Lennox (28 page)

I found my jeans, shoes, shirt,
flannel, and hat, all scattered on the floor, but I couldn't find my
belt. My pants would stay up without it, but I didn't want to give
myself a reason to come over after work again, so I didn't stop
looking.

The place was a mess, even worse
than my house. Stacks of takeout boxes and checkout-line magazines
sat atop mismatched furniture, and after a few minutes I gave up and
went to use her bathroom. My belt was on the worn linoleum floor,
next to her bra. I ran the leather through the loops on my jeans,
clasped the Royals buckle into place, and looked in the mirror. I
could use a shave, but I was doing alright. Even with a soft job like
tending bar, my arms still had definition. I adjusted my cap, then
went out and crossed the room as quiet as I could, hoping to get
outside before she woke.

"Luke," Maggie mumbled,
her eyes barely open. "Sneaking out like you always do?"

"Just didn't want to wake
you," I said. It was the truth, at least.

Maggie rolled her eyes. "You
gonna call me?"

"Sure," I said.

"No you're not," she
said. "You're just going to ignore me at work and then turn
around and hit on me when you get drunk after your shift. Like you
always do."

I didn't say anything.

"Like I care," she
mumbled, rolling back over and pulling a pillow over her head. "Get
out of here."

She fell back asleep, and I
slipped out the door.

Emily
died in the springtime. Nobody should die in the springtime, but
least of all someone so alive. Now I dreaded the warmer days, the
green of the season. The memories were too strong.

I pulled on my flannel as I
walked to my truck, the brim of my cap almost working to keep the sun
from doing its best to ruin my life. Still, it felt good to step up
into my Chevy and turn the engine over. I let it shake to life, got
my left foot off the clutch and my right foot on the gas, and took
off out of that dead-end street.

You've got this, I told myself.
You're tough. You've been through worse.

I pulled out onto the 70, cranked
down the window, turned up the heat against the chill still hanging
on despite it being midway through April. Cold wind poured into the
cab, clearing my head a bit and knocking Granddad Cawley's dog tags
where they hung from the rearview.

I wanted a cigarette, maybe a can
of Skoal, more than I wanted to deal with the day. But I'd quit
tobacco for Emily. I'd promised her I'd quit, even though she was the
one who'd died of cancer and she'd never even smoked. She was dead,
but my word meant something to me. My word was all I had. I wouldn't
disappoint her. Not anymore than I already had.

I drove faster, instead. I
ignored my phone as it went off in my pocket, I ignored the speed
limit, and I let myself be grateful for my truck and the wind and the
Sunday lack of traffic. Maybe I'd get out of town sometime soon. Get
my boots in the dirt, get mud on my tires. Go fishing. Call my
brother, maybe even my dad. Maybe.

You
could still get a pretty good house in Kansas City on a truck
driver's take, and my granddad had given me a house, a fixer-upper
two-bedroom place with enough yard for kids and enough garage to keep
a man happy. I pulled into the drive and tried not to think about the
look on that man's face when he'd handed me the deed at the wedding.

"The hell do I need the
money for anyway," Granddad Cawley had said, like he didn't
care. "Was going to leave it to you in my will, but I don't want
no grandson of mine plotting against me. Was going to give it to you
sooner, but I didn't want you thinking things in life came much for
free, either." That man had been proud, so proud, that all of
his years and miles behind the wheel were enough to provide for his
family.

It was a small miracle that
Granddad went to his grave before Emily did. He'd never had to know
that there weren't going to be kids in that house, that I was never
going to get to build a swing set in that yard. What sort of world is
it, where your Granddad's death is a small miracle.

As soon as I cut the engine, the
hangover came on, and worse. I made it into the house, turned on the
heat. A house should have an engine block, should just warm up from
use like a truck. But it doesn’t work that way.

Inside, I scanned the fridge, but
there weren't any eggs. I still had a half a deer in the deep freeze
in the garage, but nothing hot I could make fast enough to be worth
the effort. No breakfast today, then. Guess I'd drag myself to Price
Chopper sooner or later.

A shower would do me better than
cold cereal anyway, and I made it to the bathroom off from the master
bedroom. The one I'd been working on when we'd found out Emily was
sick, the one I'd never finished remodeling. I stripped, stepped into
the hot water. The first half of the shower, I decided I needed a
better way to keep Emily off my mind than sleeping with Maggie,
because sleeping with Maggie didn't work anyway. The second half, I
didn't care that it didn't work, because I didn't care about much
anything at all.

From the time I was seventeen to
twenty-three, I'd lived with Emily at my side, in a bliss I didn't
know the world had to offer. Now that she was gone, I wasn't prepared
to face the world without her. Hell if I knew why I kept on going in
the first place. I guess because Emily would hate it if I quit. And
if I was honest with myself, I was afraid she might not be waiting
for me on the other side if I took my own life. Whether or not I was
right with God, no matter how shaken my faith, it just wasn’t a
risk I was willing to take.

The water ran cold all too soon.

Drying off in the bedroom, I
found myself flipping through the stack of proof prints from our
wedding, like I did most days.

I'd memorized every one of them.

Emily on horseback in her wedding
veil, head thrown back in a laugh, me holding the reins from the
ground and staring up at her like I’d never seen anything so
fine. Another with Emily in her white gown, smirking, leaned against
my chipped beige Chevy pretending to aim a slingshot at me while I
held back a grin. The two of us sitting on the tailgate, hand in
hand, the skyline of our western city silhouetted against the setting
sun, mud on both our boots.

The photographer had charged too
much, I used to think. Emily and I'd argued over it, even, in that
halting, loving way that was the worst the two of us had ever really
argued. She'd been right, of course. She'd always been right.

It was too overwhelming. I set
down the stack of photos, but I could feel her blue eyes follow me
across the room. April 15th, when those eyes had shut forever, was a
date burned into my brain deeper than September 7th, our wedding, or
September 28th, her birthday.

I threw my clothes back on and
left the bedroom.

My cell phone sat on the butcher
block counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. The
house was a minefield of memories—I'd built her the countertop
as soon as we moved in. I unlocked my phone and saw two missed calls,
two voicemails. One from my brother Mike at 10am, the other from my
work, at 1pm.

"Luke," Mike's voice
said, impatient. "Wake your ass up. Am I going to see you at
church? Ever again? You even alive?"

I deleted the voicemail before it
even finished playing.

"Hey, so I don't know if
you're really into having a job," Warren, my boss, said in his
familiar drawl, "but if you are, you can't keep pulling this
shit. I got in this morning and the place was a mess. You didn't do
the dishes, you didn't close out the register, you didn't wash the
mats or take out the trash. I feel like I'm lucky you even remembered
to lock up on your way out. I'm sick of cleaning up after you, and I
know we're friends but I'm going to find a new guy if you do this to
me again. See you at three."

I had to be at work by three.

I looked at my phone. Two-thirty,
and a thirty-minute drive.

Without another thought, I went
out the door. There was a package on the stoop, about the size of a
book from Amazon, but there was no return address. Just my name, Luke
Cawley. No postage, no address, just my name.

I picked it up, tossed it inside
the house before I locked up, and ran to my truck.

Haley Grace Cooke is just an ordinary girl with big dreams when she’s spotted singing at at
open-mic night in Hollywood. Suddenly, she’s on the fast-track to fame, thanks to one (incredibly sexy and
charming) man: Brando Nash.

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My muscles scream, chest on fire,
nerve endings twitching like a million thunderbolts across my torso.
I can feel the beads of sweat on my forehead running down my
tensed neck. I glare at the fluorescent light on the gym ceiling,
feel the cold metal of the bar against my chest.

That twinge in my triceps should worry me. Gotta meet Jax at the
club for drinks in a couple hours. Maybe it was a bad idea to do this
big a lift at the end of a workout. Last time a lift went wrong I
messed up my thigh so bad I was finger-fucking girls for a month.

Thoughts bear down on me like a load of bricks, pressing down on the
ends of the bar, making it even heavier than it really is.

Don’t think, Brando. Just fucking lift.

I repeat the words like a mantra. A rhythmic drumbeat that focuses my
mind. I exhale as I push, the rush of adrenaline leaving no room for
thoughts, the heat burning all doubt out of me.

Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.

As I pump the bar up and down it feels like I’m lifting the
entire building, like I’m trying to push a planet away from my
chest. I feel like I’m calling on strength that doesn’t
belong to me, strength that comes from the same deep pit of hell the
pain in my muscles comes from. I exhale and my breath comes out with
a long, low grunt.

The pain and the heat and the testosterone and the adrenaline swirl
inside of me, and I direct it all against this fucking barbell.

When my set is finished I have just enough energy to bring the
barbell back onto the claws. My fists sting as they let go of it,
palms almost melded to the metal. I drop my arms and breathe deeply
for a few seconds before sitting upright. My blood pumps, veins
throb, and I feel the satisfied ache of a post-workout high seep into
my skin.

“Pretty dangerous, benching that much without anyone spotting
you,” a throaty female voice says from behind me.

I look up. The gym is almost empty except for a guy listening to his
headphones as he runs on a treadmill in the corner. I save myself the
trouble of turning around to see her and just look at the reflection
in the wall-sized mirror in front of me.

“Looks like you spotted me just fine,” I drawl, eyeing
her in the glass.

Even by gym standards, she’s unbelievable. She’s in tight
black spandex pants, with nutcracker thighs and hips that seem
custom-made for my hands. Her sports bra is so tight she may as well
be naked, and the thought instantaneously sends about a million
X-rated images through my mind. Judging by the hungry look in her
eyes, I know exactly where this is going—but I’m enjoying
the foreplay, so instead of just cutting to the chase and inviting
her to suck my dick in the locker room, I grab the barbell and force
myself through one more punishing set of reps.

It takes everything I have to keep my arms steady, my muscles
screaming all the while, before slamming the bar back onto the rack
and sitting up.

“Impressive,” she says, eyeing me up and down in the
mirror. “You certainly don’t do things the easy way.”

“I prefer the hard way,” I tell her, checking out the
curve of her breasts like I’m about to paint a portrait of
them. It’s all I can do to keep myself from just grabbing her
and sitting her down in my lap.

“So do I,” she purrs, running a hand across my back. She
steps closer, standing behind me with the bench between her legs.
Then she puts both hands on my shoulders and starts pressing and
rubbing.

“Shit that’s good,” I say, closing my eyes at the
deeply sweet touch of her hands – the only thing that could
stop me from enjoying the ravenous eye-fucking she’s been
giving me in the mirror.

“It should be,” she says, a tinge of amusement in her
voice. “I’m a massage therapist here. With all the time
you spend working out, I’m surprised you haven’t stopped
in for a session by now.”

“So you’ve seen me around,” I growl. She rubs
harder, massaging a knot next to my shoulder blade until it loosens,
and I groan out loud. “Damn. Maybe it
is
time to see
about that session.”

“Good, because you’re way past due. And I’m not
gonna wait any longer.” She leans down toward my ear, her long
blonde hair brushing my shoulder, and says in a low whisper, “I
teach a yoga class, too.”

Her words hit me like a shot of adrenaline to the cock. I close my
eyes and let her work me some more, lust building with the sensation
of her palms kneading the base of my neck and the scent of her as she
leans over me. I let out another low moan.

Looks like Jax might be drinking by himself for a little while
tonight. But I’m sure he’ll understand.

My eyes flicker toward the guy in the corner, still running on the
treadmill. The yoga teacher/massage therapist/sportswear siren reads
my thoughts as easily as she reads the tension in my back and nods
toward a side door.

“It’s your lucky day,” she smiles. “I’m
giving a free massage to the man who can handle it.”

I stand up, grab my towel and run it over my face.

“Always good to have a massage after a workout,” I reply.
“Keeps the blood flowing.”