“That’s normal.”
“I know that. And yet I don’t believe it. It still feels surreal. I thought when I came out here three years ago that I’d gone through my trauma and it was all behind me. Now it’s happened all over again. I was fooling myself, Luke.”
“Or protecting yourself. Retreated to fight another day.”
“I don’t have any more fight left in me.”
“You don’t need to do that ever again.” He strokes my hair. “We can run away if you want. Go into hiding.”
“I thought about that. When I left Washington. Disappearing to an island somewhere.”
“Would you do that now?”
I shake my head, lost in thought as I stare out over the ocean. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because trouble has a way of catching up to you anyway. Might as well stand and fight. I’m just not sure I’m up for the next one.”
40
Luke
I don’t want there to be a next fight.
But that’s her call to make, not mine.
“I can’t keep quiet any longer,” Taylor murmurs, her gaze locked in the distance. It’s taken me a long time to realize that’s what she does when she’s thinking. Beautiful mind-ing, I call it now. She looks away from the conversation, from the here and now, and lets her brain churn.
And she sees some amazing things.
She knew I was in trouble from the way a phone conversation ended.
Her whole life, her ability to see in three dimensions has been undervalued. Not valued at all, actually.
I lean in. I could listen to her talk for hours. “About Lively?”
Good thing we have the rest of our lives to discuss anything and everything.
She nods. “And it’s going to have ripple effects. I know that. It’s ironic, actually. I tried to destroy the last administration. Not for any good reason. They were perfectly reasonable politicians, but I needed my out, and that was the path I saw in front of me. I tried to create as much damage as I could. And here, almost by accident, this administration may tumble instead. I don’t want to do that. And maybe I should have because they’re not good people at all.”
“But it’s not who you are anymore. You used to be a chaos agent because it was all you knew. And now it’s not.”
“No.” She turns back to the here, to the now. To the conversation, and me. She gives a beautiful smile. A from-the-soul smile that’s happy and gorgeous. “It’s not.”
“I see you,” I whisper as she stands up and brushes the sand off her legs. “I see how good you are.”
“You helped me realize that.”
“Did I? When?”
“Sometime yesterday, maybe? It took a while.”
“Bite your tongue,” I growl as I ease her into my lap.
“I’d rather you bite it.”
I kiss her instead. Gently. Biting will come later.
“This is going to be rocky,” she whispers. “However I find a way to tell my story, it’s not going to be easy.”
“I’ll be there. Every step of the way.”
“It’s okay if that part of my life is separate. I can quietly come and go from here. If you’re going to be undercover—”
“No.” I cut her off with my words, and then my mouth. “That’s not happening. That was some insane wish I had when I didn’t know what else I wanted from life. I’m more than happy being a detective. I’m ecstatic to come home to you every night. I will put in leave time to go with you to Washington, and hold your hand in a big, scary courtroom. Or in a television interview if you go that route instead. Whatever you want.”
She wraps her arms around me and leans into me, pushing her face into my neck. My ribs ache a bit, but they can fucking deal.
I have Taylor back in my arms. I don’t care how much it hurts. I feel invincible right now.
“I kept a lot of secrets from you,” she whispers.
“They were yours. You didn’t need to crack your heart open for me.”
“No. But I needed to do it for me.” She kisses my neck and sighs.
The moon is rising now, and the path back to the car is pretty well lit. “We should head back.”
“Don’t want to,” she mumbles. “Let’s stay here forever and share all our secrets.”
I chuckle gently. She doesn’t need to convince me. “Deal.”
She carefully stands up and walks down to the water.
Then she turns back and waves at me. “Come on,” she calls. “Let’s dip our toes in.”
Deal.
41
Taylor
A week after I come home, I’m cleared by the doctors to go back to work.
It’s surreal to return. Luke drives me. I still don’t have a car.
I still don’t have any money, really, and I won’t for a while. When your mother shoots you and then dies, any effort you might have been able to put toward convincing the FBI that your money isn’t dirty gets a touch more complicated.
Everyone is there. The executive director, the volunteer coordinator, the coordinator of counseling services, and they have flowers and an edible arrangement.
“We were worried about you,” my boss says. “It was so scary to think of someone targeting one of our own.”
One of their own. Not one of the Dashford Reid daughters, not a socialite, not a fucked up sexpot.
A fellow crisis worker. A fellow woman. A colleague.
I belong here. I wanted to, desperately, before the attack. I did my best to be social and friendly, but I was never sure they liked me back.
Tears slide down my cheeks. “Thank you,” I whisper. “I missed you all so much.”
“It’s okay if you want to take some time before you get back to peer counseling. There’s lots of admin work.”
I shake my head. “I can do this. I want to do this.”
“Great.”
And that’s it. Back to work.
Surreal.
But wonderful.
The next shoe drops a week later. Luke and I go car shopping—for a used car, which is wild. And fun. I sell some jewelry, and it turns out that you can absolutely buy a car for a rough trade-in value on a gaudy diamond bracelet and three pairs of earrings, if the earrings are big enough and the car is old enough.
To celebrate, I go window shopping on Rodeo Drive. Luke has to work tonight, until midnight, and I’m happy to fill the time with something fluffy.
But when I return to my car, there’s a woman standing next to it.
My pulse picks up. I don’t like the way she’s looking at me.
“Ms. Reid, I’m Melinda Gray. I’m a journalist.”
“No comment.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask.”
“The answer won’t change.”
“Do you want to talk about Gerome Lively? Did he rape you?”
I jerk backwards. How could she know that? I look her over. She’s generically pretty, in a never-had-plastic-surgery kind of way. Ordinary. Straight brown hair, polite smile that reveals neat white teeth. She had braces probably, and her clothes are decent quality. Not wealthy, but not desperate. “Who are you?”
“I told you. I’m a journalist.”
“Lots of people call themselves that these days.”
She holds out a card. “I’m only interested in the truth, Ms. Reid.”
I’m not going close enough to her to get it. But I also don’t want to have this conversation in the middle of a busy shopping area. “Then you haven’t been around for very long. The truth doesn’t sell magazines.”
“Actually, I’ve been around long enough.” She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, and there’s something familiar about her face now. That gesture.
“Have we met before?”
“A few times.”
I try to place her. “Here? Or in Washington?”
“Back east.”
I frown.
“I worked with the Horus Group.”
She smiles. “Back then I went by Ellie. I was the receptionist there for a while.”
“Quite the career shift.”
“Not exactly.”
Ah. The pieces are falling into place. A sick lack of surprise twists in my gut. “You were undercover there.”
“Something like that.”
“What happened?”
A cloud passes behind her gaze. Enough of a clue that I know I don’t want any part of her revenge plot, whatever it is.
I shake my head. “Still no comment. I’m sorry I can’t help you. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“I’m not,” she says firmly. “Gerome Lively has a long track record of abusing women. Young women. Girls, even.”
She’s not wrong. But I’m done showing people my hand and getting nowhere for it.
“If you ever change your mind. If you ever want to tell any part of your story—on your terms, I promise—my inbox is open.”
“How can you promise that? My terms only? You don’t know what those terms are. You don’t know if you can trust me to be honest with you.”
“I think I can.”
“Why?”
“Because you went to ground. And even when your car exploded, you did everything in your power to keep that quiet. You don’t want to be found. So if you decide to speak up, I’ll know it’s for different reasons than before.”
Would it, though? The bitter, angry nugget deep inside me feels the same. And how could I tell any story about Gerome without talking about my mother, who has now been scrubbed from my life, but not my past.
And forever more I will have to lie about her. How she died, where she is.
With a painful jolt, I realize I resent what I’m caught up in now more than I ever suspected, just as I resented my life then. “Don’t assume anything about me, Melinda. I will absolutely disappoint you.”
“I’m sure that’s not the case. Your story could be quite inspirational.”
I shake my head. “Either way, it’s not good for me. I don’t need to put myself front and centre for judgment or false validation. I’ll get both, neither will feel right, and it will destabilize any progress I’ve made toward a healthy, real life. You get that? I’m just living now, and it’s great. I don’t want any part of the performative bullshit you people trade in.”
She sticks her tongue into the corner of her mouth. Thinking. “What if it were anonymous?”
“What?”
She shrugs. “What if the story is exactly what you just said? Once upon a time, there was a scandal. The details don’t matter. They can’t be shared, anyway, because the woman at the centre of the scandal very much wants to stay out of the public eye—forever. She’s had a bitter taste of it, and now spends her days wrapped in a cloak of privacy. And inside that cloak, she’s found happiness. But there was another scandal. A secret one. Way back when, when she was a child. Too young to be culpable.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s a better answer than no comment.”
“No comment.”
She grins. “Too late, Taylor. I know that you’re considering it, and that’s awesome. If there’s anything I can do to prove that I’m a trustworthy journalist, you just give me a shout. My secure contact details are on the card.”
Which I still haven’t taken.
Damn it.
I move closer, and she puts it into my hand. Then she steps away from my car.
Giving me space.
“Think about it,” she says. “And I’m really glad to hear you’re doing well now.”
Fuck. If only she really knew. I nod.
“And Taylor?”
“Yeah?”
“If you talk to Cole, or Jason…any of them. Don’t tell them about me. Okay? I’m going to trust you with my secret first. And then you can decide if you want to trust me.”
42
Luke
I get back to Taylor’s apartment at half past midnight. And when I open the door, I can smell cookies.
I find her in the kitchen, drinking a glass of wine and staring at the working oven. Behind her is a rack of clean mixing bowls. “You baked.”
She nods, still staring at the oven. “Yep.”
“Is something wrong? Something’s clearly wrong.” I close the gap between us and kiss her gently. “Hi. Love you.”
“Hi. Love you, too.”
“What happened?”
“A reporter found me. A reporter who once went undercover in the Horus Group, which is really weird, but it’s not the weirdest part. I think she actually had a good idea, but it scares me, and I don’t know what to do.”
I kiss her again. “Let me tuck my gun away and wash up. Are those going to be done soon?”
“Five minutes.”
“Pour me a glass and we can talk about this over a plate of warm cookies. Deal?”
She nods.
I change into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, then return to the kitchen. It’s not a far walk. Her apartment is nice—rich girl nice—but too small for both of us.
I should move back into my house soon.
But the thought of sleeping apart from her tears me in two, so until we’ve been dating long enough for me to suggest that we buy a new place, a place that is truly ours, I’m going to continue being a squatter in her small space.
I help her plate up the cookies—chocolate chunk and walnut, delicious—and then I settle in with a snack and my listening ears. “Okay, tell me everything.”
She takes a long sip of wine, then a deep breath, and launches into the whole thing. “I’ve read some of her pieces tonight. She’s a really interesting journalist. Nobody knows who she is—she wasn’t kidding when she was telling me that she was trusting me with her secrets, too. She’s super anonymous, and she pulls these pretty incredible sources out of nowhere to drop truth bombs on Washington.”
“This might be what you were looking for. A chance to tell your story, on your terms.”
“That’s what she said.”
“But?”
“But it’s hard for me to trust her. Or anyone.”
Yeah. There’s the rub. “Ah, I’m sorry.”
She shrugs. “It is what it is.”
“Cookie?” I hold one out to her.
She takes a giant bite direct from my hand. “The rest is yours,” she mumbles around the crumbs.
“I didn’t know you could bake.”
“First time for everything. Apparently, I can follow a recipe.”
“You’re very good at following instructions,” I agree.
Her eyes spark. “Am I?”
“No.”
She groans and swipes at me. I catch her and spin her around, pinning her to the counter so I can mock frisk her. “But I like it when you struggle.”
“Mmm.”
“It’s been a long couple of weeks.” I skate my fingers down her sides, making her shiver. We’ve made love a lot, but always gentle. Always careful.
“It has.”
“If you’re feeling up to it—”
She shudders. “Yes.”
“You don’t even know what I’m offering.”
“Yes to all of it.”
“Ball gag?”
“Deal.”
I laugh. “Do you have one?”
“Improvise with my panties.”
Fuck, that’s hot. “Do you need a distraction tonight?”
She nods. “Yes.”
“A big one?”
She inhales shakily. “Is that a cock joke?”
“I would never joke about how big my dick is, baby. That’s super serious conversation right there.”
“Of course.” She twists in my arms, turning around to look at me. “Yes, I want a big distraction tonight. Don’t be gentle with me. I’m healed up now.”
“Okay. I’m going to put the cookies away. You go get ready for bed and I’ll join you in a minute.”
When I get to the bedroom, I find her stretched out on her side
, naked.
Looking at me.
There’s something feral in her eyes, like a challenge I want to rise up to meet. A matching heat sparks to life inside me. I can be a tiger for her. A lion.
I prowl across the room and pounce as she rolls away, landing on top of her, my legs and arms bracing on either side of her trembling body.
“Tell me,” I growl. “Tell me what you want.”
“Hold me down,” she whispers, rocking beneath me.
I take her wrists in my fingers and pin her to the bed.
“Harder,” she begs. Tears cling to her lashes as she squeezes her eyes shut.
“What do you need?”
“You.”
“I’m here.”
“Don’t ever let me go.”
“I won’t.” I flex my hand, then squeeze again. Harder, as requested. I trace the line of her neck with my other hand. “Are you sure you want me to be rough tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Why, darling?”
I need to know. The reason doesn’t matter. Whatever she wants, I’ll give her. But if I know what’s driving her here, I can make it even better.
She shakes her head from side to side. “I don’t know,” she sobs. “I just need you to hurt me. And then hold me.”
My heart cracks, and I fall on her. “I’ll hold you forever,” I growl. “Always. You can come to me and curl up in my lap and ask me—tell me—to do bad things to you, and I will. And then I will always—always—make it right afterward.”
“Sometimes I’m so scared that I’m bad to the bone.”
“You’re not.”
“Sometimes I want to be punished.” It’s the tiniest of whispers. Hotter than anything.
“You need to be shown a lesson?”
She nods jerkily.
I rear up above her and roughly turn her onto her front, baring her ass for me. “What are your words, baby?”
“Red, yellow, green. I’m totally green,” she pants. “Spank me, Luke.”
I laugh. “Not that easy.” I climb off her, leaving her on the bed. She squirms, and I grab her foot. “Stay like that. Or you won’t like what I do when I come back.”
Wicked Sin Page 24