Page 37 of Warrior Security
What my mind kept circling back to was the way he’d shifted his thigh higher without being asked.
I gripped the wheel harder.
I could almost explain what happened in the overhang. Adrenaline. Panic. A body flooded with chemicals that needed somewhere to go. That was biology, not choice. I could file it underextraordinary circumstancesand move on with my life.
But I was in a truck now. The adrenaline was gone. My hands were on the wheel and my breathing was normal and nobody was having a breakdown. But I still wanted Logan. I could feel it in the low pull behind my navel and the way my body leaned toward his side of the cab without my permission.
That was the terrifying part. The overhang had been reaction. This was something else.
“Road washes out up ahead sometimes,” I said, because if I didn’t say something, I was going to crawl out of my own skin. “After the bridge. If it’s flooded, we’ll have to go the long way around.”
“Okay.”
The bridge wasn’t flooded. I drove across it, and the silence settled back in.
He wasn’t asking. About any of it. Not the mortgage, not the grants, not the six weeks without heat. I’d split myself open in that overhang and poured every humiliating detail into his lap—then proceeded to use that for other purposes—and he hadn’t said a word about any of it.
I didn’t know what to do with that. Part of me was grateful. Part of me wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him.Say something. Ask me something. Tell me I’m an idiot for letting it get this bad. Tell me you didn’t sign up for this and it’s time for you to go. Just stop sitting there being patient while I fall apart.
He wasn’t going to, though. I was starting to understand that about him. He’d wait. He’d let me come to him on my own terms, in my own time. And the patience of it, the absolute unshakable quiet of this man, was either the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me or the most terrifying.
I was tired. Not the kind that sleep fixed. This was the tiredness that lived behind my ribs where I kept everything I didn’t show.
Tired of being cold in my own house. Tired of eating standing up over the sink because sitting down felt like admitting the problems were still there. Tired of holding everything else up with no one to hold me.
I’d been carrying everything alone because alone was safe. Alone meant nobody could get close enough to take anything else from me. I’d built Pawsitive and filled it with people and animals who needed me, and I’d made myself so necessary that no one ever turned around and asked what I needed.
That was the design. That was the whole architecture of my life since I’d walked out of my marriage.
And this afternoon, a man had held me while I fell apart and hadn’t asked for anything in return, and now the architecture had a crack I didn’t know how to patch.
The barn appeared through the trees, its peeling paint familiar and welcome. I turned into the gravel lot and parked, and the engine ticked in the silence.
“Animals need feeding,” I said. “I’ll take the barn if you want outdoor rounds.”
My hand was on the door handle. Already moving. Already reaching for the next task, the clipboard, the feeding cards.
“Let’s talk about the hot water heater.”
I stopped. Looked at him. That was a mistake, because looking at him meant seeing his face, and his face was the one that had been inches from mine in the firelight while I kissed him.
“You said you haven’t had hot water in six weeks. I’m going to look at it tomorrow.”
“Logan, it’s fine. I’ve been managing.”
“I know you have. I’m still going to look at it.”
“It’s not a priority right now. The animals need?—”
“The animals are fine. You’re the one showering in a barn. The hot water heater is a broken thing on your property, and I fixbroken things on your property. That’s literally what you hired me for.”
“I hired you to fix fences and haul feed, not to?—”
“Lark.”
“What?”
“Let me look at it. There’s no harm in that.”
