His big, rough hand grabs my arm as I walk by, and I stop to look at him. “Son, I love you, all six foot plus of that ego of yours, and damn it, I hate that your confidence has been rocked by your injury. But my advice is to give this girl a chance to remind you who you are. My gut tells me you won’t be disappointed.”
His blue eyes volley between mine as I consider what he just said, but the limit to my openness with my dad has reached its end for today, and all I can manage is a nod before he lets go and I walk up to the house.
Scraping my boots on the mat inside the door, I hang my hat on the hook in the mudroom and walk into the chaos that is the Harlow kitchen. Marley and Sloane are walking around each other and the little people taking food to the dining table, and it sounds like there are children screaming and laughing from every room in the house.
As I cross the kitchen to go to the dining room, I look out the big window over the kitchen nook and see the frame of Marley and Jax’s house in the distance behind her stables. It looks like it’s going to be big. I heard Mason and Sloane are consideringbuilding as well, but they haven’t pulled the trigger on anything yet.
The front door opens and closes before I see Elly walk up the stairs dressed in her work clothes, even though she doesn’t have to work, she insists on driving to Tulsa because she says she’d go stir crazy at the house every day. Then I hear my nephew, Dawson, squeal at the top of the stairs when he sees his mama. For the first time in my life, I wonder what it would be like to hear my child squeal in happiness and excitement when seeing me at the end of the day.
Nora comes to mind, and my chest squeezes, almost painfully, as I push the thought away. The thought is as foreign to me as loving a woman and also tells me I’m in serious trouble.
It doesn’t take long for the dinner table to fill with people, highchairs, and chatter. I remember when it was just the six of us kids and Dad every night. I thought the table was too big for us then, but I’m sure my mom bought such an enormous table with aspirations of fitting all the kids and grandkids around it someday. Too bad she didn’t get to see it. I’m one hundred percent positive this is what she was manifesting.
“Hey, Tuck, Callum called me today and asked if he could have your number. He wants to talk to you about something, so expect a call in the next couple of days.” Mason says as he scoops more mashed potatoes onto his plate.
I stare at him, my fork hanging in the air where it stopped mid-bite. “Why would he want to talk to me?”
Callum is Mason and Jax’s team leader for their off-the-books black ops team. Mason was asked to join the team almost ten years ago while he was still in Delta Force for his sniper abilities, and Jax was asked to join while he was still DEVGRU. I never asked what his specialty is.
Mason shrugs his shoulders. “Don’t know. Ask him yourself.”
Narrowing my eyes at him, I watch to see if his face is going to reveal anything. He feels me staring at him and looks up. “What? I don’t know, I didn’t ask.”
I know all of Mason’s tells, and I’m pretty sure he’s telling the truth, so I let it drop. I’m still wondering what he could want with me as I push away from the table after I finish eating and go up to my room to wash the sweat and hay off me.
The scalding hot water pelting the muscles across my shoulders helps ease the tension, and I set my palms on the tiles to let my head fall forward and breathe. As soon as I close my eyes, I see Nora and feel the softness of her lips from that kiss last night.
Her beautiful green eyes, her gorgeous smile as she shut the door while I waited, the curve of her hips swaying as she walked up the porch steps, and fuck, her hard nipples that touched my chest when I leaned into her.
Right on cue, my dick stands up. Jacking off to a woman in the shower is a slippery slope; once those mental images are created, it’s damn near impossible to stop them from multiplying. I try to ignore the fucker as it throbs even harder, demanding attention.
I lose the fucking battle and take my dick in my hand, stroking to images of her riding me as I hold on to her hips, her tits bouncing in front of my face. In no time at all, I’ve painted the tile, and almost all the stress of the day has left my body.
It’s in that moment that I decide I’m going to go to the pub and walk her home again tonight.
15
NORA
STARING ATmy computer screen, I’m on the verge of panic. My profile on the online platform I use for my editing jobs has been deleted. I haven’t felt fear like this for a while, not since I first left Matt.
The day I left, I separated my life from his by moving my money into a new account at a different bank and filling out applications to get my own place. Within a week, my bank account was drained and closed, and each of the applications I sent in was declined because of a negative rental history.
I don’t have a rental history. I went from living with Grams, to a college dorm, to living with Matt.
At that time, I had almost eighty thousand dollars in my account because that was when I still had an in-office job that paid well, and since Matt paid for the condo, my money was mostly untouched. But he took it all without a second thought about what it would do to me. Eighty thousand dollars is not much to him, but it was everything to me.
That was when I found out just how mean and vindictive Matt could be. I don’t know how he did it, he knows a lot of people, but for weeks he was sabotaging any move I made to get away from him. He followed through with the threats he made tome the day I left him; he tried to make it impossible for me to live without him.
I almost let him win that day. I got in my car intending to crawl back to him so I would have a place to sleep that night. But everything in me was screaming not to go back, not to let him break me.
With my heart beating so hard, it could break a rib, I sat in my car trying to figure out my next steps. Could I sleep in my car? With no money to pay for my hotel anymore, it was my car or go back to Matt. I chose to sleep in my car. It took me a few days and quite a bit of deception, but I set up a false online profile that I’ve been living through since then.
Apparently, he found it.
All the editing jobs in my queue are gone; my damn queue is gone, including the contact information for the authors sending me their manuscripts. My mind can barely keep up with the panic that is making it hard to breathe. Oh God, my payment center is gone, too. I don’t keep money there; it’s just where online payments go when I get paid for a job. I always move it quickly, but, fuck! My outstanding compensation has nowhere to go. I’ve lost that.
The last bit of my identity is gone. As of right now, I’m a waitress in a bar living in a fancy hotel. I don’t even have my car. With a deep breath, I fight the claws that are hooked into me and trying to pull me into a dark hole of despair.
