Chapter 19
Nineteen
I’m a good person. Not a nice one.
—Hux to Bernice
Hux
I hated waking up the next morning without Bernice.
I’d spent the last two days with her, and it felt suddenly wrong that she hadn’t been there to wake up beside me for a third.
Except, when I woke up the next morning, it was to a soft knock at my front door that I knew somehow belonged to her.
When I opened the door in nothing but a pair of sweats, she took her time to allow her eyes to follow the length of my body.
She took in every inch before she pulled something out from behind her back.
She held out the little pink box and said, “Happy late birthday.”
I blinked. “How do you know it’s my birthday?”
She grinned. “Your birth date is on your ID. And you had to give it to the lady at the store yesterday when you bought that permanent marker.”
Yesterday had been my birthday, and I hadn’t celebrated it like I always did.
I hated my birthday.
My mother always used to go big for our birthdays, but she’d always made it all about her.
None of us celebrated. And none of us celebrated each other’s. It was an unspoken rule that we ignored its existence.
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
I’d bought the marker when we’d gone to the supermarket the day before for dinner ingredients.
“Want to come inside?” I asked hopefully.
I wished I could get my hands on her body for a little bit, too.
She stepped back, her eyes wide as she shook her head furiously. “No. If I come inside, we’ll never leave. And I have to get to work to open it five minutes ago.”
I grinned. “So one more minute won’t harm you.”
“But…”
I reached for her and tugged her into my arms.
The kiss left us both breathless, and I had half a mind to pull her in here and fuck her brains out before sending her off to work ten minutes late.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t.
She did, though.
“Fuck it,” she whispered, pushing herself inside my apartment and slamming the door.
I reached for her skirt and lifted her up, pushing her panties to the side.
My sweatpants were lowered in the next breath, and I was pushing inside her in the next.
I fucked her, hard and fast, until she was crying out and breathless.
Too breathless.
I walked backward to the counter and caught her inhaler up, holding it to her lips.
She leaned forward, and I pumped the meds into her lungs.
She inhaled deeply and held her breath.
I waited until she was once again in control, then fucked her hard and fast against the door.
It was the everything I’d been wanting and more.
Her cries of completion rang in my ear as I let myself go, pouring myself into her.
I growled against her ear, squeezing my eyes closed as it felt like my soul left my body right along with my release.
Her breathing was harsh in my ear, but this time, she didn’t lose complete control.
No rescue inhalers were necessary by the time I was putting her on her feet.
She was breathing fast as she stared at me, her skirt rucked up to her hips.
“I’m so late.” She laughed.
My grin was fierce as she bent down and retrieved my dropped cupcake that’d miraculously ended up right side up.
She handed it to me, then yanked down her skirt.
“When I’m with you, I’m never cold,” she mused as she slipped back into her boots.
My heart gave an unsteady pound as she darted out the door then down the stairs.
In my preoccupation with letting her go, Benz was halfway down the stairs with her.
Luckily, the door slammed closed before the escape artist could make it outside, too.
She yowled in displeasure.
I tucked my dick back into my pants, then left the door open and cleaned up.
By the time I made it back to the door, Benz was back, glaring at the large door downstairs.
“Come on,” I said as I peeled the wrapper on the cupcake. “In you go.”
She haughtily turned around and stomped back inside, her tiny little feet sounding like tiny drums as she went to her food bowl and stared at me with contempt.
“Fine, I’ll feed you some wet food. But don’t get used to the whole damn can.”
She yowled at me as I gave her the rest of the can.
Then went to the window and stared outside until it was time for me to leave.
Hours later, I was still tasting the cupcake on my damn lips when Bernice’s brother showed.
“My meat done?” he asked.
I looked at the backlog of carcasses still hanging in the meat locker and said, “Does it look done? By the way, you massacred the back strap.”
Creed shrugged. “I was in a hurry. Birdee said it smelled like a slaughterhouse.”
“Uh-huh,” I grumbled, thinking about how I’d spent my Saturday, and wishing I could rewind to it.
Despite doing what I love, it was still a damn job.
And I still had to deal with bullshit customers.
Though Creed wasn’t one of them.
“Anyway, if I did anything wrong, it was your fault. You taught me everything I know,” he joked.
That I had.
All of the Dixie Wardens had experience with hunting and fishing.
And all of them had helped me out when I was first getting established here, trying to catch up from a backlog of work that my late grandfather had left behind for me to take care of on my own.
Though I’d been doing the butchering thing since I was young.
I’d taken meat classes in high school and had furthered my education in college by taking several courses to certify me as well as a culinary education from a college in Texas.
My grandfather on my father’s side hadn’t had all that.
He’d just been a glorified butcher who was baptized in the Depression, forced to make his way with nothing.
He’d been the most sought-after in five hundred square miles, and sometimes even further if it traveled through the right word of mouth.
“I guess you’re right,” I said, spying the box in his hands. “What are you doing with that?”
He held up the box. “Bernice said that she was headed here to help you during lunch. I wanted to drop off her birthday gift.”
“What?” I asked, thinking I hadn’t heard him correctly.
“Bernice’s birthday,” he repeated. “I thought I’d ask her if she wanted to go grab some lunch at Hopps.”
A tendril of guilt hit me.
She’d known that it was mine yesterday, and she’d still brought me a cupcake on her own birthday this morning.
Some stalker I was.
I didn’t even know when her birthday was.
“Shit,” I said as I stopped taking notes. “She didn’t tell me.”
His eyes sharpened. “Why would she need to tell you?” He paused. “And why was she meeting you here for her lunch break anyway?”
So I could fuck her brains out.
“I…” I trailed off when Bernice came through the door looking frazzled. “Mom’s dead!”
Creed and I both frowned, momentarily forgetting what we’d been talking about.
“What?” Creed asked.
“Our mother,” she repeated. “She’s dead.”
“What?” he asked. “How? Last I saw, she was smoking her life away and living off the government with several other men who were also living off the government.”
I snorted.
“Hux thinks that her disappearance was due to my serial killer,” Bernice offered up.
Creed’s head whipped around to stare at me. “He does?”
“I asked a couple of my friends to look into it,” I explained. “Wolf and Griffin. They’re out of the Uncertain field office.”
“Oh,” he said. “What makes you think that? She really is that fucked up. She could’ve just disappeared and it be her own fault.”
“This time, I don’t think that’s the case,” Bernice said as she handed her brother her phone. “Also, Hux and I are seeing each other.”
Creed ignored the phone and narrowed his eyes at her, then once again swung those eyes toward me.
They weren’t angry, but they weren’t happy either.
“That’s why I’m here on my lunch break,” she said. “Also, I ate a crap ton during random breaks all morning. I have no room for lunch. So, thank you, but no thank you. I’ll take a rain check on lunch plans. Where are my gloves?”
“Gloves?” Creed asked.
I pointed toward the drawer. “In there.”
She pulled out a pair of thick gloves that would protect her hands from the cold and a knife and slipped them on.
Then she turned to me. “Did you get me smaller disposable gloves?”
I pointed at the wall where I’d put the second package of small gloves just an hour ago.
She beamed. “Now, tell me where you want me! I have an hour.”
Creed murmured something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, ‘What the fuck?’
“You can stuff those cuts of steaks in the bags I have sitting out there. Then when you’re done with that, we’ll send ’em through the vacuum sealer and label them.”
Creed watched his sister get started while I continued to cut the steaks from the elk carcass.
“Y’all look like a well-oiled machine,” he mused. “How many times have you done this before?”
“Once, during that snowstorm,” Bernice answered. “Why?”
Creed leaned on the counter beside his box. “I don’t know. Looks awfully cozy.”
“We haven’t been seeing each other long.” Bernice read his mind. “Two days.”
I liked that she wasn’t denying what we had.
I also liked that she was being straight with her brother.
I didn’t like the whole hidden relationship thing.
It was fine if you were in the movies, but the logistics in real life were hard to pull off. Let alone why would you want to?
Above all, I liked that she knew there was an “us” despite not having a conversation about it.
There hadn’t been much time for conversations yesterday or the day before.
“Guess that’s why there was no answer at your house yesterday,” Creed mused. “I think I’m okay with this. Not to mention, it’ll be nice not to have to worry about you home alone twenty-four-seven. Having another pair of eyes and ears on you would make me feel a whole lot better.”
Bernice sighed. “You’re overreacting.”
“If anything,” Creed grumbled, “I’m under-reacting. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this the moment you knew that I was okay.”
“I was overcome with elation that you were alive, Creed,” she said. “Plus, you had your own shit to deal with at the time. Don’t blame me that you didn’t know what was going on with my life. You could’ve known had you not shut me out that last year.”
Creed snapped his mouth shut.
I sliced off another steak and kept my mouth shut.
What were the odds that I’d find her half the world away, and I’d fall in deep with her before I even really knew her. Then, as fate would have it, her brother would get dropped off practically on my doorstep where she’d then find her way here?
If that didn’t scream “fate” I didn’t know what did.
What I did know was that I’d be keeping her.
I’d tangle her in my web so deep that she’d never want to be let go.
And I’d protect her from the psycho that set his targets on her or die trying.
“Anyway,” Bernice said. “Mom’s dead. Her face was plastered on the front page of the online newspaper for her area. She was found outside a hospital.”
“Good riddance,” Creed muttered. “Let’s forget she ever existed.”
Bernice’s lips quirked. “I was thinking the same dang thing.”