Chapter 8 I Can Take Care of Myself
i can take care of myself
BELL
In the bathtub, I resolved to tell my unexpected savior it was time for him to leave one moment…
…and woke up under my winter duvet covers the next.
Morning sunlight flooded the room. The curtains were open. And though Dennis always slept in—often until noon—his side of the bed was empty.
What in the…?
Yesterday rushed back. The unexpected savior. Dennis’s death. The bath.
I was still sore, but I could see through both eyes now. And when I lifted my arm, the metal bracelets were gone from my wrists.
Had it all been a dream?
My heart sank because that explained everything. A savior who looked like my favorite Greek statue come to life. The bath soak I always needed after one of Dennis’s beatings—but could never manage to run for myself….
Obviously, it was only a dream. My daughters had written me off. Rightfully. Of course they hadn’t sent some impossibly yoked statue to rescue me from—
“Good. You’re awake.” Yesterday’s impossible hallucination barged in, holding a mason jar of water in one of his large hands. “I just made a big-ass pot of oatmeal, and I was hoping I wouldn’t have to eat it by myself.”
He was no longer splattered in blood, and he wore clothes today: cargo pants and a tee that said SMOKE HAPPENS. There was a strange scar on left forearm, I noticed. An arc of jagged indentation marks—like something had bit him there. Had he been attacked by a dog when he was younger?
"Mornin', sugar." Boone set the water on the nightstand, and the bed groaned when he sat on the edge—just like it had yesterday.
“How’re your pain levels? I wanted to wake you up and give you something last night after you fell asleep in the bath, but there wasn’t anything in the medicine cabinet.”
No. Dennis had dumped my ibuprofen down the sink early into his stay so I could “feel the pain” I’d caused him.
Dennis…
My eyes flicked to the door.
Then back to the man who’d killed him—before tending to me and, apparently, making me breakfast.
My mind spun, trying to keep up.
“You’re all the way out of that shock, huh? You going to start screaming and hitting me now?” The older Hercules statue crooked his head, eyes crinkling into a soft grin. “You can if you want. Whatever you need to be okay, I’m good with it.”
Yes, I was coming out of shock. But his invitation to scream and hit him loosened the tight knot in my chest.
Almost made me smile.
Almost.
He kept watching me with that crinkled grin. “You wanna eat in bed or come out there with me? Don’t worry, I cleaned up your living room last night while you slept.”
I thought about it. Then decided to sit up and…
Discovered I was naked when the blanket slipped.
We both froze.
And this time, my unexpected savior did not avert his eyes.
A new heat lit in his blue gaze, and a new kind of heat pooled low in my stomach. The kind I used to feel when I drank with Naheem before we fooled around.
But I hadn’t had alcohol in months. Not a single drop.
“You okay?” His voice went low—gruff—and his nose flared the same strange way it had yesterday.
I wasn’t sure what he was asking.
Or why he didn’t look away, like he had before.
I sat there—paralyzed? Entranced? I didn’t know what was happening—
And then he leaned forward.
Oh God. No. No!
Something snapped inside of me. Terror replaced fascination in a blink.
He was going to hit me. Hurt me! Just like Dennis.
I scrambled backward like a crab until my shoulders hit the wall. Trapped. With Dennis, I always went limp—disappeared into one of my two happy places at the first hint of incoming violence.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the switch. The one that turned me into Vacant Little Thing. It was broken. Or maybe I was broken. Either way, the panic came flooding in with nowhere to go.
Choking me, crashing through me in waves. I was trapped by this beast of a man. What was I going to do?
“Whoa, whoa. Don’t be scared.”
He jumped up, and turned toward me, hands raised, like yesterday.
“I know I look like a scary motherfucker, but I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m never trying to hurt you, I swear.”
His voice wasn’t loud. Actually, it was so quiet, I had to focus in on it in order to hear him over the thunder of my heartbeat.
“I saw the swelling had gone down,” he said, jaw tight, like he was working to keep his tone steady. “I just wanted to check that eye. That’s all.”
His words sank in. Penetrated my panic.
And slowly, the logic of them caught.
Embarrassment replaced fear so fast, I went from trying to crawl through the wall at my back to wishing it would swallow me whole.
“It’s okay,” he said from the other side of the bed. “Do you want some clothes? Would that make you feel better?”
He moved to the closet without waiting for my answer. “Maybe a dress? I see you’ve got a bunch—okay, okay. Doesn’t have to be a dress.”
I didn’t realize I was frantically shaking my head until he quickly closed the closet and started rummaging through the dresser.
He wouldn’t find anything.
The first thing Dennis did was get rid of my clothes. Jeans. Torn sweaters. Anything that looked like the me I’d curated during my ten years without him—gone.
The only reminders left were the old leather jacket and the orange coat hanging by the door.
“Fuck.” He straightened. “Nothing here.”
He looked up, apologetic. “I’ve got a couple extra shirts in my duffel. You’ll be swimming in them but—”
I started nodding before he was even finished making the offer.
As scared as I'd been seconds ago, wearing this stranger's shirt felt like the easiest answer on a multiple-choice quiz.
He left the room—and came right back with a long-sleeve flannel bunched in his hand. One of those tops that could double as a jacket over a t-shirt if you needed it to.
He set it at the edge of the bed like a peace offering. Then turned his back. Like a patient gentleman.
Though, again, something told me he was neither of those things.
I lunged for the shirt anyway, the pulled it on and buttoned it up with clumsy fingers.
“Is it alright if I turn around now?” he asked. “Knock on the wall if it’s not.”
It wasn’t alright. Having those intense eyes on me made my nerves jangle.
But I didn’t knock.
He turned.
One side of his mouth hitched when he saw me kneeling on the bed in his way too large shirt. “You look good, sugar.”
Liar.
“Okay.” He nodded, as if he’d come to some sort of conclusion . “Breakfast can wait. I’m going to stand right here until you’re ready to either talk or come out and eat with me. As long as it takes. I’ll wait.”
Something cracked open in my chest. The graveyard shifted. He’d wait? For me? As long as it took?
I didn’t understand. Didn’t understand any of this. But he was right about me being hungry.
I tentatively moved forward, feeling more like a scared animal than a fifty-six-year-old woman as I edged across the bed and came to stand in front of him.
God. He was giant.
Even bigger now that I was upright.
He blocked the sunlight streaming in from the window behind him, and the room dimmed—like his body determined the weather.
There went my heart again, beating so loud I could barely think.
But not so loud I missed him saying, “Good girl.”
I stilled. Did he really just call me a good girl?
Yes, he did. And he doubled down on it, regarding me with that soft expression and those intense blue eyes. “Bravest little thing I know.”
Brave. Not vacant.
I was fifty-six.
Fifty.
Six.
But my whole face—not just my cheeks—warmed under his praise, and I had the sudden urge to duck my head like a teenager.
Less than ten minutes later, I found myself sitting across from him, eating bland oatmeal with an absurd amount of raisins.
Boone looked ridiculous at my tiny table—like that bull from the children’s book Noelle used to make me read her every night, the one who was always getting stuck in delicate spaces not meant for him.
I wanted to talk. Explain. Ask every question I had.
But I couldn’t.
Dennis was gone now.
So was my couch. My rug. The things I’d bought to cover the warped wood floors. The air smelled like cleanser instead of Dennis.
Which told me Boone was… nice.
But also the kind of person who could kill and disappear a body overnight.
He’d said he was a smoke jumper, but was he violent? A criminal? Both? A violent smoke jumper criminal who somehow knew my daughters’… what had he called them—mates?
I set down my spoon, suddenly not hungry anymore.
“All done?” he asked, like he’d been waiting for me to finish.
I nodded.
“Can I touch you?” he asked.
I went still—
—until he added, “Check your face?”
I couldn’t find a reason to say no, so I tightened my muscles and held myself still while he reached across the table to tip my chin gently and angle my face toward the light, thumbs barely grazing my cheekbones.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Swelling’s down. Your eye looks good, too. No damage to the pupil.” He lowered his hands and grinned. “You got yourself back a beautiful matching set.”
I held still on the outside.
But inside, everything went still, too.
Was he… was Boone… flirting?
Or just giving me some sort of pity compliment?
Either way, I didn’t know how to respond.
So I stood and started gathering dishes.
“Not done yet,” he said, picking up his spoon again.
Oh.
I hovered—unsure what to do. Flat out ask him to leave? Wash my bowl? Hide in my room until he went away?
“Do you mind keeping me company while I finish?” he asked, offering a third option I wouldn’t have come up with on my own.
Yes, I minded.
He was scary. He was stirring the graveyard inside my chest, and I wanted to hide.
But he’d rescued me, and I couldn’t even make myself say thank you.
So, I sat back down—perched on the edge of the chair, ready to bolt into dish-clearing the second he was finished.
“So,” he said, “I was sent here on a mission by my nephews—your daughters’ mates. That’s what our kind calls husbands. Sort of. How much do you know about their situation?”
A little. Not enough.
I really did need to find my phone.
Also—our kind?
My face must have done something, because he nodded. “Okay. I’m going to assume not a lot. Not everything.” He watched me. “Want me to call your girls’ mates? Tell them you’re okay now, and let them explain everything?”
“No!” The spoken word suddenly burst out of my mouth. “Please don’t!”
He paused mid-bite. Then grinned. “There you are.”
Yes, there I was, too terrified to stay silent.
“Please don’t tell them you found me like this,” I said. “I don’t…”
My voice gave out. I couldn’t explain why—not even to myself. But I couldn’t let him call Holly’s and Noelle’s mates. “I don’t want Holly and Noelle to see me this way.”
“Bell.” His voice gentled. “Don’t worry. I’m not in this for them anymore. I’m here for you. If you don’t want me to call them, I won’t. Just tell me what you want to do.”
Tell him what I want….
I thought. Then said it out loud.: “I want to heal. Wait until the bruises fade. Then I want to go to Canada to see them. On my terms. On my timeline. But definitely before the wedding.”
He considered that. “Good idea. I’ve got my truck downstairs. We’ll drive to Bear Mountain whenever you’re ready.”
We?
“Oh. No, no.” I shook my head. “You don’t have to keep helping me. I can take care of myself from here.”
“I’m sure you can,” he said.
Then he went back to eating.
I waited. For him to agree, to stand up, to say when he’d be leaving. But he just kept spooning oatmeal into his mouth.
Finally, I had to ask. “So… after this, you’ll be leaving?”
He looked honestly confused. “Why would I do that?”
“Because we just agreed, I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, you can, but…” He trailed off, considering. “Look, I don’t want to scare you any more than I have, but I’ve gotta be truthful here. I’m not going to let you take care of yourself. I’m not leaving you alone here. I can’t. I just… can’t.”
My stomach dropped with the ugly-but-familiar sensation of someone else deciding my life for me. Turning my apartment into a cage again—even if this time imprisonment came with breakfast.
“Why not?” I managed.
He shook his head. “It’s a long story, sugar. And I can tell you’re not ready to hear it. Not yet.”
Maybe he was right about that.
As confused as I was, I went quiet again. Then I abruptly jumped up from the table and did what I’d wanted to do since sitting back down: scurried off to my room to hide from the Herculean statue who’d saved me, cared for me, and now refused to leave.