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“I’m sorry I was late,” he murmurs, almost silent, so I have to quieten the roar of my pulse in my ears to hear him. “I was wringing your clothes out, so they wouldn’t drip as much.”
I lick my parched lips and look down to his hands: water dripping from them and hitting the thick carpet below. “Numbers matter to me.” I swallow again and know I run the risk of becoming a cliché. The brainless damsel. The idiot who can land herself in trouble, but somehow can’t get herself out again.
I’m the woman, raised by a woman, who declared she would be strong and independent and never,evercount on a man to take care of her.
And yet, this man, this one I don’t even know, was gone for thirty-six seconds, and I’m literally losing my mind over it.
“Numbers matter,” I repeat on a rasp. “So if you say you’re going to be thirty seconds…”
“Then I have to be thirty seconds,” he finishes gently. “Okay.”
“If you wanted a minute,” I clarify, “you just say you’re gonna be gone for sixty seconds. So I don’t worry. But if you say thirty, and you’re gone longer, I’m probably gonna assume you died and aren’t coming back.”
“So I’ll overestimate from now on.” He exhales again so I taste his breath on my lips, and though my tongue darts out without my conscious decision to do so, he turns away anyway, unseeing, and starts toward the bedroom on the right. “If, in the future, I have to go somewhere without you, and I think I’ll be a minute,” he stalks to the doorway at the end of the hall, but instead of heading into the room and dumping my things, he pulls a small closet door open and takes out a hidden clothes drying rack.
It’s made of metal and stands about three-feet-tall. He hugs my ball of clothes in one arm, kind of how someone would carry a football, and with the other, he carries the metal stand back to the living room and sets it up before proceeding to hang my things. My shirt. My jeans. His expression remains exactly the same, even when he moves away from outer clothes and instead detangles my underwear and hangs them out straight.
“I’ll tell you two,” he finishes his thought at the same moment he finishes hanging my washing. Glancing up, like he wasn’t just touching my bra and undies, he flashes a handsome grin and sets the loaded rack to the side. “Under promise, over deliver. Always makes people happy.” He strides back to where I stand and taking the crutch from where he set it against the wall, he offers it to me. “I know you’re hungry. But I also know you’re overwhelmed and sore right now. So I’m back.” He takes my gun with easy hands and re-holsters it against his ribs. Then, he tucks his arm beneath mine and takes most of my weight before leading me back to the couch. “I’m not leaving again tonight, so you get to relax, and I’ll take guard duty.”
He smells of cedarwood. And maybe gunpowder. Perhaps a little engine grease, though I have no clue why, or how on earth I could identify such a scent anyway. His hold is firm, and his smile is easy as he brings me to the couch and lowers me back to where I started just a few minutes ago.
“Why are numbers your thing?”
My brain is slow. My thoughts lagging more than my ancient laptop.
My stomach rumbles now that I’m near food again, but I don’t pick the fork up. I don’t start eating, though any normal woman with half a brain would.
“What?”
Chuckling, like he knows he’s smooth, he takes the fork and places it between my fingers the way he so easily did with a gun minutes ago. “Eat, Little Bird. Then explain the numbers thing to me.”
“Um…”Little Bird? Because of the regurgitation thing in the car?“I-I guess I get nervous sometimes.” I twist the fork in the pasta and appreciate, for a moment, that my meal had the chance to cool down. So when I make a pig of myself this time, it won’t burn quite as much. “Life has been a little tense for me,” I explain, “it’s always felt a little out of control.”
“So you count to regain it again?” he surmises. “Like me leaving and going to the other room. It made you anxious, so to feel in control again, you counted how long I was gone?”
“I count how long till you’re back.” I bring my fork higher and take it between my lips, far more graceful than the first time I began. “Was that your wife on the phone before?”
“My wife?” Like my question stuns him more than anything else today, including the possibility a man he considered dead, may be alive, his head shoots back and his eyes go to the door. “The woman on the phone?”
I nod and take a second forkful between my lips. “Vi.”
He snorts, so the sound is almost offensive. “No. She was my best friend’s wife, though. She’s sweet.”
“Was?” I swallow my dinner and wish for a glass of water to wash it all down. And like I verbalized my request, though I know I didn’t, Drake shoves away from the table and heads to the kitchen to grab a glass. “Shewasyour best friend’s wife?”
“Yeah. My best friend was my partner. He died on the job.” He fills the glass from the tap, adding, “On Vallejo’s job. Violet’s a good girl, and she deserves peace. So when she caught Vallejo’s name on the news, naturally she called me to ask what the hell was going on.” He flips the faucet off and heads back in my direction. “Here.” He places the glass in my hand and lowers himself to perch on the coffee table to face me. “She’s as shocked as I am that his name is being flashed around town.”
“That’s why you’re here? To make sure he’s dead?”
He rolls his bottom lip between his teeth and studies my eyes. “Yeah. And to make sure you live.”
“Me?” I take a sip and lower the glass to the table by his thigh, working hard to still the shaking of my hand. “I don’t understand why.”
I wonder if he, too, is confused. Because he shrugs his shoulders and hunches to rest his elbows on his knees. “You rolled through a small town, Aurora. You needed help because some other asshole did the wrong thing. The first responders who came out that day aren’t just people. They’re not random folks turning up to work and going about their jobs on rote. They’re a family,” he clarifies when I lift a brow. And when I don’t lift my fork, he places his hand beneath mine and forces it. “You became part of the family that day too. So when Malone called me and said he’s got a Vallejo case stinking up his desk, then he sent me CCTV footage of the girl running away…”
“You recognized me,” I conclude, nibbling the end of a dangling pasta before it falls.
“I was coming anyway. For Vallejo. But I’m glad I’m here now, and that you’re alive.” He releases my hand and stands up, stunning me so the rest of my pasta falls from the fork and back into the bowl. “We’re gonna have to go down to the station tomorrow and walk you through a formal statement.”
