“That’s why,” Donald whispered to his son.
“Dad,” Damian whispered back.
“That’s why we lost Tess.”
I felt tears fill my eyes.
Donald didn’t look away from Damian when he whispered a tortured, “You raped her?”
“It wasn’t—” Damian started. My body straightened, the tears vanished, and I interrupted him.
“It was,” I snapped and Damian looked at me.
“Tess”—he shook his head and started to lift a hand—“things just got out of hand.”
Oh.
My.
God.
Brock made a noise low in his throat, his arms going super-tight around me but I didn’t read these warning signs because I lost it again.
“Out of hand?” I shrieked.
“Tess—” Damian started again, his eyes darting back and forth between me and Brock and, honest to God, it looked like he was weighing the decision to approach.
“Don’t you get near me, you motherfucking asshole,” I clipped. “And, newsflash, Damian. A woman is fighting you tooth and nail, screaming, ‘No!’ at the top of her lungs, crying uncontrollably, and begging you to stop and you still fuck her that… is… rape even if she is your goddamned wife.”
Brock’s super-tight arms convulsed twice through this speech but I only had concentration enough for Damian, who winced.
Then he said softly, “You left the next day, Tess. You never gave me a chance to explain.”
I felt my eyebrows hit my hairline.
“Explain?” I asked. “Explain?” I repeated my question. “Are you fucking high?”
“Tess, I was—”
“Clawing your way up a drug cartel,” I finished for him then leaned forward, taking Brock’s arms with me, thus taking Brock with me. “I know,” I hissed and leaned back. “Stressful, hunh?” I asked. “So stressful you suddenly lose your ability to be a decent human being and when your patience snaps because your wife is asking you simple questions like, ‘Honey, what’s stressing you out?’ you take your hands to her. And when she says no to sex, you lose your mind and rape her. It must have been tough for you dealing with all that stress as you climbed to the highest heights of the criminal underworld, Damian. I feel bad for you that you didn’t have a different woman in your life who’d eat your shit. Sorry I was such a crap wife.”
“You weren’t a crap wife,” he whispered.
“I know,” I bit out. “I was being sarcastic, you moron.”
“I made some bad decisions and let my emotions get the better of me, Tess. I’ll admit that,” Damian said.
“Big of you,” I retorted. “Though bad decisions and emotions getting the better of you don’t entirely destroy lives, Damian, something you’ve been doing to people you care about and people you don’t even fucking know for over a decade now.”
“I—” he started. His jaw clenched and he looked away, tearing both his hands through his hair and I noticed belatedly he looked good.
Like his father, age barely touched him. And like the asshole he was, impending incarceration didn’t faze him. Fit frame at least three inches shorter than Brock and probably more than thirty pounds lighter. Light brown hair. Dark brown eyes. A sharp crease in his well-tailored dark blue trousers. A light blue shirt that I knew had been made specifically for him because he always spent a whack on his clothes. Polished, dark brown, Italian leather shoes.
Even now, he had it. Even now, even as detached as I was, I sensed his magnetism. Decent looks, great clothes he wore well, undercurrent of charisma never switching off.
Toxic charisma.
Poison.
He dropped his hands and leveled his eyes on mine.
Then he stated, “If you gave me a moment to explain at lunch before you took off, I got in touch with you because I was trying to make it up to you.”
Make it up to me?
Maybe he was high.
He kept talking.
“I asked you to lunch to explain”—his eyes moved to Brock then back to me and he carried on—“about the money. To go over the bank documents with you. I wanted you to have”—again he looked to Brock, then back to me—“if something happened to me, I wanted you covered.”
“You wanted me covered?” I asked, my voice filled with derision mixed with shock.
“Yes,” he clipped.
“Why?” I queried.
“Because you were my wife. Because I still love you. Because I fucked up. And because I wanted to make it up to you.”
“You thought…” I whispered but stopped, momentarily unable to go on then I went on. “You thought that you could make it up to me by infiltrating my life and saddling me with your ill-gotten gains. And when I didn’t hang around long enough to say yes to this super-generous offer, you forged my name on the documents anyway so you could be certain to continue infiltrating my life at the same time fucking it up when the best thing you could do, bar building a time machine so that you could go back and make sure you never met me, would be to leave me… the fuck… alone?”
He pressed his lips together and said not a word.
I turned to his father.
It killed me to see this was killing him.
But I could not help that. I couldn’t. I had enough on my plate.
So I wasn’t even going to try.
“I love you,” I said softly. “I always will. I think of you often, so often…” I sucked in a breath and decided to leave that because I couldn’t go there. “Your son took a lot from me. All of it hurt, so much you wouldn’t believe me even if I described the pain. And losing you was part of that pain.”
Tears filled his eyes. I watched them as I felt the same happen in mine.
“Honey,” he whispered, taking his hand from the wall and turning away from his son to face me.
“I love you and miss you but I’m not coming back, never, no matter what happens to Damian. I can’t have anything that reminds me of him in my life. It’s toxic. I just released it and I can’t take it back. I can’t have it poisoning me anymore. Not anymore. He took eighteen years of my life. He can’t have any more.”
I watched him swallow.
“This man holding me is the man of my dreams, Don,” I told him quietly. “Tonight, someone shot at him. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to follow that trail to Damian. He has family. He has children. And he has me. Talk to your son. Make him stay out of my life and leave me and everyone I love alone. Please. Please do that for me.”
He sniffed, his eyes still wet and getting wetter and then he nodded.
I looked back at Damian and stated in a firm voice that still shook, “I never want to see you again. If you can, for once, listen to what I say rather than what you want to hear then hear this. I never, never want to see you again. Never. No matter what. I don’t want your money. I don’t want your guilt. You cannot make up to me what you tore from me or the years I lost because your poison infected me. Do not call me. Do not come to my house. Do not fuck with my life. Do not fuck with people I care about. Go away and stay away.”
“Tess,” Damian whispered and it was there, right in his eyes, pain and regret.
Pain and fucking regret.
The motherfucking asshole.
“Go away and stay away,” I whispered back.
Without looking at Don again, I moved my body toward the door. Brock felt my movement and let me go. But he grabbed my hand, led me out, through the yard, and to the passenger side of his truck that was parked behind my car.
He bleeped the locks and opened the passenger door before I noticed what he was about.
I locked my body and looked up at him, saying softly, “I’m okay to drive.”
He shook his head, gently pushing me toward the seat, saying, “Get in, baby.”
“I don’t want to leave my car here,” I told him.
“Get in, don’t worry about it. I’ll deal with it.”
“Brock—”
He closed in on
me and I had to tip my head way back, he was that close.
“Up into the truck, Tess,” he said softly.
I bit my lip and nodded. He moved back and I climbed up.
He rounded the hood, swung up beside me, his truck rumbled to life, and off we went.
And when we hit Yale it came to me that of the many awesome powers my man held, clairvoyance was one of them, for the adrenalin surge fled and the emotions rushed in on its tail. I lost it again, this time melting into deep, body-rocking, uncontrollable sobs.
I was so far gone I didn’t notice us getting home. I didn’t know how I got in. I didn’t even know how I got myself curled on the bed. I was just suddenly there and I just kept crying.
I vaguely heard snatches of Brock saying, “She’s bad, Martha. I need to deal with the police and she needs you so I need you over here soon as you can come.” And also what might have been just minutes later or longer, I was too far gone to tell, “My woman lost it after it went down. I can’t come to the station. The boys are outside investigating the area. You need to come here.”
But that was all I noticed until I felt Martha crawl into bed with me, curve her body into the back of mine, her arm wrapping around and holding me tight.
I heard the voices in the living room then.
“Who’s here?” I asked through a sniffle.
“Cops, honey,” she whispered. “Brock has some business he needs to tend to after what went down tonight.”
Of course.
I shut my eyes tight and pressed out more tears. Finding her hand with mine at my belly, I pulled it up to my chest, held it tight with my fingers as I pressed it deep into my chest.
I opened my eyes and whispered, “He got shot at tonight.”
“I know,” she whispered back.
My hand clutched hers and new tears stung my eyes and nose. “I can’t lose him.”
“I know, honey.”
“His boys can’t lose him.”
“I know.”
“His family—”
“Shh, Tess.”
I sucked in a broken breath.
Then I stated a trembling, “I hate Damian.”
Her arm gave me a squeeze and her hand twisted to hold mine.
“I do too.”
I fell quiet. So did Martha.
Then I sucked in another broken breath and told her, “There’s a chicken in the oven.”
“I know. I sorted it,” she told me. “Are you hungry? Do you want me to get you something?”
“No, but Brock—”
“He’s a big boy, honey. He can take care of himself.”
“I know, but—”
“Tess, honey, trust me,” she said while squeezing my hand. “Right now, he’s not hungry. Right now that man out there is concentrating on making a statement to his colleagues and trying not to rip your living room apart. He pulls his shit together, I don’t think the first thing on his mind is going to be dinner.”
I nodded, then said, “I should go to him.”
“No.” She held me closer. “He wants you here and safe with me while he deals with that shit. Let him have that. You do what he needs you to do and get your shit together.”
She was right.
Therefore, I nodded again and settled.
She held me for a long time. The voices in the living room silenced. Brock didn’t come in.
Then Martha sensed I’d gotten my shit together (and she was right). I knew this because she gave me a squeeze and said, “The chicken is burned so I’m gonna go rustle up dinner. Time you two ate.”
She pulled away and I rolled to my back to look at her.
She hadn’t even taken off her coat.
She came right to me and didn’t take off her coat.
Fresh tears hit my eyes but I beat them back and started to suggest, “Maybe you shouldn’t—”
“I’m not going to cook, Tess. Riviera.”
Well that was a relief.
“Chile rellenos,” I ordered and she grinned.
That was to say she grinned before she muttered, “Like I don’t know that,” as she rolled off the bed, rounded it, shot me another grin, and then she disappeared.
She would know I liked the Riviera’s chile rellenos, considering I’d eaten approximately seven hundred and twenty-two plates filled with them while sitting across from her.
I gave it a while before I got up, went to the bathroom, took my contacts out, washed my face, and went back to the bedroom to grab my glasses.
I moved out to the living room to see Brock standing just inside the front door talking to Levi and Lenore.
This was interesting.
Quick update: Lenore had not gone away. Lenore was around for Christmas lunch and New Year’s dinner with the Lucas clan. When I quizzed Brock about this, he told me he had no clue and when I pressed him to get the dirt, he told me had no intention of giving his brother the third degree about his love life. He said this firmly. Therefore, I let it go reluctantly.
But I was thinking good thoughts.
“Hey, Tess,” Levi called, his hazel eyes gentle on me in a way that was sweetly familiar mostly because his brother often looked at me the same way.
“Hey, Levi.” My eyes went to Lenore. “Hey, Lenore.”
“Hey, honey,” she said softly.
I got close and Brock claimed me, arm around the shoulders, tucking my front to his side.
I tipped my head back to look up at him and he informed me, “They went and got your car. It’s all good.”
It wasn’t all good. It wouldn’t be all good for a while.
But at least it was somewhat good for now.
I looked to Levi and Lenore. “Thanks, guys.”
“Not a problem,” Levi rumbled.
“Are you staying for Mexican?” I asked.
“No, we already ate, Tess, and we gotta go. But thanks,” Levi answered.
I nodded.
Lenore smiled at me.
Levi looked to his brother and gave him a chin lift.
“I’ll walk you out,” Brock muttered then looked down at me. “Stay here, babe, yeah?”
I nodded, gave out cheek kisses, hugs, and more words of gratitude and Brock walked out behind his brother and his brother’s girl.
I closed the door behind them but stared out the little window, exhausted from my terror-filled, adrenalin-surge, tantrum-throwing, crying-jag evening but not so exhausted I couldn’t be nosy about Lenore and Levi.
And I saw that I was right to think good thoughts. As they walked down my walk, Levi slid his arm around her shoulders and Lenore slid hers around his waist. Bonus was, when they stopped at Levi’s SUV to talk with Brock, Levi kept her close and Lenore rested the side of her head on his shoulder and when she did, it appeared Levi held her even closer.
Excellent.
After playing busybody, I walked to the kitchen. I had two cold ones popped open by the time Brock got back and I was taking a huge freaking swallow from mine.
Brock walked right to me and I had to jerk my arms to the side because when he walked to me, he didn’t stop. He folded his arms around me and pulled me in deep.
Then, against the top of my hair, he asked, “You good?”
“I think that was cathartic,” I said to his chest, my arms snaking around him.
“Good,” he muttered into my hair.
“I still feel the need to get drunk,” I went on and he chuckled. “Blotto.” I changed my mind as to the state of drunkenness I aimed to achieve and Brock kept chuckling. Then I changed my mind again, “No, shitfaced. Totally.”
His arms gave me a squeeze before one of them released me and my head went back just as his hand wrapped around my neck, his thumb stroking my jaw.
“Have at it, sweetness,” he said quietly.
I sucked in a breath.
Then I asked, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he answered immediately.
“Brock—” I started warningly but stopped when he shook hi
s head, his thumb stopped stroking, and his fingers grew tight.
“I could be wrong, babe, but you got through. I don’t know if he was behind the shit that went down in front of your house tonight but if he was, it won’t happen again. You wounded him. No, you crushed him. Whatever fucked-up shit that’s in his head that makes him tick, it unscrambled and he focused long enough for your message to get through. Even if I miss my guess and he still intends to dick with you, I suspect his father will move mountains to try and make him stop.”
“Well, that’s good news”—and it was—“but I was talking about your getting shot at.”
At that, I felt and saw his casual shrug before, “Not my favorite pastime, baby, not even in the top hundred and fifty, but it’s happened and you deal.”
Okay, well…
Yikes!
I’d pulled my shit together but frankly I’d dealt with enough that night and enough the last however many years. I would deal with the fact that my man was a man who got shot at later.
Like, in my next life.
Moving on.
“You said if that was Damian, do you not think it is?”
“He’d be my prime suspect. Or he was until I saw him with you. Probably not his brightest move to admit to calling a hit on a cop ever but definitely not right in front of the cop he called the hit on. But when you were shoutin’ at him, he seemed genuinely surprised and started to deny it, though he didn’t get to finish considering you were still shoutin’.”
“I had things to get off my chest,” I told him and he grinned as his hand at my neck as well as his arm around my back gave me a squeeze.
Then he dipped his head, touched his mouth to mine, and the lifted it away before he whispered, “Yeah, and I’m fuckin’ glad you did. You were magnificent, sweetness. Fuckin’ phenomenal.”
It was nice he thought that and all.
But…
“I lost it again,” I whispered, pressing in closer.
“No, you’re finding it,” he contradicted.
“What?”
“Babe, he took your power. Tonight, you took it back. And it”—his arm gave me a squeeze—“was”—his hand gave me a squeeze—“fuckin’ ”—his forehead dropped to rest on mine—“beautiful.”
I closed my eyes and pulled in a deep breath.
Then I opened them and said, “You had my back.”