Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
TESSA
It had been three days since I last saw Bryce in person.
He’d gone out of town for a case he was working on, which meant I went from having him constantly to not at all, and although he’d gotten back earlier this morning, I had no real reason to call and ask him to come by my place later tonight.
No matter how badly I wanted him with me.
Now I was running on fumes. Two nights he’d slept by my side, and already, I’d become addicted to having his big, strong body wrapped around mine.
These past few nights I hadn’t been able to sleep to save my life. I spent each of them tossing and turning, feeling like something was missing. Something in the form of a six-foot-four man with more than two hundred pounds of pure muscle packed beneath his skin.
After how he broke my heart, he was the last man on earth I should crave.
But, he made me feel . . . safe. For the first time in my life, when I’d needed someone I hadn’t been alone.
Someone had taken care of me. Bryce had taken care of me, and he’d done it better than I could have imagined.
Gentle and kind, sweet and loving. Anticipating my every need.
Like a husband.
My protective wall was in shambles, full of holes, and barely standing. I missed him like crazy. The only silver lining was that he’d stayed in contact while he was gone.
Like an addict, I’d kept my phone in hand, reading and rereading the string of texts between us every few minutes over the past three days. And it had to be said, Bryce Dixon was just as potent over text as he was in person. The man was good with words.
“Ms. T?”
The sound of my name pulled me from my musings and back to the present.
I was sitting in the common room at Hope House with a few of the other volunteers and a bunch of the kids.
Oscar, the boy who’d just spoken my name, was looking at me curiously, his pencil poised over the homework I was helping him with before my mind drifted off . . . again.
“Sorry, buddy. Spaced there for a second.”
With an easy acceptance of my lame explanation, he slid the paper toward me. “I finished it. Can you check my work?”
I read over the lines typed on the page. The task was to locate all the verbs in the three short paragraphs, and with the exception of two, Oscar had located them all.
With my guidance, he quickly found the ones he’d missed the first go round. “Got ’em!”
I rechecked his work, before looking up at him with a smile. “Look at you. You nailed it, kiddo!”
He hit me with a big, toothy grin that melted my heart before stuffing all his completed work into his backpack and running off to join a couple kids playing video games on the large TV that had been donated from the electronics store in town.
The chair beside me scraped across the floor as it was pulled out, and I looked over just as Diana took a seat beside me, her eyes across the room on Oscar as she murmured, “The change in that boy is miraculous.”
She wasn’t wrong. When he’d first come to Hope House, the boy couldn’t read at his grade level, but with the help of the volunteers, his report card now sported all A’s and B’s.
“He’s doing so well.” I let my gaze travel through the room before speaking again. “They’re great kids, aren’t they?”
“That they are,” Diana quickly agreed. “I’ll admit I didn’t have the first clue what I was gettin’ into when I volunteered to work here.
Never did anything like this before.” I turned back to her and discovered she was watching the kids with a smile on her face.
“I spent my life as a housewife and mom. That was the only career I ever wanted. Then one day I woke up and realized it was over. The kids were grown and gone, and I was left with nothin’ to do.
Lost my purpose. When Rory and Cord opened this place, I thought maybe this would help me find it again.
” She shook her head and chuckled. “I didn’t know what I was gettin’ myself into, that’s for sure.
But these kids . . . they make it easy. Even on the days they make it hard, you know? ”
“This job isn’t for the faint-hearted,” I told her, reaching out to place my hand on top of hers. “All I can say is I’m glad you gave this place a shot, because you’re great with these kids. You make a huge difference, Diana. All the volunteers here have.”
She turned her hand palm up and wrapped her fingers around mine, giving it a squeeze. “This is a great team here. Made even better when you came on board.”
A throat cleared from behind us, breaking through the moment and drawing our attention to Reggie, who’d come up behind us. “You have a visitor, Tessa.”
The common room was a huge space, but when Bryce stepped inside it suddenly felt a million times smaller.
My heart began to buck and spin at the sight of him, and when he looked in my direction and hit me with that devastatingly sexy grin, my belly quivered.
“My oh my,” Diana mumbled under her breath. “That man just gets more good lookin’ every time I see him.”
He moved across the room. He didn’t walk, he swaggered, and from the silence that suddenly fell over the space, I wasn’t the only one who noticed him.
“Hey there, beauty,” he said, his low voice sending goosebumps across my skin. “Missed you.”
I gulped, my throat suddenly feeling as dry as the Sahara before stuttering, “I-I missed you too. What . . . um, what are you doing here?”
Before he could respond, one of my boys, Josiah, called out, “Yo, Ms. Tessa! Who’s the huge guy?”
Diana shot from her chair, her voice raised enough for everyone in the room to hear. “This is Miss Tessa’s husband, Bryce Dixon.” Shit, shit, shit! “Kids, come say hi.”
“Whoa, Ms. T! You’re married?” Jerome asked.
“Omigod! Your husband’s totally hot!” Hailey shouted.
Diana gave me a saucy grin when I cut her a scathing look. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she didn’t regret it one damn bit.
I started in Bryce’s direction, and as soon as I was close enough, his arm shot out, wrapped around my waist, and he pulled me right against his side.
I looked at the kids with trepidation. “Guys, like Diana said, this is Bryce. Bryce, these are my kids.” I went through and introduced each of them by name. He gave chin tilts and handshakes to all of them as I said their names. “And this is Charity.”
Bryce’s attention shot to the pretty blonde girl hiding behind layers of heavy makeup, and his expression grew warm. “Nice to meet you, Charity. Tessa’s spoken very highly of you.”
Her eyes, narrow and shrewd as she’d studied him like a specimen beneath a microscope moments before, went big with surprise. “She has?”
“Yeah, darlin’.”
That amazement vanished as fast as it had appeared, and she went back to looking at Bryce with scrutiny. “Well, she’s never talked about you. How come we’ve never seen you before?”
“Charity,” I admonished.
“What?” She gave me a shrug. “It’s true. We’ve never heard of this guy before.”
“You’re being rude, and it’s totally uncalled for.”
Her face pinched angrily, and I knew we were close to a blowup. “I wasn’t being rude. I was stating a fact. There’s a difference.”
I was about to argue back when Bryce spoke up, his tone even and calm. “I’m guessin’ you’re old enough now to realize that guys are pretty stupid, yeah?”
That question made Charity and me both pause, and her gaze returned to the big man still holding on to me. “Yeah, so?”
“So I figure, since you know we’re stupid, you also know we mess up. A lot. I messed up. That’s why I haven’t been around. But I’m workin’ on makin’ up for being an idiot.”
She cocked her head to the side, giving that some thought. “You do something illegal?”
“No,” he answered quickly.
She shot right back. “So you aren’t a criminal?”
“Not at all.”
“Sweetheart, I think that’s enough with twenty questions,” I said gently, trying to curtail a potential disaster.
Her hands slammed down on her hips, her stance that of someone much older than thirteen. “You said you’d always have my back. Well, someone has to have yours too.”
My lips parted with a shocked gasp. I had to look away as my heart swelled, causing an overwhelming urge to burst into tears, and when I locked eyes with Diana, I knew she was struggling just the same as me. God, these kids were amazing.
Bryce knew how much her saying that meant to me, so instead of being offended, he informed her, “I’m glad she’s got you lookin’ out for her.”
Some of the fire drained out of her, but I knew she wasn’t ready to relent completely when she said, “Yeah, well, I’m watching you, so don’t do anything else idiotic.”
I had to lower my head to shield my smile behind the curtain of my hair as he replied, “You have my word.”
“You a cop or somethin’?” Oscar suddenly chimed in. “You’re really big, and you look like a cop.”
Bryce’s chuckle made his body shake against mine. “What’s a cop supposed to look like?”
“I don’t know.” The little boy shrugged. “Like you, I guess.”
“Not a cop. I was a Navy SEAL, and now I work at Alpha Omega.”
“Whoa!” another boy, Caleb, exclaimed. “Those guys are totally badass!”
I shot him a scowl and quickly reprimanded, “Language.”
“It’s true,” Josiah added. “Everyone in town knows those guys are bada—” He caught himself, his expression going sheepish as he looked at me and finished with, “you know.”
“That’s so cool,” another girl, Brooklyn, said. The fourteen-year-old had recently decided to go boy crazy, much to my detriment and the rest of the staff’s, and as she gazed up at Bryce dreamily, I knew it was probably time to bring this visit to a close.
“So you didn’t answer my question. What brings you by? Not that . . .” I gulped, and added, “Not that I’m not happy to see you.”
“I promised you I’d help get all the stuff you needed to make the kids costumes for the haunted house, didn’t I? The guys and I started work on the barn this mornin’. Figured I’d see if you wanted to go check it out, then we could drive into Richmond to run your errands.”
Reggie stepped up, humor dancing in his eyes. Obviously, he’d enjoyed our little show as much as Diana had. “Go. We can take care of things here.”
“You’re sure?” I asked, chewing on my bottom lip.
I tried to spend as much time at the house as possible after the kids got back from school, wanting to be around in case anyone needed me.
These kids lacked consistency, and I tried hard to be a constant for them.
But the Halloween festival was coming fast and there was still so much to do.
“Positive,” Diana answered for him. “Besides, if you don’t get crackin’ on those costumes, these kiddos won’t be scarin’ anybody.”
“Go, Ms. T,” Jerome shouted. “You promised you’d make us all look like super scary zombies.”
“All right, all right.” I gave in as I took Bryce’s hand and began guiding him out of the room. “I’m going. I’ll see you guys later.”
The kids all shouted their good-byes after us. As he followed me down the hall toward the exit, I searched for that voice in my head telling me this was a bad idea, that I shouldn’t let my guard down and be so comfortable in Bryce’s presence.
But for the first time since he came back into my life, that voice was completely silent.