Chapter 25 - Laurel
I woke up with the feel of hands around my neck, but it was only a bad dream.
It took a few seconds to remember how I got home and into bed.
The sun was still out, and when I grabbed my phone to check, it was late afternoon.
So much time had passed. More than I remembered at first, because I wasn’t coming out of a fog from Rand’s attack, but a far worse one.
So much noise and confusion. That sudden burst of gunfire, louder than someone rattling a can full of rocks directly next to my ear. The terror I felt when Mik disappeared from my view after he shoved me to safety. How was he so quick to act? He couldn’t have known what was about to happen.
I had barely registered how odd it was that the truck door was sliding up on its own from the inside, and a blink later everything was chaos.
Once again, I had turned to jelly, first crawling as fast as I could back into the restaurant, then getting up and jetting through the dining room screaming for help.
At the first glimpse of another gun being pulled out by one of the construction workers, I really lost it, and after he pushed me into Mik’s office and told me to take cover, I shrank into a ball, completely frozen.
Now I felt sick. Once again Mik had taken me home and tucked me in bed like a frightened child, and that was about how useful I was in the whole situation. It was at moments like that when I wished my mother were the sympathetic type.
I would have loved to get all my feelings out to someone who wouldn’t judge me too harshly.
My mom didn’t fit that bill, and it was unlikely she’d even take my call.
It had been weeks since I spoke to her, and she didn’t know about the change in my marital state.
She only took down my new address in a bored manner, never asking why I moved.
My old friends in Virginia hadn’t heard from me in so long they probably all gave up on me.
I tried to keep up with them when I first moved to California, eager to start my career, but once Rand got his hooks in me, he was always so jealous about everything.
He accused me of putting women’s names in my contacts to cover up calling old boyfriends, and when I let him hear their voices on speakerphone, he accused me of getting some random sister of the imaginary boyfriend to cover for us.
It was too much work to have friends, and I let them all slip away, only understanding when it was too late that Rand had been carefully isolating me so I’d have no one to turn to but him.
Nell was too close to the situation, still working at the winery, and I had never called her back after promising her I’d tell her everything so she’d agree to pretend she didn’t know me.
I wasn’t sure Mik was at home and didn’t want to bother him if he had to return to the restaurant and deal with the aftermath, but the feeling of being alone was beginning to be worse than leftover stress from the shooting.
After staring at the new contact in my phone and hovering my finger over it for several minutes, I finally called Mila.
“News travels fast in this family. I know everything,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” I confessed. “I’m not hurt, just…”
“I get it, having someone shooting nearby is scary.” She sounded bizarrely calm, going on to say that it was a rite of passage to hear gunfire in Los Angeles. “I’m just glad Mik was prepared.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t expecting the construction guys to be packing, but I guess I’m glad they were.” My voice broke as a new memory pushed its way in. Mik had tried his best to guide me out of there without seeing anything, but the tarp-shrouded body with the red stain seeping through loomed before me.
“Don’t be sorry about anyone who got himself killed doing something that reckless,” Mila said. “You know what they say about playing stupid games.”
I sniffled, trying to be as dispassionate as she was. She was right; that man could have easily killed Mik, or me, or any of the other people at work today.
“Why?” I asked, not expecting an answer. “It doesn’t make sense. There are some valuable things there, but nothing I’d expect would be easy to pawn. Is there a big black market for kitchen supplies?”
She laughed humorlessly. “There’s a black market for everything.” There was a long pause before she said, “It was probably random, or the idiots got the address wrong, or some kind of gang initiation.”
“I loved going there every morning,” I said, trailing off.
Now I didn’t want to think about having to face the place again anytime soon. What if I went tomorrow morning and saw a deep red stain on the floor where that covered body had been? It was going to be a while before all the bullet holes were filled in or smoothed over.
“It’s never going to happen again,” Mila promised. “Mik’s going to have security, more cameras, and an armed guard to bring in deliveries from now on.”
“That’ll go down great once we’re open.”
“Don’t worry, they’ll blend right in. You might not even notice any changes. He’s not going to let anything happen to you, Laurel. You can count on that.”
It was nice to believe that, but she was operating under the assumption that Mik and I were truly in love, and that our marriage was real. “I’m going to have to start writing down how many times he’s saved my life,” I joked, or tried to.
I still felt like crap for going to pieces, but after I confessed to being utterly useless, Mila comforted me and bolstered my confidence.
“You did exactly what Mik wanted you to do,” she said.
“You stayed safe. And if you hadn’t screamed, how would the good guys with guns know they needed to use them? ”
“Okay, now you’re just being nice,” I said. “But I appreciate it. Really.”
“What are cousins-in-law for?”
I felt better after ending the call, but not by much. I still had to face the restaurant tomorrow, and after that nap, I’d most likely be tossing and turning all night. After a bracing shower, I headed downstairs to face Mik if he was home, and to force myself to eat something.
Maybe everyone was right, and it really wasn’t a big deal. And I had to stiffen my spine. I heard Mik in the kitchen, talking on the phone, and paused to straighten my shoulders before I faced him, determined to be as brave as Mik.
If only I weren’t so sure I’d disintegrate tomorrow morning when faced with the aftermath of all that violence. Maybe it was better to ask for the day off, even if it reinforced how weak I was.
Mik ended his call, and his scowl melted away when he saw me. “I didn’t expect to see you until morning.”
“About that,” I said, wanting to get it out of the way. I was certain he wanted to tell me that everything was fine and how we’d proceed, but all I could think about was that bloody tarp and all those bullet holes.
“Yes, about that,” he said, standing to place his hands on my shoulders. “We’re not going into the restaurant tomorrow.”
Before I could assert that I was fine, and hope he didn’t see through my lie, he continued.
“We’re going up to Napa again.” At the slightest tension in my shoulders, he rushed to name off some of the vineyards I had wanted to go to instead of Canyon Vines, and my ex’s place was conspicuously off the list.
“Are you sure?” I asked. Was he doing this for me, knowing how much I would balk at going back to the restaurant so soon? “We don’t have to. I’m fine. I know it won’t happen again.”
He smiled down at me, squeezing my shoulders. “I know you’re fine, but we’ve got to have the best wines that California has to offer, don’t we?”
I saw through him as easily as if he were made of plastic wrap.
He was sheltering me, planning to keep me away and distracted for as long as he thought I needed.
This might have outraged me if I weren’t so grateful.
Whatever we had together, Mik cared. He cared enough to drop everything and whisk me away to a place that I loved, despite Rand trying to make every memory there a bad one.
Now I’d get more new memories to erase him completely. New memories with Mik.
I threw my arms around his neck, burying my face against his shoulder. He slid his hands around my back and eased them down to tug me close. He knew what I needed without me having to say a word, and made it happen.
My adrenaline was flowing the moment our bodies touched, but now my heart rate wasn’t up because of fear. That was all Mik’s touch.
Slowly lifting my face, I saw he was looking down at me with tenderness and something else I couldn’t figure out. His hands moved steadily downward as I lifted up on my toes to reach his mouth, and when his lips were on mine, everything in my harried brain went calm.
My body, however, was the opposite. This morning seemed like an eon ago, but the sensation of the fiery kiss came back to me, overwhelming me with badly beaten-down lust. I couldn’t look at the man without wanting to reach out and touch him, and it had been a month since our first and only night together.
An indistinct noise, a cross between a moan and squeak, came out of me when he parted my lips with his tongue.
He gripped my behind, lifting me higher so that my body brushed against his, tantalizing and tormenting at once.
My nipples hardened, and I longed to feel hot skin touching me instead of the clothes that were between us.
Lifting me completely off the floor, he carried me toward the stairs, making a detour at the living area. “Can’t wait,” he said.
“Good,” I agreed, wrapping my legs around him.
He folded me onto the oversized leather couch and fit perfectly between my legs.
I groaned, wanting so much more. He echoed the sound, lifting himself up to tug at the buttons on my pajama top at the same time I reached for his shirt.
My fingers were trembling, and as soon as my top was spread open, he ran his palm down my belly before tearing his own shirt off with a feral growl.