Page 18 of Splintered Security (Aspen & Evergreen #2)

the hubster

Anni

Night falls on Sunday with me on the sofa, wrapped under a blanket, my feet resting on Ren’s lap. His thumbs massage my feet again while I set up my new phone so everything sounds right, looks right, and does what I need it to do.

Ren didn’t scrimp. I have the latest and greatest and, for now anyway, exactly one contact.

I considered labeling him The Hubster , but again, he’s the only contact so Ren will do.

Besides, The Hubster is a little too cutesy for the not-cutesy-at-all man kneading my ankles and heels while watching football.

While I can still see the boy he was when we were growing up, more and more of that dissolves into another image—the military man who fought and apparently got injured doing God-knows-what in a foreign land, fighting our enemies.

I also see the man who is opening up to me.

In fact, aside from his job, I don’t see him on his phone texting or talking with anyone .

He's a lone wolf who now has to protect me while fighting his own battles. He hasn’t said what those are. It’s just something I know or sense in him. The lightness of someone who has little to worry about doesn’t exist in Ren Gallo.

“Will you send me the pic from Friday morning?”

Silently, he grabs his phone, taps a few icons, and my phone is dinging with the photo I requested and more.

It hasn’t even been seventy-two hours. I stare at the image. The man there is such a far cry from the man-boy he was when he graduated high school. He’s just as handsome, actually he’s more so. But his posture, his demeanor, all of it screams of discipline, duty, and determination.

And the way he’s looking at me in this picture, he’s… mine.

That settles in my bones in an odd way. Like I could eat waffles every Sunday, count on foot rubs, and somehow, we’d manage .

Lulled into that false sense of security, my old phone catches me off guard with the awful siren sound notifying me that Heath hasn’t forgotten me. I know he hasn’t. He never will. My little bubble of life with foot massages and waffles pops, and it all comes crashing down.

“I wouldn’t ask and I don’t want you to, but I need the intel. Do you mind? I know it’s going to suck, but I’ll be right here with you the whole time.” He extends the phone. “Put it on speaker.”

I do as he asks and brace for the cruelty that is to come.

… But I don’t brace enough.

Ren

“Hello?” Annika’s voice is tentative.

“You answered. Didn’t think you’d have the guts.”

“I’m here.” She visibly hunches in on herself. Her shoulders roll in, and she tucks her chin.

“Where’s here, you little cunt?”

Anni’s eyes go wide as she looks to me.

“What do you want, Heath?”

“I want to know where you are. I want you here. I want you to do your fucking job and pay your fucking debts.” His voice is a shout, until lethal calm enters it. “I want to punish you for disobeying me, and not in the way that you’ll get off on it.”

Her eyes slam shut as I clench my jaw to the point of pain.

“Did you hear me, bitch?” he seethes.

“Last time wasn’t enough? Or the time before that? I thought the bruises would teach you a lesson. If not that, the blood surely would’ve. Dumb bitch.”

Anni says nothing. There’s nothing she can say when he’s screaming in a tirade like this.

“Maybe I should let Conyers have at you for real. He’s itching to use that knife on you again. Maybe this time I’ll let him slice your cunt with?— ”

I know better. I fucking know better, but it doesn’t matter. I swipe the phone from her hand and hurl it. It lands somewhere in the kitchen, and from the sound of it, at least some piece of it is broken.

She’s cowering in fear.

I’m shaking with rage.

I can’t calm myself enough to help her, and she shouldn’t get near me either.

After several moments, and against both of our instincts, I scoop up her tightly balled-up body, offering no words of comfort. I have no right. I did that to her. I asked her to allow herself to be spoken to that way, put in that position, to be made to feel low, to revisit torture. I did that.

“I’ll never forgive myself.” The words come out on a whisper. If I attempt anything more, I’ll scream until I’m hoarse.

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is.” I give her a squeeze that tells her not to argue with me. My control is frayed and the small string I’m holding onto is unravelling.

“Don’t you dare try to hush me when I’m telling the truth.”

Now she finds her voice? Of all fucking times, when I could bring the walls of this house down with my fists? Now she wants to hold her own and argue. I’d laugh if I didn’t think I’d sound like a maniac.

I rest back onto the cushions of the sofa, keeping her close, forcing my muscles to relax while my brain screams at what I heard .

“Give me a minute, Sunshine.”

I need it. I need more than a minute. I need whatever it takes for the Hulk to revert to Bruce Banner, or Mr. Hyde to return to being Dr. Jekyll.

“Ren?”

“Give me a minute.”

A hand strokes my jaw from chin to below my ear, cupping my cheek and turning my face toward her. “It’s been forty-five.”

“Since when?”

“Since the last time you asked for a minute. Your breathing has calmed, but your body is incredibly tense. I need you to relax, even if it’s just a little. If not for you, then for me. Your arms are really tight.”

I immediately release them.

“That’s not at all what I asked.” She practically tssks me.

I stretch out my arms, feeling the tension of keeping them flexed in one position for so long.

I twist my legs up onto the sofa and stretch out, my muscles straining in protest as I take her with me. “I don’t trust myself right now.”

I’m not lying. But I know I won’t hurt her and I’ll sure as fuck never let another person hurt her again either. Keeping her close means I won’t lose my mind, go apeshit, and make a liar of myself.

She rolls to her side between the back of the sofa and me, tucking in and stretching her arm across my stomach. She’s gone from zero to sixty as far as touching me. I can’t say I don’t love it.

Days ago, she wouldn’t call me on my shit. She was shy, hesitant, and scared. Now, she’s laughing and smiling, although not at this exact moment. She’s comfortable naked and tells me what she wants me to do to her body. She touches me and initiates.

Her ring catches the light as she rubs my chest. How in the world did Anni Garver, my best friend’s little sister, become the sultry woman in my arms? What a crazy few days.

“Well, I do.”

“You do what? I kind of got lost in my own head and don’t know what we’re talking about.”

“I trust you right now. And I need you to give me the same.”

I exhale all the air in my lungs and draw in another breath.

“I can do that. I can’t think about what he said to you or how he spoke to you without wanting to peel the skin from his body and make him watch as I do. I’ll never get over what he said to you, what he’s done to you.”

“You will. Remember the happy scales? I want you to have the same.”

I use the hand not tucked under her body to draw her hand to my mouth. I kiss her palm and then the knuckle above her rings before placing her hand on my chest and covering it with mine.

I hold my wife until her body goes heavy in my arms and her breathing is audible. I could get used to her in my life, in my arms, in my heart.