CHAPTER SEVEN
Leighton
My face burns as I watch Holden and the rest of the MTF guys leave The Café. I guess I’ve been naïve thinking he doesn’t know how I’ve been waking up ninety percent of the time.
It messes with me, since I’ve never really been a sexual person. But Holden? He brings out every carnal thought I’ve ever had as a woman and completely makes me wonder if I even know myself.
“They’re nice.” Violet has a seat next to me at the counter again.
I chew the tip of the pen I have in my hand, a nervous habit I’ve developed over the past few months. “Yeah, they are. One of the best group of guys I’ve ever met in my life.”
“How did you meet your husband?” She asks out of the blue.
It throws me off guard that she doesn’t know, but then I remember she’s new to town, and not everyone is privy to the history of Laurel Springs. I shift in my seat. “My maiden name is Strather, and he’s spent the last few years arresting various male members of my family for making moonshine.”
Her eyes are wide. “You’re related to the Strathers?”
Now I’m uncomfortable and borderline sorry I said anything. Trying to be honest sometimes works for me, other times it gets me into situations like this. “Yeah, my grandfather is Merle, my brother is Brooks.” I purposely leave my dad’s name out. Our relationship has never been good, and I don’t want other people to think I belong to him.
“The one that hit the officer?”
Again I feel the weight of my family on my shoulders and wonder how in the hell Holden and I will ever be able to forget the past and move forward. “Yeah.” I twist my hair around my finger. “He’s paying the price.” I feel the need to stand up for my younger brother. If anything, he had even less of a chance than I did to get out of our family business. He’d been groomed for it since he could walk.
“I’m sorry,” she says as she puts her hand over her mouth. “I’m just in shock; you seem so normal and sweet. You and Holden seem to have such a great marriage.”
“I know.” I grin ruefully. “It’s weird, huh? The head of the Moonshine Task Force marrying a moonshiner’s daughter?”
I let that sink in for a second, reminding myself exactly who we are and why all of this is a bad idea.
“Yeah.” She nods. “But the two of you seem so happy, and you can tell you care for another when you’re together. Maybe you’re kinda like Romeo and Juliet.”
This is news to me, no one’s ever made commentary on mine and Holden’s relationship. “Do we?” I’m dying to know what it looks like from the outside to someone else. And I don’t bother to tell her that Romeo and Juliet died.
She grins, resting her chin on her hand as she looks at me. “Yeah, you do. As soon as he walked through the door, you couldn’t keep your eyes off him. Then after he convinced you to sit in the booth with him, he couldn’t keep his hands off you. It’s sweet, and the chemistry between you is so explosive you can see it just looking at you two.”
For the first time, in possibly ever, I’m going to allow myself to be the woman I’ve never allowed myself to be when it comes to my husband. Since Violet doesn’t know much about my past, only what I’ve told her, and she came to town after we got married, I’m going to gush. I’m going to be that girl. “My husband is a very good-looking man, and I’m lucky he chose me to marry.”
“It’s the tattoos.” She giggles.
I giggle right back. “No, it’s the tattoos, the air of authority, the dark intensity of his eyes, and honestly just the way he carries himself.” I keep going, because now I can’t stop. I’ve lifted the gate on keeping my mouth shut, and now I have to share all the amazing attributes of the man I married with someone. “The guys give him a hard time because he’s so cut, and he’s in such good shape.” I lean in, lifting my eyebrows suggestively. “But I get to watch him work out, and oh my God,” I fan my face, “I’ve never seen anyone as intense as he is when he’s focusing on his form and core for an average of forty-five minutes a day.”
“You’re a lucky woman, Leighton,” she sighs. “He’s hot, he’s a genuinely good man, and the way he looks at you says he wants to eat you up every second of every day. Pretty sure if you two were alone much longer over there in that booth, you would have spontaneously combusted. A lot of women would kill for a love like that.” She grins ruefully before she gets up from the stool and walks behind the counter, starting on the last of what we have to do before the next shift comes in.
Does Holden look at me like that? Am I oblivious to it? And why haven’t we been acting like a normal married couple? We’ve never been out on a date, never gone to restaurant together, except on our wedding day. Either we stay in and cook or one of us brings something home. Deep down I know I’ve been scared of running into my family, but I’m beginning to rethink my position on that now. Maybe I want us to have a more traditional relationship, and I know if that’s the case, the person who initiates it is going to have to be me. It’s time to pull up my big girl panties and let my husband know what the hell I want.
Decision made, I hop off the stool, and start cleaning off all the tables, grinning to myself as I clean the one I sat at not two hours ago. I can still smell Holden on my clothes, and I realize with a startling clarity how happy it makes me.
Can this be more than a marriage of convenience? I’m not sure, but there’s only one way to find out.
Havoc
I’m tired, and still a little soggy as Renegade and I head back into the station, almost three hours after we had our lunch. The amount of rain that’s fallen on the county in the last few days has caused so many traffic accidents, we’re all working overtime in our main capacity as officers of Laurel Springs instead of the Moonshine Task Force. I don’t mind either way, but I don’t like when we get too far away from the MTF side of things, it starts making me nervous for Leighton.
“How are the roads?” Ace asks from where he sits at his desk, laptop open in front of him. He came on shift a few hours after Renegade and I did, so he’s got a few more hours to go.
“Not bad.” I tiredly sink into the chair at my own desk. “Most of the water is starting to recede. It hasn’t rained since this afternoon, but they’re calling for more overnight. It’s going to be up in the air, depending on how many people are out on the roads tonight.” I pull the forecast up on my phone. “And temps are falling down into the thirties, so it’s gonna be a chilly one. Hopefully that rain doesn’t freeze, cause nobody knows how to drive on ice around here. Throw in black ice and we could be fucked.”
“Leave it to us,” Ace shakes his head, “to have one of the coldest days of the winter on the night when we get the most rainfall we’ve seen in months.”
“Shit happens,” I remind him. “And it always happens to us.”
I take a look around the squad room, noticing the shift change is starting to take place. I’m ready to be off. Today’s been a long fucking day, and all I want to do is go home, sit in front of the fireplace in my house, and cuddle with my wife. I’m chilled to the bone after having been out in the rain earlier and haven’t been able to get warm ever since. When I see my replacement, I give him a nod and grab my stuff.
“I’m out, see you tomorrow afternoon.”
Ace gives me a wave, as I exit the squad room like I have the hounds of hell at my back. Walking out into what’s now the night air, I shiver, seeing my breath as I make my way over to my truck. Typically during the winter months, we have a cold spell or two, but we haven’t had one yet this year. With March fast approaching, I figured it was time, but I didn’t think it would be this damn cold.
The leather of the driver’s seat creaks as I pull myself up into it, grimacing as it puts a strain on my chest wall. So far today it hasn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, but now that I’m allowing myself to relax as I wait for my truck to heat up, I’m feeling all the aches and pains. Fatigue sets in after the adrenaline of being “on” all the time fades from my body. This is the moment I allow myself every day where I let go.
My back hurts as I shiver, my legs ache, fuck even my knees ache. It’s unusual for me – normally the cold doesn’t affect me like this. My head falls back against the seat, and I crank the heat up higher. I feel fucking beat up, and maybe that’s an honest description of my life right now. I’m bruised, cold, tired, and wondering all the fucking time where I stand with my wife.
Leighton. It was nice to see her in the middle of a workday, nice to hold her against me for a few minutes and let her warmth infuse my body. I look forward to seeing her all the time, whether I want to be honest about it or not. She makes everything a little more tolerable, puts a smile on my face whenever I see her, whenever I think about her.
I’ve never wanted to look too deeply into it. Since the day I met her at her grandfather’s house standing in the back of the living room while I questioned the men in her family, I’ve been intrigued by her. The dark hair, the big eyes, the hot body (if I’m completely honest), and the way she carries herself. There aren’t many women who have the air of regality she does, and even if she’s a Moonshine princess, it doesn’t seem to matter.
A part of me wishes we could have met in a different time where both of us have different lives. I know more than anyone, though, life doesn’t give us the circumstances we want. We’re dealt a finite number of moments and we’re supposed to turn those moments into memories and life-changing situations. I didn’t know seeing her standing there, as a barely nineteen-year-old kid would change my life. Looking back on it now, I know it did. We were put into each other’s life paths for a reason and instead of fighting it, I’m beginning to think we need to figure out why that was.
I liked being next to her today, enjoyed kissing her in public, and not tempering my affection. Out of nowhere, I realize today was the first day we’ve actually been in public together since we got married. The first time I shared a meal with her and let other people see us together here in our hometown. Any other time we’ve done anything, it’s been in Birmingham. I know part of that has been to protect her, but maybe the other part of it has been to protect me.
I have a fear that as soon as she doesn’t need me for protection anymore, she’ll be gone. The only thing I can do to prevent that from happening is prove to her what kind of a life we’ll have together if she stays. Why haven’t I thought of this before?
Fuck, I’m getting soft and I’m getting old. Thirty-six is making me feel like an old-timer. Or making me think about my own mortality, not exactly sure which. Either way, I know I have to get on the road, because if I sit here any longer, I’m going to fall asleep in the station parking lot. That won’t look good for anyone involved.
I put the truck in gear and make my way home.