Chapter 19 Leo
LEO
Pebbles sprayed behind me, nicking the back of the bike as I tore down the driveway. I’d never taken it this quickly — the stinging gravel was a good reminder of why — but it was a small price to pay for some alone time with our pretty little Princess.
I’d cut out of the shop the second I saw Spencer’s text. Dom was still out doing god knows what, which meant I’d have the house — and Kiera — all to myself. It was a rare opportunity, and I wasn’t about to waste it away tooling around with old hunks of metal at the autobody.
I whipped the bike to a stop by the front door, stumbling in my haste to get off the damn thing.
Deep breath. Don’t want her to smell the desperation on us.
Probably what turned her off of Spencer — she wanted it too badly. But patience — breathing room — was key here. Especially if the girl still thought she was straight.
A prize like Kiera had to be earned, and I would put in as much work as it took for a taste of sweet victory.
My fingers were still blackened from grease as I hung my helmet from the handlebars. Making the trip from bike to door in two bounds, I fished a clean rag from my back pocket to shield the doorknob from my grime.
It was still weird to see my hands like that — the darkness painted into the tiny folds of my knuckles. My work as a surgeon had mandated tidiness. Everything in a precise order, everything sterile and strictly accounted for — a far cry from the grime and grit you got pulling apart engines.
Then again, it wasn’t like surgery left you clean, exactly. The gloves and masks protected you from the bulk of it — a tidy layer that could be peeled away and discarded after the bloody work was done. But no amount of scrubbing could erase the things I’d done, the things I’d seen…
I shook my head, rubbing the rag over my fingers as I climbed the main staircase. I didn’t like to think about the specifics. That kind of work — even when you were proud of what you did — left a permanent mark. And for the sake of my own sanity, it was better left in the past.
All I’d ever wanted to do was fix things. And now, in a way, I got to do that.
Hands mostly clean, I tucked the rag into my pocket and took a deep breath. Show time.
I knocked gently on the door as I slid the key into place, letting the mechanism turn with a satisfying click. Nothing.
Knocking a bit harder, I pressed my ear to the door, waiting for some sign of life behind the heavy mahogany, but still, nothing.
My chest tightened — a wiry, hungry house guest had been on my bingo card, not the silent treatment. How fucking long did Spencer leave her locked up in here?
But as I swung the door open, there were no angry green eyes burning at me — just a lump of blankets, Kiera’s red hair splayed against the snow white pillow case — a fox in a snowbank.
The sight of her stole the breath from my lungs. I stood in the doorway for a long moment not wanting to disturb her peace. I hadn’t seen her calm enough to rest.
Or bored enough, more likely. Not a book or a TV screen anywhere in sight. A glance at the old desk, and I wasn’t even convinced there was a pen and paper in here. Gotta fix that if she’s going to be staying here…
Crossing the room, I had half a mind to wake her for food — if I was right about how long she’d been locked up in here, she had to be starving. But as I came around to the bedside and got a better view of her sweet face, I couldn’t find the heart to disrupt her.
A lot had happened in the last two days, and the way she was going, she probably needed the rest just as much as the food.
When the thought crossed my mind, she rolled over, snuggling her face against the drool-stained pillow as if in agreement. My chest tightened at the sight of it. I shook my head as I muttered to myself. “Good. I always did like a woman who knows what she wants.”
As she adjusted, eyes drifted down from her face to her fingertips wrapped around the edge of the duvet. I wondered how her wound was doing.
Sparing another quick glance at her heavy lids to make sure she was asleep, I stepped to the edge of the bed.
Freeing the blanket from her grip and easing her fingers open, I was careful to keep my dirty hands far from the actual wound.
No signs of swelling or infection. It still probably hurt something nasty, though, even if she wasn’t complaining about it.
But those bruises… they’d come out of nowhere. Despite how hard Gabe had grabbed her, there wasn’t a single mark on her forearm for nearly 48 hours. And now, deep purple and blue marks covered her skin.
Delayed bruising. Worth keeping an eye on.
“Books, ibuprofen, and a mini fridge,” I muttered, adding to my mental list of things that Kiera would need if Dom kept up these nonsense rules about locking her up.
Standing at her bedside, the exhaustion of the day finally hit me. It was so tempting to peel the blanket the rest of the way back, to nestle up against her warm body and press my nose into that sweet red hair — to let my dirty hands stain all of her.
But I shook my head and dropped the blanket — no matter how much her body might like the comfort, I had a feeling her mind would have a hard time making sense of it all in the morning.
She already has enough to think about.
Instead, I tucked her back in, careful not to smear too much grease over the white duvet before I walked away to the dusty old arm chair across the room. It wasn’t going to be comfortable, but at least it meant I could be close when that hunger finally caught up with her.
I wanted to be close when she woke up — for her to know that as long as I was here, she wasn’t trapped. She’d spent far too long feeling that way already.
I eased down onto the chair with a light groan — it didn’t have those terrible plastic covers that Dom put in some of the other rooms, but maybe it could have benefitted from one — the chair had certainly seen better days.
Doesn’t matter. I sighed, pulling a spare throw blanket over my torso and ignoring the chill in my legs. As long as she was safe and comfortable, I’d be okay.
When I closed my eyes, visions of red hair and tangled sheets looped through my mind. Soon enough, the sound of her soft breaths lulled me to sleep.