Page 43 of Gonzo's Grudge
Catalina’s eyes snapped to her. “Stupid girl.”
“No,” IvaLeigh said, her chin lifting. “Not stupid. I know who he is. And I know he’s the man who will keep me safe. You obviously have history and it must not be good. But you don’t know me and you don’t know what I can and can’t handle.”
The silence that followed was heavier than gunfire.
Catalina blinked, stunned, then scoffed. “You’ll learn.” She shoved past me, storming for the door. “And when you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The door slammed so hard the walls rattled.
I stood there, breathing hard, fists clenched at my sides. The gun sat cold and silent on the dresser.
IvaLeigh slipped from the bed, the sheet wrapped around her, and came to me. Her hand found mine, steady.
“She’s wrong,” she said softly.
My throat was raw. “Baby…”
“She’s wrong,” she repeated, stronger this time, eyes locked to mine. “Because I believe in you. And nothing she says will change that.”
And just like that—despite the ghosts, despite the guilt, despite the storm clawing at the door—I felt that dangerous thing again.
Hope.
The house seemed to hold its breath after the slam. I stared at the door like it might open again and spit another ghost into my kitchen or let another skeleton out of my closet. My pulse still hit a combat cadence. The gun on the dresser looked wrong there—too loud for the quiet that followed, not loud enough for the noise in my head.
IvaLeigh didn’t flinch. She slipped her hand into mine, sheet tucked around her like some kind of armor she made out of thin cotton and nerve. “She’s wrong,” she said again, firmer. “About you. About me.”
I dragged a hand down my face and blew out a breath that tasted like metal. “She’s not wrong about GJ. I am playing house when I should be?—”
“You’re doing both,” she cut in, calm in a way that put weight under my feet. “You’re fighting for him. And you’re allowed to sleep sometimes. Even soldiers sleep.”
“Outlaws don’t,” I said, but it came out tired, not tough.
She tipped her head. “Then I’ll keep watch when you do.”
Something in my chest went soft and dangerous. “Get dressed,” I told her, voice low. “I’m changing locks.”
We moved without bumping into each other. She knotted the sheet into a makeshift dress and slipped into my T-shirt when I tossed it over. I pulled on jeans and the first clean shirt in reach, cleared the gun and re-holstered. Motion settled me.
I put a chair under the front knob anyway. Habit. I texted Shanks three words: Change. The. Locks.
He sent back a thumbs-up and a skull. Subtle as a brick, that one.
IvaLeigh hovered in the doorway to the kitchen. “She had a key?”
“Old one,” I answered. “From a lifetime ago.”
“How many lifetimes ago?” No accusation in it. Just math.
“Enough that I should’ve made sure none of it could walk through my door,” I replied. “That’s on me.”
She nodded once. “Okay.”
I leaned both palms on the counter and looked at the wood because it couldn’t be disappointed in me. It couldn’t swallow me up in the guilt I was feeling.
“I wasn’t good to Cat,” I shared. “Not the way men in houses like your parents’ define it. I was gone a lot. I was angry more. I told myself the Marines came first and made an altar out of that sentence so I didn’t have to look at what I broke when I put everything on it. I strayed. More than once. Then I put the club first. Everything and everyone came before her.”
Silence. Then the soft slide of her bare feet across the floor. Fingers on my forearm, light and warm. “I figured that much just in the way she was broken,” she explained.
