Chapter 23: Ben
We finish breakfast and Lilah insists on helping me with the dishes. Something has shifted between us and it’s more than just sex. Lilah opened up a chink in her armor last night and I get the impression that was really big for her. I grew up in a stable home, unless you count my antics, so it’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like to lose one parent only to be willfully abandoned by the other.
Knowing what I know now, I’m not surprised that trust is a difficult thing for her. I meant it when I said she could trust me. She opened herself up and even if it’s just a little crack, I’ll keep showing her, day after day, that this is something special.
When we finish putting the dishes away, I don’t want to let Lilah go but she insists that she has to get ready for work at the bakery. And since I can’t exactly kidnap her and keep her as my sexual hostage, I walk her back home and kiss her at the front door.
"See you tonight," I tell her.
"Are you asking or telling?" she replies.
"Telling," I say with a wink.
"Ok," she says smiling up at me as she stands on her tiptoes to kiss me.
I nearly let her go before noticing something amiss behind her.
"Is the door open?" I ask her.
She turns and presses a hand against the panel, and it swings open freely. I'm positive I heard her shut it behind us when we went to my house this morning. As my mind races with (mostly) rational explanations, an ominous chill creeps up my spine. And even though I know it's probably nothing, I can't let her go inside alone.
I move Lilah behind me and step inside, looking carefully for anything out of the ordinary.
"Wait out here," I say. "I just want to check everything out."
"No way," she says as she follows me inside. "You'll probably just raid my panty drawer."
I can't help myself. I turn and blink at her, completely caught off guard.
I know she's just trying to tease me, but I'm half frustrated at her for making light of a potentially dangerous situation and half in awe of her smart mouth. Her face is pale. She looks scared, but she pushes past me and reaches into the coat closet, producing a wooden baseball bat. She hands it to me and I'm about to thank her before she dives back into the closet, coming out with a metal one. Holy shit, she’s awesome.
"Nice," I tell her appreciatively.
She shrugs but gives me a smug little smile as she waves her finger back and forth between the bats. "Asher and Lukas. There's pepper spray in my purse from Julia."
We walk from room to room, looking behind every door, checking every closet, under the bed and even the attic. Infuriatingly, Lilah refuses to stay behind me, ignoring the fact that I have a foot and a half and 120 pounds of muscle on her.
Like everything else about her, I find her stubbornness adorable. I'm pretty sure she'd take a swing at anyone that threatened me right now, and I would straight up love it.
Lilah scoops up a bored looking Frankie as we pass by her cage and when we don't find anything disturbed or any unwelcome visitors, we both relax. Not completely, but enough that Lilah takes the baseball bats and puts them back in the closet. Her brow is still furrowed, and she jumps when she turns the corner and sees me.
"Are you sure you're ok?" I ask her.
"Yeah, fine," she replies. It's the least convincing thing I've ever heard her say.
"I'm going to stay while you get ready."
"You don't have to do that. I'm ok, really."
"I'm staying," I tell her again. She shrugs, but the little lines between her eyebrows smooth out. I'll do anything to make her feel safe and hanging out at her house for half an hour is no hardship. She pulls on my arm, making me bend down so she can kiss me on the cheek before going to shower and get changed. I look at her bookshelves while I kill time. For someone who doesn't do relationships, she sure has a shitload of romance books.
My mom always had a bunch of the old school ones lying around growing up. My sister liked to find the dirty parts and read them aloud to torture me. I don't know how I'd forgotten that. I smile to myself as I run my fingers along some spines with women in fluffy dresses.
Going down a shelf, I pull out a paperback at random and snicker at the cowboy on the cover. He's shirtless, with a Stetson pulled down low, covering his face. I grab another book and there's a shirtless man wearing glasses in front of a library background. "Stud in the Stacks" is scrawled across the cover. Both books are worn in and I flip to a page that has a scrap of paper sticking out like a bookmark.
My eyes nearly bug out of my head. God damn, that's dirty. I read three more pages before replacing the scrap of paper and closing the book with some solid ideas for the future.
Lilah appears to have her books organized by genre, rather than author. There's an entire shelf dedicated to cowboys and another for a bunch of shirtless nerdy guys. I laugh out loud, not because I'm judging but because this is awesome. I fit both stereotypes.