“Had to be in order to get them to believe.” He hesitated.
“And the woman.” George tilted her head back to get a good look at him. “Was she someone you loved?”
“Jesus,” he said. “No. No, I didn’t love her, which is so much worse. She was…” He turned his face away. “She was nobody.”
“What were you doing at the bot—”
“Rival club attacked us.” He leaned away from her. “Why am I doing this, George? Telling you this shit? I’m looking back at my life, and it’s like this big hunk of swiss cheese, you know? Only instead of air, it’s full of huge, black holes. And no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I work to push those holes away, I get sucked back in, over and over again, every single goddamned night.” Clay rolled slightly, trying to rid himself of George’s weight; she let him. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. You’re just too… I’m just this big black hole, and you’re so full of sunshine. What if all this shit rubs off on you?”
She opened her mouth to respond, but he stopped her, shook his head as if to clear it, and went on through tightly clenched teeth.
“Something I need to tell you, George.”
She stilled. After everything he’d just laid at her feet, his tone of voice said this was worse. “Okay,” she said reluctantly.
“I watched you. Before.”
“What?”
“Stood out there in the woods across the street. Watched over you.” He laughed, a hard, regretful sound, and something uncomfortable shimmered down George’s back.
“You watched me?”
“God, it’s even worse out loud, isn’t it? It was… It’s such a bad world, you know? And after you got attacked by those little thugs, I…I couldn’t stand the idea of you being on your own, with no idea of all the shit out there. So I came here and made sure you didn’t get hurt again.”
“Have you done this before? With other women?”
He let out another harsh laugh. “No. Apparently, I’ve only recently turned to the dark side.”
As understanding dawned, everything inside of George softened, opened up. What must it be like to be this man, walking around with the weight of the world on his shoulders?
“Every night, George. It’s wrong, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I just wanted to make sure you were safe. I couldn’t stand to see you get hurt again.”
George swallowed back that image of this man standing sentinel in front of her house, doing the only thing he apparently knew how to do—taking care of people, saving them. Just not himself, it turned out. He needed someone else to do that for him.
He looked devastated when she took his cheeks between her hands. “It’s okay,” she said, granting him the absolution he couldn’t give himself. “Let me take care of you, Clay. Let me…let me hold you. Will you do that? Will you just let me hold you tonight?”
He nodded—this big, hard, uncompromising man—and once the incomprehension left his face, the hope she saw there was so bright, so new, so clearly against the grain that it nearly broke her heart.
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16
George awoke on her bedroom floor and unwound herself carefully from An—No, Clay’s arms. ATF Agent Clay Navarro.
She considered trying to rouse him and get him to move to the bed but decided against it. Best to leave him there, where he seemed to be getting actual rest, as opposed to whatever he’d suffered through while they’d lain on the mattress.
Quietly, she moved around, gathered the things she’d need for work, took a quick shower, fed and released the animals, and left, feeling…
Lord, what would you call this sensation? Giddy, certainly. Fulfilled, yes. But not quite happy. Satisfied but not content. Something was missing, something she’d forgotten about, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
She was the first to arrive at the clinic, her brain fully occupied with thoughts of Clay as she set up for her patients and shifted gears in her mind—preparing to face a day of work when all she really wanted to do was help him tackle his demons.
The day dragged by, the usual medical conundrums failing to fascinate her the way they normally did—the way they should—and all she wanted was to get back home.
To him.
If he was still there.
