Chapter 12 #2
The need to fix something overpowers me. The problem is, I don’t yet know what needs fixing, though I have a sinking suspicion it has everything to do with my little troublemaker.
“I’m honestly not sure. She said there’s a…” I blow out a breath that puffs up both of my cheeks, then drag my fingers through my hair. I desperately need a real shower.
Savvy stands rigidly, dropping her arms to her sides like lead weights. “There’s a what?”
“Quinn said there’s a scandal.”
The woman before me goes eerily still as all color drains from her face.
“What kind of scandal?” Her chest rises at an alarming pace. It’s the only thing on her that moves. She doesn’t even blink, for fuck’s sake.
Why am I the one to give her this news? Of all people, it has to be me? She just got back to her ball-busting ways—the way I like her.
Damn. I do like her this way, but I don’t know her demons well enough yet to know what will weaken her.
“What scandal, Greyson?”
I stare blankly at a point on the wall just above her head. With a heavy sigh, I finally look at her. “She didn’t say. Just that it was something to do with your past.”
Visible tremors start in her fingers and race up both arms, and nothing I can do will tear my gaze away from her outward signs of distress. My palms itch with the need to set things right.
“My past.” Her words are wrapped in arsenic, and she nods with one aggressive tip of her head.
I study her, waiting for any direction on how to proceed, but all she does is walk woodenly toward the front door in silence.
Do I follow? Do I call Braxton and ask him what the hell is going on?
I’m out of my element with her. Generally, when a problem presents itself, I act on it, then move on.
But there’s a looming sense of dread that I can’t see through.
Calling Braxton seems like a safer bet right now, but when I lift the phone, Savvy’s heavy footsteps on the porch call to me, and I follow her instead.
She’s staring out at the swamplands my property has become. She hasn’t noticed me on the threshold yet, so I take my time studying her.
My fingers itch to tug her thumb from her mouth. Biting that nail is a bad habit, but it’s also her tell that not everything is calm in that mind of hers.
“How do you even have any nails left?” I ask after a long beat.
As expected, she jolts in place, her eyes blinking rapidly as though she’d zoned out.
Her thumb curls under her fingers as she forms a fist around it, and she shrugs.
“It seemed weird that no one came out here the last couple of days.” She scans the property from left to right and back again.
I’d been thinking the same thing, but I don’t admit it. The last thing I need is to fuel her fears.
But she’s not wrong. We’ve been stranded here for six days now, and someone got as close to us as they could every day right up until two days ago.
“I spoke to Braxton and Cian yesterday. I hate talking to Cian on the phone. I can’t understand a word the Irish ass says.”
Her lips curl up with the tiniest glimmer of a grin. “You get used to him. He’s a really great guy. You should feel lucky he considers you a friend because he hates most people.”
I don’t think he hates them—he just has a very low tolerance for stupid. The guy would do anything for just about anyone as long as you’re not a dick.
“Yeah, well, I’ve never needed many friends.” I keep my focus on the upturned trees on the other side of the new pond.
The heat of her stare sets fire to the side of my neck. My pulse beats erratically, and I know it’s because everything in me is screaming to look at her. But I can’t think clearly when I do, and it’s become a daily internal battle I lose every time.
“You’d have more if you let people in.” Before I can formulate a response, she continues. “What else did she say? What’s going on out there?”
“She was a little cagey about it, to be honest. But now that I think about it, so were Braxton and Cian.”
“Do you think they’re keeping us out here on purpose?”
She’s cute when she’s flustered.
Can Stockholm syndrome happen when you’re stranded with someone during a natural disaster? She’s cute when she’s flustered? What the actual hell is happening to me?
I like her, I hate her, I want to fuck her into submission until she says she’s mine.
Wait. What? I’m losing my goddamn mind.
“They are, aren’t they?”
I forgot what she asked me.
“Why would they keep us out here?”
Oh, right. I tug on my T-shirt, missing my suits more with each passing conversation. “I don’t know,” I say. “Brax just kept saying this was the best place for us right now and that they’re working on cleaning up the mess. The way he said it was…odd.”
Feisty Savvy rears to the forefront, and she taps one of her feet, hands on her hips, a slight scowl pulling at her brows. How do you not stare at her when she prowls like a goddess of war?
“Clover said something similar. But she made it sound like it was a problem with the road they had to clear before they could get up here.”
I nod. That’s what Cian implied too. Unfortunately for them, Braxton is a shit liar.
She begins to pace. Six days cooped up with her hasn’t been as terrible as I thought it would be. After our bedroom confessional, something in me shifted. I still don’t trust her, but perhaps I’m evolving and at least attempting to understand her more.
“Savvy, you’ve actively avoided talking about your past, but Quinn explicitly mentioned it. What the hell could you have done that could evoke a—what she called a nationwide scandal.”
Her teeth dig into her bottom lip, and then I realize it’s because she’s trying to keep her chin from quivering.
“Jesus, Monroe. I’ll fix it, just tell me what it is.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, it hits me just how true they are. My mind may want to hate her, but my heart wants to fix her entire world and then wrap her in bubble wrap coated in titanium so nothing can get to her again.
“Tell me your honest opinion, Patch.”
I rear back. Is she drunk? “Patch?” I grind out. “What’s that about?”
Her smile is sad. “You’re a fixer, always trying to patch the holes in the ship before anyone realizes it’s sinking. But some people are destined to go down with the boat, and you have to let them.”
That’s never going to happen.
She shrugs. “Plus now that I know it annoys you, I think I’ll stick with it. It’s better than the other names I call you in my head.”
Heat curls around in my stomach, and my throat tightens. “What names, Monroe?”
“Drill Bit, for one. Because you’re always forcing your nose where you don’t belong.”
“Or because my cock drills into you like no one else ever has.” And now my cock is hard. “What else?”
“There was Patch Daddy, but I thought you’d like that too much. Then Commander, but it felt like too much of a compliment. Mechanic was in the running for a while too.”
My lips curl. She has me so damn curious all the time. “Why Mechanic? Because I like to dirty you up?”
“Jesus, no. Because you think you can fix the whole damn world.”
I suddenly feel lighter than I did moments ago. She did that. She breathes fresh air into my stale, stagnant life.
“You’ve put a lot of thought into a nickname for me.” It’s as though she’s injected me with the swagger of Iron Man, and I stand a little taller.
She grumbles and looks away. “I had to. If I kept calling you Crotch Rocket in my head, it would’ve eventually slipped out, and Madi wouldn’t have thought it was as funny as I do.”
A bark of laughter rips from me, shaking my shoulders and causing a stitch in my side, but she frowns—the seriousness of earlier circling back and hitting me square in the shoulders.
“Do you think our friends have left us out here to try and clean up whatever mess is out there?” she asks. “Or do you think we’re still here because of the hurricane?”
The collar of my T-shirt presses against my throat tighter than the tie I once allowed Sage to tie on me when he was seven. I miss my suits, but it seems out of place to wear them here while she’s stuck in my oversized T-shirts and lounge pants.
My suits are my armor, protection. And my gut says she’s going to need all the protection she can get.
“I don’t know,” I say.
She shifts back to the swamp-like pond before determination wraps her entire form in Kevlar. “Are you up for a hike?”
She can’t be serious.
“You don’t have to come, but I can’t just sit here anymore either.
Not if…” Her beautiful green eyes connect with mine, and the pain I find hidden in their depths steals the air straight from my lungs.
“It doesn’t matter. If Madi is trying to protect me, I just— I can’t, okay?
If she and Brax are doing something to shield me…
” Her throat works hard to swallow. “Madi has been through enough with the media. She doesn’t deserve to go through my shit too. ”
“What shit, Monroe?” I’m officially losing my temper with her, and my voice rattles Mother Nature’s soothing sounds. “What the hell kind of skeletons could you possibly have?”
When she looks up at me with so many painful secrets swimming in her beautiful green eyes, terrifying sensations swirl in my gut.
Ever since my father locked my sister, Violet, in her bedroom for the duration of her pregnancy when she was just seventeen years old, I haven’t handled having choices taken from me well.
After Violet went into early labor and passed away from the lack of medical care, the will to protect has become my entire personality. And staring at Savvy now, every molecule in my body says that she needs my protection.
I failed with my sister—I won’t allow that to happen again.
“The kind I’ll do everything in my power to keep from the people I love.” She glances back out over the swamp, and sadness I’ve only ever experienced firsthand envelops her in a cloud of grief. “Even if that means I have to leave them to protect them.”
Panic. That’s the uncontrollable heat feeding on my veins like cancer. “Fuck that, Sav. You’re not that dumb, are you? Have you met any goddamn person in this town? Not one of them is going to let you just walk out of here to deal with anything on your own.”
Especially not me.
As if she can hear my unspoken words, she drifts closer. Close enough for me to see the dash of gold in her left iris. She pats my chest, twice, then walks into the house.
“Stay here, Patch.” Her smirk is an injection of adrenaline straight to my soul. “I’ve never counted on a white knight, and I don’t need one now. I’ll call you from the inn if I find out it wasn’t the storm holding us hostage.”
I growl like a bear in her direction, and it vibrates through each vertebra of my spine.
“Fuck you, Monroe.” I lower my voice—a warning that makes most people back up a step. But not her, no, never her. She moves closer. “If you think I’m letting you walk out into the unknown alone then you don’t know me at all.”
She pauses, and we meet at the stairs, her chin dipping toward her chest. “Does anyone know you? Really know you?”
Flames lick at my ribs, the fire in my veins flooding my system.
She’s trying to pick a fight, and I can’t allow it.
Not now. “You almost did, Monroe. Almost. Now pack a bag and grab the first aid kit from my bathroom. We have no idea what we’ll encounter—if we can even find a way around the remaining water.
Even the driveway that we can see on the other side of the pond is corroded, and who knows what will happen once we meet the main road. ”
“You really don’t have to come with me.” She sighs, and it feeds my own frustration. “I’m perfectly capable of figuring out how to get through mud on my own.”
“Oh, because you did it so proficiently the last time?” So much for not falling for her antics.
Her hip snaps to the left. “It was a hurricane. Rain came down thick as walls. It’s sunny out today, and I’ll be fine.”
“Fine or dead, and it’s not a risk I’m willing to take, so get your ass moving. We’re doing this together.”
She takes one step before stopping again. “Have you decided yet?”
“Decided what?” Irritation has me reaching for my lucky coin. Could you imagine if I was actually in a relationship with this woman? I’d either wear out my lucky coin or break my fingers. She’s seriously the most frustrating human on the planet.
“How you feel about me? Love or hate? Friend or foe? Do you want to keep punishing me for being your friend or spank me…for fun? You’re very divided in your words, Patch, but your actions? Those are crystal clear.”
I recoil at the word love, grow hard at the vision of spanking, and no, I’m not one step closer to having any damn idea how I feel about this insufferable woman.
“Wear pants,” I grunt, then hurry to the kitchen to pack some supplies. “We leave in ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Reyes, sir.” She’s so damn fresh—but sir from her pouty lips is something I could get on board with—permanently.
I may not know what I want to do with her, but right now, yeah, I know exactly what I want to do to her, and it involves her silent and on her knees.
This woman is going to break me. I feel it in my bones.