I don’t press, though. Don’t even acknowledge having heard the confession as I clean and spread an antibiotic ointment on the open sores while gently probing the bones beneath. Cullen was bad enough off to be hitting brick walls. What set him off, though? The bar fight? The fight between us? I shove the thought away, but I can’t help noticing how the tension within his coiled muscles eases with my touch.
I bite my lip. “There may be a fracture.”
“There isn’t.” So certain. So damn cocky.
I lift my face to call his bullshit.
“I had it X-rayed,” he says, meeting my gaze. His eyes are more open than I’m used to seeing them. The pain is still there, but it’s a bit softer than before. He’s also sitting up straighter. Strange how I no longer consider that a threat. Still, him maintaining such intense eye contact is making me squirm. I pretend not to feel the sudden flash of heat between my legs.
“What? Why are you staring at me?” I ask, my voice higher pitched than normal.
“Why are you here so late at night, Sky?”
The question takes me by surprise, so I answer with more candor than I probably should. “It’s nice here, and I needed the Wi-Fi.”
A crease appears between his brows. “Your place doesn’t have Wi-Fi? Is it out in the sticks?”
“No. It’s…” It’s a shithole. “I just didn’t realize what time it’d gotten to be.”
He nods as if in acceptance, but the intensity of his gaze never diminishes.
I finish tending the last of the cuts and release his hand, missing the skin contact already. “So, do you attack innocent walls often?” I mean it half in jest, only now realizing I was stretching the tentative trust between us one step too far.
Cullen’s face closes off, the camaraderie we shared vanishing like a mirage. “I need to go.” He stands, giving me a short nod. “Thank you for your assistance.”
My chest tightens. “Cullen…”
“You may use the space as you like, but please keep the lights on the next time you’re here late.” His tone is polite, his gaze no longer open to me. In fact, everything about his features has gone blank. Inscrutable.
Without another word, he turns on his heel and walks silently toward the door, whooshing through before letting it fall closed with an audible clank.
11
Cullen
Cullen stretched his arms over his head, his wrists brushing the thick rails and crossbars of his wrought iron headboard. He opened his eyes and realized a couple of things at once. It was Saturday morning. He’d managed to actually sleep, and not just sleep, but sleep deeply and late, as the sun already shining down on Pikes Peak suggested. Sure enough, the alarm clock confirmed the time. Eight thirty in the morning. Three hours later than Cullen’s usual wake-up call.
Christ.
It was the first good night’s sleep he’d had in days. The longest in months. Ironically, the person who’d made it possible for him to finally rest was also the one who’d set off his recent episode. No, that was unfair. Skylar Reynolds might have lit the match, but she didn’t build the pyre. Cullen’s fucked-up mind did that all by itself. He’d never been fit for human company, and PTSD didn’t help.
Cullen yawned and sat up, the king-size mattress shifting comfortably to adjust to the change. After sleeping on bare ground for years, the bed’s softness was still a small daily jolt.
For a second, he allowed himself to imagine there was a certain strawberry-blonde woman in his bed. Which was a mistake, given the sudden—and rather painful—way his cock hardened. Yes, his body was still ahead of itself. But her pouty lips, the long column of her delicate throat, and her startling blue eyes had that effect on him. Not to mention her breasts. She never exactly flaunted the goddamn things, but they called to him nonetheless. Which reminded him of how twisted up and sideways this woman had him.
Then he recalled Reynolds’s desperate attempt to flee from his car, and his body cooled as if dunked into ice water. Cullen frightened her. Viscerally. Like he frightened his own family. The image of an Afghani woman flashed before him again, the one who yanked her daughter from his arms rather than let him keep the child breathing. He could still hear the fear in her voice. And the worst of it was that the woman wasn’t altogether wrong. That attack had been his fault.
He shook his head. The smart thing to do was to keep his distance from Skylar Reynolds. More to the point, Cullen needed to pull his head out of his ass and get back in the game.
He swung himself out of bed, the movement just enough to make the shrapnel in his shoulder twinge, and took his prazosin. At least he’d kept up with his meds. Normally, Cullen went to sleep and rose at the same times. Then, an hour in his home gym, a shower, a protein shake, and work. The military had drilled a respect for routine into him, and keeping to a rigid schedule made him function better overall. Being thrown off it over these past several days made him feel as if he was crawling out of his goddamn skin.
But it was now eight thirty in the morning, and Cullen would just have to deal with it.
Pulling out his phone, he pulled up Eli’s number. Since it was Saturday, the guys were likely going to make their way to Liam’s club, North Vault.
Vault 7 p.m.? Cullen texted Eli. The result was predictable as hell. His cell rang within seconds.
“So you’re amongst the living again?” his friend spat out, obviously pissed.
“Yeah.”
“You’re a fucking arsehole, you know that?” Eli half yelled into the phone, and Cullen closed his eyes. He did know that. He knew it better than anyone. But he didn’t say anything in response. The silence ticked on for several tense heartbeats before his buddy broke it. “I take it you’re in one piece more or less?”
“Yeah.”
Eli huffed out an exasperated sigh. “See you at seven.”
“Roger,” Cullen replied, but his buddy had already disconnected from the line.
After walking over to his office, Cullen pulled open his laptop. Catherine had made sure the most critical calls had gotten through to him over the past few days but now he needed to catch up. Scanning through his email, he frowned at what he saw. Or, more accurately, what he didn’t see.
“Adrianna,” Cullen barked into the phone as soon as the line connected. “Where is my mortgage bill?”
The woman on the other end of the line huffed. “It’s my mortgage payment, Cullen. And I’ll make it tomorrow. You don’t need to keep paying my bills for me, you know.”
“I’m not paying your bills. I’m paying Bar’s.” Cullen pinched the bridge of his nose. Addie was Bar’s wife and as good a woman as Cullen had ever met. Kind, responsible, strong. But she had trouble accepting help—and when dealing with Bar’s family, she needed the help. Frank Peterson, Bar Peterson’s brother, had launched a full-out assault on collecting all of Bar’s assets before the man’s body even returned from the Middle East. With the prenup Bar’s family had forced him and Addie to sign and Frank Peterson’s unscrupulous tactics, she was left with nothing except the house, but even that only so long as she made the payments. If the place went into foreclosure, Frank would get the proceeds of the sale.