Kitabı oku: «Salvaged», sayfa 2
“It’s okay. Like I said, I’ll take him home until I can find a place for him.” I crouched down and wiggled my fingers to get the dog’s attention, and grinned when he bounded over, tripping over his front legs as he scrambled in my direction. “I can take him to work with me and hold on to him until I figure something out. One of the boys at the shop will step up if Dixie doesn’t want another dog.”
I heard him sigh and looked up to see him watching me intently. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then snapped it shut, his teeth audibly clicking together. I didn’t know much about Wheeler, but what I did know I liked. He was nice. He was polite. He was thoughtful and he was kind. But more than any of those things, he went out of his way to hold himself in a way that wasn’t threatening or intimidating because he was aware without me saying a word how jumpy I was around people, men in particular. I hated that they were bigger than me. I hated that I knew firsthand how badly they could hurt me if they had a mind to. I hated that I wilted and cowered under their attention, even if it was innocent and friendly. The fact that he took care not to spook me spoke volumes and made me feel awful for putting him in such an awkward position.
“Poppy …” He sounded regretful and I had no interest in dragging the torture out any longer for either of us. I scooped up the dog and buried my nose in the top of his head.
“Seriously it’s no big deal. I love him and I’m happy to hold onto him until I can find him a proper home. It was stupid of me not to consider how busy you are with everything you have going on in your life right now. A puppy is a big commitment and that’s not something you can put on someone else without discussing it with them first.” The dog swiped his tongue across my face, no doubt feeling my distress and rising panic. I wanted to tuck his warm little body to my chest and run away like I was trying to score a touchdown in the other team’s end zone. “I should have known better.” That was a common refrain, one that chased me in my nightmares and blasted through my head every single second I struggled to survive the torturous hands of my abusive husband. I found myself repeating dangerous, harmful patterns where the men in my life were concerned, and through it all I told myself over and over again that I should have known better. My therapist would tell me I was being too hard on myself, that I was shouldering the blame for the actions of men that I had no control over. But blame was hard to let go when it was what you lived and breathed.
Wheeler made a noise that sounded like he was choking and then bent over at the waist so that his hands were resting on his knees as his breath wheezed in and out. His wide shoulders shuddered and then tensed like he had taken a blow that knocked the wind out of him.
I didn’t touch anyone, not even the people that had grown up hugging me and loving me. But I was compelled to reach out a shaky hand and put it on his colorful shoulder. The puppy gave a yip of approval and I tried not to fall to my knees as the warmth from his tattooed skin blazed through my fingers and shot up my arm. It had been a long time since I’d let myself have any kind of human contact, and even longer since that kind of contact didn’t leave bruises and welts on my skin and tattered lesions across every surface of my soul. He felt so vital. So necessary.
“Are you okay?” The shoulder I was lightly touching tensed even tighter and I let go as if his skin burned me when he righted himself and I ended up frozen in that frigid stare of his.
“No. I’m about as far from okay as I have ever been.” He let out a brittle-sounding laugh and narrowed his eyes at me. “When a pretty girl shows up trying to make the shit show that has become your life better, it should be okay, but it’s not.”
He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face like he was tired. “I can count on one hand the times in my life someone bothered to ask if I was okay, Poppy.” His mouth twisted into a wry grin that would look harsh on anyone else but with those dimples of his still managed to look downright adorable. “Most of those times have been Dixie asking. It wasn’t even the right sister.”
I was horrified and didn’t bother to hide it as I huddled the wiggling puppy to my chest like his warm little body could protect me from the images his awful words brought to mind. “That’s terrible, Wheeler.” My voice shook and the words sounded squeaky. I already knew too much about him and this was more information that I didn’t feel like I had earned the right to have.
“It is pretty terrible but not nearly as bad as my ex telling me that she’s knocked up with my kid.” I gasped and took a step backward as his words landed like blows. “A kid we definitely didn’t plan on. A kid I am in no way ready to raise with a woman I can’t stand to be around. A kid that is going to have to bounce between houses and be shuffled from one place to another always trying to figure out exactly where home is.”
He sounded shattered and he looked the same. Those eyes of his were colder than anything I’d ever seen, his skin was pale and taut over the sharp angles of his face, making the smattering of freckles that dotted his nose and cheeks stand out even more than they normally did.
A baby.
Those words always hit something delicate and unprotected deep inside of me. When my sister first told me that she was expecting a baby, I wanted to be happy for her but that happiness had to fight its way through remorse and sorrow so thick it felt like it was crushing me. The same thing was happening right now as Wheeler watched me. Everything inside of me wanted to unravel but I was holding it together, barely. He should be happy that he had a precious little life on the way, even if he was less than thrilled with the circumstances surrounding the arrival.
I took another step backward and almost fell over. Wheeler reached out a hand like he was going to catch me or stop my fall, but I flinched away and tightened my hold on the dog so much so that he yelped in protest. Frantically I pulled my sunglasses from the top of my head and shoved them back over my eyes. I could feel moisture building, and if I started crying I needed something to hide behind. He wouldn’t understand why his words stripped me bare and I didn’t have it in me to explain the reasons why they cut so deeply. I’d used up all my limited courage and nerve getting myself out of the car and offering up the puppy.
“Well, congratulations on the baby.” I didn’t sound like I meant it even though I honestly did. “I’m gonna take this little guy and head home and make some calls about who might be in the market for a puppy.”
I scrambled back some more and watched wide-eyed behind my sunglasses as Wheeler advanced on me. He followed me until my back was flat against the side of the car and he was looming in front of me with only the puppy to separate his chest from mine. It was the closest I had been to a man in a very long time. Even with him being irritated and riled up, I couldn’t say that I was worried about him taking out his feelings on me. He didn’t scare me. The way he made me feel did.
“I’m sorry, Poppy. If I was in a different place in my life I would be pretty fucking excited that a girl like you had me on her mind and went out of her way to do something really sweet for me. If I wasn’t already struggling to get my head around being a new father, I would happily take on the task of being a puppy parent.” God, he was nice. Even when he was looming over me looking not very nice at all. “There’s something about you, something about those eyes and the soft way that you speak, that makes me want to tell you all my secrets. Secrets that sting. I want to tell you that the last time my life was this fucked up was when my junkie mother was dropping me off at a fire station in some rinky-dink mountain town in the middle of a snowstorm. Our car broke down, because it always did. She didn’t take care of it and she sure as shit didn’t take care of me.” I felt my mouth drop open in shock but couldn’t move as his voice dipped lower and his eyes got even colder. His words sent shivers up and down my spine.
“I was lucky that it was a manned station and not one of the volunteer houses that sits empty until a fire is called in. There was a very nice fire captain there that took me in for the night. The next day I was dumped with child services and I spent my entire childhood jumping from one foster house to another. She didn’t even have a coat for me. She dropped me off in jeans that were too small, a T-shirt that was stained and torn, and in tennis shoes that were shit for the snow because they were mostly duct-taped together.” He blinked at me as I gasped in horror and that harsh scowl that cut into the pretty lines of his aristocratic bone structure was back. “I was fucking four years old.”
I wanted to hug him. I wanted to comfort the little boy he was and the man that was clearly struggling in front of me. Knowing that I would freak out if we actually made that kind of contact while both of us were so raw, I scooted to the side, careful not to brush up against him, and pulled open the door so I could put my panting, slobbering bundle down in the passenger seat. I kept the door between us as a barrier while all I wanted to do was get away from his desperation and pain. I needed to take a minute to process the fact he had a baby on the way with a woman that had destroyed him and ruined the idyllic life they could have had together. That hurt in ways I didn’t want to pick apart while he was standing so close looking at me like he could see right into the center of my every thought and feeling. I had too much of my own hurt; I couldn’t believe that I was feeling his as well.
“I’m so sorry you had to suffer like that. Good luck with everything, Wheeler.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell him I would be around if he needed me, even though the words were tickling the tip of my tongue. I slipped into the car and wrapped my fingers around the steering wheel like it was some kind of lifeline. I reached for the door to pull it shut but it wouldn’t budge because his hand was wrapped around the top of the frame. He bent his head to look down at me and I could see a riot of emotions blowing through his cool gaze. He was pissed. He was frustrated. He was sad. He was irritated and he was maybe, just maybe, a little bit excited.
“Gonna need more than luck. But seriously, thank you for thinking of me. I can’t recall the last time someone did that.” If I was someone else, someone stronger, braver, someone fearless instead of fearful, I would have climbed out of the car and given him that goddamn hug. He looked like he desperately needed one.
But I wasn’t someone different.
I was the girl that had almost died trying to make her father happy and win his approval.
I was the girl that let her sister leave without begging her to take me with her when that was all I really wanted.
I was the girl that fell in love with the wrong boy and paid a price so heavy for it that I lost everything.
I was the girl that married a monster, and even though the demon was physically dead and buried, he still lived inside of me, where he haunted me, hounded me, hurt me.
As always, I was afraid, so I didn’t do anything other than shut the car door when he let go and drive away. I really couldn’t fix all the things that were wrong with Wheeler’s life and I wasn’t about to let him close enough to see exactly how broken my own existence was because I’d yet to be able to fix myself.
The puppy whimpered like he knew what I was thinking and disagreed with me. Luckily, he was a lot easier to ignore than the taunting voice in the back of my head that kept up the steady refrain of You should have known better.
Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.
—Lord Byron
Wheeler
What you’re looking for isn’t between the blonde’s legs, Speedy.”
I shifted my gaze away from the blonde that was very obviously eye-fucking me and turned my attention to the bartender that offered up those unwanted words of wisdom. As always they were spoken with a distinct southern drawl. I lifted an eyebrow at him and was treated to one lifted right back.
“You didn’t find it between the brunette’s legs last week or between the redhead’s the week before that.” He put another drink in front of me even though I’d had more than enough. I watched as he leaned on the bar across from me so that I had no choice but to look up at him as I slid the mixed Southern Comfort and ginger ale closer to me. “The fact of the matter is, no matter how hard you try, you can’t fuck away a broken heart. You aren’t going to find a magical cure for heartache spending an hour inside a pretty girl or one spent at the bottom of a bottle.”
I knew Asa was right but I had no intention of telling him that. Instead I took a healthy swing of the drink and flashed a smile that was fake and forced in the direction of the blonde. When I turned back toward the bartender he was shaking his head at me. I didn’t know Asa Cross very well even though I’d sold him a sweet Nova that needed some work a while back. We shared common friends and his boss at the bar was a silent investor in my garage. Something I tried to keep in mind so that I didn’t make an ass out of myself while trying to drink myself numb.
For reasons known only to the overly observant southerner, he’d taken it upon himself to be my voice of reason every single time I stepped into the bar. Admittedly each time I did so I was looking for dangerous distractions. I didn’t want to go home to an empty house with nothing but regret and dread for company. I appreciated that he didn’t want me to chase after my own ruin, but I’d handled my love life so carefully for so long that I was beyond ready to dirty it up a little. Being thoughtful and considerate got me nothing but being abandoned and betrayed. It was time to see what I got when I was careless and reckless.
“I’ve told you before, I’ve been with the same girl since I was sixteen. Nothing wrong with seeing what else is out there now that the shackles are shaken off.” I wanted to sound more excited about the prospect of sleeping my way through the entirety of eligible women in Denver than I actually was. The reality was that women liked me, they always had, but I’d been saying no for so long that saying yes felt weird. Misplaced guilt took the fun out of being a player. That was something I couldn’t even convince myself I was until the third or fourth drink.
“Anybody that takes a little bit here and a little bit there is going to end up hungry at the end of the day, Speedy. You’re a man that’s used to having a full plate, these snacks aren’t going to do anything for you. You’re going to starve.” Asa nodded and pushed off the bar, leaving his convoluted words hanging heavily in the air. He made his way over to a customer at the other end of the bar top, giving the blonde the opening she’d been waiting for to make her move. I tried not to wince when she slid onto the empty stool next to me. Her perfume was strong and sickeningly floral. It was inescapable as she leaned an arm on the bar top and turned her body toward mine.
She was pretty in a very made-up kind of way. I didn’t particularly have a type. I’d been with Kallie for so long that I’d forgotten what my preferences had been before her. Watching this woman’s very painted lips turn up at the edges and her alarmingly long eyelashes flutter flirtatiously at me, I realized that high maintenance and overly done was not high on the list of things that made my dick hard.
Unwanted, an image of Poppy Cruz holding that adorable puppy and looking at me like she was ready to bolt at any second flashed through my mind. Now, her easy and untouched kind of beauty made my dick hard without question. In fact, I could feel it tighten and twitch against my zipper at nothing more than the thought of her.
She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and she didn’t have to do a single thing for me, or anyone else to notice it. She didn’t wear makeup, not a stitch of it. Even without it, her lips were a rosy pink and her eyelashes were long and a flawless fan of inky black. They did a great job of keeping her stunning but sad amber gaze hidden from prying eyes. Her skin had an enviable golden hue that could only be achieved through heritage and blessed genetics. Her hair was an unusual mix of browns that ranged from dark chocolate strands to rich caramel-tinted highlights that I doubted came from a salon. The girl didn’t do anything to enhance her stunning looks, which included hiding her slim frame in clothes that were several sizes too big. I’d only ever seen her wearing the most boring, neutral shades that did their best to wash her out and make her look ordinary when she was anything but. She was born to be a hot rod but for reasons that were hard to think about she was living her life like she was meant to be a minivan. Even camouflaged and covered up, the way Poppy Cruz looked totally worked for me in a way this very practiced blonde did not.
“Hi.” The blonde breathed the word out and put the straw sticking out of her drink to her lips in a move that had clearly gotten her what she wanted more times than not.
I took another swig of my drink, turned my head, and inclined my chin in a greeting that was far less seductive than hers. “Hey.”
“You’ve been sitting over here by yourself all night. I thought I would come and see if you wanted some company. It’s never very much fun to drink alone.” She was right. Drinking alone sucked, so did sleeping alone and living alone and doing pretty much everything alone when you were used to having someone by your side.
“I’m Tessa.” She stuck out a hand and I noticed that her fingernails matched the ruby red of her lips. That seemed like a lot of effort to put into catching company for the evening. The most I’d done was put on a clean T-shirt.
I took her fingers in mine and watched as her gaze drifted over the dark spots of grease and oil that seemed to be a permanent part of my skin at this point. It didn’t matter how many times I scrubbed them, parts of the garage were always marking me as a man that got dirty and worked with his hands. She didn’t curl her lip or pull her hand away and wipe it on her very tight jeans. I always considered that a win. “Wheeler.”
Both her eyebrows lifted and a playful smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Is that your real name?”
I grinned back because that was a question I got a lot. I heard her suck in a breath as she watched my face when I smiled. My dirty hands might turn some women off but I’d never encountered one that was immune to my smile. God bless dimples. I’d never understood what the big deal was, but they were the reason Kallie noticed me when she first walked into the wrong class when we were in high school together, so I was always glad I had them. They made the work of going home with a willing woman far easier.
I slammed back the rest of my drink and set the empty glass on the bar in front of me. “It’s my last name.” My auto-shop teacher in high school had started calling me by my last name because there was another Hudson in the class. After a while he’d told me he’d never had a student that was so naturally skilled and adept with cars as I was, so the name became a badge of honor. You couldn’t be a guy named Wheeler and not know your way around all kinds of things that went fast and sounded loud and mean. I’d never had anyone invested in me enough to give me a nickname before. Never had anyone care enough to praise me or compliment me. After high school the name stuck because Wheeler was who I decided I wanted to be. He was someone worth something.
“I like it.” I bet she did. But I bet she liked the way my tattooed biceps flexed under the plain black cotton of my T-shirt even more. I’d started getting tattooed when I was really young. I had more skin that was marked than not. Now that I was single I was finding that women liked the ink and the body it covered almost as much as they liked my dimples. In fact, they liked the way I looked so much I didn’t have to put very much effort into trying to be charming or interesting if I wanted to get them into bed. It made me feel a little queasy when I thought about how superficial and unimportant it all was. I forced another smile to distract us both, which made her sigh.
“Thanks, it gets the job done.” I watched as she sucked on the straw some more, clearly waiting for me to give her some kind of sign that I was good to go. I wanted to be good to go, but the longer she stared at me, the more I silently compared her to the woman that stood in front of me earlier, obviously scared but forcing herself to do something nice for a stranger anyways. There was no question that there was something about the terrified and nervous Poppy that I found charming and endearing. This girl had none of that and it was making everything inside of me slam on the brakes instead of pushing the pedal down to move things along faster.
The empty glass in front of me disappeared and a full one reappeared. “Last one, Speedy.” The southern drawl lost its smooth edge as his gaze shifted between me and the blonde. “You want another one, doll?”
The girl paused like someone had hit a button on a remote that controlled her movements. Her huge fake eyelashes fluttered and dropped in reflex at the sound of Asa’s voice. She’d been so focused on me up until that point she didn’t realize there was other attractive and available dick hanging around. Objectively speaking, Asa was far better looking than I was. There was nothing about him that was difficult or complicated to look at. He hadn’t spent a lifetime covering up his skin in order to keep from being overlooked. There was also none of the edge that I had from being unwanted and left behind that sharpened his gaze. Hell, if I had to pick between the two of us, I would go with the southern bartender myself. He had an easy, effortless way about him that I most definitely did not have. I couldn’t remember the last time anything in my life had felt easy. Plus, he was charming as hell, something I most definitely was not.
“Uh … no. I’m good.” Her painted lips turned up at him the exact same way they had turned up at me and a shiver of unease shot down my spine.
I was tired of being second best and underappreciated. When the blonde turned back to me after Asa moved on to finish his last call, I pushed my untouched drink in her direction and hauled myself off of the barstool. “Last drink is on me. Have a good rest of the night.” She blinked at me in confusion and opened her mouth to say something but I shook my head and walked away from her before she could say anything else.
I really was good at saying no, much better than I was at saying yes. Even after the girl made me feel like a piece of meat, like nothing more than a dick that could be interchanged with any other dick for the night, I still didn’t have it in me to be a total asshole. I didn’t want my rejection or disinterest to hurt her because I was still in the throes of how badly Kallie’s desertion had hurt me. I wasn’t the type that lashed out, which made the fact I’d spilled my guts and dropped all my baggage at Poppy’s feet yesterday super unexpected. There was just something about that beautiful girl with her wounded eyes that made me want to assure her she wasn’t the only one feeling shredded and alone.
It was late fall in Denver, well past the time of year that you could be outside in the dark of night without a coat on. The chill in the air cleared up some of the fog in my head and cooled some of the still-simmering anger in my blood at being disregarded as I walked over to my perfectly restored and lovingly maintained ’67 Eldorado Cadillac. The car was my baby. She was the reason I took shop when I was a teenager and she was the thing that gave me purpose and directed me on the path that would lead to my own business and a way to provide for myself. My Caddy was my passion, the first thing that I’d ever owned that was mine outright, and she was a culmination of everything I’d ever been taught and had learned to apply to something real. There was no way in hell I was getting behind the wheel after a night of drinking. She had a million memories tied to her and I doubted I would be able to recover if anything took them away. I felt like my life hadn’t really had the chance to start until I walked into that tiny, undersupplied garage at Brookside High School and laid eyes on the mangled, dismantled beauty that was the former husk of my baby.
I ordered an Uber and propped a hip on the hood as the cold started to filter through my drunken melancholy. It and the idea of going home to an endlessly empty house made me shiver. I turned my head as the noise from the inside of the bar followed Asa out when he opened the door and did a quick scan of the parking lot. His gaze landed where I was leaning against the Caddy and I saw him let out a breath of relief. He shouted over his shoulder for someone to watch the bar for a second and then he let the heavy door shut behind him. He made his way over to where I was shivering and trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
“I was worried you were going to let the blonde take you home. Didn’t think I had to worry about you taking yourself home when you aren’t in any state to drive.” His breath left little puffs of vapor in the air and he didn’t bother to stop his teeth from clicking together as he rubbed his hands up and down his arms. “I like you, Speedy. Don’t make me take you to the ground for your keys.”
I held up my phone and showed him the map with the indicator that my Uber was only a few minutes away. “Called for a ride. I wouldn’t risk my car by driving drunk.”
He shook his head at me and rocked back on his heels. “You’re worried about your car and not yourself. You need someone to set you straight, Wheeler. I’ve been trying the last few weeks but I’m not getting through.”
I lifted an eyebrow and shrugged at him. “I come by for a drink and the company. I don’t remember signing up for a therapy session.”
He snorted at me and rolled his eyes. “You might not want to hear it, but you should listen anyway. When a man that’s made more than his fair share of mistakes sees another man driving off into the ditch, he isn’t much of a man unless he tries to get all those wheels back on the road. Sometimes it takes a tow truck, sometimes it only requires a little push from some helping hands. I understand your old lady did you wrong, but you aren’t going to make it right by drinking yourself into the kind of man you wouldn’t waste your time on if you ran across him.” He pointed a finger at me just as the Uber pulled into the lot and the driver flashed his lights. “Get yourself out of the ditch, Wheeler. There’s nothing good down there and all you’ll end up doing is spinning your wheels.”
I wobbled a little as I pushed myself off the car and put my phone in my back pocket. “I’m good at fixing things that are left behind and broken down, Asa. Don’t worry about me.” I had booze-fueled confidence to make the words sound more certain than they were.
He sighed again and looked down at the toes of his boots. “It’s never fun to see a good man get knocked down.” When he lifted his head back up there was concern stamped clearly across his face. “It’s even worse when that man doesn’t seem interested in getting himself back up. I’m cheaper than a shrink, Wheeler, and my office is a lot more fun.”
The man was going to be spreading himself thin if he was trying to save every lonely heart that sat down at his bar. He was weeks away from opening his own speakeasy-style bar in the heart of LoDo and that meant double the amount of advice to dole out to people that probably weren’t going to listen anyway.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Asa. Take care of that beauty.” Most would think I was talking about his pretty cop girlfriend, but anyone who knew me or knew anything about how a real gearhead operated would know I was talking about the Nova. He was doing the bulk of the restorations himself but occasionally he would bring it by the shop for a mechanical issue his limited knowledge couldn’t handle. It was a sweet ride and I was glad it found a good home. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone needed to tell Asa to take care of his girl; he treated the redheaded cop like she was his entire reason for existing … kind of the way I’d treated Kallie until it all went south.
I gave the Uber driver the address to my place in Curtis Park and tried to tamp down the now familiar hollow and vacant feeling that came with heading home to an empty house. I’d bought the place a hot second after I slid my ring on Kallie’s finger thinking that she was finally ready to settle down and grow up. We’d been together since we were nothing more than kids; however, while I’d gotten more ambitious and more focused on building something impossible to take away from me over the years, she seemed stuck in place. She was always a handful, a bit of a princess with an annoying tendency toward drama and hysterics, but she loved me and she never left me. So I put up with it all. Now that she was gone, hindsight was startlingly clear and I could see all the ways that we had been moving in different directions long before her first indiscretion. I wanted stability and a solid foundation. She wanted to party and be free all while letting me take care of her and support her. Being needed was nice, but not when it turned into being needed for the things I could provide instead of being needed for the man that I was. I’d turned into an ATM machine instead of a boyfriend and a lover. The worst part was I let it happen by not being able to tell Kallie no. I was too worried that if I denied her she would go. In the end it didn’t matter how much I gave, or how hard I’d loved: she went anyway.
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