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“He didn’t,” Finn informed her, rocking back on his heels, seeming to enjoy himself.
“Well, he is offering you some now,” she informed us. “I am going to go wash up,” she added, more unexpectedly conscientious than I would expect from someone who hadn’t been around Finn before.
“Coffee?” I asked when Meadow moved between us, going inside, disappearing into the bathroom with Gadget.
“Your woman did offer.”
“She’s not my woman.” Though at that admission, there was a sour feeling in my stomach.
See, it didn’t stop.
My body reacting to her.
Each time she came out of that shower smelling like the soap I made. Each time I saw her in one of my shirts, or walked out into the living room finding her curled up on the couch with my dog for a blanket, and a goat clutched to her chest like a favorite teddy bear.
It was more than that, though, more than that knee-jerk attraction.
It was the way there was a warmth inside when she smiled, when she laughed at something Gadget did, when she sighed contentedly in her sleep finally, when she stood at my counter making me dinner, when she looked proud when I told her it turned out good, when she chased fucking Red around the yard just to put him in his place every day.
Warmth.
There was no denying it.
Not when I was generally polar fucking cold inside.
Having her here, it was having an impact.
Which should have unsettled me.
But, somehow, all I could seem to do was worry about the day when she might no longer be here, when she would take that warmth away with her, leave me icy inside again.
“What’s with the goat?” Finn asked, standing in the middle of the kitchen, carefully not touching anything. It was killing him not to get to it, get rid of all of that dog hair that always found itself under tables and in corners despite how often Meadow or I swept.
“Anya died having him. She, ah, promised her that she would look after her baby.”
“She promised a goat,” Finn mumbled, running a hand down his beard.
“Think the animals are a sort of therapy for her.”
“Makes sense.”
And it did, of course. We’d known many of guys who left the service who had needed therapy dogs afterward just to be able to get through a day, somehow connecting more with their K9 companions than the human beings around them. Maybe because the people needed so much from us whereas the animals just wanted to be there with you – no matter how fucked up your head was.
It was likely why Meadow took to Cap, took to Gadget. They simply loved her, without having to know what she had gone through, without needing her to recover from it first, to learn how to trust again.
“How are things at work?” I asked after a long silence. Finn, as a whole, was about as good a conversationalist as I was. Which meant that when we got together, sometimes almost nothing was ever said. But, I found, things were a little different this time. Maybe because of Meadow, because of her constant presence, because of my desire to get to know the person I was sharing a home with, sharing a life with, I was getting more used to talking again.
“Fucking Bellamy,” was his response.
Fucking Bellamy.
“What’d he do now?”
Quin had been wanting Bellamy for years. As a whole, our jobs, our clientele usually stayed on the right side of the law. Or, maybe it was fair to say we skirted that line, not usually jumping right over it, save for a few very special cases.
Covering up a murder comes to mind. Though that bastard was a wife-beater and had it coming, so no one was sweating that job.
And, sure, sometimes shit happened on a job when you were dealing with some real criminals. Sometimes fights happened. Sometimes lives were lost. In the heat of a moment.
It was never calculated and cold-blooded.
But trying to coerce Bellamy onto our team meant jumping right over that line, planning to take lives.
Bellamy, when it came to nicknames like everyone on the team got, was The Executioner.
You wouldn’t know that by meeting him, of course.
If you met Bellamy in one of his expensive suits and with all his abundance of easy-going charm, you would take him for some carefree child of some oil magnate or some shit, someone who just flew around the world, partying, not having a single worry in this empty head.
And there were times when Bellamy did just fly around the world, having fun, meeting everyone, leaving impressions, but getting out before anyone formed any kind of attachment.
But there was a dark side to him, something he made it his job never to show anyone, a secret he kept, only a few people in the know having any knowledge about it.
