Rest & Trust (28 page)

When he came into the kitchen, the house was dark, quiet. There was a small stack of dirty dishes by the sink. Sherlock paused in the act of taking off his kutte and stared at that for a second.

Even with her arms stitched up, Sadie didn’t leave dirty dishes out. Not a single plate, not a fork. She thought it was gross.

“Sadie?”

Feeling a kind of worry that was becoming all too familiar, Sherlock went through the dark house, hoping for the best and trying to prepare himself for something else. His hands ached, and he flexed them, trying not to let them clench into fists.

He found her lying in bed, curled on her side. When he came into the room, she turned her head. He let the tension out of his body in a breath and went to sit next to her. “Hey, little outlaw. You okay?”

“Hey. Yeah. Just tired.”

He’d only been gone a few hours, and she’d been fine when he’d left. Herself. She hadn’t really needed him to hover; it was more that he’d needed to hover.

“Rough day?”

She sat up and put on a big, bright, completely false smile. “I kind of got fired today.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Guess I’ve flaked out a little bit too much lately. I’m officially on a ‘leave of absence’ until the kiddie porn case is over, but yeah. Fired.”

“Damn. I’m sorry.” He put his hand on her thigh and gave it a squeeze—checking as he did so for any new damage. He didn’t see any. She’d experienced a major setback and hadn’t cut. That seemed like a good sign. Or maybe it was just that she didn’t have that horrible box with her here at this house.

“Yeah. Oh well, I guess.” Looking down, she frowned and put her hand over his. “What happened? You’re hurt.”

He thought about ducking the question, but it wasn’t one he needed to duck, and he had to be straight with her where he could. “I took Muse and Demon and paid a visit to your buddy Gage.”

She searched his face for a long time. Her own was nearly expressionless; he’d expected something else. Shock, maybe. Anger.

When she finally spoke, she asked, “Did you kill him?”

“No. He’s probably in the hospital right now, but we left him breathing. He’ll never come near you again, though, I guarantee that.”

“Will it get you into trouble?”

Her interest in the consequences for him gave him heart. “Absolutely not. He knows he can’t talk.” He took a breath and caught her eyes again. “I
have
killed, Sadie. I think you should know that. But only when I had to, and nobody innocent.”

She nodded. “I figured.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. I’m not naïve about everything. I did some research. I didn’t figure the Horde were the only outlaws in history who didn’t do outlaw things.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“That’s a strange question. Does it bother me that you’ve killed people? Is ‘no’ a possible answer to that? Sure, it bothers me. If you say you had to, though, then I believe you.”

“Are you sure? I have your trust?” He thought about the way she’d torn herself up—literally—for shooting at Taryn, how horrified she’d been that she’d felt that urge and acted on it. But then, what she’d done to herself that night had been about so much more than pulling the trigger.

“It’s not really my trust in you that gets shaky. It’s my trust in myself. Sometimes I just feel like everything’s spinning out of control.” She laughed and looked down, at their still-joined hands. “Pretty sad, since I’m not exactly in charge of anything important. Just my little life. Not doing such a bang-up job with it lately.”

“That’s bullshit, sweetheart. You know, I need you to meet my brother. He’s a fucking mess, with nowhere near the reason to be that you have. He’s washed out of rehab a bunch of times. Doesn’t even make it a week. You, though, you kept your life going when you were using, and you’ve kept clean since you stopped.”

“Yeah, but…” she gave her arms a significant look.

“I know. You’ve got work to do still. But you’ve been carrying too much on your own skinny little shoulders. You don’t have to do that anymore. There’s lots of room on mine.” He cupped her cheek. “Sadie, I want you to move in here. Officially. Completely. It’s time. Let me take care of you.”

With a long, slow, heavy sigh, she scanned his face again, her eyes moving back and forth. “Why, Sherlock? What does being with me do for you? I’m a disaster.”

This was the moment, he realized—the point at which what they had would solidify or break apart. It all hinged on whether his answer was enough to make her see.

“I love that you need me. I need it. But I’ve told you that already, more than once. So I’ll raise it: I’ve never known another woman who likes the things I like, who understands the things I do, who can share that part of my life. One of my favorite things we do is game together. Gaming has always been a solitary thing I did with these disembodied voices of other players in my head, people I’ll never know, who call me ‘Ben’ because that’s the name of the toon I’m playing. Playing with you is better. I love that you know that part of me.

“It’s more than that. The club has been changing these past few years. Guys are pairing up, settling down, making families. I wasn’t part of that, and I’ve been getting more isolated from the family part of the club—and that’s the thing that makes us stick. I hardly noticed. But then you met everybody, and you know them, and you’re making relationships of your own, and I’m part of something in my own club that I wasn’t before. I thought I was okay with the way my life was segmented into boxes. Until I met you. You put all my parts together.”

Her beautiful mouth quivered, and he laid his finger on it. “
That’s
why, little outlaw. You make me whole.”

“Fuck a duck,” she breathed, her lips moving against his finger. “I love you so much.”

“You’re moving in, then?” he chuckled.

She nodded. “Oh, yeah.”

“Good girl.” He leaned in and claimed a kiss.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“What are you doing?!”

Sherlock stopped and cocked his eyebrow at Sadie. “I’m packing. Does it look confusing?”

She snatched the throw pillow out of his hand. “That’s a kitchen box. This is a living room pillow.”

“You live in one room, sweetheart.”

“Not anymore, I don’t. Only kitchen things in the kitchen box.”

“That pillow fills this box perfectly—and keeps the dishes safe. Bonus efficiency.”

“Nope. Wrong room. Use dish towels instead.” Matter settled, Sadie turned and crossed the room to her empty bookcases, where she’d been sealing a box of books and games when she’d watched Sherlock come over and grab that pillow.

She sidestepped Fargo and Keanu, who were carrying the chest from her bathroom. They met Connor coming into the apartment and did the dance people did when they were trying to fill the same space.

It had taken several weeks to work everything out. Sadie had had trouble with the thought of selling her place, and she’d finally decided to rent it out instead. The building association wanted to get up in her business about that, but they’d eventually come to terms. So now, in October, she was officially giving up her own private place and moving in with Sherlock. She’d really been living with him since August, but as of this weekend, it was official.

She set the throw pillow back with its mates. Then she crouched down and wrote ‘LR: BOOKS/GAMES’ on the top of the box she’d just sealed, set the Sharpie aside, and slid her hands under it.

“No.” Sherlock’s voice and its demanding tone carried emphatically from the kitchen. She looked up to see him staring at her, shaking his head.

“It’s not that heavy.”

“No.” He came around the counter and headed her way. “There are six men here. You don’t need to carry a single fucking box. Find something to pack. Demon got that beaded light thing down in the bathroom—I’m sure you can occupy yourself wrapping that up.” He held his hand out to her. “Up you go. Step away from the box.”

She took his hand and let him pull her up. “Geez,
Dad
.”

He grinned and patted her belly. “Yep.” Then he hooked his arm around her and drew her close. Sadie leaned in, resting against his body. He was so much bigger than she was that she always felt enveloped by his embrace.

“Get a room,” Muse grumbled, but when Sadie caught his eye, he winked.

Sherlock kissed the top of her head and set her back with a smile. “Okay. Let’s get this done.” He patted her belly again and went back to the kitchen.

Whether it was a dumb idea or not, she was pregnant. Once she saw the test result,
that
was when it really hit her that having a baby while she was a fucking calamity of a human being might not have been her most intelligent decision ever. But Sherlock wanted it so much, he was so happy, so devoted, so protective, so perfectly loving, that she couldn’t manage to really freak out about it.

It was kind of cool, too, to be pregnant when other women she knew were. Faith was due in April, only a few weeks before she was, and Juliana’s little girl was due in December. Sadie had taken to studying all the Horde mothers very closely. And she’d started babysitting Ezra. Just a couple of afternoons a week; Bibi had him the rest of the time. She liked the practice, and she liked the baby. It gave her some little confidence that maybe she could be okay as a mom.

At six months old, Ezra had gotten through the colic stage. He was sitting up and starting to play with toys and people. He loved to watch the other club kids. All the Horde had been together at Hoosier and Bibi’s house for a Sunday dinner the first time he’d laughed. Sid had collapsed into sobs at the sound.

Sid was what scared Sadie most of all about having a baby. She was an emotional yo-yo, and she always seemed tired and stressed. From what Sadie could tell from the way the women talked, Sid had been pretty calm and cool before Ezra.

Sadie was starting out a wreck. If she had trouble like Sid was having trouble…well, then, good thing she hadn’t let Sherlock throw away her box.

That had been their worst fight so far. A real one. He could not understand why she needed that box; he could not understand how having it made it
less
likely that she’d self-harm, not more. She’d fought him harder than she ever had before, because that was a fight she’d needed to win, reasonable or not.

He’d hated giving in; she’d seen in his eyes that he thought he was letting her down by giving up that fight. But he was wrong. Until she could give the box up herself, she needed it. Him forcing the point would only make her need it more.

She hadn’t needed it since that night she’d carved up her arms, though. Barely a twitch of that need since.

And God, the mess she’d made of herself. She didn’t know why she’d broken a habit of years—a rule she’d held sacred—and marked herself in a way so much harder to hide. Not impossible, but not easy during an inland SoCal summer. Breaking that habit, that rule, felt like a bottoming-out of some kind.

And it gave Sadie hope. Maybe that was her next meltdown, like the day she’d lost it at work and ended up in rehab. Maybe cutting her arms so badly was the same, the moment when she had nowhere to go but up, away from the need.

Fix one reckless behavior at a time. Okay, then. She wasn’t ready to give up her box yet, but she could envision a day when she might. Maybe she wouldn’t even need it when the baby came.

That would be cool.

~oOo~

Sherlock got quiet and cross whenever he saw his family. This was the third time he’d brought Sadie to the little house hidden behind the enormous manzanita hedges, and he always got quiet, his brows always drew together.

He’d told her that his family was ‘shit,’ and he hadn’t been enthusiastic about her meeting them, especially after meeting her father had gone so poorly.

Sadie’s dad had been obviously appalled at Sherlock’s mere appearance. He’d tried to be a gentleman and cover, but the damage had been done. Afterward, he’d called her to provide a list—she thought he’d literally made a list; it had sounded like he was reading to her—of all the reasons she could do better. His age. The piercings and tattoos. Even his name. Hell, even his truck, as in, ‘I’d never have expected you to be interested in someone who would drive a pickup truck.’

Her father still didn’t know that he was a biker, much less one of the Horde. Or that she was pregnant. That was a list for another day.

Her family was ‘shit,’ too. She loved her father, but nothing about them had really been functional since she was nine.

As much as he didn’t like to go home, Sherlock also obviously loved his mom. And Sadie liked her. Patty Holmes was a sweet, sad woman. For whatever reason, though, Sadie had had a more middle-class picture in her head than the reality proved to be. She’d been almost as shocked by Sherlock’s family as her father had been shocked by the man himself.

The neighborhood was tattered around the edges—lots of yards with more weeds than grass, or more dirt than weeds, with broken toys left where they’d been dropped. Cars on blocks in driveways. The Holmes house was nicer, though. Not a better house, just better cared for. Sadie knew Sherlock was responsible for that.

Patty herself spent most of her life inside, usually sitting in her recliner in front of the television. She was a really big woman, with a lot of health issues, and when she got up and moved around, she looked miserably uncomfortable. None of that mattered, of course, in terms of how good a person she was, but Sadie couldn’t help picking up a little of Sherlock’s depressed vibe. As friendly as Patty was, and as welcoming and pleased that her ‘baby boy’ had found love—and how awesome it was that he’d never brought a woman home before!—this wasn’t a happy house, and Patty wasn’t a happy woman.

Sadie suspected that no small part of the gloom was due to Sherlock’s older brother, Thomas. She stopped short of blaming him for it—she was too experienced in addiction to assign blame to a man so obviously lost in the world—but Thomas was the opposite of high-functioning. The man could barely sit still for the duration of a meal; he could barely maintain his side of the most casual conversation. And he looked half-decomposed already.

Meth addiction was notorious for the ravages it wrought on the human body, and Thomas had been addicted for a very long time. When Sadie first laid eyes on him, she’d almost cried. Even in rehab, she’d never seen anyone so far gone. But then, her father had sent her to a swanky rehab center in the mountains. Meth wasn’t really the drug of the well-heeled.

Thomas was why Sherlock and Sadie were here today. They were ostensibly here to borrow some gardening tools, and that was true; Sadie wanted flowers in Sherlock’s—their—boring back yard, and he only had a mower and a hedge-trimmer. But they had another reason for coming today, too.

Sadie was nervous. She’d never done anything like this before.

Sherlock still hadn’t moved. They were in his truck; he wouldn’t let her ride on his bike while she was pregnant. He was staring at the GMC logo in the middle of the steering wheel.

She reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Are we going in?”

“Yeah. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“I know. I want to. Maybe it’ll help. I want to try.”

With a sigh and a nod, Sherlock got out of the truck, and Sadie followed suit, jumping off the running board to the ground with a little hop.

He was waiting for her at the front fender. As he took her hand, he said, “I wish—”

She cut him off. “You’re not lifting me out of your monster truck until I’m at waddle weight. I’m not jostling the little peanut in my gut by jumping a foot down. There’s a limit, Sherlock. I’m a disaster, not an invalid.”

Laughing, he kissed her cheek. “You love me like this.”

She grinned and pushed him away. “Do not. Shut up.”

~oOo~

They talked to Patty first and told her what they’d arranged. Sherlock didn’t want to surprise or upset her. When Patty agreed, then Sadie went, alone, back to Thomas’s room.

She knocked on the door. When he answered and saw her, he smiled. If he could kick the meth, he really, really needed dental work. First thing.

“Hi, Sadie Bug!” People loved to give her nicknames. Like, everyone—all the men she knew, anyway. Even ‘Sadie’ was a nickname. She didn’t understand it, but it rarely bothered her.

“Hi, Thomas. You mind a visitor?”

He looked surprised, and a little worried. “Tim around?”

“Yeah. He’s out talking to your mom.”

“He’s okay with you hanging out with me?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t he be?”

Thomas shrugged. “I don’t know.” He looked down the hall. “I’m not his favorite person. I’m just surprised he’d trust me with you.”

“Are you thinking about doing anything untrustworthy?” She smiled and made it a joke.

“No, ma’am. Well, sure, then. Come on in.”

He opened the door all the way and ushered her in with a grand bow and sweep of his hand. “Sorry about the mess.”

Yes, indeed. Ugh. So unbelievably gross. Sherlock was nowhere near this disgusting.

“No problem. Sherlock’s a slob, too.”

He knocked a mountain of garbage off an old armchair. Sadie didn’t feel like she could decline his invitation to sit, but she perched just on the very edge, with as little of her ass on the seat as she could manage without falling on the even grosser floor.

“So! What brings you to my neck of the woods? Are you doin’ okay?”