CHAPTER ELEVEN
Havoc
“You look even better in my clothes this morning.”
Lame. The words I spoke were so lame. Usually I’m much smoother than this. When I woke up, I’d been disoriented, wondering why I was still in bed with it being so light outside. Then bits and pieces of the night before had come back to me, and then I’d made the mistake of trying to swallow and almost come off the bed. Right now, it feels as if there are shards of glass working their way out of my throat and tonsils. Leaning against the wall, I cross my arms over my t-shirt covered chest, surprised at how warm it is in here.
“Sorry.” She ducks her head. “It’s cold out there, and I’ve been helping Ryan salt the porch.”
“Renegade?” I’m more confused than ever. How fucking long was I out for? And why in God’s name are they salting the front porch?
She nods. “Yeah,” she replies, before she reaches down to take her boots off. “Why don’t you come to the kitchen and I’ll fix you something to eat? We need to get some more medicine in you and you need something in your stomach.”
“My throat is killing me,” I admit.
“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.