“Sorry for your loss, Annika.”
“Thanks.”
“So when you said all men….?”
I let out a breath. “Asshole,” I mutter, not really meaning it this time. “When Grandpa died, the last truly good man on earth died.”
“Tell me about him.” I feel his fingers in my hair, glance sideways to watch him again twirling a curl around his finger, between finger and thumb, his gaze intent, as if my hair is the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.
I find myself wondering, in turn, if his hair is as silky as it looks.
I clench my hands into fists to stop myself from finding out. “His name was Hezekiah—for real. I called him Grandpa Zeke.” I swallow hard. “He was…fuck. He was everything good in the world. I get my height from him, he was six-six, about the same as your friend Rev. I think I get my hair from him, too, or so Gram used to say. He kept his short, being a guy, but I guess it was red like mine and would have been curly if he’d let it grow. I remember when I was a little girl, he seemed like a giant, and like he was just…hewn from granite. Everything about him was just hard, like literally, physically hard. His hands were so rough, you know? Like, he’d pick me up and it was like his hands were pumice. But he was just…pure light and love. Sweet, gentle, and quiet. I went through a goth phase as a teenager—and yes, it looked every bit as hysterically awful with my hair and coloring as you’d imagine. And Grandpa just…accepted me. When I’d go apeshit and get all angsty and difficult, the only person who could get through to me was him.”
“Sounds like an amazing man.”
I nod. “He really was. He…” I have to pause, swallow. Fight back the burn. “He’s really the only real reason I’m even still here. But that’s heavy, and for a different day. Like never.”
He doesn’t fill the silence, and I appreciate that.
2 As Bad As It Looks
Chance
Her stomach growls into the silence, loudly.
I chuckle. “Hungry?”
“I could eat,” she mutters.
I twist and sit up, taking her with me to the edge of the bed. “Let’s rustle you up some grub, then, huh?”
She plants her cane into the floor, presses hard to assist her in standing up—I watch carefully. When Phil, a squad-mate from the Marines, lost his leg from the knee down, I took him to a bunch of his PT appointments as he learned to walk on the prosthetic. There was a guy there who had a gnarly knee injury that looked a lot like hers does. He was determined to rehab the knee until he was back to as normal as he could be, and last time I saw him, he was sprinting hundreds and doing pretty monster back squats. He still had a hitch in his walk, but he was active, strong, and mobile. So either this injury is recent, or she’s quit on the rehab efforts, seeing as she can still barely put weight on it. Or, it’s worse than I understand, and I’m full of shit.
She moves to her feet, leans her cane against her thigh, and rakes her fingers through her hair, shoving it back out of her face.
I can’t help but stare. She’s wearing a denim skirt with a frayed hem, short, a good three inches above her knee; the skirt cups her ass, molded to each cheek with that slight gap in between where the denim is stretched tight, and as she lifts up on her toes in a stretch, her ass goes taut, tightening as she clenches it through the stretch. Her top is a sheer white tank, worn with a black bra beneath it. Her legs beneath the skirt are a mile long, bare, sleek, almost shiny, with thick, powerful thighs and sculpted calves. She’s wearing flat sandals with thin black silver-studded straps that crisscross all the way up her calves, ending just below her knee.
God, fucking gorgeous. And that fucking hair. An explosion of almost crimson curls, fiery red ringlets that bounce and shift with each twitch of her body, long enough to drape around her shoulders.
I’m jonesing to bury my fingers in that wild mass of hair, to get those long, long legs wrapped around my neck as I taste her sweetness….
Fuck.
I push up to my feet and out the door, ripping my eyes off of her tight, curvy body. Head for the kitchen. I hear her cane clicking on the floor—she goes to the coffeemaker and pours another cup, leans a hip against the counter and looks at me.
I glance at her. “You eat eggs?” She just nods, eyes on mine over her mug. “How you like ’em?”
She shrugs. “Scrambled with cheese?”
I snort. “Saying scrambled with cheese is redundant. Who the fuck eats scrambled eggs without cheese?”
“Savages?” she jokes.
“Exactly,” I mumble. “Great minds think alike, clearly.”
I pull a carton from the fridge, a bowl from a cabinet, and start cracking. Seeing as I can eat at least six scrambled on my own, I just crack the whole dozen, and feel her amused surprise the farther through the carton I get.
“I hope you’re hungry because there’s no way in hell I’m eating even half that many,” she says.
I eye her sideways. “You see me?” I pat my stomach—which isn’t flat and doesn’t sport anything like definition; my abs are more like a solid steel keg than little individual packages, and that keg is wrapped in a dense layer of cladding…e.g., fat. “You don’t get this by eating little portions, mama.”
Her eyes flit over me, shoulders, chest, stomach. And unless I miss my guess, she likes what she sees. Which is nice. Being best friends with a man who looks like Rev has its challenges—most female attention is fixed on him, if we’re together. I’m just the wingman. Not that I’ve ever minded, really. But it’s nice to have female eyes look at me and seem to enjoy the view.
I scramble the eggs, and in between stirs I gesture at her with a loaf of bread.
She shrugs, nods. “Haven’t eaten in…well, I don’t know what time it is, but since early the day I met you, which I’m assuming is yesterday.”
I frown at her. “Why’s that?”
She rolls her eyes. “Alvin.”
“Elaborate?”
“He had me make a delivery to Reno. But I had to be back here in Vegas for my shift at work, and work was nuts, and then Alvin showed up at work after my shift and demanded I accompany him here. And there just wasn’t time to eat except for the Panera salad I had while driving back here.”
“You ate a salad while driving?” I ask.
She snickers. “Yeah, and I do not recommend it, at all. Seriously messy, and very difficult. But it was that or McDonalds, so…”
“Salad it is.” I sprinkle cheese, stir, sprinkle, stir, and then when it’s melted and gooey, I divide it into two portions and set out a variety of toast toppings—butter, jelly, cream cheese, peanut butter. “What kind of delivery?”
She snorts. “What do you think? Meth.”
I put the butter knife down at stare at her. “Aren’t you working off a debt?”
“Yes.”
“Which I assume you accumulated via addiction.”
“Yes.” This is quiet, almost inaudible.
“You don’t seem like a tweaker. Or in withdrawal.”
“I’m clean.” Her eyes plead with me to believe her, even as her tone remains almost belligerent.