by Nicole Helm
“Try it,” he instructed, making up his own bowl. He set it on the table, then went about getting them something to drink.
He slid across from her and glared. “Take a bite, Camden.”
She poked her fork at him. “What if it has something in it I’m deathly allergic to?”
“What are you deathly allergic to?”
“Beside the point.”
He chuckled, feeling overwhelmed by the warmth of affection squeezing around his chest. Like something more than affection, deeper than care. Something that took the breath out of his lungs because it was all...too much.
When things were too much, he ignored them. “What were you talking about when you came in? Something I wouldn’t believe?”
She pursed her lips, then finally took a bite of the squash. She wrinkled her nose as she chewed, but instead of telling him his health food was gross, she poked around for another bite.
“Tess.”
“What do you think of Granger?” she asked, eyes focused on her bowl.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
She looked up, eyebrows drawn together, expression perplexed and unsure. “Just humor me for a second.”
Marc didn’t see much reason to lie. “I think he’s a prick.”
“I... He’s been...” Tess fidgeted in her seat. “Weird lately. Like, I kind of knew he was a jerk when I was training him, but I thought I’d swayed him toward the path of least dickishness.”
“Okay, so what happened?”
“He’s been... I get the feeling he’s vaguely kind of threatening me.”
Very carefully, Marc set down his fork. The way he might at any stop with an asshole spouting off at the mouth, he let the anger settle deep in his gut while keeping a complete appearance of outward calm. “How is he threatening you?”
“I don’t mean it in a physical way. I mean, more like he seems to think I’ve done something wrong. And he’s going to find out what it is. I don’t know if it’s because my father lives so close to that drug dealer guy or what, but he’s... Something is weird about how he’s been treating me.”
“I see.” The anger he usually kept so well locked away until he could punch it out at the gym or run it out around the block boiled. It bubbled. He stood.
“What are you doing?”
“I think I’ll go have a talk with him.”
“Oh, please.” Then she seemed to understand that he was serious. “Don’t you even... Are you kidding me right now? I can handle Granger.”
“Yeah, so can I.” Handle his face into a brick wall. Because Tess had enough shit on her plate—she didn’t need some asshole who thought he was important because he had a badge screwing with her, too.
“I trained the guy. You have no tools at your disposal that I don’t have except a slightly larger build.”
“Yeah, slightly.”
She pointed her fork at him, and the I’ll-kick-your-ass hardening to her features was nothing to be trifled with. “The fact of the matter is, when it comes to work, I’m currently your superior. And his. So you’ll sit down, and calm down, and I’ll handle it.”
She was right. He knew she was right. He hated that she was right, but that didn’t change anything.
Stiff with anger and frustration, Marc sat back down. Underneath the table he clenched and unclenched his hand. He had to let it go. She didn’t want his help, she didn’t need his help, so he would keep it to himself until she did.
That didn’t need to make him feel like nothing. It didn’t. Even if it did, she didn’t have to know. That’s how things worked best. When no one had a clue as to what he was really feeling.
Why was it so much harder with Tess? No amount of clenching or unclenching, no amount of telling himself it didn’t matter, could keep the question from spilling out. “Are you ever going to let me help with anything?”
She looked like a deer caught in headlights, wide-eyed and frozen. “I’m fine.”
“And I can help. I’m not sure our ability to do either is righter or wronger than the other.”
“I can’t let you undermine me at work. Things with my father are a delicate balance. You... Believe it or not, this helps. Having dinner with you. Talking to you. Feeling like there’s some little piece of my life that’s mine, it helps.”
“Good.” And it was. He just needed to know he was helping, and he could relax. If this helped, he’d keep doing the hell out of it.
It didn’t matter if that put him in second place. He was good at second place, wasn’t he?
“Now, you,” she said simply.
“Me, what?”
“Tell me about your family.”
“If this whole...thing we have going on distracts you from all your shit, let’s leave my family out of it. Have our nice dinners, our nice evenings, and forget—”
Abruptly she got out of her chair, and he thought she was going walk right out, but she didn’t. She crossed to him, grabbed his face between her hands and pulled so he had to look up at her.
“I want to know you,” she said, forcefully. “I want to know that this stupid feeling I should not allow myself to have—but I don’t even care because it’s that awesome—I want to know what I feel for you is something real. So, I want to know you. Tell me. Something. Anything. Do not give me blank faces and brush-offs.”
Marc stared at her, the grayish eyes and the top-heavy mouth and every inch of her gorgeous face. Her palms were warm against his cheek and jaw. She smelled like her floral perfume, and this... It was so much a thing he wanted to keep.
But did he want that more than all those feelings he denied himself? Could he really let that go after years of keeping it in? Keeping it in was how he kept going, how he dealt.
Could he knowingly walk into a situation that was achingly similar to his family life? Taking the backseat. Never being important enough to make a difference.
“Marc.” Her fingertips traced his cheekbones. “Please.” Though he could fight a lot of things, pretend not to feel a lot of things, her simple please was his undoing.
* * *
TESS’S HEART WAS beating so hard and so loud in her ears, she could barely hear. She needed something from him. Some hint as to the weirdness between him and his parents, some idea of what resided underneath all those layers of quiet brooding.
She needed to know this deep, uncomfortable feeling of possibly being in love with a guy she couldn’t be in love with after such a short period of time was, well, was going to be worth the inevitable pain.
“My...sister was born with a heart defect.”
She had no idea where this was going, but it was the first he was talking about his sister, his family without it being vague. So she nodded, hoping it would encourage him to go on.
“You know, you joked about me not playing with her when I was a kid because I was too macho or whatever, but honestly it was because she was sick and I wasn’t allowed.”
“Oh.” Oh. Well.
“It’s a weird situation, I guess is what I’m trying to say. My whole life has kind of revolved around her health, or lack thereof. Which isn’t wrong or bad or something horrible my parents did, it just...is.”
“But, she’s okay now, right? Or did you move because—”
“She’s fine. She had a heart transplant years ago, and aside from a few...things, she’s mostly healthy and fine.”
Heart transplant. Jeez. It wasn’t dark or complicated like her family issues, but it was heavy. Big. Life and the threat of death. “So why were you so tense with your parents? Why the comments about them not wanting to see you?”
“Because...” Gently, so gently she wanted to squeeze him, he took her hands and removed them from his face. Then he stood and turned his back to her, the tenseness in his shoulder
s so sharp she wished she could do something to relax them.
“Leah’s health made her the center of their life, and I...” He didn’t move, she wasn’t sure he even breathed, his shoulders were so still. “I don’t quite make the cut, I suppose. They cared for me. I never wanted for any necessities. They are good parents.”
“But you don’t think they love you?” She swallowed down a longing so familiar it was like a part of her. The question of parental love had always been more question than reality for her. If one could even call Mom leaving a question of love. She pretty much had the answer on that one.
“Of course they love me. In that kind of way you love all your family members. But Leah’s the center of their life. Everything they work toward. I’m more of a rock or foundation-type thing. There. Supportive. But not something anyone pays much attention to.”
He turned to face her, jaw set, eyes determined. If she wasn’t looking for it, she’d probably miss it, but underneath that determination was hurt. Sadness. She moved to hug him, but he kept talking.
“See? It’s really all very stupid. Pointless. Nothing. It’s nothing like what you’ve had to deal with.”
Some of the sympathy that had welled inside of her faded away. “You don’t always have to be comparing.”
“I only mean it’s nothing.”
“You tell yourself that a lot about a lot of things, don’t you?” She could see that pattern. He convinced himself his feelings didn’t matter. He made himself blank. Pushed it all down. She’d seen that without totally understanding, but now that she knew this...
She understood. She understood him. Maybe his family issues kind of paled in severity to hers, but it didn’t take away the fact he’d dealt with something difficult. Something painful, and probably scary and hard.
More, he didn’t think he deserved to have it mean something. That his feelings didn’t matter because they weren’t as big as hers.
“Well, all that’s utter bullshit, darling.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“No. The feelings aren’t bullshit, you thinking they aren’t important or valid is. We all have crap, Marc. Deep, twisted crap. Some of it’s worse than others but it hardly negates the crap of feeling...” She took a deep breath, uncomfortable with offering even more of herself than she already had. Especially when this was so...screwy.
But she couldn’t help herself. She just couldn’t. “It’s hard feeling like you don’t matter. Period.”
He remained very still. Very blank. “I’ve tried very hard to be...” He trailed off, his forehead getting scrunched, his jaw clenching then unclenching.
“To be what?”
“Someone they’d appreciate,” he said through clenched teeth. “Everything they asked, everything they expected, I did it. I know how pathetic this sounds, but I’ve just wanted them to acknowledge that. But they don’t. Because Leah’s all that matters.”
She pressed her palms to his heart, because she felt an echoing pain in hers. She’d never felt as though she didn’t matter. In fact, it was the opposite. She mattered too much. She was responsible for too much.
But she wanted to be acknowledged for that, too. She wanted it to matter, and it never had. “You matter,” she said, possibly more fiercely than the situation warranted.
He rested his hand over hers. He didn’t say anything, and she didn’t know what she wanted him to say. Well, she had an idea, but it was such a foolish thing to want, she pushed it out of her mind.
“I think you should tell them how you feel. Just...” She spread her fingers wide so he could lace his with hers. “The fact they’re here and they were all interested in who I was means they care, Marc. Maybe they don’t see, but they care. You can’t blame them for not being able to see through this unaffected aura you give off.”
“You do.”
I love him. It hit her on a deep, visceral level. This man, so desperate to do right and help and not be hurt—she was totally in love with him. Because of things like that. Because he could make her feel important and capable and her. Just by being honest.
And she didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of figuring out what she was going to do about that.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MARC HAD NEVER felt so raw and exposed before. In fact, the feelings were so foreign, he was having a hard time figuring out how to deal with them aside from standing like a statue with his hand linked with Tess’s over his heart.
Where more foreign, complicated feelings knotted together, making it hard to breathe or move or think or talk. Statue Marc was his go-to, and he was there. But so was Tess, and she wanted more from him. To know him.
“I think it’s easier to go on as things are,” he finally managed to get out. “I’ve actually kind of liked the way things are going as of late.” Because if she saw too deep, understood too well, she’d know that every time she asked him to step back—it killed him to do so.
Her mouth curved and she stepped closer. “Me, too.” She said it emphatically, her eyes a little shiny.
Strange.
“But I still think you should, well—” Her free hand slid up his chest, his neck, the back of his head, her palm grazing the short bristles of his hair. Then over his forehead, down his nose, covering his eyes, and when she got to his mouth, she smiled. “Tell them. How you feel. Maybe they don’t know they’re hurting you.”
“They’re not hurting me,” he said into her palm. More because he wanted it to be true than because he was under any illusion it was.
Her hand moved back down his chest, covered his hand that was covering her other one. All on top of his heart. “It’s not wrong to feel hurt.” She paused, looking at their joined hands before tentatively raising her gaze to his eyes. “You should be able to tell people how you feel.”
He had a hard time getting his breath in or out. That last sentence, the way she so carefully said the words, the way her eyes met his, their hands entwined. It all seemed to mean something bigger. Less about his parents, about her father, about the things that made everything between them complicated.
More about them in this moment and feelings he wasn’t sure he knew how to deal with in the context of reality. But in the context of this evening, of this apartment...
“Tess.” He didn’t know what else to say. Hell, he barely got her name past his lips. He could hardly breathe properly because right here in this moment he felt so much, so deeply, that he didn’t know what the fuck to do.
Welcome to the past few weeks with Tess. All sorts of things he didn’t know what the fuck to do with.
But when she put her fingertips to his mouth, he pressed a kiss to them. Then to her palm, and her wrist. He didn’t have the words to express the chest-shrinking, jittery thing going on in his general heart area, but maybe he could still find a way to give her some insight.
He cradled her arm with one hand, pressing another kiss to the inside of her elbow, the rise of her muscle, then he nudged the collar of her shirt off her shoulder so he could kiss her there, then her collarbone, the side of her neck.
Her breath fluttered across his cheek, but otherwise she didn’t move. She let him explore with his mouth, light brushes of his lips against the soft hollows and expanses of her skin. From one shoulder to the other, then down her opposite arm, wrist, fingers.
“My turn,” she said, curling her fingers around his wrist and pulling his hand to her mouth. She did the same thing to him—soft lips against all the same places on his arms, his neck. But she stopped there, her tongue flicking out and grazing his shoulder, then licking up the side of his neck until she reached his jaw, where she nipped at him.
“Kiss me?” she asked.
As if she had to ask. As if he’d ever say no. He lowered his mouth to hers, gently, lightly. He’d almost call the k
iss tentative, but that wasn’t it. Testing. Teasing. Until she sighed against his mouth and linked her arms around his neck. With her body pressed against his, the pressure of the kiss intensified. He tangled his fingers in her hair, cupping her scalp, letting his tongue explore the texture of her mouth, her lips.
When she pulled away, they were both breathing heavily, both had each other in a tight grip. He couldn’t remember a time he’d been this desperate to hold on to someone.
“Come with me.” He took her hand and led her to the bedroom. It seemed imperative to lie next to her, be entwined with her.
She went with him. He could have sworn they’d gotten all the nervous and random awkward pauses out of their sexual encounters, but nerves jangled in his gut. A hollow, twisting feeling. It wasn’t as if this were suddenly more important. She’d always been important. The crackle of attraction had been instantaneous, and getting to know her had only made that attraction sharpen into care.
So, nothing he felt was new. But it felt that way. Or maybe it just felt more important. Bigger.
Christ. It was too much. All this feeling and not saying it and not understanding what was curling inside him, making everything this weighty.
“Marc?”
He blinked down at her, irritated with himself for losing focus. Irritated with himself for all of this and his lack of handle on it.
Her mouth was still open, but no other words came out, just a stilted exhaled breath. “I...”
He almost thought she was going to say it. The crazy thought going around and around in his head that he kept trying to ignore.
He was...in love with her. Part of him didn’t believe it was possible, but it was one of those things that once he’d thought it, that word he didn’t know what to do with, he couldn’t unthink it or change his mind or miraculously know how to say it.
“I want you to make love to me,” she said very seriously.
“I’m planning on it.”
Her mouth curved. “And then I’m going to spend the night.”
