I hadn’t planned to tell her off. As many times as I’d played it out in my daydreams, I hadn’t wanted her to see me that affected. It was the weaker hand. Anger/hurt/resentment—showing any of those emotions proved she still had a hold on me, and while I knew she did, the last thing I’d wanted was for her to know that.
Despite that, it felt damn satisfying. Might have felt better if she’d broken down into tears, or, the jackpot, if she’d gotten down on her knees and begged, but her despondent silence was a hell of a gratifying end to our relationship. I was taking it as a win. A big fat fucking score.
Without saying anything, she reached out to Donovan’s desk and grabbed a piece of paper off his notepad and a stray pen. “It’s Jolie,” she said as she jotted something down.
“Not ever calling you that.”
She ignored the barb. “Here’s my cell phone number.” She set the paper and pen on the desk and stood before gathering her coat and her purse. “I’ll be in town for a few days, if you change your mind.”
“Not going to change—” But I was talking to her back now, so I didn’t bother finishing the statement since she was obviously done listening.
Which made all that smug satisfaction fizzle away like a punctured tire. This was supposed to be my closure, and yet goddamned Julianna Stark had managed to once again have the last word.
Three
Past
* * *
I hissed as I pulled my T-shirt over my head, then craned my neck, trying to see the marks on my back. They burned like a motherfucker, like my entire torso had been lit on fire, and though I couldn’t see anything, I was sure I was probably bleeding.
Though my shirt was relatively clean. It was black, which made it hard to tell for sure, and the whole thing felt damp, but I’d been sweating. If I’d been wearing my uniform dress shirt like I was supposed to, I would be able to see better.
If I’d been wearing the dress shirt, I wouldn’t have been in this position at all.
I reached an arm back to feel and cringed at the brush of my fingers across newly torn skin. When I brought my hand back, there was blood. Not too much, but enough. I twisted my neck again to look. Dammit, I needed a mirror.
I froze at the sound of the door as it squeaked open, my head angled over my shoulder. My breath sat trapped in my lungs until she slipped in, shutting the door behind her. Jolie. Kind eyes. Soft lips. My angel. My savior.
And the last person who should be here right now.
“You shouldn’t be here.” My voice was cautiously low, and despite my words, it was evident I was relieved to see her.
“Where else would I be, you moron? Turn around. Let me see.”
I hesitated, not wanting her to see me like this—weak and wounded. She’d seen me like that so many times, I shouldn’t have felt ashamed. And I didn’t. Not really. Just.
I wanted to be different for her.
And as many times as I swore that I would be, her father still got the better of me.
“Come on, Cade,” she said soothingly. “Let me.”
Slowly, I turned, keeping my head craned so I could use her expression as a mirror. She barely flinched, but I saw it before her mask of compassion swallowed it up, and all I saw was love.
“It’s not really that bad,” she said.
“You’re a bad liar.” Actually, she was a good liar. I would have believed her if I couldn’t feel the evidence to the contrary.
“I’m not lying. Most of them aren’t even bleeding.”
“Seriously? It feels like my whole back was torn open.”
“I know.” She tugged my T-shirt from my hands and patted it gently on a spot that must have been oozing.
I bit my cheek so I wouldn’t cry like a big baby.
“They’re really thin. Like cat scratches. I bet they don’t even scar.”
Probably why Headmaster Stark was so fond of the skinny-tailed whip. That and because it hurt the most.
I let my breath out slowly before attempting to speak. “That’s not fair. I deserve a souvenir.”
She forced a laugh and pulled a small tube from the pocket of her skirt. “You’ll remember it. Trust me.” She was still in her uniform, but her tie was loose, and even though class hours were over and we were no longer required to be in dress, I instinctively wanted her to fix it, just in case there was a chance she’d face the same punishment I’d faced.
Concern over her outfit got pushed away as she delicately rubbed the ointment along one of the stripes on my back.
“Holy fuck.” So much for taking it like a man.
She winced. “I’m sorry. I don’t want them to get infected.”
It was hard to concentrate on words, the pain too blinding to think about much else. “Right. That’s, um. Thanks. Good. Good thinking. Oh my fucking hell almighty Christ!”
“Shh.” She was trying to be comforting but also reminding me to watch my volume.
It also reminded me of the risk she was taking just by being here. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, and I wasn’t sure if they were from the pain or because she was helping me. There hadn’t been much kindness in my world before her.
It was still hard to believe she was real. Hard to believe she was mine.
Of course, she was forbidden, so it wasn’t like anyone knew she was mine. But she was all the same.
I blinked away the moisture in my eyes. I hadn’t cried when I’d been beaten, I wasn’t going to start now.
She finished applying the antibiotic and pressed her lips on one of the wounds, so gently that it barely stung. Then she snuck her arms around me, her hands moving low toward the crotch of my khaki uniform pants.
“Jolie,” I warned. It would have been a perfect distraction from the agony of my wounds—her in my lap, my cock buried inside her, my kisses swallowing the sound of her moans.
But the risk...
“It would be worth it,” she murmured, reading my mind.
I was hard when her hand cupped my bulge, but I put my palm over hers to stop her before we got carried away. Then I pulled her around to my front and settled my hands on her hips, holding her at arm’s length. “We can’t,” I whispered sternly.
She glanced toward the door, seeming to assess the threat. Then she sighed. “I wish…”
“I know.”
She looked up at me with yearning, the flecks of brown in her eyes more present at the moment than the green or the blue. She had kaleidoscope eyes, the colors always changing, and what I wouldn’t give to spend hours lost inside her gaze, studying every shift of pigment. I wanted that even more than the hastily stolen moments we’d shared. Wanted to just be with her, seeing into her the way she always saw into me.
My resistance was weakening. I pressed my forehead against hers. “How can we live like this?”
“Like caged birds?” She brought her hands up to my cheeks, tilting my face so she could look at me directly. “It’s not too hard if we just keep thinking that eventually we’ll fly free. And we will, Cade. We won’t be trapped like this forever.”
I brushed my knuckles across her cheek. She had such delicate features, but in reality, she was so much stronger than me. So much braver. Sometimes I swore she had courage enough for both of us.
I bent in to graze my lips against hers, but halted at a voice calling from outside the room. “Julianna?”
Her body tensed in recognition of her name. It was still far away though. She had time.
“Go,” I said, ushering her toward the door. “Before he catches you here.”
She took two steps away, then hurried back to press a fast kiss on my mouth and a half empty pack of cigarettes into my hand. “One day. We’ll fly.”
Then she was gone, out of the room before I could say anything else. I rushed after her and pressed my ear against the door, listening.
“In my office now, Julianna.”
I couldn’t tell if he was close enough to know where she’d just come from, or if he suspected. Her,
“Yes, sir,” gave nothing away.
My fingers curled into a fist at my side, ready to punch a hole in the wall, but I stopped myself, my wounds too fresh of a reminder about the consequences of rebellion.
I forced myself to take deep breaths instead, and held tight to the promise of one day.
Four
Present
* * *
I sat at Donovan’s desk for a long time after Jolie left, my mind in a strange fog. There was so much new that I couldn’t process, and I found myself back in the past.
We’d been so young. Made so many promises. I’d believed with every fiber of my being that she’d meant them at the time. So why hadn’t she flown away with me?
It was a question I had never been able to answer, which was why I tended to avoid looking back at all costs.
Currently, the past felt surer than the present. I may have been wrong in the long run, but in that moment, when she’d risked everything to be at my side, I’d known what was between us. Known what we were. Known what I’d felt for her. Known I could trust her.
Now, I didn’t know anything. I was blank. My body numb. The only feeling I could identify was the decade-long forgotten urge for a smoke.
“I saw your lady friend leave a while ago and wondered if I’d missed you,” a voice said.
The unexpected company snapped me out of my daze, and I looked up to find Fran standing in the doorway.
I must have been truly out of it. I hadn’t even heard the elevator ding, let alone the clomp of her thick heels.
“Not so sure she’s a lady. She’s definitely not my friend.” I stood and crossed to the closet, hidden in the bookshelves, and grabbed my coat. Now that I was in motion, I needed to stay in motion. “You good to lock up?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Thanks.” I patted my coat pockets, as if I’d find a pack of cigarettes tucked away in one of them, an old reflex that had me cursing under my breath as soon as I realized it had kicked in. Then, ignoring the piece of paper with her phone number scrawled on it, I headed to the door, snagging one of Donovan’s cigars on my way out. I wasn’t much for the fancy shit he liked to puff on, but maybe it would satisfy the craving.
Once on the street, I realized I should have grabbed a lighter as well.
With another curse, I tucked the cigar in the breast pocket of my suit jacket and hailed a cab to the Park Hyatt. I’d missed the wedding ceremony at this point, but the reception would be going on for hours. Plus, I was staying at that hotel.
I considered bailing on the festivities altogether. Weston and I were both partners in the firm, but we weren’t that buddy-buddy, and it was a fake wedding at that, some marriage-of-convenience scheme Donovan had concocted to help expand Reach in Europe. Honestly, business and money were probably the smartest reasons I could think of to get married, and in many ways I was more supportive of this union than most because of that. But since the parties involved considered it all for show, it wasn’t like anyone would care if I ditched.
When I walked into the hotel lobby, though, I realized that if I didn’t go to the reception, I’d end up at the bar. And ending up at the bar would be a sign that I wasn’t okay, and I needed very much to be okay.
Another benefit of the reception? The booze was free.
Despite suggesting to Julianna that I’d dressed in my suit for the wedding, I’d actually rented a tux—or rather, Donovan had rented me a tuxedo. I’d found it waiting in my room when I’d checked in the day before. I was of half a mind to ignore the monkey suit and just go in what I was wearing. But I had my coat to deal with, and I didn’t want to check it, so I headed up to my room to ditch it and ended up changing into the tux as well.
While I was up there, I lit the rich-ass cigar, ignoring the no-smoking sign blatantly posted in my suite with each puff. Serious cigar smokers don’t inhale, but I sure as hell did, praying it would get me buzzed. The numbness was wearing off, and if I was going to feel, I wanted to be in control of what kind of feeling I had.
The cigar wasn’t quite the fix I wanted, but I was a different kind of jittery when I found myself downstairs in the Onyx Ballroom—thank God for no line at the bar. The place was decked to the nines in luxury. Everything from the jazz band to the gift bags for the guests was Grade A wedding material, and even if the marriage hadn’t been Grade A fake, I would have been nauseated at the sight.
A couple swigs into my beer and the urge to puke faded away, as did the urge to smoke. The itchiness of the tux remained, but that had nothing to do with the event itself. Tuxes were always too constraining. I’d learned that the hard way when an art auction in Thailand had gone south. I’d left that situation with a busted kneecap and a bruised kidney that I was certain I could have prevented if my attire hadn’t restricted movement. I’d hated the fancy-ass get-ups ever since.
At least Donovan had known well enough not to get me a cummerbund.
I did a quick scan of the room, looking for a familiar face, not expecting to find too many—the pompous wedding was mostly meant to appease the bride’s family, so most of the guests were on her side. Plus, I hadn’t been in New York in years, and I wasn’t the type who had many connections to begin with. But it didn’t take too long before I spotted Donovan with a hot brunette cozied up to him.
I paused a minute to take that in before approaching them. I’d known Donovan now going on seven years. In that time, I’d seen him with plenty of women—the man wasn’t a whore, but he kept himself entertained. Never had any of those women been more than arm candy and (presumably) a good lay. He’d certainly never looked at anyone the way he was looking at this chick.
Of course, no chick had been this chick. He’d been carrying a torch for this one for the last decade. I didn’t know a lot about her beyond a few drunken exchanges over the years, but I recognized in him what he probably recognized in me. There’s a specific type of wariness in those who have loved and lost. Like speaks to like. We understood each other well.
But now the girl he’d pined for was in his arms, carrying the torch along with him.
And I was…
I wasn’t going there, was where I was.
It took another swig of beer to loosen the tightness in my chest and another after that before I approached the couple. “Then the rumors are true,” I said, startling them out of their embrace. “Donovan Kincaid has found himself a girlfriend.”
Said girlfriend backed away from him as fast as a teenager caught making out by dad.
Maybe not that quickly. If anyone would know that panic, it was me.
“I’m the one who told you that rumor, you asshole,” Donovan said, clapping his hand on my back.
He’d dropped it like a bomb, actually, when I’d called Tuesday to tell him I was coming to town. “Great. You can meet our new director of marketing strategy. Oh, and by the way, she’s my girlfriend.”
Unable to get more from him, I’d asked Weston about it when I’d called with my late wedding RSVP. He’d filled me in with as much as he knew, which wasn’t a hell of a lot that was meaningful. He had more to say about his own tryst with the woman than Donovan’s relationship with her. Too much to say about her, really. I hadn’t needed the intimate details. But that was to be expected—Weston liked to gloat about his conquests, and Donovan was tight-lipped.
Truth was, I hadn’t needed to hear anything from either of them to put together that this girlfriend was the girlfriend. The fact that Donovan had abandoned me in Tokyo and moved back to the States as soon as this woman from the past was hired told me everything I needed to know.
“Sabrina, this is Cade Warren,” Donovan said, making the official introduction. “Cade, I told you about Sabrina.”
It was possible he was hinting for me to play that up, make the girlfriend feel all warm and fuzzy because her boyfriend had been talking about her. If he was, well, he had to know me better than that. “No. You told me about our new director of marketing strategy. Weston told me about Sab
rina.”
I shook her hand, taking in her features as I did. Big brown doe eyes, rail thin frame. The kind of beautiful that turned heads. No wonder the boys had both been into her. “Pleasure to meet you. Everything I’ve heard has been quite…complimentary.”
I was a little more friendly with her than necessary, forcing myself to be present for reasons beyond seeing if it would rile Donovan up.
Apparently it did. “Cade’s story that he’s here for the wedding is only a cover,” he said pointedly. “He’s really in the States to meet up with a woman from the past.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Hey—”
“Payback’s a bitch.” He wrapped his arm around Sabrina’s waist and pulled her closer like he owned her, which knowing him, he probably thought he did.
“That was supposed to be a secret.” I made sure my tone reminded him that I was still someone to be afraid of. In case he’d forgotten that I hadn’t been innocent when he’d met me. He knew the kinds of things I could do to people. The kinds of things I’d done.
Not murder, though. I’d never gone that far.
Could I go that far? Would I, if…?
“Sabrina and I have no secrets,” Donovan said, and as soft as it made him sound, I had the gut feeling that he would kill if he had to. For her.
But I wasn’t Donovan. And Jolie wasn’t in my arms. And I sure as fuck wasn’t killing anyone for her.
And even if, once upon a time, I was the type of guy who would have killed for her, this share-all-my-secrets-pussy-whipped bullshit was not ever going to be my scene.
I rolled my eyes. “Well, isn’t that precious?”
“Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.” At least Sabrina seemed to understand I was a man not to reckon with.
Though, I wasn’t sure it was that important to keep the meeting with Julianna on the down low. At first, I hadn’t wanted people to know because who would understand besides Donovan? Now that I knew what she’d wanted from me, it was a different story. If I were going to help her, any communication with her could incriminate me.
Wild Rebel Page 3