Hell on Heels(54)

Throwing the deadbolt back, I yanked my front door open, prepared to verbally eviscerate whoever was on the other side.

“Jesus Christ,” I growled. “Of course it’s you. Why wouldn’t it be you?” I said sarcastically.

He looked over my head into the apartment, searching, but when he came up empty-handed, he turned his sights back to me. “Shouldn’t give your access code to strangers then, babe.”

I banged my head against the door dramatically. “Go away, Maverick.”

I started to shut the door, but he slammed his boot into the doorway.

“You look like shit.” He shook his head and pushed his way past me into the apartment.

Turning to look at him crowding my entryway, I rolled my eyes. “Gee, thanks.”

“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

That was Maverick.

I hadn’t heard from him in weeks, and yet, he stood, arms crossed over his chest in my hallway like he belonged there.

“I’m sick,” I lied, motioning with my arm for him to leave.

He glared.

In two strides, he closed the distance between us, and my pulse raced.

He smiled.

Then he reached over my head and slammed the door shut behind me.

“Not leavin’,” he stated, like it was the end all, be all of statements.

Then he left me growling in my entryway, looking like a slob, as he walked into my living room.

I stared after him.

“It looks like a bomb dropped in here.”

Rolling my eyes, I stomped down the hall to see him staring at my coffee table like it was on fire.

“You don’t like it?” I huffed. “You know where the door is. I didn’t invite you in.”

He shook his head.

“That’s seriously gross, babe.”

I followed his eyesight.

My coffee table was piled high with takeout containers, tissues from my sobbing, probably an entire case of empty Diet Coke cans, and at least one 7-Eleven’s worth of candy wrappers.

It wasn’t that bad.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, fed up and ready for him to go so I could get back to succumbing to my misery.

He walked into the kitchen and bent his hulking frame over as he started to rummage through cupboards.

“I called your office,” he said from under my sink. “That guy said you’d taken the week off.”

I could here the sounds of things being moved around.

“So?” I spat half-heartedly. I was distracted by his odd behaviour. “What the hell are you doing in my kitchen?”

“I’m looking for garbage bags.”

My already barely there patience was running thinner by each passing second.

“Maverick, what are you—”

I was cut off when he stood up. “Found one.”

Then he moved from my kitchen back into the living room, making the vaulted ceilings seem shorter.

I waited for him to answer me.

He didn’t. He just started to pick up things and throw them in the trash.

The thin line holding my temper in check snapped.

“Maverick!” I screamed, smacking the bag out of his hands. “What the f*ck are you doing here?”

He glared at me.

“He said you were sick.” His voice was low, and the flame in my chest flickered when he spoke. “I called, you didn’t answer. I was worried about you.”

“Bullshit.” I rolled my eyes.

He prowled towards me; standing so close, I had to look up just to see him.

“You don’t look sick.” He assessed me. “But you do look like shit.”

I scoffed. “My ego thanks you.”

“So why aren’t you at work?” His eyes bore into me. “And why do you look like you were backed over by a semi truck?”

I started to pull back, but his hand gripped the back of my neck.

My eyes closed.

“There is a sadness in me, brutal and unparalleled,” I started to speak, and he pulled me face first into his chest. “It strikes at will, taking down others with reckless abandon.” I wrapped my arms around his middle. “If I were you, I’d walk away now.”

His hand fisted into the back of my hair, yanking my head backwards.

“I’ve got thick skin.” He looked down at me. “It won’t bleed against your broken pieces.”

The tears at bay came rolling in like the tide.

“Okay.”

“Good,” Maverick whispered. “Your dark place or mine, Princess?”

I closed my eyes.

“Mine,” I whispered back.

His hands moved under my ass, and when he lifted me, I wrapped my arms and legs around him.

Maverick carried us to the couch and sat down with me still straddling his lap.

He pulled my hair away from my face, holding it in one hand like a ponytail so I was forced to look at him, not bury my face in his neck.

“Show me your dark place, Princess.”

I closed my eyes, steadying a breath, and then opened them.

“I found him, you know,” I whispered. “Henry, his body… It was me.”

Maverick watched me with his black eyes.

Not in the way people gawked at tragedy, unable to tear their eyes from a train wreck.