9 Leo Wherever I Go—Noah Rinker #2
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll slice your feet open,” I reason calmly. “No funny business, okay? Just want to avoid you injuring yourself on a sharp rock or some broken glass I haven’t spotted.”
“Okay, okay.” She sighs in defeat. “Point taken.”
“You’re safe with me. Promise.”
Scooping her from the knees, I pluck Eden off her feet like she weighs little more than a feather. Realistically, she doesn’t. The girl needs some serious TLC. I’m making it my mission right now to ensure she gets it.
Her arms curl around my neck, bringing her flush to my torso. I forcibly shackle any untoward thoughts while carrying her to the centre, despite her wriggling body wrapped around me in the manner of a half-frozen sloth.
Fuck my life, she feels so good.
Striding into the deserted centre, I navigate towards the cast-iron burner tucked into the corner. It’s preloaded with firewood. Despite spring approaching, the temperature is still frigid out here, and I like the place to feel inviting when we open up.
Eden lets me place her down and smiles faintly when I drag a chair to position it in front of the fire. It takes a couple of attempts to get the kindling lit, but soon little flames are crackling from within the hearth.
“Okay.” I nod to myself. “Towels. Tea. Dry clothes. You’re not hypothermic, right? What’s my name? How many fingers am I holding up? Shit, I should call the doctor or . . .”
“Leo,” she interrupts. “I’m not dying.”
“You were sitting in a rainstorm! Half frozen! Barefoot!”
“You’re overreacting.”
“Well, excuse me for giving a shit,” I snipe back.
I can’t tell if she looks amused or disturbed. Something’s gone very wrong here if she’s not used to people worrying about her. That only begs the question of how many times she’s pulled this dissociative crap and not been looked after.
“Wait here.” My finger jabs towards the fire. “Get warm.”
“Anything else, sergeant?”
“Always with the sass.”
“You’re the one making a big deal,” she calls after me.
“Too right I am!”
Thankfully, we keep a stash of clean, dry clothing on hand for emergencies. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to crack into it, though most people time their bizarre lake-side activities for slightly warmer weather.
Selecting the smallest sizes I can find—a ragged pair of navy sweats with a hole in the knee and a Hawkthorpe Masonry T-shirt someone must’ve donated—I return to hand Eden the bundle with a pair of thick socks.
“There’s a bathroom in the back you can change in.”
Contrite, she fists the dry clothes. “Sorry for being a brat.”
“I’d never call you that.” I pluck up a small smile.
“I didn’t expect anyone to find me out here. Thank you for caring though.”
“Thought I was making a fuss?”
“I’m just not used to it,” Eden confesses in a hush. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful.”
Despite my fluttering chest, I shackle the animalistic urge to grab this slip of a woman, crash her into the wall, and show her exactly how much I care. How she deserves to be seen, comforted, and fucking cherished.
“Thanking me for caring is the one thing you’ll never have to do,” I say in a thick voice.
“Nevertheless, you deserve to hear it.”
“Thanks. Usually, I just get yelled at for being too much.”
“You’re not too much, Leo.”
The room narrows to the chapped landscape of her slightly parted lips. Sweet, soft pink darts out where her tongue swipes over her bottom lip, causing me to gulp hard. Nope. Not going there. Not even thinking about it.
Eden reaches up on her tiptoes and ever so carefully pecks my cheek. Where her chaste kiss lands erupts into flames that char my skin cells and sloughs my stuttering heart down to bare, vulnerable strings. This innocent minx is plucking every last one of them without even realising it.
It takes the self-control of a goddamn deity not to grab her wrist and pull her closer to take those lips for myself.
I need to know if they’re as pillowy as they look.
How sampling her soul would taste. Or how she’d peer up at me through blown pupils and grant me another peek behind the mask she wears like armour.
“I was raised to have more manners than that,” she reveals breathily. “So, thank you.”
My response is a gravelly rockfall.
“You’re welcome.”
When she withdraws to go get changed, the white-hot need roiling inside me summits. My fingers quake as I duck into the staff room to make tea, needing a task other than drooling over the angel getting naked in my near proximity.
Stop it, Leo.
She’s vulnerable.
Least of all because of those concealed scars. I need to earn her trust. Even if I’m having the sordid thoughts of a caveman and need a long shower to sear the memory of her lips from my mind.
“How’d you take it?” I shout into the cabin.
After a beat, she calls back. “Got anything stronger than tea?”
As a matter of fact, I do. But I don’t know if sharing a bottle of whiskey with the little devil is a good idea right now.
“God help me,” I whisper to myself.
Now dressed, Eden finds me in front of the fire, arranging a second chair to join the sealed liquor bottle and two chipped mugs. No fancy glasses here.
“You keep a secret stash?” she asks.
“Only for emergencies.”
“Is that what this is?”
“After finding you out there? Yes. I’d say it is.”
Her expression clouds, eyes growing distant. Shit, I’m losing her again. Before she can slip back into whatever numb state led her to that platform, I pour a measure, then steer her in front of the roaring fire.
“Here. Drink up.”
“What is it?” Her nose wrinkles.
“The good stuff.”
Aged whiskey tickles my throat, giving me something to focus on besides the way her pale shoulder is exposed where the shirt’s neckline slips.
Her throat is a sloping column of temptation, beckoning to be kissed and marked.
A stairway to heaven carving a path straight to that mouth, those lips . . .
You’re her friend, Leo. Friend.
Imagining what it would feel like to rip that T-shirt off and explore every delectable inch of her with my tongue isn’t helpful. Nope. Control yourself. We need to get her talking.
“Tell me something about yourself,” she requests. “I don’t want to think about me right now.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something important.”
“Erm . . . well, did you know I spent over a decade in foster care until I came to Hawkthorpe?”
Fingernails drumming on her cup, Eden peers at me. “I thought you were adopted?”
“Not until I was almost fourteen.”
“Oh, wow. You grew up in care?”
“Yeah, I entered the system as a toddler. Had a bunch of interviews and families interested over the years, but it never worked out for me. Not until Sterling’s ma walked in and refused to leave without me.”
Even now, the memories are too raw to lose their impact. A terror so deep and biting for a scared kid never quite dissipates, even in adulthood. For each year I spent bouncing between temporary placements, that terror grew, forming a permanent scar.
The fear of never belonging. Of not finding my place in the world or having anywhere or anyone to call home. That I must be fundamentally unlovable, watching other kids get adopted, while birthdays and Christmases passed for me without note.
“Until that moment, I didn’t know what it meant to be cared about,” I admit. “And I wasn’t used to it. For a long time, I didn’t trust anyone. I was terrified of the place I found here being taken away.”
Eden sips her whiskey, listening intently.
“Even now . . . I guess you could say that I still feel the need to earn my place or risk losing it all over again. The guys might call it mothering, but to me, it’s my way of ensuring I never lose the family I was given.”
“Leo,” she murmurs. “You shouldn’t have to earn their love.”
“And I don’t. Hell, I’m sure they’d tell you I’m annoying and overbearing. But it doesn’t change the way I see the world and my place in it. I lost my home before, and I can’t risk that ever happening again.”
She nods thoughtfully, swirling amber liquid in her cup. “You’re still afraid.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” I meet her stare.
“Yes. Of course.”
“I’m actually petrified.”
We share a hesitant smile, lips loosened by hard liquor and the quiet press of wooden walls emanating warmth. Eden has subconsciously inched closer, her knee now brushing mine as she contemplates the firelight.
“You can tell me your secret too. I’ll take it to my grave.”
“I can’t.” Her head jerks from side to side. “Not this.”
“Then tell me why you were sitting on that jetty in the pouring rain.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yet it matters to me.”
She steals another sip for courage. Knees brushing. Breath synchronising. Her nervous gaze darts up to contemplate my face, perhaps searching for confirmation of my trustworthiness. I hate that she even feels the need to check.
“Because . . . I’m scared too,” she admits.
“Of what?”
“You can’t help, Leo.”
“Try me,” I incite her. “Now you know—fixing things is what I do best.”
Her bottom lip trembles, shattering my soul clean in two with the sheer vulnerability she allows to surface.
“Can you fix me?”
Placing my whiskey on the floor, I reach out to take her empty hand in mine. Screw the illusionary boundary between us. She swallows hard, staring at my fingers, then allows them to curl together in a tight knot.
“Listen to me very carefully,” I spell out. “Because this right here is God’s honest truth, okay? I don’t see anything here that needs fixing.”
“You don’t see it yet, but you will.” Drying strands plaster to her face, curling into baby hairs. “He always told me I needed fixing. I was never good enough.”
Gulping down my anger takes great effort.
Who the fuck told her that?
“But no matter how small I made myself . . .” Eden shakes her head, as if disturbing loose memories. “It still didn’t work. I failed to live up to his standards and paid the price.”
“Who, Eden?”
Fearful fireflies light her pitch-black pupils. “I’m not the person you think I am.”
“What does that mean?” Unease licks at my insides. “Who are you?”