Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8)

by Lauren Gilley

  “Do you do the two of them together every time?” Jazz asked.

  “Yeah.” Stephanie tossed her hair, looking proud of herself – and a little flushed. “Ten said Reese was a virgin, which, not now! I popped his cherry, thank you very much. But they’ve had a few of the other girls, too. Always together. I don’t really know what’s going on there, but something is.” She smirked.

  Chanel sat down in the tufted chair in the corner to pull on her boots. “Aren’t they both, like, secret agents or something?”

  “Something,” Jazz agreed.

  “They’re hot is what they are,” Stephanie said, stepping into her heels.

  Carter felt like none of this was gossip he was supposed to be hearing, but the persistent numbness kept him from forming an opinion on the sexual habits of their resident assassins – who was he to talk, after all?

  “Thanks for coming, ladies,” Jazz said, and they all laughed when they realized the double entendre. “I’ll walk you out.”

  Carter finished his wine and stared unseeing at the empty threshold, listening to their voices fade down the hall toward the front door. He tried and failed to define how he felt about what had just happened – only knew that it had been both too much and not enough at the same time.

  Jazz returned a moment later, leaned a shoulder in the doorjamb and tipped her head, offered him a quiet smile. Concern marked her brow. “You doing alright, baby boy?”

  He nodded.

  Her smile widened, close-lipped, tinged with sadness. “No, you’re not.”

  He opened his mouth to respond, but instead, to his horrified shame, his eyes filled with tears, and his throat closed up.

  He blinked them away fast. Cleared his throat. He didn’t cry.

  But she’d seen. “Honey,” she murmured, and came to sit beside him. He tipped his head back, his eyes shut, but she wasn’t deterred; stroked his hair, petting it, tracing along his scalp. She knew all the best places to scratch, and he felt the tension slowly melting from his neck. Let out a much-needed deep breath. She was silent. Waited.

  When he could, he opened his eyes and rolled his head toward her, just a fraction, so he wouldn’t dislodge her hand. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he murmured, his voice rough. “I don’t – there’s nothing wrong. Nothing bad happened to me.”

  “Baby, that’s not true.”

  He swallowed. “So I didn’t go pro. Big deal. Most people don’t. I knew that was a long shot even before I got hurt.”

  She gave him another soft, sympathetic smile, and he was really starting to hate those, the way they made him feel pitied – though Jazz was the last one to pity anyone. That was another thing about her he loved: she didn’t look down on anybody, and hoped you wouldn’t look down on her in turn.

  “But it still hurt,” she reasoned. “Even if you thought you’d never make it in the NFL, you still wanted it. It hurts to want something and not get it.” She sounded almost wistful.

  “I’m being a brat,” he said.

  “You’re being a sweet baby boy who got dealt a shit hand. And who put up with it without complaining for a long time. And it’s hitting you all at once right now, sweetie. That happens sometimes. It happened with Kev.”

  He breathed a humorless laugh. “The shit that happened to Kev makes my shit even lamer.”

  “No. Don’t go comparing scars. If we all did that, we’d fall apart.”

  “Is that what this is?” he asked, fear stealing through him; he heard it touch his voice, a little shiver. “Am I falling apart?”

  “I dunno,” she said, honestly. “But I don’t think so. I hope it’s not. But I think you’re unhappy, and I think you need to start thinking about what would make you happy.”

  “You make me happy.”

  Her hand stilled at his nape. She leaned in and kissed him, sweetly, lingeringly. Pulled back a fraction, even when he tried to chase her lips. “This, being with you, has been some of the most fun I’ve ever had. But, honey, you’re miserable.”

  “Jazz–”

  “Now, don’t worry, I’m not blaming myself.” He was helpless but to return the smile she offered. “I’ve got no doubts in my ability to please.” Then she grew serious. “But I don’t want to watch another baby boy go down a dark road. I won’t do it. We can have all the fun you want – four girls next time. Five. We can ask those freaky assassin boys if they wanna join in and we’ll have ourselves a real orgy. But don’t go getting lost in your head and keep quiet about it. If you need help, then ask for it, and we’ll get it for you, whatever that looks like.”

  Her words threatened to bring all his thorny, unexamined emotions boiling up to the surface. He closed his eyes again, and rested his forehead against hers. He couldn’t find words of his own, too overwhelmed and shaky.

  But, in typical Jazz fashion, she didn’t seem to need them. She stroked the back of his neck. “You’ll always have me,” she whispered, fiercely. “No matter what.”

  Five

  Carter showered, dressed, and headed back for his dorm at the clubhouse. It was late – after three in the morning by the time he’d had coffee and the sandwich Jazz insisted on making him – but he hadn’t wanted to sleep over. Her sheets reeked of sex and, despite being bolstered by her care and support, he felt a little unmoored. He needed quiet; needed his own bed and a chance to gather his thoughts.

  The lights were off in the clubhouse save the few that were always left burning at night to keep people from stumbling into the furniture.

  Carter was startled to run into a tip-toeing figure at the mouth of the hallway. A girl, he realized, one of the newer Lean Bitches. Meg? Mary? Something. She was carrying her high-heels by the straps, and even in the meager glow of the light above the bar he could see her tousled hair and badly-smudged makeup. She looked a little shell-shocked, dazed – but not necessarily in a bad way. Looked the way he had in the mirror just a short while ago: all fucked-out.

  She pulled up short, and so did he, and they regarded one another a surprised moment.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  She offered an “excuse me” and stepped around him; tip-toed for the main door.

  Halfway down the hallway, a silhouette stood leaning in a lighted doorway; the cherry of a cigarette glowed and swelled, chased by the quiet sound of an exhale.

  Carter had to walk past whoever it was to get to his own dorm. Paused only long enough, when he was alongside the guy, to catch a glimpse of his sharp-featured face in the cigarette’s glow, the glimmer of blue eyes. Tenny, shirtless, in unzipped jeans, stinking of sex and sweat.

  As Carter passed, and their gazes collided, a hand reached out from inside the door, closed on Tenny’s wrist, and pulled him inside. He went willingly, his movements coiled and languid like a big cat. Carter got a glimpse of Reese’s odd, haunting face, his pale hair in snarls around it, and then the door shut, and he heard the low murmur of voices.

  He gave a little eyebrow shrug – Stephanie hadn’t been exaggerating – and continued on.

  His dorm was like all the others on this hall: room for a bed, and a dresser. A closet, a bathroom. They all had the same dated orange carpet, because Ghost could afford to buy up bars and cafes, but why spend good money on perfectly serviceable carpet? He’d left the bed unmade this morning, and he stripped down to his boxers and fell back onto it. Clicked off the lamp, and waited for sleep to claim him.

  It was a long time coming, though.

  He was physically exhausted, but his mind kept going over all that Jazz had said there at the end. He wasn’t happy. He did feel like he was drowning; slowly being crushed beneath the weight of waves through which he didn’t know how to swim. Admitting it, even to himself, felt like incredible weakness, though. He had food in his belly, and a roof over his head. Had a bike to ride, and friends to depend upon. Had all the sex anyone could ask for.

  He should be happy.

  He was living the dream.

  So why didn’t it feel like h
e was?

  He finally drifted off while he was chasing answers, all of them sliding through his fingers, just out of reach.

  ~*~

  Chanel was bustling about in the kitchen the next morning, and Carter’s face warmed when he passed her on the way to the coffee pot.

  “Morning, sugar,” she said, brightly, without a hint of flirtation. No winks, no sly looks. It was like nothing had happened.

  “Morning,” he echoed, relieved it wasn’t awkward, filled his mug and headed out.

  Tenny and Reese were sitting side-by-side on the couch, watching TV, devouring plates of eggs and toast with the same mindless economy of movement. They could have been twins, one light and one dark-headed.

  Both of them glanced toward the sound of his footfalls, and Carter froze a moment, like he had last night.

  There were dangerous Lean Dogs, violent Lean Dogs; Dogs with short fuses and big biceps. Guys who would kick your ass as soon as look at you. But no one had a stare like these two. That eerie, inhuman calculation; perfect blank masks that revealed nothing of their thoughts. Like robots.

  The moment stretched on too long – Carter had the sense he was being challenged, dared to say something – and then Tenny slipped on his other mask, the one that was all for show, his pretend-person façade, and smirked at him before they both turned back toward the screen. It was a sitcom rerun, the sort of old, laugh-track, early-2000s thing Carter didn’t watch anymore because fake laughter hit him the wrong way these days.

  Tenny aimed his fork at the TV. “You need to learn how to do that with your face,” he told Reese.

  “Do what?”

  “Change expressions, you tit.”

  “I can change expressions,” Reese said, in that strange, flat voice of his that proved he probably couldn’t.

  “Not worth a shit, you can’t. And even then, you only make faces at me.”

  “You’re very easy to make faces at.”

  “Oh-ho, he’s working on his jokes.”

  “Morning, guys,” Carter muttered, and headed for the door.

  He was almost there when a voice behind him shouted, “Hey, asshole!” That could have been directed at anyone, and was probably directed at Tenny, so he kept going. But then: “Hey, I’m talking to you, preppy-ass motherfucker!”

  Okay, that was definitely him.

  He turned – in time to see Boomer rushing at him, face set in a snarl. His first instinct was to throw his hot coffee at his attacker, and was a little startled by the violence of that thought. Instead, he dodged the rush, side-stepped Boomer’s swipe, and Boomer ran into the corner of the wall, only just getting his hands up in time to keep from cracking his nose against the sheetrock.

  The thing about Boomer was…he was kind of a doofus. “He’s a dumbass,” Ghost had said, bluntly. But Carter saw it more as a case of Boomer being, despite his tumultuous upbringing, a bright-side sort of guy. There was an innocence there that most of them found endearing.

  It was easy to forget, then, that he was a big guy. His dad was all long and lean, with the silky, good kind of hair Carter was convinced he dyed to keep it lion’s mane gold. Boomer, though, was all beef. The sleeves of his t-shirt threatened to rip as he pushed off the wall and turned his wrath on Carter for a second time.

  “Fucking asshole!”

  Carter held up his free hand in a placating gesture. “Okay. Hold on. Why am I an asshole?”

  “Oh, Boom, don’t!” Chanel called from the kitchen.

  Ah. So she’d told him.

  “You–” Boomer started, reaching toward him.

  Carter stepped behind a chair. “Look, I didn’t–”

  “You can’t go around fucking other people’s old ladies!”

  Carter put another chair between them, but Boomer kept coming, brushing them aside. “Jazz invited her, and it wasn’t like–”

  “Asshole!”

  “Okay, yeah, you said that.” Something bumped against the backs of his legs; a fast glance revealed the coffee table. They’d backed all the way across the common room. Tenny and Reese were staring at him, now, instead of the TV. “A little help?” he hissed.

  Reese said nothing.

  Tenny said, “Throw the coffee in his face.”

  “Thanks. Boomer, listen–”

  “Chanel’s my woman, and you have no right…” Boomer’s big hand was coming at his face, now, maybe his throat, and, shit, he really was going to have to throw the coffee, wasn’t he?

  “Boomer!” Chanel snapped, and Boomer froze. Turned toward her as she stalked toward them, face a thunderhead, heels rapping like gunshots on the floorboards. “What in the hell are you doing?” Carter had never heard her raise her voice, or be anything but solicitous with everyone.

  All the anger drained off Boomer’s face, and he looked helpless as a child. “I don’t…but you…and he…”

  She folded her arms. “He didn’t do anything I didn’t want him to. Jazz invited me over, and I wanted to go, and I went. It’s simple as that.”

  Boomer swallowed with an audible gulp. “But you’re–”

  “Don’t say my woman. Don’t you dare. Because I’m not.”

  “But–”

  “Do you see a ring on this hand?” She lifted it for inspection, manicured fingers wiggling. “Have you ever even asked me out on a date? I like you, Boom, and we have a good time, but until you’ve got the balls to tell me you want us to be exclusive, I’m gonna do what I damn well please. Understand?”

  Good for her, Carter thought, relaxing a fraction.

  A mistake, it turned out. Boomer gaped at her a moment, opened and closed his mouth a few times, soundlessly, out of arguments. The sharp turn of his head was Carter’s only warning, and then one of his meaty fists was coming right at Carter’s face.

  Oh shit, he had time to think, and then everything went black.

  ~*~

  “It’s kinda scary how much he already looks like Aidan,” Leah said with a chuckle, touching one of the dark curls on top of little Ash’s head.

  He smiled at her and said, “Ada.” He couldn’t say “Aidan” properly yet.

  “Oh, I know.” Maggie’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “The DNA is strong. Almost done…there, okay, it’s printing.” She swiveled her chair to face Leah. “You got many interviews lined up?”

  “Uh…well…”

  The printer chugged to life, spitting copies of her resume out into the tray.

  “Ah.” Maggie chuckled. “I get it. Having never actually interviewed for a job” – she gestured to the Dartmoor main office around them – “I absolutely get it.”

  “I looked online last night,” Leah said. “There’s some places I’m gonna apply to.”

  “Geez, hon, don’t sound so excited about it,” Maggie joked, but softened the words with a motherly look. The same worry and sympathy her own mother had turned on her last night. Leah both appreciated and hated it. “You know, if you’re interested, the offer still stands that we can help you find something.”

  Her smile felt more like a wince. “That’s really sweet.”

  “But you want to be stubborn and do it on your own,” Maggie said, not unkindly. “I get it.”

  “But you think it’s stubborn.”

  “I think it’s brave, and admirable. But there’s no shame in taking help from friends, sweetie. Ghost’s name opens doors in this city, and if he can open one for you, I say why not take it?”

  It was a very valid point. Even her parents had agreed. “They’re offering to help?” her dad had asked last night, brows lifted. “Well, damn, that’s great.” He’d thought she was stubborn, too, but she thought her mom had understood.

  “I don’t–” she started.

  And the door banged open.

  She twisted around in her chair and saw three people crowded in the threshold: two young guys she didn’t recognize, and between them, his mostly-limp arms draped across both their shoulders, was Carter.

  “Holy shit,”
Maggie said, without inflection. “What’s going on?”

  Carter had a bloodied nose; red had dripped all down his mouth and chin, and stained the front of his white t-shirt. His head hung low, but he was awake, Leah noted – or, at least his eyelashes were fluttering.

  The guy with the dark hair said, “Boomer decked him.” He had a crisp British accent. (Honestly, how many Brits were there around here these days?)

  Maggie pushed her chair back and got to her feet. “Boomer did? What the hell for?”

  “Carter had sex with Chanel,” the blond guy said, his voice toneless, his expression very blank. Spookily blank.

  The British guy breathed a harsh laugh. “Him and every-bloody-one else.”

  Maggie muttered under her breath and moved to stand in front of Carter; took his chin in her hand and lifted his head. He was conscious, but glassy and out of it. “You get your bell rung, kiddo?” she asked.

  He swallowed. Licked blood off his lips. “Yeah.”

  She lifted a hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Uh…five?”

  “Lucky guess.” She stepped back. “Sit him down, then. We need some ice.”

  “Reese has it in his pocket,” the Brit informed her as they shuffled Carter into the office and got him situated in the chair beside Leah’s.

  Reese produced a cold pack that he pressed into Carter’s hand.

  “Thanks,” Carter mumbled. He tipped his head back and pressed the pack to the bridge of his nose. “I think it’s stopped bleeding.”

  “Did you black out?” Maggie asked.

  “Fell like a tree,” the Brit said with a malicious grin that Leah found herself recoiling from physically. He demonstrated with his arm. “Right back on the coffee table.” The grin became a sneer. “He spilled coffee on my boots.”

  “Tenny,” the other one, Reese, said, a bit of inflection touching his voice. A reprimand.

  “Well, he did.” The Brit – Tenny – gestured down at his feet. “And these are brand new.”