CHAPTER FOUR
HUX
I shouldn’t have touched Anya. I knew it was a bad idea the moment I walked downstairs and saw her curled on the sofa, all soft curves beneath the blanket tucked around part of her and her clothes. My damn clothes, with my name emblazoned across her back when she shifted in her sleep. Somehow, that made her sexier than seeing her naked, and walking away the night before had been one of hardest things I’d ever done when she offered up that empty side of the bed.
And it wasn’t to fucking well sleep.
Hell, I’d been halfway across the line until I saw the wine glass. Then there was no chance I was screwing my best friend’s sister when she was drunk and explaining that one in the morning to both her and him.
Plus, she mentioned a breakup earlier and the feeling Sol had set me up doubled. I gritted my teeth, my hand resting in the warm spot where she’d been laying for hours tingled at the thought of winding my body around her.
This has to fucking stop.
Hissing breath through my teeth, I grabbed her blanket, folded the fluffy bundle, placed it back where she had been and switched the TV off. Silence fell over the room, colder and empty without her in it. The coffee grinder in the kitchen stopped a moment later and then everything was quiet.
Only it wasn’t.
A soft hiccup, the muted sort that came from behind a hand, reached me. I was on my feet, striding into the kitchen and had Anya in my arms a second later. Her hands covered her face, and her shoulders shook.
“ Fuck, ” I swore, stroking her hair as I held her to my chest. “I didn’t mean to scare you, girl.”
She shook in my arms, and I realized just how tiny she was, standing pressed to my chest. Warm, too. Anya was smaller than the often model height puck bunnies the team frequently associated with, but the girl in my arms was the perfect height to lift onto my waist, place her round bubble butt on the counter and?—
Get. Your. Shit. Together.
I growled the words mentally at myself as she pried her hands free. A streak of blood smeared her face. My heartrate picked up as I checked her and the counter over. No cuts showed up, and no immediate danger as I focused on her face. After Tabitha and Benny yesterday I was on high alert in an instant.
The counter behind her was clear, and I couldn’t see a blade anywhere. Shit. Was she a self-harmer? My stomach flopped at the thought. Sol never mentioned it, but then, he might not know. Both of us were away from our families— his, I didn’t have a fucking family left—so often and for long enough that we barely knew their day to day functions. Had Anya slipped through some crack and none of us noticed?
“Anya?” I said quietly, running my thumbs over the insides of her wrists and breathing out a little easier when I found no new cuts or old scars. “Where’s this blood coming from?”
She shook harder in my arms, burrowing against me and pulling back at the same time. Something crunched underfoot. I glanced down and found her standing in a circle of shattered mug pieces.
“Jesus. What’d you drop?” I frowned. She’d been drinking out of the blue and pink striped thermos that featured a stack of anime characters I didn’t recognize. Suddenly I felt old.
Anya tried to yank back from me, but I wouldn’t let her, tucking her closer and trying to avoid the shattered ceramic beneath her feet.
“I’m sorry!” she burst out like a banshee, a shriek built of pure panic and fear that blasted straight at me.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s just me,” I muttered, gripping her waist through my jersey. The material folded in my hands as I lifted her lithe form, planting her luscious fucking behind on the counter. Something scraped on the surface. I reached behind her, pushing the thermos back. Steaming black coffee trickled over the lip where she’d already filled it to the brim. “What were you making? Yours is full, Annie.”
“It was for you.” Anya gripped the edge of the counter with whitened knuckles striped with red that didn’t seem to come from anywhere. “I’m sorry,” she whispered on repeat.
Like she couldn’t stop.
A tightness I recognized from way too recently dealing with Ben and helping Tabitha wound around my chest in a constriction that stole my breath. Fuck, no. Not her. I cupped her face and tilted her head back, encountering wide, white eyes. Her pupils were blown out, though in this case I didn’t think the fear she experienced was from today.
“It’s okay, it’s just me. Not gonna hurt you, ‘kay? You’re safe. I promise.” I stroked her cheek with my thumb until she nodded and breathed with me. My chest loosened as some of the tension dropped away from her and she sagged against my chest. “Can you stay up here? I’m just gonna move some of these broken bits.”
“Icandoit.” Her words jumbled together as she tried to push down from the counter.
I pressed a hand to her stomach, easing her backward, and kicked the bigger shards aside carefully, finding a safe spot to stand in close to her. The rest I’d deal with later. Right now, she was more important. I crouched, running my fingers along the soles of her feet, and found the tiny cut. She didn’t flinch, but I felt the sharp, fine slice of ceramic embedded into her heel. So small that it wasn’t deep, just enough to make a mess, but she should have felt it. I pulled that free and fumbled about for a tea towel to clean my hand, keeping my other on her stomach, intent on making sure she stayed on that bench and didn’t tumble headfirst to the floor. No way could either of us handle that sort of additional chaos right now.
“Tell me about him.” I didn’t give her a chance to argue with me, and she needed to know I wouldn’t hurt her.
She stared at me, and for a moment I thought she hadn’t heard me at all. Then her lips parted and a single word came out on a whisper. “Peter.”
I nodded, stroking her cheek gently. She seemed to like that, or at least, didn’t mind the contact or throw me off. Her shivers subsided to a faint tremor. I took that as a good sign, hoping to hell that I wasn’t kidding myself that I could care for her. “Okay, so Peter the Asshole isn’t here right now. Is he?” Part of me wished very much that Peter would waltz his ass right into the kitchen so I could employ some of those moves Sol and I had practiced on each other over the years.
With a little less team side camaraderie, of course.
“No,” she whispered, her voice barely audible even at this close range.
“Good.” I’ll hunt that fucker down for what he’s done to you. I met her eyes and made that promise as her fear subsided a fraction. Anya’s hand rose, her fingers curling around my wrist, though she didn’t pull my touch away. “Tell me about him?” I made it a question this time, rather than an order.
“He was—” she shuddered, and I eased closer into her space, gathering her against me at the edge of the bench. A soft breath left her as she sank into my touch, resting her cheek in my palm. She let me take her weight in a display of trust that left my heart aching in my chest cavity. “Peter— We were supposed to be married this year.”
I started, and cursed myself internally. “I didn’t know that,” I murmured, trying to sound neutral, and not the controlling, possessive asshole I was fast becoming around her. “What happened?”
She let out a soft, albeit brittle sound. “He did. Peter liked to show off what he owned. That included me. And if things weren’t perfect, like…” Her voice trailed away, and a tear tracked from the corner of one eye to collect at the join of my fingers where I cupped her cheek.
I swallowed. “Like broken coffee mugs, huh?” I guessed.
“Yeah. Like that.” Her blunt, black and blue striped nails dug into my wrists. “I left him two months ago. He’s still fucking haunting me, Hux. Why can’t I just forget?”
I gathered her to me and let her cry into my chest, standing barefoot in a pile of broken ceramic mug and wished I had a magic answer for her. But there was no way to forget the pain that came with that sort of trauma. Not even time, though it theoretically the hurt was supposed to lessen.
I’d found that advice was utter bullshit. Lies others told you to ease their discomfort at witnessing your pain. So I held on, rocking her gently in my arms, and pressed my lips to the top of her head.
And said nothing at all.
I sat across the table from Anya and watched her nibble on toast like it was the least likely thing she wanted to put in her stomach, but I didn’t want to leave her alone. Making sure she ate something seemed a good enough reason to stay around. That, and coffee.
The girl drank the stuff by the tank load, and it didn’t seem to touch the sides.
She perched on the stool opposite me, her legs crossed beneath her, the foot with the small cut that stopped bleeding almost immediately patched up with a Band-Aid she grudgingly let me apply that I scavenged from the small first aid kit under the kitchen sink. My jersey hung off one shoulder, baring the curve I wanted to trace with my fingers. But she’d obviously been through enough, and she didn’t need me pawing all over her more than I already had.
That didn’t mean that her tears and shaking hadn’t scared the shit out of me. This was the girl I grew up with away from school and social norms. Out here, a few times a year when we could all just…be. Sure, I knew she had a crush on me. But that was then and now… suddenly not feeling like I could touch her was the hardest thing in my whole damn world.
“Eat,” I instructed when she put the toast down and shook her head. Golden curls hung forward, shielding her face. I reached across the table but curled my fingers up, stopping shy of actually touching her. “Please?”
Anya looked down at the piece of toast with a few nibble marks to it and sighed. “Whatever.” She picked it up and took a big bite, then glared at me. “ Haffy ?” she asked, toast obscuring the sounds.
I grinned. “Extremely.” I pushed her refilled thermos forward as a reward.
She clutched that thing like a lifeline, and emptied half its contents. Silence fell over the kitchen for a moment as she finished the toast, and looked at me. “You don’t have to babysit me, Hux. Go do whatever you were going to do this weekend.”
My lips thinned before I could stop them, and my own truths fell out. “What, mope about, ignore the memories I nearly ran clean the fuck into on my way up here, and try not to screw up everyone else’s weekend? Yeah, I have so much planned to fill my time.” I stretched back in my chair, linking my hands behind my head. The ceiling offered fuck all distraction, but it was still better than witnessing the sympathy in her face.
Anya’s chair scraped back a half second later, and the face I tried to avoid after staring at her for the past half hour appeared hovering right above mine.
“When you’re done moping, I could use some help lugging in this weekend’s supply of firewood.” Her hand cracked down on my shoulder in a slap worthy of her brother.
I winced as I straightened, watching her saunter out of the kitchen, not a limp in sight. Apparently, all I needed to do was provide her with a greater problem than she currently faced to override her anxiety in the moment. Or at least, when she was coming out of it.
Sob stories, I can do.
Not how I planned this weekend to go, if I planned anything at all.
I hauled my ass out of my seat, reclaimed her coffee she’d left on the table and followed her out of the kitchen before it hit me.
“You used all the stored firewood last night to keep the house warm, didn’t you?”
Her giggle ricocheted off the walls as I tracked her out the back of the house, snagging an old jacket of mine that survived a few winters without me off the hook near the door.
Hell, if she kept laughing like that, maybe this weekend would be okay after all.