by Penny Alley
A very sad echo of her former smile crossed her face, and then was gone again. “No. He never wanted me, but Matson never struck me. Not once.”
Gabe frowned. “Then why didn’t you want him found?”
“Because I…” The napkin tore between her worrying fingers. She licked her lips, then bit them. “I was afraid of what he would say. When they asked him who to save.”
“Who to save.” Gabe shifted in his seat, certain he was misunderstanding whatever point she was trying so hard not to make and at the same time fighting to keep his butt in the booth when every fiber of his being suddenly ached to drive out to Scullamy and raze the whole damn place to the ground. The only thing preventing him from doing it was the slump of Neoma’s shoulders and the certainty that if he left her now she wouldn’t understand why, and might even take it as yet another abandonment. And of course, Scotty’s head was pillowed on his leg. It would have been hard to move and not wake the boy.
“They wanted to cut him out of me,” Neoma said, not looking at him. “The Alpha refused to let them. Eight hours later, Scotty was born. It almost killed us both, but if they’d cut him out, I would have died for sure.” The smile she flashed him then was even smaller and more fragile than the one before. “I guess that kind of says everything it needs to about me. What kind of mother thinks more of her own life than that of her baby’s?”
“The kind who has fought every day since then to keep herself and her son alive,” Gabe answered without hesitation. “They were going to gut you, Neoma. You’re allowed to be scared any time that’s about to happen.”
“Matson didn’t think so. He didn’t touch me after that.”
“He was an idiot.” Gabe said that without hesitation too. In retrospect, he probably should have kept that to himself, but Neoma didn’t seem offended. She flashed him another fragile smile.
“It doesn’t matter.” Wadding the destroyed napkin pieces into a ball, she set it aside. “They killed him a few weeks later.”
“Deacon,” he guessed, although he hardly needed to. Deprived of anything else to pick apart, she turned on her own fingernails. That was an answer in and of itself. “Why was he killed?”
“Treason,” she confessed, her chest rising and falling in those quick, shallow breaths that betrayed more than her carefully schooled mask could. “He tried to get us out of Scullamy. When he came home that night, he was…scared. Deacon found out Matson was sleeping with…his mistress. I didn’t find that out until later, though. He gave me no time, not even to pack diapers. He grabbed a bag and we left.”
The cuticle around her thumb began to bleed. If the table between them were smaller or Scotty not on him, he’d have reached across and taken her hands, putting a stop to the nervous injury. When she saw the blood though, she stopped on her own.
“We didn’t get very far.” Picking up the discarded napkin wad, she wiped the welling blood away. “They skinned him alive.”
A curious burning was crawling through his chest, up into the back of his throat. As pissed as he was, Gabe barely felt it. “Was this before or after your father had you whipped?”
The slight hitch in her breathing and the tremor in her hand as she dabbed again at her bleeding thumbnail told him he’d finally guessed the right reason for those scars on her back. The burning in his chest took root just under his breastbone, squeezing in around his heart and lungs, making each hard beat and even harder breath a struggle to gain and filling him with one immutable certainty: He was going to kill Deacon.
“My story isn’t as funny as yours,” Neoma said, but stopped when her gaze found his. Her startlement bled quickly into caution. “Your eyes are glowing,” she whispered, shooting a quick glance to the chevolak teenager working behind the ice cream counter.
The customer bell on the front door clanged out the arrival of more patrons and she quickly covered her face with her hand, as if that might somehow protect him from being spotted. Gabe closed his eyes. Two slow breaths and more self-control that he thought himself capable of just then helped to swallow the anger back. Maya’s surprised voice did the rest.
“Gabe?”
Gabe and Neoma both looked up, Gabe half-turning in the booth to see Maya, her black hair and soft brown skin a sharp contrast with the white of her tanktop and cutoff denim shorts. Across the table, Neoma covered her face again.
“Wow,” Maya said, eyebrows arching. It was probably a trick of his imagination that made him want to interpret that look as pleasant surprise. “This is definitely the place to come on a Thursday night. We just ran into Marcus in the parking lot.”
The bells on the door clanged again when her husband, Seth McQueen entered the shop. He stopped when he saw Gabe and the initial openness of his expression became abruptly closed. “Hell,” he growled.
A few short days ago, this kind of unexpected run-in with the woman of his dreams would have caused Gabe’s heart to skip a beat and his pulse to race. Right now, watching as she took two hesitant steps toward his table, all Gabe felt was…a strange hollowness. Oh, his heart still panged, but it was nothing like what he’d felt the day he’d watched Maya submit to Seth’s Bridal Claim. He still felt longing and perhaps he always would, but when Neoma quickly stood up, it was to her that he found his concern promptly redirected.
“I need to, um…visit…” Flushing uncomfortably, she gestured helplessly toward the restrooms beyond the ice cream counter.
“Here.” Trying not to jostle Scotty, Gabe dug out his wallet and handed her a five. “Put this in the tip jar, if you don’t mind.” He gathered the sleeping boy and scooted out of the booth. Scotty awakened enough to wrap his arms around Gabe’s neck and settle back against his shoulder. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”
Nodding once, she ducked her head as she passed Maya and swiftly walked away.
Careful not to jostle Scotty any more than he had to, Gabe edged past both Maya and Seth. He couldn’t help giving the youngest McQueen brother a dirty look, one that was returned full force. But as he reached the door, Maya caught Seth’s arm.
“Get me an ice cream, would you?” she asked. “I need to talk to him. For just one minute,” she added, when Seth flashed Gabe another dirty look. “Please?”
With Scotty in his arms, there was no way he was about to rise to that challenging stare, though every fine hair down the length of his back bristled to answer.
And then what? The last thing he wanted was for Neoma to come out of the bathroom to find him pounding Seth’s face into the black-and-white tiled ice cream parlor floor. Curled against his chest, he felt Scotty’s fingers twitch against his shoulder. Rubbing the pup’s small back, Gabe shook his head, more at himself than the machinations of the situation. Eventually, he would stop pining after Maya, and he knew it. But for now, just having to stand this close to her made the rawness of it too damned much for him to bear. The chimes on the door rattled when he bumped them with his hip and shoved his way outside.
“Gabe?” Maya followed him out into the cool night air.
He walked quickly, gravel crunching under his boots as he headed for the jeep, parked at the far end of the parking lot. Not because the place had been packed full of customers when they’d first arrived, but a habitual defense he liked to employ to save it from scratches and dings and careless vehicular neighbors. He was almost to it when Maya broke into a jog, her sneakered feet chasing out across the parking lot after him.
“Gabe, wait,” she called, soft and winsome. “Can we talk for just a minute?”
Juggling Scotty in his arms, careful not to wake him, Gabe fished his keys from his pocket and unlocked the car. “Sure. Why not?”
Stopping at the rear bumper, Maya watched as he lay Scotty into the back, buckling the seatbelt around him. It was probably another trick of his imagination that made him want to interpret hers as a pained expression, but for just a second she looked far too Neoma-ish—her mouth tense, her fingers wringing at one another—for his peace of mind. He glanced
back at the ice cream shop, but there was no sign of Neoma through the well-lit windows.
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked impatiently, and then when Scotty woke up a bit, softened his tone. “Hey, buddy,” he said, ruffling his hair. “Go back to sleep.”
“I left my ice cream,” Scotty mumbled, raising sticky fingers to hug the seatbelt strap.
“Trust me, you’re wearing it home.”
Having followed him on the pretense of talking, Maya was content to wait until he finished buckling Scotty in. Head conked back against the seat, mouth slightly open and hands limp at his sides, Scotty was asleep again before Gabe withdrew. Soft as he could, he closed the door.
“You do that really well, you know,” Maya finally offered. When he looked at her, she gestured at him and the car. “The whole fatherhood thing. I’ve always thought you’d make a great dad.”
Unsure which urge to give into—the one screaming for him to either get angry or laugh—Gabe waited for her to get to the point. There wasn’t a molecule in him that felt like laughing right now, and yet what could possibly be gained by getting angry?
“Are you regretting your choice?” he finally asked, so painstakingly neutral that it physically hurt. Like tiny shards of glass cutting him from the inside out.
There it was again, that barely perceptible wince as she slipped her hands into her back pockets. “No.” She shook her head. “I know you don’t like the McQueens, but Seth…he’s a good man. Kind, gentle. We have a lot in common, and I…I think, in time, I could come to love him very much.”
Funny, how that honest admission didn’t make the brittle glass inside him cut any deeper than it already was. Perhaps he’d hit his saturation point where Maya and pain were concerned. He glanced again to the ice cream shop. Neoma was still in the bathroom.
“I’m glad,” he said. It wasn’t a complete lie, either. That surprised him, but then, he supposed he’d have to be a real ass to want her miserable for the rest of her life.
Maya looked at her shoes, and then back up at him. There was no mistaking the plaintive helplessness that made her appear as if on the verge of tears. “I’m so sorry, Gabe.”
Oh, and here it came. Wishing Neoma would hurry up so he wouldn’t have to hear what was coming, Gabe walked the long way around the jeep to the driver’s side. It didn’t work; she followed him, her tone pleading for understanding. “I know you’ve always thought you loved me—”
His hand on the handle, Gabe turned on her. “Thought I loved you?” he echoed incredulously. “There was no ‘thought’ about it. I did love you!” Did? “Do,” he belatedly corrected, a tiny spark of unpleasant surprise wending through the glass in his gut.
“And I love you,” Maya returned, the tears coming then, filling up her eyes. Dark as it was, if it weren’t for the brightness of the lights inside the ice cream shop reflecting off them as they spilled over her lashes, he never would have seen them falling. “I’ve always loved you and I always will. Just not the way you want me to.”
Her fingers red from where she’d been twisting at them, Maya pressed both hands over her heart, as if that pressure were the only thing keeping it from breaking. He knew exactly how she felt. Right now, his was shattering.
“I can’t remember a time in my life when you haven’t been there—being there for me, watching out for me.” She shook her head. “I’ve been trying for years to feel like that for you, but I can’t. You’re my brother, Gabe. Every bit as much a brother to me as Hank.”
And there it was. The irrevocable kiss of death to any man’s chance of romantic entanglement with the woman he’d once considered his perfect mate. Gabe closed his eyes, waiting for the pain to just rip him apart. It didn’t happen. The glass remained in his gut. It even rose, spreading up into his chest, making swallowing a brittle accomplishment. But, at least it didn’t hurt any worse than it already did.
“That’s not the way wives should love their husbands,” Maya told him, her voice cracking just a little.
“You should have told me.”
“I know. I know, I just…I didn’t know how.”
Behind them, the bell clanged as the parlor door opened. It wasn’t Neoma, though, and Gabe’s hope of rescue from this conversation was dashed when Seth exited, a sundae container in each hand. Frowning, he went as far as his car, parked near the door, then stopped and waited.
“I should go,” Maya whispered.
Forcing himself to look away, Gabe managed a nod. “Yeah.”
She hesitated, but when he continued to avoid her, she gave up. “I hope you and Neoma are very happy together,” she said, and God if she didn’t look sincere as hell when she said it. Gabe almost did laugh then, except it still wasn’t funny and when she put her hand on his shoulder, arching onto tiptoes to kiss him goodbye, it completely killed the desire. He turned his face, making it easy for her to buss his cheek.
He hoped that kiss twisted in Seth’s guts for at least a year.
The bitterness behind that thought didn’t last longer than the time it took Maya to walk away. When she reached her husband and pulled his arm into a comforting hug—for which of them, Gabe could only guess—by then, all Gabe could feel was guilty for harboring it.
“I hope you’re happy too.” He hoped he said it softly enough for neither of them to overhear. Seth glanced over at him, but Gabe had no idea if he did so because his volka ears were just that good or because Maya was once more safely at his side; Maya never looked back at all.
His heart having taken all the abuse it could for one night, Gabe checked his watch. When the chevolak came out from behind the counter and switched the neon open sign off, it became obvious that Maya’s unexpected arrival would require some serious damage control on his part. Double-checking to make sure Scotty was still sleeping and all the doors were locked, Gabe headed back to the shop. Seth and Maya were still talking—arguing maybe—in their car when he passed them on his way to the front door. He had no idea what he was going to say to Neoma, but maybe by the time he reached the bathroom, he’d figure out how to coax her out of it.
The clerk had already locked the front door, but he came over when Gabe knocked.
“We’re closed,” he said through the glass.
Gabe pointed back through the store. “My wife’s in the bathroom.”
Quirking both eyebrows, the clerk unlocked the front door. “I don’t think so. I just cleaned and shut out the lights back there.”
Knowing Neoma might easily prefer sitting in a pitch-black bathroom stall to witnessing anything that might pass between Maya and himself, Gabe crossed the floor. With the chevolak hovering not far behind him, he knocked twice on the women’s restroom door before cracking it open. “Are you okay, honey?”
There was no reply.
Pushing the spring-loaded door open further, Gabe leaned in far enough to switch on the light. The bathroom was every bit as empty as the clerk had suggested, with a single toilet and sink and no stalls to hide in. And a long, but narrow window, high up on the wall, that was slightly ajar.
“Told you,” the clerk said, stepping back when Gabe did.
A slow prickle of alarm tickled down his back. “Where’s your back door?” Gabe asked, already ducking past the clerk and behind the ice cream counter.
“Only employees are allowed in the kitchen,” the chevolak protested, following him past the freezers, the manager’s closet-sized office, and through the rear exit, despite the bright red tag across the handle that read, ‘Emergency Only—Alarm will sound’.
It did, a mid-pitched buzz that lit up both the store and parking lot at ear-piercing decibels until the clerk managed to shut it off.
“Neoma!” Gabe shouted, searching all around the dumpster and then the near-derelict VW bug that he could only guess was the clerk’s car.
There was no sign of her. No trace of her scent lingered on the evening breeze and he heard nothing, no sound to hint she was hiding nearby while she tried to figure ou
t her next move. Except that in his gut, he already knew she never would have walked out of this store and left Scotty behind.
An alarm of a different sort began to buzz inside of Gabe, growing stronger with every step as he searched the entire back lot all over again.
“Dude, I think you dropped something,” the clerk said, helpfully pointing at the ground beside the dumpster.
It wasn’t until Gabe came back into the light that he saw the empty syringe, lying in the shadows tucked up near the back door. That buzz of alarm became a full-on roar, overtaking all of his senses in a whoosh of urgency that had Gabe running back through the store.
No light reflected off the driver’s side window of his jeep, but it wasn’t until Gabe had reached it that he realized it was because the window had been smashed out. Shattered glass lay across both front seats, but he didn’t give that a second look once he noticed the back passenger door was standing wide open. Scotty was gone. On the ground, Gabe found another empty syringe.
“That son of a bitch,” Gabe said, staring at it in stunned disbelief. It was almost a full minute before he could make himself move. “That son of a bitch!”
Slamming the door, Gabe ripped off his shirt. He used it to sweep as much broken glass off the driver’s seat as he could before diving behind the wheel. The fury of his rage burst through his veins as if it were an extension of the engine roaring to life. He tore out of the parking lot, throwing gravel behind him, his tires squealing when they hit the highway blacktop. He pushed his jeep, taking those winding curves back to Hollow Hills much faster than he ever would have otherwise dared. After only a few miles, he caught up with Seth and Maya.
An oncoming tractor-trailer blared its horn, but Gabe still swerved into its lane to get in front of Seth. He barely managed it before the wind of the big rig’s passing buffeted the jeep, nearly sweeping it off the road and into the ditch. Seth laid on his horn too, but that didn’t stop Gabe from slamming on his brakes. Seth hit his just as fast, and both vehicles lay long lines of melted rubber on the pavement. They barely kept from colliding. Throwing it into park, Gabe had his door thrown open just seconds ahead of Seth.