Say You Will (Trust & Tequila Book 3)

34. Henry

thirty-four

Iclean and prep the blade on the maul, then hang it with the other tools in the shed, lingering longer than necessary with the scents of fresh-cut oak and blade oil. I want to keep going and wear myself out, but that would be stupid when I have work to do and an unknown threat lingering around us like a bad smell.

I kick the shed door shut behind me with unnecessary violence as I head back to the woodpile. Lawrence has gone to extraordinary lengths to attempt to come between Franki and me. It’s not a stretch to suspect him as our unsub. He was already on my list of suspects, but now he’s flown straight to the top. Normally, I’d be the one heading the investigation and leave our asset with someone else to guard, but Franki isn’t an asset. She’s the love of my life. I don’t trust her protection to anyone else.

I rub my chest and breathe through the ache. She can barely stand to look at me. She thinks I betrayed her with divided loyalties to her and MPD. She should know that she’ll always come first for me.

I load my arms with firewood to haul inside and try to work past the regret to make a plan to fix this. Why wouldn’t she believe my loyalties are divided? When I saw her again for the first time, I’d imagined her on a list of priorities, as if she wouldn’t be right there at the top, every single time. She doesn’t realize that I’ve changed. If I could go back to the night of the reception, I’d handle everything differently.

As I reach for one last piece of wood to add to my already large armload, a splinter lodges itself deep in my thumb, and I hiss at the annoyance of it.

I have things to do and standing here ruminating over my regret changes nothing.

I carry the wood into the cabin, stacking it next to the hearth, then move to the kitchen sink. The splinter is large enough that I should be able to remove it without tweezers, but my fingers slip off the wood when I try, so I use my teeth and yank the fucker out. Blood gushes from my thumb as I spit the splinter into the sink. I turn on the faucet, letting the small wound bleed for a few seconds under the stream of water, then I wrap it in a paper towel to stop the crimson flow.

This is what Franki expects me to do with MPD. She wants me to rip it out of our lives entirely to prove that she’s my priority.

I turn back to face the living room. She’s closed the door to the bedroom against me.

I try to access the numbness I’ve lived with for the last several years, but Franki burned it away, and now every raw, aching nerve inside me is nothing but feeling. I’m filled with layer after layer of emotions. Hurt and regret and, more than any of it, tenderness and love for her, even though she’s infuriating. Strangely enough, there’s relief in the realization. Going back to being that man would mean respite from the pain, but it would also be a return to the hollow void of my life without her.

I tap on her door with a knuckle.

“What do you want?” Her voice is muffled.

“I need a shower. The only bathroom is on the other side of this door,” I say testily. I suppose she’ll tell me to bathe in the sink or the panic room. It’s her cabin, after all. She can tell me to sleep on the porch, and I’ll do it.

“The door’s not locked.”

When I try the knob, it turns easily under my hand. Franki is lying in bed with her hair piled in a sloppy bun and glasses perched on her nose, a book in her lap. She refuses to look up at me as she waves her hand toward the bathroom door. “Go ahead, before you stink the place up with man sweat.”

I prowl through the bedroom on my way to the bathroom and try to pretend my heart doesn’t feel as though it’s been stabbed, then set on fire. I shower, washing away the grime and man sweat, and work through a different plan. Controlling MPD is no longer my goal. I no longer even want it. It’s nothing but a reminder of how I’ve hurt Franki.

I return to the bedroom, a towel wrapped around my waist to find Franki standing at the dresser and sorting through one of her cases. I join her, opening a drawer and removing a pair of boxer briefs, pajama bottoms, a T-shirt, and a cardigan sweater. It’s sheer habit to strap on my ankle holster. I won’t remove it until I’m ready to climb into bed for the night.

Franki is silent beside me as she pulls out a tiny cardboard box with a prescription label on it, a Band-Aid, two alcohol wipes, and a syringe shrink-wrapped in plastic. She lays the items out on the bedside stand, then goes into the bathroom to wash her hands. When she returns, I’ve dressed and torn open the box and syringe packaging. She freezes at the sight of me, then shakes her head. “I can do it.”

“I know you can. You’ve been doing it for months by yourself, but you don’t have to because you have me now.” I hadn’t realized she’d done it last week until it was over. She never even considered asking for my help.

She shakes her head in one brief jerk, then appears to reconsider and gives a stiff nod. “I’m not cutting off my nose to spite my face. Tonight would have been rough. Go wash your hands, please.”

I do, despite the fact that I’ve recently showered. I use a clean hand towel from the linen closet to dry off and return to find her reclining on the left side of the bed.

After I read the prescription, I confirm the number of cc’s with her. She tells me, then starts to give me directions, but stops when she sees me swipe the alcohol wipe over the top of the bottle unbidden and begin the process.

“How do you know how to do this?”

“Training.”

“You’ve given injections before?”

She has no idea. “Yes. Usually under far more harrowing circumstances than this. You’re not even bleeding, love, and you’re entirely conscious. You’ll have to start screaming and frothing at the mouth if you want to rattle me. At the very least, we need a good explosion or two going off around us.”

Her eyes go wide, then they narrow. “I’ll skip the screaming, thanks. Maybe next time we can arrange for some fireworks.”

She doesn’t seem to realize what she said. “Next time.” As in, we’ll be doing this again. She’s not leaving me, whether she’s ready to admit it yet or not.

She shimmies her fleece pants down her legs. “It’s the left thigh this week.”

I swab the area with another alcohol wipe and wait for it to dry, sneaking a look up at her as I do. Her knuckles are red and swollen tonight, so I’m not surprised the injections are a challenge for her. The plunger in the syringe is tight and requires a steady pressure to both fill and depress it.

I squeeze her thigh when the alcohol is dry and gently slide in the needle. Franki doesn’t react to the poke at all, but a few seconds after I’ve withdrawn and applied the bandage, she breathes out through her teeth. “Ouch.”

“It hurts?”

“Not the jab, but the medication, itself, feels like a wasp sting. It’ll settle down in a few minutes.” Franki pulls up her pants and indicates a sharps container she’s set on the dresser.

By the time I turn back after discarding the syringe and cleaning up, she’s sitting cross-legged on top of the covers, watching me with a serious expression.

“I’ll marry you,” she says.

I blink, thrown by her unexpected offer, hope lifting me like a kite on a breeze. “You will?”

She crosses her arms defensively. “So your cousin doesn’t throw a bunch of old people and babies out into the street. Yes, I will. But no more flirting with me. I’ll give you your business deal.”

And now my kite is in the trees.

“Really?” I ask silkily, lifting one eyebrow and covering my hurt and anger with snark.

“That’s what I said,” she snarls.

I draw the corners of my mouth into a smile. “I’m afraid I have to decline.”

She drops her arms and gapes. “What? This was your idea. You said you needed me to marry you. It’s what you’ve been working for all this time.”

“I was wrong. I’m not interested in a business arrangement.” It’s a direct quote of the words she said to me.

She sputters, and I lean closer, using my finger to tip her mouth closed.

“I find I need all the traditional trappings. Romance and emotional investment. You understand,” I say.

Straightening, I head for the living room. When I close the door behind me, something, probably a pillow, thuds against it. Seconds later, an incoherent scream of rage filters through the door.

I snap it open and poke my head inside. “You’re all right in here, love?”

She shows me her teeth. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

“I’m going to leave this door open after all”—I shoot her a finger gun—“so you don’t get cold.”

“Great.”

“If you need me”—I use my thumb to point awkwardly behind me—“I’ll be getting a little work done out here.”

“I won’t. I’m taking a bath, then going to bed.”

I nod.

“Good night, Henry,” she says.

I stand in the doorway and watch her get off the bed and head for the bathroom. Before Franki woke me up, I’d have convinced myself this ache in my chest was a heart attack. “Good night, love.”

When the bathroom door closes behind her, and the sound of running water begins, I return to the kitchen and set up my laptop, determined to focus on work for a while.

Oliver stands up from his little bed in the corner, gives himself a shake, then trots for the front door. I run a hand through my hair. “Little man, Franki took you out to do your business half an hour ago.”

He whines and scratches at the door, so after a quick check of the alarm system, I shove my feet into a pair of shoes and let him outside. Dachshunds aren’t supposed to climb stairs because of the potential for back injuries. So, like the well-trained pup he is, he stands on the wooden porch in the wash of the outdoor floodlights, waiting for me to carry him down the six steps from the porch to the pea gravel walkway.

With the side of my foot, I complete our usual routine of nudging the metal doorstop shaped like a turtle into place and leave the front door propped open a few inches. If it were winter, I’d bother with grabbing the keys and arming the cabin, but this should take no more than a minute or two. Oliver watches me patiently until I carefully lift him into my arms. He doesn’t wag his tail or snuggle into me the way he usually does. Instead, he puts his nose in the air and turns his face away in rejection. In fact, I’d call the way he’s been behaving since Franki read my texts from Spencer as “pissy.” He may not know why she’s upset with me, but he knows she is, and that’s enough for him to take sides.

I carry him down the steps. “Listen, I’m not the one being unreasonable here. She’s mad because I loved her on purpose? That doesn’t even make sense. I wasn’t choosing the company over her, and she’ll realize I’m telling the truth eventually when I don’t marry anyone else or take MPD for myself.”

He makes a sound in his chest in response, a blatant disagreement with my assessment. Dachshunds look like small dogs, but Oliver’s growls and barks always sound deep chested, like they come from a much larger canine.

I set him down on the section of lawn illuminated by the lights from the cabin. “Hurry up and do your thing. The temperature is dropping, and I shouldn’t have left the door open. The cabin’s going to get too cold for Franki.”

Oliver takes off like a shot, but instead of heading around the side of the cabin or anywhere on the lawn, he heads straight back up the porch steps.

I lunge after him. “Don’t you dare climb those sta—”

Too late. He’s inside the cabin before my feet have hit the porch, then the little Machiavelli shoves the doorstop aside and pushes the door shut behind him just as my fingertips graze the wood. I blink in consternation.

I’ve been locked out. By the dog.