Chapter 8 Lily
I wake up in a foreign bed and immediately know I’m not alone.
He’s there in the corner. Cloaked in shadows. Drinking a cup of steaming liquid.
Remembering what put me in this situation, I sit up and gather the comforter around me, my gaze scanning the room for any threats. My body is ready for flight.
“You’re safe here,” he says, that voice so low and deep.
Swallowing, I take stock of my clothing. Still dressed. Except my top has been changed, I’m wearing one five times my size.
He sets his coffee aside, standing long enough to bring me a cup of water. “What’s going on princess?”
My response is nothing. Rather I suck down the water greedily, finishing the entire cup. My body is so relieved to have its dehydration cured, tears crowd my eyes and I take a deep, gulping breath.
“If I’m going to get to the bottom of this, you’re going to have to tell me what made you run like you’ve got fire on your heels.”
To tell him the truth. That whoever was chasing was a result of the money my mom owed them. “It’s nothing to, “
“She speaks. I’ve never heard a word you said,” he cuts in. “Don’t tell me I shouldn’t be concerned with this.”
How do I tell him what’s really happening. The first time I get to talk to the man I’m in love with, it has to do with my mother. I can’t tell him, at least not right now
He seems to read that thought on my face and his eyes flicker with something, possessiveness maybe but it’s gone before I can decipher it, making me feel like I imagined it.
“If you don’t want to talk right now, I won’t force you,” he says, clearing his throat. “It is a given that I’m going to find out what happened to you, you’re either going to have to talk to me or I’ll find out myself one way or the other. “
“Okay”
My voice seems to throw him off, but only momentarily. His gaze traces the slope of my shoulder, a muscle bunching in his cheek. A hungry look in his eyes. But, I doubt it’s for food “Alright, you can’t go out until I know what’s going on and that you aren’t in any danger.”
“I’m not arguing with that,” I correct him, pressure shifting in my chest at his sheer beauty. Those muscles bulging out from his shirt.
“It’s my mother,” I say finally, the words tumbling out before I can stop them. “She owes money to some bad people. I don’t know how much or who exactly, she never tells me the details, just that they’re not the kind of people you want showing up at your door.”
Noah’s expression doesn’t change much, but something behind his eyes sharpens, goes cold and calculating in a way that makes me think, for just a second, that I’m looking at a completely different man than the one who’s been feeding me soup and lending me his old T shirts. “Names,” he says. “Do you have names?”
“I don’t know any names. I just know they came for me tonight because of her.”
“That’s enough to start with,” he says, already reaching for his phone.
“Who were you calling?” I ask, watching the way his whole demeanor has shifted, gone cold and efficient in a way I haven’t seen from him before.
He’s quiet for a second too long. “Someone who can find out who’s threatening you faster than the police ever would.”
“That sounds like something out of a movie.”
“Lily.” He sets the phone down and looks at me, really looks, like he’s deciding how much truth I can handle in one sitting.
“My family isn’t just a garage and a construction company.
That’s the part people get to see. Underneath it, there’s a lot more, and it isn’t clean.
I stepped back from most of it years ago, but stepping back isn’t the same as stepping away.
The men I used to run with still owe me favors.
The men who scare people like whoever came after you tonight, they answer to people who answer to people I know personally. ”
The room tilts a little. “So you’re telling me you’re... what? Mafia?”
“I’m telling you my father built something dangerous, and when he died I inherited the parts of it I couldn’t walk away from even when I wanted to.
” His jaw works. “I kept the legitimate side running because it’s a good business and good cover.
I kept the rest running because there are people counting on it, and because walking away clean was never actually on the table, no matter what I told myself for ten years. ”
“How many people?” I ask. “Counting on you, I mean.”
“Enough that I couldn’t put a number on it if you asked me to.
Men with families of their own. Men who’d have nowhere else to go if I decided one morning I was done being who I am.
” He rubs a hand over his jaw, tired in a way that has nothing to do with the late hour.
“It’s not the kind of business you retire from with a pension and a handshake, Lily.
It’s the kind you carry until it decides to let you go, if it ever does. ”
I should be terrified. Some small, sensible part of me knows I should be halfway out the door already.
Instead all I can think is that it explains everything, the way he moves like he’s always tracking exits, the way Thorn looked at him this morning like they were discussing something heavier than car parts, the shotgun that met me at his back door before he’d even seen my face.
“And the men after me,” I say slowly, “they’re connected to your world.”
“Could be. Small towns like this one, there’s usually only one or two organizations worth borrowing from if you’re desperate enough not to ask questions about interest rates.
I’ll know more by morning.” He crouches in front of me, forcing my eyes to his.
“None of this changes what I said. You’re safe here.
Whatever debt your mother’s tangled herself in, it doesn’t touch you while you’re under this roof. ”
I sit with that for a long moment, turning it over, waiting for the fear to catch up to what I’ve just been told.
It doesn’t come, not the way I expect it to.
Instead there’s something almost like relief, strange as that sounds, the relief of finally understanding why the ground under my feet has felt unsteady since the day I first walked past his garage.
Some part of me must have known there was more to him than rolled up sleeves and a nice smile.
Some part of me chose to find that out anyway.
“Okay,” I say finally, and his eyebrows lift, like he expected a very different reaction. “I need time to actually process it. But okay.”
He nods once, twice, watching me carefully. “I’m giving you two days and after that you will need to tell me everything.”
That’s it?
Color me skeptical.
I want to ask more questions, but I’ll just end up blabbing or worse declare that I love him. “Two days,” I echo.
“That’s right. Two days here. Under my protection.”
Protection. It seems too good to be true, but maybe I’m due one tiny, little break.
“And after the two days,” I ask, watching him carefully, “what happens then? You just hand me back to whatever’s waiting outside?”
Something flickers across his face, gone before I can name it. “That’s up to you. I’m not in the business of keeping people somewhere they don’t want to be.” He pauses at the door frame, his knuckles white where he grips it. “But I’d be lying if I said I wanted you to leave.”
My pulse stutters. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough,” he says, low and certain, like it’s not up for debate. Then he’s gone, footsteps fading down the hall, leaving me alone with a stomach full of butterflies and a question I’m not ready to answer, not even to myself.
What’s most concerning, is those goons. What if those goons show up here. ?
Then again, something about this house doesn’t feel like a place regular men could just show up at uninvited.
I noticed the cameras on my way in, tucked up under the eaves where you wouldn’t spot them unless you were already looking, and the door I came through had a deadbolt thick enough to belong on a bank vault.
Whatever Noah Rickson actually is underneath the coveralls and the easy smile at the garage, this house was built by someone who plans for trouble the way other people plan for rain.
Then I’ll make a break for it. Hope Noah doesn’t get hurt.
Please let me get the chance to kiss him first.
The man stands, saunters to the door. “I’m in my garage if you need me.
” He turns with a hand on the door jamb.
“In the meantime, you’re welcome to my shirts in the drawer.
Toothbrush under the sink. Shower is en suite.
” His eyes sweeping over my curvy form again.
He licks his lips, the act drawing my gaze to those sinful lips.
His voice trails off as his footsteps creaks down the hallway. “I’ll see you at dinner, Lily.”
At the mention of dinner, my stomach growls loudly.
Embarrassingly. Once his footsteps fade for good, I finally let myself look around the room properly instead of just cataloguing exits like some cornered animal.
It’s plain in a way that surprises me, no clutter, no photographs on the walls, just sturdy furniture that looks like it’s been here longer than I’ve been alive.
A house built by people who valued things lasting over things looking nice.
There’s something oddly comforting about that, like maybe a person who keeps a house this steady might be steady himself.
It’s only later, lying awake, that I notice the things that don’t quite fit a simple mechanic’s house, the reinforced frame around the front door, the cameras tucked discreetly under the eaves that I only spot because the porch light catches one lens just right, the gun safe in the hall closet that’s bolted to the studs instead of just sitting there.
None of it screams money or paranoia exactly.
It just quietly says this house was built by someone who takes safety seriously enough to plan for the worst, which should probably worry me more than it does.
Mostly it just makes me feel, for the first time in longer than I can remember, like nothing bad can actually reach me here.
His footfalls pause before continuing.
* * *