CHAPTER TWENTY
Thia
“I can’t go in there,” I said, stopping just short of the front porch steps, my arms crossed over my bare chest.
“Needle and thread,” Bear said, wincing, still holding my bloodied shirt over his shoulder. “Where would I find it?” he asked and I was relieved he wasn’t going to force me inside.
“Sewing room off the kitchen, right on the left. Mama kept that stuff in a tackle box in the draw next to her Singer.”
Bear disappeared into the house, emerging a few minutes later with my mom’s entire tackle box. “No lights,” Bear said, tucking his lighter, which he had been using to guide his way through the dark house, into the pocket of his jeans. Of course there were no lights. The bill was past due before my parents’ deaths, and the dead don’t pay the electric bill. Most of the time, in our house, neither did the living.
He tossed me a blue tank top that he’d gotten from my room and I hurried to cover myself with it. “Thank you,” I said. Bear’s response was a small grunt.
I opened the toolbox on the porch and picked out a flashlight. I clicked the button and thankfully it came to life. “You’ve been here all day and you haven’t gone in yet?” Bear asked, sitting on the top step with his back to me. I shined the light down as Bear picked out what he needed from the tackle box.
“I didn’t plan on coming here at all.”
“Then why come back here?” he asked, pouring vodka from a bottle that I didn’t notice he’d come out with onto the thread. He handed the bottle to me. “Pour this on the back of my shoulder.”
I grabbed the bottle and using the flashlight I was finally able to get a good look at Bear’s wound. He was right it was clean through, but it was much deeper than I’d thought. “Shit,” I said, dropping the flashlight. “Just pour it on, Ti and tell me why you’re here if that wasn’t your plan.”
I shined the light on his wound and for some reason found myself closing my eyes as I tipped the bottle over and poured the alcohol directly into his wound. Every muscle in Bear’s body tensed. “Ti, speak. Now,” Bear said through gritted teeth. He grabbed the bottle from my hand and poured the rest over the hole in the front of his shoulder, bracing his hand on the ledge of the front step he tore off a chunk of the old rotted wood. When he was done he tossed the wood into the yard and set down the bottle, handing me the needle and thread.
“Sheriff Donaldson isn’t in until the afternoon. I was going to go see him, but then I ended up here and I got…distracted.” Distracted was a good term for Ben Carson and his audacity to even step foot onto the grove.
“You were going to confess?” Bear asked, the anger seeping back into his voice. He crossed his arms over his thighs and leaned forward so I could have better access to his wound. I set the flashlight on the banister and using the only stitch I remembered that my mama had taught me I pulled Bear’s skin as close together as possible and tried to pretend it wasn’t his flesh and muscle I was putting back together, but a thick quilt or tough leather.
“Yeah, I thought it would be best to lay it all out, take whatever I had coming to me. My friend Buck is the deputy, figured maybe they’d cut me some slack. It’s not like if I go to prison anyone would miss me. The world would still turn. Nobody would even know I was gone.”
“I would.”
“Yeah, you would know I was gone, but you’d be happy to be rid of me,” I said bitterly.
“Ti…” Bear started. I stopped breathing, waiting to hear what he had to say. “Aaaahhhh,” he grunted as I dug the needle in deeper than I’d anticipated.
“Sorry,” I whispered, thinking that maybe I should remember that I was sewing a person after all.
“I got a lawyer for you,” Bear said, surprising me. “Last one I wanted to call, but she’ll do right by you.”
“You did what?”
“I got a lawyer, a bitch of a woman. If the devil wore fancy suits and wore red lipstick it would be Bethany Fletcher. She’s good though. Right now she’s sorting through all this shit. Making calls and digging in a little deeper into your case. Right now you’re only wanted for questioning, you’re not under arrest. You bolted before I had a chance to tell you.”
“You repaired the door, but you left it unlocked. I figured you were telling me to go,” I said honestly.
“I was telling you that you weren’t a fucking prisoner,” he corrected. “I thought you’d fucking listen and do what you’re told. I see now that was a mistake and don’t worry I won’t make it again. I should have listened to King and cuffed you to the fucking bed.” His entire body stiffened and my needle stilled, unable to make progress into his muscle.
I ignored his threat to cuff me, and focused on my task. “I know it’s hard, but try not to tense up, it will just make the pain worse.”
“Oh yeah?” Bear asked, sounding amused. “Where did you learn that?” His muscles relaxed slightly and the needle moved in and out with more ease making quicker work of putting him back together.
I smiled, recalling the memory. “Dr. Hartman told me that when he fixed up my knee. My brother Jesse and my friend Buck and I were practicing casting the new reels we’d gotten for Christmas one year. Well, they weren’t brand new, but they were new to us.”
“You got water this far inland?” Bear asked.
“Oh yeah, we got a pond in the middle of the grove, deep one too. Every once in a while Mr. Miller used to stock it with stuff he caught on one of his trips to the lake. But that day we weren’t practicing at the pond. We were on dry land, just out back in the clearing. We set up hola-hoops on the ground for targets and weighted down our lines. It was good practice too, but looking back I guess we didn’t need the hooks. I walked a little too close behind Buck when he was about to cast and caught a hook to the knee.” I stretched out my leg onto the front step so Bear could see the long scar that ran from the top of my knee to the bottom. “He didn’t realize he hooked me and kept going, tore the skin and the hook right out of my knee. Twelve stitches,” I said, pulling my leg back.
Bear held out his left hand and pointed to a scar between his thumb and index finger. “Same injury. Different friend. We were probably about sixteen and in this little dingy doing some inshore fishing. If we caught a few red fish sometimes we sold them to one of the restaurants on the other side of the causeway for a few bucks. Sometimes they were just good eating. But the only thing we caught that day was a buzz and about an inch of skin off my hand.”
“I’m done on this side,” I said, biting off the thread and tying it off in a series of unbreakable knots. I rethreaded the needle and knelt on the step to the side of Bear. It was an awkward position that had me almost teetering off the edge and he noticed, because he grabbed my forearms and spread his legs, pulling me in between and resting my elbows on his thighs, he released my arms and his hands came around to rest on the small of my back.
“Better,” he said, looking right into my eyes. I was all too aware of his gaze as I started to close off the wound, which was smaller in the front then it was in the back. He watched me as I worked, the edge of his beard brushed against my skin, his breath warm against my neck sending tingles between my thighs.
I needed to concentrate on my stitching before I hurt him again. “There was a picture in the apartment of you when you were younger. You and King with another boy wearing a bow tie. Was that Preppy?”
Bear leaned forward, resting his nose in the crook of my neck and nodded, his lips and beard setting my skin on fire.
So much for concentrating.
I cleared my throat. “Does he live in Logan’s Beach?” I asked, as I finished the last stitch. The thread was short after stitching both the front and back of his shoulder. I had to close my mouth around the thread, my lips flush against his skin as I cut it with my teeth, resisting the urge to taste him with my tongue, before tying it off like I’d done on the other side. I blew on his skin to ease some of the pain and Bear stood up, catching me before I tumbled down the steps and setting me back onto my feet.
“He’s dead,” Bear said, picking up the bottle of vodka and pouring it over both sides of his wound, hissing between his teeth.
That was the end of our personal conversation, after which Bear turned all business. By the time he’d asked how deep the pond in the middle of the grove was and tested the tractor on the side of the house to see if it was running, I was starting to figure out what he’d meant by ‘cleanup.’
After I watched him tie the bodies of his former brothers to what was left of their bikes and sink them into the pond…I had an even better idea.
* * *
Thia
“Sun’s up soon,” Bear said, looking off into the distance to where the pink had just started to invade the night sky. He pulled out his phone and pushed a few buttons, his lips moving silently as he read something over, shoving his phone back into his pocket when he was done. He hopped down from the tractor and came around to my side, about to help me down.
I rolled my eyes. I’d been jumping on and off that tractor since I was in diapers. Bear stalked toward me, backlit by the rising sun he was dirty, sweaty and muddy to all hell but he was surrounded with a halo of light like he was an angel from hell. “Bethany messaged me. She arranged for you to be questioned by the sheriff at her office in Coral Pines. He wanted to do it tomorrow, but she managed to push him off for another forty eight hours because she wants to meet with you first and go over some things.”
“What kind of things?” I asked.
“Your story,” Bear said. “She wants to make sure you say the right thing and that you know how to answer his questions.”
“What right thing?” I asked, following him around to the side of the house where he unraveled the hose. “I killed my mom after she killed my dad. That’s all there is to it.”
He let out a frustrated sigh and held up the end of the hose with the nozzle, searching for the spigot.
I stomped over to where the hose bib was hidden by a thorny bush and turned on the water.
“When are you going to learn to stop questioning me and fucking listen? Your story,” he said, closing the distance between us, “will be whatever Bethany tells you it is.”
“When are you going to learn that I don’t like being told what to do?” I crossed my arms over my chest and Bear adjusted the nozzle, testing the spray in the grass.
His eyes burned with anger, a warning not to continue to argue with him. Fine. I won’t argue.
But that didn’t mean I was agreeing with him either.
“You said the sheriff isn’t in office until the afternoon?” he asked.
“Yeah not until two or three,” I said. “Buck might be around, but that’s it for Jessep, just the two of them.”
“Good. My bike’s not in the worst shape, but I need a couple of parts. We can make a quick run at first light and head back to Logan’s Beach.” My stomach chose that moment to let out an embarrassingly loud growl.
How long had it been since I’d eaten? Then I remembered, not since lunch with Grace and Ray.
“And we have to get you some food,” Bear added. My cheeks reddened.
“Wait, you want me to come back with you? Why?”
“You ask too many questions,” Bear growled, unbuckling his jeans he gave me no warning before pushing them down to the grass and stepping out of them. He turned the hose on himself, rinsing off the events of the night.
I turned around because I wasn’t sure what else to do or where else to look. “I ask, because I want to know,” I said with a huff, the image of Bear’s naked ass burned into my mind. My nipples hardened and something inside of me clenched. I didn’t need to go back to Logan’s Beach with him, I needed to check myself into a mental facility for teenagers who can’t keep their hormones in check. “Why did you come after me? Why did you want to make sure the MC didn’t kill me?” And because I couldn’t resist and because my mouth was running away with me, “And why did you kiss me?”
I waited for him to answer me but nothing. I heard the spray of the hose turn off and was about to turn around to see if he walked away when I felt his heat against my back. His wet heat.
His naked wet heat.
He pulled me up against him, his strong chest on my back and rock hard thighs against my ass. With one hand splayed under the hem of my shirt against my bare stomach he breathed into my ear, “Stop asking so many questions,” he said, the tip of his tongue barely making contact with my skin but sending a flush of wetness between my legs.
“Just answer me why,” I said. It came out as a whisper.
As a beg.
Bear chuckled and it vibrated against my neck. I leaned into him, my lower back coming into contact with his growing erection.
“Do you really want to know?” he asked, tracing the underside of my breast with his calloused thumb. “Do you really want to know why I kissed you? Why I kissed your sweet pussy? Do you want to know that I can still taste you on my tongue right now and I’m fucking salivating for more? Do you want to know that you were tight around my tongue and I imagined the entire time that it was my cock you were squeezing with your virgin cunt?” he asked, rocking against me.
“Yes,” I begged. “Yes, I want to know.”
“Because, I fucking wanted to,” he said and my stomach damn near flipped out of my body. He punctuated his words by nipping at my neck before pushing me forward and turning the hose on me.
The cold stream dousing the fire of lust that had started to build in my belly.
“Son of a bitch,” I screamed, running toward the spray of the water, intent on killing him and adding him to the bodies at the bottom of the pond.
He tossed me the hose and I caught it by the neck. “Clean up.”
“You could have just said that,” I spat.
“Now where would be the fun in that?” He bent down and picked up his jeans off the ground, shrugging them back on. I covered my eyes with my hands but couldn’t help peeking through my fingers to catch another glimpse of his round and tight ass.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware this was fun,” Bear said. “You can take your hand down now and stop pretending you weren’t looking.”
“I wasn’t looking!” I lied. Bear chuckled to himself disappearing back up the steps to the house as I finished hosing off, wishing that the water was colder.
Much, much colder.