Ghost Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 3) (25 page)

STANDING IN LONDON’S
house, I’d never felt quite so big, awkward, and clunky. Everything in her space was neat and tidy, with plenty of room between every piece of furniture to allow her to move in her wheelchair with ease. The halls and doorways were wider than normal, too. This was a house clearly designed with accessibility in mind.

Being here should have left me feeling like I had enough space to move around, for once, but it did the opposite instead—I felt like I was taking up too much of London’s ability to move freely, and everywhere I stood, I would be blocking her.

“You planning to stick around long enough for us to talk?” she drawled after we’d been inside for a few moments—long enough for her to get a couple of bottles of water from the kitchen and set them on the coffee table. “I thought that was why you wanted to bring me home. Have a seat. Get comfortable.” She shifted from her chair onto the couch and patted the seat next to her.

No chance I’d be able to relax being that close to her. Not unless I could drag her up against me and bury my nose in the citrus-vanilla scent of her hair. I’d caught a couple of whiffs of it in the car, and the reminder had taken me back to the first day she’d been at my house.

The longer she’d stayed, the less I’d been able to make out the scents of her shampoos and soaps and whatnot.

But now they were all back full force, doing a number on my already frayed nerves.

I sat in the armchair across from her instead of where she’d indicated, stretching my legs in front of me. Her furniture was too small for a man my size. It felt almost delicate.

“So you were hiding scars under all that facial hair, hmm?” Her gaze flitted over my face, taking in every part of me. “Not a surprise. But they’re not that bad, you know.”

Subconsciously, I ran a hand over my jaw, feeling where the skin bubbled up. They weren’t as bold and purplish as they used to be. These days, they were more of a soft pink, almost white in places. I hadn’t seen them in years, though, because of all the facial hair covering them. “Not too pretty, either.”

She chuckled. “You’re not supposed to be pretty. You’re a hockey player. I can’t think of a guy who doesn’t have at least a few scars from sticks and skate blades and surgeries. Most have missing teeth, too, but you seem to have at least most of those. It’s not that bad. Besides, my brother always told me that chicks dig scars.”

I couldn’t stop the grin from curling up the corners of my lips. “You like my scars?”

London shrugged, smiling. “I never said
I
like scars.”

“But do you?”

“I like them better than the beard.”

“Why?”

“Because they allow me to see you. All of you. Even the parts you’d rather hide. They let me know who you are.”

“You know who I am.”

“I mean on the inside. That’s not the same as what you show the world. None of us are the same on the inside as what we let everyone else see.”

“You’re different?” I scoffed. “Not just a demanding, mouthy know-it-all?”

London shrugged. “I’m those things, sure. But there’s more to me than that. I also care too much about other people. I have to be that way to protect myself from getting hurt, because so often, they don’t help themselves when they should. Part of it is a barrier. It’s a way to keep myself from getting too close to people who won’t ever make the changes they need to make if they want to live a better life.”

“Like me.”

“I hope you’re not going to be like that,” she said quietly. “Because I really care about you, Dima. I’ve already let you in too far if I’m going to be able to keep myself from getting hurt if you don’t choose to deal with all your stuff.”

“Like Miller.”

“Yes, like Wade,” she said, nodding. “I care too much about him by half, and it kills me that he doesn’t care about himself.”

“He loves you, though.”

“In his own way, yes. But if he can’t ever start to love himself again, how can he really love someone else? How can he let someone else love him if he doesn’t think he deserves to be loved? He hates himself because he came home and his team didn’t.” She leaned forward, and some of her hair escaped from the clip holding it back behind her head. It fell down to frame her face in waves that I wanted to run my fingers through. “What were you thinking when he said you weren’t good enough for me?” she asked after a long moment.

“Thinking he’s right.”

“He’s wrong. He thinks you’re not good enough. He thinks
he’s
not good enough. It’s all wrong. That’s the problem. And I need you to see the truth. I need you to see yourself for what you are.”

“Trying not to hide from you,” I said.

“It’s not me I’m worried about here. I wish you weren’t hiding from yourself.”

I shook my head, not following. “How can I hide from myself? Doesn’t make sense.”

“Exactly. You can’t, but you’ve been trying to. From yourself. From Sergei. From everyone.” London leaned forward and grabbed a bottle of water from the coffee table, then took a sip. “You’re a study in contradictions,” she said after a moment, eyeing me over the top of her bottle. “You tattoo your hand so you won’t forget, but the rest of your body is covered in tattoos meant to hide the evidence of your past. Instead of putting ink on your face, you grew that god-awful beard to hide the most visible remnants of your accident. But then you hold charity events to raise money for other people dealing with the same problems Sergei has, and you sent me money to fix up a car for my needs after my accident.”

My head whipped back like she’d struck me. “I didn’t—”

London held up a hand to stop me before I got too far. “Don’t lie to me about that, Dima. I’ll know, and I can’t stand being lied to.”

“All right.” I wasn’t a good liar anyway, unless it was lying to myself, apparently.

She raised a brow. “So you admit it? You’re the one who sent me the money, aren’t you?”

“Wasn’t just me. Got every guy on the team to donate.”

“But you’re the one who was behind it.” A statement, not a question. “It was your idea, you organized it, you probably hounded the rest of the guys until they forked over some money, and you arranged to get it to me. I’m sure it was the same thing when you dragged half your teammates into participating in the sled hockey game, too. You got it in your head that you had to do it, and then you worked your ass off to make it as good as you could for the fans by getting the other guys involved.”

I tried to shrug it off.

“So what’s all that about?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because you seem to want to be with me, even if you don’t
want
to want me. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why, but I want to be with you, too. But I can’t be with someone who’s trying to hide from the past like it’s going to catch up to him. No, that’s not entirely right. I
can
, but I
won’t
.”

“I shaved,” I said on a frustrated sigh. “What else do you want?”

“I want you to figure out how to let go. It’s not just about the beard and tattoos, and you’re deluding yourself if you think otherwise. It’s about what you’re trying to hide with them. I want you to move on so you’re not constantly trying to make up for your mistakes. That’s no way to live.”

“I don’t know any other way.” Constant reminders of the things I’d done wrong had been the only things holding me together for so long now I didn’t have a clue what it would be like to let any of it go.

“Well…if you want to be with me, you’re going to have to figure it out. You can start tomorrow when you go to the support group.”

“What if I don’t go?” After watching what she’d put Joyce through this afternoon…

London stared at me so hard and for so long I thought she might start in on me that same way. But finally, she said, “You saw what happened with Wade this afternoon.”

I nodded.

“I love him as much as I love my parents, my brother, my nieces and nephews. Wade Miller is part of my family, and I would do
anything
to see him happy. Including push him away because he’s still stuck in the past. Even if it hurts us both, which I promise you…what you witnessed this afternoon ripped us both to shreds, even if you think I’m just a coldhearted bitch. I might not break down and start crying over things, but that doesn’t mean they don’t tear me apart limb from limb on the inside.”

“So I don’t go, you cut me out? That’s what you’re saying?”

“Not exactly, no. But I am saying I won’t sit by and let you keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing all along, hoping things will get better. You’re going to have to make an effort to
make
things better. Or I’ll cut you off.”

When she said the last part, her gaze flickered down to my crotch. Instinctively, I put a hand down to guard my dick and balls.

She snorted in laughter.

“Not funny.”

“The look on your face is.”

“This is why you’re a bitch,” I bit off.

“A bitch you still can’t get out of your mind.”

Damn it if she wasn’t right about that.

“So are you still coming to the support group tomorrow?” London asked.

“Fine. I’ll come. Once.”

“Don’t limit yourself to only coming once until you give it a try. You never know. You might come back again after the first time.” She took another sip from her bottle. “It’d be good for you.”

“Not promising anything yet.”

“Fair enough. But I’m not promising anything, either, until I’ve seen that you’re making an effort.”

“Not anything, meaning what?”

“Meaning no sex. No jumping into bed to get me to shut up. We can hang out like this and get to know each other, but no matter what we might become in the future and regardless of what we’ve had together in the past, right now we’re just feeling each other out.”

“I only like you when you’re naked. You feel good when you’re naked.”

London burst out laughing, but I was being completely serious. When she was naked, I liked the things that came out of her mouth. When we had clothes on, I would typically prefer for her to keep her thoughts to herself. Yes, that meant I was all sorts of sick and twisted, but I’d never argued otherwise.

After a moment, she sobered up and gave me a pitying sort of look. “Well, then.” She shrugged and cocked her head to the side. “I guess you’d better start making an effort to leave the past behind, because I have no intention of getting naked with you again until I’ve seen some change.”

I had to be losing my mind. There wasn’t any other good explanation for the fact that I had every intention of trying to make this work, whatever the fuck
this
turned out to be.

In all the years since my father had died, and in the seven years since the wreck when I’d nearly ended both Sergei’s life and my own, I’d never once seriously considered getting myself into any sort of counseling. But now, with London threatening not to let me get into her pants, it was all I could think about.

Why wasn’t I saying to hell with her and moving on to some other woman? I could get as much sex as I wanted from any number of willing women—that had never been a problem for me, ugly beard or not—so my willingness to go along with what London was insisting upon couldn’t be just about sex.

“Not even oral?” I said, waggling my brows to show I was teasing.

She tossed a throw pillow at me in response, which I caught and threw right back in her direction as soon as it was in my hands. It narrowly missed her head before smacking against the wall behind her. But somehow we both ended up laughing.

I reached for the other bottle of water, careful to keep all my body parts out of her reach, since I still didn’t trust that she wouldn’t try to cut off my dick, and I also didn’t trust that I wouldn’t try to get her naked if I could touch her again.

Her eyes followed my every movement, but we both managed to keep our hands to ourselves.

“Got tested again,” I said, removing the lid from the water before taking a long swallow. “On the road. I’m clean. Thought you should know. Was stupid of me…”

“It was stupid of us both,” she said, not that it made me feel any better.

I knew I was a man-whore. It wasn’t uncommon for me—until lately, at least—to be in a different woman’s bed four or five nights out of the week. Whatever might be said about London’s temperament, I didn’t get the impression she let a lot of men into her bed. I took it as my own responsibility to safeguard not only the women I slept with but myself, and I hadn’t fulfilled my end of the bargain that time.

“I’m fine, too,” she said.

“You’re not—” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word
pregnant
, so I waved my hand through the air, hoping she’d be able to fill in the blank.

It hadn’t been very much time since I’d been an idiot and fucked her without protection, so she might not even know yet. I didn’t have a clue how long it took to find these things out. Somewhere between
instantly
and
nine months
was my best guess.