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“Ready to go to bed, Mistress?”
When she nodded, he could tell he surprised her by picking her up. Moving to the platform that held her bed, he took the short set of steps up to it to sit on the mattress edge. He kept her in his lap, her arms looped around his neck. Leaning over, he drew down the cover. With a smile, he rolled back and deposited her into that spot on the mattress before straightening back up and putting the cover over her. “When she was really little, that was how I’d tuck Aubrey in,” he told her, “Whenever Nicole and Colt went on adults-only trips, she’d leave her with me.”
Colt of course never acknowledged it, and probably opposed it in theory. However, the indirect indication that his brothertrusted him with his daughter, enough not to give Nicole a lot of shit over it, had been a subtle balm on an otherwise trashed family relationship.
Tiger glanced toward the clock. About three a.m. She’d invited him to stay the night, but that had been a while ago. “I should hit the road, but—”
Her hand closed on his. She shook her head and reached over his arm to tug down the covers next to her.
His gut did a roll that probably felt the way that bed move did to Aubrey. A lightness to balance the end of day, the facing of the darkness.
“Sure thing, Mistress.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
By Thursday, Tiger felt on top of his world. Yeah, things were still silent as fuck in his head, but he was pretty sure outside it the birds were singing. After spending the night with Skye last weekend and getting the memorial thing in his rearview mirror, he felt better than he had in a while. Things were less overwhelming.
He'd skipped the hearing class this week. He was figuring this shit out. He didn’t need it, not as a weekly thing. The garage repairs were proceeding with the insurance money. The building inspector had signed off on them using the two bays furthest from the damage. Maybe he’d tell Red to come back next week. Bring in Maryshka and Larry as soon as that third bay was deemed usable.
When he leafed through the mail he’d brought home from the shop, he saw the reminder about a Kentucky rally coming up. Maybe he should go. Maybe he should invite Skye to come with him. Yeah, he had to confirm his balance on the bike first—something that tightened his gut with a little shot of worry, given how badly it had gone last time he’d tried it—but if that was better now, why not?
Some part of himself warned he needed to settle down, not get too confident, but feeling good felt…so damn good. He’d missed being in control of his life. Since Skye was coming over this weekend to learn about bike tuning, he’d hit the grocery store to pick up her drink preferences and replenish his beer supply, plus lay in the fixings for some snacks she might like.
Three hours later, the whole world was shit again.
He didn’t make it back to the house. The garage was closer. He felt sick to his stomach, he had a tremor in his hands, and the pain and dizziness were a hurricane in his head. He could text the doc about it, but he didn’t want another damn doctor appointment. Or to leave his back office. Maybe ever again. There were plenty of grocery delivery services when he ran out of what he’d picked up.
Drama queen shit, but still. What had the slides said in the last hearing class he’d attended? “Don’t let yourself hide. Have a safe space, but limit it to thirty minutes. After thirty minutes, get out and do something.” The guy who’d taught the class signed everything, but he also used a voice software like Skye that projected words up on a screen.
“Staying in that cave will make the anxiety and bad emotions worse. It will become harder to move forward.”
Sure he might know what he was talking about, but who gave a fuck? As stupid as it sounded, Tiger felt like it was him against the world. He thought he could go to a rally? Jesus fucking Christ. Right. There was no point. And not just for that.
He typed in the text, making it quick and casual.Going to have to cancel this weekend. Sorry. I’ll make it up to you.He sent a dozen rose emojis and followed it with an emoji of twopeople on a bike, a guy and a girl, one of those animated ones so the girl’s hair was streaming out behind her.
It made him imagine what it would have been like, being at the rally, her relaxed on the bike behind him, pointing at things, excited about stuff that was new to her, letting him see it through her fresh eyes. God, he was a pathetic asshole. Damn it. But he was fucked up in his head. No telling how he’d fuck up her day if he had her come over this weekend.
She didn’t answer right away. She was at work, so he expected that. She had an important job, a busy life. He was a loser with a burned-out garage, a wobbly head and couldn’t even go to the goddamn grocery store without…
He went out to the debris pile he needed to load up and cart away. Chuck was probably getting tired of looking at it.
Tiger picked up a pipe, hefted it. Then he beat the shit out of a half-burned pallet, sending planks flying. He wanted to destroy something, needed to do it. He stepped back, looking for a new target, and tripped over some more pipes. They’d obviously been knocked loose from the pile and rolled behind him, with a jingling metal sound against the asphalt he couldn’t hear. He landed on his ass, hand slamming down on a splintered piece of wood. It tore a strip out of his palm.
“Fucking hell.” When a deaf man vented his rage, he couldn’t hear his howls, the clang as he flung the pipe at the wall of his building.
He wanted to get on his bike and just ride. When things became too much with Colt and his father, with all of it, that was what had brought him back to center and given him peace. As if mocking him and what he wanted, the dizziness overtook him, seized him in the gut with a shot of anxiety and despair. He threw up his toast and coffee.
Shit.
When he glanced up, he saw the shadow as Kat moved away from the back screen door. Chuck replaced her. Tiger held up a hand.Please, fucking God, leave me alone.
Chuck’s nod was punctuated with a concerned look. But he got it. He followed Kat back deeper inside, though he left the door open. In case.
He didn’t deserve friends that good. Tiger retreated to his office, stopping off at the bathroom to rinse out his mouth and wash the cut on his palm. As he stared at himself in the mirror, he couldn’t stop the thought. He would have been better off being the dead one, instead of Nicole.
Anything that kicked him over the hearing loss seemed to connect back to that. No pity party was complete without inviting all the available contributors.
Even the stupidest ones, like the grocery store bakery’s lack of his favorite morning Danish today. Yeah, put that at the top of his list of traumatic woes.
