Chapter 18 Anna
ANNA
I hummed to myself while ripping open plastic bags of all sorts of things.
Flavoring packets for water bottles. More small things of toothpaste.
Toothbrushes. Little shampoos and conditioners.
I went overboard, shopping in town. There would easily be enough for three baggies a person with how much I stuffed into these things.
Good.
The homeless were left behind way too often.
From out of nowhere, however, my door slammed open. It crashed into the wall with a thud, and I yelped as my hands startled. A poof of packets went up all around me, dropping down onto the bed and on top of my head as I whipped my wide gaze toward the door.
“The fuck gives, K—”
But when I saw Brutus standing there, his nostrils flared, his eyes casing all up and down my body, my frustration was replaced with a heat I couldn’t disregard.
“Bee,” I said, my voice a bit breathless.
His eyes connected with mine before he stepped in and closed the door behind him. He rushed toward me, dropping to his knees by the bed. His hands flew to my body, running up and down my arms. My legs. Cupping my face. Like he was checking me out to make sure I was still breathing.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I had to swallow down my heart. “Yeah, I’m okay. Did you think something was wrong?”
He shook his head as he got up and quickly perched on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know. I thought—”
I waited for him to complete his thought. But when he didn’t? “You… what?”
He shook his head softly, like he tried to discard what raced through his head. And that was when his attention fell to the area around me on my bed.
“What are you making?”
“Oh!” I chirped before going back to what I was doing. “Making little baggies for the homeless. I promised them some goodies after the information they gave me.”
“What?”
“The homeless.”
“No, I heard that. What information?”
“Oh, one of the women saw the kidnapping of the girl King and them are looking for.”
“Wait, she did? What did she say?”
I smiled over at him. “Patience. Let me get these put together, and then we can talk.”
He crawled onto the bed, the frame creaking beneath his weight, before he sat cross-legged and motioned with his fingers. “Let me help. Tell me what we’re doing.”
I sure as hell wasn’t going to deny the help or his presence. “All right, so. Each baggie gets one thing each. We start there, and then whatever extra we have, it gets divvied evenly. And if we don’t have enough to put one in each, we keep those as extras for other baggies in the future.”
“So, you’ve done this before.”
“Oh, I do it all the time. Whenever my brother needs to deal with the homeless population in any way, he comes to me. They seem to be a little more easygoing around me than him and the crew.”
“Fair.”
“So,” I said as I picked up a baggie, “I’ll start with the water bottles. I’ll get a baggie, like this. I’ll put a water filtration bottle in it like this, and then I’ll hand it to you and you put one of each from those five bags around you into this one. Got it?”
He nodded as he reached for the baggie that already had a filtration water bottle in it. “Got it.”
“Good. Let’s get to it.”
We didn’t talk for a while. We just passed the baggies back and forth, filling them with the necessities and foodstuffs I picked up.
King and the guys always had a surplus of MREs they let me utilize.
Why the hell they still ordered and ate those things was beyond me.
But they always let me take a few whenever I made my baggies.
Each bag got three of those motherfuckers, along with a small bag of hard candies, four protein bars, and three packets of Jell-O along with two unopened water bottles.
But once we stuffed the toiletry necessities into them, I broke the silence.
“How’d the patrolling go?” I asked.
“They were spotted in town.”
I whipped my head up. “What?”
Brutus was already looking at me when I looked up. “They were spotted in town. One of their blacked-out logo cars drove around downtown Redd Valley for a while today.”
“Logo,” I whispered softly.
He tilted his head. “What? What is it?”
I worried my lower lip before I turned my attention back to the bag I was working on. “Does my brother and his crew know about the car you saw?”
“Cap’s keeping them in the loop, yes. What do you know?”
I sighed heavily as I peeked back over at him. “The woman I talked to today? That heard and sort of witnessed the kidnapping of the girl here in town? She said there was a logo on the black car. She just couldn’t make out what it was.”
His face grew stern. “Please tell me you informed someone.”
I scoffed. “The fuck do you think I’m doing? Of course I informed someone. King knew immediately, as did Dozer since he was with us. I don’t know what they did with that information, but they know.”
He drew in a very deep breath. One that expanded his chest to a point where I thought his breastbone was going to jump right out of his fucking skin. But then he let it out in one of the biggest sighs I think I’d ever heard in my life.
“I’m glad you’re safe, Anna.”
I reached over and placed my hand on his forearm without thinking. “Of course I’m safe. When I’m with my brother, I’m always safe.”
His beautiful brown eyes met mine. “You know you’re safe with me, too. Right?”
I smiled at him and squeezed his forearm softly. “Of course I do. I know I’m safe with you.”
He placed his hand on top of mine, his thumb tracing idly on top of my hand. “Good. Because I need you to know that. Even if your brother doesn’t think so, you’re always safe with me.”
I furrowed my brow. “Why would my brother think I’m not safe with you?”
He just studied me for a while before patting my hand. “Just a vibe I get from him.”
“Well,” I said as I removed my hand from his skin, though I hated moving away from him. I wanted to move closer. “My brother has always been protective of me. Don’t let him get to you.”
“I’m not.”
“Mmmmhm. Here, we’ve got some surplus here. Let’s figure out how to get it into these bags evenly.”
We worked together for a while, counting things out and rearranging some things in the bags so that everyone had an equal amount of everything that I had purchased.
I felt good about these bags. I wasn’t sure why in the hell I hadn’t thought about the water filtration bottles beforehand.
Those would help them out a lot, along with the filtration straws I ordered way back when for my next batch of these things anyway.
Brutus was the one to break the silence. “How often do you make these for the homeless?”
I shrugged as I tied off one of the bags. “A few times a year. It helps me to keep connections with them and keep tabs on them. I like to know who’s coming and who’s going from our hometown. Who’s aging out of the system and who needs help.”
“Why?”
I peeked over at him. “Why not?”
He shrugged. “I’m just wondering. I think it’s admirable, what you’re doing. I figured there was a personal reason behind it.”
I looked back down for a while, working on tying up another bag. “Mom was homeless for a while. When she was younger.”
I expected him to react or respond, but he didn’t. He just sat there, stuffing the bags full of the last of the things and handing them back to me so that I could tie them off.
“I don’t know,” I said when he didn’t respond, “I guess I just see her in all of their faces. Had she not had help, or anyone coming around to check on her, to help her back up onto her feet, Kay and I wouldn’t be here, you know?”
“Yeah,” he said uncharacteristically softly.
I shrugged as I tied off the last bag. “So yeah. I guess… I just sort of do it for her. She always had Kay and I in the homeless shelter helping with meals over the holidays. She patrolled the streets herself for a time until Dad sort of put a stop to that.”
“Why did he do that?”
“She got attacked once,” I said as I set the last bag to the side and looked up at the mountain man perched with me on top of the bed. “Not intentionally. It’s just… when you’re homeless, you’re desperate sometimes, you know? She was an easy target, and she got hurt pretty good.”
“I can’t blame your father for that.”
“Neither can I. It’s why I go with things, so they feel less desperate when I roll up on them. The homeless need to be taken care of, too.”
A small smile crooked his lip. “Yes, they do.”
I blushed a bit before I looked down and counted the bags, my head bobbing softly. There were forty-two of them, and I was satisfied that would be more than enough.
“Come on, let’s get a duffle bag to put these things in,” I said.
“We can use the one I brought back with all of Doc’s supplies in them,” he said as he stood off the bed.
He offered me his hand.
I smiled as I took it. “Thanks.”
He helped me to my feet. “No thanks needed. I’m glad that I can help.”
I expected him to let go of my hand, but he didn’t. Instead our connection dangled in between us, his thumb smoothing over my skin. I stretched my fingers a bit, and all of a sudden, without any motion of my own, his fingers slotted with mine.
My god, I loved how his hand dwarfed mine.
“Come on,” he said as he slipped his hand away, leaving my hand cold and aching for his touch, “let’s go get that duffle bag. It’ll have more than enough room for all of these.”
I nodded and fell in step in front of him. “Thanks for your help.”
“Again, no thanks needed,” he said as he held my bedroom door open for me, “I’m happy to help anytime.”
You can help yourself to me anytime.
I had to shake the thought away as I stepped out into the hallway.
It wasn’t the time for those kinds of thoughts.