Long For Me

by Shiloh Walker

  She popped an eye open. Then, the grin on her lips widened. “Okay. You talked me into it. But coffee comes after I do.”

  * * *

  Coffee did come next.

  She bent over the counter, wearing his shirt hanging open over her torso as she sipped at the steaming black brew and tried to coax her muddled brain into cooperating.

  Jensen was pissed at her.

  She’d called last night, and apparently, threatened to sic the police on them. Eyeing the phone narrowly, she poked it with her finger and then shot Guy a dark look. “I don’t see why they think I’m still stuck in pigtails and my She-Ra T-shirts. I’m twenty-four years old. I’m practically an adult.”

  He came up behind her, settled his hands on her hips. “Practically an adult. Glad to hear that,” he said, nipping at her neck. “But … yeah. Chris, you’re going to have to tell them to back off, or they never will. I get that they are worried and I know this is rough on all of you, but it’s getting insane that you can’t have time to yourself without her threatening to sic the cops on you.”

  “She’s not that bad,” she muttered, trying to shrug it off. “They just…”

  “They don’t understand how you cope with things.” He brushed her hair back. “They never did and that’s fine. We all do things different. But Chris, you’re not a kid. I know you don’t want to cry on Jensen’s shoulder like she wants. I know she just wants to know you’re okay. But you and I both know you need room or this is going to drive you nuts.”

  She made a face at him. “I already am nuts, didn’t you hear?”

  “You’re not.” He cupped her face, dropped a kiss on her nose. “You’re not and you know it. You hold things in until you’re ready to deal in your own way and that’s fine. I wish you wouldn’t hold it in so long, but you deal the way you –need to. Make them understand that … they’ll back off.”

  “I don’t always hold it in.” She shrugged. “I threw roses at Tate not too long ago.”

  “You threw roses because you were mad.” He hooked an arm around her neck, tugged her in close.

  They stood like that for a moment and she was thinking about sliding her hands up his chest, or maybe down … he hadn’t buttoned his jeans and the way he looked with them just barely riding on his hips was doing bad, bad things to her mind. She’d much rather think about getting him naked again than Jensen anyway.

  But even as she went to step back, give herself room to maneuver, he shifted them around, using his hands to cage her in against the counter. Her breath locked in her throat and she looked up, staring at him.

  Dark eyes searched her, cut right through her.

  She reached up, touched his lower lip. “I don’t plan on forgetting this. I don’t know where that leaves us, but…”

  The rest of the words were spoken against his mouth as he lifted her up. “I’m not forgetting, either.”

  They parted, studied each other. “I don’t know where this leaves us,” she said again.

  “Neither do I.”

  She inclined her head. “I guess we’ll figure that out.” Then she leaned in, licked his lower lip. “We can worry about that all later, though … right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t right to feel almost … happy. Not only had he fucked Chris six different ways to Sunday, he’d also made slow, easy love to her and watched as she all but melted under his hands.

  Not once had she looked away, and not once had she acted like she wanted to tuck this away in some corner of her mind, pretend it hadn’t happened.

  So, yeah, he was feeling pretty damn good, even if things were falling apart.

  He had to return to reality, but not yet.

  He’d spend his week out on the river, then go back to reality.

  He was almost level, and that’s why the phone rang.

  The old man seemed to have a sixth sense about when Guy was almost happy.

  Just seeing the caller ID made his vision go red, but hey, he could ignore it.

  Nobody said he had to take a call from the prison where Theo Miller currently resided, right? Nope. He ignored it, because he could.

  There was absolutely nothing that the old man could say that interested Guy. Unless it was a confession. Unless it was the truth. And it wouldn’t be that. Guy knew this, because he knew his father.

  He ignored the second call.

  He ignored the message from the warden.

  He answered the call from Chris.

  And when she came to him that night, her face tired, her eyes sad, he opened the door and they made love on the couch, then retreated to the hot tub where they watched the sunset over the river.

  She didn’t say what was wrong, and he didn’t ask.

  They spent the night in his bed, her slim frame wrapped around his larger one and come morning, he went about closing up the cabin. If she was going to keep coming to him at night, then she could do it without driving an hour each way.

  She helped him with the cabin. She’d been there with him often enough that she could do it solo—and had, more than once.

  “How much time are you taking off?” she asked as he locked up.

  “I’m not sure. I’ve got another week left, easy. After that…” He let the words trail off and then sighed, shaking his head. “The department needs distance from me while this is investigated, but I can’t take off much more than a week or two without pay.”

  The warm weight of her pressed against his arm had him looking down. She pressed a kiss against his bicep, bared by the T-shirt he’d pulled on. “You can always move in with me,” she offered. “Be my boy toy until this blows over. I think I’d like to have a big, sexy boy toy help me lug flowers around.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, I can see me lugging flowers around. Me and my allergies.”

  “The offer is open.” She squeezed his hand and then sighed, turned back to look at him. “We’re having another memorial. Well, not a memorial, exactly. Just a … thing. Me, my family, a few of Mom’s friends. Something that won’t turn into the zoo that happened last week. I want you there.”

  Moving in, he cupped her face, dipped his head.

  “There’s no place else I’d be.”

  * * *

  Over the next three days, he ignored another three calls.

  He was ready to block the number, or just call the warden and tell them he didn’t want any more calls from his father.

  It may or may not work, but that was a problem for after this.

  Chris, Tate, Jensen, even Doug, for now, they were his priority. It was that thought he kept in the front of his mind as he parked his truck in front of the little house where the Bell family had lived—hell, he had spent a great deal of his childhood here up until Nichole had died.

  After that, Tate went to one home, the girls to another, while the investigation tore a hole through a family already shattered.

  He headed up the walkway and paused, trying to decide what looked different. He’d come here hundreds of times in the past fifteen years, checking on Doug. Even when Tate was gone, Guy had still come over. He’d worried about the old man, thought maybe he’d off himself one lonely night.

  He never had.

  But the house had always been gray, lifeless …

  That was it. Staring up at the house, he realized that endless wave of grief that had seemed to grip the place like a cloud had somehow lifted.

  He nodded a little. It was good, he thought. Good that they were healing. Able to move on.

  As he moved closer, he could hear the low strains of music playing. Through the window, he heard a soft laugh and the sound of it was a kick in the chest, a fist to his heart. Chris.

  One hand curled into a fist. Just the sound of her laugh turned him into a mess, the whisper of her sigh across his skin was like a balm to his soul. It hadn’t been that long since he’d seen her, not really.

  But it had been too long. Desperate to see her again, to stand at her side wh
en the grief hit, because it would, he took the steps in one long stride, but before he could push through the door to find her, a low, soft voice stopped him in his tracks.

  “Guy.”

  Turning his head, he watched as Dr. Evan Holcomb rose from the rocking chair tucked in the shadowed corner of the porch, hair combed over his balding head, his rumpled suit hanging on a tired, stooped frame.

  “Hey, doc.”

  Holcomb nodded at him as laughter echoed again from the golden windows of the house. They turned as one to look toward the sound. “I need a word, a quick one.”

  A leaden weight dropped, settled in the pit of his gut. “What’s this about?”

  “Your father.”

  “I don’t want to hear.”

  A faint smile came and went on the doc’s face. “That doesn’t surprise me. He told me to tell you he’ll talk only after you listen to him. He didn’t elaborate, but he gave me authorization to say this has to do with some test results.” He paused and then looked back as a car turned into the parking lot. “He took care to mention the Bell family, several times. I think you need to come in. I’m doing a follow-up with him on Monday and he wants you there.”

  Chapter Six

  “How long has he known?”

  Mondays were a bitch. This particular Monday wasn’t just a bitch—it was like some vicious hellspawn, birthed from the very bowels of hell. Ugly torrents of rain poured from the sky, flash flood alerts were going up all over town, and he’d been late getting in here because he’d stopped to help out at an accident scene until the city cops could get on the scene.

  But none of that was the real problem.

  The real problem lay within the folder Dr. Holcomb had just laid on the counter.

  The old family physician looked up over the rims of his glasses and sighed.

  “Not long. He had his yearly workup and his weight was down. He was complaining of back pain as well, but the symptoms for this form of cancer are very vague. This is why it’s so hard to diagnose it until it’s pretty advanced.”

  Guy went back to staring out the window, his hands linked behind his back.

  Behind him, the doctor sat and waited. His father was in one of the exam rooms, a cop at the door.

  Dr. Holcomb had left his door open so they could still see the door, but Guy knew the son of a bitch was sitting in there, silently laughing about all of this.

  “Why did he want me here? You’ve explained the prognosis. He knows he doesn’t have a good shot.”

  “He doesn’t even want treatment,” the doctor said softly, shaking his head. He looked away, his face troubled.

  “Why?”

  “You would have to ask him.”

  Guy had his suspicions. The son of a bitch had figured out a way to avoid his day in court for Nichole after all.

  The evil, evil son of a bitch.

  One hand closed into a fist and he had to fight to relax.

  “You don’t have to talk to him. All he wanted to do was see you here, know that I told you. You did your part,” the doctor said. “You can let it go now.”

  “No, I can’t.” Guy shook his head and forced himself to turn around, take the first step to the door.

  It was like walking through concrete.

  “If he tells you anything,” Dr. Holcomb said, “it’s worth it. That family went through hell. Hell, you went through hell. You were close to her, too. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”

  Guy turned his head, stared at the doctor.

  Holcomb lowered his gaze, stared at the table. “I’m not supposed to get involved. But I knew Nichole. She worked for me, for a while. Your father doesn’t know that. I’ll provide his care, to the best of my ability. But I would like to give her family closure, if we can.”

  The cop nodded at him. “If you have your off-duty weapon, I’ll hold it while you’re in there.”

  Guy looked at him, took the few seconds needed to place him. Werner. “I left it at home today, since I knew I’d be seeing him.” Guy didn’t add that he didn’t want to risk feeling the temptation that he might use it. There had been a few times, growing up, if he’d been able to get his hands on a loaded gun, he would have used it.

  Now fate or God was going to stick it to Theo Miller instead.

  Guy didn’t know if it made him a bad person, and he didn’t care, but he hoped the miserable bastard suffered.

  He opened the door and found himself looking into the room, looking at his father, and searching for signs of the disease that was going to kill him. He’d lost weight in just a few weeks, little more than skin and muscle stretched over a long, lean frame. It wouldn’t be long, he thought, before even the muscle started to waste away.

  Pancreatic cancer was almost always fatal. It was a bad one, not overly common, but a mean form of the disease. One of the guys he’d gone to college with had lost his father to it.

  Now it was going to put Theo in the ground.

  In a few months, probably.

  It wasn’t fast enough.

  It was too soon, too.

  Because they needed answers.

  Theo turned his head and looked at the door. If he wasn’t mistaken, surprise lit his gaze for just a second when he saw Guy standing there. “Well, well, well,” Theo drawled, his voice raspy, harsh from years of smoking.

  Guy wondered absently why it was the pancreas, not his liver from years of alcohol, not his lungs from years of heavy smoking. The pancreas.

  “It’s good to see you, boy.”

  Guy arched a brow. “The last time you saw me, you weren’t exactly thrilled to see me.”

  “Well.” Theo shrugged and looked away. “Circumstances.”

  “Circumstances.” Guy propped a shoulder against the door. “How about you tell me whatever you got to tell me, old man? I have other things I have to do today.”

  “You’re a cold bastard, Guy. I got things I need to tell you. I’m thinking it’s time I should bare my soul, but you ain’t got no time for your old man.”

  The calculating light in Theo’s eyes made Guy’s gut crawl but he didn’t let his revulsion show. “Bullshit. You want something. Don’t think you can jerk me around. I know you too well. Just tell me what you want. I’ll decide if it’s worth it.”

  “That little bitch you sniff after wants the truth. You always were crazy about her. Isn’t she worth it?”

  Guy didn’t let himself react. He knew better.

  “Tell me what you want,” he said again, speaking each word slowly, carefully.

  Theo studied him for a long, slow minute and then finally looked away, stared out the window. “I don’t want to spend the last few months of my life in prison.”

  “Too fucking bad.” Guy laughed sourly and turned on his heel, reaching for the doorknob. “If that’s why you’re pestering me, you’re wasting your time.”

  He had the door open when his father bit off his name. “You’re such a fucking hard ass.”

  “Yeah? If I am, you made me this way. If I was anything other than hard, you would have put me in a grave before I was five.” He headed through the door.

  “Wait.”

  “No reason.”

  “The fucking dog broke his chain. It ain’t my fault.” The needle of a whine entered Theo’s voice.

  Guy paused now, looking back over his shoulder for just a minute. “I can’t get you out of jail. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. So think of something else you want.”

  “Money.” A crafty look entered his father’s eyes. “I got no money for smokes. No way to make things easier for the time I got left. Maybe I can’t get out, but there ain’t no reason it’s gotta be sheer hell, either. I imagine a smart boy like you could maybe talk to somebody who could get me some quiet time alone in the yard. I shouldn’t have to be on my guard the whole fucking time I’m out there walking, shouldn’t have to worry about guarding my smokes, my back.”

  “What are you asking for? Solitary?”

  “No. No.” Theo
shook his head. “I’m fine where I am. I don’t cause no trouble … usually. I know how to get along on the inside. But once it gets out that I’m sick, that I’m not up to speed, people are going to start to try to move on me. I still like my time out in the yard. I want to enjoy that. I want to spend my money on smokes. I wouldn’t mind a few books to read. Some luxuries. I’m entitled.”

  “You’re not entitled to shit.” Guy stared at him. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the leg pocket on the baggy cargoes he’d pulled on that morning. Tossing them up, he watched as Theo’s eyes lit with greed. “You tell me how it went down that night. I’ll give you these. Then, after you give a written statement, I’ll talk to the warden.”

  “You want me to confess. Are you nuts?” Theo’s eyes were wide, his yellowed teeth visible as he sneered at him.

  “You’re dying. Not like the county is going to waste money prosecuting your ass.” Guy rocked forward, lowered his voice. “Do it my way and I’ll see if I can help you out. But if you don’t … well. I might let it slip that you’re not really up to watching your ass. Word might get out that you’ve been talking to cops—I don’t have to mention what you’ve been talking about. How well you going to sleep at night, Dad?”

  “You fucking son of a cunt.”

  “Yeah, well. You raised me.”

  * * *

  “You realize what this is going to do to them?”

  Dean West stared at the letter the county sheriff had given him. There were only three men in the room: Dean, the sheriff, and the silent figure who had yet to say a single word.

  He had no doubt how this had all come about.

  The tension coming off Guy Miller was enough to choke every man in the room.

  The sheriff opened his mouth to respond but Dean just shook his head and focused his eyes on the man standing by the window.

  “Guy.”

  Slowly, Guy shifted his head and looked up. His eyes were stark, his face practically carved from stone.

  “This is going to be like rubbing salt in a wound,” he said.

  “This won’t make it to trial.” Guy looked away. “Once they hear the circumstances…”

  “Shit.” Dean surged up and started to pace, agitation chewing at him. “I get that. But you and I both know that it’s not going to help them.”