If you’re looking for me, you missed me. Leave a message. Leah smiled at the sound of his voice.
Gunner, it’s me. What’s going on? I’ve paged you at least a dozen times, and you’re not calling back. I’m worried, baby. And I need…I want to see—”
Leah had been drawn toward the kitchen by the woman’s voice. She was halfway through the living room, still holding the hanger with her jeans draped over the bar, when it cut off abruptly. She stopped, too. She couldn’t see either Rad or Griffin, but she guessed they were right around the corner, near the sink.
“Shit. Was that what’s-her-name? The MILF he’s bangin’?” Griffin whispered.
“No idea,” Rad muttered. “Just shut the fuck up.”
Feeling woozy and scared, Leah dropped her jeans onto the ugly sofa and went around the corner. She wondered what a ‘MILF’ was, but that curiosity barely registered. Gunner was ‘banging’ somebody, and she sure knew what that meant.
Rad gave her the most paternal look she’d ever seen on a face that wasn’t her father’s. He didn’t even try to feign ignorance that she’d heard. “Hey, darlin’. Don’t wrap yourself around that axle.”
“He already has somebody?”
Rad came to her and set his rocky hands on her shoulders. “Think about it, Leah. Ain’t even been a week since the party.” She stared at the answering machine. He pinched her chin and made her face him. “Not even a week. Right?”
He was right. It was Thursday. She nodded.
“Things’re movin’ fast with you two. That’s okay. Got a good story about movin’ fast myself. But Gun wasn’t livin’ under a rock before last weekend. That probably won’t be the last time you come face to face with his life before you, so you best figure out how to roll with it. You hear? He’s hurt and sick, and he don’t need drama from you makin’ his shit harder.”
The phone rang again. Either Rad or Griffin had turned off the answering machine, so it just rang and rang. They all stood in the kitchen and stared at the inactive device on the little table until the ringing finally stopped.
Rad still had hold of her. “Leah. Tell me your head’s straight on this, little girl.”
“I’m not a little girl.”
He smiled and brushed the tip of her nose with a callused finger. “No, you’re not. You’re a little bobcat. But I need to hear that you’re not plannin’ to take a hunk out of Gun over this. Or yourself. That chick is wonderin’ where he is. But you know. You’re here. Because he took a beatin’ over you. Think about that.”
Leah thought about it. Rad was right; Gunner had made his choice. Whoever that woman was, Leah was the one who had him. She nodded, and Rad grinned.
“Good girl.”
~oOo~
On the day Gunner came home, Leah stayed at the apartment and made things ready. The Bulls and his dad and sister were bringing him from the hospital, everybody together, which seemed a bit much to Leah, but Gunner had wanted it.
He’d been away nearly two weeks. In that time, she’d settled in a tiny bit, and for his homecoming, she’d made things as nice as possible—a new little tablecloth over the card table in the dining room, new sheets and pillows on his bed, a kitchen stocked with the food he was allowed to eat—bland and mushy. Lots of broth, nothing more substantial than Cream of Wheat, and that only in small measure. But he liked Jell-O, all the red flavors, so she’d bought a whole shelf’s worth of boxes and a set of fancy parfait glasses.
A week had passed since she’d been to her father’s house. She’d hadn’t heard from him, and she hadn’t tried to call, either. She’d left a few messages for Ashley, but they’d gone unreturned.
The ‘MILF’ woman had called twice more looking for Gunner, and then she’d stopped. Leah had left the messages—more of the same—on the machine. They were Gunner’s, and she didn’t have a right to erase them. But she meant to ask about her.
The hospital was releasing him before he was fully recovered, and he had a lot of restrictions about what he could do. That day, Willa brought Zach over to help Leah get the medical stuff ready and to help Gunner get settled when he got home. She was a nurse, and she had more instructions for Leah than the doctor had had. She’d brought a trunk load of supplies over—all the stuff freaked Leah out a little.
She held little Zach and followed Willa around while she set up the bed, and set up the bathroom, and went through the kitchen to make sure the food was right. All the while, she rattled instructions off, and Leah tried to commit it all to memory.
“Mo, Joanna, Maddie, and I are gonna take turns checking in and helping out, but we all work, too, so don’t worry if one of the girls shows up instead of us. If that happens, it’s because we were stretched too far and sent her over. Don’t get territorial. Take the help you need, okay?”
Leah hated the thought of any of the ‘girls’—she’d heard them called ‘sweetbutts’—coming over to take care of Gunner while she was at work. Ugh. No.
She didn’t argue with Willa, however. “Okay. Willa—I’m…I’m a little scared.”
Willa laughed and took Zach from her. “Get used to that feeling, hon. That’s life with a Bull.”
~oOo~
That night, long after everyone had left, Leah peeked into the bedroom. Gunner was asleep, propped up on a foam wedge thing Willa had put under his pillows to keep him elevated. He was snoring quietly; he’d had the maximum dose of painkiller the doctor had prescribed, and that always knocked him out. His water glass was empty, so she tiptoed in and picked it up.
The little gooseneck lamp on his nightstand was still on. Before she snapped it off, she took a beat and studied him. The weight he’d lost in the hospital had drawn circles under his eyes and carved hollows in his cheeks. Red lines of fresh scars crossed his nose, his cheek, his forehead.
His chest was bare, the covers drawing a line just at the bottom of his ribcage. Those ribs weren’t bound in bandages any longer, but the still-vivid blooms of bruising from punches and kicks showed how badly he’d been hurt. Under the covers, on his side and belly, long incisions were stitched and bandaged.
Over the days since he’d been beaten, Leah had often tried, and always failed, to understand why it had happened. She could understand her father’s worry when she hadn’t come home, and she could even understand his shock and anger at finding out she wasn’t who he’d thought she was. But he’d known—he must have known—that Sheriff Lucas would have hurt Gunner to make him stay away. Everybody in Osage County knew that he was as likely to solve a problem with fists as with handcuffs. Lots of people liked him for just that reason.
Even by that standard, what had happened to Gunner seemed extreme. As if the sheriff had taken the situation personally. But Leah hardly knew him, and her father didn’t know him all that well, either. It made no sense.
Gunner had been quiet all day. Leah had been relieved when people had left and he’d agreed that he needed to get into bed. He’d had to lean on her and use the four-footed cane that Willa had brought over to get from the sofa to the bed.
Now, in this apartment, they were alone, truly alone, for the first time. Even though his dinner had been chicken broth and Jell-O, she’d loved making it for him and sitting beside him on the bed while he ate it. She loved standing here right now, watching him sleep, preparing to wash up the dishes from that little meal. She loved the thought that she would slide in beside him in that bed and sleep with him so close.
Taking care of him, being with him, she knew she’d gained more than she’d lost, even though she’d lost everything.
Before she took his empty glass away, she bent down and kissed his forehead. As she turned to leave, his hand caught at the tail of her shirt. “Hey, don’t go.”
“I’ll be back. I’m just doing dishes. Go back to sleep.”
“Stay with me. Stay.” His eyes were closed, and his words were soft. The drug had him mostly under, pulling him quickly deeper. “Stay,” he sighed.
“I’m staying.”
She set the empty glass back on the nightstand and went to slide in beside him. “As long as you want me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gunner made a face at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He looked like a fucking mangy dog. The new scars on his face, he didn’t mind so much, nor the scars he’d have when the stitches in his gut dissolved. Scars were cool. But the butchers at the hospital had shaved him in weird patches all over his torso—divots wherever they’d stuck some superglued discs for the EKG leads, and wide swaths around his incision sites. Even with all the hack-happy shaving, they’d still managed to pull hairs out by the roots when they’d freed him from the leads the day before. And changing the bandages? Not cool.
And then there was his head. They’d trimmed his beard way back—he’d been growing it for more than a year, but now it looked about a month old. In addition to that outrage, he was going to have to do an undercut thing like Rad and Apollo, at least for a while, because the nurse or doctor or whoever had wielded the razor had left a bald patch about five inches wide on the back of his head, a sad halo around the scar left by the blow to the head he’d taken on Leah’s front lawn.
Add to all those lovely features the ten pounds he’d dropped, and oh yeah, he was looking fine lately.
Flipping his reflection the bird, Gunner opened the medicine chest and put his deodorant and toothpaste away. He meant to pull his pain meds down and pop a couple, but they weren’t on the shelf where they’d been. Perplexed, he closed the chest and checked the counter. Nope. His antibiotics were there, but not the Percocet.
When he came out of the bathroom, he glanced around the bedroom. On the dresser was the blue plastic organizer full of supplies for wound care, but no pill bottle—not there or on the nightstand.
The bed was made, the pillows fluffed and the covers smoothed and turned back in a neat triangle, ready for him to lie down again; Leah must have done that while he’d washed. Gunner smiled at that. She was quite the little nurse and housekeeper.
He’d woken a few times in the night, finding her at his side, facing him, her hands tucked under her pillow. She looked stunningly young and sweet when she slept. Feeling calm and content despite the various discomforts in his body, he’d watched her as long as he could before sleep had taken him back under. When he’d woken to use the bathroom and get another hit of pain meds, she’d woken as well to see if he needed help. She seemed completely devoted.
What was it—like two weeks since she’d sought him out at the clubhouse? A whole lot of shit had gone down in those two weeks, and here he was, living with a chick for the first time in his life. Wild.
He lived his life balls to the wall, doing everything on impulse and as fast as he could go. Apparently, he fell in love the same way.
He was pretty sure what he was feeling for Leah was love. It wasn’t something he’d felt before. But he wanted to touch her all the time, he felt better just being around her, and when he was away from her, he was just biding his time until he could be with her again. That was love. He was pretty sure.
“You’re supposed to use the cane,” she said behind him, and he turned around, careful not to twist a midsection that was still fucking tender.
She stood there in a tight pink t-shirt and a pair of baggy denim overalls, her hair in a loose, messy, doubled-up ponytail. Her hands were on her hips, and her forehead was creased with disapproval. Damn, she was cute.
The cane made him feel like a hundred-year-old invalid, so he rolled his eyes. “I don’t need it. I’ll use the wall if I feel shaky.” With a grin, he grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “Or you could just hold me up.”
She gave him a sweet smile and leaned—very lightly—on his chest. “Are you going back to bed, or coming to the living room with me?”
“Living room—hey. Do you know where my meds are?”
Her eyes flashed something like guilt, which was strange. “They’re in the kitchen.”
They’d made it to the living room, so Gunner eased onto the sofa and noticed that she had his PlayStation games arranged in a neat row under the television and beside the console. They were probably alphabetized, too. “You moved them?”
She followed his eyes to the television. “I was just trying to make things nice for when you came home. I didn’t mean to change things on you.”
“Not the games, Leah. My meds. I need them closer than the kitchen.”
Instead of going to get them, she sat down. “Can we talk about that?”
Curious and feeling the first hint of defensiveness, Gunner nodded slowly. “If you’ve got something to say, go ahead.”
It took her a few seconds to get it out, and she didn’t look him in the eye, so his defensive instinct had flowered by the time she opened her mouth. “You take the maximum dose as often as you can. Sometimes more.”
Fucking hell. She was already monitoring him? “Are you for real? You think I’m hooked? I’ve been home less than a day.”
“I don’t think you’re hooked. But…I think that’s how you get that way. I just want you to be careful.”
He gestured sharply at the bandages over his otherwise bare belly. “Fuck, Leah. I hurt. I’m taking the meds the doc gave me for the fucking pain.”
For most of his adult life, Gunner had sought out ways to hurt. But this was different. This hurt, he hadn’t felt in a damn long time, not since he was sixteen. This long-term healing pain that was mostly a constant, hot ache, it didn’t give him what he needed—instead, it made him need. Sharp pain gave him focus. The pain he had now just made him tired.
It was more than the pain; there was frustration in it, too. The steady, dull beat of this hurt made him need the other kind. He hated it. The Percocet, at the highest dosage, calmed that psychic itch.
What would Leah say if he told her all that? One look at her in her pink and blonde innocence, her smooth face and bright blue eyes free of makeup so that she looked not one second older than her years—fucking hell, she was still a goddamn teenager—told Gunner he should shut the fuck up about why he was leaning on his pills.
He’d snapped at her, however, and now her lips quivered like she was ready to cry.
Gunner suddenly understood where this was coming from. It wasn’t about him. Setting his offense aside, he picked up her hand. “I’m not your dad. I got a lot of weaknesses, and you’re gonna find that out, but not drugs or booze. Strictly recreational user—unless I’m hurt. I promise. But if it makes you feel better, you can keep track. At least give me until my gut’s healed up, though, before you start twelve-stepping me, okay?”
Obviously relieved, her quivering lips steadied and spread into a pretty smile. “Okay. Thank you. I’ll get your meds.” As she stood up she paused and gave him yet another nervous glance. “Um…can we talk about something else?”
Fuck. Gunner didn’t like feeling defensive like this in his own apartment. This was his safe space, free of judgment and expectation…that thought coupled with his musing about what she’d think of his pain deal, and the first wrinkle in the whole living-together thing occurred to him. He’d moved a girl he barely knew into his own home. They didn’t know each other’s tastes or habits. Or their weaknesses and vices. They had no idea if they were compatible at all.
Elbowing that huge thought to the side so he didn’t say anything that would freak her out, he took a breath. What the hell was he in for now? “Yeah…say what you need to say.”
Rather than speak, she walked away and went around the wall into the kitchen. He heard her fill a glass with water; she apparently meant to get him his meds before she brought up her next difficult topic.
Her challenging questions had put him on guard, and he flinched in surprise when his answering machine began to play. Simon first, asking him to call in. The robotic voice of the machine stamped that one as occurring on the day he and Osage County’s finest had danced their dance. A call from Delaney on the same day, demanding a call—the president sounded angry with an edge of worry, and
threatened to kick his ass if he was flaking out. The next message was from a fellow gearhead, left later on Saturday night. He used a code for a street race location. Gunner raced his Chevelle once or twice a month. Usually made some decent jack on the bets.
Then Evelyn’s voice rose up, and Gunner’s body went so tense that pain flared through his midsection, and he grunted. Evelyn had his number but almost never called. She used his pager, and he called her back at payphones or directly at the motel.
The first message, time stamped for Sunday, indicated that she’d paged twice and was just checking in to make sure he was okay. She sounded more pissed than truly concerned; their relationship was one in which she got her way, unless there was a club reason to keep him from coming when she called, and she didn’t like being ignored.
Five more messages from Evelyn throughout the time he’d been in the hospital. He hadn’t even seen his pager since he’d gone home after the beating, but Evelyn had been hitting it hard, it seemed. In the last message, she was clearly worried and frustrated—and sad, too. She said she wouldn’t call again.
Twist (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 2) Page 17
