Luna sat up so quickly the blanket that had been covering them both fell off the bed. “What did you say?” she demanded.
“Scratch my ankle.” He made a little flirty face at her. “Please?”
“Your ankle?” I asked, my own voice filled with some incredulity. “Is that what you said?”
“Yeah, I said my ankle. It itches like…”
He stopped, his eyes widening.
Brock hadn’t been able to feel his legs from the hips down since he woke. The swelling the bullet had caused around his spine had cut off communication between the nerves and his brain. The doctors thought it might reverse when the swelling went down, but weren’t sure. And it’d been so long… two long damn weeks!
“My ankle itches!”
“Your ankle itches!”
Luna jumped off the bed and launched herself at me. We laughed as we hugged, then she turned back to Brock and hugged him, a hug that turned quickly into a kiss that made me feel the need to leave the room.
He was going to be okay.
I leaned against the wall and slowly sank to the ground. He was going to be okay.
It was a mantra, repeating itself over and over in my head.
It was all okay. We were all going to be okay. After everything we’d all gone through: the cheating and the unexplained pregnancy and the falling out and the fire and the physical therapy and the scars and the lies and the deaths and the bullets and the jealousy and the grief and the pain. We were going to be okay.
Thank you, God!
Chapter 23
Kinsley
His hand moved slowly over my hip as he pulled me closer to him. His mouth was warm, almost as warm as the sleep-warmed skin that pressed against my side. I could lie there and kiss him forever, never doing any more, never doing any less. The taste of him, the feel of him… I could do it forever.
But then his lips slid down my bare throat, making a moist trail as he sought out, and found, my hardened nipples. I ran my fingers through his hair, loving the feel of him, wanting more and more despite myself. I knew him now better than I knew myself. I knew every inch of his gorgeous body— knew every scar, every freckle. Every single inch. I knew the taste of him after a cup of coffee, knew the taste of him first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I knew him when he was relaxed and happy. I knew him when he was tense. I was beginning to think I knew him better than I would ever know myself.
Two weeks was all it took.
When we were together, all the darkness of my past just drifted away like so much smoke on the wind. When he touched me, the memory of Major’s betrayal disappeared—poof—like a bad dream. When we were together, I was stronger than I ever imagined I could be.
And this pleasure… who knew a body that had known so much pain could also know so much pleasure?
We moved together, our bodies two parts of one whole. I dug my fingers into his muscles, needing to pull him as close as I could get him. We rushed together up a cliff, in a hurry to reach the summit. Later, the trek would be slower, but this time, we rushed. And when we reached it, we jumped together, sailing over the waves as one, dancing to a tune that was all our own.
As the metaphors became logic again, I rested my head on his shoulder and ran my fingers over his chest, creating an imaginary connection between the few freckles that darkened his flesh there.
“We can’t hide out here forever, you know.”
“Why not?”
I smiled. “Because it’s been two weeks and we’ve barely left the bedroom.”
“I told you, I had a lot to make up for.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like the crude way in which I treated you back there at that place. I’m not normally that… adolescent the first time I’m with a woman.”
“Oh, you’ve more than made up for that. Besides, don’t I owe you something for keeping you hostage?”
“Naw. I probably deserved it all.”
“You’ve never done anything to me.”
“Yes, but there have been women before you. I’m sure it was karma or something.”
“That’s just what you ought to do, Oxley Winn. Remind your current lover of all your past lovers.”
He grunted, rolling over to kiss the tip of my nose. “Sorry.”
“Were there a lot of them?”
“What?”
“Women!”
He smiled, his lips lightly touching mine. “Why? Jealous?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Good.”
I smacked his shoulder and he pushed me down against the mattress, pinning me for a long moment before his grip relaxed as he kissed me. I slid under him, wrapping my legs around his waist.
“Damn, woman! You’re going to kill me!”
We got into the shower a while later, after wrapping a very unhandy plastic bag around the cast that supported my broken ankle. My face was pretty much healed, but my ankle would be another month in the cast. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and it’d relegated me to a desk at work. Not fun.
“Oliver called last night,” Ox said, his back to me as he washed with a bar of soap.
“Did he?”
“He finally went to see her.”
I nodded despite the fact that I knew he couldn’t see me.
Mrs. Winn was arrested not long after Cheryl emailed copies of the recordings I’d made to all the appropriate law enforcement agencies. She was charged with the murders of both Jimmy Winn and Devon Garfield. She pled guilty at her initial court appearance, prompting the prosecutor’s office to petition the court to throw out Oliver’s conviction. It hadn’t happened yet, but everyone was confident it would in the next few weeks.
“How did it go?”
Ox shrugged. “She’s sober, obviously. And filled with all kinds of regret. He said it was like talking to stranger. He didn’t recognize her.”
“I don’t suppose he would. She’s been a drunk all his life.”
“Yeah.” He turned to look at me. “I’m thinking I might go see her, too.”
He knew I was torn on that. But I wasn’t going to stand in the way. Everyone had to walk their own journey, especially when it came to their parents.
He kissed the top of my head lightly. “I’m glad it’s over. I’m sorry so many people had to get hurt. But you… I can’t even begin to express how grateful I am to you.”
“Why? I got your mother arrested!”
“You also got her to admit to her fault in the accident for Oliver’s sake. You didn’t have to do that.”
I shrugged. “I wanted to.”
“And you got Patrick to admit that he coerced my father into a lot of what led to this mess. Here I was, blaming him for everything, and you knew it was never his idea.”
“I didn’t know, but I suspected. I know—knew—Major. I knew what he was capable of when he wanted something.”
“I’m sorry that things ended up like they did, that that cop had to shoot him like that. But I’m glad you got out. That was really a dumb thing to do, babe.” He lifted my chin with his hand. “Promise me you’ll never go into a situation like that again without an exit plan.”
“I promise.”
The thing was, I’d been thinking a lot about my work as a cop. I liked to think I was good at it, but sometimes I wondered if I’d just gotten into it because of my childhood and all the trauma I suffered. There was once a time when I’d wanted to be a writer. Or a movie star. I felt like I’d never really discovered who I was. The real me, not the broken child warped by her father’s illness, not the scared daughter of a woman who meant well but played a dangerous game with three lives.
Now, here I was, jumping into a relationship with a guy I knew a little too well, a guy who no longer had any secrets to keep from me. And I had no secrets to keep from him. That should have been a good thing, but in truth, it scared the shit out of me.
I was living in a world I no longer understood.
***
Ox sto
od back and studied the place, lost in thought. I found myself doing the same. I’d thought I would be remembering the awful month and a half I’d spent here, but all I was thinking about were the moments I’d spent with Ox between those four walls.
Funny how perception could change for the strangest reasons.
“Are you ready?” he asked, sliding his arm around me.
I hesitated. All I’d wanted was to forget this place. I’d wanted it gone from my life, from my memories. But now… somehow it had lost its power. But I nodded anyway.
Ox gave a signal and the whooshing sound filled the air. A moment later, flames began to lick at the door, playing with the roof.
Ox had arranged for the local fire department to come out and burn the cabin down in a controlled fire. As we stood there, the building was slowly condemned by flames.
“We could build something new here, if you wanted. A lovely cottage or a gazebo we could visit from time to time.”
“I’d like something like that. A nice gazebo for hikers to rest on, with a plaque dedicating it to my mother.”
“That’s nice. I’ll see what we can do.”
I nodded, leaning back against him, resting my cast on its heel. The fire was almost beautiful.
“It’s all over then.”
“It is.”
I reached into my pocket and held up a simple flash drive I’d found inside the copy of Black Beauty.
“Maybe you should toss this in there, too.”
“I’d wondered what had happened to it. Akker said you found it.”
“It was the only book on the shelf that wasn’t covered in dust.”
“I should have thought of that, I guess.”
He took the drive and held it in the palm of his hand a moment, his fingers closed tight around it. I could almost hear his thoughts, almost knew what was going through his mind. It was everything he’d taken from Caballo that could prove his father’s complacency in the money-laundering scheme. It had been right under Lindsay’s nose all along, hiding in the house where he’d threatened an old drunk and talked her into testifying against her only son. It was probably his idea, too, to convince Oliver to take the blame the night of the car accident.
Everything on that drive could be used to convict each cop who was now awaiting trial on charges of theft and abusing authority. But it would also condemn Caballo and cast a dark shadow on everyone who worked there now.
“Put it in the fire. That part of your life is over. Let it go.”
Ox stepped away from me, wound his arm, and pitched the drive into the fire.
It was like a weight was lifted from my heart when he did it. I don’t know why. It wasn’t my life, wasn’t my business. But it was still a relief to see the last of Major’s dark shadow disappear.
“He was right about one thing, though.”
“What’s that?” Ox asked, coming back to stand behind me, his arms encircling my shoulders.
“When he said that cops aren’t paid nearly enough for what they do.”
“That’s true.”
“And when he said that cops have targets on their backs these days. Being a cop has become a joke because of a handful of bad cops like Major. Because every cop who steals or lies or perpetrates racist behavior against an innocent person pins that target on cops who are honest and clean, on cops who take their oath to the citizens of their city seriously.”
“I agree.”
“I grew up believing that every cop was something like a guardian angel. My momma told me they were, that they would always protect me. And when Major arrived at that farmer’s house that night, I knew my mother’s words had come true. He was my guardian angel. But now…” I shook my head, tears clogging my throat. “It’s not right. Kids these days, they don’t respect cops because they see too much of these bad cops on the news, causing people to die with an inappropriate chokehold, or a misplaced bullet, or intentional actions that come from fear instead of training. They don’t believe in guardian angels anymore.”
“That’s just the world we live in, babe.”
“It’s not right.”
“I know.”
He pulled me closer to him, his lips brushing my temple. “Come work for me,” he said softly against my ear. “Let us find a way to change things. Let’s find a way to work with the police departments to improve training, to improve community relations. I don’t know how we’d go about it, but we can try.”
I smiled, touched by the thought. “I’ll think about it.”
“Okay.”
There was a twinge of disappointment in his voice, but he didn’t push it. I liked that about him. He knew when to drop a conversation to be picked up at some later date.
We waited until the fire was little more than embers glowing among ashes, then got in his Porsche for the ride back to town. He held my hand, humming under his breath as we went. I stared out the window, watching the countryside go by. I’d never really enjoyed long drives, but I was learning to.
“Let’s let the future take care of itself for now,” I said, glancing at him. “I think all I want to worry about right now is what we’re having for dinner.”
“Pizza?”
I groaned. “We’ve had pizza too many times!”
He glanced at me, flicking his eyebrows up and down. “Yeah. It’s the easiest thing to eat in bed.”
I laughed, slapping his arm lightly. “You are insatiable!”
“I hope so!”
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Caballo Security Box Set Page 92