

  “You going back to New York?” Dale’s expression was relaxed, but there was a worry in his eyes I’d never seen before. He was strong. He was a protector. He always knew how to guard himself from his worry whenever he needed to, but the look he gave me just then seemed to advertise his fear. Some deep-set dread that whatever I said would shift the small bit of happiness he’d found for himself in this home with his niece and sister. I could never fracture that, no matter what I did.

  I let a slow grin inch across my face as he watched me. I slipped down against the back of the sofa. “I don’t think I can.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I touched his chest, curling close to Dale with my hand over his heart. “This is home,” I said, repeating his earlier words. “Why would I leave?”

  “It’s not that far from the studio.” Dale looked nervous as he pulled his truck down a winding road just three blocks from Kit and Kane’s place. We’d passed their house ten minutes before, waving to Kiel, who stood outside talking to Johnny and Angelo as they smoked cigars on the front drive.

  “How’d you hear about it?” I asked, wondering if Dale’s heart was beating as fast as mine was.

  “The real estate agent who helps with the crew lodgings?” I nodded, remembering the woman who always made sure we had housing whenever we moved around the state for each season’s projects.

  “She has an associate in the city. The old man who lived on the property passed two years ago, and his kids had the place renovated. Two acres. Fenced in. Plenty of room for everyone.”

  Was it the prospect of things changing so much that made me nervous? Or was it the fact that we’d be alone soon, with no interruptions, no precious, beautiful niece asking us to play, no finally arriving home sister fresh from the hospital visiting their brother, ready for cordial but somewhat weird introductions to Dale’s new… What was I exactly? I had no idea.

  “This is Gin,” he’d told his sister when she arrived home, looking tired but excited as Mercy ran to greet her. To me, Jazmine gave a skeptical half nod and a forced smile. Dale stood next to his sister, draping his arm over her shoulder. “Be nice.” I heard him tell her, but she didn’t strike me as the type to follow directions just because they were given.

  “Oh,” she said, giving me the once-over. “So this is the woman you’ve been whining about for weeks?”

  Dale shook his head, abandoning his spot at his sister’s side to take the grocery bag from her. “Why do I bother with you?” he asked her.

  “Because you love me.”

  “Think so?” He laughed when she grinned at him, throwing a wink my way. “You know, when you were fifteen, you told me you were my ride-or-die,” he said, heading to the kitchen.

  “Think again, white boy.” Jazmine picked up Mercy, and this time, when she smiled at me, the expression wasn’t forced. To Dale, she called over her shoulder, “We might be blood, but I ain’t going down for nobody.”

  “I’m your brother,” he said, coming back into the den.

  “Half brother.” Jazmine’s attention was on the baby. She blew her kisses as she continued to insult her brother.

  “The good half.”

  “So you say.”

  “This is it,” he announced, pulling into a driveway at the end of a short road. Dale jumped out of his truck and met me on the passenger side, shutting the door for me as he led me up the paved walkway to the front porch. The columns along the porch and glass
in the attic and second-floor windows gave away the age of the house—likely at least seventy years, but it had a new roof, new wood siding, and the entire porch, which ran the length of the front of the house, had been rebuilt.

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s gorgeous.” I marveled at the craftsmanship. “Kit have a look?”

  “You kidding?” Dale asked, slipping his key into the lock. “You think I’d live to see another day if I bought a house and didn’t let her check out who did the work and the house history?” He waved me inside, turning behind us to lock the door when we were inside. “I think she might have even gone to the library and gotten a family history of the first owners.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” I said, letting Dale take my jacket. “She’s convinced any house older than ten years is haunted.” I curled my arms to my chest as I walked farther in, struck by how much effort had been put into this renovation. When I came to the front room fireplace, I stopped, examining the tile, mouth dropping open at the intricate inlay of marble along the hearth. “No deaths here?” I asked Dale, turning to face him when he didn’t answer.

  He shook his head, but he seemed only interested in watching me, not relaying all the details my friend had discovered about Dale’s new home.

  He walked farther into the room, the keys in his hand hanging from one finger. It took Dale several minutes before he spoke. He appeared to be more interested in looking me over, running his free hand down my bare arm and along my collarbone. Both had been covered by my jacket and scarf when I’d first arrived at Dale’s.

  His scrutiny became too much, and I looked away from his stare, gaze shooting up to the moldings and down to the trim along the baseboards, to the original walnut flooring and at the ornate staircase between the den and dining room.

  “It’s impeccable,” I told him, needing a distraction. Dale followed me as I continued to look around. My movements seemed to bring him out of the small spell he’d fallen under. “How many bedrooms?”

  “Five,” he answered, leaning against the wall. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll give you the tour.”