A Favor

“You’re mine?” He asks softly.

“Yes, Sam. I’m yours.”

“Then there’s nothing more to talk about. Just like I take care of your body and make sure you only have pleasure I’m going to continue to see to all your other needs. I have to take care of my trucks oil changes, I have to take care of you. I want to take care of you. You happy and succeeding with this website gets you closer to your goal of quitting and painting full time. Those things are necessary to your happiness so I need to make sure you have what you need because then I feel good when I know you’re good.”

“But you can’t be responsible for my happiness. I have to take responsibility for that.”

“So if I went to the strip club with Taylor and stayed out until the sun came up, would that make you happy?”

“Of course not!” The thought has me pushing away but he keeps a tight hold on me.

“Then again, I’m calling bullshit. I know the things that will make you happy and the things that won’t. Now if the things that made you happy didn’t make me happy, then we might have a problem but they don’t. So there’s no problem.”

I sag against him and lay my head on his shoulder. Had he really compared me to his truck? It doesn’t matter, I understand what he means. Just like I had started to learn to cook his favorite things and taken to buying the things I knew he liked because I want to make him happy I get why he did the website and did the things he did.

“I was never going to win an argument with you, was I?”

“You can try, I’ll always let you try.” Then his mouth comes down on mine and I pull him out of the sweats he’s in and come down on him and all is right again in our world.

Sam is coming out of the shower and I watch as he dresses and I don’t want to argue and hope it won’t come to that. I sit up and pull the sheet up with me, I don’t want it to seem like I’m using my body to get what I want from him.

“What’s the matter?” His voice is low and husky as he sits beside me on the bed. It’s still unsettling how easily and quickly he reads me and my eyes go down to my hands.

“We’re still short trainers and I’m pretty sure I can talk a trainer who left last year to come back but he’s in Dallas. I want to go up there and see him tomorrow.” I pause, hating but knowing what I need to do. “Can I please go up and see him tomorrow and ask him to come back to work?”

A finger moves over the lines in my forehead and tucks my hair behind my ear. “We’ll both go tomorrow, when I get off work. We’ll take my truck because I don’t trust your car.”

It’s exactly what I had hoped he would say, and I sigh with relief and kiss his cheek. “Thank you.”

Chapter Seventeen

The drive is quick and easy with Sam at the wheel, I’m thankful for it because I-35 is hell on earth to me. Between the asshole drivers in their big trucks and the eighteen wheelers I hate the drive to Dallas and I don’t go unless I have to.

We pull into the driveway of the address I had been given by one of the few employees that had kept in touch with Dean. It isn’t a regular apartment complex, it’s a retirement community. This is going to be easier than I thought. Sam finds the building they are all one story with what looks like four apartments in one building.

“There’s nothing I can say that will make it so you’ll stay in the truck, is there?”

Sam doesn’t even respond to the question, he simply turns off the truck and slides out and I sigh and wait for him to come around and lift me out of the truck, like he always does. He opens the door and catches me around the waist and sets me down. I’m in loose jeans and a long loose blue tee shirt given away at one of the company’s events for the charity Taylor had created. It’s as sexless as I can be but as we walk toward the apartment, Sam’s hand is on my ass and I feel pretty damn sexy.

I knock and it’s quiet for a few minutes. The door opens and a white haired woman, tiny but cranky eyeballs me with distrust. Sam, she recognizes for the same kind of man as her grandson and nods grudgingly as she steps back.

“Dean, you got company!” She yells.

“Hi, m’am I’m Zoe Lawrence and this is Sam King. I used to work with Dean and Sam-“ The woman shushes me and points down the hall.

“First door on the right, he’s probably got those damn earphones on.”

Respecting the elderly is always harder when they’re assholes is all I think as I walk down the short hallway. I knock and wait for an answer but nothing so I open the door. Dean is laying on the bed staring up at the ceiling, whispering along with Mazzy Star and I try really hard not to laugh. Forcing it down, I step into the room and I finally catch Dean’s eye. He pulls off the earphones and looks at me with hope and embarrassment.

“Zoe, what are you doing here?” Long and lean, his light brown hair is scruffy and there are bags under his light golden eyes. It’s a huge difference from the pretty boy image he loved to flaunt before he met slut, I can’t remember her name, she’d always just been the slut to me since I caught her on Taylor’s lap.

“Hey Dean, this is Sam King, we took him on as a trainer a few weeks ago. He came with me because when I told him I wanted to talk to you about coming back he seems to think he can’t let me out of sight around a man. We’re together and he’s just a little possessive so no bear hugs okay?” Dean and I had been friendly as he was practically Taylor’s best friend and he thought I was adorable because I was so small and his usual greeting was a bear hug where he lifted me up and spun me around. When he had sat up and stood, I had stepped back against Sam and he had quickly wrapped his arms around me.

Dean just nods and smiles and sits at the edge of the bed. “I’m happy for you Zoe. So you know about me and Sasha? Does everybody know?”

I shake my head, Dean had always been just a little too proud, a little too cocky for his own good. “Exactly what happened? No. All Tay

lor and know is that you broke up, which wasn’t a surprise. She had dollar signs in her eyes when she looked at you. I won’t tell Taylor anything, your private life is your private life. I’m sorry she hurt you, I know it’s been a long time since you thought you were in love and I think that was the real appeal for her. You wanted to love her and there’s nothing wrong with that.”