“You’re not naked, I’ll still find a way to revive you.”
“Tate, it’s three thirty in the morning, you’ve had a long day. You shouldn’t even make that drive.”
“Baby, you’re naked in my bed, no way I’m not.”
“Tate,” I said to dead air, he was gone.
I took the phone from my ear and stared at it. It slid from my fingers, my head came up and I watched Wood flip it closed.
“Go to bed, Laurie,” he said quietly, his eyes soft on me.
I swallowed. He was really handsome, almost as beautiful as Tate but in a different way. There was an edge to both men but I got the sense that Tate’s was sharper and closer to the surface. Wood’s was just a sharp but it ran deeper.
“Okay,” I replied then I pulled in breath. “You… today… what you did, looking out for me.” I paused. “It was really kind, Wood,” I finished on a whisper.
His body moved slightly toward me but he locked it down and I saw his jaw tense.
Then he repeated, “Go to bed, baby.”
I nodded, thinking exiting his presence immediately was probably a good idea. I walked by him and headed down the hall.
“Lauren,” he called and I stopped and turned back to him. He was leaning into a fist on the kitchen counter and his eyes were on me. “Once we were brothers,” he told me and I held my breath. “I’d do anything for him.”
I didn’t know what this meant and I stayed frozen, staring at him, waiting for him to go on.
When he didn’t, I chanced my guess on a whisper. “You miss him.”
Wood held my eyes and didn’t speak. Then he turned away, walked across the kitchen and hit the light switch. The kitchen went dark but I watched Wood in the light coming from the living room walk back to the couch. He dropped down to lounge there, his eyes on the TV, his face blank.
I had known whatever had happened, the history and bad blood between Tate and Wood was big.
Now I knew it wasn’t big. Whatever it was was colossal.
I wanted to go to him, stretch out beside him, hold him close in my arms and watch television, not in a loverly way, in a way I sensed he needed.
But that would be bad.
So I turned and walked to Tate’s room.
Chapter Seventeen
What Do You See?
My body jolted awake when I heard the loud bang on the window, a sound like the strong, angry crack of knuckles.
“Bitch! Get out here!”
After the shrieking female’s words, the bang came again and I sat up in Tate’s bed, holding the covers to my naked chest, looking toward the window and staring in shock at a ghostly face framed with a mass of dark hair staring into the window.
She lifted a fist and banged again, so hard it was a wonder her hand didn’t go through the glass. My body jumped with the sound.
“I said, get the fuck out here!” she screeched.
The outside light went on and she was illuminated.
I’d never seen her up close and her face was twisted with fury, making her not at all attractive. Even so, I knew when it untwisted, she’d be a knockout.
“Yeah,” she shouted, “I see you, bitch!”
It dawned on me Tate needed curtains. Badly.
“Jesus Christ, Neeta, what the fuck?” I heard Wood’s angry clip.
Neeta’s head twisted to the side, it jolted with surprise and then she glared.
Then she screamed, “Traitor!”
“Get away from Laurie’s goddamned window,” Wood ordered.
“Fuck you!” Neeta shouted back.
I sat there immobile, shocked at what was happening and unable to move considering she could see me and, as Tate had demanded, I was buck naked between his new, high thread count sheets.
“What’s the matter with you?” Wood asked loudly, with anger and frustration clear in his tone. “Honest to God, Neeta, I wanna know.”
“And what’s the matter with you?” she shot back. “Honest to God, Wood, I wanna know,” she mocked, threw out an arm and her knuckles cracked alarmingly against the window also making equally alarming clinking noises because she was wearing rings. “I thought she was yours.”
“Get away from her goddamned window!” Wood shouted.
“Just like you,” she snarled. “got no fuckin’ balls. Never had any fuckin’ balls. Word is, Tate nailed her right under your nose.”
This wasn’t exactly true. This also pissed me off.