Chapter 6 #2
We’d been successful on all our missions so far. Part of it, I liked to think, was that we were smart, intuitive chicks. Part of it, I worried, was dumb luck.
What I knew was, either way that swung (especially the second way), we wouldn’t stand a chance against John Wick.
“What’s on Wednesday?” Harlow asked.
“Dinner at Mom and Dad’s,” I told her.
“Okay, Thursday.”
Well, dang.
“I can’t do that either,” I said.
Raye was getting irritated, I could tell. “What do you have to do Thursday?”
“Well, uh…”
Both of them stared hard at me.
“Knox and I are going to have a chat.”
Harlow got all happy-face.
Raye got all hope-face.
“I’ve been popping around, making sure he’s fed and hasn’t fallen and can’t get up,” I admitted. Then said firmly, “As friends do.”
“You’ve been…popping around.” Raye drew the last two words out.
“What are you guys talking about?” Jessie came up to our huddle.
“Luna’s been popping to Knox’s house and taking care of him,” Harlow chirped.
Jessie swung to me. “Really?”
“We’re friends,” I stated.
“I’ll tell you what,” Jessie began. “If Eric gave me a hint of what we could be, then did…whatever, and took it away, expecting me to be his friend, no way in fuck I’d be nursing his ass after he got shot. Even if I did agree to be his friend.”
“Same with Cap,” Raye put in.
“Well, I’d probably look after Javi,” Harlow mumbled.
She totally would, and that was one of the reasons Harlow was so awesome.
“You aren’t me, and Cap and Eric aren’t Knox,” I said.
They went back to staring at me, now with worry.
“It’s okay,” I told them.
“What does he want to talk about?” Harlow asked a pertinent question.
Because…yeah.
What did he want to talk about?
“Right, so the road to us being functional friends hasn’t been smooth. As you know. We’ve been avoiding each other a lot.”
There were a variety of responses to that including verbal chuffs and eye rolls.
I kept at it.
“And I kinda got in his face yesterday because, clearly, I had a few things to get off my chest. So my guess is, he wants us to finally put all the crap behind us and figure things out so now that it’s all out there, we can all be one big happy posse without that mess dragging us down.”
Or at least that was my guess.
“And we’re making progress,” I told them. “He had breakfast waiting for me when I showed this morning to make sure he was good.”
They kept staring at me.
Then they stared at each other.
They went back to staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You went by this morning?” Harlow inquired.
I nodded.
Jessie opened her mouth.
“Nope,” Raye said, cutting her off.
Jessie shut her mouth.
“What?” I repeated.
“Girl, you need to figure your shit out,” Raye told me.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be you figuring your shit out,” Raye stated.
“It’s no big deal,” I asserted. “This is good. It wasn’t good before. But this is good. Sure, last night I shouted in his face. But we were all good this morning.”
Except for that whole “slept like a log” business.
And his smile.
And his bare chest.
And his comment about my ass.
Friends didn’t comment about friends’ asses.
I needed to make a note to share that with him during our talk.
“I think I needed to let it out,” I told them. “You know, with the shouting business. I feel better about it now.”
Was that a lie?
I wasn’t sure.
“She definitely needs to figure herself out,” Jessie muttered.
“Totes,” Harlow, watching me closely, agreed.
“You’ll see,” I stated.
“Right,” Raye said.
“Are you women ever gonna work!” Tex, who could not see us, but we’d learned he could sense us, especially when we weren’t working, boomed from the coffee cubby.
See?
Hilariously obnoxious.
“Honey!” Nancy shouted back. “Everyone needs a break once and a while.”
See?
Totally sweet.
“All at once?” Tex boomed.
Nancy looked in our direction from where she was bussing a table and grimaced.
Yeah, time to get back to work.
“I’ll do a water round,” Harlow said.
“You got a new table, Loon,” Raye told me.
I scanned the space and headed out, saying, “We can talk among ourselves about Byron. Text chain.”
“What about Byron?” Jess asked.
“I’ll fill you in,” I heard Raye say as I rounded the bar to approach my new table.
I noticed Tito watching me from behind his sunglasses.
I smiled at him.
He touched his fingers to the panama hat that had little turtles printed on it which he was wearing (see? eclectic wardrobe), then went back to his iPad.
I went to my table.
* * *
Before I hit the doorbell when I got to Knox’s after work, I heard him shout, “It’s open.”
I walked in carrying a box with four of Willow’s cupcakes in it.
He was standing in the kitchen, doing what, I didn’t know, because the first words out of his mouth were, “Good. You’re here. Now I can shower and you can change my dressings.”
Oh shit.
Knox in the shower.
Naked.
Me taping bandages on his bare skin.
I’ll repeat…
Oh shit.
I made it to stand across the counter from him, set the box of cupcakes on it, and watched his lips curl up in a sexy, contented smile when he saw them.
I ignored that (or tried to).
“If your door is open, does that mean you’ve had lots of company?” I asked.
“Men have been in and out all day,” he answered.
“So is there a reason you saved the shower and bandage changes for me?” I pushed.
“Not gonna ask one of my buds to hang while I shower and then tape my wounds,” he replied.
“Uh, why?” I kept pushing.
“Babe.”
That was all he said.
Babe.
“That isn’t exactly an answer,” I told him.
“Best I got considering you don’t have a dick so I could talk for a year, and you wouldn’t get it.”
How much more dude-like could these dudes get?
“I’m perfectly certain it would be no hit to your manhood to have Cap or Javi or Gabe hanging out, listening on the off chance the big body of a dude fell in the shower,” I informed him. “And I’m absolutely certain that they wouldn’t give a shit about taping some gauze on you.”
“And this is what I mean about you not getting it,” he said as he hobble-walked toward the stairs.
“Knox, I don’t really have a lot of—” I began.
When he interrupted me, he was two steps up, doing them one-footed. As in, he put his right foot on the step while he leaned into his crutch on his left, hefted himself up, and then right foot again.
It looked onerous, tedious and precarious.
No wonder he only did it once (or today, twice) a day.
“It’ll only take half an hour. Can you wait half an hour?” he asked.
I could wait eternity for him, which was the problem.
“It’s gonna take you that long to get up the stairs,” I noted.
“If you don’t want me to try to prove you wrong, don’t issue a challenge.”
God, he was a pain.
I rolled a hand. “Take your time but get on with it. I came here before going home to Jacques, and we both know he’s a very good boy, but it’s not nice to make him wait.”
Knox continued up the stairs, saying, “If I gotta be home, you should bring him over in the morning. I’ll look after him. Once I get more mobile, I can take him for walks, and he can use my backyard in the meantime.”
I turned to the windows that pretty much made up his back wall.
The woodwork around them was painted black. It looked good with the rest of the space.
As mentioned, although the development Knox bought into had no personality, the inside did. I’d been uber impressed the first time I’d walked in.
He had super good taste.
The gray cupboards of his kitchen, with the black metal open shelves on the back wall and black industrial lighting over the bar.
The big dark-gray tweed sectional (he even had toss pillows!).
The wood accent walls. The small but totally pimp backyard with its built-in outdoor kitchen and its also-small pool, which had one of those things on it that you could turn on and it shoved water at you so you could do laps, even if you didn’t get anywhere.
We’d had sex in that pool (without that water thing going).
And once we established I’d be spending the night every night, Jacques had been with me.
He’d missed his Uncle Knox when he was gone.
It would be awesome if my furry baby had company all day.
What are you thinking!? My brain screamed.
And…
Yeah.
Sure, friends looked after friends’ dogs, and it would probably be helpful for Knox to have company while he was cooped up at home recovering. Not to mention, a good excuse (not that he’d need it) to take regular walks.
But Jacques totally missed Knox when he was gone.
And this would be temporary.
I couldn’t do that to my dog again.
While Knox showered, I killed time replying to our Angels text string (it seemed all were in favor of feeling out Byron, not to mention my reprieve to talk about Chambers Family Business was going to last until Saturday, because Gemma was pulling together a karaoke night for Friday, and that totally worked for me—not karaoke, which I detested, but delaying our official Angels confab).
“Babe! You’re up!” Knox shouted from upstairs.
“Do you have everything I need up there?” I shouted back.
“Yeah!” Another shout.
I walked up the stairs.
I stopped dead in his doorway when I saw him shirtless, wearing loose workout shorts that were long in the leg, but he’d tucked one up on one side. He was sitting on the side of his bed, his wounds exposed.
My head went woozy, and I had to wrap my fingers around the doorframe to stay standing.
He might have been wounded, but he was right up in my space, lickety-split, one hand holding tight at my waist, the other at my neck, his face in mine, his lips whispering, “Baby.”
“Those look awful,” I whispered, staring at the one in his shoulder close up.
Good God.
So awful.
And painful.
“They’re not as bad as they seem.”
I tipped my eyes to his.
We were close enough to kiss.
“Are you sure?” I was still whispering.
“I’m sure.”
I said nothing and didn’t move.
“Maybe I should call Shirleen. See if she can deal with—” he began.
I shook my head and stepped back, out of his space, out of his hold.
I straightened my spine and declared, “I got this.”
“Shirleen won’t mind.”
“I’ve got this, Knox,” I stated firmly.
He studied me before he nodded and limped back to the bed.
He had the stuff beside him.
Okay, maybe I didn’t have this because I had no idea what to do.
“You’re gonna have to talk me through it,” I told him.
“Gotcha,” he said and then handed me some gauze. “Let’s go.”
He talked me through it.
One could say the bandage around his shoulder didn’t look half as tidy as the one he’d had before. I hadn’t seen the one that was on his leg, and, fortunately, the job I did on that one didn’t look too bad.
However, being that close to him, smelling the fresh-soap smell mingled with all that was Knox, touching his warm skin, doing this while his deep voice murmured instructions, in a room where we’d repeatedly been as close as two human beings could get—all of it did a number on me.
So I didn’t want to scurry away from him when I was done.
But I sure did.
“Right, let’s get you back downstairs so I can see to Jacques,” I said, not able to look him in the eyes.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t say anything. But he did wait for me to precede him.
I was down the stairs in less than half the time it took him, but I still waited and watched his painful descent.
When he was down, he walked me to the door.
I was ready for a quick escape when he asked, “You bringing Jacques over tomorrow?”
“Sure,” I answered immediately.
Me:
Big.
Idiot.
He smiled. “Great.”
Goddammit.
“Time now for you to take it easy,” I ordered.
His smile stayed in place. “Will do.”
“Later,” I said.
“Later, baby,” he replied.
Another endearment.
I hoofed it to the Prius.
As I started up my car, I realized I hadn’t asked what our talk was going to be about.
And as I was driving out of his complex, I told myself he seemed good. He was getting around. He had a lot of folks dropping by. I needed to stop doing this.
I told myself this.
But I still knew I’d be there in the morning, with Jacques, and I’d be there in the afternoon, to pick up Jacques.
I also knew Raye was right.
I needed to figure my shit out.
Because one thing I wasn’t being clueless about.
I knew I was in big trouble.