“I was taken to a house where a woman and three other children lived. I remember the swimming pool in the back yard. It felt like a vacation to me, but when I asked about my parents, no one would tell me anything. It was weeks before I really understood everything that had happened, and even then, I only understood as much as a four-year-old could. My parents and my sister were gone, and they weren’t coming back.
“There wasn’t any extended family for me to go live with, so I got shuffled around in the system. Five different foster homes the first two years. Once I started school, I was never in the same place for more than a semester, never made any friends or anything. When I was nine, I was put in a more permanent home. That’s when I started really looking into what happened to my family.
“It was years before I knew the whole story. No one would ever give me any information when I asked. My foster mom would take me to Mass, and the priest would tell me my family was with God and that they were happy now. I tried to focus on that, but I needed to know what happened. It ate at me. When I was ten, I figured out how to get ahold of court documents, and I found the police reports of the break-in. A neighbor had called the police when he heard gunshots, and he saw three men leaving the house before the police got there. He didn’t get a good look at them and couldn’t ID them or anything like that. When the police arrived, they found three bodies in the living room and one four-year-old boy hiding in the closet. My sister had been…had been raped before they killed her.”
“Oh my God.” I reach for Deklan’s leg, but he doesn’t look at me. He drains the glass and continues.
“No one was ever charged with the crime. I might have dug into it more then, but that’s about the time my foster father died of a heart attack, and my foster mother went nuts.”
“What did she do?”
“She was convinced my foster father died because the rest of us—herself, me, and another boy in the foster care system—had sinned against God, and we were all being punished. She was convinced that she was going to die as well unless we all atoned.”
“Atoned?”
“The other boy was Brian. He only had to put up with it for a couple of months before he was moved to another family. I was left there to take the brunt of it.”
“Brian? As in the guy who took me to see you at the hospital? You were in foster care together?
“Yeah, that’s him.”
I ponder this for a moment. In essence, this makes Brian Dek’s brother, and I see him in a slightly different light now.
“What did your foster mom do?”
“I was a sinner,” Deklan says quietly. “I had to pay for my sins. It’s not like I ever did anything—she was just a nut, ya know? But I had to pay for whatever she thought I’d done. At this point, I figure I still have a few more sins to commit before I catch up to the punishments.”
“How did she punish you?”
He looks at me with dark, narrowed eyes. There’s a long pause before he answers.
“Whipped us with a belt. Made us stand with our arms out, holding up Bibles, boiled water for the bathtub. That was the worst of it.”
“She put you in boiling water? Oh my God.” I gasp as I place my hand over my mouth. My thoughts spin around in my head as I put it all together. “The scars on your leg…”
“I guess the neighbors heard me screaming,” Deklan says. “Had to have skin grafts because the burns were so bad. That’s when they took me away from her for good. I never saw her after that. She died of an overdose a couple years later.”
“I was twelve then and was placed in a group home. I ran away and was caught and placed in another group home. That was the trend over the next couple of years until I figured out how not to get caught.
“I lived on the streets for about six months, just doing whatever I could to survive. Not long into it, I came across Brian, and we helped each other out sometimes, finding odd jobs, mostly quick manual labor stuff at restaurants or loading docks. I was big for my age and pretty strong even then. People seemed okay with giving obviously underage kids a few bucks to haul boxes around.
“I met Fergus Foley at a loading dock. I’d made a bit of cash there earlier in the day, and it was raining that night, so I stayed in the shipyard and was going to sleep in one of the containers. Sometime in the middle of the night, Mr. Foley caught sight of me, questioned me, and then put me to work. He offered to buy me a steak dinner and give me a place to sleep for the effort.”
“I kept loading containers for Mr. Foley for a few weeks after that. After a while, Brian joined me. Fergus and I talked more, and he found out what happened to my family. One day, he came in and told me he knew who had killed them.”
“I’d never felt such rage before. When he offered to help me locate them…I didn’t even consider consequences. I wanted revenge, pure and simple. Fergus Foley helped me get that.”
Deklan glances at me before giving me a wry grin.
“I’ll spare you the details, but believe me, they paid for what they’d done.”
“You killed them.” It’s not a question, but I still need the confirmation. He doesn’t answer me in any case; he just stares at the bottom of his empty glass.
“So that’s how I started working for Mr. Foley full-time. He set me up in this apartment so I would be close to him, got me a car to get around in, and paid me a shit-ton of money. He gave me a job, a purpose, and helped me get my revenge. He gave Brian a job, too, which got him off the streets. I owe the Foley family everything.”
I stare at my hands as I take in everything Deklan just told me. All thoughts of my encounter with Sean are gone. All I can think about now is Deklan and what a horrible childhood he had. I try to imagine Deklan as a child, hiding under a blanket in a closet as his family is murdered, but the image that comes to my head is too horrible. I think about him as a teenager, loading cargo containers for Fergus Foley, and that’s a much more relatable picture.
“So that’s me,” Deklan says as he sits up a little straighter on the couch. “You now know more about me than anyone alive does.”
I swallow hard as I look at my husband’s blank expression. Despite his efforts to remain emotionless, I can see the tension in his jaw and the tightness in his shoulders. I pull myself up on my knees and crawl into his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck and laying my head against his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Deklan. I’m sorry that happened to you and your family. You were so young. No one should have to go through all that.”
Deklan doesn’t speak. He coils his arms around me and holds me to his chest and rests his head on top of mine.
“It feels weird,” he says, “telling someone all of that.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“I’m not sure.” Deklan sighs. “I don’t think you need to be burdened with my past. You’ve got your own trauma.”
“I don’t remember it,” I say with a shrug. “My therapist said I blocked it all out. Sometimes I dream about it, but I can’t recall the details.”
“I didn’t know you had a therapist.” Deklan runs his thumb back and forth along my wrist, and I relax with the touch.
“I haven’t seen her since we got married.”
“Do you want to see her?”
“I haven’t given it much thought,” I say. “I used to see her regularly, but I didn’t think I was getting a lot out of it, and Dad bitched about the cost.”
“Maybe…maybe if you talked to her now, you would remember something.”
“Why would I want to remember any of that?” I press against him, inhaling his scent. “It’s over and done with. Remembering it doesn’t make any difference.”
“Maybe it would,” Deklan says softly. “Maybe if you remembered it, things would be different.”
“I’m okay with how things are now.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.” I tilt my head up to kiss his cheek. “I like being here with you.”
“I like it, too. I thought i
t would be difficult learning to live with someone after being on my own for so long, but it’s nice having someone to come home to.”
“You just like my cooking.” I giggle.
“I do like your cooking, and that’s no joke.” He brushes his lips over mine. “I also like taking you to my bed at night. I like watching your eyes roll back in your head when you come.”
“They do not!”
“Oh yeah,” he says, “they do. That’s how I know I got just the right spot.”
I glare at him, and he kisses me gently.
“It’s more than the cooking and the sex,” he says softly as he runs his hand from my shoulder to my wrist. He wraps his fingers around my arm and rubs the skin with his thumb. “I like you just…just being here. I like talking to you.”
“I like being around you, too.”
Deklan stares at me for a long moment before he speaks again.
“I don’t remember my parents well, but they were good people. They were good to me, and I loved them. They loved each other. I want to remember what that was like, so that I can give that to you, too.”
Chapter 18
“Think you’ve got it?” Terry asks as I poke at the iPad screen to navigate the cash register app.
“It’s pretty straightforward.”
Terry watches as I ring up the next customer.
“Nice!” he says. “Now we can alternate. One of us does the register while the other makes the drinks until we get tired of what we’re doing. Then we can switch. Or we can alternate customers—whatever you prefer.”
“Let’s alternate customers,” I say. “That way I can remember what I’m making.”
“Deal!” Terry gives me a big smile, and I return it. I’ve decided his smiles are contagious.
We fall into a smooth rhythm for a while. Around ten o’clock, the man who is always following me around comes in. He lets a woman go in front of him, and I’m pretty sure it’s so he ends up with Terry taking his order and not me.
He can think he’s subtle, but he’s not. In fact, he’s as obvious as he could possibly be. I do take note of the name Terry writes on his cup—Charlie. I wonder if it’s even his real name. He goes to the back table with his newspaper and coffee.
“Has he always been a regular?” I ask Terry.
“The weird guy?” Terry winks.
“Yeah, the one who always sits in the back and reads the paper.”
“Who reads newspapers anymore?”
“Right?” We both laugh.
“I guess he’s been coming in here regularly for the last few weeks. I’m pretty good about remembering customers.”
“About the time I first started coming here?”
“Hmm…maybe.” Terry tilts his head and looks at the ceiling. “A week after, I think. Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, but I’ve seen him around.”
My shift ends in the afternoon, and as soon as I head out the door, I see “Charlie” across the street on a bench near the bus stop. I watch him out of the corner of my eye as he stands and follows me down the street at a distance.
I am already sure he’s following me, and this just adds to my evidence. If I ever decide to ask Deklan about it, he won’t be able to deny it. There are just too many coincidences.
Surprisingly, Deklan is home when I get there.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” he asks as soon as I walk in.
I hesitate. I’m not sure if I want to hear either one.
“Good?” I hang my jacket up on the hook and walk over to the kitchen.
“I’m taking the rest of today off,” Deklan says as he wraps his arms around me. He kisses me gently before letting go.
“What’s the bad news?”
“I need to make some preparations,” he says. “In the morning, I have to leave for a couple of days.”
I frown.
“Do you have to?” It’s a stupid question, but I ask anyway.
“Yeah, I do.”
“The whole weekend?”
“I should be back Sunday night. I guess it’s a good thing you got that job, or you’d be stuck here all weekend on your own.”
“I requested the weekend off.”
“Why did you do that?”
“It’s my birthday weekend.”
“What?” Deklan’s eyes go wide. “Are you serious? Fuck, Kera—I had no idea. I never…well, shit. I never even asked you when your birthday was.”
“Saturday,” I say with a shrug. “It’s no big deal. I can occupy myself for a couple of days.”
“I’m so sorry, babe. I’ll make it up to you. We can go out tonight or when I get back—wherever you want. Dinner, movie…anything.”
“It’s okay.” It’s not, but I’m trying not to get angry. I never mentioned my birthday, so I can hardly blame Dek for not knowing it was so soon. “We can do something when you get back. Where are you going?”
“Chicago.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask too many questions, babe. You know I’m not going to give you the details. I will make it up to you though—promise.”
He pulls me close to him again, kissing me gently and stroking my cheek.
“Let me make you dinner for a change,” he says. “I don’t cook as well as you do, but I didn’t starve before you were here, either.”
“You wouldn’t poison a girl before she’s even legal to drink, would you?”
“Nah.” Deklan grins and kisses me again. “Maybe I’ll even give you a glass of wine before I lure you to my bed. You young ones are easy to manipulate.”
I struggle playfully in his grasp, calling him a jerk as he wrestles me against the counter and shoves his hand down the front of my leggings. My muscles rebel against me when his fingers reach the right spot, and he slowly circles as he holds me upright.
“You’re already wet,” he says. “Have you been thinking about me on the way home?”
“Always,” I say, breathless. “You always leave me wanting you.”
“I try.” He captures my mouth with his, kissing me deeply as his fingers slide inside my body. He twists and turns them until I moan into his mouth.
“Forget dinner,” I say as I push against his chest. “Let’s just go to bed.”
Deklan grins as he swoops down and lifts me up off the floor. He tosses me over his shoulder as I squeal and then hauls me to the bedroom.
I don’t even know what happens to my clothes. They just seem to fall to the ground along with Deklan’s as his mouth and tongue demand all my attention. He throws me backward onto the bed, and is immediately on top of me, pushing my legs apart and entering me swiftly as I cry out and grasp his shoulders. He grabs my wrists and holds them above his head, immobilizing me.
I let my head drop back against the mattress and just let myself feel for a moment. My skin tingles everywhere he touches me. I arch up when he runs his tongue over my nipples and then blows cool air across them and pull my knees up, allowing him better access as he drives into me in a slow, comfortable rhythm.
My heart pounds. My breathing is labored, and my muscles are tight. I’m already close when he suddenly pulls out.
“Aargh!” I cry in protest. “Don’t stop.”
“Roll over.” Deklan releases my wrists and grins down at me.
He leans back on his heels, grabs me by the hips, and pulls me over until I’m on my stomach. He snakes a hand under me and pulls me up on my hands and knees.
“Spread those legs for me. There you go…” Deklan runs his hands over my thighs, pushing my legs a little farther apart. He grips my hips and pulls me back against his hard cock, rubbing it between my legs. Sliding his hands up my sides and around to the front, he pulls lightly at my nipples, and I moan. “You like that, baby?”
“So far.” I don’t know how I feel about being in this position. We’ve always faced each other before—either him or me on top, but never like this.
I feel vulnerable as I look over my shoulder.
Deklan’s eyes shine in the dim light of the bedroom. He reaches to my shoulders and massages them, and I relax a little.
“If you decide you don’t like it, just tell me.” Deklan gathers my hair up in one hand and kisses the back of my neck. “I can stop any time.”
He releases my hair, allowing it to fall over my shoulder, and then trails his fingers down the center of my back. I feel him grip my hip with one hand before he presses the tip of his cock against me and slides forward.
I gasp. The angle in this position makes everything feel different. A deep groan comes from Deklan’s throat as he leans over my back, rubbing my shoulders and arms.
“Do you like that?” I feel his hot breath on the back of my neck.
“It feels different.”
“Good kind of different?”
“Yes.” I adjust my knees against the mattress and push back against him a bit, and Deklan grunts as he buries himself deeper.
He moves back and forth slowly a few times, then a little faster. He reaches around and grips my breasts, pinches my nipples, and kisses between my shoulder blades before he sits back up, changing the angle again, and starts moving with long, hard trusts.
“Oh, God!” I cry out. I reach forward and dig my fingers into the sheets as I try to match his pace, pushing back to meet each stroke.
“Do you know how perfect you look with your ass in the air and my cock sliding in and out of you?”
“Fuck…Deklan…ugh!”
“Sweet Jesus, that feels good.”
He moves faster and harder, and each thrust feels like it’s going deeper than the last. He grips my hips hard and pulls me back against him as he moves.
“I want you to feel this,” Deklan says, punctuating each word with a thrust, “every moment I’m gone. I want you so sore, you can’t walk without thinking about me.”
He continues his relentless pounding until I can no longer hold myself up on my arms. With my face pressed against the mattress, I give up trying to match his pace, and just let him take me as he wants.
“Give me your hand,” he says as he slows down for a moment.