by Paula Cox
For Christ’s sakes, Dax. Where are you? Did anyone even call the police?
“I get that you think I’ve betrayed you,” she said. Hell, at this point it was worth trying any unorthodox tack. “But if you’ll just give me a chance to tell my side of the story, maybe you’ll see that it isn’t so black and white. You know I’ve loved you since high school.”
“No, you played me,” he replied. “To get what you wanted.”
“Um, you made the first move. You asked me out.”
“Then you saw your chance and you played me with that coy little secret-slut routine. I heard about those guys at the burger bar where you worked…that threesome. Did they both nail you at the same time, or did they take turns?”
She shook her head, fighting back the tears. “Where’s all this coming from?”
“The patterns were there all along. I just never saw them before…not until you slipped up the other week. You stayed out all night when you were usually back before bedtime. Then you tried to lie about where you’d been and whom you’d been with. That fucking proves your guilt. It proves you were covering up for what you’d been up to all along, behind my back. And even now, when the cat’s totally out of the bag, you’re still trying to play innocent. You make me sick. You make me fucking sick!”
Before she could offer her defense, he flew at her. Tiana tried to kick him off. She caught him in the balls, which halted him for a moment, then just made him madder. He bared his teeth. The veins in his neck and forearms bulged. His face contorted with murderous rage.
“Don’t. Please, Thad, don’t—”
His hands were around her throat before she could finish. He squeezed so hard it punched the breath up out of her windpipe, mid-swallow. She tried to cough up the saliva that had gone down the wrong hole, but even her cough couldn’t get through. He choked and he choked. Her head felt like it swelled three sizes. It was ready to explode. A heavy iron weight in her lungs backed up to her heart. Now she went lightheaded, as though her brain had been filled with hot air and cast adrift from the rest of her body.
She knew she was dying.
Her last impulse was to play him, just as he’d accused her of doing. It made little sense and yet it was the only thing that made any sense. To outsmart a crazy person…
She stopped struggling and fell limp. Closed her eyes.
Somewhere through her fog of consciousness he released his hold and set her head down. Not violently but gently, peacefully. He’d done what his insanity had made him do and now he would just have to deal with it…with what he’d done.
Everything she had left told her to gasp for dear life, but Tiana didn’t dare move a muscle. She was inside a black, muscular hole that was swallowing her deeper and deeper. But the distant voice above said, Not yet. If you move now, you’ll never move again. It kinda sound like Dax Easterling’s voice, and she trusted it. It was desperate, that voice. It relaxed her limbs and clenched her core so that she could play dead long enough to cheat death. To cheat him. The man she’d loved for what seemed like a lifetime. Her murderer.
She held on for as long as she could. Not moving. Not fighting back but fighting onward, reaching for survival. All she could hope to do now was outlast him. To cling to the future.
Tiana thought she heard a car backfiring. It was close. It was worlds away.
Then she slipped into the darkness.
Chapter Sixteen
“Hang on just a sec.” Clamping his cell phone between cheek and shoulder, Dax had one hand on the gear stick and one on the steering wheel. He was ready to break every traffic law in L.A. if it meant getting to Tiana in time. “Okay, go Ward. Uh-huh. And that’s confirmed. Uh-huh. Sure, I know the area. It’s not that far. I might need to check my Google Map once I get close, but I’ll find it. Copy that—number one-one-two-four. Sure, you go ahead and call it in. What’s that? No. I won’t be waiting till they arrive. Appreciate it, brother. Over and out.”
It was getting late in the evening, but there was way too much traffic on the roads for his liking. Umpteen times he had to blast slowpoke drivers who couldn’t get it into their heads that he was in a hurry for a reason.
If you’ve laid a hand on her, Hollis, I swear to God, you’re dead.
He cursed himself for not bringing along a sidearm—he had two locked in safes in the Hollywood home. If they’d told him Hollis had been packing, he might have made sure he was armed, but an asshole with a knife he could manage. The Marines had taught him that early on. His own self-defense disciplines had given him several other options to achieve the same result. He mentally rifled through them now.
It took him a little under fifteen minutes of hell-for-leather driving to reach Hollis’s address. He double-checked the mailbox number and saw 1124. There were two lights on in the house: one upstairs, probably a bedroom, and one downstairs, probably the living room. He switched his engine off and didn’t wait to draw a breath; he just got out and headed straight for the front of the house. The garden was overgrown, a real mess. It gave him cover for his approach.
The living room drapes were open. No movement inside that he could see. He tried the front door. It was unlocked, and it didn’t creak when he opened it. He crept into the vestibule, still confident he had surprise on his side. But not only was the house quiet—a disconcerting, heavy kind of quiet—there was a sharp and all-too-familiar tang in the air.
Cordite. Shit!
A part of him didn’t want to peer around the corner. It would be too awful. Worse than all the worst things he’d been cursed to relive from his time in the Corps. Tiana. Dead. Because he’d left her alone to be kidnapped.
He saw a man’s body in the armchair, head slumped forward. Blood spattered on the wall behind him. There was a Beretta on the floor nearby.
Oh Jesus. He’s done it. And he’s taken her with him!
Dax dashed in, scanned the entire room in moments.
No sign of Tiana.
He checked the study and the kitchen. Nothing. So what the fuck had happened? Where was she?
“Tiana?”
He ran upstairs to where he’d seen the light coming from. Immediately he saw her lying motionless on the bed and knew he was too late. Goddamnit! The coward had brought her up here to kill her, then he’d done himself someplace else, somewhere where he wouldn’t have to look at her when he finally pulled the trigger.
You sick fuck. Why did you have to take her with you? Why couldn’t you just leave her alone?
Minutes! A matter of minutes had passed since Dax had been alone with her in the Jacuzzi, the most intimate he’d ever been with a woman in his life. Tiana, for Christ’s sake. His Tiana!
Hollis, what the fuck have you done?
Numb inside, he made his way over to her. There was no cordite smell in here. How had he done it? Smothered her with a pillow? No, the red marks on her neck indicated the son of a bitch had strangled her.
He checked her pulse. Faint, barely there…
It took him a moment to realize what that meant. He sat up and snapped out of his funk. “Tiana? Stay with me. Holy shit! You need to stay with me, okay.”
He called 9-1-1, told them everything, and demanded an ambulance. “Yeah, she’s weak, but she’s alive! Keep her comfortable? Copy that. No, not a rope or a cord; I’m pretty sure he tried to choke her with his bare hands. I will. Trust me, there’s no one getting in here without a badge or a uniform. My name? Dax Easterling. Yeah, that’s right—UFC. Who is she to me?” He thought about that for a moment but couldn’t decide how to word it. His heart was hurting though, hurting badly. He realized there were no words that could do justice to how he felt. “She’s…with me.”
In every way he knew. And some he didn’t.
Dax promised himself he’d never leave her side again. No matter what happened.
***
There was comfort in the occasional soft beep of her bedside vitals monitor. Before she was strong enough to open her eyes for more than a moment, Tiana
figured out where she was—in a hospital, maybe an intensive-care ward. However, the will was missing. The will to wake up fully, to push through the sleep fog and open her eyes to the reality of what she’d endured. No, it was better to wallow in drowsiness, let the drugs keep her passive, inside the fog. It was safer in there. Less real. She didn’t want to know what had happened next in her old home, after she’d blacked out.
A doctor came to check on her and saw that she was fitfully coming around. He shone a light in her eyes and asked her to follow his finger. She did. As soon as he’d finished, she closed her eyes again and slipped back into the fog. Being insensible was the only comfort she had left. Nothing vivid or lucid could penetrate the fog. Like a dream catcher, it softened, filtered, and took care of the bad thoughts before they could reach her.
Then she heard a familiar voice—a man’s voice, deep but gentle. It seemed from another life. She didn’t know how she felt about that life, except that it had let her down in ways she couldn’t articulate. This voice in particular. It was one she’d wanted to hear at the end, wanted badly, but it had not come. Dax Easterling had not come.
“Hey, Tiana. The doc said you were awake. How’re you feeling?”
She blinked at him. Like a train wheel ran over my throat, genius.
“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot you can’t talk. I actually wore one of those things myself.” He gestured to her neck brace. “After a fight I had in Marrakesh. My windpipe swelled up and I—okay, you don’t wanna hear about that.” He sucked in a deep breath. “So I don’t know if it’s the right time to tell you this or not—not that there’d ever be a right time—but I think sooner is better than later.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. She liked the sensation of his touch, but not the gravity in his voice. “You should know that Thad is dead. He shot himself.”
She reached for the fog, but it was gone. The bad thoughts crushed in from all around, as though the room was collapsing. She pulled her hand away and shot him a hateful look.
“I got there as quick as I could…before the police got there. He was in the living room. He’d already pulled the trigger. Then I ran upstairs and found you. I thought he’d done the same to you, but when I found you had a pulse, even though it was faint, I knew you’d pull through. You’re tougher than you know, Tiana Crowe. You’re a survivor. Like me. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for your loss. I know what he meant to you, in spite of what he turned into.”
He looked her squarely, sincerely in the eye, but she couldn’t reciprocate. Without her fog, she had no filter for a lifetime of memories. All those years she’d spent loving Thad—now lost. All those future plans she’d made for the two of them—now gone. The romantic times, the turbulent times, the ecstatic moments when he’d won big fights or received lucrative sponsorship deals or when he’d made love to her with that vigorous, intense passion that was uniquely Thad. A flawed guy, yes, but this fucking sport had driven him to excess. If it hadn’t piled so much pressure on him, he’d never have taken all those steroids, would he? And he wouldn’t have needed the corrective treatment that really fucked him up psychologically.
Her cute and cocky jock from high school, who’d taken her to see that “pirate play” even though he hated theatre, let alone comic opera, had just committed suicide. After trying to kill her. If there was ever any way to come to terms with that, it was totally alien to Tiana right now.
“I’m sorry, Tiana. I should never have left you alone like that. I don’t know what else to say. I guess we’re just lucky he didn’t take anyone else with him.”
Lucky? The man she’d loved for all those years had just blown his brains out and this idiot was calling it “lucky!”
She couldn’t stand to look at Dax. Maybe it was harsh—he certainly hadn’t caused any of this—but he was involved. He was connected. However unintentionally, he had helped tip Thad over the edge. So had she. The two of them, together, were in some twisted, self-righteous way responsible for a sick man seeing murder and suicide as the only solution to his problems.
Maybe if she’d done what Dax had suggested, what she herself had almost done more than once, filed charges, it could have been avoided. If she’d notified the authorities that Thad was unwell and abusive and was liable to do something dangerous if no one intervened.
Too late now.
No matter what anyone said, she had to bear some blame here. For not acting sooner. For provoking him by jumping into bed with his biggest rival the moment he’d thrown her out. Sure, she could justify it any number of ways—getting even, living her own life, following her heart—but did she have to screw Dax so soon after all that bad blood between him and Thad? Was she surprised he’d overreacted? That he’d flipped out like this? If not, then she had to have known what was coming and she’d let it happen anyway. That was her guilt right there.
She and Dax had played their part in Thad’s downfall because they’d seen the danger signs and done the one thing that was bound to trigger him off.
Their affair had blood on its hands. And it would never be innocent again.
“Tiana, I’m sorry it had to happen like this. We both guessed it might go down this way, but that’s not the same as wanting it to happen, or even making it happen. He did this. He got himself hooked on steroids. He took that chance. Remember that. You were steady for him all those years. You did your best to keep him on an even keel. If it wasn’t for you, he might have flipped out a lot sooner and a lot worse. You’ve nothing to blame yourself for.”
He held her hand again. This time she let him; she didn’t pull away. Her heart was torn, just like her mind. She had no real perspective right now. Only feelings. They told her Dax was genuine, he meant every word he said, but also that he was a newcomer in her life. An important one, granted, but she hadn’t known him long enough to let his opinion change the way she felt about Thad. All those years weighed heavy on her now. No matter how he’d turned out, how much she hated the monster he’d become at the end, he was still the boy who’d changed her life, who’d taken her virginity and given her a home away from home, and he’d taken her on an amazing journey with him, shown her things, a lifestyle, that she’d never have gotten to see without him.
Most important of all, she’d loved him. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment she’d lost that love—weeks, months, years ago—but it was gone now. What she had left was a sugarcoated memory with a bitter end. However, she could still feel the way she’d felt about him once…about the man before the monster. Words couldn’t describe how much it hurt to feel that now.
And Dax only reminded her of it. How she’d turned to him at the most painful time in her life. He’d been great, amazing even, but he’d also been there at a time when Thad had tried to kill her. Would Dax always remind her of that? Or would he help her to get over it, to move on? He was a fighter, too. Could she ever really trust a fighter not to be violent? He might be sweet and chivalrous now, but so was Thad in the beginning. Maybe the seeds of the monster had always been there, waiting for a catalyst. The steroids and the testosterone treatment had just been the trigger.
Were those same seeds in Dax Easterling? After all, he wasn’t just a martial artist, he was a Marine, a trained killer. He hadn’t just beaten men in the ring, he’d taken lives and done unspeakable things overseas. Maybe he was as much a time bomb as Thad had been and those monstrous urges were just waiting to be triggered.
Or maybe he didn’t have them and she was being paranoid and seeing violence in every man’s shadow. Being around men full stop was probably not a good idea right now. They all had a bit of Thad in them.
One thing she knew for certain was she was tired. Tired of hurting and feeling helpless and of being afraid of the future.
What she needed was to disappear into her fog for a while—that insensible fog where nothing sharp or definite could reach her—and drift, just drift, until all this was over.
Tiana felt his gaze on her, but she refused to look at him. He said s
omething she didn’t quite catch, then he got up and kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes and turned away from him.
Can’t you see I want to be on my own? Can’t you see this is too painful? Why can’t you just go away and let me deal with this.
Then he did leave, and she glanced around the empty, strange room. The fog did not return as she wanted. Things were too sharp, too defined. They were all too real. And she felt isolated, afraid. She really did want someone with her. But he was gone now. Maybe he’d never be coming back. She hadn’t exactly made him feel welcome. On the contrary, she’d practically eighty-sixed him with her outraged ice queen routine.
Christ. Would she ever see him again? Had she gone and lost both the men in her life?
Tiana’s neck started to burn. Every time she inhaled it felt like a flint was striking metal partway up her throat. She reached around for the pain relief injection button and found it on her right side. She pressed it. It wasn’t long before the fog began to swallow her up, and everything in the room lost its definition. It was just easier in the fog. Softer. Simpler. Then she realized Thad, in his own way, had been on his own as much as she was now. The only difference was, his fog had not been so kind, so forgiving. No, it had taken away everything she’d loved about him.