Reed cracked a vicious smile, twisted derangement when he looked at me. “It’s her funeral.” Menace streaked through his expression when he turned his attention back on Ian. “Actually, it’s yours.”
Rage flashed through Ian.
I could feel it.
So intense and powerful.
The man barely hanging from a thread.
His teeth gritted when he hissed the words. “You won’t get away with this.”
“Watch me.”
Reed snapped his fingers in the air like the sick cliché that he was. “Let’s go.”
“Daddy . . . no . . . please, I want my mommy!” Mallory squirmed in the man’s hold.
“That’s your mother’s fault,” he grunted at her, not even glancing at his daughter as he stalked down the steps ahead of everyone else. Her feelings and needs didn’t matter in the least.
The exact way as it’d always been.
“Reed, please,” I begged again.
Sophie started crying, her confused, worried sounds piercing my heart. “Mommy! Mommy, need you!”
Daggers and stakes.
How could I explain to a baby what was happening? That it was going to be okay? How could I convince her when I had no idea how to make it true?
I could feel the walls of this old house crashing down around me.
Ian raged at my side. Every muscle in his body rigid and hard, body shaking, held in restraint.
“Please!” I pleaded. But no one was listening.
That was right when I got trapped in the swamp of misery that swam in Thomas’s eyes. At the sorrow and the fear that wracked his little being.
I darted for him. “Thomas.”
The officer stepped in front of me and pinned my arms to my sides. I flailed against him, fighting and begging, unable to see through the mask of tears that blinded my eyes.
I couldn’t let this happen.
I couldn’t.
The officer’s voice was at my ear. “Please don’t make me arrest you in front of your children. That’s only going to be harder on them.”
Oh God.
Oh God.
Thomas’s little voice hit my ears, so contrite and filled with guilt. “I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to. He just asked where we were on my messenger. He said he wanted to make sure we were safe. I didn’t know I was going to ruin everything. I always ruin everything.”
A sob crashed out of my throat, the words stretched thin, praying they could touch him from across the space. “No, Thomas, no, it’s not your fault. Mommy is the one who’s sorry. I’m so sorry.”
My whispered pleas turned to fractured screams as they hauled my children to Reed’s car.
“I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry. Mommy loves you. I’ll fix this. I’ll fix this.” The cries just kept coming as the sound of the car doors slamming ricocheted like bullets through the hazy morning, the officer still holding me back, while Ian, Jace, and Faith had to watch.
No one with a word that could change a thing.
The barest gray glowed above the trees, birds chirping and flitting from the branches, a hint of the sun chasing the stars from the sky.
It felt like every single one of them were crashing to the ground.
I screamed and wailed as Reed’s car began to pull away, fighting the officer as the crunch of tires sounded over the gravel drive.
He kept me there until the cars disappeared.
“I really am sorry, ma’am,” the officer said as he released me, holding his hands up in apology as he backed away.
The second he let me go, I dropped to my knees.
Torment ripped from me as my skin dug into the hard wood.
Sobs reverberated through the dull morning light, and agony sliced me in two.
Gutting.
I couldn’t breathe.
Arms circled me from behind and pulled me from the unforgiving ground, words abraded and raw. “I won’t let him get away with this. I will destroy him, Grace. Destroy his world before you lose those kids. I promise you.”
My back was to the thunder of his chest, my feet not even touching the ground as he held me pinned against his body as my cries climbed for the sky.
Slowly, he set me back onto my feet, not releasing me as he placed a massive hand on my throat, drawing me back, voice vicious at my ear. “Whatever it takes.”
It was cold and hard and terrifying, and I clung to it.
Believed it.
He released me, and I slowly turned around, shoving back the hair that was matted to my forehead, sniffling and trying to clear the tears from my eyes.
Trying to gather myself when I kept getting rushed.
Wave after wave of agony.
I blinked back at the faces staring at me.
Faith wearing nothing but heartbreak on her expression, the woman hugging her baby boy to her chest as if she were terrified that he might be stolen away, too.
Bailey was nowhere to be seen, probably still upstairs asleep and having no idea of the atrocity that had just been committed.
Jace stared at me. Fury shivered from his skin. But it wasn’t close to what was coming off of Ian.
The man a storm.
An inferno.
Jace’s face was hard, gauging his brother, before he turned and strode down the hall with purpose.
Ian guided me to follow.
He moved into a sitting room down the hall where he flipped on the television to the local news.
A reporter’s voice came through the speakers. “Dearborne’s children were reported missing late last night. Dearborne shared joint custody with the children’s mother, Grace Dearborne. Grace was spotted leaving her attorney’s home, Ian Jacobs, in the early morning hours on November eleventh just before dawn. It’s speculated Jacobs and Grace Dearborne initiated the affair in a bid to damage Dearborne’s senatorial campaign. More news on this breaking story at the top of the hour.”
The whole time she spoke, a reel played. A picture of me leaving Ian’s building in the middle of the night, my hair a sexed up, matted mass, another of us on my grandmother’s porch, hidden away in the shrubs and somehow still in plain sight of a camera, another of Ian at the strip club.
Ian froze at my side.
Ice cold.
Rigid.
Detached.
“Ian,” I whispered.
Without saying a word, he turned on his heel and strode out the door.
And I was sure I’d never felt so alone in my whole life.
Thirty-Seven
Grace
Silence hung in the cab of Ian’s car, the only sound the hum of his engine and the tiny tremors of sorrow that kept scraping up my raw throat.
Everything hurt.
Excruciatingly severe.
Torment wracked through every cell in my body, steadily pumped by the slivered remains of my heart.
Ian stared straight ahead as he sped down the road, one hand gripping the steering wheel, his bloodied knuckles white and blanched as he squeezed the other fisted on his thigh.
The man was emitting so much energy he could light up the entire town.
But that energy had morphed.
Had become something dark and bitter and ugly.
His soft words from last night vanished with the reality of what we’d done.
He hadn’t said anything during the time we’d been forced to watch the evidence of our affair play out on the screen as if it were sordid and dirty. As if it were made of greed and corruption when I was sure I’d never experienced anything so pure and right.
Jace, Faith and I had just stood there.
Shocked.
Broken in the truest sense.
Ian had left me there to listen to him where he’d roared and moaned, his fists pummeling the wall as he’d raged outside.
Five minutes later, he’d returned.
Hatred and vacancy in his eyes.
It was the first time I’d thought he’d resembled what he believed himself to be.
A demon.
Capable of anything.
He’d simply said, “We have to go. Now.”
Faith had scrambled to gather my children’s things, and we’d loaded them into Ian’s car.
The whole time, Ian hadn’t uttered a single word.
Now, the car screeched as he took a corner hard. I swore, my mind had to be racing just as fast, searching for a solution.
Fighting the hopelessness that threatened to seep in and take over.
I refused to succumb to Reed’s demands.
Refused to succumb to the despair that crashed and covered, the weight of it making it impossible to breathe.
The tires squealed again as Ian took the last turn into my neighborhood, and he slowed as he navigated the suburban streets to my home.
A sanctuary.
A place of peace and love.
And somehow it was Ian who’d come to feel like home.
He pulled to the curb, and my shattered heart heaved in a shock of pain when I looked over and saw the utter devastation on his face.
Different from mine.
A shroud of guilt covered him whole. The man vibrated with self-condemnation. A dark cloud crawling his flesh.
Shaking, I fumbled out of the car, still barely able to stand.
My bleeding heart was somewhere in my throat.
Thick and knotted.
Suffocating.
A crisp breeze twisted through the intense blue sky that murmured of the coming winter.
Like a cold, quiet whisper.
A premonition.
Chills flashed across my skin, and my stomach twisted in awareness and dread.
I couldn’t control the shaking in my hands as I opened the back door of his car.
Grief streaked through my insides, and I nearly fell to my knees when I looked at my children’s things.
Their little suitcases and their seats.
The unbearable reality slammed me.
He took them.
He took them.
Grief took over everything.
Every cell.
Every molecule.
He took them.
A sob ripped from my chest, and my eyes blurred with the tears that I couldn’t keep at bay.
They fell. Fell as violently as the anger that infiltrated to the marrow.
Ian came around to my side, the man a dark, gray storm, those crazy-colored eyes the strangest I’d ever seen.
Swirling with rage and anger and a terrifying sort of desperation.
He gathered up everything in one fell swoop, shifting on his heel and stalking up the walkway, rigid anger as he waited at the door.
I felt as if I were crawling as I followed. Moving against the current. Cutting against the grain.
Everything wrong.
So wrong.
Legs heavy, I moved around him and unlocked the door, and he set everything just inside.
He refused to look at me, jaw clenched and muscles bunched and twitching, the designs etched into his skin alive, exposed by the tee shirt he wore.
My soul wept.
Cried and howled.
Couldn’t he see that he was only making it worse? That he was only hurting us more by doing this to himself?
Blame would win us no points.
But it was there in the firm set of his chiseled jaw as he stepped back, there in the anger and the fury that roiled and tossed and turned my world into disorder.
A gust of wind screamed through. Burning my flesh. Freezing my bones.
He glared off into it, still refusing to look my way.
“Ian,” I finally begged, unable to take it any longer.
He stayed frozen.
The man carved of stone.
Stone that was roughened by the world. Gaping holes underneath. “I’m sorry,” he grated, the words just as hard as the rigid lines of his body.
“What are you sorry for?”
Bitter laughter punched the air.
Haunting.
Echoing through the space.
“What am I sorry for?” In a flash, he whipped toward me, and he was angling down, coming so close that I could taste his savage words. “I’m sorry for being me. For fucking this up. I knew I would. I fucking knew I would, and I went after you anyway.”
He straightened as soon as he said it, putting space between us.
Agony twisted my brow into a tight bow, and I hugged myself. “No. You are what I needed. What I was waiting for. We needed you.”
Bitter laughter rumbled low, and that gorgeous face twisted in disgust. “Your kids are gone because of me. You’re alone because of me. Everything I’ve worked for since I was seventeen, all the blood, sweat, and bullshit I’ve taken . . . gone. Because. Of. Me. Gone because I couldn’t keep my goddamned dick in my pants.”
He might as well have slapped me.
“You know it was more than that,” I wheezed through the desperate plea.
“It wasn’t anything but a mistake.” He gritted it so close to my mouth I could taste the venom coming from his tongue.
A sob climbed my throat, so big I was suffocating on it.
I couldn’t take any more.
“No . . . don’t say that. Please, don’t say that.”
“This ends. Now.”
I reached for him, and he stepped back.
“Please, Ian, don’t leave me. Not now. I need you.”
His expression turned cold, distant, and I swore the earth shook, the last pieces falling away.
Destroyed.
Desolated.
Pain splintered and spread. Veins of devastation that crawled and exterminated.
Uprooting all the hope I’d put on this man.
My fingers clawed at him. “No . . . no . . . you . . . you said you were going to fight for them. With me.”
I was begging.
Pleading.
Praying,
How could he do this to me?
He laughed more, this low, disgusted sound. He tipped his head to the side, bleeding antagonism. “You really think a judge is going to listen to what I have to say? I fucked my client. Guess what, Grace, that means I’ve lost all credibility. I can no longer touch this case. I’ve ruined my career. It’s over. All of it.”
Desperation sped through my blood.
“No, you can’t do this. You can’t just walk away from me. From us. You love me. You love us.” I was floundering, the despair too great as I tried to reach for him.
To get ahold of him.
To make him see.
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“No . . . please.”
He lifted a defiant chin, all the tender goodness I’d come to recognize in this man obliterated.
Standing in his place was the predator.
The man who would do absolutely anything to survive.
It didn’t matter who got in his way.
Including me.
“I don’t want this mess, Grace. I never did. Now, I’m walking away. Believe me, you’ll be better off.”
“So . . . that’s it? Things get rough, and you run like a coward?” I choked around the accusation.
He didn’t even flinch. “I warned you who I was.”
Selfish.
Greedy.
Incapable of love.
The devil.
Maybe I’d been the fool who hadn’t believed him. The one who’d seen more in him. Something better than the powerful, callous man who stood in front of me right then.
I hugged my arms across my chest as if it could shield me from the brutality of his words. As if they could protect me from the truth I should have seen all along.
Still, I was stumbling, pleading with him. “No, you’re wrong. You’re so much more than that. I know you are. I’ve seen it.”
“You only saw what you wanted to see.”
“You told me you loved me. I trusted you. I trusted you with everything.”
“And look what that got you.”
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A gust of wind whipped through the narrow street. The spindly branches of the ancient oaks hissed and howled, sending a tumble of dead, dried leaves across the ground.
It stirred the chaos that raged inside me.
I don’t believe you.
I don’t believe you.
My spirit screamed it while my mind struggled to accept the reality. The truth that he could hurt me this way.
That he would just . . . turn his back and walk.
It ripped and tore at my insides.
Loss.
A grief unlike anything I’d ever felt.
Hope scattering like the leaves.
“How can you do this?” I forced myself to look at his beautiful face.
Too beautiful. Too mesmerizing. Too dangerous.
“How can you, when you know what is at stake? When you know how badly I need you? I trusted you.” The last raked from my throat that was raw and aching.
As raw and aching as my heart.
My eyes squeezed closed when he reached out and brushed his fingertips down the side of my face.
Tenderly.
A stark contrast to the wickedness that blazed from his soul.
Then his voice twisted with that dark, bitter hatred—hatred I was sure was completely directed at himself.
“You shouldn’t have.”
Thirty-Eight
Ian
“What the fuck are you going to do?” Jace demanded below his breath.
Ripping at my hair, I paced the parlor at Jace’s place. A goddamned panther who was going to claw his way out and take everyone down with me when I did it.
Mack was sitting at the bar, grim expression on his face.
My attention darted their way. “Whatever the fuck I have to do.”
Mack shook his head. “This is messy, brother.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I spat.
It was a motherfucking mess.
A disaster.
That meteor I’d felt coming had finally broken through the atmosphere, nothing but a ball of obliteration that had made landfall.
An implosion no one had seen coming.
But I should have.
I fucking should have.
Fury boiled my blood, the hatred so intense the only thing I saw was red.
Worst part was Grace’s face when I’d walked away.
When I’d left her standing there like the asshole I’d warned her I was.
All of Me: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel Page 34