by Cox, Chloe
“Blacklist him from the building,” she said to the guard on duty. “And, if I may, I’d like copies of your security reports for my own purposes.”
“Standard, ma’am,” he said.
And they swept out of there, dragging Jason along, cursing and shouting, his hands secured behind his back with truly uncomfortable looking twist-ties.
Cate looked around the outer office. Everyone was standing around, mouths agape, except Verna. Verna was smiling.
“Listen up,” Cate said. “My soon-to-be-ex-husband is not a nice man. If he approaches you, alert security. If you see him on the premises, alert security. None of you should have to deal with this, and I will do my best to make sure it never happens again.”
“I never liked him,” Verna said.
Cate smiled back. This was why she had Verna screen her calls. If only Cate actually listened to her all the time.
“This divorce could get ugly. Whatever happens…” Cate wasn’t exactly sure what to say. I hope you’ll all support me? I hope nobody looks at me differently when Jason starts a smear campaign?
As if reading her mind, Verna clucked at her. “We’re all behind you, ma’am,” she said, waving her hand. “And we’re all going to go back to work. Now you have Rubin waiting on line two,” she said, eyebrow raised.
Verna knew what that meant. Rubin was her go-to, ace-in-the-hole investigator. The guy lived for the hunt of information, no family, no friends that Cate knew of, and, as far as she could tell, he lived out of his car. She had no idea where he put the obscene piles of money she paid him.
And Rubin was currently on Soren’s case. Which meant this was a call that never should have been kept waiting.
Cate practically ran back into her office, hip-checking the door shut behind her.
“Rubin!” she shouted as she picked up. Maybe she had had a bit of an adrenaline spike from the whole Jason thing. “Tell me you have good news.”
“Your hunch was right, Cate,” came the raspy voice. He was chewing something. Cate bet on a bacon double cheeseburger, extra pickles. Same every time.
“Go on,” she said, careful not to get her hopes up.
“I don’t have it all yet,” he said. “Still connecting all the dots, but I’ll get there in a few days. It’s a sister in Nevada. She hasn’t been as careful as Daniella Collins and Cheedham, and I think I know why Daniella took the money.”
“Tell me it was greed,” Cate said. “I really don’t want to have to feel bad going after her for fraud.”
“You’re gonna feel bad, Cate.”
“Crap.”
The hardest part of this job was finding out that sometimes people did terrible things for good reasons. When she could, Cate tried to find ways to spare those people the worst consequences of their actions, but it usually wasn’t her call. And this time the case had gotten so big, and they’d gone so public…
She sighed.
“You’re going to have it all tied up for me?” she asked. “With a bow on top?”
“Yes, ma’am, definitive evidence going to credibility. It won’t prove perjury, but…”
“That’s my job, Rubin,” Cate said.
She smiled as she disconnected and dialed a new number from memory. By the time she was done, her heart was thudding a raucous chorus in her chest, and she could feel her cheeks burning up. She hadn’t spoken to Soren in days, not since she’d broken it off out of a desperate sense of self-preservation. That, of course, was before she’d found out about Julia Goode. And it was before she had actual, real good news to share with him.
No answer.
Cate frowned, her heart skipping a beat. Soren had always picked up for her.
She tried Declan’s number and tried to ignore the growing ball of anxiety sitting in her gut like a lead shot.
“Cate!” Declan said when he picked up. “Have you heard from him?”
“What? No, I’m calling you because he didn’t answer his cell,” she said. Maybe too quickly, she followed {she-1">
“Well, that’s nice, but he’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
“Back east. He just up and left. I had to call his sister to figure out what the fuck is going on.”
Cate’s voice was strangled by fear. “What happened? Is he ok?”
“Who knows,” Declan said. “He’s an idiot. His stepfather had another heart attack, passed away. Soren didn’t tell anyone about it. He just left.”
Cate sat down heavily. Declan sounded pissed off, frustrated. And Cate could see why.
But she also knew why Soren had left on his own. Why he didn’t even tell his best friend. This was Soren’s version of hiding away: going off on his own to deal with the worst parts of his life. He’d see it as protecting the people he cared about from the mess of his family, but it was the same thing. He was alone.
Cate couldn’t bear it.
She knew him. She knew what he was going through, what he was feeling. She knew the instinct that told him to leave, that told him to go do it on his own. She thought about how Soren hadn’t let her get away with it, how he’d shown up at her place when she was most fragile and afraid and turned it into something wonderful. Something painful, too, but wonderful and beautiful, and something she’d never give up in a million years.
He took that risk. He pushed her, just for the chance to show her how it could feel to let someone in.
And now she wanted to do the same for him.
“Are you following him?” Cate asked.
“Of course we are,” Declan said. “He knows I know where he lives. We’re just getting everything packed up now.”
“Can I come with you?” Cate said. “I’m not really asking, it’s just…less weird if I’m polite about it. I’m coming, one way or the other.”
Declan was silent for a moment.
“Be at LAX, terminal 3, in an hour,” he said. “Cate? The man is my brother. He can take care of himself, but I don’t like it when people make that harder on him than it has to be.”
Cate smiled into the receiver. Declan couldn’t know it, but knowing Soren had this kind of family around him made her happier than she thought possible.
“Me neither,” she said quietly. “That’s why I’m coming.”
chapter 16
Soren flipped up the collar of his leather jacket and cursed. He hadn’t thought to check the weather report before he’d jumped on a plane, and he’d forgotten how crappy East Coast “wintry mix” could be. He’d insisted on walking from Declan’s uncle Jim’s place, where Soren always stayed when he came back home, to his mother’s house. He figured he’d take the time to clear his head, get in the kind of mood he needed to be in to see his mother and sister.
One good thing: the weather meant he didn’t have to deal with anyone recognizing him. Last time he’d been back here he’d had to keep his head down.
The trouble was that Soren wasn’t totally sure what compelled him to come back. He doubted his mother would be happy to see him, so what the hell was the point? To make sure the bastard was really dead? For some kind of ‘closure?’ But ‘closure’ was a lie, and he knew that already. And expecting anything different out of his mother after all these years was the definition of insanity.
Had he come for Sonya?
Maybe. Soren might have liked to think he was still that hopeful kind of guy, willing to dole out forgiveness and all that crap, but he figured it was probably more selfish than that. As much as it troubled him not to know exactly what was going on his own head—disturbing for a Dom—he knew it had something to do with Julia.
No one knew Julia quite like Sonya had. The two of them had been best friends in high school, and when Sonya started going to college, Julia started going to Soren’s shows, and the rest…well… Did he think he could get some answers? There were never going to be answers. Julia had broken his heart and then she’d overdosed on freaking heroin. She’d been his first sub; she’d introduced him to BDSM. Soren had thought he w
as going to be with her for the rest of his life.
And then in the space of a week she’d broken his heart and died, and he learned he’d never known her at all. And what it had felt like—still felt like—was he hadn’t loved her well enough. And he hadn’t loved anyone since.
And now it was on the fucking news. Or about to be.
Cate was doing all she could, but hell, even Soren knew what it looked like. It looked bad. It looked predatory, monster-level bad.
And sweet Jesus, there was Cate.
How sick was it that he was almost grateful to his son-of-a-bitch stepfather for dying and distracting him from how he felt about Cate? About Cate running away from him, curling up into herself? It destroyed him, thinking about Cate hurting.
And every time he thought about Julia, he thought about Cate. No one else had ever…
Damn. That was a loaded thought right there. He had to be careful. So damn careful. He’d tried to love women for ten years after Julia, and he’d never gotten close. Never felt that thing inside him switch on, never felt his hear femn careft pump with it, never had it make him feel like he was in love with the whole world just because of it. But Cate…everything with Cate had happened out of order. He never felt the switch flip on because it had been on the whole time, that constant flow between them, that dizzying energy that just…distorted everything.
He saw into Cate. He saw when she hurt, he knew her, he appreciated the hell out of her mind. He could never, ever forgive himself if he led her on and broke her heart because he forgot what he was.
And he didn’t know what that meant. Especially because he could barely stop thinking about her long enough to remember he was here for a frigging funeral.
“Jesus,” he said to himself, and looked up to see his mother’s house looming over him.
He hated that house. That’s where he’d been the whipping boy. On the other hand, the basement was where he and Declan used to pretend to be rock stars back when Declan lived with them for a little while, before Soren’s stepfather got really bad. So: not all bad memories.
Soren gritted his teeth and knocked on the door.
Everything he thought he knew went out the window when his mother opened the door.
When Soren had left she was just an angry woman, drunk on white wine and woozy on pills, with a mean streak a mile wide. The last time he’d seen her had only been about five years ago, when he’d tried, for the last time, to have a nice family reconciliation. She’d told him not to come back, since it upset her husband Ted so much, and he hadn’t seen a problem with honoring that.
Now? Holy crap, his mother looked frail. Seeing her like that was like a kick to the gut.
She was still mean, though. And woozy.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she said, squinting up at him.
“Almost didn’t,” Soren answered honestly.
His mother waved a dismissive hand. “Wouldn’t have made much difference to your stepfather.”
Soren sighed, and it turned into a laugh. She hadn’t even invited him in yet, and it had started. “Jesus, Mom,” he said, shaking his head.
“Well, I just wish you would have made more of an effort to get along with him, that’s all,” his mother said.
Soren took a deep breath. The man had made a game out of throwing lit cigarette butts at him when he was twelve. He’d been the one to break Soren’s nose. He’d run over Soren’s dog on fucking purpose while Soren was in the car, and then he’d gone inside and been sweet as pie to Sonya and their mother. It wasn’t really an issue of ‘getting along’ with him.
But then Soren looked up and took another look at his mother. Shhisize="+1e didn’t look like she was taking any joy in those barbed comments; she looked like she was barely standing up.
Ten years of being a Dom had taught Soren some things about observation. His mother wasn’t just barely standing up—she was barely holding on. She was lonely and terrified, the reality of her life encroaching on her alcoholic haze for the first time in years. And she was dealing with it the easiest way she knew how—by taking it out on her son.
Well, he was a fully grown man. He could take it now.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mom,” he said. And he meant it.
Maureen Andersson blinked up at her son for several seconds. Finally, she stepped back from the door.
“Well, thank you for coming,” she said.
***
It wasn’t long after that that Soren got the surprise of his life.
The wake wasn’t well attended, but Soren only knew his mother and Sonya. It reminded him how much he hadn’t been invited into his stepfather’s life. Sonya walked around shaking hands, thanking people. Soren stood there like a giant alien from another planet. It would have been funny if it weren’t for the circumstances.
What blew Soren’s mind, though, were Sonya’s kids. She had kids. He’d known that, obviously, but he’d never met them before. Twins, four years old, a boy and a girl. They were the spitting images of Sonya and himself when they were younger, and he couldn’t freaking believe it.
He kept staring at them. Somehow, those kids made him miss his own sister. He hadn’t thought anything in the world would have the power to do that, but the four-year-old terrors currently trying to steal the food off of people’s plates from beneath their chairs? Yeah. Powerful little rugrats.
“Tyler looks like you,” Sonya said, bringing him a plate of crackers.
“Madison looks like you,” he said. “They seem to get along, though.”
Sonya smiled ruefully. Crap. He hadn’t even meant it like that.
“Where’s Doug?” Soren asked.
“Doug and I split,” Sonya said, looking down at the carpet. She always did like to trace patterns in the shag carpeting with her feet.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Soren finally said. His sister looked hurt. He wasn’t used to seeing that. “Are you guys all set? The kids are provided for and everything?”
“We’re fine,” Sonya said, frowning. “You don’t have to…that’s not why I said it. We’re actually thinking of moving back here. Spend more time with Mom.”
Soren frowned at the thought.
“She’s good with them,” Sonya said quietly. “She’s different with you than she is with us.”
Soren looked at his sister’s serious face and burst out laughing, loudly enough that he got some ‘this is a wake’ looks, and he tried to cover it with a cough. “You don’t say?” he said, still laughing into his hand.
Sonya actually smiled. “Maybe a little bit.”
Soren cracked his neck, the humor leaving him suddenly, the absurdity giving way to anger. Every once in a while, something could send him right back to that place he remembered from his childhood, that place where he knew he’d get the shit end of the stick for no reason. He mostly had it under control, but every so often he’d feel it crawl up his spine.
And his sister might have contributed to all that, but she was still his sister. She still knew him.
“Soren, there’s something I have to tell you,” she said. “When this is over. It’s important.”
Soren didn’t say anything.
“Please?”
“No promises,” he said. Then he sighed. “Let me cool off, Sonya.”
Which was why when the doorbell rang, Soren was more than happy to go answer it.
Standing huddled on his mother’s porch were Declan, Molly, Brian, and, behind them all, Cate.
Cate.
“Holy crap,” Soren said.
“You fucking idiot,” Declan said, shaking his head. He clapped Soren on the shoulder while he walked past him, leaving Molly room to give him a fierce hug.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Molly said. Then she punched him lightly in the stomach and followed Declan inside.
Soren was still staring at Cate.
Brian looked between the two of them then looked inside.
“Right,” Brian said. “I belong at the kids�
� table anyway. Soren, you ever pull something this dumb again, and I’m posting that song you wrote when you were seventeen online.”
Cate stared back at him.
“Are you listening to me?” Brian asked. “The one where you rhyme ‘love’ with ‘dove.’”.>
That got Cate’s attention. “Oh my God, I need to see that song.”
“Yeah, it’s not like it was Prince writing it, either,” Brian grinned. “It’s earnest.”
“Get your ass inside,” Soren said, pulling Brian into the house while the bassist tried to hide his laughter.
And then Soren stepped outside to be with Cate.
She was shivering. He wanted to hold her, keep her warm, but he remembered what she’d said—she couldn’t do that. Soren was afraid to touch her, like she might scatter, might run if he did. Like it might hurt her. She looked fragile, and it made him hurt inside, but it didn’t change the most important thing.
He was so fucking happy to see her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“You might suck at love, but I at least have remedial ability at it,” she burst out.
Soren’s brain locked up.
The wide-eyed silence between them was thick. Then Cate refused to look at him, and felt immediately farther away to him, like she was retreating inside herself. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes on the floor.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said. Then she looked up fiercely. “I don’t want you to say anything, not right now, at a freaking wake. There are no strings here, I promise, no strings at all.”
Soren’s brain started moving again, enough for him to know, right then and there, that he was an ass.
“Cate,” he started.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Don’t say anything. I just…I couldn’t let you hide away after what you did for me. So suck it up, tough guy. I’m not leaving.”
And then she shivered again.
“You’re cold,” Soren said gruffly, and stepped forward to engulf her in his arms.
And she fit. She fit something in him, that cavern that had opened up deep inside when he’d thought about the risk of hurting her, the crook of his shoulder, the perfect way she let him know that she saw through his crap. Because she’d been right: he had hidden this this all away, like a wounded animal hiding until it healed. Just reflex, just instinct at this point, and she’d seen through it and tracked him down.