Chapter 15
Loreena
Was Maverick maybe slightly an asshole last night? Yes. But also… no. Everyone has a right to voice doubts and spiral a little. Or a lot. God, look at how much grace he’s given me.
It’s true what I said. While everyone has been paying attention to me, Maverick has gone through hell and back.
Yes, hell can look like someone wearing a smile, toughing it through, and saying they’re okay.
Maybe he is. Maybe he’s not. Either way, he’s allowed to be frustrated.
He’s entitled to be scared, hurt, angry, and afraid.
The things he said? They were hard truths, but maybe that’s what I needed to hear more than soft platitudes.
Whether they were said in the heat of the moment or not, his words resonated with me for the rest of the night. I gave him his space even after I heard him come in. He didn’t drive away. I watched through the basement window. He just walked off.
I didn’t see him come back a few hours later, but I did hear the door open and close quietly, and then his steps echoing above.
His words percolated through me, bitter and bold. I stewed in them for hours, thinking them over fully, before I finally got up and went upstairs and made real coffee.
It’s a beautiful morning, the sun making a rare cloudless appearance, light streaming through the open blinds of the living room’s bay window.
After the rough night, Maverick is sprawled out, finally asleep, and obviously deep enough that the sound of the espresso hissing and gurgling in the kitchen didn’t disturb him.
I intended to wake him up, placate him with coffee, and tell him that he was right and I’d made a decision, but I can’t help going into full on creep mode instead. I just stand here, a mug of coffee in each hand, staring at the man before me.
Despite ten hard years, he’s beautiful awake, and even more so unguarded in sleep.
His thick lashes rest against the darker smudges under his eyes.
His cheeks always had a hollow to them, but at rest, in the sunlight, it’s even more obvious.
His jaw is dusted with such a dark shadow of stubble that if he left it a few more days it would almost be a full beard.
His lips are pursed as though he’s deep in thought, even in his dreams.
He only grows more handsome to me every day, but that’s because he’s allowing me to know all of him and see how wonderful he is on the inside.
He’s not a man who needs masks or a hard exterior.
He doesn’t lie to himself. He didn’t lie to me last night either.
It might have been tough, hearing some of those things, but it was worse listening to him say horrible things about himself.
He had every right to his truth, and it takes a big person to be able to churn that over, admit it to themselves, and put it out into the world.
He’s been willing to accept me since the first letter and the first moment of our meeting in person. I can accept the whole package of who he is, flaws included. That’s what I was trying to say last night, but I don’t think it came out right.
I don’t want to wake him after so little sleep, but I think his back and neck might thank me later.
Guilt kicks me in the ass before I remind myself that Maverick couldn’t sleep in the bed any better than he does on this couch.
It was more than just us saying we wouldn’t do things, doing them anyway, and finding that confusing as fuck.
“Maverick?”
He’s normally a light sleeper, but exhaustion must finally have caught up with him. I nudge his foot with mine. When my bare toes make contact with his sock, my stomach flips. It suddenly seems like a strangely intimate way to touch a person.
He had his tongue in your pussy last night, and you think footsie is intimate?
My face heats up, and I clear my throat just so I don’t go back to thinking about that. I have something else I need to say first. “Maverick?”
He jerks awake, eyes opening, but there’s no panic or a mad scramble.
He’s not back there. He sits up slowly, blinking sleepily.
He rakes a hand through his hair, mussing it further, but my god.
Even in a rumpled t-shirt, yesterday’s jeans, and after a hard couple of nights with very little rest, he has the exact sexily rumpled look that most men try to channel for photos.
I swallow thickly and hold out the coffee I made him. “I have something to say.” That’s about as awkward as it gets, but Maverick just takes the mug and sets it down on the coffee table.
He rolls his neck quickly and violently so that it cracks loudly, then scrubs a hand over his face and groans.
“I just wanted to say that I know you’re frustrated and not just with me.
” I perch on the edge of the couch, keeping enough distance between us.
I sip the coffee and give silent thanks that Scythe is such a coffee snob.
This is the best java I’ve ever tasted in my life.
“I know you weren’t trying to punish me last night.
You just needed to clear your head. You were edgy and probably wanted to be alone, and I was the one who came to you and pressed you instead of giving you space. I thought I could help.”
He blinks slowly. That was too much, too soon. He’s probably still half asleep. I’m about to apologize, but his dark eyes sweep to me, soft and languid and shining with something so deep that I know he heard me just fine.
“I know you just wanted to help me,” he sighs.
I want to fold that sound into me, to store it up. Not because I think I’m going to have to let it go, but because there’s nothing about this man that isn’t a treasure.
“I know that too. About… you.” I swallow another gulp of coffee.
I never imagined my heart as a thing with ropes or chains, but they’ve been there for a long time, growing link by link and letter by letter, forged impossibly strong, binding me to him.
“I didn’t go back to sleep after you left.
I thought about what you said. I realize that I might have been wrong all these years. ”
Maverick gives me his whole attention. It would be enough to make me squirm any other time, and so intense that I could burn up under it, but that fire won’t hurt me. His flames only exist to keep me warm.
“If you can find the guy and get him into a courtroom and let the law decide and punish, like you said, then I’ll agree to it.
” The words fall out of my mouth, so ineloquent that I wince.
“None of it can come back to you. You can’t put yourself at risk for anything.
” He opens his mouth to assure me that he won’t, but I’m not finished yet.
I thought about this long and hard before I made my decision.
“I’d like the guys at the club to do it. ”
Shadows gather in his eyes. They’re not necessarily angry, but maybe a little bit wary and more than a little hurt. It feels like a knife in my hand, slipping between his ribs in betrayal, but this is my way of keeping him safe. He doesn’t have to like it or even agree with it.
“I’m only saying that because I feel like they’ll have more ways to protect themselves as a club.
I doubt that this is the first illegal thing the place has done and not had any retribution come down on them.
The difference between those men and you is that they’re not fresh out of jail.
Uh… well, not most of them probably. They aren’t being watched or tracked or anything. ”
“You don’t know that I am,” he shoots back.
“I don’t know with a hundred percent certainty that you’re not. I’m not willing to take any chances when it comes to your life and your freedom, Maverick.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to imagine what it was like for him on the inside.
I might have been basically locked in my apartment, but that was my own choice.
There was no one waiting for me, ready to cause me damage.
I didn’t have to watch my back or sleep thinking that someone might harm me in the middle of the night.
I didn’t have to worry about gangs or violence or trying to figure out who wanted what as currency and what every single breath was going to cost me.
Maverick’s never once looked cold before, but his face empties out, going completely devoid of emotion. He sips his coffee, then licks foam off the corner of his lips. A pang of heat shoots straight between my legs. I force myself to focus even though a tremor shoots through me.
“You’re a person and I’d rather hurt myself a thousand times over than cause you a single moment of pain,” I rasp. “I know I’ve caused enough worry and heartache for you already, at the worst possible time. You told me last night that the club is here for both of us. Let’s let them be.”
He studies me for a long time. Longer than anyone would find comfortable, but instead of being unnerved by the direct eye contact, I hold it and drown in it.
He leans forward and sets his mug on the coffee table, then scoots over to me.
My breath catches. My first thought is how good he smells, how he seems so much larger up close, how I want his hot mouth on every inch of my body.
I panic slightly because I have coffee breath, and eww, but Maverick either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
I freeze as his hand cups my cheek. He pushes back some of my wild hair that I haven’t even brushed out yet, tucking it behind the shell of my ear. He traces the whirl down to my earlobe. I shiver violently, his touch as potent as if he’d used his mouth.
“I can arrange for them to come here,” he says.
It takes his words a second to pierce through the hot haze that grips me. I shake my head, meaning no, but nuzzle against his hand. “I want to go to them.”
His loud inhale is telling. “How?” Not how as in, how the fuck do you think you’ll manage that? It’s more of a kind word, as in, tell me and I’ll make it happen.