by Chloe Cox
Simone rubbed her sleepless eyes. Sleep deprivation was doing a number on her memory. She’d forgotten all about that.
“This is payback,” she said.
“What for?”
“Remember when the two of you broke up, or whatever it was?” Simone asked, and leaned on the kitchen island. That coffee smelled good.
“I remember my Dom temporarily being an idiot, yes.”
“Well, I ambushed him before five in the morning with coffee and a lecture,” Simone explained, managing a smile. “But only because that was literally the only way I was going to lecture a Dom.”
Charlene grinned back.
“When he was too sleepy to be intimidating?”
“Pretty much.”
“What was the coffee for?”
“For after I was done lecturing him and also very far away,” Simone said. She reached for one of the coffees and inhaled deeply. “Do you mind?”
“Girl, those are both for you,” Charlene said. “You don’t want to know the amount of caffeine I consumed just to be here on time. I’m pretty sure I could fly right now if I put my mind to it.”
Despite the sleep deprivation and the situation, Simone smiled again. Charlene really was family. She’d been Simone’s older sister’s best friend, before Gabby died. Simone couldn’t remember a time without Charlene in her life, and she wouldn’t want to. Because there was nothing like being around someone who you knew accepted you for who you were, no matter what.
That was the look Charlene was giving her right then, as the first rays of sunlight started to stream into Simone’s kitchen, and for the first time in days, Simone was glad she let someone in.
“Simone,” Charlene started, her voice gentle.
“I know,” Simone said. But she didn’t. Not really. She didn’t know anything.
“Well, are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Charlene said. “This whole hermit bunker thing you’ve got going on? You’ve got people who love you, you know. We’re worried.”
Simone stared deeply into her coffee, and found no answers.
“I just…”
“Just tell me, sweetie. Rip off the bandaid.”
Simone closed her eyes. She was just too tired to lie, even to herself. “I’m ashamed,” she said.
There it was. She hadn’t really said it out loud before, but the second she did, the truth of it was impossible to ignore. And it felt…silly. Silly to let something she knew she was wrong to feel get the better of her, and then she was ashamed of that, and there was just no end to it. It was like the shame itself was a living thing and would do anything to survive, hopping from thought to thought, relationship to relationship, infecting every damn thing she loved.
“That’s it,” she said again, forcing herself to look up this time. “I’m ashamed.”
Charlene’s brown eyes were big and soft and fighting back tears. That hurt Simone more than she was prepared for.
“Shame and love can’t share the same space, honey,” Charlene said eventually. “And you deserve all the love in the world.”
“Yeah, well,” Simone said, and looked for more answers in her coffee. She hated that she’d essentially reverted to being a sullen teenager, but it was like the last line of defense against the feelings welling up inside her. She would take it.
Unfortunately, Charlene wouldn’t.
“Look at me, Simone Delavigne.” Charlene’s voice cracked. “I’m not ashamed of you, and no one at the club is ashamed of you, and I know there is no way in hell that Holt is ashamed of you. Quite the opposite, in fact. We’re all proud as hell that you went and tape recorded that conversation, even if—”
“I’m ashamed of me,” Simone blurted out.
Charlene stared at her. There was a long moment of silence. Then she sighed, and smiled slightly, which was a weird combination.
“What?” Simone said.
Charlene paused, as if deciding whether to say it or not, which almost made Simone want to laugh. Charlene had never not said the thing in her entire life.
“I know you’ve carried a lot of weight on your shoulders your whole life,” Charlene began, true to form. “What with Gabby’s death, and your father’s general—”
“Assholery?”
“—Difficulty,” Charlene finished. “I’m being serious, Simone.”
“I know. Sorry.”
“There have been times when I’ve been very scared for you, and times when I’ve been sad for you, and I’ve never been able to do much about it except be here when you let me be, and I accept that. That’s how it works. But I wish you’d be half as kind and as understanding to yourself as you are to everybody else.”
“Look, I don’t—”
“I wasn’t finished,” Charlene said, and the eyebrow went back up. She could lay on the big sister authority when she needed to. “But since you won’t be kind to yourself, I’m just going to have to tell you the truth instead. I can’t pretend to know everything about your relationship with Holt, but I do know that I’ve never seen you as happy or as free from that weight as when you are with him. I don’t know what it is or how it works, and I don’t care. I just like seeing you happy.”
Simone looked down and gripped the edge of her kitchen island while the void in her chest opened back up. Charlene was right, of course. Holt made her feel whole. He made her feel like it was ok to be herself.
Right up until he didn’t.
That’s why it had hurt so much. Like being given a glimpse of paradise before the door was slammed in your face.
“Char, this isn’t actually helping,” she whispered.
“Well, I still wasn’t finished,” Charlene said. “Buck up, buttercup. Because I know that man, and he loves you. And I don’t think you’re hiding away from him. I think you’re hiding away from yourself. I think you don’t want to face your own feelings. I think you don’t want to face all that pain. And you know Holt won’t let you be anyone but your real, flawed self, or any way but honest, and that’s what scares you so much you’re holed up in here like a living mummy.”
Simone blinked up at her friend. The light was streaming in now, illuminating her stuffy apartment, showing it to be the living mausoleum she’d turned it into. It was like all the air had been sucked out of the room.
And that was why she used to drink—to run, to hide. She’d promised herself that she’d never do it again. And yet here she was, locked away in a virtual tower…
“I don’t know what to say,” Simone said.
“You never were good at admitting when I was right,” Charlene said, and stole a sip of Simone’s coffee. “But I will remind you of what I told you at the beginning of all this, which was that you got sober and you got through rehab on your own, so if you can face that…please. You can face this. God, I make good coffee.”
“The rest is mine,” Simone said, smiling to keep from tearing up. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Brat,” Charlene said, grinning again. “Now, what are you going to do for the rest of the day?”
“I don’t know,” Simone said. “Think? Cry? But consider me well lectured.”
“Only if you promise to leave the house,” Charlene said. “This isn’t healthy. And you have to promise to come to dinner. And you have to promise to call me at least once a day. And—”
“Ok, I didn’t pull any of that crap on Luke during his morning lecture,” Simone said. “But I will think about it. All of it.”
And in fact she could already feel certain uncomfortable thoughts pushing their unwanted way into her mind—like that maybe it wasn’t totally rational or reasonable to deduce Holt’s reaction from a single look, or that maybe she had reacted on a hair trigger because of the last time, or that maybe she was just trying to find a way to run from her feelings without drinking, which was still better than drinking, obviously, but wasn’t, you know, great. And she was too tired to resist them. There really was something to this early-morning ambush technique.
“Well, that’s all I ask,” Charlene said, and hopped down off one of the kitchen stools. The sun was really flooding the place now, and the light was reflected in Charlene’s smiling face. “Now I’m going home so I can wake up Luke before he gets to sleep in.”
“Big day for you two?”
“No, just revenge,” Charlene said airily. Simone laughed as she opened the front door for her friend. Charlene walked through the door, turned around, and grinned. “Plus, maybe I’ll get some good discipline out of it.”
“You live a life of danger,” Simone said.
Charlene laughed, but then she stood there, in Simone’s doorway, while her smile faded, her eyes searching Simone’s face the whole time. Simone had to admit that Charlene had a point. It was unnerving to be seen like that, sometimes.
“What?” Simone said.
“I love you,” Charlene said, shrugging it away, like it was the simplest thing in the world. “And…listen. Shame feeds on secrets, Simone. Let them go. Trust me on that.”
And then with a quick peck on the cheek, Charlene was gone.
Leaving Simone to think about her secrets, and her shame.
And Holt.
29
That first night was hard.
It was pure torture, walking away from that interrogation room. Walking away from Simone.
But Holt knew in his mind that what Gavin said was true—he knew it in his mind well before he knew it in his heart. He needed to deal with his own shit before he dealt with Simone’s. Before he saw her. Before he would be any good to her. Before he could be her Dom.
Still torture.
He hadn’t gone home. He’d gone right to the twenty-four-hour gym he belonged to, the no frills kind that trained first responders and fighters, and assumed you didn’t need anyone to tell you how to lift the weights. Just as well—Holt would have taken someone’s head off that night just for looking at him wrong.
He needed to rage. He’d lifted until his legs were shaking and his shoulders ached and his eyes were red, and then he’d hit the heavy bag until the sun creaked in through the dirty windows and reminded him that he was supposed to be a human being.
Humanity felt far away. Hell felt closer. Vengeance felt closer. While he worked that heavy bag something opened up inside him, and he saw that his threat to Crennel had been just as real as it had felt when he made it. It had turned around everything he thought he knew about himself, and made him face something deeper.
The same woman who’d taught him to be a better man had shown him that darkness lived in him, too. And he kept thinking about what Carlinson had said.
God gave us free will so we could choose who to be.
But he knew who he had to be for Simone. He loved that woman more than he’d thought possible, more than he knew he was capable of. His choice was made.
Then Gavin called.
“I know you’re thinking of going over there right now,” Gavin said, no further explanation needed, “and I’m telling you not to. Don’t even call her.”
“You telling me, or Simone?” Holt had asked.
“Both,” Gavin answered. “She’ll let you know when she’s ready. Or I will. Or something like that. This is uncharted territory.”
If it had been anyone else, Holt would have let him have it. But he trusted Gavin. He trusted Simone.
So that second night, Holt had gone back to the gym.
And after that, he thought he was done. He was back to equilibrium. He’d gone back to work. Until he’d gone out for lunch and thought he saw some men hassling a girl. He’d gone full berserker on them, threw one man up against a wall, knocked another to his knees, the girl who was with them screaming her head off before he realized he’d made a mistake. Just a jerk older brother and his friend, teasing his teenage sister.
After that, Holt had taken his first vacation in eight years, and he’d gone right back to the goddamn gym. Only this time he was thinking while he worked. Something kept Simone from wanting to see him, from being ready to see him. And whatever it was, he was going to fucking take care of it. He just had to figure it out first.
In the end he didn’t care that she’d been with someone else, and he knew that she knew him well enough to know that; he cared that she’d been hurt. He cared that she’d ever felt that pain. It was his pain, now, and he wanted to take it out on anyone who had ever hurt her. That included himself.
He thought about Simone’s body language by the time he put her in the car, after he’d secured the scene, after the police showed up. She was withdrawn, curled up in her shell. Reacting. Like he’d reacted when he saw those kids—reacting to a thing that happened in the past by taking it out on something in the present.
That’s when the lightbulb went on.
He finally understood, and he understood because he knew his sub, inside and out. And he knew that right now, she was triggered into thinking she was going to lose him. She was reacting defensively. She was too walled off to be reached. She needed to know she was in control of herself before she gave it up to him.
Sometimes the best way to be close to someone was to keep your distance.
For a time.
He gave her a week.
Holt put it to good use. The next morning he showed up at Mrs. Greenfield’s rundown red clapboard shotgun house with his tools, his truck, and a plan. The only reason the Greenfields had gotten into trouble was because they felt they had no other choice, and now Mrs. Greenfield was knocking around all alone in that house while it fell apart around her.
Holt fixed it. He patched up her roof, replaced the siding, built her a shade covering so she could go outside and talk to people. Fixed up her yard, recruited the local kids to help so they could keep it up, and made damn sure they knew who Mrs. Greenfield was and they knew her biscuits. He did all the things that needed doing, sweating in the sun until he was empty of regret or anger, as empty as he was going to be.
And he called Gavin every damn day.
“How’s today?”
“Same as yesterday.”
“You make sure someone’s looking in on her,” Holt ordered. “Or I’ll have your ass.”
He did all that for six days. And then something turned in the air. He couldn’t say how he knew, but he knew.
It was time.
This time he didn’t call. He pulled into the driveway at Club Volare, noticed the looks he got—everyone a little curious, no one rude enough to bother him. Ignored it all.
Went right to Gavin’s office, where this all started.
Told Gavin what he needed.
Gavin only looked up, and frowned.
“Did she call you?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Holt said. “Soon.”
“I don’t think I can do that if—”
“If you try to tell me something you think I don’t know about my sub one more time, we will need to take this outside,” Holt said, his voice calm, but devoid of humor. “Understand me, Gavin. She is the love of my life. Nothing comes before that. Nothing. Do what I asked. And have it ready by—”
He was interrupted by his own phone, beeping a notification he heard rarely but recognized instantly. Holt read the message and smiled.
“Have it ready now,” he said. “We’ll be back in an hour.”
Simone took a deep breath, cut through the hazy, humid air of the bayou, and climbed the steps to Bo’s Gumbo Shack.
“Do the right thing,” she whispered to herself, “even if it’s not the easy thing.”
Over the past six days, Simone had tried every thing she could think of to deal with the fall out of the raid on Crennel’s. Well, that wasn’t entirely true—she’d tried every comfortable thing she could think of. She’d holed up in her apartment, she’d eaten a lot of ice cream, she’d cried, she’d talked to Charlene, she’d written a bunch of embarrassing things in her journal. All the usuals.
Nothing had worked. There was still this hole in her heart, and there was still, no matter what s
he did, this annoying little voice in the back of her mind, getting louder with every passing day, telling her she was screwing up. That she was running. Hiding. Doing the exact thing she’d promised herself she’d never do again.
So now it was time to try some uncomfortable things. Like standing up, taking responsibility, and facing the consequences of her choices.
It was time to apologize to Holt. In person. Face to face.
So of course she was at a gumbo shack instead.
She wished she could say she got up to go get some apology gumbo because she was brave and determined and totally at peace with her choices and her future, but the truth was she was a mess and the gumbo was good, and the odds that she was going to work all this out on her own were slim and getting slimmer. And while she was emphatically not allowing herself to hope that Holt would somehow see past all her myriad screw ups and somehow still want to be with her, she couldn’t go talk to him without a peace offering, right?
So this wasn’t just procrastination. Nor was it a transparent and cowardly ploy to maybe get someone who knew Holt to give her some inside info on what he was thinking. No, this was just about the gumbo.
Well, mostly about the gumbo.
The look Bo gave her when she ducked inside told her he wouldn’t have believed any of that if she’d tried it on him.
“Hi, Bo,” she said. She looked around, and sure enough, they were alone in the cool shade of the restaurant, the windows open to the sun and water outside. “I don’t know if you remember me, but—”
“I remember you,” the old man said, leaning over the high wooden counter where he took his orders.
“Do you know why I’m here?” Simone said.
“Well,” Bo said, unmoving except for his mouth, “it’s either gumbo, or it’s not gumbo.”
Simone almost laughed. That pretty much summed it up. Facing Holt was either going to break her shell or break her heart. Gumbo, or not gumbo.
“Both, maybe?” she said.
Bo grunted. “Sit down,” he said, and disappeared back into the kitchen.
Simone made her way to a table by an open window and tried not to look nervous. This was starting to seem like a bad plan. A ridiculous plan. A plan that wasn’t really a plan, so much as a way of avoiding actually talking to Holt. She didn’t know what she expected to get here, what Bo could possibly tell her that would make this easier. The fact was that she was scared because of her mistakes. Because of what they revealed about her.
