Chapter Five #3
Her eyebrows lifted. “You would let me move your furniture?”
“You’ve been judging it since you walked in.”
A surprised laugh escaped her. “I have not.”
He quirked one of his eyebrows at her.
“Fine. Maybe a little.”
He nodded toward the window. “Feel free to plant flowers if that’s what you want. I know you’ve been thinking about it since we pulled up.”
Her mouth fell open. “How did you know that?”
“You stared at my yard like it personally offended you.”
Willow laughed.
Jay Bird glanced at Lily. “Get some rest. I’m going to make a call. I’ll be in the living room afterward.”
“Okay.”
He stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him.
The room fell quiet again, and Lily, already half-asleep, let her head sink back onto Willow’s shoulder.
Willow stood there for several seconds, her eyes fixed on the lock as if it were something unfamiliar. When she finally reached for it, her hand trembled—not entirely from fear, though that was part of it, but from something deeper and harder to name.
She turned the lock, and it clicked softly, such a small, almost fragile sound in the quiet of the room.
Willow closed her eyes, leaned her forehead against the door, and held Lily a little tighter as tears quietly filled her eyes.
For the first time in three years, she had closed a door and locked it herself. Not to keep herself trapped inside, but to keep the rest of the world out.
An hour later, Jay Bird sat in the corner seat of the sofa with one ankle resting across the opposite knee and the History Channel playing quietly on the television.
Some guy was talking about a World War II aircraft carrier.
Normally, Jay Bird would’ve been interested. Military history was one of the few things he could watch for hours without getting bored, particularly when the narrator actually knew what the hell he was talking about.
Tonight, he couldn’t have repeated a single thing the guy had said, because his attention kept slipping away from the television and drifting instead toward the hallway on the opposite side of the house, more specifically to the closed bedroom door at the very end of it.
Having Willow and Lily inside his house still felt strange enough that every few minutes his brain circled back to it as if it needed confirmation.
Jay Bird had lived in the house alone for four years, and he had preferred it that way.
The house was quiet when he came home, exactly the way he had left it when he walked out the door.
Nobody asked where he had been, when he would be back, or whether he had remembered to pick up milk on the way home.
There were no expectations waiting for him on the other side of the door.
He had built his life that way, intentionally and carefully shaping it into something quiet and controlled. After—. No. Jay Bird cut the thought off before it could even form, shutting it down hard. He wasn’t going down that road tonight, or any night if he could help it.
He shifted on the sofa and stared at the television without really seeing it.
Derek had called a little while ago. His commander had started the conversation by asking how Willow and Lily were doing, but it hadn’t taken long before he had gotten to the question Jay Bird knew was coming.
You sure about this?
Jay Bird had rolled his eyes even though Derek couldn’t see him and answered him honestly. He was good with the arrangement.
There had been a pause. Derek knew him too damn well, and unfortunately, he knew enough about Jay Bird’s past to understand why inviting a woman and her child to live under his roof wasn’t exactly a small thing.
But strangely, he was fine with it. Actually, he was more than fine, and that is what he should have been concerned about.
He had known Willow for two days. Two fucking days and somehow he had gone from catching her when she collapsed to buying a car seat, stocking his refrigerator with toddler food, and handing her the security code to his house.
That wasn’t normal behavior for him, but then again, nothing about Willow or Lily seemed to bring out anything even close to normal in him anyway.
Derek had also told him that he planned to stop by tomorrow with Tink.
Tink had served with Derek years ago before leaving the teams and starting his own security company, although calling what the man did “security” didn’t quite cover it.
Tink had contacts everywhere and a disturbing ability to find information others couldn’t.
Not to mention he has classified contracts with the government.
Give the guy a name and a few details, and somehow he would come back with tax records from nineteen ninety-five, your fourth-grade teacher’s maiden name, and probably what you had ordered for lunch last Tuesday.
According to Derek, Tink had already uncovered information that might help Willow start reclaiming her identity and figuring out what had happened to her life during the three years she had been missing. That alone was worth bringing him over.
Jay Bird would talk to Willow in the morning before they arrived. After everything she had been through, the last thing he wanted was two men she didn’t know showing up at the house without warning.
The fact that he was already thinking that way, planning around what might make her comfortable, should probably have bothered him, but it didn’t.
Jay Bird rubbed a hand over his jaw. What the hell was it about those two?
He understood Lily a little better. The kid had latched onto him immediately, and apparently he was enough of a sucker that one pair of big brown eyes and a stuffed elephant had turned him into a willing participant in Peppa Pig marathons.
Willow was harder to explain. She was beautiful.
He wasn’t blind to that. Even exhausted and bruised, there had been something about her the moment he first saw her outside the gym that made him look twice.
Now that she had showered, rested, and finally gotten some food into her, that quiet, striking quality about her was only becoming more obvious.
But attraction alone didn’t explain the pull. Jay Bird had been attracted to women before, but none that ever felt like this. This was different in a way he couldn’t explain.
Maybe it was what she had survived. Maybe it was knowing she had been trapped with Chen and still risked herself to help Riley escape.
Maybe it was the way she automatically put Lily first in every situation, even when she looked like she could barely remain standing herself.
Or maybe it was the fact that after everything she had endured, she could still look at his barren front yard and tell him, with a completely straight face, that it appeared he had threatened the landscaping.
That one made him smile. She hadn’t been wrong. His house really had no personality, and he knew it. He just hadn’t cared enough to do anything about it.
Furniture served a purpose. Landscaping required maintenance. Pictures collected dust. Decorative pillows were completely fucking useless.
Willow had walked through his front door for the first time and immediately looked around as though the place was personally offending her sense of decency, and he found that ridiculously entertaining.
A faint sound from the hallway pulled his attention away from the television, and a moment later Willow stepped into the living room. For a moment, she didn’t notice him.
Her long hair was pulled into a high ponytail, although several shorter pieces had escaped and framed her face. She had changed into a pair of loose pajama bottoms and a matching royal-blue tank top that made Jay Bird abruptly forget what documentary he had supposedly been watching.
Jesus. There wasn’t anything provocative about the outfit, and that was exactly what made his reaction so irritating. She just looked comfortable, and at ease in a way he hadn’t really seen from her since she’d shown up outside the gym.
As soon as she spotted him, she stopped in her tracks.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t know you were still out here. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
Jay Bird frowned. “Bother me?”
She gestured vaguely toward the television. “You were watching something.”
He glanced at the screen. “I couldn’t tell you what.”
The corner of her mouth lifted slightly. “Still.”
“Willow, you walking through the living room isn’t an interruption.” He motioned around them. “Remember the whole make yourself at home speech?”
“I remember.”
“Good. Because I don’t want to repeat it.”
She laughed softly.
There it was again, that sound doing something strange to his chest, and Jay Bird tried to ignore it.
“How’s Lily?” he asked.
“Out cold.” Willow smiled. “I don’t think she has moved since I put her in bed.”
“I thought you’d be sleeping too.”
Willow looked down at first and then looked back at him. “I’m just getting some water,” she said.
“Well, the kitchen is still where it was when you saw it earlier.”
Her sweet laugh came easier this time. “You’re a smartass.”
He smirked. “So I’ve been told.”
Willow walked into the kitchen, and Jay Bird forced his attention toward the television instead of watching her cross the room.
He heard the freezer open, followed by the quiet clink of ice dropping into a glass.
A minute later, she headed back toward the hallway, then stopped near the edge of the living room.
She was holding her water with both hands, shifting her weight slightly from one foot to the other.
She looked like she wanted to say something.
Finally, she looked at him. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Of course,” Jay Bird said, reaching for the remote and shutting off the television. The sudden silence settled over the room. He nodded toward the sectional, gesturing for her to sit.
Willow walked over and sat at the far end of the couch, putting enough distance between herself and him, which Jay Bird noticed immediately.
He didn’t take it personally, though after Chen, he was honestly a little surprised she was even willing to sit in the same room with him at all.