The Departed

by Shiloh Walker

  “Smart-ass.” He closed his eyes. “Dez, this entire thing is a mess. All of it.”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t mention that it wasn’t even done. There was no need. He knew. Her gut was still in knots over the task before them, the heartbreak they still needed to face. And the guilt—

  Fuck, the guilt.

  “God, what have I done?” She dropped her head into her hands and blew out a breath. “What in the hell have I done?”

  Taylor rested his hand on the back of her neck. “Dez, you need to stop.”

  “I can’t,” she snapped, surging out of the chair and pacing the small confines of the waiting room. “I haven’t been gone so long that I’ve forgotten to be aware of all possible outcomes. I knew what kind of kid he was—knew he wasn’t stable—should have realized he’d react badly if he saw me there. Damn it—”

  “And what if we’d waited?” Taylor stood up. His voice was cool and, once more, his emotions were hidden behind that steely blue curtain. “What if we’d waited? Dez, did you look at that journal at all? He was at Beau’s house. You know why? Because Beau saw Mark and ran him off the road. He wrote it all down. He was afraid Beau’s fuckup would lead back to him. And he also was worried about the other boys. What if he’d gone after them?”

  Dez shook her head. “And what if he hadn’t?”

  “He was going to go back for Ivy.”

  She stilled. Her heart slammed against her rib cage and her mouth went dry. Wiping her sweating palms over her jeans, she stared at him. “What?”

  “You heard me. He considered her an unfinished job. He’d set himself a goal of ‘killing a bitch’—his words—before he turned eighteen and he was going to do it. She was his goal and he was going to kill her.”

  “No.” Dez turned away, covering her face with her hands. Screams of fury rose inside her, but she kept them trapped. “You…hell. You read it in the journal?”

  “Yeah. He had it all documented, neat as can be. His dad had me read it earlier—I finished it while you were in the chapel. It goes back eight months. There are others, though. His stepmom says he’s kept journals for almost as long as he’s been able to write.”

  The guilt was still there. She couldn’t wipe it away as easily as that. And maybe she shouldn’t be able to—oh, screw the maybe. She knew she shouldn’t be able to wipe it away. She’d fucked up and she needed to take responsibility for it.

  But she could bear that guilt, she reckoned. Especially if it meant Ivy would be safe. “He’ll have a harder time hurting her now,” she said quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “Does that make it okay?” She turned and looked at him, her hands opening, closing into fists. She remembered the look of sheer hate, the rage—the ugliness she’d seen in Brendan’s eyes. The pure filth she’d felt inside his soul. “He’s so young. Could he be helped? Knowing she’s safe now, that makes me breathe easier, but this doesn’t make it okay for me. It can’t.”

  “It shouldn’t.” Taylor came to her and slid his arm around her waist. She sighed and rested her head on his chest, wishing she could get closer. Wishing she could find a way to fix all the mistakes she’d made over the past day. “If this made it okay for you, you wouldn’t be who you are.”

  “Are you okay with this?” She curled a hand into his shirt, determined she wasn’t going to cry over this. She wouldn’t let herself have those tears. She wasn’t sure she deserved them.

  “No. But I saw a kid who was willing to kill you, me, his father. All because we were in his way. That’s all it was, Dez. We were in his way. It doesn’t make any of this right, but I’m not going to kill myself with guilt over it, either. We screwed up. We have to live with it. But he made the choices that put him here.” He pressed his lips to her brow.

  “He’s just a kid.”

  “He’s seventeen. Old enough to know he shouldn’t kidnap a girl, that he shouldn’t kill his friends. Don’t use that ‘just a kid’ line, Dez. We both know better. Neither of us had the easiest childhood and we didn’t decide to go and kidnap a girl, didn’t decide to kill our friends, none of that.” He eased back, studying her face. “You have to figure out how to deal with it on your own; I know that. But he made his own choices. And he knew they were wrong. He just didn’t care.”

  She swallowed. Sighing, she eased back away from him. The memory of seeing those pictures spill out of the journal haunted her—seeing Ivy’s face—that haunted her. Ivy…God, she wanted that image gone. So badly.

  But she couldn’t pluck it from her mind, just like she couldn’t erase any other moment of this day. She had to live with it. “You’re right. He didn’t care. I have to live with knowing I did something that pushed him into running—and he had an accident that landed him in here.”

  “We pushed him into running,” Taylor interjected. “We have to live with it—it was both of us.”

  “We,” she echoed. “But he was old enough to do this. It’s not like he was ten years old, twelve years old. We have to deal with it. So does he.”

  * * *

  IT was night. Dark and cold—too cold, but Dez thought maybe it was just her. As Taylor pulled up in front of the cottage, she looked over at him. “Will you stay with me?”

  “Is it a good idea?”

  Her heart stuttered. He…hell. He hadn’t changed his mind already, had he?

  In the faint light coming off the dashboard, she saw the tired smile on his face. “Dez, that look hurts even worse than my arm,” he said. He put the car into park, awkwardly, shifting around to use his left hand since the right was casted to just under his elbow. Then he turned and reached out, brushing his thumb over her lip.

  “I’m not walking away. I meant what I told you—hell, was it only this morning?”

  She swallowed. “Then why don’t you want to come in?”

  “You need to sleep.”

  “All the more reason you should come in.” She covered his hand with hers, staring at him. “I sleep better with you around, Jones. At least I did last night. And…hell, I don’t know what it is, but when you’re around, I don’t have this rush of everything coming in. It’s like I’m more grounded or something. And around here, I desperately need it. It’s peaceful.”

  A blond brow crooked up. “So basically you’re just attracted to me because I’m boring?”

  “Boring?” She laughed weakly. “No. Boring and peaceful are two different things. Come on inside, Jones. I’ll even let you use the washer and dryer if you’re worried about wearing dirty clothes tomorrow. The washer and dryer look like they are brand new—you can break them in.”

  “They are new.” He leaned over and nipped at her lower lip. “I’ll come in. If you call me by my damn name.”

  “Taylor.” She touched his cheek. “Stay the night with me. Please.”

  “Okay.”

  Then she pushed him back, scowling. “How do you know if the appliances are new?”

  “I own the house.”

  She was still gaping when he opened her door a minute later. He owned the house?

  “YOU own this place?”

  Taylor glanced at her as he rooted through the cabinets, trying to find something fast and easy that he could make her eat before they went to bed. “Yeah. Do you like chicken noodle soup or tomato better?”

  “Chicken noodle. Unless we can do grilled cheese.”

  She wandered farther into the kitchen and peered over his shoulder as he glanced into the refrigerator. Yeah, the lawyer’s wife had done a decent job stocking up on basics. “We can do grilled cheese.”

  “Good…are you cooking?” She headed over to the island and settled on one of the scoop-backed stools, gazing at him.

  “Yes. Because I know you won’t. You’ll just go collapse in bed.”

  “Why do you own two houses?”

  He frowned at her. “I don’t.”

  “But…you just said you owned this one.”

  Taylor sigh
ed. Tugging open one of the drawers, he rummaged around for a can opener. “My family owned five houses here, including the manor. Now they’re mine. So those, and my house in Virginia. That’s six houses, not two.”

  “Six.” She rubbed her eyes. Absently, she frowned at him as he studied the can opener and the can in front of him. “You need help?”

  He grimaced at his casted arm. “I’m afraid I do.”

  She opened the can and nudged it over to him and returned to her perch, content to let him finish since he seemed so intent on doing it. “I can’t believe some of this is happening, you know. Actually…all of it. But some parts seem very surreal. Like now. I’m sleeping with my boss. He owns six fucking houses.”

  “Technically, I’m not your boss.”

  She smirked at him. “Technically, you are, according to that contract. Although I guess we can tear that up.”

  “I already did.” Using his casted right arm to steady the tub of butter, he scooped some of it into a spoon and dumped it into the skillet. “Well, figuratively speaking. The job that was never really a job is done and it’s official. You’re completely free of me again.”

  “Am I really?” Her voice was low and soft, husky…and it hit him like a sucker punch, straight in the gut. In the heart. Glancing up at her, he found her staring at him with heat in her eyes, a smile dancing on her lips. “What if I don’t want to be free?”

  “You might want to be careful there.” He looked away—had to, before he decided to say the hell with cooking. She needed some food in her belly. He could strip her clothes away and have his way with her after she ate, damn it. And he insisted he could wait, even though his hands were shaking somewhat.

  * * *

  DEZ smiled at his back as he focused on the food. Either it required a great deal of his attention to grill those sandwiches or he was ignoring her.

  She figured he was ignoring her.

  That was fine. She’d been flirting with him more to keep her mind off everything else, anyway. Everything else—so much of everything else. Damn it all to hell.

  Stop it. You can think about it more in the morning. You need to sleep, she told herself.

  Needed to sleep. Needed him. Needed to set all of this aside. Tomorrow she’d go back to the hospital, face what she’d done. Again. But for now, she needed to set it aside.

  It didn’t take long for him to slip a plate and a bowl of soup in front of her and she stared at it for a good thirty seconds, trying to convince herself she could eat, that she should eat. Making a face, she looked up at him and said, “You know, I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat.” He settled across from her with his own food.

  “You’re so damn bossy.” She sighed and dipped a spoon into the bowl, stirring it around. “I’m not hungry.”

  “If I waited for you to be hungry, you might eat at the dawn of the next ice age. Eat…please.”

  “Damn. Jones, you just said please. I’m so impressed.” She put the spoon down and picked up her sandwich, then dipped it into her soup, a faint smile curling her lips. Vaguely, she could remember eating like this with her grandmother. Those memories were so faint, they couldn’t really even be called memories. But they made her smile. She reached up to touch her necklace, only to remember she didn’t have it—the chain still needed to be fixed.

  After she took a bite of her sandwich, she looked at Taylor. “Where was my necklace?” she asked him.

  A shutter fell across his face, his eyes carefully blank. With controlled, precise movements, he laid his spoon down. His gaze shifted to some point past her shoulder, although she suspected he wasn’t seeing any part of the house, or even her. “It was on the floor after the medics transferred you to the stretcher. I saw it and grabbed it.” He slanted a look in her direction and then shifted his gaze off to the side again. “I’m sorry I didn’t return it sooner.”

  “’S okay,” she murmured, shrugging. “I was just wondering. I’d pretty much given it up for lost.”

  “I’ll get the chain fixed for you.” He picked up his spoon again.

  She opened her mouth to tell him it wasn’t necessary, but then she frowned, noticed how tightly he gripped that spoon. Hell, she couldn’t have pried it out of his grip.

  “I never should have let you go in there.”

  Dez tore off a piece of her sandwich and popped it in her mouth. Oddly, her appetite wasn’t quite as dead as it had been. “You would have had a hard time stopping me, you know.”

  “I could have cuffed you and thrown you in my car,” he growled. “Shit.”

  He shoved back from the island, hurling the spoon down.

  “And I would have decked you. A girl would have died. We need to get past this, sugar. God knows the two of us are going to have enough to come to grips with, just dealing with everything going on here and now. I’m fine, so why worry about it?”

  “Because I’m not fine!”

  She jumped, caught off guard by the fury, the heat in his usually cool voice. He came off the stool, prowling the kitchen like a caged lion, his eyes half wild, his uninjured hand opening and closing into a fist. “I’ve got enough nightmares haunting me already, but none of them haunt me like that. I can’t…I can’t…”

  His voice broke and he turned away.

  Dez stared as he braced his uninjured hand on the counter, his broken one hanging at his side. Then he just stood there, head slumped. “You’re all torn up inside over what happened to Brendan Moore and I won’t deny feeling some guilt. But it’s not going to shatter me, not going to keep me awake at night. None of it would have happened if he hadn’t taken the road he’d taken. If he was four, five years younger? I might feel different. But you saw the same person I saw—that wasn’t a child making those decisions. He knew what he was doing—and he didn’t care.”

  As he turned around and stared at her, eyes burning with emotion, Dez’s heart leaped into her throat. “You’re going to feel bad about it, and I can’t stop you,” he said, his voice gruff, raw. Naked emotion shone in his gaze. “It may well keep you up at night. But you know what keeps me up at night? The sight of you lying on the ground, your blood all over my hands, and I can’t fucking stop it.”

  “Taylor…” Slipping off the stool, she moved around the island, coming up to stand in front of him. She cupped her face in his hands, stroked a thumb over his mouth.

  What did she say to him? Her heart ached inside her chest and she wanted, so badly, to take that pain from him. Rising on her toes, she pressed her lips to his. She couldn’t just keep saying, I’m fine. He could see that. And saying it wasn’t going to do anything to undo the nightmares, she realized, not if they ran that deep.

  Maybe…she closed her eyes and pulled away, resting her head on his shoulder as the words she’d held inside burned in her throat. Maybe she could give him that. Would it help? Would it hurt?

  Swallowing, she lifted her head once more and studied him. She stroked her hands down his chest, down to his sides. “Have you ever had something burning inside you, something you wanted to tell somebody for a long, long while, but you just couldn’t?”

  His lids flickered, but he said nothing. His uninjured hand came up, his thumb lightly brushing the scar on her neck.

  “I could have said it a year ago. I meant it then. Hell, I could have said it two years ago, five…” Nervous, she realized. Oh, fuck, she was nervous. Was she supposed to be nervous? She’d never told anybody. Not like this. She thought she might have told her friend Taige, but that was different. Had she ever told anybody as a child? Her mother? Her grandmother…

  Focus, damn it.

  Biting the inside of her cheek, hard, she waited until that small, sharp pain cleared her head enough for her to think again. Then she focused on that steely blue gaze. Yes. She could have told him five years ago, easily. She suspected she probably could have told him within a few months of meeting him, not that he’d made it easy for her to love him—Taylor Jones w
ouldn’t want anybody loving him. But she loved him anyway.

  And it was time she let him know that.

  Cupping his face in her hands once more, she focused on him—just him. He was her anchor, she realized. When he was there, he made everything so much easier, so much more real. She needed him.

  “I love you.”

  * * *

  FOR a few seconds, those words didn’t want to connect in his head. No, that wasn’t right—they wanted to connect, but some protective instinct just wouldn’t let them, not immediately, at least.

  He could feel the ridge of her scar under his thumb, the warmth of her skin. He could see the darkness of her gaze, the intensity of it. There was a small, solemn smile on her lips, so gentle and easy.

  Closing his eyes, he let himself think about what she’d said—let himself think about the words.

  Fuck. Fuck—

  Abruptly, he caught the front of her shirt in his hand, fisted it, dragging her closer. He pressed his brow to hers. In a ragged, harsh voice, he demanded, “Do you mean it?”

  “Now come on, Jones.” She chuckled. “Since when have I ever said anything I don’t mean?”

  She might have said something else, but he didn’t know what—he couldn’t say he even cared. He was too busy kissing her, his mouth all but devouring hers. And she didn’t seem to mind at all.

  Handicapped by his broken arm, he struggled one-handed with her clothing, determined to have her naked—now. She apparently had the same focus in mind, her fingers fighting with the buttons on his shirt, shoving it open, but she didn’t mess with trying to get it off. Fine by him.

  He wasn’t too worried about his clothes, but hers were a different story. The shirt, it had to go. Same with her bra, her jeans, her panties, although his fingers were clumsy and everything seemed to tangle with him. Growling, he fisted his hand in the silky little strip of cloth high on her hips, ready to rip the panties off. She laughed and said, “Slow down there, Jones. I just bought those from Victoria’s Secret—you tear them, you buy me new ones.”