Chapter 13

13

Wyatt

The sound of the house alarm buttons being pushed wakes me from a dead sleep at 4:30.

Someone's breaking in.

I fly out of the bed and land on soft feet, and I don't bother pulling on a shirt, because it's not going to be any protection against an intruder. I hit the bottom of the stairs when the lights flicker on, blinding me.

"Freeze, asshole!" Ellie barks. Something whizzes past me and thuds against the door.

The dark figure next to the alarm panel sighs. "A guy drives all night to answer a distress call, and what does he get? He gets a dildo launched at his face. Nice, Ellie. Real nice."

" Davis ?" she shrieks.

The slender, man-bun-wearing, bearded intruder bends over and grabs the massive purple thing from the floor. It's longer than his tatted-up arm. "Fucking hell, does that even fit? Put your fists down, Wyatt, it's not about her honor. You see the size of this thing?"

Ellie snatches it back, but once she has it, she grabs it by the base with her other hand and wipes the first one on her shirt.

"Go put pants on," I hiss at her.

"It's like a swimsuit, Morgan," she snaps back. "And this isn't mine. It was in the drawer in the guest bedroom."

All three of us momentarily stare at the two-foot-long, six-inch-thick dildo dangling from her fingers. I try not to look at the mangled, leathery scar on her thigh, but my stomach still dips thinking about what she's been through.

"You should mount it," Davis says, nodding to the dildo.

Ellie goes stiff like she's going to beat him with it, and I'm about to slug him when his lips twist in a familiar smirk.

"On Beck's bedroom wall," he finishes.

His dark eyes flit between us. "And you two should be more careful when you're having sex. Looks like you had a threesome with a boxer."

Ellie's eyes bug out.

"We weren't—" I start, yanking my hand away from where it instinctively went to test the tender skin around my eye, but Davis pops a rare full grin and turns to the door to the basement.

"What'd you do to fuck up Frogger? And where's the coffee? If I'm gonna fix this, I need fuel."

"Screen went out, so we pulled the plug to reboot." I jerk my head back at Ellie. " Please go put pants on before Tucker comes down here and sees you walking around like that, because he'll tell his mother and I'll never hear the end of it."

I can deal with the guilt of seeing her scars.

But I really don't want Tucker thinking about women in underwear any younger than hormones finally make him.

"And don't forget my coffee, wench," Davis calls.

"Oh, go cut your hair," she replies good-naturedly with a smile.

She heads to the kitchen, swinging the dildo of indeterminate source, and I'm pretty sure she's going to at least wrap it in a garbage bag, if not take it all the way out to the trash herself.

I follow Davis into the basement. He was the youngest in our group growing up—of the guys, so excluding Ellie—the slowest to warm up to people, and he was the first to want to call it quits on the boy band thing. I don't know exactly what he does for a job now, but I know it involves computers, coding, and the nuclear reactor a couple hours south of here.

"Should've told us you were coming. We would've left the light on."

"Three calls in an hour, and you thought I wouldn't come?"

"Three?"

He smirks again. "I don't know what you told Beck, but he wanted photographic proof that his score's still the highest."

"I kissed Ellie. On video call with him."

"About fucking time, dude."

"Shove it, Remington. Not going there."

He flips on Frogger and whistles low. "You wiped it."

"Can you write a new high score on it?"

He gives me a don't be a dumbass, of course I can look. "Gonna take donuts and coffee. Wouldn't mind pretty company."

I spread my arms. "I'm free until my kid's up."

"How'd Ellie break it?"

"Maybe I did it."

"Dude. If it was your kid, you would've just told Beck. If it was you, you would've just told Beck. If you're calling me to fix it, it was Ellie. Man up and do something about it already."

Easy for him to say.

He has a career—and a bank account—that mean he doesn't move every one to four years unless he wants to. He doesn't have an ex-wife and a son to take care of, and no idea what he's going to do to support them if he has to leave the military next summer because of orders anywhere but Copper Valley. And he doesn't have a clue how ill-prepared I feel to be a good partner to anyone, let alone my best friend's sister.

Help her heal?

Yeah. I'm in.

Anything more than that?

I'm not the man for the job.