You name it, I was scared of it.
Granted, I had a good reason for being scared, but I wasn’t going to allow myself to be this person forever. I had to start somewhere.
“Are you sure?” Liner scrunched up his face in concern, causing one side of his beard to pull up along with his cheek, making me want to smooth it back down.
I nodded, looking more confident in my answer.
“Castiel’s not going to hate you on sight,” he said softly. “He’s not like Hoax. Castiel’s a cop…he’s trained to look at the big picture.”
I smiled and he nodded his head, his hand going back up to place the phone to his ear.
When he did, a sliver of skin flashed, causing my eyes to go to his lower belly.
Only minutes before, when Liner hadn’t closed the door all the way, it’d allowed me to see a portion of his naked body as he got dressed after the mishap.
What little of it I’d seen had been beautiful. Wonderful. Sexy and hard.
God, I wanted to touch the man all over.
Which was a conflicting feeling for me seeing as I wasn’t used to having these feelings at all.
I never found anyone attractive. Hell, the one and only person I’d wanted to kiss when I was in eighth grade had been kissed by my sister first and she did it deliberately right in front of me.
I hadn’t wanted to consider him as anything other than just a guy in my class after that.
I may be willing to be someone’s second…as long as that someone’s first wasn’t my sister.
There was a line, and I drew it there.
It was thick, dark, and there was no doubt that that line was there to anybody that was made aware of it.
“What’s that look for?”
I pasted a small smile on my face, hopefully one that was enough to make me appear as if I was okay when I really wasn’t.
“Oh, nothing,” I said softly. “I was just wondering if they wanted to eat.”
His grin was every bit as hot as his abs.
Seriously…this man standing in front of me? I just couldn’t with him.
He was hot, beautiful, and everything I always prayed would help me.
And yes, I’d prayed.
I hadn’t prayed for anything but…him.
Him exactly.
Granted, I hadn’t pictured the colorful tattoos that would run up his arms and disappear into his shirt sleeves. I hadn’t figured the man’s ears would be pierced, or he’d have a tattoo on his neck. I hadn’t pictured the beard or the bulging muscles…but I had pictured a man that would protect me whether I wanted to be protected or not.
And Liner was definitely that man.
“Yeah, you can come over,” I heard him say into the phone. “You eaten yet?”
I licked my lips, trying not to continue my downward spiral of thoughts…and failed.
Why?
Because Liner sat down hard on the kitchen chair that was right next to me and brought his feet out in front of him to cross at his ankles. The next thing he did was bring his hand up to rest on his abs…under his shirt. Meaning I got an eyeful of his belly.
He had a trail of hair that led from his belly button to the waistband of his jeans. The hair there was dark and on the thicker side, surprising me because he didn’t have excessive body hair anywhere else.
I wondered if he had hair on his chest as well as his belly, or if it was just thick there.
“All right, I’ll order a couple of pizzas. See you in a bit.” Liner thumbed his phone to ‘end’ and then immediately opened up an app on his phone.
Curiously, I moved closer until he was a couple of inches away from me.
“What are you doing?” I asked inquisitively.
His eyes flicked up to me and flared for a few long seconds before he looked away, licking his lips as he said, “Ordering pizza off an app.”
I blinked. “An app?”
He jiggled his phone at me. “An app. On my phone.”
I frowned.
I’d seen him doing a lot of things on his phone over the last couple of days, but I hadn’t realized he could do that kind of thing on his phone.
“Technology has really advanced since when I had a phone,” I said softly. “The last one I had was a flip phone. One of those slim ones that was about the size of the palm of your hand. I’ve noticed Tyson on his phone a lot when we’re visiting, but normally he’s just reading on it while he gives Linnie and I a couple of minutes by ourselves.”
“You haven’t had a phone since the flip phone?” he asked, sounding cautious.
I shook my head. “No. And even then, not since I was a teenager.”
He shook his head, then patted his thigh.
“I’ll go buy you a phone tomorrow,” he said. “Get you out of the Dark Ages.”
I licked my lips again and felt my mouth go dry at the implications.
Sit on his lap?
Was that really a good idea?
“Come on,” he urged. “I’ll show you how to order pizza.”
Then he tugged lightly on my wrist, urging me to come down onto his lap.
I did and didn’t think twice about it.
I sat in his lap and watched as he showed me how to use an iPhone. First, we ordered pizza, then he navigated to the Safari app where he then went to a clothing website and told me to order some clothes.
When I hesitated, he rolled his eyes. “I have more money than you would think. Trust me when I say a couple hundred bucks in clothing purchases won’t be noticed.”
So that was what I was doing when the pizza came.
Sitting on his lap, flipping through his phone, ordering clothes, and listening to Liner as he said, “Not that one. Or that one,” when the pizza finally arrived.
Liner placed both hands on my hips and easily lifted me up to standing, then deposited me at the bar that was between his living room and kitchen.
I continued to look through the clothes and found a couple more pairs of shoes before I heard the eerie silence that filled the room.
Silence that didn’t last long as I lifted my head and stared at the man that was across the room, in the entrance of Liner’s house.
“What in the actual fuck, Liner?”
Liner shook his head. “Long fucking story, bro. Long fucking story.”
To say the next couple of hours was tense was an understatement.
Liner was right. It was a ‘long fucking story.’
A story that started and ended with Liner giving every little piece of information he had on me out to this man that was sitting on the couch in front of us looking pissed off and tired.
We’d eaten. We’d talked.
And now I was wondering if I should get up and go to the bedroom.
“You should offer them a shower,” I whispered. “They look tired and dirty.”
Liner had leaned over so that he could hear what I had to say, then turned to look at his friend.
“Y’all can take a shower if you want. You have a bathroom connected to the room that’s not being used.” He paused. “You’ll have to share it with Theo since it’s a Jack and Jill bathroom, but just make sure to keep the door locked otherwise y’all might walk in on each other.”
I flushed.
My door would be locked. Oh, and I’d be using the hall bathroom.
I hadn’t thought about that when he’d said that he’d be staying over.
But there was no way in hell that he was walking in on me.
I was determined to grow a spine, and to start acting like I wasn’t scared of my own shadow.
But there was no way in hell I was taking a shower, where I was vulnerable, with a man like Castiel on the other side of the wall.
I bet that he had the ability to pick locks.
“Thanks, Liner.” Castiel stood up and held out his hand to the woman that was plastered to him.
Her name was Turner, and she was a ho
ot.
I liked her a lot.
It was nice to have someone talk to me like I wasn’t two steps into the crazy lane.
Turner smiled at Liner and me.
“Thank you for dinner…and the use of your spare bedroom,” she said. “We really appreciate it.”
Liner stood up as well and offered Castiel his hand. “Any time, man. Any time.”
He said it to Castiel as if he was the one to say it, making Turner and I share a look that caused both of us to smile.
“I’m letting Monster out and locking up for the night,” Liner said, causing Monster to hop up on his feet and dance around, happy to be acknowledged.
“All right, I’ll try not to set the alarm off,” Castiel snorted.
With that, Turner and Castiel were walking in the direction of the spare bedroom they’d stored their meager belongings in earlier, leaving Liner and I standing at the back door waiting on the dog.
“Not too bad, was it?” he asked.
I pursed my lips.
“I guess not,” I admitted. “It was definitely more comfortable than when I met Hoax.”
He grunted out a reply. “I can imagine…Hoax has never been one to hide his feelings well, though. You probably wouldn’t have any idea what Castiel thought unless he flat out told you.”
I didn’t know what to say or think of that.
So I chose to say nothing.
“You looked freaked out about the shower,” he said. “Do you want to use mine until they leave?”
Until you leave? was left unsaid.
I opened my mouth to say no, but ‘yes’ came out instead.
“I would, thank you,” I said softly. “I’m just not…Tara sometimes...” I shivered. “The shower isn’t a good place for me.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’ll have to tell me about your shower demons one day.”
I thought about that and decided that maybe I would.
Maybe I’d tell him everything one day.
Then he might realize that I was a lost cause and think ‘good riddance’ as I was shipped out to parts unknown.
“One day,” I confirmed. “Just…not today. Thinking about it makes me not want to shower for at least a week. And yeah, I cleaned up dog vomit off your chest today. I feel like I need one.”
My attempt at humor didn’t go over well, and I could tell that he wanted to say something more.
Instead, he let Monster in and then walked into my room, then into the bathroom, and collected all my stuff that he’d bought me out of the shower and off the counters.
Then he closed and locked the door that led to the bathroom and continued on to his room with me following behind him like a lost puppy.
After placing all my stuff down on his counter, he lifted a couple of towels out of a cabinet, then took a robe off the back of the door.
“I don’t ever use this,” he said. “Got it for Christmas last year.”
I smiled at it.
“It’s nice,” I said to him.
He spared a glance at it, then scoffed. “Do you honestly see a man like me wearing a robe like this?”
The robe really was nice.
Big and plush. Soft. Definitely not something I’d expect to see on a man like Liner.
Then again, maybe I could.
Having something so smooth and soft against skin that looked just as smooth and soft? It looked like a match made in heaven.
“I think you might enjoy it if you tried it,” I admitted.
He rolled his eyes and tossed both the towel and the robe to the counter, then turned until we were face to face, only inches apart.
“Do you want me to show you how to work the shower?” he asked.
I looked at said shower and searched for why he would think that I’d need him to turn on the shower, and then realized that he was right. Or he would’ve been if I hadn’t already used it once before. Then, I’d had no clue. Mostly because there were no freakin’ knobs to turn or levers to pull. Also, there was no shower head.
It’d taken quite a bit of me fiddling with things before I’d figured it out.
“Umm,” I said softly. “No thanks. I figured it out already.”
He grinned and walked right into the shower.
Liner’s bathroom was set up as one large room with the shower and the toilet area in a recessed alcove that broke it off from the rest of the room. The shower portion took up what looked like over half the length of the room but was walled off by a glass partition. A massive tub cut off the lower portion of the shower from the top portion, shielding the modesty of those within if there happened to be more than one person in the room at the time.
“Wow,” I said, finally taking my first good look at the bathroom. “This is nice.”
It was really nice.
Really, really nice.
And I knew nice. My father had every single luxury that was known to man. If there was something he wanted, he made it happen.
He had the money and the means to make anything happen.
But this place? It was honestly not something I’d have expected of Liner.
He didn’t seem like the type of man that allowed things like this to be in his place.
“I had it remodeled,” he explained. “When I moved in, the bathroom was absolute shit. It looked like the previous owners intended to start something similar, but either ran out of desire to do it, or money. My guess is money. I just kind of finished it. I like it now. Other than this.”
He pressed his finger to a button, and a whirring sound began in the walls, followed shortly by shower heads opening up from the walls.
Shortly after that water started spraying, and then the room began to heat up.
“Oh, wow,” I repeated. “Holy crap. Seven shower heads?”
“Eight.” He pointed to the rain head faucet in the ceiling that I hadn’t seen until now. “I don’t like that one. It’s too soft and seems like it falls directly over my face. If I step out of the way of it, I find myself stepping directly into the spray of that one.” He pointed at another faucet. “And then I get a mouthful of water for my troubles.”
I grinned. “I can see that.”
He pointed at a dial.
“This is how you turn the heat up and down. I have it at like one hundred and five, I think,” he said. “When you’re done, just press this button right here.”
He pointed at another button, and I nodded.
“Yell at me if you need me,” he offered.
I smiled.
Then he was gone, shutting the door softly behind him.
I swallowed hard and started to ease out of my shoes, followed shortly by my socks, pants, and t-shirt.
I looked at the articles of clothing on the floor—all clothes that Liner had scrounged up for me—and wondered how I’d gotten so lucky.
How had I been given this man?
How did I deserve for a man like him to mess with a girl like me? A girl that looked identical to a woman that had hurt his friend—badly.
I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered if I’d ever be able to escape Tara.
Tara, who had tortured me from a young age, and found pleasure in my pain.
Then there was Andy. Andy, who seemingly only got interested in me when Tara had done her worst, and he could make my torture complete by unleashing his own version of hell.
And my father, who watched his two children do what they wanted to do to a person of his own blood.
I didn’t see what Liner saw.
I saw a woman. A short woman with blah hair. She was too skinny. Her face looked like it could use some work—possibly a nose job thanks to Tara breaking it over and over again. She had sunken blue eyes, bags for days, and a sallow complexion that always looked like she needed about two weeks’ worth of uninterrupted sleep.
There were stress lines on top of stress lines, and there wasn’t a single smile line amongst them.
As if I wasn’t Theodora Threadgill, Tara Threadgill’s identical twin sister. No, he looked at me like I was just Theo. His Theo.
Someone that was deserving of his kindness.
And that made me feel things that I’d never felt in my life.
Things that I wasn’t sure that I should be feeling.
Especially since I was leaving in just a few short days, and he was helping me go.
But the fire that he’d started burned deep.
I wanted him…and I wasn’t sure I could talk myself out of doing what was slowly starting to swirl in my mind.
Chapter 12
Wade: If you had a shot for every time you thought about quitting, would you be sober or drunk?
Liner: I’d be dead.
-Text from Wade to Liner
Liner
I never expected it.
It came out of the blue.
One second, she was in her room, where she was supposed to be.
And the next she was in my room, crawling under my covers, and I was lost.
My eyes felt like they were peeled open and sandpaper was lining the lids, but I opened them anyway.
For her.
“What’s wrong, baby?” I asked softly, sitting up and rubbing my eyes with one fist, trying to clear my vision enough to see her.
The ‘baby’ had fallen from my lips so easily that it felt utterly natural. Like it was meant to be—her being my baby.
She didn’t stop to talk. Didn’t really say much of anything.
Instead, she continued to crawl until she was pressed up against me from shoulder to feet, and I couldn’t help my response.
I’d been fighting my body’s reaction to her the moment that I’d seen her at The Bridge.
Then she’d come into my home, and I’d had to control myself. I’d had to put my growing hunger for her on the back burner because she was so fragile.
Plus, I didn’t want to spook her away with my desire.
I didn’t want her to know what I felt in case she didn’t feel the same way.
Snitches Get Stitches Page 9