The day I walked into the Harlow’s living room and my eyes fell on Marley, my heart started beating like it had never beat before. It was like a shock to my system, the part of my system that only saw life as something to get through. Until that day, I lived life as shallow as possible, avoiding anything that might touch my heart.
Marley’s comment about me and Mason wandering, I knew she was talking about women, and I know she probably questions my motives. Rightfully so, I’ve never cared what other people thought of me. Until now. What she doesn’t know is that the day I met her, there were no other women. My heart burst out of my chest, taking my dick with it, and wrapped itself up in a fucking bow, laying itself at her feet.
She’s far from my next conquest.
She’s it.
It’s been her since that day and I don’t think I could ever go back to my empty life, jumping from woman to woman and looking for any kind of stimulus to make me feel alive. She makes me feel alive. I’ll walk through fucking fire to make sure she’s happy.
An enormous crash accompanied by clattering comes from inside the stable and I run to find Marley. She’s sitting on the floor like she fell backward onto her ass with small bags of feed, canisters of supplements, and toppled feed buckets all around her. At her feet is one of the two shelves from the wall by the feed stall, the screws still in the anchors that secured them.
“You okay?” Squatting behind her, I loop my arm around her waist and pull her onto her feet, her back pressed against my front, and take a step back. I don’t think she realizes it, but her fingers have wrapped around my forearm as she looks at the damage in front of her in shock.
“It just fell when I put the supplement canister back on it.” Her eyes are wide as they move over the mess in front of her and then up to the wall.
“Marley!” Gray, Mason, and Mr. Harlow are yelling as they run across the yard to her stable.
Without looking away from the mess, she yells, “I’m okay, in here.”
When she realizes I’m holding her to me, she looks down at her hands on my arm. I haven’t loosened my grip on her, and then her head swings to the side to look over her shoulder. Her head tips back as she looks up into my eyes and whispers, “I’m okay.”
Giving her a nod, I let go of her just as Gray, Mason, and Mr. Harlow run into the stable. They seem to move in unison as they all look over Marley to make sure she is okay, and then their gazes move over the mess on the floor.
“What the hell happened?” Mr. Harlow growls as he is looking over the jumble on the floor. If you didn’t know that he thinks smoking is a disgusting habit, you would think by the sound of his voice that he smoked two packs a day his whole life.
Gray steps over the mess and holds his hand up to stopMarley when she tries to follow him. “I got this, you stay over there away from the screws.”
She stops and looks at her dad. “I don’t know, I just set the canister on it and it all fell.”
When Gray moves the shelving so he can get a better look at the wall, a long screw still affixed to the shelf slides toward Marley’s leg. Mason reaches for her to pull her away, but I grab her first and pull her toward me. It wasn’t done intentionally to keep her away from him, we saw the shelving move toward her leg at the same time and reached for her, but when he looks at me, his eyebrows pull together and he narrows his eyes.
I meet his stare head on, no use pretending it didn’t just happen.
Running his hand over the wall, Gray turns to his dad. “It looks like they pulled away, I think there may be some water damage from the fire.”
“Damn.” Marley whispers and her eyebrows pull together as she looks at the mess. “Just another thing to fix, I feel like I’ve done nothing but fix things since the fire.”
“I’ll help you fix it.” Every head in the room turns to me, and I look from Mason to his dad to Gray. “What?”
Gray stands up and slides his hands in his pockets. “I know you must have a home or family or friends to get back to. We can take care of things here.”
Gray’s baseline is grumpy as hell for a thirty-four-year-old man, but I guess after losing his mom when he was a kid and then losing his wife in a car accident seven years ago, I try like hell to give him slack. But I’m not going anywhere, I’ll be wherever Marley is if there is any hint of danger.
Just as I am about to make a crack about feeling like he’s the closest family I’ve got, we hear tires on the gravel by the main house. We all turn and go to the big open door of the stable.
There is a flower van parked in front of the house and we see Kinley on the porch signing for the enormous bouquet and what looks like a pretty wrapped box.
“No.” Marley whispers and starts walking toward the house, the rest of us are hot on her heels. “Kinley!” She yells and we all pick up our pace. “Kinley, put it down.” I know we are all thinking the same thing. What’s in the box? And who sent it?
The delivery guy is walking back to his car and Kinley turns to us, a smile splitting her face. “Aren’t they pretty?” She yells.
“Put them down, Kinley!” Gray yells this time, his deep dad voice bellows across the yard, and he starts running, we all follow suit.
Confusion crosses her face for a moment before she bends over and carefully places the round crystal vase holding a big spring bouquet on the porch and then sets the box next to it. As she sets the box down, her smile falls, and she looks at her fingers, her eyebrows pinched together.
Her head snaps up to her dad as we get to the porch and she holds her fingers up for us to see, the tips of three of her fingers have blood on them and her face is turning green. Mr. Harlow moves around us and grabs her by the shoulders, pulling her away with him.
Out of habit, Mason and I take point and move around the box like we would any questionable object in the field. Our movements are orchestrated as we get closer. The paper in one corner of the box is turning crimson as blood soaks into it, the overflow is in a tiny pool on the wood floor next to the corner.
