Rest & Trust (27 page)

Finally, J.R. scowled at him. “Get the fuck out of here, bro. I’m hurting her more because you’re making me so jumpy.” He looked down at Sadie and smiled. “Okay, honey? You don’t need his ugly mug hanging over us, do you?”

Sadie shook her head. Sherlock felt a hand on his arm and turned to find Gordon trying to lead him out to the balcony. He let him.

Shit. It was daylight. He hadn’t even noticed.

Gordon closed the door securely behind them and then came and stood next to Sherlock at the railing.

The view from the balcony was nothing special up close: just the parking lot and neighboring buildings. But the buildings nearby were low, and the long view, when the sky was clear, was of mountains in the distance.

“You’re a good man, Sherlock. I know this. I can see it in your eyes.”

Sherlock looked down at the smaller man. Pressed khakis and a trim striped shirt. He’d roused Gordon in the middle of the night, and still the man looked like he’d dressed for company. “Thanks.”

He knew there was more to the man’s statement than a compliment.

“I know you love her. I know you want to be good for her. I believe these to be true.”

“Get to it, Gordon.”

“Are you?”

“What?”

Gordon didn’t repeat his question, and he didn’t need to. Instead, he said, “I’m not suggesting you’re not, or that you can’t be. I’m asking if you’ve thought deep about what it means to be good for our girl. It’s not just that she’s an addict. It’s why she got to be one. You know her story?”

Sherlock focused on the hazy blue silhouette of the mountains. “Yeah. I know what happened.”

“She went through all that alone. She never told anybody. After her mom and brother died, her dad…well, she didn’t want her dad to worry about anything, so she made herself into somebody he didn’t need to worry about, no matter what. That’s why I told you, the first time we talked, that this girl is strong but not tough. She was a twelve-year-old child, just a baby, protecting her father from the truth of his failings, letting something terrible happen to her, all so that he wouldn’t know any more pain. For years and years—and it hollowed her out. She became the shell he needed to see, and she never had a chance to let anybody love her for herself. She doesn’t know how to trust it. That’s not how she sees those years, but it’s plain as day when she talks about them. It’s only been since she came out of rehab, since I’ve known her, that she’s started to fill up her insides. She’s learning herself for the first time.”

“If you’re asking me to be patient, I’m not going anywhere.”

“No. I’m asking you to be what she needs. And if you can’t be, then I’m asking you to think hard about what’s going on behind us. What she did tonight, she won’t be able to hide so easily. All those years, she was careful. Not this time. And she wasn’t done, was she? If you hadn’t called me, if we hadn’t gotten here, where would she have stopped? So what’s that mean? I don’t know what happened to make this mess, but I do know she didn’t call me. She’s never not called me since I became her sponsor. If she’s closing herself off from somebody she trusts, if she’s giving up on the consequences, then we need to think hard about that.”

“What does she need?”

“Don’t you know?”

Sherlock stared at the mountains. He’d thought he knew.

“She needs a rock,” Gordon answered for him. “Strong and steady. She needs somebody who’ll
let
her be weak, but won’t
make
her weak. Who’ll hold her up when she’s tired.”

Unbidden and unexpected, tears pricked at Sherlock’s eyes and then slid down his face. Jesus. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried, but here he was, standing on this balcony in the new morning sun, Sadie’s blood hardened to a crust on his clothes, being lectured by a man he barely knew, and crying. He bent his head and closed his eyes, straining for composure. “That’s who I am,” he gritted through his tight throat.

Gordon’s hand came down on his slumped shoulder. “Good. Then be that for her. The rest of it she’ll figure out, as long as she’s got a strong center, somebody she knows for sure is right there with her no matter what. It’s feeling alone that makes her fizzy, as she says. I don’t think she’s figured that out yet. She thinks it’s when she feels out of control, but I think it’s when she feels like she has to control everything because there’s nowhere she can turn for help. Be where she turns.”

Those words sparked the memory of the moment he’d known she’d come back to him in the bathtub. When she’d literally turned toward him, let him pull her close.

Gordon wasn’t finished. “She needs more than me, it seems. Makes sense—I’m not who you are to her. Your relationship with her gets close to some scary things for her. I can guide her through her recovery from the drugs, but that’s just the symptom. Where you are—you’re right up against the cause. You have to tread lightly, so close to what scares her most of all.”

“She could be pregnant. The past few days, almost a week now, we’ve been trying.” Sadie would likely be pissed as hell that he’d just said that, but he needed Gordon to know. He felt like they were on the same team. The Sadie Ballard Protection Squad.

Gordon was quiet for a long time. The world began to make its morning sounds. Traffic noise picked up as people headed to work. A dog barked. Sherlock smelled the aromas of coffee and bacon wafting from a nearby kitchen window.

“Then I hope to fuck you mean to be her rock for the long haul.”

The door slid open behind them, and Sherlock and Gordon both turned and faced J.R. “Hey, bro. She’s all put back together. She’ll be okay, but right now she’s hurting. I gave her some Tylenol, but that’s not gonna do much. You know the drill on taking care of the sutures.”

“Thanks, brother. I owe you big.”

“Nah. Buy me a bottle or something, maybe. Looks like you’ve got your hands full here.”

Sherlock simply nodded and followed J.R. back into the apartment. At the door, he turned and faced Gordon, who’d been right behind him. “I’ve wanted to take care of her since the day I met her. I
am
her rock. I need that as much as she does.”

~oOo~

“You look tired, sweetheart.”

She did. Tired and pale. J.R. had said he didn’t think she’d lost too much blood, and he’d left some iron pills to be on the safe side, but Sherlock didn’t like her color at all. The bruise on her cheek was much more visible now, with the blood cleaned up and her skin so pale. When she was up to it, she was going to tell him who the fuck had done it.

They were alone; after J.R. left, Sherlock and Gordon had cleaned up the mess, and then helped Sadie clean up, and then Gordon had kissed her cheek and shaken his hand, and bid them goodbye, just a few minutes ago.

“You don’t have to stay. I’m all sewn up now, and I’m not going to use or cut or anything. I’m okay.”

She definitely wasn’t going to use, because that shit was long gone. That wasn’t why he was staying, though, and it was time she believed it.

He sat on the bed, next to her hip. “I’m not leaving you, Sadie. You need to listen to me now. I love you. What happened last night changes nothing at all, not for me. What happened with Taryn was her fault, and my fault, but it was
not
your fault. I should have been more open about her, but I wasn’t trying to hide anything. I just…like I said, I just hate thinking about her. It’s you I want to think about. It’s you I want to make a life with.”

“The kids? Her kids, I guess. You don’t miss them?”

“Sure. I love them. But they’re not my kids, not my family. They never were. I was only borrowing them because I didn’t have one of my own. Now I have my own. And I am not leaving you. Short of kicking me to the curb, there’s nothing you can do to chase me off.”

She turned her head away, and he reached out, took her chin, and gently turned her back. “Listen to me, little outlaw. This isn’t me feeling sorry for you. This is me
needing
you. Taking care of you, loving you—it fulfills me.” He thought about what Gordon had said. “You don’t have to be strong for me. You don’t have to be anything you’re not. I like being strong for you. I love you for who you are. You can rest with me, Sadie.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing. I get so lost.”

He wrapped his hand over hers. “Then let me hold your hand.”

She turned her hand in his and brushed her fingers over his palm. Then she slid her fingers between his, weaving their hands together.

She nodded and began to cry. Moving carefully so he didn’t jostle her injured arms, Sherlock stretched out at her side and held her.

~oOo~

“The plan?” Muse asked as he, Sherlock, and Demon dismounted around the corner from a neat little bungalow with green shutters. “There a limit to how far you want to take this?”

“Breathing. I don’t feel like dealing with a body. Beyond that, I don’t care.”

Demon and Muse both nodded. “Your lead, bro,” Demon said. “We’ll keep you in check.”

They were both a lot more experienced in this work than he was—though there was some irony in the fact that Demon would be keeping him in check.

Three days had passed since the morning that J.R. had put almost a hundred stitches in Sadie’s arms. It had taken three days for Sherlock to feel like he could leave her at all. As soon as she was steady on her feet, he’d packed her up to his house, where he intended she would stay, and he’d been camped at home with her since.

It had taken her two days to tell him where she’d gotten that motherfucking bruise on her face.

Now Sherlock knocked on a green door that matched the shutters. A tall, thin, blond guy, about thirty or so, with a shaggy brown goatee, answered the door. He got a load of the three Horde, sporting colors, and stood up straight, his eyes wary. “Hey, fellas. Something I can do for you?”

“Gage Emerson?”

“Yeah…we got a mutual friend?”

Sherlock punched him in the face. Damn, that hurt, but he resisted the urge to shake the pain out of his fist.

Emerson reeled backward and fell into, and then through, his coffee table. The Horde charged into the room. Demon came around Sherlock and grabbed Emerson by his t-shirt, dragging him back to his feet. Sherlock heard the door close behind him.

Emerson wiped blood from his gushing nose and swelling mouth. “What the fuck, man? I got no beef with the Horde.”

“You sold to Sadie Ballard.”

“I didn’t sell it—I gave it to her. A gift.” His expression suggested that he thought his generosity should make everything right.

“She’s over a year clean. You could have fucked that all to hell.”

He blinked, growing confused. “I didn’t lean on her, man. She came to me.”

“She’s my old lady. She’s under the protection of the Horde. You understand what that means?”

Emerson paled and tried to step back, but Demon now had him by the neck. “Fuck. I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know.”

“You know what else, cocksucker? She’s got a bruise on her cheek. You know how she got that?”

Now his bloody mouth dropped open, and he lifted his hands in surrender. “Bro, look. I’m sorry. If I’d’ve known who she was to you… I’d never cross the Horde. I am so, so sorry. Tell me what to do to make it right. Anything. I’ll do anything. What can I do?”

Sherlock made like he was considering the question.

“You can bleed.”

~oOo~