Lauren Dane - Broken Open

Tuesday didn’t miss the way he referred to the band as we.

“We should have done it for Vaughan,” he muttered.

“Do you want to elaborate?”

“You’re not just going to insist I share?”

She waved a hand. “Who am I to do that? I say things out loud sometimes that I may not mean to. Or maybe I do, but I’m just tossing it out to talk about it later.”

“I suppose with Vaughan it’s more a tossing the idea out there and maybe we can chew over it later.”

“Okay.”

Things settled into an easy silence for a while. Tuesday liked quiet. She grew up in an insanely loud house. Always alive with kids, family and friends. It meant she cherished silence and guarded her life zealously, keeping the number of people who didn’t appreciate the same to a bare minimum.

Except her family. They were loud and crazy and there was no changing that.

“So tell me what you’re thinking right now,” Ezra coaxed in his supersexy voice.

“You really want to know?”

“I’m a grown man, Tuesday. I say what I mean.”

Okay then. Why was that so hot? Why did he make her itchy and sweaty and a little lonely after they parted?

“I was thinking about quiet. About how I like it and how we’d been sharing a nice quiet moment. I wish more people liked it.”

“Quiet amplifies loneliness for some people. Maybe for most people.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being lonely sometimes.”

He hummed. A sound of agreement and approval and it, too, was hot. God, everything about him was hot. How did that even happen? How did one person come with so much on every damned level? What sort of cosmic Scooby Snack was Ezra Hurley anyway?

“I didn’t come to appreciate silence until I was in rehab.”

* * *

TUESDAY SETTLED INTO the seat, looking out the window as he spoke. Ezra had a gut feeling it was because she knew he’d prefer she not watch him as he revealed himself.

He didn’t know why he was sharing this stuff. Other than he liked her. He liked being with her and the slow getting to know one another thing was new. And slightly disconcerting because she was such a stupid choice for him to make and he was going to make it anyway.

“They sent me to this place in the middle of nowhere. Just trees and fresh air and mountains in the distance.” He’d gone straight into their detox unit for the first week. “Rehab is loud. I mean, and look, I know how lucky I was that the place I went was as great as it was. But there’s a lot of crying in rehab.” Puking, too. He hated that part worse than all the crying.

“The rehab was on acres of land and the main house and the outer cabins were fenced off. It was, I remember even now, a three-mile circuit and I’d walk it like four times a day just to go be alone.”

“Did you feel lonely?”

“Yes.” He’d alienated everyone who’d ever mattered to him. He’d fallen so low and had hurt so many people the loneliness had nearly drowned him.

“When it’s quiet you can’t avoid it.” Her words, the tone in her voice, told him she knew this firsthand.

“No. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how much of it is your own fault.” He shook it off. “Anyway, I had to find better ways to process all my shit. What I’d been doing was killing me.” It wasn’t in a group when he’d first been able to say he was a fucking heroin addict out loud. It was under a tree, by himself at that fence line. It had been Ezra who needed to say it. Needed to hear it. Needed to believe it.

Her head moved in a slow nod. “I do think sometimes that it’s when I’m avoiding being alone that I need it most. I can’t lie to myself with the same ease I can to other people.”

“It’s pretty badass to be so—what do you call it? Self-aware?”

“Ha!” She laughed. “My mother is a hippie disguised as an engineer. She made us keep dream journals when we were growing up. She’s really into speaking the truth and shaming the devil.”

“Is it as annoying as I’m imagining it to be or am I seeing it wrong?”

She started to giggle. First a tiny burst and another and one more until she’d erupted into a full-on fit and he couldn’t really do anything but smile.

And want more.

“It’s totally annoying. She’s all woo-woo and hippie-dippy and she’s an engineer, too. So imagine organized woo-woo. Anyway, she still goes once a year to a holistic healing retreat where they do yoga for fun and eat loaves of mung beans or whatever. Makes her happy, which is the point of such things. Essentially, I was raised to face the unpleasant stuff. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

He’d bet her mom was pretty fantastic. “You mentioned your dad is a roofer?”

“You were telling me about rehab and silence. Then it’s my turn.”

He sighed. “I guess I used the chaos and the noise to keep from confronting my shit. And then I had so much noise and nothing but time so I found some silence and it wasn’t until then that I could really do the work.”

“Talk about self-aware.”

“Therapy.”

“Ah. Well.”

“I see you know what I mean.” The moment he said it he wished he could recall the words immediately.

“I’m sorry. I forgot. It was careless.”

She blew out a breath. “It’s all right. I promise. In this case, though, I had therapy when I was a kid. Before I knew Eric even existed. I was nine. There was an accident on a field trip. Our van flipped and ended up in a river.”

Her voice had gone faraway.

“Two of my classmates and one of my teachers died. I’d been motion sick and the window had been open so I wouldn’t throw up. It’s how I got out so fast. Anyway, my parents made me go to a psychologist to deal with the nightmares and the grief counseling stuff. Wow, I’ve made this rather heavy. I’m sorry to be a buzzkill.”

Buzzkill his ass. She was incredible. He made a disapproving sound as he pulled up the drive to the large Victorian Tuesday shared with Natalie. The motion sensor lights flooded the front of the house, exposing pretty front gardens and a porch with furniture that invited you to sit.

He keyed the car off and turned to her. “So we both found our silence it looks like.”

She nodded. A shadow across her features meant he couldn’t see her expression very well. “And owned our loneliness, huh?”

Maybe so, but he didn’t have to be alone right then and neither did she.

He ignored her rhetorical question. “Let me walk you in. Make sure everything is all right.”

“Is this a pity good-night hand squeeze for the widow?”

Holding back an annoyed snarl, he got out and circled to her side, opening the door and helping her to her feet.

He moved in close. “Is that what you want from me, Tuesday? Pity? I can give you pity at a coffee shop in broad daylight. I can send you a book about grief but I’m betting you’ve written one of your own.”

Her gaze flicked up, snagging on his. Defiant. Good. He didn’t want her afraid or cowed; he wanted her to know who he was and want him anyway.

She licked her lips and then shrugged. “I want you to touch me and never make me think you feel sorry for me. People die, Ezra. It happened. It happened when I was nine and it happened four years ago. I’ll die. You’ll die. It’s what we’re born to do. I don’t need your pity. I need your dick.”

He barked a laugh, surprised. She clearly didn’t want to go into it any deeper right then so he let it go because he knew what that felt like. “I think I can manage that.”

“All right then.” She linked her arm through his and walked, her heels dangling from a fingertip as they headed up her front porch steps.

Ezra was sure the house was fine; they had good locks and security. It wasn’t really that he had to walk her in, or that he was concerned for her safety. Sharon Hurley’s sons might have been an unruly handful at school, but they always opened doors for people; they said please, thank you, sir and ma’am; and they walked their dates to the door. Hurleys had a protective streak when it came to people they considered theirs.