Page 23 of The Tex Hex (Bitches With Stitches #3)

TEX

“Off the floor, Big Guy,” I say it like a joke, like it doesn’t kill me to see him curled up in a ball, trembling on the bathroom tile. He’s clutching the towel like it’s a lifeline, his face pale with exhaustion. “We’re doing this. Bedroom. Now.”

He scowls but obeys, shuffling like a sulky teenager down the hall. I trail behind, herding him like a stray sheep. He immediately reaches for sweatpants, but I block the drawer with my body, arms crossed over my chest.

“No clothes.”

Mandy’s face pales further. “No clothes? You’re not serious.”

“Try me. All you get are underwear.”

“The fuck for?”

“Exposure therapy. Skin-to-skin cuddling.”

“That’s fucking…” Mandy gapes, searching for the right word. “Idiotic!”

“It is what it is. You don’t have to like it, you just have to lie there and take it.”

I reach into the top drawer and find a gray pair of boxer briefs and toss them to Mandy. He catches them, still looking stupefied, and steps into them.

He drops onto the bed and pulls the comforter up over his head like it’s a shield against everything, me included.

When I don’t move, he peeks out, startled. “You’re really doing this?”

“You bet. Scoot over.” The mattress dips as I lie down beside him and cuddle up to his big body, immediately feeling warmer. He smells like body wash, and I breathe him in deep. Every muscle in my body loosens and relaxes at his familiar scent.

Mandy shivers. Not from cold, though. This is something else. He’s touch-starved and afraid to want it. But he does. I can feel it in the way he tenses and breathes.

“I feel underdressed,” he grumbles.

“Ugh, fine,” I huff, peeling off my shirt and tossing it to the floor. His arms come around me, and I breathe out a contented sigh.

This is the stuff, right here. Just being held by a big, cuddly teddy bear who smells like wintergreen and man. I could get used to this.

Mandy squeezes tighter. “You said skin to skin, but I can’t feel you.”

“You’re absolutely right, and when you peel those covers off your body you glued on like wallpaper, I’ll be able to climb under there with you.”

“Sounds like a threat,” he grumbles.

“It’s a cuddle, not a crime scene.”

We lie like that, awkward and quiet, until f inally , he exhales. His body begins to soften against mine. His hand twitches like he wants to let me under the blanket, but still, he doesn’t lower it.

“Could you just… hold me?” I whisper, shocking even myself.

He raises his head, eyes wide, and then nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”

We shift until I’m tucked around him, his back to my chest, my arm across his middle. My fingers rest just beneath his ribs, where I can feel the subtle tremble in his breathing. I close my eyes and listen to it like it’s music.

“Cuddling is sweet and innocent,” he mutters, “until someone gets a boner.”

I laugh, too loud, and he chuckles with me. The tension splinters.

“Have you ever wanted something so bad it hurts?” he asks softly. “It hurts to want, knowing you can’t have it. And the reasons why you can’t have it? That hurts, too.”

My throat tightens. “Yeah. I know that feeling.”

He’s quiet for a long time, then says, “Why’d you join the Army?”

My pulse kicks. “That’s a hell of a question for a cuddle.”

“I want to know you.”

I think about lying, then I don’t, because I want him to know me, too.

“I didn’t want to join. I hated everything about it. The uniforms, the barking orders, leaving home. But I didn’t have a choice. I got busted for shoplifting and weed. It wasn't my first time, or my second. The judge gave me two options: Prison or Boot Camp.”

Mandy chuckles, but it’s sad. “What would you have done if you hadn’t?”

“Motocross, maybe? I had a sick dirt bike. And I was a hell of a roper. You should’ve seen me on the back of a horse with a lasso in my hand.”

Mandy chuckles, and I can feel his big body rumble. “I'd give anything to see that. I bet you looked hot.”

“Of course I did.” My throat tightens and my mouth goes dry thinking of saying out loud the words he wants to hear.

“Boot camp was hell. They cut the crotch out of my uniform, wrote slurs on my gear. Sabotaged my bunk, my boots. Then they’d help me, make it look like they were protecting me.

Giving me candy bars, cigarettes, covering for me.

I thought maybe they were softening. I thought I could make them like me. ”

“You don’t have to keep going,” he whispers.

“I do.” My voice cracks. “Because if I don’t say it now, I never will.”

He waits quietly, and I don’t miss how his arms tighten around me, like he’s shielding me, or lending me his strength, maybe.

“It didn’t get any better after Boot Camp, when I got to Bragg.

A lot of the same guys followed me there.

They weren’t my friends. They knocked on my door at night.

Sometimes in groups. Sergeant was one of them.

They gave me drugs to keep me compliant.

High. Numb. Eventually, I didn’t even fight it.

I didn’t know how. They—” It hurts to swallow past the lump.

“They took turns, held me down. Laughed. Again and again. It became routine. Just another fact of life. It was a total mind fuck. I’d get off easy on room inspections, grab the sweetest shifts for the motor pool and guard duty.

Pass PT tests without even trying. Like that paid the debt they inflicted on me. ”

Mandy tries to turn towards me, but I tighten my hold to keep him still. I just can’t look at him right now. Or more like, I can’t let him look at me.

“When I got out, I hung around Fayetteville. Bummed around. Slept with guys for money. Not like a—just… had them pay a bill. Buy me food. Put gas in my car.”

He fights my hold and turns to face me then, eyes glassy.

“How did you get clean?”

“Same way I got into this mess. Got busted. The judge gave me rehab. Ninety days. Then Serenity House. Nacho. Brewer. Miles. Those guys saved my life before they even knew me.”

He doesn’t speak, just reaches out and touches my chest. Right over my heart. It damn near breaks me.

“I didn’t stay clean for myself,” I say.

“At first. I did it for them. I didn’t want to lose that house.

That feeling of home. For the first time since leaving Texas, I felt like I belonged somewhere.

I knew if I wanted to stay, I had to be clean.

So I went to the meetings, and I worked my steps, and I did everything Brewer suggested, and somewhere along the line, I began to realize I was doing it for me. I began to matter again.”

He nods slowly. “Have you ever thought about telling them what happened to you?”

“No.” I pause. “Brewer knows. They probably suspect something close to the truth, but… until now, I haven’t been able to say it out loud. And I’m not ready to tell you the rest. Not yet.”

He looks hurt.

“I see the way you look at me, Mandy. Nobody else looks at me like you do. If you knew the whole story, you wouldn’t.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is.”

“I get it,” he says. “Nobody looks at me the way you do. The guys—they care, but it’s different. You see something else most people overlook. I’ve lost so many parts of me, but I don’t feel so lost with you.”

My eyes sting. “You see all the parts of me I keep hidden. And you still look at me like I matter. I would do anything not to lose that. Even if it means keeping pieces of myself hidden from you.”

He cradles my face in his hand.

“I could never see you differently,” he says. “No matter what. You’ve already shown me who you are. And I believe in that man.”

I finally give in to the burning pain in my chest and let myself cry. “I know you believe that because you’re good. But you’re wrong. There will come a day when I show you what I really am. And I’ll lose your respect. Maybe even your friendship.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I was never deployed,” I whisper. “My war was right here.”

He holds me tighter.

“I love you, Mandy.”

He doesn’t say it back. Not yet.

But the way he holds me says enough. For now.

The silence after my confession isn’t empty. It’s full of breath. Of shared pain. Of that tight, aching stillness that only comes when two people have shown each other the raw, bleeding parts of themselves and the world hasn’t ended.

Mandy doesn’t let go.

His arm is still around me, and I can feel the weight of his hand on my back.

His thumb moves, just barely, back and forth over my skin.

A soft, absentminded stroke. The kind of touch you don’t give unless you mean it.

Unless you’re not thinking about it, and somehow, you’re thinking about everything.

“You okay?” he whispers.

No. Yes. I don’t know.

I nod.

Then I do something braver than telling him the truth. I move my hand over his ribs. Just a gentle trace of my fingers along his side. His stomach clenches at the contact—reflex, nerves—but he doesn’t pull away.

So I do it again.

His skin is warm, smooth in some places, rough in others. A story written in flesh.

I realize I’m the first person to touch him like this in years.

I wish he could say the same about me.

“I think about you all the time,” I murmur.

His breath catches. My fingers move higher, gliding over his marbled skin. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just know I want him to feel good in his own body for five fucking seconds. I want him to feel seen and wanted and safe.

When I look up, he’s watching me like he’s waiting for the moment I vanish.

Moving slowly so he can stop me, I bring my face to his, brushing the tip of my nose along his. His eyes close.

“Tex,” he breathes.

I kiss him… Soft… Careful. Just the press of my lips to his, like a promise, or a question.

His mouth answers, tentative at first, but it opens to me. Our hands find each other. Mine runs along the curve of his back, his fingers twist in my hair. It’s not frantic. It’s not lust. It’s just us, finally letting down walls.

And then he flinches. Like I touched a nerve. Or a memory.

He jerks back, eyes wide. “Don’t.”

“I—shit—Mandy, I didn’t mean?—”

“Don’t touch me there.”

He’s breathing fast. Shoulders curled forward.

Like he’s trying to fold in on himself and disappear.

I realize my hand had moved without thinking, down the long, raised stretch of scar tissue along his side.

The place where they harvested grafts from his thigh.

Where the skin is shiny and new, angry and tight.

I sit up, hands off, palms up. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not you,” he says quickly, but he won’t look at me. “It’s me. I just—fuck.”

He shudders and pulls the blanket up to his chin like armor.

“Hey,” I say, as gently as I can. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” His voice cracks. “I wanted to kiss you. I still want to. But my body—sometimes it forgets that I’m not in danger anymore.”

“I get it.”

He glances at me, and I give him a half-smile. “You think you’re the only one who’s flinched during a kiss?”

Mandy exhales slowly. “You ever feel like you’re made of live wires? Like even a kind touch feels like too much?”

“Every fucking day.”

He closes his eyes and nods.

I move just a little closer. Not touching, just near enough that he knows I haven’t fled. “Can I still hold you?”

After a beat of silence, he gives in. “Yeah.”

I lay back down and fold myself around him. No kissing. No wandering hands. Just warmth and skin and breath. The rise and fall of our chests in sync. My cheek against his hair.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he says after a long while.

“Neither did you.”

We lie there in the dark, tangled and trembling, not because we’re weak, but because we’re trying so hard to be brave.