by Sey, Susan
“You don’t know if I’m a jackass, or you don’t know if you want to discuss it?”
“Oh, I know you’re a jackass.” She tipped her head, considering him. “I just don’t know that I’m interested in discussing it.”
He made a show of stuffing his hands into his pockets and hunching against the wind. The temperature had definitely dropped back into the wintery range since sunset but Jax wasn’t cold. He rarely was. In fact, he was feeling markedly sweaty at the moment and not in a good way. But Addy didn’t know that. “Can I come in while you think about it?” he asked, all innocence. “It’s chilly.”
“Oh. Sure.” She stepped back from the door as he’d known she would, bless her innately hospitable soul. She gestured him into what had once been the foyer, the parlor and the dining room but was now a single generous space.
She closed the door behind him and Jax whistled. “Wow. You didn’t waste any time getting Graham up here.”
“He had a few free hours over the weekend.” She turned and walked to the enormous fireplace that had previously been stuffed into a tiny slice of the main floor and now anchored a burgeoning great room. She ran a loving finger over the elaborate granite surround. “He gave them to me.”
Jax studied that fireplace. He’d seen it right there all his life but had clearly never seen it. Not the way Addy had. If he had, he’d have known that those walls were only hemming it in. He’d have understood that a fireplace like this was supposed to be the living, beating heart of the whole damn house, an irresistible invitation to gathering and warmth.
Or maybe he wouldn’t have. Maybe that was the kind of thing only Addy saw. Or maybe the invitation and the warmth came from her. He couldn’t be sure but that was exactly why he needed her. To show him what he missed. To be the invitation and the warmth and the heart.
But all he said — all he allowed himself to say — was, “He does nice work. This is really coming along.”
A corner of her mouth lifted, and he wanted to kiss it with every ounce of his soul. “You should see the kitchen.”
“Frank and Mason had a few hours, too?”
“They did.” That smile died. “I don’t imagine it’ll be quite so easy to get on their calendars from now on, though. I had quite an afternoon.”
“Did you?”
“Might’ve burned a few bridges.”
“Yeah?”
She leaned back against the granite fireplace, folded her arms. “I’m showing those paintings, Jax.”
His stomach twisted and he bit back an instinctive protest. “Where are they?”
“Upstairs. Bianca decided to hold off on framing them in case the framer leaked photos or something.” She tipped her head slowly. “Why?”
“I’d like to see them again,” he said. “If you’ll let me.”
She studied him carefully. He didn’t know what she was looking for, nor what she found. But she blew out a breath and nodded. “Yeah, okay. Come on up.”
The hall light beamed into the bedroom where Addy had dumped her meager pile of stuff. It shot across the dirty floor like a spotlight and hit the folio propped up against the wall.
Addy stopped just inside the door, nerves jittering, and hit the switch. The naked bulb above glared to life and she stepped aside to let Jax into the room. She wanted to reach for him so she tucked her fingertips into her pockets instead and pointed her chin at the folio.
“There you go,” she said.
Jax didn’t move. He gave the folio a long look, and Addy’s nerves stretched until she thought they’d twang like banjo strings.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “There they are. Go ahead. Open them up. Look all you want.”
He turned away from the folio. Turned toward her. And what she saw in his face twisted her nerves beyond tight and into snap-any-minute.
“You know what? I don’t want to see them.” He stepped toward her. She stepped back. Found her butt against the wall. “I’ve spent years trying not to see them but they’re carved on my damn heart. It doesn’t matter if you show them or not. They’re yours, Addy. Do whatever you want with them. Just don’t leave.”
“Don’t leave?” Her heart thudded inside her ribs, shock stealing her breath and hope giving it back. “Jax, you left me. I just batted cleanup.” But a thought fragment scratched at her subconscious, just below the surface, and part of her brain split off and bore down, trying to catch it.
“I know I did.” He stepped in closer, and the heat of him reached out to claim her. “I’m a jackass.”
“Yeah, you are.” She spread her hands on the cool plaster wall behind her and tried to think. She had to think. Because the memory dangled like a thread, just out of reach. She didn’t know what it was, but understood somehow that it was important. What had he said? I’ve spent years trying not to see them…
“But I came back.”
“You did.”
“I’m here now.”
“I know.” She swallowed down a mortifying tightness in her throat, and it took all her concentration to keep her voice steady. She wouldn’t cry in front of him. She refused. “But you scared me.” It was bitter and humiliating, but it was the truth. She wouldn’t lie any more than she’d cry. It was all weakness, and she was done with that. “I thought—”
He took that last step, fitted his body deliberately into hers. She hissed like water tossed into a hot frying pan and arched into him. He felt so good. His mouth found the curve of her jaw and he murmured, “You thought what? You thought I could walk away? You thought you could do anything, say anything, be anything I wouldn’t want?”
“I—” His lips moved to her throat and the words fizzled out, thought disappeared. That broken bit of a memory still nudged at the fuzzy edges of her mind though, tried to filter through the heat of his body and the strength of her yearning. It had been there before, too, she realized. At the gallery this afternoon. It was like finding a puzzle piece months after you’d already given up on the puzzle — you should obviously keep it but where were you supposed to put it?
“Addison.” He turned his face into her hair and breathed her in like she was oxygen itself. “For God’s sake, I love you. I have since the moment Diego brought you home with this hideous old honker on your finger and all that terror behind your beautiful smile.” He twined his fingers through hers, lifted her diamond ring until even the ordinary light of the bare bulb above them shattered into rainbows. “I fell ass over teakettle for you right then and I haven’t breathed right since. I’ve waited years for you to wake up, to see me, to choose me. I thought you finally had.”
“I did.” Tears swam into her eyes. “I do.”
“But he’s still there, isn’t he? Diego. He still has a hold on you.” He tipped her ring this way and that, catching and splitting the light. “He can still hurt you, and those paintings prove it.” He gazed thoughtfully at that stone-cold diamond. “I’d erase him if I could, you know. My own brother. I would. I’d scrub him right out of your memory, out of your heart. I hate what he did to you. I’d undo it if I could.” He huffed out a half-laugh. “Oh, I know I can’t. I’m not delusional. I could burn those paintings to ashes but you’d still have the scars, wouldn’t you? So do whatever you want to with them. Burn them, hang them, use them for tea towels. I don’t care. Just stay. Let me love you the way he should have. The way you deserve. I can make you happy, Addison. Give me a chance.”
“Jax.” Hope shimmered and glowed inside her, tried to overshadow that nudging awareness, that lost puzzle piece. I’ve been trying not to see them for years. She stopped, struck. “Wait, what did you say about the paintings?”
“They’re yours.” He gripped her arms, held her eyes. “It’ll kill me to let you put them on display but end of the day? They’re yours — your property, your history. You should do whatever you want with them. Not—” He dropped his chin and eyed her. “—whatever my mother wants you to do, mind you. Whatever you want to do.”
“No,
before that.” She brought her forearms up, wedged them between their bodies and levered him back a few inches. “You said you’d been trying not to see them for years.”
He scowled. “I have been.”
“For years, Jax?” She seized the word with both hands. Relief filled her, the reflexive satisfaction of having solved a thorny riddle. But pain roared in after it, ate up her relief like a bonfire. Because up until a week ago, nobody outside of Addy, Diego and Julia Gates had known those paintings even existed.
Or so she’d believed.
“How many years?”
He froze but she saw it in his eyes, the guilt and the anguish. She didn’t need him to answer. She knew. But she wanted to hear him say it.
“Addy, listen—”
“You knew?” She spoke over him, betrayal knifing through her like the winter wind over the frozen lake. “You knew about the paintings?”
“No!” He backed away, though. Dropped his hands to his sides. “I had no idea Diego was still painting.”
“But you knew what he was painting,” she said dully. Pain pounded inside her head, filled up her heart. “You knew what my marriage was. You let me smile and pretend and make a fool of myself for years. And the whole time you knew?”
“Yes.” He dipped his head to catch her gaze and those hazel eyes were wary, guarded. “I knew.”
“How?”
“I just did.” He smiled bitterly. “That’s how it goes when you’re in love with your brother’s wife, Addison. You notice everything, whether you want to or not. And believe me, I didn’t want to. But nobody would stop talking about you — the starry-eyed child bride, too young but so in love! And lord, hadn’t she just bewitched Diego? Look at the two of them!” He shook his head. “So I did. I looked. And you know what I saw?”
“What?”
“Disaster, looming large. Diego was crazy into his sweet, fresh-faced little angel but that was the thing about my brother. He loved all his toys, right up until he broke them. And, Addy, he broke them all. He was going to break you, and I knew it.”
She forced herself to swallow, and her throat was so dry it hurt. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“What was I supposed to say?” He folded his arms and glared at his boots. “Talking wasn’t going to fix anything. Either you knew what he was and were okay with it, or you didn’t know and were happy that way.” He looked up, and his eyes were full of furious sorrow. Her heart — poor damaged thing that it was — managed to ache for him. Poor Jax. Hard-wired to serve and protect, doomed to stand helplessly by while Diego broke his funny little bride. The bride Jax himself had some inexplicable itch for. It must have nearly killed him.
“It wasn’t your fault, Addy.” He leaned in urgently. “You have to know that. Diego was one huge appetite. Whiskey, women, and song, you know? He never met a party he didn’t like, and fidelity wasn’t really in his skill set.”
“No,” Addy murmured. “It wasn’t.”
“I know you could have used a friend,” he said. “Hell, you needed a friend and, Jesus, I wanted to be there for you. But I couldn’t do it, Addy. Not when I knew it meant I’d have to stand by and let him…” His hands fisted at his sides and he pressed his mouth flat. “I just couldn’t do that, okay?”
“No, of course not.” She spread her lips into an understanding smile even as she twisted her cold, shaking fingers into a tight knot at her waist. Because, oh merciful heavens, she was connecting the dots. That final puzzle piece had changed the whole picture, and not for the better. The shame in her chest annexed most of her stomach in one slow dip. “Heaven’s sakes, Jax, don’t be ridiculous. Whatever my marriage was or wasn’t, it was hardly your business to—”
“Bullshit.” His head snapped up, his face thunderous, and she wanted to die. Just expire right there. Because Jax didn’t love her. Not really. He felt sorry for her. He felt responsible for her. Diego had damaged her and rejected her. He’d been careless with the gift of her heart and that offended Jax down to his very marrow. Shamed him. And he simply wasn’t designed to tolerate shame. Take one mile-wide streak of chivalry, add an oddball spark of sexual chemistry and let it stew for four long years, and what did you get? A do-over. A guy bound and determined to fix his feckless brother’s poor widow. To kiss her hurts all better.
He’d gone considerably farther than a kiss.
She shook her head silently, too sick to speak.
Jax seized both her hands. “It damn well was my business, Addison. No matter what else you are, you’re my family, and I failed you. I had a responsibility to—”
She whirled savagely away, jerking her hands from his. “No.” Furious tears seized her by the throat and she had to pause. Swallow. She turned back. “No, you didn’t. You had — you have — no responsibility for me. For my happiness. Because I’m fine. Better than fine, in fact. I have a life I love and a family I adore. A family that adores me back.” He opened his mouth and she threw up a hand to stop him. “Including you, I know. Not that I’m feeling particularly grateful right now, you jerk.” He shut his mouth on a frown and she leaned in. “So I have all those things, Jax. An abundance of blessings. Which means I do not require help, fixing, or — God help us both — another pity bang from my misguided brother-in-law.”
“A pity bang?” His mouth fell open. “I’m in love with you, Addy.”
“No,” she said, almost gently. Pain wept inside her like drizzle, the ugly kind that could go on without ceasing for days. Weeks. Seasons. “You aren’t. You’re in love with Diego’s Angel, just like everybody else. And seeing me like that—” She waved a shaking hand at the folio propped against the wall. “—all bloody and human? It offends you. You want to fix it. Heal it. Diego broke me and you want to put me back together.” She put a hand on his arm, and it was rigid under her hand, unyielding. “But Jax, I’m exactly who and how I’m supposed to be. The painting is called Broken, but I’m not. I survived.”
She dropped her hand and stepped back. “I don’t doubt your heart, Jax. If you say you’re in love, you are. But not with a real live woman. You’re in love with a ghost.”
“You’re wrong, Addison.” But a thin thread of doubt uncurled in his voice.
“I wish I were.” Agony throbbed through her veins but her head was light and clear, as if she were operating on pure oxygen. She watched her own hand reach out, steady as a rock, and pull the door invitingly open for him. “You should go home.”
Chapter 31
TWO WEEKS LATER, the gallery door jingled open, and the unmistakable clomp of heavy boots filled the air. Addy’s heart took flight like a startled bird.
Jax.
Then her brain joined the party and she noticed the lighter tread, the less confident bang of boot heel on wood. Not Jax. Matty. Her heart — stupid, stubborn thing — dipped with disappointment. Which was ridiculous, because Addy had gently but very firmly refused every attempt Jax had made at private conversation for the past two weeks. Of course he wasn’t going to keep pressing her. He wasn’t a stalker, for heaven’s sake. So why on earth was she disappointed that he’d finally accepted her decision?
Because it had been such a lovely dream, probably. She could admit that much, at least to herself. She’d gotten attached to it, that make-believe future where she and Jax had lived happily ever after in his cozy house in town, swinging on that jewel-box front porch of his while curly-headed babies played in the yard. Even now her heart yearned toward that pretty vision but she wrenched it back. It was a dream, she told herself firmly. Because Jax didn’t love her. He loved what he saw when he looked at her, and Addy had been Diego’s Angel long enough to know the difference. She refused to make the same mistake twice.
Not that she had a choice. Refusing Jax was agony but letting herself love him would be worse. She knew exactly how it would unfold, after all. Reality would grind away at his vision of her like the Devil River ate at its own stream bed, and eventually there would be nothing left of his love but a big bl
ack kettle of contempt. She’d survived it with Diego but her love for him had been barely a shadow of what she felt for Jax. She wouldn’t survive failing Jax that way. No chance.
She hated that she was hurting him, though. Hated it with a burning, visceral ferocity that only multiplied her own pain. But she loved him too much, too truly, to cave on this. She had to stay strong, to do the right thing for both of them. He’d thank her eventually. She only hoped she lived that long. Some days it felt like a long shot.
Matty arrived at the edge of her desk. The smell of dirt and sunscreen filled the air, evidence of his summer job as Jax’s man-of-all-work. He leaned silently against a pine pillar instead of greeting her, his usual habit these days.
“Hey, Matty,” she said. “I thought you were going to be with Jax all day.”
“Mom called. She wants me home.”
“What for?”
He moved those skinny shoulders, his face an utter blank. “Jax had to drive down to the Twin Cities anyway. Meeting with the Fire Marshall or something. Said to see if you could take me up the hill.”
“Sure. I’m heading up to Davis Place here in a minute anyway.” She put her attention casually back on her laptop screen but worry nibbled at her stomach. She didn’t like this new taciturn Matty, this silent kid who shrugged more than he spoke. He’d always been a yeller and a banger, expressing everything in his heart at top volume and with no hesitation. But he’d gone dark lately, ever since…
She frowned, and her hands stalled over the keyboard. Since the fires, she realized. Since the night the Dumpster and the Hideaway had gone up in flames. Since Gerte had accused him — loudly and in public — of having set them. Peter had cleared him, but still. It was enough to turn any kid dark, she supposed.
“Just let me finish up this email,” she said, and forced herself to start typing again. She skimmed quickly and hit send. “That Devil Days app was as buggy as August in the Boundary Waters.” She manufactured a smile and sent it his way. “Just gave the programmer a piece of my mind.”