by Kate Hewitt
Would Jaiven really want to deal with her stuff, complicated as it surely was? When he wasn’t even sure what he wanted from her, just that he wanted to find out?
What was she doing?
She scrambled off his lap as if she’d been poked with a cattle prod.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she babbled, wiping her streaming eyes. She had snot running from her nose. Awesome. She drew a shuddering breath and grabbed a box of tissues, pressing several to her face.
“What,” Jaiven asked in a level voice, “are you sorry for, Louise?”
She stilled, a fistful of tissues still pressed to her face. Why was she apologizing? If Jaiven didn’t want to deal with her stuff, then that was his problem, not hers.
Wasn’t it?
“Louise?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “For…for burdening you with this, I guess. For telling you all my…stuff. You didn’t ask for this, Jaiven, I know that—”
“Actually, I did,” he answered. “I asked you what stuff you were talking about. I wanted to know.”
“Only because I said I wanted to tell you.”
“So I’m still not getting why you’re sorry.”
She shrugged, defensive now, and still feeling so very raw. “I guess I’m kind of used to saying sorry. But I also know that my baggage is more than you bargained for.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, “it is.” He raised his eyebrows. “So?”
She felt a frail tendril of incredulous hope unfurl in her soul. “So,” she answered, “aren’t you going to try to get out of here as soon as you can? Tell me it’s been fun, but?”
“It has been fun,” Jaiven answered. “And I don’t have a but to add to that.” He took a breath, let it out slowly. “Look, Louise, if I’d wanted nothing but fun, I would have kept on the way I was. Keeping it casual. But since meeting you I’ve realized I want more than that. More than just fun. So if you come with a side helping of serious, that’s okay. I’ll deal. I’ll try.”
She gave him a wobbly smile. “More than a side helping, I think. More like a main course.”
“I don’t know about that.” He pulled her hands away from her face, tugging her toward him. “I think you don’t give yourself enough credit, Louise.”
“For what?”
“For being strong enough to walk away from an asshole like your ex-husband. And not just walk away, but make something of yourself. You’re smart and successful and sexy. And after everything you’ve been through?” He shook his head slowly, tugging her by the hands so she was standing in front of him, that wobbly smile spreading across her face. “I think you’re pretty damn amazing,” he said, and kissed her.
“Thank you,” she whispered after his lips had brushed across hers. “I think I needed to hear that.”
“I think I needed to say it.” He squeezed her hands gently. “I’m not pretending this isn’t new and kind of scary for me, Louise, but I’m not going anywhere.”
“I don’t want you to,” she told him, and kissed him back.
Chapter Twelve
JAIVEN WATCHED LOUISE smile tremulously as she eased back from their kiss. She looked so unbearably fragile he felt as if she might topple over if he breathed too hard. She might break apart. It had taken guts to tell him her history. All that stuff.
More guts than he had, since he’d held back from baring his own soul. He’d started small, telling her he was a school dropout. Big deal.
He hadn’t had the balls to tell her the whole, awful truth. He didn’t have a tenth of the courage Louise had shown tonight. And now that she’d told him all of her stuff, his own history felt like a millstone around his neck. Both of their necks. Because how could he offer Louise the comfort and love she so desperately deserved and needed, with both of their pasts? She’d been abused by a man. He’d killed a woman.
Telling her the truth would be breaking her trust. Hiding it from her was just as bad.
Damn it, he had no idea how any of this would work, and yet he knew he couldn’t walk away. He needed her too much. And she, for the moment at least, needed him.
Louise took a deep breath as she scrunched the tissues up and tossed them in the trash. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “For showing me so much grace and understanding.” She swallowed, smiled. “And for accepting a ton of emotional baggage.” She pointed a finger at herself, still smiling, if a bit shakily. “Complicated, thy name is Louise.”
“We’re all complicated,” Jaiven answered gruffly. He certainly had his own emotional baggage. What a term. He pictured his life like a bunch of shabby trunks that should be tossed in the Hudson River.
If only it could be so easy.
“So what now?” she asked, her smile still there. Still shaky.
“Tell me what happened. How you got out.”
She started to sit down in the armchair he’d vacated, but he held his arms out and with her smile turning just a little self-conscious she came to him. He hauled her onto his lap, needing her there.
She didn’t speak for a little while, just rested her cheek against his chest so he could feel her soft breath, her heart rate slow. He slid one hand into her hair, stroked it softly.
“I don’t think I’d have done it on my own,” she said finally. “I thought about it, but I was too scared. Not of Jack, actually, because I was pretty sure if I walked out he’d just shrug and find someone else. I was never really that important to him.” She was silent again, seeming to process her own words, before she continued. “I was scared of being alone. Of facing the world without a safety net, even a crap one. Jack had chosen me, even if he didn’t ever act as if he really liked me. That meant something to me, stupidly. To be chosen. Accepted, even if I really wasn’t.”
“I know how that feels,” Jaiven said quietly, and she twisted around to look at him.
“Do you? How?”
He blew out a breath, knowing he needed to come at least a little clean. Maybe if he gave her the truth in small pieces, it wouldn’t seem so terrible.
Yeah, right.
“I was kind of a screwup as a kid. Not great academically. Messing around. My parents didn’t have the time of day for me, and I couldn’t really blame them. And then my father died when I was twelve.”
“He did?” She looked shocked, and Jaiven hadn’t even told her the rest of it. “How?”
“My parents ran a bodega, and he was shot during an armed robbery.”
She looked even more shocked. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.” He shifted under her, so unbearably aware of what he was not saying.
“So where did you look for acceptance, Jaiven?” she asked quietly, and his breath caught in his chest because in that moment it felt as if she saw him so clearly.
And yet not at all.
“After I dropped out of school…” He paused, instinctively tightening his arms around her, as if he were afraid she’d scramble off his lap. Leave him. “I joined a street gang.”
She stiffened slightly, but that was all. “Not a smart move, I’m guessing,” she said after a moment.
Talk about understatement. “Definitely not.”
“I guess that didn’t please your mother.”
“To say the least.” His chest burned with the knowledge he was keeping from her, and yet he forced himself to continue. “Especially because the gang I joined was responsible for my father’s death.”
She didn’t say anything, and he couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t bear to see the revulsion and judgment he knew had to be on her face.
Then he felt her hand on his face, cupping his cheek just as he’d cupped hers. “Oh, Jaiven.” There was so much sadness in her voice, so much compassion. He felt the sting of tears behind his lids and rapidly blinked them back. “How did you get out?” she asked softly, and he felt a thousand emotions twist like knives inside him: hope and grief, gratitude and guilt. Because she was acting as if he’d been as much a victim as she had, and he damn well knew h
e hadn’t been.
“I didn’t get out,” he told her, his voice rough. “I got sent to prison.”
“Oh, no.” He looked at her then, bracing himself, but all he saw was sadness. “That must have been terrible. How old were you?”
“Seventeen. But I was a criminal, Louise. I did—I did a lot of bad things.”
“And pulled yourself up out of it, Jaiven. If you’re not going to judge me for the mistakes I made, then I won’t judge you.”
“It’s totally different.”
“Maybe.” She didn’t fight him on that one, which made him strangely glad. He didn’t want her rose-tinted view of his past. He wanted reality, and yet even now he couldn’t make himself tell her the whole truth. “But in some ways,” she continued, “we’re a lot alike, Jaiven. We both had lonely childhoods. We both went looking for love and acceptance in the worst place to find it. We both feel guilty for making a bad choice.” She paused, reaching up with her other hand to frame his face and look in his eyes. “We both want to move on.”
“Sometimes I don’t know if I can,” he whispered, and she nodded, leaning forward to rest her forehead against his.
“Then we’re alike in that, too.”
They remained that way for a long moment, silent, the only sound their mingled breathing. Then he eased back and asked, “So who helped you to get away from your husband?”
“A woman who saw me with Jack,” Louise answered. “I was working at the diner, the same one where we met. I’d dropped out of school to work full-time to help support us. I know, I know.” She shook her head, forestalling him, even though he hadn’t been going to say anything.
Or maybe he had. Maybe he’d been going to say if he ever met this Jack he’d knock his teeth back into his throat. Although considering her history, maybe that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
“So what did this woman do?”
“She gave me a way out. But more importantly, she held up a mirror to myself. I saw myself for the first time—I saw how other people looked at me, how pathetic I seemed, and I hated it.” She let out a little sigh. “He’d come into the diner and started ragging on me like he usually did. He didn’t hit me or anything, just gave me the same old lines. And I started apologizing. Again.”
Just as she had a few minutes ago. Yeah, this was complicated.
“I started crying,” Louise said after a moment, “and I went into the bathroom to wash my face. The woman followed me, and gave me a card for a domestic abuse center in New York.”
“Why New York?”
“It was where she was from. She volunteered at the center there. But it suited me because I needed to get far away from Alabama. From the person I was there. It took me another two months to save up the money for bus fare. Work up the courage to leave.” She swallowed hard; he could feel and hear her ragged breaths. “But I did. I took a bus from Monroe to New York City and I found the center. They gave me a chance. A place to live, first of all, and they helped me find a job. They even helped me apply for night classes at Columbia, and then I ended up getting a scholarship. After that I didn’t look back. Ever.”
Except, Jaiven thought, when she’d met him. And he’d reminded her of this bastard. He pressed his face into her hair, the guilt and remorse he felt a hot lump in his throat.
He tightened his arms around her and drew her more securely against his chest. When he trusted himself to speak, he said, “I’m glad you told me all this. And thank you for telling me, because I know it wasn’t easy.”
“Not,” Louise agreed, “a laugh a minute.”
He laughed then, a low rasp of a chuckle, because at times like this he realized how much she absolutely amazed him. How strong she was. To endure what she had and be where she was, a successful, professional woman who was sexy and confident even if she didn’t always think she was? To have the courage to tell him all her stuff and still be able to joke about it? Unbelievable.
He wanted to tell her something of what he felt, but even as the feeling surged in his chest, the words bottled in his throat. He’d never done this before. Cared so much before. And somehow his own fears and failings got tangled up with all the admiration and affection he felt for her, and he couldn’t say anything. He just wrapped his arms even more tightly around her and pressed his face against her hair again, breathing in her scent.
Louise slid her hand on top of his, entwining their fingers. “Would you…would you stay the night?”
Did she even have to ask? But before he could tell her he would, she clarified quickly, “Not—not for sex, fantasy or otherwise. It’s not that I don’t want you, but…” She trailed off uncertainly, but he still got it. All of this revelation had left her too raw for sex, especially with their history. He understood that. He felt it himself.
Well, sort of.
“I’ll stay if you want me to,” he said. He touched her chin with his thumb and forefinger and tilted her head so she was looking at him. “But if you change your mind and want me to go, I’ll do that, too.”
Her eyes widened and she blinked rapidly. “Thank you,” she whispered. “But I won’t want that.”
“Even so.”
Silently, still clasping his hand, she led him from the living room to her bedroom, its gabled window overlooking a tiny cement courtyard in the back, the steep roofs of other brownstones stretching on like a sea of slate.
She didn’t pause on the threshold, but he did. He remembered lying on that bed with her, taunting her with her own desire, forcing her to admit she wanted him. Humiliating her, because he’d been so angry, so hurt. What a pathetic bastard he’d been.
“Jaiven.” She turned to him, pressed her cold hands to his cheeks. He blinked at her, the memories banished for a moment, even though his stomach still churned with guilt. “Stop thinking so much,” she said quietly. “And just hold me.”
“That sounds good to me.” He craved the closeness of her body next to his, her warm curves pressing into his hard angles and planes, softening him. He needed her for that, he realized. He needed her so much.
And so he pulled her into his arms and she pressed against him, her hands sliding around his waist and locking around his middle. Then after a moment she eased away, gave him a mischievous smile. “If we’re going to do this right,” she said, “let me brush my teeth and change into pajamas.”
He laughed, grateful for the moment of lightness. “That’s doing it right?”
“In my book.” She undid the tie on her dress and slipped out of the clingy black jersey, revealing a black lace bra and pants. Jaiven swallowed hard.
No sex, he reminded himself. Don’t even think about it. And if that was the penance he needed to serve, then so be it. He would do whatever it took.
He stripped down to his boxers and T-shirt; he normally slept in the buff but he knew that wasn’t going to happen tonight. A lot, he acknowledged, wasn’t going to happen tonight.
But a lot already had.
Louise lent him a spare toothbrush and they stood shoulder to shoulder in her tiny bathroom, brushing their teeth in a way that felt totally bizarre and yet weirdly companionable. As if he could imagine doing this every night for the next fifty years.
Then when she slid into her double bed with its ivory duvet and pastel-colored pillows and held out her arms Jaiven wasted no time in joining her and taking her into his arms, where she snuggled right down.
“This feels,” he said as he stroked her hair, “like a sleepover.”
She let out a laugh that sounded as if it had turned into a hiccup. “Is this too weird?” she asked, anxious again, and he slid his hand around to cup her cheek.
“It’s different than what I’m used to,” he told her, “but at this point in my life different is good.”
“How so?”
He kept his hand on her cheek as he sifted through his feelings, chose his words. “The whole fling thing had started to seem kind of empty,” he said. “I admit I’ve had my fair share of one-night stands
and flings.”
“I’d say more than your fair share,” Louise murmured. “You’ve had mine, too. And maybe half the population of Manhattan’s.”
“That might be a slight exaggeration,” he answered. Then he asked, “Does it bother you?”
“That you’ve slept with tons of women?” She considered the question, her cheek pressed against his chest. “If I’m honest? A little.”
Which was fair enough. He didn’t particularly like the thought of her with other guys, which was probably some stupid caveman instinct, but he still felt it. “Well, if it helps, I’m not into that kind of life anymore.”
“That’s rather an about-face.”
“Maybe it’s been coming for a while, and I just didn’t see it. Didn’t want to see it.” Maybe it was who he really was, what he’d wanted all along, and he’d just denied it because he’d never felt worthy.
And you still aren’t. You still haven’t told her the whole truth.
But he would, Jaiven told himself. Eventually.
Louise drew a breath as if she was going to say something more, but then she let it out on a sigh and relaxed against him. And maybe that was better. They’d both said a hell of a lot tonight. Jaiven wasn’t sure he had much more in him.
Louise wanted to be held, and he just wanted to hold her.
He felt her relax a little more, her palm resting against his chest. She shifted, and desire shafted through him.
This was the sweetest torture, but it was going to be a hell of a long night.
*
Louise woke slowly, like being underwater and swimming up toward sunlight. She stirred, conscious of the unusual warmth of her bed, her body. Then she became aware of the muscled arm cradling her to an even more muscled chest.
Jaiven. She’d spent the night with Jaiven. And then it all came rushing back: the setup with Chelsea and Alex, the awkward walk home, and most of all, her confession and breakdown. The way he’d listened and not judged. The way he’d held her and told her about himself. All they’d shared.
Remembrance rushed through her and on its heels came about a thousand more questions, the main one being what happens now?