Jake (Demented Souls #16)

12

H eather jumped when her phone rang, vibrating against her leg while the rock song she’d set as her ring tone played at full volume.

“You okay?” Matt asked.

“Yeah, it just startled me.” She pulled the device from her pocket and checked the screen. Her heart seemed to skip a beat before speeding to what seemed like its normal usual pace. She swiped her thumb across the screen.

“Hello?” She hadn’t even thought about not answering it, which was what she would have done if it had been Mitch, or an unknown caller, but this was neither.

“Hey.” The voice that rumbled across the line calmed her nerves like nothing else had in days. It had been the same this afternoon, once she’d realized who it was calling her name. Something about him made her feel safe, even safer than being here with Matt, and that was saying something. Because for a long time, going several years back, at least until this morning, she would have said being here with Matt was the safest she’d felt since she was a kid.

Thinking about that made her miss her parents. Or at least the parents she remembered from her childhood. They were still around, but not the same people they’d been then. And it wasn’t just her perception of them now that she was an adult.

After she’d moved out to start college her parents had split. She’d been able to see for a while that they weren’t happy and had expected they’d be happier apart and even now she had to admit they were. But she hadn’t been ready for the other changes they’d made.

If it had just been the ways they were living, that wouldn’t have bothered her, but her father had married a woman only a few years older than her, and while he’d called her occasionally, he didn’t seem interested in seeing her much. She didn’t know if he didn’t want others to know he had a daughter as old as she was or not, but that was the feeling she got. It had caused them to grow apart in ways she didn’t have a remedy for.

Then there was her mother. That change took longer but was no less jarring than what had happened with her father. Mom had nothing nice to say about her father, and while that wasn’t a huge change, in the nearly ten years since her parents’ divorce, she’d only become more angry and bitter. It had gotten to the point that Heather actively avoided talking to her mother because she didn’t want to hear an angry rant about her father or whatever male had pissed her mother off this week.

All the changes didn’t keep her from loving her parents, but they had meant that when the problem with Mitch and those bikers he’d been spending time with came up, she hadn’t been comfortable going to either for help.

“Did I lose you?” Aaron’s voice in her ear reminded her of what she was doing and pulled her mind from her thoughts of her parents.

“No, I’m here. Sorry. I just got lost in my head for a moment. I’m glad to hear from you. I take it you had no trouble getting home?”

“None. That’s part of why I was calling. I wanted to make sure you made it back safe.”

“We did. No problems, at least not that I’m aware of.” She glanced up and found Matt watching her, a crease between his brows. ‘Aaron’ she mouthed to him, before standing and started walking around the room while she talked. “It was a nice ride. We stopped once for a few minutes, but I think we made good time. How about you guys?”

“We’ve been back a while, even had time to get everything unloaded and put away. I waited to call to make sure you guys had enough time to get home. You had a longer ride than we did.”

“Wow, not only home, but all unloaded too? You guys are on top of it.” She had no clue if the stuff they’d taken today was unloaded or not. Matt wasn’t part of whoever did that.

“I wanted to get it done so it wasn’t waiting on us tomorrow,” Aaron said. “What are your plans for the rest of the evening? Going to have a good time?”

“I don’t know.” She looked around, wondering how much attention Matt was paying to what she was saying. “I’m not sure I want to do much. I’m kind of hurting.”

“I bet. If you’re not used to riding much or at all, then you spent six hours on a bike, even broken up like today, it’s likely to make you sore. I recommend a hot bath. Run the water as hot as you can stand, add a little Epsom salt to the water if you can get your hands on some, then soak for at least twenty minutes. That will help ease some of that soreness. Hang on a sec.” He paused, and she heard him speak again, but his voice was muffled, as if he’d put his thumb over the speaker. She wondered if someone had come to talk to him, but before she could figure out how to ask without being rude, he came back. “Sorry about that. Have you checked to make sure you’re just sore and don’t have any saddle sores?”

“Saddle sores?”

“What hurts? The skin or the muscles? Do you have rubby spots from riding or just sore from sitting in a position you’re not used to?”

Heather frowned, thinking about it. she wiggled her hips while considering where it hurt. “No, not my skin, but deeper. It’s definitely my muscles that are sore.”

“Good. Then do the bath thing, with the salts if Iceman has any.”

“What would you have said if I said I have rubby spots?”

“I’d have told you to leave the salt out. The last thing anyone wants is salt in an open wound. The hot water would sting, but making it salty would hurt more. If you were here, I might could do more, but the bath will help. And drink water. Water will help flush out the lactic acid.”

Heather frowned. It sounded like was making that up, but the more she thought about it, when you got a massage, they told you to drink water to flush out toxins, so what could it hurt?

“I’ll do that,” she said. She kind of wished she had someone to curl up against, to rest, to just be reassuring. Of all the things she could have missed from being in a relationship, that was the one that came up the most.

She’d thought as she was leaving Mobile that she would miss sex on a regular basis, or at least semi-regular, because that’s what it had become with Mitch, but she’d barely thought about that since she’d been here.

“What’s going through your mind?” Aaron’s voice drew her back to the present again.

What was wrong with her tonight?

She debated telling him for a moment then decided she had nothing to lose. She’d already walked away from nearly everything she’d thought was important. Besides, what was the worst he could do? Laugh and tell her she was naive? She’d already figured that much out when she’d realized the creeps in the grocery store were talking about her.

“I was thinking what I really want is someone to curl up against. Someone who will let me lay my head in their lap and not expect anything but being close. Someone I can be that real with.”

“I’d do that for you if I were there.” He sounded like he meant it. Like he really wished he were here so he could do what she wanted.

“Really? You wouldn’t want more?” Heather wished she could take that back. It sounded needy and like she was fishing for complements and that wasn’t what she’d meant.

“Really. It’s probably stupid to tell you this now, but oddly, it’s easier over the phone. Probably because I can’t see your face and see how you’re reacting if you don’t feel the same. But all those years ago? Before we moved away? I was trying to work up the courage to ask you out. Then I found out I was leaving and as badly as I wanted to, I couldn’t. Not just because we were leaving, but what if you said yes, then I had to leave you behind anyway?”

“But you can tell me now?”

“Now I’ve already asked you out. And you said yes. Now I’ve learned that if you don’t ask, the answer is always no. But if you take a risk, if you do the thing, if you ask the question, you might get a yes. It might work. I’d rather have a maybe yes than a definite no.”

Heather’s breath caught in her throat as she tried to figure out what to say. How did one respond to something like that? Not that he was wrong, or that she didn’t agree. Quite the opposite. He’d said it so well. She swallowed and tried again.

“I like that.” She had a hard time making her voice come out as more than a whisper, but she’d managed. Barely.

“If I was close enough, I’d come over, strip you down and put you in the tub myself. Then when you were done, I’d dry you off, dress you in your most comfortable pajamas and let you curl up in my lap and relax until you fell asleep.” The low rumble of his voice sent a shiver through her body, even over the phone.

“I wish you were close enough to do just that,” she said, as she headed down the hall toward her bedroom Matt didn’t need to hear where this was going. If he did, he would give her shit about it later. Besides, he didn’t seem to like Aaron, though Heather wasn’t sure why. She didn’t want to give him any more reason to dislike her friend, even if she hadn’t been in touch for a long time.

“About that dinner. I wish I could say I could be there tomorrow. I’d love to see you as soon as I can, even tonight wouldn’t be too soon. But we’ve got visitors, and I can’t get away for that long until they’re gone.”

“When will that be?” Heather couldn’t stop the pang of disappointment that shot through her. She’d been hoping to see him again in the next few days.

“They won’t be leaving for another week. So, I can’t make it up there until at least then. I’m sorry. If you were close, I could manage something, or I’d ask you to come out here. We’ve got things going on that I can’t get out of, but I would if I could.”

She made it into her bedroom, closed the door then sat on the edge of the bed, wishing there was a solution. “What kind of things do you have going on?” she asked, trying to keep him talking. She didn’t care about what, she just wanted to hear his voice.

“We’ve got a couple more rides and a community event we want to turn out for.”

“You get involved in community events?” she asked, not sure why this surprised her.

“We do. We want a good relationship with the people of Gillette, so we find events that we can contribute to, and go participate.”

“What’s this one?”

“They’re going to have a demolition derby in town. Some of the guys have picked up an old beater, and have spent their free time fixing it up, putting a change in it. We’ve entered it. It’s not much but it will be fun.”

“Who’s driving?” She thought about the men she’d met and who was most likely to be that kind of dare devil. It wasn’t until he didn’t answer right away that she realized what he wasn’t saying. “Aaron?”

“Yeah?” His voice had turned hesitant.

“Please tell me you’re not driving.”

The silence coming across the line spoke volumes. But he didn’t just ignore her. He did respond, just not in the way she’d hoped.

“Sorry, Lynnie. I was the only one willing to get behind the wheel.”

Heather felt like her brain shorted out as the nickname she hadn’t heard in more than ten years registered. No one had called her that but him. And she never would have admitted it then, but she’d liked it. She had given up on ever hearing it again. Now, it made her eyes water, and her insides turn to goo.

When had she become so soft and sappy?