Broken Wings Page 44
“Oh,” I blurted, finding Beck sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter. He was dressed in fitted workout clothes—I tried really hard not to drool over all the muscles on display—while casually sipping a cup of coffee and reading something on a tablet. Beside him, another place had been set with fresh, steaming coffee and a plate of waffles. “I didn’t ... uh...” I awkwardly shifted from foot to foot as he watched me like a predator. “I need to get home, did you see the time?”
A smile teased at the corners of his mouth, but he shook his head and indicated to the seat beside him. “Sit down and eat something. Your clothes are in the guest bathroom.”
There was no room for negotiation in that statement, and I was still too sleepy to even try and argue—despite the fact that my clothes had no reason to be in Beck’s guest bathroom. Mute, I slid onto the stool beside him and took a long gulp of my coffee. It was exactly how I liked it—pitch black.
I was starving, so I didn’t put up a fuss about eating the waffles in front of him. They looked like they’d been prepared by a chef, topped with sliced bananas, fluffy mascarpone, and drizzled with maple syrup. Mouth-watering heaven.
“Jesus Christ,” Beck muttered on a laugh, looking at me from the side of his eye. “If I’d known, I would have fed you waffles sooner.”
“Hmm?” I frowned at him, my mouth full, then blushed hot when I realized I’d been moaning my appreciation of the food. How. Embarrassing. I swallowed, then cleared my throat and took another sip of coffee to cover the awkwardness. The bitterness of my black coffee contrasted perfectly with the sticky sweetness of the waffles, and I needed to bite my lip to keep from making anymore borderline sexual noises over my breakfast.
Beck just snorted a laugh and powered off his tablet. “I’m going to take a shower,” he declared, then eyed me meaningfully. “A cold one. Take your time with that, we’re not expecting Dylan until later but I think I’ll get you started on basics before he gets here.”
“Huh?” I squinted at him in confusion. Maybe I needed more coffee.
Beck shook his head at me. “You forgot? We’re teaching you how to shoot today, Butterfly. It’s time you became a bigger badass than you already are.” With a flirtatious wink that was so not Beck, he departed the kitchen in search of that cold shower he mentioned.
I had totally forgotten Dylan was going to teach me defense and shooting today, and now that Beck had reminded me I was strangely giddy with excitement. Just more evidence that I was a bit fucked in the head, I guessed.
Quick as I could—without wasting it—I finished off my breakfast and stacked the dishes in the sink. I couldn’t see a dishwasher anywhere and wasn’t comfortable enough to go poking around in cupboards looking for one. Besides, I had no doubt the Becketts had staff lurking around waiting for me to leave so they could clean up.
Thankfully, the guest bathroom wasn’t too hard to find. It was back in the direction of the cinema where we’d spent the night.
There was a neat, folded pile of clothes on the vanity and I didn’t pause to look at them until after I’d showered and dried off.
“Huh,” I muttered, picking up the spandex items and inspecting them. At first, my reaction was along the lines of, “where is the rest of it?” and then quickly my mood shifted to more of an evil chuckle. Silly Beck. He’d clearly picked out my outfit—high waisted leggings and a black strappy crop top—thinking he was pissing me off. Instead, I was just going to make his day long and hard. All puns intended.
Once I’d dressed, I tied on the black sneakers that were parked in front of the vanity then admired my reflection. He’d gotten my sizes spot on, but that didn’t even surprise me. Beck had that next level possessive thing going on, and despite the fact that I still had no idea where we stood with each other, his knowledge of my sizes was no shock.
My favourite toothpaste and brush brand also sitting there was a little more disconcerting, but … it was Beck. He noticed everything. Weirdness aside, I was mostly just grateful for clean teeth.
When I was done, for lack of an idea where else to go, I headed back through to the kitchen while weaving my long, unruly hair into two French braids. Thankfully, I had some spare hair ties around my wrist, so I could secure the ends.
“Hey,” I said, coming up behind Beck who was pouring another mug of coffee.
He turned, and his gaze darkened, dragging over me from head to toe before he handed me the beverage. “Come on, trouble,” he growled. “We’re heading to the range.”
The fact that he already knew I needed more than one coffee to function in the morning showed a level of understanding I wasn’t ready to acknowledge. So I just sipped my drink and followed him through the rabbit warren house, wondering what in the hell the range was.
“Oh,” I blurted as Beck led me into a literal gun range. In the basement of his house. What the fuck...? “Right, this makes total sense.”
He flicked a quick look at me, then gestured for me to come closer. From a small table he picked up a highly polished wooden box and held it out to me.
“What’s this?” I asked, curious and excited. My parents had done their best, but money was seriously tight in our household. I barely even got gifts on my birthday, let alone for no good reason.
Beck gave a half shrug. “Just figured you needed something more girly than the guns we use.” He said it casually. Too casually.
Suspicious, I opened the box. Inside was a delicate handgun, its handle a pearly cream enamel with a blue butterfly painted on it. The engraved plate in the box said it was a Smith & Wesson M&P9 Compact 2.0. I knew nothing about guns, maybe less than nothing, but this one was prettier than most I’d seen.
“Sebastian,” I breathed out. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s just a weapon,” he muttered, turning to a locked door and scrolling the combination to open it. Inside was a collection of guns that would put a private security company to shame. It wasn’t just a cupboard, like I’d thought. It was a full walk-in supply room with every variety of gun imaginable mounted on the walls. Or ... that was what it looked like to me, anyway.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, staring at the collection with a slack jaw.
Beck threw a cocky grin over his shoulder at me, but selected a normal looking handgun and several boxes of ammo. I kept peering into the storage room, and he coughed a short laugh.
“You can play with the big guns after you learn some basics,” he told me. With his hand on my lower back, he guided me away from the arsenal and over to the little cubicles set up in front of a long room. Running down the ceiling, tracks were set up to mechanically place targets and return them with a click of a button. Only the best when you’re that stupid rich, I supposed. For the next while, Beck taught me “the basics” as he called them. It was difficult with my fractured arm to hold the gun completely steady, but if I used that hand just as a guide, I managed to figure out a way.
After our discussion in the cinema last night, the training session was strangely ... enjoyable. No trace of the prickish asshole surfaced. He was calm, patient and understanding to the point that I started watching him from the corner of my eye with fears he’d been body snatched.
Dylan arrived early—around the same time Beck actually let me fire real bullets from my very own gun. The look on his face as he entered the gun range in the Beckett basement was one of pure confusion. No doubt he’d expected to find us tearing shreds from each other, blood splashed all over the walls and curses being screamed. Instead, what he walked in on was me jumping up and down with excitement as my target returned to show I’d actually hit the paper. Turning to Beck, almost on instinct, I high fived his waiting palm—awkwardly with my casted hand seeing as I still held a gun in the other one—then beamed at Dylan.
“Hey!” I greeted him. “Did you see? I hit the paper!”
I proudly waved my hand at the target which hung in front of my station. Admittedly, the little hole from my bullet was still a long way off the colored rings, it was barely even on the page. But fuck it, that still counted in my book!
Dylan gave Beck a cryptic glare over my head, then turned back to me with a smile. “You sure did, Riles. Good work.”
“Keep practicing, Butterfly,” Beck instructed me, brushing his hand across my bare back and sending an instinctual shiver of arousal racing through me. “Dylan and I need to discuss you.”
“Excuse me?” I demanded, whipping around to scowl at him.
“Your training,” he clarified, cocking one brow at me. “What did you think I meant?”
My face heated, and I turned back to my target to hide the embarrassment. “Uh, nothing.”
“Mm hmm,” Beck murmured with a small chuckle. He and Dylan stepped outside
Fighting the urge to follow and listen in, I instead examined my beautiful gun. Trying to decipher the hidden message there. Why did Beck buy me something so … personal?
Okay, yeah, I was clearly fucked up enough that this was akin to jewelry for me. My very own, pretty gun. It had to mean something. He’d said as much last night, but there had been so little good in my life lately that a very large part of me was screaming not to trust Beck. To not trust his words, which were so perfect. Too perfect.