Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2)(109)

“I know, baby, didn’t I just say that?” I replied fake sweetly.

“Jesus Christ!” he exploded. “It’s your goddamn shoes.”

I stood unmoving, staring at him.

“And it’s not a big fucking deal,” he shared.

“Then why did you just shout at me?”

“Because you’re right, I’m a dick.”

But looking at the expression now on his face, unease mixed with guilt, it hit me like a shot.

I need to take care of you.

He had to navigate my shoes, my clothes, my runaway makeup.

I need to take care of you.

He piled my mail, vacuumed, chilled out and watched TV I wasn’t interested in so I could work.

Always treated me with almost excruciating care.

Oh my God.

This was excruciating care.

Core came to me, took my hands in both of his and dropped his forehead to mine.

“We’re good, baby, all right?” he placated me. “I’m good. It’s all good. It sucks today went off the rails, but we’ll chill and go back out tomorrow.”

“I’ll put my shoes away,” I said to him.

He squeezed my hands and lifted his head. “Promise. It’s okay.”

“You’re allowed to find me annoying, Core. I’m actually not perfect.”

He gave me a crooked smile. “Damned close to it.”

Oh God, I loved this man.

But this was not okay. This was not the way forward.

This was the way to head right to an eventual end.

And it was something deeper for Core that I had to help him let go.

I squeezed his hands and didn’t stop squeezing. “I need to know if I do something that bothers you.”

“You don’t,” he said swiftly.

I pulled our hands between us and pressed them to his chest.

“Stop this,” I whispered.

“Stop what?” he asked.

I looked around then back at him. “Are you neat?”

“What?”

“Do you run the cordless every day?”

“Nanook sheds.”

I tried to remember before I moved in officially, and yes, there was shedding. It wasn’t out of control, but it wasn’t neat as a pin every day.

And he’d throw his phone and keys on the kitchen island. Maybe not every time, say, when they were in his pockets, or he was home in order to stay home and he didn’t leave them lying around.

But it happened.

“Core,” I called.

“Right here,” he said.

“Everything doesn’t have to be perfect for me.”

“You got nice clothes. You don’t need dog hair on your clothes.”

I let his hands go and framed his face.

He put his hands on my hips.

But he appeared uncomfortable.

“You know I’m in love with you,” I said gently.

Another crooked grin, his fingers dug into my flesh, and he replied, “Yeah.”

“And I agreed to you taking care of me, but do you understand I need to take care of you too?”

“Sure.”

He said it, but his expression said something else.

“I mean that, Core. Say, I leave my shoes out and you trip on them, and it ticks you off, you need to tell me.”

“It isn’t that big of a deal.”

“I know when things don’t seem like that big of a deal, until they happen over and over again, and the person who’s supposed to love you constantly does little things that lack the most common of courtesy, and it doesn’t feel very good. Do the shoes bug you?”

He tried to pass it off by joking, “I’m getting used to dodging them.”

They bugged him.

“I’ll make a point to put them away. And clear my basin when I’m done. But I can’t guess at stuff that might bother you. You have to tell me.”

“Babe, this is—”

I pressed in with my hands as well as my body.

“No, Core, I need you to tell me. And if you want to vacuum Nanook’s fur every day, I’m not going to stop you. But I don’t need that. My clothes will be fine and that’s why we have lint rollers.”

He opened his mouth, but said nothing, though his brows slammed down over his eyes, and he twisted toward the door because someone was hammering on it.

Loudly.

“Stay right there,” he growled, snapped his fingers, pointed at the floor by my feet, and Nanook came right to me and sat in front of me.

I leaned to the left so I could see around the wall that made the small foyer at the front door and felt my body jolt with shock at what I saw when Core opened it and demanded, “What’s your fucking problem?”

“Nice,” my dad spat, giving Core a derisive up and down. “Jesus Christ, look at you.”

He then, in pure Dad style, being a man Core had never met, tried to bowl Core over at Core’s own front door. How he thought he’d manage that, I did not know, and unsurprisingly, it didn’t go well for him.

Core’s arm shot up to his side, Dad ran into it and fell back like he’d run into a tree.

It would have been funny if I wasn’t outrageously pissed he was there at all.

First Kiki.