It Will Always Be You (You Series Book 1)

by Tina Ness

  Once the fireworks are over we grab up all the blankets to head inside. The guys are only minutes behind us. When Marshall comes in, he slips in behind me as I stand by the kitchen counter. “So,” he whispers in my ear, “was that the best fireworks display you’ve ever seen or what?”

  Should I tease him or let him have this one? I decide on the former, “Mm, I’ve seen better; it was alright.”

  “Well, pretty lady, we have a sea of fans that would dispute that, I reckon. Them’s fightin’ words.” Not sure what made him decide to go all Western movie on me, but it certainly makes me smile. “We’re legend in these here parts.”

  I’m dying to see the face that goes with that voice, so I turn to look at him, then give him the best damsel-in-distress voice I can. “You ain’t gunna challenge me to a duel now,”—I place the back of my hand to my forehead—“are you, mister?”

  He gives me one of his sinfully sexy smiles. But before he gets a chance to respond, a voice arrests our attention. “Aubrey, why the hell didn’t you tell me about this? How long has he been calling you?” Rich is following after Aubrey as they both enter the kitchen from the hall. Aubrey keeps walking and doesn’t answer.

  Rich stops and looks over at Marshall and says, “Jett.” I look up at Marshall; his nostrils are flared and he looks livid. All from one word. I look over my shoulder only to see his father with the very same expression.

  I turn back to look at Marshall. He shakes his head no, trying to shake off what he’s just heard. “Marshall, what’s going on?”

  He takes in a deep breath. “Beth, can you give me and my family just a minute alone, please?” What? I begin to panic; he’s shutting me out?

  He looks down at me, and for a moment I think he plans to fill me in. “Please, Beth. I just need a few minutes.” I want to tell him how I know he has kept his past from me and that he can trust me with anything. His past is important—it has made him who he is—but now is not the time. I turn to head out the front door to give them some space.

  Five long minutes later a rough-looking Marshall comes blasting out the door. I reach out to him, but he dodges my grip. “Let’s get out of here,” he mutters softly, even though his demeanor is screaming.

  Our drive back to his place reminds me of the first night we went out; his eyes once again face forward like he’s in a trance, his knuckles are pale white, and the air is thick with pain—only this time I fear he might have cracked. Marshall just may have hit his breaking point. Threatening tears sting my eyes, as the suffering radiates off of him. Losing his wife must have been so hard, but that clearly isn’t the extent of it. I get the feeling that the mess Eva spoke of isn’t only Aubrey’s mess.

  We pull into Marshall’s garage, he closes the garage door behind us, and as I reach for the door handle he speaks, “I just wanted it to all be over. I should have done more to protect her.” He leans forward on the steering wheel with his elbows, locking his fingers on the top of his head. I wait a few moments, unsure if he will go on.

  “What did you want to be over, Marshall?”

  He shakes his head, “That goddamn piece-of-shit made her believe he would kill me.”

  His statement catches me off guard—my chest deflates as though the wind was kicked out of me.

  He continues, “I knew I should have just paid him off… hell no, I should have strangled the life out of him is what I should have done.”

  Kind, patient Marshall just threated to take a life. What the hell is going on? I stare straight ahead, searching for my first question.

  I jump as he takes my hand from spinning my ring. “Oh shit, Beth, I’m sorry.” He looks at me with torment-flushed face and anguished eyes. “Let’s go inside and talk,” he says before stepping out of the truck. I’ve never seen Marshall as anything but kindhearted, passionate, and confident, but I can’t help but wonder if there is a second side of Marshall. Situations beyond our control can make people do crazy things sometimes, but I still can’t see him ever being violent.

  We walk up the two steps from the garage and into his kitchen. I have a seat on the tall chair next to the island while Marshall heads over to the bar area at the furthest end of the kitchen. I wonder if it’s liquid courage or a mask for the pain he’s after—maybe both.

  “I’m going to have an absinthe drip; would you like one or can I get you a glass of wine?”

  I could use the chance for the little extra focus that Marshall told me absinthe was once believed to bring. “Sure, I will try one.”

  I watch as he takes two absinthe glasses from the cabinet and pours the olive-colored liquid into each glass. Taking a slotted spoon from the drawer, he places it over one of the glasses before he adds two sugar cubes to the spoon, then places it under the slow drip of water coming from the absinthe fountain—a much smaller version of the one at Blackwater Lounge.

  His uncharacteristically hunched shoulders move up and down with his heavy breath while each water droplet rains slowly over the sweet cubes. On the second one he omits the sugar and goes straight to the water.

  He sets the glass of cloudy liquid before me—lighter in color than his. As the first sip of sugary licorice coats my throat, I decide to hold off on another sip until I know what I’m dealing with. Maybe I won’t like what I hear and decide to leave.

  “Who is threatening to kill you?” I blurt, eager to send flying daggers out into the universe at whoever would threaten the man I’m in love with.

  “Sarah’s brother, Aubrey’s ex-husband, my perfect nieces’ biological father, the scum of the earth.”

  I run what he said through my brain a second and third time.

  “You mean to tell me that Aubrey was married to Sarah’s brother?” He must be waiting for me to process this since he doesn’t go on. “And Rich isn’t Emma and Kayla’s dad?”

  “Rich is very much those girls’ daddy, just not biologically. Way better father than that greedy snake could’ve ever been.” He grits his teeth before taking a generous sip of his drink.

  “And yes, Aubrey was married to Sarah’s brother. She met Jett when she was off at college in Duluth. Jett and Aubrey threw some great parties at the house they rented. I wasn’t quite twenty-one at the time, so the bar scene was out of the question. Parker and I would come to Duluth most weekends, which is how I got to know Sarah.

  The parties stopped once they got married, and ten months after that, Emma was born. That following year was when I married Sarah and we made Minneapolis our home.” He takes another sip of his drink and clears his throat. Seconds slip by, and his obvious reluctance has him back at his drink for another sip.

  I shift impatiently in my chair and absentmindedly pick up my glass and swallow my second sip.

  “I thought I knew Jett. I thought my sister was in good hands, but after the unexpected death of their father we soon found out what Jett’s true colors were. Their father had been sitting on more money than any of them knew. Not all honestly earned money, I’d guess. The sizable life insurance policy and 401k went to their mother, while his savings was willed evenly to Jett, Sarah, and their sister, Jada.”

  “Once Jett got the taste of money, he started staying out late, leaving a very pregnant Aubrey at home to care for Emma on her own, which I didn’t know until later or I would have dragged Aubrey back to Minneapolis. Not long after Kayla was born, Aubrey’s regular phone calls to her family stopped. She just quit answering her phone. A few times Jett had answered and said she was asleep, or that he had insisted she get out for a walk, or just that she said she would call back.”

  He tips back his head to pour down the last drops of liquid the glass had to give.

  “I’m having another—you want any?” I look over at my glass, ready to give him a “can’t you see it’s full” kind of expression, but cringe as I notice the glass is near empty. Well, too late for driving to be an option. I down my last sip and hand him my glass. He pours our drinks, then takes his seat next to me. A small part of me wants so badly to
reach out and place my hand on that strong jaw, kiss that magic set of lips, and somehow make him forget his pain, even if only for a minute, but I need to know the depths of his pain before we can move on. I need to know if this past he has kept me in the dark about is more than we can weather.

  “Our family had had enough of Jett’s excuses, so we finally took a family trip to Duluth to see what was going on, only I’d never expected to see what I saw when I got there.” Scrubbing his hands over his face, he groans, without a doubt dreading reliving the history he is about to reveal.

  “Jett took off on Aubrey and the girls. He took his inheritance money, their only car, most of the furniture, the TV, her cell phone, and he even took her wedding ring, telling her he was going to go get it cleaned. When we showed up, Aubrey was extremely malnourished, beyond overly tired and emotionally vacant. She looked to be near death. She was suffering from postpartum depression, and he just abandoned her. She’d neglected herself, but somehow had still managed to care for every one of her children’s needs over the course of two weeks since Jett had left.”

  I reach over to touch his hand. “I can see why you all got so upset by the mention of his name.”

  “I wish I could say it ends there, but it doesn’t.” He gets up to refill his glass, only this time he doesn’t ask me; he just takes my half-empty glass and tops it off. He keeps up this pace, we will both pass out before he finishes his story.

  “There are two good things that came from that sorry ass—no, make that three—Emma, Kayla, and the other is an easy divorce. She got the kids, and he got to keep all his money.”

  As he mentions the girls’ names, his eyes visibly soften, and I can see the tension in his neck relax a bit. I love how crazy he is about those girls. I can hardly blame him; all it took was one night of the fireworks game for me to fall head over heels for those precious little blondies. A surge of regret hits me as I realize the way we had left tonight, I never got to say good-bye. I hope that they are tucked away and unaffected by the obvious venom in the eyes of their family tonight.

  “Being as stubborn as she is, Aubrey refused to leave Duluth. Wanted to make it on her own, although she wasn’t alone long; she married Rich a year later. For two years we didn’t hear from Jett, but as soon as he caught wind that his sister was near death in the hospital, he took it upon himself to visit her when none of us were around. Sarah was on a ventilator and couldn’t speak when he visited. He tried to convince her to sign her inheritance over to him, telling her that the money should stay in the family, that he had planned on giving it to his girls because he felt so sorry for what he’d done. That prick even went so far as to actually take her hand and try to make her sign. Little did he know—she would get better and fill us all in on his corrupt attempt.”

  “And now he’s back at it again, trying to use Aubrey to get to me. I knew something was up—she’s been acting strange for some time now. That was why I had to stay at Aubrey’s that day we were supposed to spend together. It was almost like she had slipped back into that numb state she was in when Jett left, only I couldn’t get anything out of her. Dammit, I wish she would have told me, before he started telling her that if she doesn’t talk me into giving him Sarah’s share of the money, he will kill me.”

  Someone is threatening to kill him; how can he not be freaking out, calling the police or hiding?

  My heart races, fearing for his life. “You’re going to give him the money, right? What if he comes here for you?” I have a sudden need to look around the room. “What if he’s here already?”

  “Calm down, Beth,” he stands and grabs my face, making me look up at him. “Just breathe,” he says calmly.

  “The girls! What if he goes after the girls to get to you?” my shrill voice bounces off the walls of the kitchen.

  “Beth, calm down. It won’t be me that Jett is looking for. Aubrey turned herself into his target when she told him that I don’t have the money, that I gave it to her.”

  Chapter 28

  “Did you give her the money?” I can’t help but ask.

  “Yes, Sarah and I gave Aubrey the money to help with the girls the second that Jett left, but Jett didn’t need to know that. Aubrey put herself in danger thinking she was protecting me, but she obviously didn’t think it through, but I promise you—she and the girls are safe. My father insists we all have high-end security systems put into each of our homes, and he will be alerting all his police buddies who will keep a close eye on the house.”

  I take several deep breaths as he rubs my back. It’s surprisingly soothing, though I know I’m teetering uncomfortably close to the edge of a total meltdown. The fear of losing Marshall mixed in with the trepidation that comes with nearly being raped and the thought that I may have been murdered proved to be a harmful concoction for my nerves. Marshall, on the other hand, had immediately turned back into his caring, put-everyone-else-first self the second I started to lose it.

  He removes his hand from my back and reaches to pull his chair in closer to me. He sits, positioning his legs on each side of mine, and focuses his eyes on mine. “I’m so sorry to put you through this. This is the last thing you need on top of everything you’ve been through.”

  “Everything I’ve been through? Marshall, you’ve lost your wife and nearly your sister. It’s clear you’ve carried the burden of protecting everyone, myself included, and now you have someone threatening your and Aubrey’s lives. You shouldn’t be worrying about me.”

  “Jett is a greedy snake, but he isn’t the murdering type.”

  I finally feel some of my tension ease.

  He takes my hand. “I know you have been trying really hard to be strong, but Beth, I can see the pain and fear you try to deny. There are times when we’re together that I see it almost vanish from your eyes, and I feel like maybe I am helping you in some small way.”

  My heart sings with the knowledge that this man knows me better than I know myself, and I so badly want to tell him how I love him, but not after that much absinthe.

  “That’s just it.” I place my hand on his cheek. “You have helped me, but not in a small way. When I’m with you, I don’t feel scared. When we make love,”—I pause to see his reaction to those words, and he doesn’t blink, doesn’t look away. That’s when I see it: he does love me. I reluctantly continue even though I want so badly to kiss his perfect lips and have him take me to bed.—“it’s like everything’s right in the world, nothing else matters. It’s like each time takes more of the hurt away. I need you, Marshall.”

  He smiles that perfect sexy smile and runs a finger over my lips. “And I need you, Beth.” That is as close to an “I love you” as one can get, and for now I’m satisfied with it.

  His lips crash into mine, and his tongue explores my mouth with such need I can hardly breathe. Without slowing his wondering tongue, he pulls me up to my feet. I can feel the effects of the green fairy as I rise, but it’s different than other times I’ve been drunk. It’s more of a sense of euphoria. His fingertips run the length of my neck and slide down over my shoulder, and I moan into his mouth at the sensation of his touch. His mouth leaves mine and travels to my ear. He whispers, “Can I taste more of you upstairs?” He holds me tighter as my knees weaken with his words.

  “Mmhmm.”

  He stops at the front door to engage the security system before we head up. I hadn’t even realized it was there, since I’ve always felt safe when I’m with Marshall; and even with everything I’ve learned tonight about Jett, I still do.

  We continue our kiss standing next to the bed, but only until I push him to have a seat on the bed. He grins at me—unmistakably enjoying my unexpected boldness. I smile back, knowing what I’m about to do, impressed at how steady my hands are. I slowly slide my shirt up an inch on each side at a time, and I sway my hips.

  He leans back in the bed, propping himself up on his elbows, smiling in approval as I pull my shirt up over my head.

  Next I shimmy from my shorts, keep
ing up my hips’ rhythm after they hit the floor. I step out of them with one foot and kick them with the other off to the side. I would think that the silence would bother me, but it doesn’t. It’s almost as though there is a song playing that only the two of us can hear. I reach back behind me, unhooking my bra, and then letting it ease slowly down to my fingers.

  The firm package in his jeans has gotten so tight he shifts for some ease.

  Lastly I slip out of my panties, hips still swaying. I step one foot out, only this time I kick it right at him.

  He sits himself up; his eyes are fixated on mine, his denim blues replaced with a deep, dark passion. His eyes travel over my body as I continue to sway, and for the first time in my life, I feel unashamed of how I look. Sure some may think it might be the liquid courage, but I know better—what I read in his eyes when he told me he needed me and what I see on his face now leaves no doubt in my mind of his desire for me, and the unspoken love we share is very present in this room.

  He rises from the bed and very subtly adjusts himself, clearly needing be removed of his restrictive attire. He takes ahold of my hips. His touch sends an electrical current through to every one of my nerves as they quake with delight.

  “Goddamn, woman; you’re so fucking sexy.” His words of appreciation play over and over again in my head as he runs his hands over my ultra-sensitive flesh.

  I begin to work at removing his clothes, but it doesn’t stop him for touching me every second he can, and once I’ve freed him from every last article of clothes, including those lucky cotton briefs, he lowers me gently to the bed.

  I reach for the glorious beast, but he takes my wrist to stop me. “I told you I wanted to taste more of you; you need to let me do that first. My restraint may not be as impressive as I’d like it to be after that little show you just put on.”

  I laugh. “Hmm, so you liked it then?”

  “Oh,” he shakes his head, “you have no idea how much I liked it, but let me try and show you. Close your eyes so you can really focus on feeling me.” His mouth starts at my neck while the tips of his fingers graze slowly over my body, up and down the side of my ribs. It’s unlike any sensation I’ve ever felt. It’s almost a tickle, but not one that makes you laugh; it’s erotic, like he’s waking up every inch of skin he brushes over, like I’m feeling my own skin for the first time. Every last little touch sends a very clear message to my sex. Fingers dance over my collarbone and continue a path down the very middle of my chest, touching every inch except my nipples that are so tense with arousal it may be too much to have them touched. Nipping softly at the flesh of my belly, he starts to glide his fingers over each of my inner thighs. It takes every bit of my restraint to keep from bucking my hips as he does.