I don’t hear Tanner come home until he’s right behind me. I whirl around. His face is inches from mine and he’s staring right at me, clutching a box I’d forgotten about.
Have still forgotten about, as long as Tanner’s looking at me like this.
It’s not unusual for him to be intense. Over the last week or so, I’ve learned there’s no middle ground with this man. He’s either engaged or he’s totally not. And right now, his dark gaze is piercing holes into me.
I open my mouth. Shut it again when nothing comes out.
Tanner sucks in a breath, then the box is on the coffee table, and his hands are on me. He lays his blazing palms on my back and turns me around. “I thought you were kidding,” he whispers.
It takes me a heart-pounding moment to realize he’s zeroed in on the scars that litter my left side. I think back to the one and only time we’ve talked about them. The brief exchange echoes in my head and I can see how he might’ve come to the conclusion that I was taking the royal piss. Surfer or not, it’s an unlikely story.
“I wasn’t kidding. I’m not that funny.”
“You’re funny enough.” His voice is still low enough to seem reverent. “How far down do they go?”
“You want to see?”
He nods. And I resign myself to pulling my pants down in front of him for all the wrong reasons.
I drop the towel and edge my waistband over my hips, revealing the mutant scars, inch by inch. The worst is on my thigh—it’s the one with actual teeth marks, and usually the point where most people back away in horror, or leer enough to make me want to die.
Tanner does neither.
He leans forward and slides his hand from the small of my back, over my hip, and down my thigh, tracing the raised flesh, apparently oblivious to the effect his touch has on me. How he can’t hear my thumping heart I have no fucking clue, but I’m glad he can’t. My snatched breath is embarrassing enough.
“Does it still hurt?”
I force myself to face him. “Not more than I’ve already told you. It’s just a bit tight sometimes.”
“I’ll bet. He really wanted to eat you, huh?”
“So I heard. I don’t really remember.”
Tanner still has his hands on me. He reclaims them and seems to return to his senses. He straightens, leaving me to cover myself and reel in silent turmoil at the invisible handprints he’s left on my skin.
He steps away, and looks as though he wants to say something. But he doesn’t speak. Just gives me a soft smile, and leaves the apartment again.
* * *
Jax
“He’s not being mean to you, is he?” Eve slides a burger across the table of the hole-in-the-wall joint she’s deemed an acceptable place for me to buy her dinner with the last few dollars in my checking account. I’m pretty sure she’s chosen the cheapest place in Vermont, but if she’s happy, so am I.
“Tanner’s not mean to me. I don’t see him much, and when I do he’s pretty fucking sound.”
That’s one way of describing the charged encounters I’ve shared with Tanner. He works a lot, and so do I, so we tend to be ships that pass in the night, but I’ve come to live for the early morning coffees and late night snacks we share when both of us are awake. Tanner makes me feel things I can’t recall ever feeling before, about myself as much as him. He listens to me, and I like it, which is the weirdest thing, cos I don’t usually feel much like talking.
At least, I never used to.
He’s also a massive help with the work I’m trying to do on the Black Claw trails. This morning I woke up to find he’d come home from work and circled the map with alternative spots to mount the static cameras that aren’t picking much up. I haven’t had a chance to thank him yet. Maybe later, if he comes upstairs before two a.m.
“So…” Eve says when we’ve both made short work of the Vermont cheddar cheese burgers this place is famous for. “If Tanner’s being so nice to you, why did you tell me you were annoyed with me on the phone?”
I laugh. “I was taking the piss, mate. But you could’ve told me Tanner was your boyfriend’s brother. Your boyfriend hates me. How did you know Tanner wouldn’t too?”
Eve pinches my fries and eats half of them in three bites. “Number one, Gabriel doesn’t hate you. He gave you one bad look a gazillion years ago. Number two, Tanner’s not a giant man-child like his brother. If he was going to hate someone, it would be for a better reason than his brother told him to.”
“So why are you in love with the moody brother, then?”
