Page 28 of Whiskey Shivers

Fable’s wide and shocked blue eyes met mine.

“Let’s get you home and bring this stuff in. We’ll have plenty of time to figure it all out after we’re done.”

She nodded and I heaved a sigh, pressing the button to start my truck and giving the shifter dial a twist.

The ride to my place was made in a sort of shell-shocked silence.

* * *

“Thanks boys,”I muttered as they filed out of my place. My living room was piled with a crazy amount of shit, lookin’ like a cheap plastic snowdrift from all the white kitchen bags stuffed with her things.

“She gonna be good?” Louie asked, and I nodded. The kid was a good kid, had heart, and was just the right fit for what La Croix and I were looking to achieve with the club. Were we ever gonna be on the right side of the law? No. Not fuckin’ hardly. Did we want to achieve a modicum of peace within this life? Yeah. Yeah, we did. We didn’t think we would ever tone down to the degree of the Kraken; but we’d like something like it, in our own way.

I looked back into my living room where Corliss stood, looking battle weary amid the crazy and the wreckage of yet another new fucking beginning. She looked strained and about ready to snap. I gave Louie a pat on the back and sent him out the portal of my front door. I shut it with a sigh behind him, threw the deadbolt, and twisted the lock in the knob out of sheer habit.

Was I afraid of anything coming through my door? Hell no. Anyone showed up here uninvited, they’d have a bad fuckin’ day. That didn’t mean I was in the habit of makin’ things easy on a motherfucker, nor did I make a habit of invitin’ any kind of trouble in.

In fact, Corliss Legare was the first woman I’d ever brought to my home. On the odd occasion I’d felt the need for a regular hookup or anything else, I kept that shit to her place or the club.

“How you doing, baby?” I asked her gently, and she startled and turned, dragging those beautiful blue eyes up to mine.

She looked absolutely shattered when she said, “I just wanted a fucking shower in my own bathroom.” She broke into a sob.

“Aw, hey, I got you. C’mere,” I said, and I knew she was done. She’d held up like a champ but it was all too much for her and I felt some kind of way over knowing that she felt safe enough now, with me, to be so vulnerable as to fall the fuck apart. I towed her gently into my arms, and I held her like the fragile little thing that she was and just let her cry it out.

I didn’t try to shush her or tell her to stop, which was my first inclination. Hell, I think it was anybody’s inclination when somebody cried from a broken heart or just plain too heavy of a load to bear. No one liked to watch another person hurt. Not if you had a soul. Still, I think people needed to sometimes take a step back from their own discomfort and let a person feel any type of way that they needed to feel.

I could do that for her, for right now, and hopefully it’d get her through the storm a little quicker.

She leaned into me and I stood fast. When she’d quieted down some, she pulled away with a final sniff and wiped under her eyes, dashing at the wetness of her tears, trying to hide them and make them disappear.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a decisive sniff, as though she’d made up her mind and that she was acting silly or something.

“Don’t,” I said, and the warning the word held had her looking up at me startled. “Don’t you dare apologize to me after what you’ve been through.”

She swallowed hard.

“You just tell me what you want to happen and I’ll make it happen,” I said, fixing her with my gaze.

She swallowed hard and looked frozen in her tracks, like a scared little rabbit. The only thing to tell me she wasn’t going to keel right over and faint was the way her eyes glittered as they bounced slightly back and forth as she stared into mine.

“I want a lot of things,” she said finally. “I-I-I want him to hurt too. I want him to feel the loss just like me. I know he never will and I hate that, but seriously, most of all, I just want a shower and to be clean, and to not be scared of what I’m going to do next and—”

“You don’t ever have to be scared again. You’re good here. Come on back here with me.” I led her down the hall of my shotgun house, through the living room and past the little bar I had at the back of it that I was still working on putting in.

There was a bedroom that opened up just off the living room, but I intended to make that an office. Past it was the master bedroom, in size and by virtue that it had a bathroom attached and was the room that was mine. It was finished, as was the bathroom in there. That’s where I took her, snatching up her bag of lotions and girl potions from the floor where I’d set them aside specifically when I’d found them.

She let me walk her, my front lightly bumping her back on occasion, as I pointed her in the direction that I needed her to go.

She sucked in a light breath when we entered the bedroom which, as I said, was finished, and her eyes were immediately drawn to the ceiling.

“How did you do this?” she asked and I smiled on the inside, her words stroking my pride.

“Cut into the attic space. Decided I didn’t need it and I wanted the higher ceilings so it wasn’t no thing. I still got some up there,” I said, pointing vaguely. “It’s just at the back of the house. I was planning on doing something similar in the living room when I got to it and leaving the ceiling sort of as-is for a low-ceilinged loft space over the front bedroom which I was planning on turning into an office. No need for three bedrooms, and that top space would make a good spot for something – I didn’t know what, but now I’m thinking maybe a reading nook or something for you.”

“Me?” she squeaked.

I chuckled and said, “It ain’t no never mind,” trying to play it off. She made me forget myself and I didn’t want to move too fast.

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