Chapter 14 – Leo
FOURTEEN
LEO
An hour and two more shots for the girls later, I’m still nursing the one beer I won’t finish because I need to keep my mind alert.
Willa and Wren twirl one another as music plays and each time she stumbles, I fight the urge to stand up, throw her over my shoulder, and take her home to sleep it off in the safety of her home.
“You look like you wish your eyes had laser beams,” Hallie says, and I stop watching Willa to glance over at the redhead.
I try to harness the lasers she spoke of to get her to leave me alone, but I fail.
She must have some kind of killer armor, because instead of crumbling, she grins wider and sits on the stool beside me.
Her fiancé stands behind her, a hand on her waist, and Nat sits on my other side.
It feels like an intervention, and I don’t like it. Still, once I note them all blocking me in, my eyes move back to Willa.
The worst part is that as I watch her tip her head back and laugh, hands holding Wren’s, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look more beautiful.
Her hair is half down, the top half braided and knotted at the back of her head, the rest flowing down her back in loose waves instead of her normal severe ponytail.
She’s in a light blue outfit, the end of it just barely touching the top of her tight white shorts with a brown belt.
When she twirls, the bottom lifts, showing a sliver of her tanned, toned stomach.
I could lie and say I haven’t been watching, haven’t been keeping track every time Wren spins her out for a glimpse at it, but I’d be lying.
Fuck, I’m pretty sure every single man in this place is doing the same, a fact that makes that familiar irritation brew in my chest.
“You have to stop looking like you’re constipated every time you see her,” Hallie says.
“I don’t—”
“You totally do,” Madden says, coming over to our growing group.
“I give him a month before she’s over his shoulder,” Nat says, sipping a drink from a thin straw, a smile on her full lips.
“A month?” Hallie says, disbelief in her words. “I give it two weeks.”
“Nah, six, at least. He’s still too far in denial,” Jesse says. Hallie looks over her shoulder, raising one perfectly arched eyebrow at her fiancé.
“Unlike you?” He grins, pulling her further into him and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
“Unlike me. I was long gone for you well before I carried you out of here.”
“Adam only took, like, two weeks,” Nat says, and somehow, my confusion only grows deeper.
“Yeah, but the first time he did it, they didn’t fuck after. So does it count?” Hallie says, seemingly to genuinely wonder.
“Can we not talk about my sister getting fucked?” Madden asks, face a bit green.
“Are you all out of your fucking minds?” I ask, interrupting the strange conversation.
“You get used to it,” Adam says with a sigh from the other side of the table. “But they’re right: you gotta stop glaring at her. It’s getting weird.” I try to school my face, then finally turn away from the women dancing.
“I’m just worried. She’s lived a sheltered life. She’s never been drunk to my knowledge.”
Hallie tips her head before challenging me.
“You know, she wasn’t even drinking earlier,” Hallie says, a smile in her words.
“When you came in? She was nursing a soda.” I turn to her, confused, and a wide grin spreads across her lips, like she’s greatly enjoying dropping this bombshell.
“But you came in, went all crazy caveman, argued with her, and essentially pushed her hand.”
My eyes widen, and I move to stand, deciding then and there that this stupid game needs to end, but Hallie’s hand moves to my arm, gripping with surprising strength and forcing me to sit back down.
“If you go over there and tell her to leave, she’s just going to fight you harder, do exactly what you tell her she can’t do. She’s like a teenager with her first taste of freedom,” Nat says, and even though I want to, I can’t argue with her logic: I’ve seen it play out a few times already.
“She’s having fun, Leo. There are four completely sober men watching her every move and committed to keeping her safe, and Colt won’t let anything bad happen here.
You said it yourself: she’s lived for the brand most of her life.
She’s never been free to have fun, to explore.
This is a safe place for that to happen. ”
“She’s safe here, Leo. This is the best place for her to let loose. She can’t live her entire life cooped up. She needs to have the opportunity to live.”
I sigh, then lean back and cross my arms on my chest. “You’re kind of good at this,” I say begrudgingly.
“My brother’s a bartender,” she says as if that explains everything, then lifts a shoulder. “And my mom didn’t love me.”
“Jesus, Hal, you can’t just dump that on people,” Jesse says with an exasperated sigh, but he’s still smiling, as if this entertains him. She turns to her fiancé, a fierce look on her face.
“Why not? It’s the truth!” She seems strangely okay with this information, and I have to wonder if it’s some kind of inside joke. Hallie turns her assessing gaze back to me. “And because of it, it just means I can see damaged people a mile away. You and Willa? My people.”
“My parents love me,” I argue.
“But…?” Her ability to read people is actually alarming. “I can smell a but.” I roll my eyes and sigh.
“But my dad’s dead,” I admit.
“Ooh! Dead dad club!” Nat says, clapping before she slings an arm around my shoulders. I turn to her, a bit confused because I’ve never actually gotten that reaction to telling anyone my father is dead. “Finally! Someone for me!”
“For…you?” I ask, lifting a suspicious eyebrow. The longer I’m here, the more I wonder if anyone normal lives in Holly Ridge.
“Everyone here has dads. Even Hallie and Colt, though their’s kind of abandoned them once Hallie graduated. The Kings have the best dad, which, honestly, is a stab to the heart, ya know?”
“You all are out of your damn minds,” I grumble.
“Ah, yes, because you’re just the picture of mental stability,” Hallie says with a laugh.
I don’t have time to say anything else because just then the song ends, and Wren and Willa stop dancing and start making their way to our small table.
I watch Willa like a hawk, and when she stumbles, my entire body jolts toward her as if controlled by some ghost before she catches herself, steadying her feet.
A moment later, she and Wren start laughing hysterically before hugging one another.
Beside me, Hallie lets out her own loud, entertained laughter, and when I notice she’s looking at me, laughing at me and my unintentionally protective manner, I realize just how fucked I am.
I don’t even realize my shoulders are tight with anticipation until Willa sits down safely beside Wren, and the tension leaves them.
“You know, the house is empty tonight. Emma’s at your parents’ place,” Hallie says, thirty or so minutes later, turning to Jesse and putting a hand to his chest. “Maybe I should try to pace the girls, and you can take me out of here on your shoulder tonight.”
“Do it,” Jesse says, a mischievous look in his eyes, and Hallie’s face lights up.
“Couch sex?”
He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t have to. The look on his face says it all.
“I need another drink for this,” Wren groans.
“Me too!” Willa says, standing and wobbling a bit.
“You should drink some water,” I say in a low voice, trying to keep it a gentle suggestion. “You don’t normally drink like this and—”
Her nose scrunches up, and I realize I said the wrong thing once again.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do.” She takes a half step towards the bar, then looks to me, a mischievous look on her face and a glint in her eye, before she calls over her shoulder. “Hallie! We’re taking another shot!”
“Coming!” she calls, then skips towards the bar. As she moves around the table, Willa stumbles, though Madden thankfully catches her by the shoulder. She and Wren lock eyes and instantly burst into hysterical giggles before they finally reach the bar.
I watch in utter misery, completely out of my depth.
“Let her live her life,” Madden says. “Anything goes wrong, enough of us are here that we can get her out quick and easy before it gives you a headache.” I shake my head and speak without thinking.
“Willa doesn’t give me a headache,” I admit, because she doesn’t.
“She never has.” Her manager might, and my boss might, but if I’m being honest, Willa doesn’t.
She was right: she doesn’t ever get in trouble.
She stays well within the bounds of what everyone expects of her, maintaining that America’s Sweetheart persona that she’s built over the years.
But without the spotlight, without the eyes, I’m learning that she’s brighter. Happier. Lighter.
In fact, right now, I’m the only person dragging her down.
“She just drives me crazy.”
It feels like I spend an eternity at the bar, watching Willa get more and more drunk, though my nerves are appeased when time and time again, it’s proven that everyone was right about this place: it’s safe, not just physically for Willa, but from the media.
No one has approached her outside of our small group, and I haven’t seen a single phone lifted to take a sneaky photo or video.
Whatever fear Colton puts in his customers, they have respected Willa’s privacy, and for that, I’m grateful.
“I gotta get her out of here before she gets too wild,” Jesse says, watching his fiancée, who has made good on her promise and caught up with Nat, Wren, and Willa.
When I turn to him, I don’t see the irritation I might expect.
Instead, there’s a pleased smile like he loves this about her, as if he knows who she is and accepts it because it’s something he loves.
I turn back to the girls and take them in, all four of them screaming a Spice Girls song at the top of their lungs.
I’ve never seen Willa this free.
“You’re supposed to take Willa home?” I ask. He nods, though for the slightest moment, disappointment flashes on his face. Considering every time Hallie’s been within touching distance, he’s had his hand on her and murmured until she blushes, I can assume why. “I’ll take her.”
“What?” he asks, turning to me.
“I’ll take her home.” Jesse’s face goes unsure, and despite the mild irritation of that, I can’t help but feel that now familiar gratitude move through me. It’s clear this crew has taken Willa in as one of their own, and that means they take care of her.
“She’s really drunk, I don’t mind—”
“It’s cool,” Madden says to his brother.
“Leo’s got her. He’s been taking care of her longer than any of us has even known her.
” The oldest King takes in his younger brother, then the women, and finally looks back at me.
I could lie, tell myself that I only offered to help because I want to do the man a solid, but I don’t know if it’s even worth lying to myself anymore.
“If she’s okay with it, then okay. But if not, I’ll just take her home.
It’s not far for me.” I nod, then look to where Willa is, take in a steadying breath, before making my way to her.
She catches sight of me, and her face goes beaming, the biggest wonky smile gracing her drunken face as she throws her arms into the air.
“Leo! King of boredom has come to dance!”
“No, no, I—” I start, but she trips into me, her chest hitting mine, her arms looping around my neck, and on instinct, my arm wraps around her waist, holding her to me.
In an instant, her body melts against mine, and the tension in my chest does the same.
Yeah.
I am so screwed.
“I’m just here to tell you I’m gonna take you home tonight,” I say. Fast music plays around us, but we don’t move to the beat. Instead, we sway slowly as I continue to hold her, and she clings to me, her face going confused.
“What? Why?”
“Because Jesse and Hallie want to get home and be alone together, and you’d be in the way of that.
” She looks over my shoulder, and as we move, I see Jesse and Hallie dancing slowly together, kissing more passionately than is appropriate for a bar, especially one owned by her brother.
It makes Willa laugh, something I feel against me.
“Okay, yeah,” she says. “That makes sense.” Then the song moves to a slow one, and a wide, happy smile pulls on her full lips. “A slow song,” she says, glee in the words.
“Willa—”
“One dance and then you can take me home,” she says.
I can’t fight it.
I’m starting to think I can’t fight her.
So instead, I move with her, giving her an answer with my body. A light, happy sigh leaves her lips, and that, too, settles in my chest.
“Are you having fun?” she asks a minute in, her voice low, though her closeness lets me still hear her.
I’ve been lost in the feel of her, so lost in the song and the way she hums to it with her eyes half shut, that the question startles me.
I look down and smile at her soft expression.
On instinct, my hand lifts, pushing back a chunk of messy hair that fell out of the braid and tucking it back behind her ear.
She leans into my touch like a kitten desperate for affection, and again, something cracks my chest wide open, but this time, before I can close it back up and reinforce my walls, Willa somehow sneaks in and makes herself comfortable.
”I hope you’re having fun. I don’t think you have fun nearly enough.” Her eyes are so hopeful, like it really matters to her that I am in fact having fun, so I nod, and as I do, I find I’m not lying.
“Yeah, honey. I’m having fun,” I say, the nickname spilling from my lips without meaning to, but I can’t find it in me to care. “Are you?”
“The most fun I’ve ever had,” she says, and I know she means it. She’s been to high-profile parties and awards shows and travelled the world, but he’s never had more fun than right now, dancing in a small-town dive bar.
“I’m glad, Willa. You deserve to have fun.”
Her eyes go somehow softer as her hands slide up the back of my neck, fingers moving to play with the hair there. Despite myself, despite needing and wanting to keep my distance, I find myself pulling her in a bit closer.
“Did I finally crack you?” she asks.
“Crack?”
“Yeah. You’re a grumpy old man, but I know you can be fun.
I just never get to see it.” I stare at her, unspeaking, as she moves and her hand reaches up to rest on my cheek as she looks into my eyes.
It’s uncomfortable in a way, but so comforting in others, as she seems to read beyond my words, beyond what I’m showing her.
Eventually, her lips tip up with a soft, knowing smile.
“Yeah, I’ve cracked you.”