Chapter 7
Seven
I am no longer shrinking myself to be digestible. You can choke.
—Bernice’s secret thoughts
Hux
Week One
I watched her from the top porch step as she stepped outside and shivered.
The Hubers watched her as well. Their new pastime was sitting there every morning so they could add commentary as she left each day.
Kurt, the youngest Huber, stood up and called out, “You need help, darlin’?”
Bernice didn’t glance up at him.
In fact, she ignored everything they did and said as she locked her front door using her keys and turned around to get to her truck.
She had a Yeti lunchbox in one hand, a coffee in the other, and her keys dangling from one finger.
When she got to the truck, she unlocked it and got inside.
I took a sip of my own coffee, catching the last dregs, before setting the empty cup on the porch railing and heading down the length of my walkway toward the road.
Glancing at my watch, I started off down the road at a slow jog.
Today I was running seven miles.
A short run for me.
I’d intended to start it earlier, but Hampton and Harvey had wanted to meet up early to get the weight room in since they were both off work for the day. Now, I was left running a couple of loops around town before heading home the same way I came in.
I heard the truck slow as it passed me and watched her wave at me.
I didn’t wave back.
But I did watch her until she disappeared out of sight.
All the while, I wondered if she was going to be able to stick it out like I thought, or take off.
Some deep, dark part of me wanted her to stick it out.
Why, I couldn’t tell you.
But I still wanted her to make it.
Week Two
I watched her through the side window of her bedroom.
I shouldn’t have been able to. She had curtains now, but she didn’t use them. Not on that window.
No one else besides me could see her from this particular direction.
Everyone else didn’t have west-facing windows on their house due to the harshness of the sun. I, however, had put in a window when I’d moved in so I could see out of my house from any angle.
Being in the Marines had taught me to watch my back, and I couldn’t do that if I had a blind angle.
With my lights off and my curtains parted, I could see everything through the window that led into her bedroom.
Today, she wasn’t doing anything fun—like getting undressed to take a shower. She was, however, still captivating.
She was folding a load of laundry on her bed.
There was no rhyme or reason to her laundry.
She washed whites with reds. Reds with yellows. Blacks with white. Towels with delicates.
It was honestly kind of funny to see what color some of her whites would come out when she didn’t take care which clothes she threw in the washer.
Needless to say, I had a goddamn easy chair in front of the window that I watched her from.
She was like my own personal form of entertainment.
Even worse, when she was at work, I would pull up my cameras that hooked up to The Mercantile and I’d watch her that way, too.
I knew everything that my mother said and did to her.
If it was something that I vehemently disagreed with, I’d confront my mother right then and there.
If it was something that I thought was bullshit, but that I figured Bernice could stick up for herself on her own, I’d leave it alone.
But the problem was, Bernice never, ever stuck up for herself.
She’d take all kinds of shit that my mother would shovel her way and not say a word.
It was disheartening.
And it sucked to watch.
Speaking of watching, she finished folding her clothes and then put everything away neatly in her dresser and closet.
She was very neat.
I never saw one single thing out of place.
She came inside and stripped every night, and she’d throw her dirty clothes into the hamper.
No discarding clothing on the floor.
No accidentally dropping and not picking up.
It was a little bit overkill, if you asked me.
When she was done putting her clothes away, she walked into the bathroom out of sight.
I grumbled darkly when I saw steam start to billow out of her bathroom door.
I hated that I couldn’t see her in there.
I was also disappointed in myself that I couldn’t stop watching.
I was a sick motherfucker.
But I continued to watch. Mostly because when she came back out long minutes later, she had nothing but a towel wrapped around her. And I finally got to see her without seven layers of clothes wrapped around herself.
She had supple breasts, long legs, and the longest hair I’d ever seen.
I loved watching her brush it out.
Sometimes her towel slipped and…
A nipple.
Today I got to see her nipple.
Score.
Week Six
I was in my easy chair again, watching her through her window.
Today she was having a bad day.
She’d had two asthma attacks at The Mercantile, and I’d forced my mother to let her go home early with pay.
The only way that she would allow it, though, was for me to work in her place.
Not wanting to see her suffer, I’d done just that.
And it sucked.
But anything was better than watching her struggle to breathe while she worked.
I’d gotten cameras on her place, too.
Outside and inside.
Creed would kill me if he ever found out.
But he wasn’t going to find out.
I just had to make sure she was safe.
Today, she lay in the middle of the bed with her head propped on a pillow, her face aimed my way as she watched the television to the right of the window.
I had another view of her from the video feed that I’d set up in her hallway, aimed at her bed.
She was bundled up in a heating blanket, the only thing visible was her cute little nose and eyes.
I cursed myself for my inability to stay away. To stop watching.
I’d turned into some psycho that couldn’t look away.
And she had no fucking clue.
If I were a better person, I’d stay away.
I really would.
But…
She shivered, and I pulled up her thermostat app on my phone and bumped up her heat.
It was already seventy-five degrees. Eighty, it was.
Week Nine
I listened, trying not to freak out, as Odin offered her a job.
“I’m sorry, but what?”
“You’re a nurse practitioner. I’m in need of some help, and you’re not doing what I know you want to do.”
“How would you know that I want to do it?” she asked. “Maybe I love my job.”
He snorted. “No one would love working there, Bernice. Everyone loves eating there, sure. But working there is hell. Hux has been complaining since I’ve known him about that stupid place.”
Bernice sighed. “Will you quit for me?”
Odin blinked. “Is that what it would take to get you to agree to work with me?”
She nodded.
“Then yes, I’d quit for you.”
She blew out a breath. “I have to give a month’s notice. She needs help, but I’m not just quitting and forcing her kids to pick up my slack. They’re good people.”
My heart felt weird.
Why did her caring so much about us make me feel all warm and gooey inside?
What the hell was wrong with my goddamn heart?
“Deal,” he said. “That’ll give me enough time to find us some help.”
For the first time in a long time, I watched Bernice smile thinking about her job.
Maybe I should’ve come up with this a long time ago.
The only problem now was wondering how in the hell I was going to get cameras into a building that my club brother had installed security in.