Havoc Read online

  “You were running a fever last night.” She walks over to me, stands on her tiptoes, and puts her palm against my forehead. “You’re still a little warm. How are you feeling? Did you sleep okay after you woke up?”

  “I woke up? I don’t remember, why do you ask?” Something in her tone and the lack of eye contact makes me wonder what the hell I did.

  “You had a nightmare,” she admits quietly.

  I capture her hand in mine as she tries to pull away. “The nightmares sometimes happen when I’m sick. They aren’t of one incident that happened while I was over there, it all melds together. When I’ve worn myself out and I’ve had some stressful situations going on, they happen. I’m sorry you had to see it. You take care of me?”

  She grins. “As much as you let anyone take care of you. You were a little out of it last night, though. You needed someone to take care of you.”

  Rolling her hand around in mine, I finish so that she’s palm up and I’m tracing the lines with the tip of my finger. Maybe it’s the fever, maybe it’s the fact she looks so damn cute and sexy in my shirt, or hell – maybe it’s been building for a while, but I can’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth. “I like it when you take care of me.”

  Her eyes meet mine, before they pull away and she bites her bottom lip, looking pensive and unsure. “I like taking care of you,” she reaches up, hugging me around the neck, “and I like when you, in turn, take care of me.”

  A slow smile spreads across my face, as I push her slightly away from my body. I’m still not feeling great and I don’t want her to get sick, but I also don’t want her too far away from me. “Why don’t we go to the kitchen where we can find something we can both eat, and you tell me why in the hell Ryan and the guys were here?”

  She looks pleased at what I’ve suggested and I want to reach around, pat myself on the back. There’s been so little for her to be happy about, and for me to put a smile on her face? Right now it kinda means everything to me.

  No woman has ever taken care of me, except my mom. There’s never been anyone in my life who stuck around that long, lived with me, or worried when I had a fever. The one woman I’d thought would, left me while I was in a war zone a million miles away. Knowing that Leighton stayed with me last night, obviously stayed with me this morning, does things to me that I don’t want to investigate too closely.

  She motions for me to have a seat at the counter while she grabs stuff to cook and medicine for me. Opening the kitchen curtain wider, she points outside. “This is why they came over. Well that, and the fact no one could get hold of either of us. Apparently Ernie had already gotten himself into a tizzy, thinking my family had gotten to us.”

  I shake my head. “Well if this doesn’t prove to you that you have made friends that care about you, regardless of what your family has done, Leigh, I don’t know what will. Ernie was worried, and he got people to come check on us.”

  The way she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and holds it there, makes me wonder if she’s going to cry. “It was very nice of them.” She forces out in a tone that tells me she might cry.

  “Don’t let that make you cry, they care about you.”

  She turns around to look at me, truth in her eyes. I get the feeling she doesn’t want to say exactly what she’s thinking, but silently I encourage her. I want to know everything that goes on behind her eyes, in her head, that she keeps to herself. “It’s been a long time since anybody’s cared about me.”

  Right now, it’s time for me to man up. This woman has been my wife for months, and she doesn’t think anybody cares for her. Fuck the sickness, fuck the scratchy throat, and fuck self-preservation. Maybe I’ve been holding back, but over the last twenty-four hours she’s shown me how much I mean to her, and I can’t let it go unnoticed. “I care about you, Leigh. Please know, I care a whole hell of a lot about you. I’m beginning to think I haven’t been good in showing you that.”

  “That goes both ways, tough guy.”

  Shuffling over to where she stands, I circle my hands around her waist, bend with my knees, and put her on the counter. When she spreads her knees, I step in between them. Turning my head, I cough, while she giggles. “Romantic, huh?”

  She shrugs. “Everything with us has happened in such an odd way, Holden, that I figure it’s all going to be ass-backward. Besides, I’m glad to hear you coughing after the way you were wheezing last night. We still need to get you some medicine.”

  Making a move to jump down and grab me that medicine, causes me to put my hands on her knees, tightening the grip. “Medicine can wait.” I reach up, caressing her jawline with the palms of my hands. “I care about you, I care so much about you, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to protect you.”

  “Protection and love are two different things,” she whispers, and I can finally see her dilemma. She wants to be loved. Don’t we all?

  “Love comes naturally, and in its own time, Leigh. Like you said, we’ve done things completely ass-backward. I’ve never loved anyone besides my family before, but I can say with certainty I love my brothers in the MTF. I know without a shadow of a doubt I care very deeply for you.” She blows out a breath. “Probably shouldn’t even admit to that. We don’t know where we’re going with this, do we?”

  “No,” she loops her arms around my neck, “we don’t, but I know where we’ve been. And we’re light years away from where we started. Whether we want to admit it or not, Holden, I think we’re both in a bit deeper than we ever meant to be.”

  “I think you’re right about that, so from this moment on, I want you to know something.” I lean in, so that our foreheads are touching and brace myself for being one hundred percent, totally honest. “When I married you, it was for real, it was for life, and I didn’t plan on it being anything different. Maybe it’s time I start treating you like my wife.”

  Her deep inhale of breath gets me, because I’m unsure what it means. “I’ve always been the kind of woman who only wanted to be married once,” she admits softly.

  My mouth hitches up in a smile. “Then I think we do know where we’re going. We just have to let life take us there, and not impede what’s happening naturally. No one is here to judge us, because no one lives our lives but us, Leigh. We don’t have to answer to anyone except God and each other.”

  “Okay.” She leans in, kissing me on the cheek.

  “Okay?” I tilt her head up so that I can see her eyes. So she can look straight into mine as she speaks. “I wanna act how I want to act with you; I don’t want to temper my words, touches, or actions. Whatever happens from this moment forward, know I do it because I want to, not because I feel fucking obligated by a piece of paper and a ring on your finger.”

  “Same here.” She tightens her legs around my waist. “I’ve wanted to do this for a really long time, the cold you have be damned.”

  And I’m speechless as she pulls me tighter into the circle of her legs, grabs my shirt and hauls me up to her mouth. She kisses me like she did that night in the bar – there is no shyness, no trying to pretend like she doesn’t enjoy it. All I can feel and taste are want and the sweetness of her. Her tongue tangles with mine and I feel a tickle in my throat as I pull away. “Gotta cough.”

  She laughs as I turn away from her. “Let me get you some medicine, for real this time. I’m not doing it because I want to avoid a conversation. You really need it.”

  I don’t fight or argue with her as she goes about pouring me some orange juice and putting some pills on the counter. “It’s going to take a while for everything to defrost. How about we stay here? Curled up on the couch?”

  I hope like hell she says yes.

  “Sounds like a damn good idea to me. Let me fix us some food, then you and I have a date with some Netflix, the couch, and a blanket. Naps today are going to be a priority.”

  Nothing in the world has ever sounded so good to me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Leighton

  After H
olden got sick, things changed between us. I count myself lucky to have not gotten whatever it was he had. I smile to myself as I think how the past few weeks have gone. I’ve stopped hiding behind the fear I had he was going to leave when things seemed to straighten out for me, and I think he’s starting to smile more. One thing I do know is we’re starting to touch more, becoming comfortable with each other in a way we’ve never been before.

  Take now, for instance. We’re on separate shifts for the next few days, and have been for the last couple. I’m getting up as he’s entering the part of sleep where he’s the deepest, and he’s not even at home at night when I’m going to sleep. I’ve started something this week though, that’s totally making me go to work with a smile on my face every morning.

  A couple of days ago, when I woke up, Holden reached his hand out to me, clasping our fingers together, pulling me to him in his sleep. At first, I assumed he was awake, but I realized when I looked at him and his eyes were closed, eyelashes brushing those freckled cheeks, that he was gone to the world. Because he pulled me so hard, I ended up straddling his waist, and I couldn’t help but to lean down and nuzzle against him. He rearranged his body, and took hold of my hips so that I sat more comfortably, and then turned his head so that we could kiss. And when I say kiss, I mean there was tongue involved, and I trailed a path to his neck, where he opened up to me so I could get a few licks in.

  Then as quickly as it happened, it ended, and he tapped me on the ass before sending me on my way. After I got up and wondered if I’d imagined the small moment we had together, he smirked in his sleep, and then turned over, grabbing hold of my pillow.

  Since then, it’s been a ritual. One I’m absolutely loving.

  * * *

  Weekend breakfast rush is over and lunch rush is still an hour or so from getting started, as I glance around The Café and see that all the work I need to do is done. “I’m gonna go over there and get some work done,” I tell Violet as I nod to the booth in the back.

  “Go for it, if someone comes in, I got them.”

  She doesn’t say it, but I can hear the unspoken I could definitely use the money. I wonder what she’s doing with all the money she makes here. I’ve seen the trailer she and her husband live in. Only once, though, when I went to pick her up so she wouldn’t be late. I wouldn’t say it’s the worst place I’ve ever seen, but it’s not the best, and for the life of me, I can’t imagine her living there. It’s not a subject I’m willing to broach with her, because every time I mention her husband, she clams up.

  “I’m going to run this down to the station.” Caleb holds up a pie. “Ernie said he hasn’t sent one down lately, and I wanna see my dad. You want me to tell Holden anything for you?”

  “No.” I grin at the kid. “He’s on nights this week. He’s at home asleep right now.”

  “That must suck.” Caleb looks like he sucked on something sour. “I mean I know it sucks when I can’t see my dad all the time, so when you’re as close as a married couple, that must be hard.”

  “Just wait until you’ve been married for years, kid.” Violet shoots him a wink. “You’ll be wishing you got some time to yourself every once and a while.”

  Caleb wisely decides not to comment before he heads out the door. While my laptop boots up, I take a good look at Violet. “How old are you?” I ask before I can stop it. Sometimes I think we’re close to the same age, other days I think she’s way older than me. It seems to depend on how she and her husband are getting along.

  “Twenty-eight,” she sighs as she has a seat at the table across from the booth I’m sitting in. “Somedays I feel like I’m ninety.”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask her why, but just as I’m about to try and have the conversation I’ve wanted to have with her for a while, the door opens and in walk two women. When I see it’s Whitney and Blaze, along with Stella, I throw them a grin and a wave.

  “Hey!” I smile when Stella’s feet kick as she recognizes me.

  “Leigh!”

  It warms my heart when this little girl says my name. Never in my life have I thought I was maternal, probably because I had no basis for it, but this little girl? With her dark hair turning blonde and her complexion reminiscent of her dad, she makes me want things I’ve never wanted before.

  “You mind if we join you?” Whitney asks as they approach my booth.

  Even though I’ve just spread my stuff out and booted up my laptop, I make room for them. I’ve never been one to have many friends, so the fact these women have invited me into their circle will never be lost on me. “What are you three out doing?”

  Whitney grins as she elbows Blaze. “Blaze needs some hardware, so she asked us to come with her.”

  “Hardware?” I’m so confused.

  Blaze is blushing a color as red as the hair on her head, shushing Whitney. She busies herself handing Stella a piece of paper and some crayons we have sitting on the tables for kids, focusing all her attention on the little girl, who’s perfectly happy and content to be coloring.

  “Nobody is even in here, Blaze. C’mon, she’s our friend, you can tell her what happened. Stop using my daughter to deflect the focus from you.”

  Blaze shoots a glare at Whitney. “I never should have told you. I wouldn’t have if I’d known you’d hold it over my head,” she grumbles, before she turns to me. “I need hardware to fix the bed. Trevor and I broke the bed.”

  I giggle loudly, holding my hand in front of my mouth. “You did what?! I knew Trevor was intense, but…” my shoulders shake as I watch the woman in front of me. She looks like she could let this booth engulf her and not let her go until we’re gone and have forgotten about the info I’ve just learned.

  She clears her throat, a smile playing across her lips. “He’s definitely,” she licks her lips and lets the smile loose, “intense, but I never thought that would happen. It’s been making a noise, it’s metal, and we didn’t think anything about it.”

  Whitney snorts. “Until she ended up being pitched into the wall and sporting a knot on the head, if you know where to look. The best part is what Trevor said to her when the bed broke, even if he is my brother.”

  “What did he say?” I can’t help but ask.

  Blaze obviously isn’t going to answer, but Whitney does instead. “He smacked her ass, told her to get on all fours on the floor because they were going to finish now and worry about the bed later.”

  We’re howling like teenage girls at a slumber party.

  “Would you stahp???” Blaze draws the word out, putting her face in her hands, but winces.

  When she pulls back, I can see a darkening bruise on her forehead. “Oh my word, you did hit the wall.” I get up and walk over to the counter, grabbing a piece of pie before I come back over to my friends. “I think we deserve a piece of pie to commemorate this situation.”

  Whitney grabs her fork, and holds it up as a salute, a saucy smile on her face. “We do, but I also think, Leighton, that you and I need to make it our duties as of today to also break our own beds.”

  I choke on what I have in my mouth. How do I even tell them that Holden and I haven’t done the deed yet? And it’s been bothering me, to be honest, but I have no one to talk to about it. I finally get the piece of pie down, and take a long drink of the water I have sitting in front of me. They look at me, wondering what the hell just happened, and I wonder if I should tell them. I’ve never before had women to talk to. Deciding to rip it off like a band aid, I blurt out. “Holden and I have never had sex.”

  Both of them stop what they’re doing, and it’s actually pretty comical. The forks come to a stop half-way to their mouths and they glance at one another, and then at me, with eyebrows raised.

  “I’m sorry,” Whitney sets the fork down on her plate, “you’re living with that hot specimen of man and you haven’t sampled the goods yet?”

  Both Blaze and I give her an incredulous look.

  “What? It’s not like I don’t notice other hot gu
ys. Just because I’m with Ryan and he’s like sex on a stick doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate other men who are also good looking. And Leighton, baby doll, he’s good looking.”

  Blaze agrees. “Yeah, if I hadn’t met Trevor first, Holden would totally be my type of guy. Dark eyes, dark looks, tattoos and muscles for fucking days…” she trails off. “What?” She glances at us. “I’m making a point for her.” She gestures at me. “Wait,” Blaze stops and tilts her head, “I know what I saw in the back of that ambulance the day he came to get you. You mean to tell me you’ve never done the deed, because the chemistry was flowing off the two of you that day? I thought you’d been lovers for a while,” she admits.

  I’m uncomfortable under this scrutiny, so when Stella reaches for me, I allow her to come into my lap, holding her in front of me like a shield. “No, we’re very attracted to one another, and we’ve done all the other stuff, but we’ve never sealed the deal, so to speak.”

  “Oh but the other stuff can be so good.” Whitney flashes me a wink. “Sometimes the other stuff means more, ya know? Like he takes the time to make sure you get there before he does. Holden does that for you, right?”

  I think back to the times we’ve been together, and I know he’s always made sure I’m taken care of – in every aspect of our lives together. “Yeah, he does, but I want more.”

  “Then tell him,” Blaze says it like it’s that simple.

  “I’m scared to, I’ve never been the type of girl to go for what I want. I mean most of my life I was surrounded by men who didn’t give two shits about me, they just wanted the things I could do.” I realize quickly how that sounds. “I don’t mean sexually, I mean I’m smart with books and numbers. I know how to keep track of things, and I can normally talk someone into doing something they don’t want to do. Not really proud of that, but I can be persuasive.”

  “Then be persuasive with your husband.” Whitney takes another bite of the pie I seem to have completely forgotten.