Good fucking riddance.
Chapter Ten
Moon
There was nothing like a long Pilates session to burn off some excess energy, especially when much of it was sexual and had to do with a man who was all kinds of wrong for me. Apparently that was my specialty and even though I was hot and sweaty and tired, I was not by any means, calm or relaxed.
I was still strung as tight as bow. Maybe a smoothie would help. It probably wouldn’t, but that didn’t stop me from pulling out all the fruit in my fridge in search of the perfect combination to soothe what ailed me. As soon as I figured out what that was. For now, a regular fruit smoothie would have to do the trick.
The sound of the doorbell startled me. It was early afternoon and Beau was in school. Everyone else I knew was at work or at home with their families. Given the events of last week, I made my way to the door slowly and looked out the window rather than the peephole. It was Cross. I pulled opened the door and gasped.
“What on earth happened to you?” I looked behind him to make sure he wasn’t being chased and tugged him inside. Sweat matted his thick, brown hair to his skin and one eye had started to close around a bruiser of a black eye.
Despite the mess of his face, he tried for a smile. “You should see the other guy.” His joke fell flat because I didn’t find his behavior funny at all. I wasn’t a pacifist by any means and I had a healthy respect for the fact that sometimes violence was necessary, but human life was fragile and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.
“Come on, tough guy.” I pulled him into the kitchen and pushed him onto one of the cushioned chairs before I left him to gather my own first-aid kit. I had the usual bandages and ointments, but I’d added a few important items of my own.
“What happened?” I asked when I returned from the bathroom.
“Having a party?” he asked at the same time, his blue eyes eyeing my fruit selection with amusement.
“Making a smoothie. Now you, what happened?”
He shrugged. “Got into a fight and I didn’t lose.” He wasn’t bragging and I appreciated that, but his matter of fact tone gave me chills.
But I couldn’t focus on that. Right now I was in health care mode. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“That depends, are you gonna kiss it and make it better?” I knew he was joking for my benefit, so I shouldn’t get too worried, but it was too late for that. I was beyond worried.
“Why did you come here, Cross? You don’t want to answer any of my questions. You want me to stitch you up and send you on your way.” It wasn’t a question. I knew it as sure as I knew my own name. I set bandages and scissors on the table and started to mix a salve for the pain and bruising. “Comfrey is my favorite healing herb and I always keep it nearby for Beau’s scrapes and bruises. This might sting a little but it’s just the antiseptic.”
“Holy fuck that stinks!” He leaned away from the bowl and held his nose but I wasn’t deterred.
“You came to me, Cross. You either want my help or you don’t.” Arms crossed, I stood in front of him.
“I do.”
“It doesn’t smell the greatest but it works better than that drugstore crap.” I put some witch hazel on the small cut on his forehead and applied my own antibiotic cream to his wounds. He was all patched up but everything about him was all wrong. I cupped his face and tilted it up until we were eye to eye. “What is going on with you, Cross? Your aura is a mess, but your eyes are…what’s going on?”
“More shit than I need to bother you with,” he spat out angrily, though I suspected that anger was directed at himself rather than me.
“Damn. I’m asking and it’s my decision what burdens I carry, so don’t be the hero right now. Just talk.” I was the mother of a precocious eight-year-old boy, I could wait him out in my sleep.
I could feel Cross’s tension across the room as I added blueberries, a banana, apple and plenty of other fruits and natural supplements to the blender. I added enough for two because whatever hell Cross was going through, he would need to be healthy for this fight. Filling up two tall glasses, I brought them to the table and set one in front of him. “Bon appétit.”
Cross held the glass tentatively, eyeing the contents with skepticism before he put the glass to his mouth. “Damn that’s good.”
I shrugged. “It’s just fruit.”
“I couldn’t sleep last night so I went out looking for the guy who shot up your shop. I found him too,” he said with a sharp, bitter laugh. “We fought. End of story.”
I nodded and listened carefully as he told me how he’d been stalking the man ever since that night. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Cross.”
“I didn’t have to, Moon. I chose to, don’t you see that?”
“I don’t see it that way at all.” Cross looked at me like he could see through me but I wasn’t bothered because I knew for a guy like him, vulnerability was a new feeling. “You’re the leader of a large family, Cross. And as the leader you have to do things you might not want in order to keep them safe.”
He barked out another bitter laugh. “You don’t believe that.”