Chapter 35

Pacey

 

 

“Come on, love. Let’s get you out of here,” I said, tucking Juliana under my arm and loving the feel of her soft body at my side. It had been hours since the police arrived at the farmhouse, old Officer Reginald gaping and apologizing profusely and repeatedly to all of us.

We’d given our statements on the scene, then were asked to meet the police back at the station. They’d proceeded to question us for hours, apparently having been after Jeremiah Anton for years. Tugger, the boys and I were congratulated heartily, then thanked and offered handshakes.

I never let go of Juliana, not for a single second, and I wasn’t planning on letting her out of my sight anytime soon. She was struggling to keep her eyes open though, and it was time to get my girl home. After I got her checked out at the hospital.

“Are we,” Juliana yawned, raising her hand to cover her mouth and rubbing her eyes as I led her to my truck. “Sorry, are we going home yet or do we need to do something else before they let us go?”

“We’re going. They’re done with us for now.” We would come back if they needed us to, but Juliana had endured enough for one day. Reginald told me he’d be in touch and had someone bring my truck over.

“Thank God. I need to sleep for days,” she said, suppressing another yawn as she climbed into the passenger seat.

“You will,” I told her. “Right after we get you checked out at the hospital.”

She sighed and shook her head, still declining medical treatment. Just as she had been all day. “I’m fine, really. It’s only my wrists and ankles that are a little chafed. They’re superficial wounds, and nothing time and a little ointment won’t heal.”

I shot her a sidelong look as I started the truck and drove out of the police station parking lot. “Are you sure? I can get the doc to come out to my house, too.”

“Your house?” she asked.

“My house,” I insisted. “I’m bringing you to my place where I can watch over you, and protect you. Unless you have any objections?”

“I don’t,” she said, but her voice was soft and uncertain. Sucking her lower lip into her mouth, she looked at me curiously. “Are you sure that’s okay? I mean, you don’t have to do that.”

I reached across the cab for her hand and folded mine over it. “I know I don’t have to, but I want to, very much. If it’s okay with you, that is. If you want to go home, fine. But then we’ll need to stop at my place anyway so I can pick up some things, ‘cause in that case, I’m staying with you.”

“Your place is fine,” she said. “But I’ll need some things from home, too; I don’t even have a toothbrush.”

I raised her hand to my lips and placed a kiss on the back of it. “I’ve taken care of it. The cops let Tugger and the others go hours ago. He has keys and a clicker to my house; he and his wife picked up some basics for you and took it over.”

“You did that for me?” Her eyes were wide and so unbelievably beautiful, even in the near darkness of the cab with tired smudges underneath them.

“There is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you, Jules,” and I meant every single fucking word. “I don’t want you out of my sight; not so soon.”

“I have to go to work in the morning, I can’t just stay home,” she told me, but her heart wasn’t in it. Luckily, I’d already taken care of that as well.

“I put in a call to your boss. They were worried when you didn’t show up this morning; apparently, you’ve never missed a day at work before. He was horrified when I told him what happened to you. He said to take as much time as you need and to get some rest.”

Juliana paused, opening and closing her mouth a few times before she finally spoke. “Is there anything you didn’t think of?”

I didn’t think so, but I needed to know that she was okay with it all. “Too much?”

She squeezed my hand. “No, you—you’re incredible, you know that?”

My lips quirked into a smile that I couldn’t hold back, not that I tried to. “Ditto.”

Juliana went quiet after that. Her hand was still in mine as she fell asleep. We reached my house a few minutes later, and despite every attempt not to wake her, her eyelids fluttered open when I lifted her into my arms.

“What?” she croaked and stiffened until she saw who was carrying her and relaxed against my chest. “Are we here already?”

“We are. Sleep, love. I’ll take care of you,” I promised her, wondering why I couldn’t stop calling her ‘love.’ I knew that I loved her: I was truly, madly, deeply, insanely in love with her. I’d faced that fact already, but I wasn’t a ‘term of endearment’ kind of guy, except with her. She was proving to be the exception to most of my rules, I was learning.

I set her down gently on my bed and found a pair of soft, cotton boxers and one of my favorite T- shirts, helping her change before I tucked her into my bed. It was so absolutely right seeing her there. I crawled into bed with her, holding her close to me.

“Thank you, Pacey,” she whispered, groggily. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, baby,” I whispered back, but her breathing had already evened out. I was still riled up, and though I should’ve been almost as exhausted as her, I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I watched her do it instead. Her hair fell in soft waves across her gorgeous face, her chest rising and falling gently on soft breaths.

She was perfection, this girl. Absolute fucking perfection, and she was all mine. My chest constricted as I thought about how close I’d come to losing her forever. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, actually. It was why I couldn’t sleep.

I’d never been as terrified as I’d been in that farmhouse. Never. I was so fucking scared that I could hardly see straight. I couldn’t lose another woman that I loved to random drug-related violence, and I’d come within a ball-hair breadth of that happening.

I hugged her tighter to my chest, relishing each and every goddamn breath that she took. I couldn’t believe that I’d nearly lost her. Looking down at her, it dawned on me that I couldn’t lose her. I didn’t want to spend a single day without her; I couldn’t live without her.

She’d crawled so deeply into my heart, a heart I’d thought was long dead, blacker than night, and completely impervious, that it felt like she was the half it had been needing to make it whole. And not whole again, entirely whole, for the first time.

At that moment, I realized that I was okay with that. I finally let go of the last bit of guilt I was harboring over May, and I prayed for her forgiveness. I would never forget her, but fuck it, I couldn’t fight my feelings for Juliana anymore.

Strangely, I was okay with that too.

When I finally drifted off to sleep, it was with a feeling of peace and serenity that I hadn’t felt in years. With Juliana in my arms, I slept better than I had since before my last deployment, and finally woke up when the sun was already sitting high in the sky.

My bedside clock told me it was 10:30 a.m. Fuck, when was the last time I’d slept that late?

Juliana still slept soundly beside me. At some point in the night, she had turned to face me, her arm draping around my hips and her face cuddled into my chest. I managed to gently extricate myself from her and kissed her forehead lightly before I headed to the kitchen to make her some breakfast.

While the bacon was sizzling in the pan, I found my phone and dialed the pharmacy to deliver ointment, painkillers, and some more bandages. I gave strict instructions that the delivery person not ring the doorbell and to call me instead. I wasn’t risking anything waking Juliana.

I had sausage, mushrooms, bacon, tomatoes, and a variety of other things in the warming tray, waiting for her to wake. I would make toast and eggs when she did so it would be fresh.

The pharmacy deliveryman arrived about half an hour after I called with everything I’d ordered, including flowers from the pharmacist and a Get Well Soon card with big balloons on it. News was spreading, it seemed.  

I wasn’t surprised. Shit like that didn’t happen in towns like this without word getting out. Exactly which words were coming out, we’d learn soon enough, but that wasn’t my problem or my priority. Juliana and her health were my only concern.

Checking on her about an hour later, I found her yawning and stretching on my bed. Her eyes hit the clock as she rolled over and she sat bolt upright. “Is that really the time?”

“It is,” I told her. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” she lied, then sighed when I gave her a look. “Stiff and sore, but well-rested. Thank you for bringing me here.”

“No problem. You’re staying here as long as you want.” Please let that be forever.

She flushed the most adorable shade of pink and tucked her hair behind her ear. “You sure?”

“Absolutely. In fact, let’s get the movers to move you in here today,” I smiled at her, totally serious.

At first, she must’ve thought I was joking, because she giggled and swatted my arm. I didn’t join in, and her jaw dropped. “You want me to move in, like, for real?”

I nodded and strode over to the bed, the mattress dipping when I sat down next to her. “You don’t need to decide right now, but the offer is on the table, okay?”

“Okay,” she breathed, crawling onto my lap. She clung onto me like a koala bear. I loved it. I loved her, though I had yet to tell her so.

“We should get some food into you. I’ve made breakfast; let me go get us some. Stay here, relax.”

“I’m perfectly capable of walking to the kitchen,” she protested, but I gave her a chaste kiss and bolted to the door, turning only when I reached it.

“Maybe so, but I’m also perfectly capable of bringing food to you.” So I did.

We ate in bed beside one another. While I’d cooked the eggs and toast, I remembered something I’d been wanting to ask her.

“What’s your favorite food in the morning?”

She chewed her bite, took a drink of orange juice, and turned to face me. “You mean except for a fully awesome breakfast in bed like this?”

I nodded. “This included. Just your favorite breakfast.”

“This is first place. Full breakfast will take it every time. Second place would have to go to bagels, cream cheese, and salmon.”

“Fish in the morning?” I laughed.

Juliana’s mouth curled into a radiant smile. “The fact that salmon is a fish is a technicality.”

“I guess.”

“What’s yours?” she asked.

“First place, same as yours. This. Second place is Cheerios.”

“Cheerios?” she giggled, eyeing me quickly before she took another delicate bite of bacon. “Who would’ve thought that the big, tough SEAL would eat Cheerios?”

I puffed out my chest, raising an eyebrow and jokingly asked, “Big, huh?”

Juliana’s melodic laugh drifted to my ears, and I was sure that this was the best damn breakfast I’d ever had. “You know it.”

“Tell me more,” I joked.

That was how it went for the next couple of days. I treated her gently, with kid gloves to a certain extent. I tended to the wounds on her wrists and ankles, told her whatever she wanted to know, listened to whatever she wanted to say. I wasn’t embarrassed that I was waiting on her hand and foot. Tugger agreed that I should take time off until Juliana went back to work.

Being alone with her like this was my own personal slice of heaven. Sure, it would’ve been marginally better if I wasn’t also nursing her back to health in the meantime, but she was model patient. She put up with me slathering her with ointment and changing her bandages as often as I thought necessary.

We talked, we laughed, we joked, and every now and then she cried. The only thing we hadn’t done was fucked. Or made love. Whatever I was supposed to think of it as now.

On Friday afternoon, we were in the kitchen assembling sandwiches for lunch. Juliana was standing next to me, her nose scrunching up adorably as she watched me smear mustard on the bread.

“I think you’re the only person more uncomfortable in the kitchen than I am,” she said.

I caught her hand and spun her around once, then pulled her close to my chest and dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “I’ll take that as a compliment. It means we’re cut from the same cloth.”

Juliana melted slightly into me, then grabbed my face between her hands and kissed the shit out of me. I groaned, taking control of the kiss. I slid my hand to the nape of her neck and held her close, stroking her tongue with mine like I’d been starved for her, which I had been.

I’d been sleeping next to her and holding her, brushing soft kisses to her sweet lips and slapping her butt lightly when she passed me. I was teetering on the fucking edge, but I couldn’t jump and I knew it. As pent-up as I was, she’d been through something awful and traumatic, and I wasn’t going to push her.

I broke the kiss, squeezed my fingers on her hips and stepped away. “We shouldn’t. You’re still in a delicate state.”

She raised her brows. “Hey, Pacey, the 1920’s called, and they want their mindset back. I’m most certainly not delicate.”

“You’ve been to hell and back, love.” She still hadn’t called me out on it, and I was still waiting for the right time to tell her that I loved her, but I saw the way her eyes softened each time I said it. That first day, it had slipped past, as traumatized as she’d been, but she noticed it now. “We shouldn’t rush into it.”

She gave me a long look, brow furrowed as her hazel eyes searched mine. Blue was winning out today. God, I could spend the rest of my life trying to figure out why her eyes looked the way they did at different times.

“Rush into it?” she asked. “What if I want to rush?”

“Then it’s a good thing you’ve got me,” I told her. “I have epic self-control.”

Juliana raised her brow in a challenge, and I found out exactly what that challenge was a few hours later when I entered my bedroom. I’d been working out in the garage, where I had a punching bag and a pull-up bar, but I got to my bedroom only to find her waiting in one of my dress shirts.

She started unbuttoning the shirt as soon as I walked in, quickly revealing that she wasn’t wearing anything else. I practically growled when I realized she was just about naked.

How the fuck was I supposed to resist this?