Page 21 of Bear
“Was that an apology?” I lifted my eyebrows and stared straight ahead because looking at Bear right then might undo whatever magical spell was being woven in the space of that Monte Carlo.
He pushed out a puff of air and came to a stop at a red light.
“Yes.”
He pulled off again and I left it alone. I wasn’t touching that shit with a ten-foot pole.
I smiled my ass off inwardly though.
Bear apologized.
Kind of.
BEAR
I’ve never felt like shit before.
Usually, I did what I had to do and kept it moving. Remorse knew no home in my heart. When I saw the look on Cecily’s face after seeing those dead bodies though…I felt like shit for the first time in my life.
I took her back to my place and we walked in to Luanne cleaning the kitchen. I let Cecily talk to her mother while I went upstairs and made some phone calls about the shipment coming in tomorrow. I changed the location one last time because I could never be too careful.
I was getting a huge shipment of pure heroin and I knew once it flooded the streets, I’d get customers coming out of the woodworks. I couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong. I sat in the study, lit a cigar and tried to smoke away the memory of Cecily’s cognac-brown eyes filled with sadness and pain.
She shouldn’t have had to relive Kaiden getting shot and I knew that’s what she was doing. She shouldn’t have been forced into that space because of me. I thought I was helping but I wasn’t. I was making it worse. The fact that the sadness in her eyes was stained into the crevices of my brain let me know I fucked up.
“You okay?” Cecily’s voice was like sweet water rushing over my confused mind.
“Not really,” I sighed, tipping back in my chair. I rested my ankle on top of my knee and noted how her eyes tracked my movements. It pushed that annoying feeling through my chest as usual. I didn’t have time to deconstruct Cecily’s voodoo though.
“What’s wrong?” She swayed over to my desk and sat right on top of it. She had no regard for my papers on or the fact that I was smoking. She crossed her long legs and stared at me.
Something burned beneath my skin.
“I don’t like how careless I was with you today. I’m supposed to keep you away from shit like that but…”
“It was rough and I’ll probably have nightmares but I think I liked hanging out with you more than anything else.” Her full lips curved into a smile and it made me smile by default. Those dimples were serious miracle workers.
Cecily tipped her head to the side and black hair ran down her shoulder like ink scrawling words I couldn’t read yet. They spelled out things that gripped me though. I wondered what would happen once I was fluent.
“I told you what to do if you have nightmares, right?” I asked her, blowing out a stream of smoke. She didn’t shy away from the smell. She narrowed her eyes through the haze and nodded then she leaned over letting cleavage spill out of her black shirt. I was so caught off guard when my eyes hovered over her cinnamon skin that I didn’t realize she was plucking the cigar from between my lips.
I watched her, amused as she took a pull of the thick brown stick. I was so amused that I decided to ignore the fact that Cecily’s pretty brown titties distracted me momentarily. I was losing my shit.
“I shoot motherfuckers for doing that,” I told her swinging back and forth in the chair.
“So shoot me.” It wasn’t long after her first inhale before she broke into a coughing fit. I could have timed it down to the second. I slid closer to her, pulling my chair toward the desk. I rested my hands on her thighs and watched her try another pull.
“Don’t hurt yourself, baby doll.”
“It’s a cigar. Not a loaded gun.”
“Okay. You’re grown, right? Twenty-one and think you know everything.” I snagged her wrist in my hand and took the cigar back, taking a longer more impressive puff. When I pulled my lips away from the cigar I tasted her fruity lip gloss. My tongue darted out to chase the lingering notes of her mouth before I could stop it.
“Okay so…maybe my throat is on fire,” she coughed, tapping her chest. I laughed and stood up to get her a bottle of water. “Fuck, Bear. How do you smoke those?”
“I started when I was younger. You know that.” I reached inside the mini-fridge and pulled out a cold bottle for her. She drank it down gladly. When she hopped off the desk, her tits jiggled and I caught myself looking again.
I would have shot any other motherfucker for looking at Cecily like that. I wasn’t any other motherfucker though. I wasn’t trying to screw her. I was just being a man. I halted any further thoughts and put the cigar out in a crystal ashtray.
