Chapter 8
EIGHT
WEST
Warmth and Mirrors
Sunlight lances through a window that’s not mine, slapping me squarely in my face. My back aches like a bitch, and my stomach sweats. I catalog every ache and pain earned from the last forty-eight hours plus some, starting from the moment Winnie threw coffee at me.
Winnie.
I lift my head from the odd angle I’ve slept at and find the weight on my stomach that’s currently in overheat mode glaring down at me.
“What are you doing in my bed?” Winnie pinpoints me with eyes I know well, but hers aren’t icy. They’re blazing blue, and aimed right at me.
It’s like looking into a sliver of the ocean, captured in a gem.
“You invited me here,” I say neutrally, expecting the forthcoming slap at any minute. “I get it if the memory is murky. You were pretty out of it when I arrived.”
She frowns. “You nearly broke my door with your foot. Why is everyone walking into my home without asking?”
That’s not a question I need to answer, so I don’t. “You seem fine.” I try to lever myself up, but her hand shoots out and strikes my shoulder.
“Don’t you dare move.”
There’s that slap I’ve been expecting. If not the reasoning.
I hold up my hands, which have been pressed to her back, where they spent the night molded to her body. “Staying where I am.”
“Good cowboy.” Winnie smirks and wiggles, getting herself nice and comfy back in her warm patch.
The warm patch that happens to be me. Apparently her sass is back and last night’s low has worn right off.
A groan rumbles deep in my throat. I force the sound back with effort, but I know she hears my frustration. “Don’t move, sweetness. Can you do that for me?” The rasp comes out taut and strained, and her knowing smile tells me she catches every inch of that torture.
Yep, Winnie’s back. Hell, she even gives me a front-seat show to her finest ass wiggle.
My fingers grip her back tight. “Winnie,” I warn her. “This cuddle ain’t gonna last long if you keep doing that.”
She stops instantly, though her eyes are still hellishly bright and piercing. I’m in so much shit. Maybe I should have gone straight home. But the way she looked last night, so lost and sleepless, washes over me. My hands flex on her back, long strokes over her spine, and she soothes.
“Why’d you come here?” she asks, crossing her wrists on my chest and perching her chin on her hands like I’m a custom-made Winnie-shaped table designed for her personal use.
She’s not objecting to me stroking her back, and even though I’m still sweating beneath the little hot rock she is, I’m not moving her off me unless she objects. All the barriers we’ve put up over the last months—years—are failing under the pressure of her ex’s appearance and her trauma restart.
I open my mouth to say some inane, meaningless banter that she’ll no doubt throw right back at me, but the wary look in her eyes reminds me that underneath her sassy front, the woman in my arms is still as vulnerable as all hell. I opt for the truth instead.
“I spent the better part of a day digging toilets in another country, and designed a bridge for the town to access those. It wasn’t really the right month or weather.” My hands twinge on cue, and I wince.
Winnie’s face freezes comically. “You—what?” She flips faster than I expect her pocket-rocket frame to move. “Kitchen. Now.”
Her command cuts through my morning haze.
I’m half out of her bed before I figure out my body has moved.
“Uh-uh, Rand. Piss first. Then you can torture me with whatever you have in mind.” I shake my hands free but then grip her waist when she comes at me again, depositing her, open-mouthed, back on the bed, right in the middle.
Not giving myself time to think too much about it, I press a kiss to her lips, hard and quick.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” I murmur, and head down her hallway.
The taste of her, sleepy and startled, lingers on my lips the whole way.
Trailing my fingers along the wall, I check each room I pass, locating the bathroom between her bedroom and Sally’s empty one. A minute later I’m done, washing my hands with enough soap to kill anything I might have picked up out of country.
“Did you have shots? Where did you go?” Winnie’s voice summons me from the kitchen.
I grin. She’s back in paramedic mode and it’s sexy as fuck.
“Weeks back.” The project sat on hold long enough to give me time to prep, thankfully.
I wait until I find her in the kitchen, and I rest my ass against one corner of the wraparound laminated benchtop.
The room is green and scarred and hideous and cluttered.
“Everything was done when I first drew up the designs and submitted them. Then the project fell through and… I didn’t expect to go. ”
“What happened?” Winnie rummages about in a top cupboard too tall for her duck butt.
“The job went to someone else.” I press my hands to her waist, squeezing those luxurious curves I’ve just had my hands on for the better part of nine perfect hours. “What the hell are you looking for, Rand?”
“The antiseptic. You have done an, uh, interesting job cleaning that, but unless you want to die or lose a hand, I’m fixing you up. There.” She points to a bottle at the back of the top shelf.
I stifle a laugh. “There’s no way you’re reaching that. What’s it doing up there?”
Winnie shrugs. “I have a kid. She’s older now, but she wasn’t always. Who kicked you off your own project? He sounds like an asshole.”
The repeated sentiment hits me at gut level. I pause but then pass her the bottle. “Your brother—ow. Fuck, woman.” The fluid is doused over me undiluted. I hiss as the antiseptic hits nerve-deep.
“Hush. You’re fine.” Winnie pats at me with a handful of fresh dressings, cleaning and humming happily.
“Is this how you speak to all your patients?”
“You’re a special case.”
“I’ll bet.” After the first pinch of pain, I let her go, relaxing as she darts about me.
“My brother is the asshole? No wonder you’re not talking.”
I shrug. “The job got done in the end. I only left when I realized I could do it on my own, anyway. Lanie’s pregnancy was the trigger I needed to walk. Cord didn’t want or need me there anymore.”
Winnie stills over my hand. Her head never rises, but her fingers on mine are like ice, as though all the warmth is withdrawn from her. “Lanie’s… what?”
I stare down at the top of her head. “Fuck. Winnie. I figured she would have…” Or that her brother would have called. Shit. Apparently I’m not the only one left out of the newly-formed-family loop.
Lanie has been Winnie’s best friend for an age.
I know the nomadic scientist flitted in and out of her life, and only reappeared recently.
That’s when I met her, last year when she fell in love with my best friend and threw the whole Coyote Falls dynamic into the sort of utter chaos that all Rands seem to thrive on.
“I thought you knew.” My attempt to rectify the mess I’ve made is clumsy at best. I wince as I pull my hand back. This time, my grimace isn’t from pain.
Winnie slaps my arm, hard. “Stay still,” she berates me. “I’m not finished.”
I close my mouth and let her continue to minister to my hand well after the work is done. She rewraps and tucks the ends in several times, her hands strong and steady on mine. Apart from that one slap to make sure I didn’t leave, she’s a complete sweetheart and, beyond that, utterly competent.
Her breath brushes my skin as I wait until she’s done, and the first tear splatters my skin.
It hits me that, through everything last night, not once did I see a tear from her.
Sure, I probably missed a flood of the damn things after the asshole of an ex was towed away—I’m still foggy on the circumstances—but this is the first time I think I’ve ever seen her cry.
And that includes all the times I’ve sat in a hospital, waiting on the news that we’d lost a man we both love.
I catch her chin between my fingers and tip her face up to mine. “I’m sorry, Winnie. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She sniffles as she stares at me. “I thought we were still close. I thought…” She shook her head and closed her eyes, shutting the world out. “I thought that even though she’s not here and I’m never there, that I was still included.”
I cup her face in both hands. “You are included, Winnie. Rand and Lanie are—” Words fail me. I try again. “They’re just…”
Occupied.
I cough to cover my derision at the thought.
It’s the same reason I left. Why I’m here instead of there right now.
Not just my itchy damn feet that couldn’t stay still in Coyote dirt a moment longer.
Was I jealous that Cord found something I didn’t have?
No. Suffocating sharing air that no longer held the same level of oxygen to breathe when they were together—maybe.
Looking at Winnie now, I’m damn well glad I did leave. Because here she is, hurting alone, and neither of them have any fucking idea, lost in their romance as they should be, but unaware of the casualty left by the wayside.
The thought blindsides me as brain space frees up. “Does Rand know about your shitty ex?” That Brad was here?
Winnie bites her lip like she’s trying to keep a confession inside and shakes her head.
I don’t make her say the words, breathing out slowly. “Okay. Thank you for doing my hands. They’re… a whole lot safer.”
“Where did you go?” Winnie doesn’t move from my hold.
I don’t drop my freshly bandaged hands. “Haiti.”
“What did you do?” Her gaze stays on my face.
I swallow hard. It’s been a long time since anyone put trust in me like she does now, and the last person who did had eyes just like hers.
Yeah, and look how fucking peachy that relationship turned out.