by C. R. Jane
I cleared my throat. “You made my heart wake up. You, with your sweet nature, your pain, and the way that you bought that land.” I still thought about that land. The place he’d wanted to have babies with me. Not that I should ever do that. I’d pretty much be the worst mother in the world. No, the world did not need me to fuck up a child. “It was… it was the first time I ever really felt something in my whole adult life.”
His mouth fell open. “Holly, why didn’t you just tell me what was happening to you? I could have protected you.”
“What should I have said? ‘Hey, Steven, I got sent in to get you. My uncle arranged for me to be your physical therapist. I’m good at my job, but sorry, you should probably have had someone else. Figured out within a heartbeat of meeting you that you’d respond to aloof, because you had nothing but women throwing themselves at you. Seduced you all for the purpose of stealing your ring. But, hey, forgive me because I have real feelings for you. Oh, and my uncle might kill me because I told you the truth—and maybe you, too.’ That’s what I should have said?” I shook my head and moved away from him. “You’d have called the police on me. Dumped me on the spot. Sure, you’d have your ring, but forget about the rest of it. I’d not be here right now, because I’d be dead.”
His laugh surprised me, and I turned around. “Maybe not those words, but you’re wrong. I was never going to send you to jail. Not then, not now. I should want to, but I still swear I can see your soul in those violet eyes.”
My eyes. The reason I’d gotten into this mess. Maybe if I’d been less striking, they’d have all left me alone. That wasn’t ego. That was just fact.
“And what do you see when you look in them?”
He didn’t break his gaze from mine. “I see you.”
“Which is who? The real me, or the one I wanted you to see?”
He shook his head. “If you think that I didn’t see that you hid things? That you kept things from me? Or that you were deeply troubled, then you underestimated me. I saw all of those things. But I wanted you to open up to me. I’m patient. I waited. If I’d known the danger you were in, I’d have been there for you. I promise I would have.”
I swallowed. This didn’t get any easier with each telling. “Steven, you have to run away. Go to some island where they don’t follow American football. Hide. They’re going to kill you if I can’t seduce an ungettable man. Okay? Go now.”
Why was he just standing there? Why wasn’t he yelling, or better yet, stomping out to go get his bags, hire a security team, and flee the country?
Steven didn’t move. “I’m not getting run out of the country by a guy who abuses women and gets a hard on from stealing from people who do things he doesn’t like. He’s set himself up some kind of empire? Fine. He’s just a bully who needs to be smacked down when it comes down to it.”
How to make him understand? “Steven, the closest I ever came to telling anyone was Jamie. Mostly because I was so beat down emotionally by then that I couldn’t take another minute of the lies. He must have known. He sent me a picture of Jamie standing on the street, totally unaware that he had a gun pointed at his head.”
“That’s very frightening.” He shook his head. “And Jamie had no idea? I call bullshit. A sniper, maybe. Sure. But standing there on a street somewhere with a gun pointed at his head? Hello, Photoshop?”
I blinked. I’d never considered the idea that the photo could be altered. I bent over, clutching my knees. Some days, I could see all the angles in life, some days, I could see none of them. Today was the latter. Everything just felt dimmed.
“Even if that wasn’t real, everything else is. You watched me kill someone.”
He took my shoulders in his hands, leaving me no choice but to raise my head and meet his eyes. “I did. Thank you for that, Holly. That’ll be the first and last time you have to do that. Whatever you have to do next to get us all through this, you’ll do. I’m big on team sports.” He winked at me, which was ridiculous, but somewhat comforting just the same. “And I’m getting my fucking ring back.”
I groaned, moving out of his embrace to lie on Charlie’s bed. “He wears it on his finger.”
“Well fuck that fucking shit.”
I snorted. That wasn’t a Steven thing to say. I shook my head. “Well put. Fuck that fucking shit.”
His smile surprised me, but it quickly fell. He stroked the side of my face. “Is that mark from my ring?”
My stomach tightened. I could lie and make him feel better, but I was through with that. They were all getting truth from me all the time, even if it was hard.
“Yes.”
He cupped the spot, running his thumb one more time over the ache. It hurt, but not badly. “You tried to get me to take the ring the last morning together. Why?”
An ache in my throat threatened to explode into tears. I held them in. “So I wouldn’t be able to leave.”
He nodded once. “We’re going to fix this, Holly. Somehow. Tell us how. We’ll help you.”
I had to get my head on straight. There were plans to be made. Groveling, sex, and misery wasn’t going to make this go away. There was just one more thing before I pulled up my big girl panties and dealt with what life gave me. “Did you give me your shirt because you wanted those two to see you without yours? So they’d know just how… big you really are under all those clothes?”
Steven leaned close. “You’re not the only one who can be devious.”
I smiled at him. “If you have a devious bone in your body, I haven’t seen it. That wasn’t devious, that was obvious. At least to me.”
If I had to guess, Jaime and Charlie knew what he had done, too.
And why.
He was in front of me so fast that I didn’t see it coming. In seconds, I was in his arms. His mouth met mine. I gasped against the kiss—it was punishing, it was pissed. This was so not the way Steven used to kiss me.
He pulled back, staring at me straight in the eyes. “Someday, you and I are going to have sex again. When I don’t want to punish you.”
I nodded, forcing my body to cool down. “You could punish me like that if you wanted to. I certainly wouldn’t object.”
My football player—and god help me, that was what he was—shook his head. “That’s not my scene, and you know it. I want you when I can be gentle with you, when I can worship you and know that you’re mine. Even if it seems like I’m sharing you with the painter and the doc, too.”
I smiled. Close but no cigar. “The Artist. The Surgeon.”
“And that made me?” He tilted his head, and I stroked the side of his cheek.
“That made you Steven.”
He shook his head, not believing me. I sighed.
“You’re the Quarterback.” We’d actually done this once already, but if he needed to hear it again, he could.
“You made me think that I could be more than that. The land that I built that stupid house for you on.”
Fuck. Had he built the house?
“It was because I thought you were what I would be when it was over. Not some washed up idiot trying to have a TV career talking about things no one wants to hear. Or buying some chain of sandwich shops and cutting ribbons. I wanted you. I was going to devote myself to you, to making you happy. Maybe having a family, if you wanted that.”
I put his cheeks in my hands. “I told you. I’d be the worst mother ever. I wasn’t lying. I was raised by parents who didn’t care what happened to me when they died. Then by a grandmother I adored, who sold me to pay her debts before she dropped dead in a diner. Finally, by my uncle—and maybe the less said about that the better.”
He shook his head. “Not the less said. Sweetheart, I can’t understand any of this. How did it even happen?”
“I’m never going to tell you. I can’t talk about it. Not really. It sticks in my throat, it burns in my brain. It hurts. And even if I could, I wouldn’t let it infect you and that place that is yours.” I took his hands in mine. “There will come a tim
e when this is over. I’m going to see to it. You’ll have that place with the person it’ll turn out you actually built that for. It won’t be me. Some girl who you will have that life with.”
Steven sighed. “I think I should probably sell it.”
“Don’t do that. You have dreams. They’re beautiful and clean. Own them. With someone who deserves them.”
With someone who had never been on the other end of my uncle’s pain-inflicting hands, or in his basement, or living off his employ.
He drew me to him. It was a surprising hug, gentle, like he’d said he wanted to be some day with me in bed. I didn’t know if we’d get there, and that was okay. I’d always loved Steven’s hugs. I closed my eyes and let myself imagine for a second that I could keep this.
It was impossible. But just for a second, maybe it didn’t have to be.
Chapter 17
Holly
Past
This was the first time that my uncle was having me travel out of state to do one of his jobs.
I’d ended up graduating early from high school because one—my uncle was too impatient for me to get started, and two—I was too scared to continue walking the halls without people noticing there was something wrong inside of me.
Four years later, and I had degrees in nursing and physical therapy under my belt. But there were no dingy dorm rooms with roommates, or late night cram sessions in the library during my college experience.
There had just been me, isolated, trying to get my degrees done as fast as possible while completing my uncle’s assignments.
Sleeping with someone to get what I wanted was no longer an issue.
There was a song, the one where the singer said he had become uncomfortably numb. That was probably what best described me.
This new assignment would be my first real challenge. Taylor Dawson, millionaire philanthropist and recent divorcé was the target. He was known to be a playboy since the divorce, sowing his wild oats. It would be tough to get his attention and hold it.
I had balked at the idea of approaching someone so well-known, but the thing about Taylor was that he also had an ego. The fact that it had gone unreported when several of his business deals were massive failures was proof enough to my uncle that he wasn’t about to air his dirty laundry out to the world when it had the potential to embarrass him.
Taylor had given his ex-wife a twenty-carat diamond ring that had been featured in all of the entertainment magazines. When he decided that he was done with her, he didn’t even have the decency to let her keep it.
Of course, that fact had also gone unreported, but my uncle had people everywhere and therefore knew Taylor still had the ring.
Taylor had recently injured himself in a skiing accident and was going to be needing physical therapy after his surgery. And who did you think was going to step in to help with that?
Straightening my scrubs and smoothing down my dark-as-night hair, I readied myself to walk into the room and meet him for the first time.
I had long ago stopped ignoring the thrill that I got from jobs, and this next job would be the biggest thrill yet.
I walked to the doors and watched as Taylor’s eyes ate me up.
Gotcha.
Chapter 18
Graham
Now
They had to think I was an idiot. They’d all been in and out of Charles’s room so many times today that I’d have to be dense to not know Holland was in there. The fact that they were not telling me, told me all I had to know.
Holland James had worked her charms. Somehow, they’d all gotten past the fact she royally screwed them over. Well, that was nice.
I wasn’t so easily fooled. She’d lived in my house and destroyed my heart. I wasn’t going to be welcoming her back to my good graces anytime soon, if ever.
Still, when she stepped outside, it took me by surprise. For a second, I let my gaze drift to her from across the small walkway that separated the two of us. She hadn’t seen me yet. Or maybe she had. Who knew with this woman? Who knew what the truth was?
What could possibly be done to a person to make them this way? What was dead inside of them?
I sucked in a breath. Those questions got me nowhere. Maybe she’d been born this way.
As if she felt my gaze on her, she turned around. A gust of wind hit just then, bringing her hair over her shoulders and exposing part of her face. Someone had beat the shit out of her. It was everything I could do to keep my feet right where they were, to not rush to her.
“I was looking for you.”
I shook my head. “Been in this shit hotel, not going anywhere except occasionally, when Steve drags me away to keep me from noticing you’re here.” Yeah. I’d known that, and he was a terrible liar. “So, not exactly hard to find.”
I waited for her to say something, but she just stared at her feet. “Graham, I have a lot that I need to say to you.”
“Really? Because I’m not sure I want to hear any of it. You stormed into my life, manipulated me, stole from me, made accusations against my father, may have gotten him killed, and broke me on your way out. I had to move. I couldn’t live there in the house after you were gone. Then I watched you kill two people, and now it seems like we’re at risk. You’ve completely destroyed my life. It’s practically unrecognizable.”
Her eyes flared. It was the first time I’d seen her like that since we found her. Worried. Emotionally removed. Scared. Focused. Beat Up. Those were the ways she’d looked since I’d walked back into her life, but that flare of pissed off that shown through now? That was the Holland I had known.
The one who had danced in the reflecting pool at the National Mall. There she was. And just like then, she was so beautiful.
“You destroyed your own life, Graham. Yes, I stole from you. I didn’t want to, but I did it. You could have moved on. You didn’t have to devote your time and energy to finding the others, locating me. You could be happily on your way to public office right now with some woman on your arm who would increase your likability factor.” She advanced on me. “That’s not what you did. That’s your choice. I should have been a blip on the radar of your life.”
She really didn’t get it. “I loved you. That isn’t something you just get over. Not for me. Maybe for you because it was all fake, but—”
Holland grabbed onto my shirt. “Graham, there was hardly a moment between us that wasn’t real. I forgot my role. Forgot my character. Fell for you like it was something I was destined to do. I told myself you’d be fine. There was never anyone better set up to move on than you, and you didn’t. I’m sorry for that. But I am not responsible for what you did with your time afterward.”
She smelled the same. That shouldn’t be. Different shampoo, soap, the general stink of this motel, and yet, the scent that was Holland was still there. The way she always did, the way it rushed through me, making me feel alive.
No. I wasn’t going down this rabbit hole with her.
The sounds from the highway threatened to intrude on my interlude, but it wasn’t until she grabbed my arm, tugging me hard, that I threw myself back into the present and out of the disaster that was the past in my memories.
“What?”
“Get down.” She pulled me until we were both hiding behind an abandoned maid’s cart. “It’s one of his cars. He doesn’t know that you guys are here, and I think that it had better stay that way. They’re not looking for me. We don’t want to be accidently caught.”
I sighed. “Tell me you have a plan to get out of this. One of your schemes so that we can all get on with our lives.”
She took a visible breath. “Come with me. I… I do have some thoughts I’d like to go over with all of you. If you will.”
What choice did I have? “Sure. Why not?”
When I’d gone to find the others, I’d never pictured this moment. We were supposed to be reveling in our victory of unmasking her, not hiding in a junky hotel, hoping to not get caught.
She rose slowl
y, gazing around as though there might be other traps just waiting to catch us.
I shook my head. “I’ll never forgive you. You should know that.”
Her face stiffened, and for a second, regret plowed through my veins. I pushed away the feeling. I had no time for soft emotions. Not with this woman, who lied for a living and destroyed us all with her cold heart.
She nodded. “I don’t expect you to. I know it’s unforgivable, and somehow, despite the fact that you’ve lived through hell, you were always a person more comfortable living outside of the shadows. There is good and bad with you, Graham. I know which side you’ll put me in, and I belong there. Please don’t think that I don’t understand.”
I wanted to throw something. Oh, she was good at this. Lie. Lie. Lie. “Why should I believe a word that you say?”
“Because the only thing I want right now is to keep us all alive.”
That seemed reasonable. “When you think of that time that you spent with me, what do you think of?”
She rubbed her eyes. “I think about the time in the reflecting pool. I think about the way you used to hold me at night. I think about that time against the wall. I remember how it used to feel in your arms. I remember thinking that…”
Holland didn’t finish, so I pushed. “Thinking what? Say it.”
“I remember thinking that if life had been kind, you and I could have met in other circumstances. That since I was born in Virginia, you would have been close. Maybe it could have been different, maybe you could have actually been mine.”
She wiped at her eyes, and it tore at my heart. That image she gave me. Yes, I could see it. Fuck me, I could see it.
What did that mean that I still loved the idea that she could have been mine?
Chapter 19
Holly
Now