by Anna Brooks
Because I’m not a solid dude. I didn’t learn much when I lost my family, but one thing I do know is that I’m possessive as fuck when I feel something belongs to me. I’ve never experienced this level… this ache in my chest and the ferocity running through my veins with my own damn wife, and that’s fuckin’ with my head, too.
I want to fight it, want to fight the pull of Brinley because no matter how it happens, no matter how I’d lose her, if she goes on without me and has a beautiful life like she deserves, it’ll destroy me.
My shit is barely together now because I’m territorial and fucking feral when it comes to her. If something happened… selfishly, I know I couldn’t deal. But also selfishly, I want her all for me and me alone.
She’s fire, and I’m ice. I need her to warm me up, and she needs me to battle the inferno that threatens to burn her from the inside out. She doesn’t even know that the shadow that’s haunted my existence is starting to lose its shape because her sun is making it fade away.
So yeah, I’m not solid, at least not with her because she makes me nothing but a puddle of liquid need.
“We’re good.” I can’t take the distance, and in a few long strides, I reach her, where I take her hand and pull her away from Q, then cuff my arm around her shoulders. “You and I can go for a walk while Q does whatever he needs to do.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Have fun, kids.” Q laughs, and I flip him off behind my back.
Chapter 9
Brinley
I sit next to Q at the kitchen table as he works on my computer.
When Noble and I got back from our walk, Q was just finishing up and noticed the stack of electronics on the coffee table. “Noble bought those for me,” I said sheepishly, still alarmed by how much he spent like it was nothing.
“You bought her an electronics store?” Q raised a brow, and Noble ignored him. “Damn. He got you some good shit.” He looks through everything, and somehow amongst the conversation, I brought up that I didn’t really know how to set a lot of it up, let alone use it.
Holy kid in a candy store. Q didn’t even ask before he started ripping boxes open and plugging things into outlets. Almost two hours has passed that he’s been explaining stuff to me and showing me how they work.
We’ve done my eReader, smart watch since it syncs with my phone, and now he’s on the laptop.
His fingers fly across the keyboard, and I lean back to watch him. It’s hard for me to keep up with what he’s doing, and I kind of stopped trying an hour ago not only because he’s just so fast, but also because I’m totally self-conscious.
Noble is acting like I’m flirting or something. I see him out of the corner of my eye, and without words, he’s accusing me. But I’m so not. I like Q. And I’m used to being around guys and having them as friends, at least Danny, so the banter between Q and I just seems natural. I noticed how upset Noble was, and I hate that I made him feel that way, so I’ve purposely been trying to maintain distance between me and Q.
Noble lounges on the beat-up brown leather chair adjacent to the couch, and the last time I looked over my shoulder, he was staring at me. He almost seemed angry, and I don’t know if he’s mad at me or what. He seemed fine on our walk when it was just us, but ever since I’ve been by Q, he’s all broody.
Instead of focusing on him, I’m trying to pay attention to what Q’s showing me, but it’s hard when I feel Noble’s eyes drilling into my back. I feel like my brain is about to explode. When Q starts explaining how to sync files, that’s when I put a stop to it. “You have to stop.”
He pulls his head back. “Uh, okay?”
“I’m sorry. To be honest, I don’t understand hardly anything you’ve shown me,” I confess. I don’t admit it’s because I’m distracted by Noble.
His face softens, but he gives me a knowing smirk, almost like he’s calling me out. He doesn’t say anything when he closes the laptop, though. “Yeah, sure. I get it. Why don’t you just focus on your phone for now? You can do pretty much everything from it without anyone else knowing, and when you’re ready, we can go from there.” He winks at me, and it’s right now that I know he knows something. Shit. Shit.
He told me his job is to find out things about people, and I went and gave him a goddamned invitation to be suspicious when I asked about if he could read my messages the other day. So much for subtlety. Man, I’m an idiot.
“That sounds good.” I sigh, relieved he’s at least not calling me out on it. I have no doubt in my mind that he somehow figured out I’m not actually homeless, and that I work for Danny. Shit.
“I should get going anyway. I’m sure Noble wants me outta here so he can have you all to himself.” He smirks as he shoves his phone back in his pocket.
He’s wearing a pair of glasses that are black and thick rimmed, and somehow kind of sexy. Something I’d never say about glasses on a guy. He wasn’t wearing them when he was here installing the system the other day, so seeing him with them on today was kind of a shock. Sure, he’s cute—he’s actually pretty hot—but not in a way that makes me want more with him. We just kind of clicked, I guess. Besides, I can’t even think about anyone but Noble. “Thank you for your, uh, help.”
“It’s no problem. Anytime.”
“I should do something to repay you.” In my world, you don’t do anything without owing someone, and I don’t want to owe him for not telling Noble what he knows.
“No, you shouldn’t.” He actually looks nervous and spins on his heel, but I grab his arm.
“Stay for dinner at least.” I drop my hand and turn to Noble, noting the irritation has been replaced by straight-up anger. Shit. I don’t know what I’m doing. Freaking out. That’s what I’m doing. But I don’t want Noble to be mad, so I try to crack a joke to lighten the mood. “You said you were making barbecue chicken tonight, right? You know I’d make it, but me being a woman and all, I can’t touch the grill.”
Noble folds his hands and rests his elbows on his knees, a slight upturn of his lips at my statement. “Yes.” He grits.
“You have enough for one more, right?”
“Yes.”
Q is more relaxed now and tries to hide his laughter by tucking his hands in the back pocket of his jeans. “Ya know what? That sounds awesome. I’d love to stay. Let me throw this equipment in my car, though.”
From the other side of the room, I hear Noble grunt but ignore his caveman antics.
“Great. I’ll start making a salad.”
I open the fridge and stick my head inside to look for ingredients. Noble meets me there and puts a hand on my lower back, running his finger just beneath the hem of my shirt. He reaches past me to grab the chicken he had marinating, his forearm brushing across my breasts, and his heat burns me up even though I’m half in the fridge. My spine stiffens in the arched position it’s in, and he huffs out a laugh. “It’s your game, Rinny. I’m just playing it.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask the milk I’m staring at.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Flirting with him right in front of my face. That’s not very nice, Rinny. I thought you were a good girl, but I guess I was wrong.” He drops his head, and I feel his breath on my ear. “Underneath all that cute and sweet, there’s a bad girl in there, isn’t there? I should have known when you flaunted your luscious body in front of me and used naughty words to tempt me. But now…” He huffs out a laugh with no humor. “Now you’re deliberately provoking me, so I can only take that to mean you want what’s coming to you.”
I shiver when the warmth from his powerful body vanishes, and before I can even turn around to say anything, he’s already reached the sliding door to the patio.
Q saunters inside, whistling. “This’ll be fun.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know, driving him crazy. He needs to lighten up a little. Need help carrying anything?”
“No. I’m fine.”
He nods. “Cool. Toss me a beer, will ya?”
> I reach in the fridge and grab a glass bottle, then hand it to him. “Here ya go.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure.”
He looks out to the deck where Noble has his back to us lighting the grill. “I won’t say anything.”
I don’t blink. “You won’t say anything about what?”
He tilts his head. “You know.” Oh no. “And I also wanted to make sure that you know I’m always here. Noble’s the shit. He’s a great guy, but he’s also intimidating, so if you get uncomfortable or something, you can call me. I just want you to know that.”
“He doesn’t make me uncomfortable.” I feel the need to defend Noble.
“Good.”
He pops the cap, then tosses it in the trash can before turning around when I call his name. “I am going to tell him. I swear.”
There’s a moment of pause, and then he just keeps walking.
Damn.
I knew it. My instincts are still spot-on with stuff like that and I knew it the other day from the second he snapped his head up and squinted his deep brown eyes at me that I made a mistake.
Now I’m going to be even more paranoid on edge that I know for sure he knows. Noble already has me all sorts of messed up. Even more so now after saying all that shit against my ear and making my knees weak and my bones Jell-O.
I take a breath and try to regain a little bit of the dignity that I still have, then get everything in a bowl for the salad.
I don’t know if I’d call it tension, but the entire time the three of us are outside, the conversation feels forced. I immediately regret asking Q to stay for dinner, not just because of the awkwardness, but because Noble thinks I’m being friendly to upset him.
Thankfully, Q leaves as soon as we’re done eating, and the easy, fun banter that Noble and I developed is no longer. He’s super quiet, so I take a shower and then sit on the floor in front of the couch. Turning the TV on, I don’t really watch it but like the distraction from all the awkwardness as I brush my hair.
Noble
She’s sitting on the floor brushing her locks as they dry from her shower, and I can’t take my eyes off her. Everything she does mesmerizes me, and I move from my chair to sit behind her. I close my fingers around hers and take the brush before running it through her hair, needing to touch the silk. Her orange shampoo has a calming effect on me. She calms me except for when she drives every primal instinct in me to the point of insanity. I don’t know what her game was with asking Q to stay for dinner, but if her goal was to make me jealous, it worked. “What was that shit tonight?”
Her body tenses up for a second, but she recovers. “What shit?”
“With Q.”
“Nothing. I swear.”
Irrational as it is, I don’t want to share her. But because she needs good people in her life, I let him stay. It might not be what I want, but if it’s what’s best for her, then that’s what she’ll get.
And part of that is me knowing what she’s been through so I can make sure she has absolutely everything she needs. “It’s your turn to share.”
“Share what?” She tips her head back and relaxed green eyes find mine.
“I gave you time, but I need to know. What happened after I left?”
The light dims, and whatever she forgot to remember takes the air out of her lungs. She looks ahead, and I continue brushing her thick, silky hair.
“It doesn’t matter,” she finally says.
“It matters.”
“No, it doesn’t. Whatever it was is over. I can’t dwell on it, and I don’t want you to.”
I pause, then push her hair from her ear with my chin. “Let me be very clear, I won’t dwell on anything. What I will do is hurt whoever hurt you. Once that’s done, we can move on. But until then, I can’t move forward. I need to know.”
“What makes you think someone hurt me?”
“I can just tell.”
She twists her fingers together and finally gives me something. “Nobody hurt me. Not like you’re thinking.”
I feel my chest decompress when I release a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. “Then tell me what happened. Help me understand why you broke down at Erik’s. Why you tried to run away from me twice. I need to know so I can help you.”
“Maybe I don’t want you to know.”
“Considering how I found you, I think I deserve to know.”
Her shoulders stiffen. “I already told you. That was a one-time thing. I can’t afford to be weak like that. It’s never happened before, and it won’t happen again.”
The last thing I want to do is upset her more, so I’ll just drop it and set Q on it. I don’t want to violate her trust, but there’s a reason she’s not talking, and I need to know why. “Okay, little red.” I continue running the brush through her hair and wait for her cue.
Finally, her shoulders rise when she inhales deeply. “I just got moved around a lot. Sometimes I got hit but not always. It was about as bad as you can imagine, and when I was eighteen, I aged out of the system and failed at surviving on my own, so I became homeless. That’s about all there is to it. I’m nothing more than a statistic.”
The stroking of her soft hair is the only thing keeping me semi-calm right now. The fact that she sees herself like that has me upset on her behalf.
“Things were things. I got my license, whatever. Life was fine. Then it wasn’t. Then you found me, so now it’s good.”
I knew she was tough, but listening to her talk about her past like this… so nonchalantly, it hits me just how fearless she really is.
When I was a cop, I saw a lot. Learned a lot. And part of that was witnessing the absolutely pathetic safeguards in place for kids aging out of the system. The statistics are staggering. It was heartbreaking to see so many children with absolutely nobody end up succumbing to the streets. Drugs, gangs, theft, and homelessness.
I hate admitting it, but she is a statistic. And I bet up until what happened at Erik’s house, she didn’t realize how much it affected her mental state. “I hate to bring it up, and I know you said it was a one-time thing, but at Erik’s—”
“That was messed up, I know. I just… I don’t know, actually. I’ve never done anything like that before. I’m always strong, even mentally, because if I’m not, it just makes for a weakness others can use. I promise it was just a momentary breakdown. It won’t happen again and—”
“It’s not about it happening again or not. It’s about making sure you’re in a good place every way there is. You’ve been through a lot, and I’m not an expert on any of this shit. You only need to know that I’m here, you’re safe and I’ll keep you that way, and I’m not going anywhere.”
She turns around and sits on her knees and the image I get of her sucking my cock like this makes my balls ache. “I appreciate it. Seriously, you have no idea how much. But I promise you don’t need to walk around on eggshells for me. I’m good. It hasn’t been that long, so I know you haven’t actually seen it, but I promise, I’m good.”
“Okay, if you promise you’re good, then I can ask you again what the fuck that shit was with Q.”
She stiffens, and her jaw falls open. “What shit?”
“Inviting him to stay, flirting, all of it.”
“I wasn’t flirting.”
“You were.”
She shakes her head adamantly. “I was not.”
“Then what do you call it? Teasing?”
“Noble, I swear. I was just being friendly. I’m used to being around guys. I—”
She snaps her lips shut, and when she tries to pull away, I grab the back of her head and pull her closer. “What do you mean you’re used to being around guys?”
“I just meant that, um, when I was on the street. There are a lot of guys who are homeless.”
“And that’s how you acted with them?”
“I didn’t.”
I ball my fist and bunch her hair. “So the way you were acting with Q was flirting?”
> “No.”
“Then what the hell were you doing?”
“I’m not a whore, Noble. Is that what you think?”
My hand drops, and I lean back at the sudden animosity. “What the fuck?”
“Nothing. I wasn’t flirting. I’m tired now. I’m going to bed.”
Chapter 10
Brinley
I close the door behind me, wanting that separation from Noble tonight. It’s not that I’m scared or uncomfortable, but I just need space. I’m mad at him because he’s acting like I can’t have a friend who’s a guy… like I’m a slut just for talking to Q.
I need to be alone. It’s what I’m used to and what I know, but I especially need to be alone so I can decide what the hell I’m going to do. My lies are starting to pile on top of one another, and pretty soon, it’s all going to explode in my face.
After changing into a pair of pajama shorts and a tank top, I climb in bed and lift the covers for Luna to snuggle next to me. I should feel bad that Noble’s dog sleeps with me and not him, but I don’t; she’s awesome. I grab my phone from the nightstand to play one of the games Q downloaded for me. He’s been nice and all, but his loyalty isn’t to me, it’s to the guys, so I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow he tells everyone, and the cops show up.
While I have the time alone, I try to text Danny on the off-chance that he got out of prison. The old phone I had ran out of minutes, so I’ve been using the one Noble bought me, even though I haven’t actually called anyone from it yet. I have no clue if Danny will ever get this, but I have to try to get a hold of him since it’s been so long since we’ve talked.
Hey. It’s Brinley
Immediately, I see the dots that tell me he’s typing back. Oh, thank God.
Where the fuck have you been?
I start to reply, but another one from him pops up first.
Are you okay?
Where are you?
Once he stops asking questions, I reply.
It’s a long story, but I’m okay. I promise. I need some time before I can come see you.
