Caged

by Lorelei James

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  DEACON drove his motorcycle to Hardwick Designs and parked it in the alley next to the back door. Then he walked around the block—twice—looking for Molly’s car.

  No sign of it.

  You fucked this up, played on loop in his head.

  When he stopped at the main office door and didn’t see lights on inside, he had a very real fear that Molly hadn’t shown up.

  Fuck. Was he so far gone with wanting her that he’d drunk himself into a stupor and was dreaming he’d crashed Katie’s birthday party so he could talk to Molly?

  No. He’d really been there. So had she. He’d watched her for an hour before she’d noticed him.

  And he hadn’t imagined the flash of pleasure in her eyes at seeing him. It’d been brief, but it’d been there. So he had the foolish hope that all wasn’t lost with her.

  Still, he held his breath when he pushed on the door. It opened, the bell jangling to announce his arrival.

  Molly wasn’t waiting for him, but he heard her rustling around in the back.

  Probably looking for her Taser.

  The sick thing was? He’d let her tase him if it’d start them talking again.

  Nervous, he paced in the reception area.

  Molly sauntered past him without a word, relocked the front door and reset the alarm.

  Although she still wore her party clothes—a low-cut western shirt that showcased her rack and a frilly skirt that hugged her ass—she’d kicked off the pink and army-green camo combat boots.

  Seeing her relaxed stance, her feet bare, her hair up in a ponytail, almost had him falling to his knees. This was his Molly.

  “I thought we could talk out here. The couch is more comfy than the office chairs.”

  Deacon doubted he could calmly sit and discuss the total destruction of his life as he’d known it. “I don’t even know where to start.” He rested his hands on the top of his head and blew out a long breath. “Fuck that. I do know. What’d you tell me to do the first time I fucked up and couldn’t remember what to say? I needed to hit the high points?”

  “You remember that?”

  “I remember everything you ever say to me, babe. So . . . here goes. I’m sorry for bein’ an asshole to you at the restaurant. I’m sorry that I embarrassed you in front of Tag. I’m sorry that you felt you had to run from me. I’m sorry that I said bullshit. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry that I had to wait five fucking days before I could talk to you.”

  “Why did you wait?”

  “Besides Amery and Ronin forbidding me from coming here or approaching you at Black Arts? I had to get up the courage. Fee told me about Katie’s party and dared me to crash it.”

  “And you can’t resist a challenge.”

  “I can’t resist you. You are the only reason I went. I wanted a chance to make this right.”

  “Why?”

  Because I fucking love you.

  “Because I lost everything when Dante died and I ran away.” Deacon found the balls to look at her. “I realized I was about to lose everything again, and this time I’m staying put.”

  “Deacon.”

  “I’ll tell you everything. Even things I’ve never told anyone.”

  “Not even Ronin?”

  “Not Ronin. Not my dad.” Before Molly could ask, Why are you telling me? he said softly, “Some of it is so ugly I didn’t want to think about it, let alone tell anyone about it.”

  She didn’t say anything to that—but what could she say?

  So he soldiered on. Take a deep breath. You can do this.

  “The condensed version is when I was fifteen I was in a car accident that killed my twin brother and also my girlfriend. I was driving. It permanently fucked up my life to the point I left home.”

  When Molly remained quiet, he knew she was letting that sink in before she spoke. “Is that why you changed your name?”

  “No. That’s another part of it. Just . . . I need to start at the beginning.” Deacon faced the window, bracing his hands on the ledge. “I don’t know what the hell my parents were thinking, naming identical twins Deacon and Dante. No one could keep our names straight, let alone our personas. Then again, most of our life we didn’t have separate identities. We had a singular moniker—the Westerman twins.”

  “Did that bother you?”

  “Not that I remember. We were a package deal until high school. Dante was a fucking brain and got into all the advanced-placement classes. I was a jock. He claimed he lifted weights and ran with me because he didn’t want to be seen as the weaker twin, but the truth was we preferred spending time together. We were more than brothers; we were two halves of the same whole. But we were always competitive. So it pissed me off that smooth-talker Dante kissed a girl before me. The smug fucker bragged about meeting her under the bleachers for make-out sessions. Since few could tell us apart, I showed up pretending to be him.”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I did. For a week after that, everyone could tell us apart since I had a black eye. He ensured I wouldn’t be kissing any girls either, since he also gave me a fat lip.”

  Molly laughed softly. “Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh, but you deserved it.”

  Deacon allowed a smile because the sharp pang of loss was bearable for a change. “True. Dante wasn’t a fighter, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to throw a punch.”

  “So you two together were the brains and the brawn of the Westerman family?”

  “Tag told you that our granddad started the family oil business. Granddad expected his sons to learn the ropes from the ground up. Our dad expected the same from us. The summer after our freshman year, we were sent to our uncle Jesse’s ranch. He had a dozen working oil rigs on his place, so we learned to read them like real oilmen. Dante was more interested in the science side of the oil business—engineering and the geological aspect. He studied. I did the dirty work and ran wild. I raced dirt bikes, cars, horses, tractors, you name it. Even then it was obvious to everyone in the Westerman family that Dante would head up JFW Industries—which is now JFW Development—one day.”

  “Was your dad happy his son would follow in his footsteps?”

  Deacon shrugged. “I guess. He sent us there for two summers. While Dante came back full of ideas about future business-development plans, I came back rougher around the edges, which infuriated our mother. She obsessed about ‘my station in life,’ constantly berating me about acting like an heir to a multimillion-dollar business, not like a roughneck running the rigs. Dante could do no wrong in her eyes. He had a way with her. Hell, he had a way with all the girls. So it wasn’t just his looks that had girls flocking to him. We were identical, and girls weren’t falling all over themselves to get with me like they were with him.”

  “So neither of you tried to look different and set yourself apart from the other?”

  “Nah. I imagine we would’ve done that at some point, but we never got the chance.”

  Molly’s bare feet shuffled across the carpet as she moved into his peripheral vision.

  “The first week of junior year, I started dating Cassidy, much to everyone’s surprise.”

  “Why?”

  “She was a year older than me. A good girl. She’d been designated class sweetheart three times. I wasn’t a bad boy.” He shot her a quick look. “No tats, or a motorcycle, or shaved head at that time. But I’d gotten into trouble for fighting. She didn’t care. Before too long I was spending all my time with her, but Dante was cool with it. He always said, Brother, I got my own deal going on. Don’t worry about me. But I did. I never wanted him to feel left out.”

  Maybe if you would’ve left him out, he’d be alive today.

  “Anyway, that fall Cassidy was elected homecoming queen. I escorted her to the football game and took her to the dance. Since Dante didn’t have a date, he went to a party out in the boondocks. When Cassidy and I got there after the dance, Dante was drunk—not the norm for him. Usually Ca
ssidy didn’t drink either, so I didn’t think anything of it when she went off with her friends. I stayed by the bonfire, listening to Dante’s drunk talk about a girl I’d never heard of. A girl he claimed he’d been having sex with since school started, which made me so mad . . .”

  “Why?”

  “Because he always told me everything right away. And he’d kept something that goddamn important from me for two months. So I’m grilling him about it, scheming on how I can get Cassidy in bed to even things up with my brother.” He closed his eyes. “That’s how I spent my last hour with him. Bein’ mad at him for losing his virginity first. Bein’ mad at him for pulling away from me because I knew that was the start of us having separate lives.”

  “So did you leave him there so you could nail the homecoming queen?”

  He snorted. “No. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was nineteen. I just . . . I had no interest in sex. That’ll make more sense later. Anyway, Cassidy stumbled back to the bonfire totally hammered. So I had to deal with my drunken brother and my drunken girlfriend.” Deacon turned around and looked Molly in the eye. “I hadn’t been drinking. Period. Not a fucking drop.”

  “You must be making that distinction for a reason.”

  He nodded and turned back toward the window. “The party was thirty miles out of town. When I realized it was two a.m. and we’d missed our curfew by an hour, I debated on whether to even go home or just stay at the campground, but it started to rain. So I poured the drunken duo into my truck, with Cassidy sitting in the middle. I told them to buckle up, but I’d been too focused on the fog rolling in to double-check if they’d listened to me. By then they’d both passed out anyway.”

  He clenched his fists. “I don’t even know how it happened. One second the truck was on the road, and the next it spun out of control, plowed through the ditch, and headed straight for a tree. The impact knocked me out. When I came to, I didn’t see Cassidy or Dante. I thought they’d gotten out. Everything was hazy. I noticed the windshield was gone. In the headlights I saw Dante suspended in midair outside the truck and Cassidy’s legs on the hood. I couldn’t see the rest of her.” The immediate sick feeling threatened to choke him. He swallowed the bile and kept going, wanting to get through this. “Later I learned Dante had been thrown into a barbed-wire fence and had died instantly. Same with Cassidy, only her body hadn’t made it past the hood.

  “I don’t remember the ambulance guys pulling me out. The impact with the steering wheel had broken two of my ribs, punctured my lung, and caused internal bleeding, requiring emergency surgery. So I didn’t actually wake up until almost forty-eight hours after the accident. My first conscious thought was Dante is dead.”

  Needing a moment, he paced to the end of the reception area and looked out the window covered in metal safety bars. That reminded him of where everyone in town had wanted him after the accident.

  Molly’s arms circled his waist, and she rested her face between his shoulder blades. She didn’t say a word, just gave him the strength to go on.

  “As if it wasn’t bad enough I’d been driving the vehicle that killed two people, because we’d been at the party, rumors were going around town that I’d been drinking.”

  “But didn’t the hospital test your blood-alcohol level before you went into surgery?”

  “Yeah. The hospital staff, the cops, and EMTs knew I had a zero blood-alcohol level. But the rumor was since my family had . . . influence, they’d paid off the officials to hide the fact I’d been driving drunk.”

  “Omigod. That is awful.”

  He closed his eyes. “The entire town thought I should be in jail for manslaughter. More rumors circulated that Cassidy’s parents planned to sue us. Not that it was an option, since Cassidy’s parents received a copy of the accident report, including their daughter’s blood-alcohol level and that she hadn’t worn a seat belt. Her parents only added more speculation when they banned me from Cassidy’s funeral. I was a pariah.”

  Her tears dampened the back of his shirt. “Deacon. Stop. I’ve heard enough.”

  He spun around and forced her to look into his anguished eyes, to really see him, to see what this had done to him. “No, goddammit. You were willing to kick me to the fucking curb because I kept this from you, so you damn well will hear every bit of it. All the way to the bitter end, because, babe, it gets even uglier.”

  Embarrassment flared in her eyes before she glanced down. “Okay. Finish it. But I can’t . . . look at you while you’re telling me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ll be so focused on how I can be there for you now that I’ll miss what you went through then.” Her tears landed on his hands. Then she tenderly kissed his scraped and scabbed knuckles. “I’ll listen to whatever you want to tell me whenever you’re ready. And I’ll be right here for you when you’re done.”

  It took a moment to find his balance. “My parents were lost in grief. I was filled with guilt and anger and loneliness like I’d never known. I didn’t go back to school as I recovered from my physical injuries. Two months after the accident, when I couldn’t take the rage anymore, I went out and picked a fight with the biggest, meanest motherfucker I could find.”

  “Where’d you find him?”

  “Biker bar. Guy beat the fuck out of me. But during the fight I figured out that’s where I could channel my rage to block out my grief. Fighting became my coping mechanism.”

  “It still is, isn’t it?”

  “No. Now I fight because I’m good at it. But Jesus fuck. I couldn’t get away from myself or my family connections or the accident. As if being sprawled on the ground, eating dirt, bleeding, and sobbing like a fucking girl wasn’t enough”—he paused to swallow—“some asshole in the bar recognized me.”

  “No,” she breathed.

  “Oh yeah. The douche fucker worked for my old man and called him.”

  “What happened?”

  “My dad showed up, loaded me in his car, and took me home. Then he disappeared for a few days. Without him as the buffer, my mother didn’t have to hold back.”

  “This is the ugly part, isn’t it?”

  Yes. This was his private shame.

  “Deacon. You have to believe I’m the last person who’d ever sit in judgment of you.”

  “I do believe that, which is why I’m here pouring my guts out and not hiding in the bottom of a bottle of Jäger at the strip club at the thought of losing you.”

  She squeezed him hard. “Tell me.”

  He had to force the words out through gritted teeth. “My mother told me she wished I had died instead of him.”

  Molly’s distressed gasp sliced through him. She ducked under his arm and plastered herself to the front of his body, her shoulders heaving as she tried to muffle her sobs against his chest.

  Deacon’s heart turned over then, at having this beautiful, sweet, loving woman here with him, crying for him. It loosened the lump in his throat so he could go on. “I was devastated.” The isolation his mother had caused with her words had tainted everything in his life and had haunted him for years. As he’d grown older he’d understood them for what they were, but the broken child in him couldn’t forgive her or forget.

  Molly continued to sob as if her heart had been split open.

  He wiped the tears from her cheeks. Then he pressed his lips to her forehead. “I left shortly after that.”

  “Left? Where’d you go?”

  “Everywhere. And nowhere. I was dead inside. I changed the way I looked—shaved my head, started getting tats—so I wouldn’t be reminded of him every time I looked in the mirror.” He’d obliterated the image of who he’d been so completely that it pained him to admit he couldn’t remember what he—they—used to look like. Dante had been a disembodied voice in his head for so long, not a physical presence, that was how Deacon remembered him.

  “But you were fifteen,” Molly said. “How did you support yourself?”

  “I turned sixteen two weeks before I le
ft. I’d taken a couple hundred dollars out of my bank account before I took off. I washed dishes or worked as a janitor for cash under the table. Menial-labor jobs ensured I wouldn’t have to interact with anyone. I moved around a lot. I had no interest in anything—sex, women, booze, or drugs. The only thing I cared about was bulking up so when I turned eighteen I could start fighting. I found a sketchy dojo that offered to train me in jujitsu. The underground fight scene is illegal, so I had to keep traveling farther away to find decent opponents.”

  “How long did you stay away from home?”

  “Almost five years.”

  “Did your family look for you?”

  “At the time I didn’t care. I legally changed my name a week after I turned eighteen.”

  “Why did you ever go back?”