“So you really quit, like, said ‘fuck off, I quit,’ and came back to the quietest little town where you’ll be bored out of your mind within a month?”
Instantly stiffening, he gritted his jaw. “Like, I called from the hospital and said to pay me my fucking last check, I’ll send over my hospital bills, and I expect double the bonus for finishing the job while I was getting the shit beat of me, and they’ll never see me again.”
Trace stilled at his words. “Oh,” she murmured. Keeping at her work, she snipped the next knot and drew it out from his skin, then set it on the base of the lamp next to the other. “I guess I thought you worked in security.”
“I did, sort of.”
“Oh. What sort of security? I mean, I thought that meantbodyguard.”
“Sometimes. Depended on the job.”
“So, sometimes it meant—”
“Trace. Please. I can’t talk about most of it, and I don’t want to talk about any of it. Since you’re… helping, I thought you at least deserved to know that I’m home to stay, and that I came back even more messed up than when I left. But I’m not going anywhere. Ever again. I’m done with all that.”
She bit her lips together, holding back the flood behind her eyes, filling her sinuses until her head felt heavy. “I’m glad you came home,” she whispered, wishing she could believe him.
Fuck.Shouldn’thavesaidanything. But, as he’d said, she deserved to know some of it.
Her hand wavered as she lowered to the next stitch, but she didn’t stop.
“Trace. Please don’t say anything to your parents.”
“Okay,” she said softly.
“They won’t understand. I did some pretty awful things.”
She didn’t need to respond. They both knew it. Ellen and Jeremy were about as salt of the earth as it gets, and he couldn’t bear to break their hearts again.
Under his ribs, his lungs ached, his heart fucking throbbed, just imagining what they’d say if they knew what he’d done with his life. That he knew how to survive torture because he knew how to dish it. There was a massive part of him that wanted to tell her all the awful things he’d done. That the shit his mom had done for drugs didn’t come close to what he’d done for money.
A voice echoed up the stairs, drawing nearer. “Trace? Are you ready?”
The ache under his ribs clenched and released as her date neared. Now at least he knew why she was so uncomfortable and unenthused about him naked. Not that he expected her to swoon over his naked body, but she’d been awfully calm, while his mind went straight to the gutter and refused to leave. A few minutes ago, he’d thought she might actually be flirting with him, but…
“In here,” Trace answered, not looking up from her task.
…Apparently not. Pretty as hell, her date was decked out in a similar black dress, hers with a cutout in the back and a cutout above the belly button, and instead of the over the knee boots and bare thigh exposed thanks to a slit like Trace had on, the date had sheer tights and heeled ankle boots. Not even close to the rack Trace had.
Not that he just thought about her lovely breasts as a rack. He bit down hard on his cheek as he realized his imagination was running off again. At least he was wearing pants this time.
Still focused on his sutures, glaring at a stubborn one that was embedded and itched like crazy, Trace said, “Cole, this is Haley, my date. Haley, Cole, I’ll explain him at dinner.”
He huffed a laugh, earning a glare from Trace when the suture she’d worked so hard to isolate slipped from her hand. “Sorry,” he whispered, grinning as she moved to try again.
Weirdest damn emotions pummeled at him, a bizarre tangle that he didn’t have to worry about tamping down any flirting, because it was never going to happen and they could just be friends. Not that they couldn’t be friends. They’d always been friends. But, yeah.
Cole looked up and saw Haley was watching curiously from the doorway. “I can wait downstairs,” she said, drawing out the words as if waiting for some sort of explanation from Trace.
“You’re fine here. I’m almost done,” Trace answered, her voice muffled by her narrow focus on his sutures.
“So. Cole. Are you… in town visiting?” Haley asked, voice lilting up at the end, a bit of laugh masked in there.
“Not exactly,” he answered. He glanced down at Trace and whispered loud enough for her date to hear, “How are you planning to explain me?”
Trace cussed under her breath as a stubby end of a stitch slipped from her tweezers. She reached into the toolbox and pulled out a seam ripper, rubbed some rubbing alcohol on it, then dug in deeper.
He hissed but stayed still.
