Beyond What is Given(16)

“Why do you go home so often?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me. “Will wasn’t the first person to say something about it.”

He turned, hand on his doorknob. “What’s the pool up to?” He countered with that half smirk that was sexy as hell. Oh, so inconvenient.

“No pool, just wondering.”

He studied me for a moment, making me wait so long that I figured he was going to blow me off. The intensity he wore so easily was exhausting to be around, draining me mentally because I couldn’t stop wondering what he was thinking.

“Everyone is accountable for something, Samantha. Me included.”

He shut the door on me and the topic.



The sirens woke me, piercing through the haze of sleep better than any latte could have. My legs didn’t get the we’re awake memo and buckled under me as I stumbled from the bed.

The clock flashed 1:37 a.m. Wednesday morning. Wait. Thursday morning. Whatever. With the late shifts I’d been pulling at the gym for almost a week now, I’d only been asleep an hour.

“What the hell?” I called out, peeking between the mini blinds. A few neighbors stood on their porches, all wrapped in robes or pajamas.

“Grayson?” I yelled, tripping into the hallway. His door was open, the bed as messy as I figured I’d ever see it, but he wasn’t in it.

I raced down the stairs, shouting “Guys?” before I remembered that Jagger and Josh were out of town for a few days on a detail. Holy shit, that siren was loud. Like being bombed at Pearl Harbor loud, or tornado in Kansas loud. Shit. Tornado.

There was no way. Right? We were in southeast Alabama, not the Midwest. Did we have a shelter? That close call while we were stationed at Fort Leavenworth was bad enough, but we’d had a shelter.

I adjusted the girls inside my shelf-bra, those things never were enough support, and then swung open the front door. Humidity, thick and heavy, hit me in the face, almost as if I could drink the air. Wind gusted, whipping branches of the lilac tree against the porch railing.

The siren blasted from the electric post four houses down. “What’s going on?” I yelled toward our neighbors.

“Tornado warning,” Grayson answered from behind me, his voice low and raspy from sleep. He reached around me, showing me his cell phone alert.

Tornado Warning, Coffee County, AL until 3:30 a.m. Seek shelter immediately.

“Where are we? Kansas? This is so not right.” A knot formed in my stomach. There were very few things that scared me, but tornadoes were on that list. They made me small, insignificant, and powerless to my own fate. I’d had enough of that lately, thank you very much.

“’Tis the season, and warning means they’re not kidding. One’s been spotted in Elba, not far from here. Now get inside, get some clothes on, and meet me in the bathroom.” He pulled me back gently by my elbows until we were inside, and then shut the door.

“But we’re in the south, and not like…Tennessee south. Like Deep South.” I turned around, my hand brushing the skin of his chest…his bare chest, and damn, but he was warm, and cut, and smelled better than chocolate. His hair was sleep-mussed, but his face was still set in stern lines. Did he even relax when he slept?

“Yeah, and you live in a town where a tornado destroyed the high school and killed some of those teenagers a decade ago, so get your ass in the bathroom. The weather doesn’t care if we’re in Oklahoma or Oz.”

“Okay.” All thoughts of naked Grayson fled as I bolted up the stairs to my bedroom.

“And put on some clothes!” he called out.

I threw a sweatshirt over my head, unplugged my phone from its charger, grabbed my iPad, and skipped back down the stairs to the bathroom. “Grayson?”

“The little bathroom.”

I moved quickly down the hall to the powder room, where I found him pulling a shirt over his head. His sweatpants hung low enough on his hips to see that V of his muscles that was probably illegal in a dozen states…or should have been. Those hours he spent every day at the gym seriously carved the guy. “Being invited to the bathroom by a guy is definitely a first.”

He raised an eyebrow before he shook his head. “No windows in here, and it backs up to the kitchen, so it’s the safest place to wait it out.” His eyes glanced down at my very bare legs. “You and I have different definitions of clothes.”

“Not the time, Grayson.”

“Right. Stay here.” He left.

“So, we’ll hang out in the bathroom for”—I checked my phone—“another couple hours. Good call,” I muttered to myself. The siren stopped, but if it was like Kansas, on a timer, it would be back while we were still under warning. I set the iPad on the counter and cued up the weather app. We were entirely surrounded by red on the Doppler. The knot in my stomach tightened.

Grayson walked back in, his arms full of his comforter, a couple bottles of water, and my shoes. “Just in case,” he said, dropping them to the floor.

The bathroom wasn’t big to start with, but with Grayson closing the door behind him, well, it may as well have been a porta-potty for how small it felt. He sat on the floor and leaned his head against the wall, closing his eyes. Where was I supposed to sit? On the toilet? Because that wouldn’t have been awkward or anything. Grayson occupied almost every spare inch of space in the room.