Her voice broke and suddenly, she was shaking and breathing fast. Too damn fast.
“Hey, hey.” Alarmed, Silver moved closer to Jolene but didn’t touch her, not even when he took the glass of wine from her hand. Christ knows that he wanted to touch her – he’d wanted to all night, since seeing her standing in her office terrified and traumatized – but she didn’t look anything like ready to accept that in this moment. “Look at me. Baby. Look at me.”
She did and he saw the panic in those beautiful eyes. Eyes like endless night skies over a churning, stormy sea.
“C’mon now,” he said gently. “You’re safe. You hear me, Jolene? I’m here with you and he’s not anywhere close to you. He’s never going to get close to you again and if he tries, I’ll get myself between you and him, and he won’t walk away from that. I’ll fucking kill him. Believe me.” That dark, dangerous edge was back and he tried hard to moderate it, not wanting to scare her more than she already was. “You’re OK. You’re totally, totally safe. Deep breaths. Breathe, baby. Just breathe.”
“You won’t leave me?” she gasped out.
He didn’t understand. “Leave you? I told you that I won’t leave the hotel… I’ll be in the lobby the whole night.”
“No.” She gulped, fighting to do as he said and breathe deeply. “I mean… this room. Please don’t leave me here alone tonight.”
“You – you want me to stay?”
“Yes. Please. Silver, please.”
Silver sucked in a deep breath of his own, imagining being curled up with Jolene in that huge, inviting bed. He didn’t care if they were naked, or if they had sex. Hell, he didn’t even care if he kissed her, if he were being honest.
All he wanted was to hold her sleeping body close and tight, for as many hours as the night offered him. He’d listen to her breathing, so soft and sweet, and he’d watch her face emerge from the shadows as the sun rose in the sky, illuminating her golden skin, her curved lips, her waterfall of dark curls. He’d watch her slowly wake up, those eyes opening peacefully, to gaze up at him with warmth and desire. And trust.
That was what he wanted. He wanted it more than he’d wanted anything in a long while.
But it wasn’t on the cards and he knew that. Not after how he’d treated her.
He could take some steps forward though, some steps towards being a decent man, a man who she could look to for safety and protection, even if she couldn’t make the full leap to trust.
Yet.
“I’ll stay here on the sofa,” he said slowly. “I’ll be between you and the door all night and I won’t let anyone into this room. You have my word, Jolene. My goddamn word.”
She calmed right away, her body unraveling, her breath relaxing. He gave her a smile and she returned it, though a bit tentatively.
“Good girl,” he said, his voice rough as he remembered telling her that in the cabin that night. “You’re doing great, Jolene.”
“You think so?”
“Definitely. You got this.”
She nodded, her hair falling over her shoulders. Taking a chance, he reached out and stroked it back off her flushed cheeks, and he felt nothing but joy when she let him.
“Silver?”
“Yeah, sweet thing?” He handed her wine back and she accepted it gratefully.
“Can I – I have something to ask too.”
“Anything,” he said, already pretty sure that he knew what she was going to say. “Shoot.”
“What did you mean that one day in the office, that day when you… ummm…” She blushed as she recalled him moving deep and close into her personal space, his hot breath on her face, those amazing lips working on hers – before taunting her for the weakness of her want, throwing her helpless arousal back in her face. “When you said that you weren’t going to let another woman that you work with back you into a corner and screw you over again? How do you think that I’d back you into a corner and mess with you? And why would I?”
“Oh God,” he said, already dreading this conversation but knowing that it was one that they had to have. He owed it to her; he actually owed her way more than just this, but it was a good start. “I’m so sorry. What I did – I was such a shithead to you that day.”
“Just that day?” she said wryly.
“Every day, and all day every day. I – I had my reasons. I thought that they were good at the time, or at least most of the time, but… well. They’re not. I mean, they are good reasons but they have nothing to do with you, so they’re crap reasons.”
Jo blinked in utter confusion at his word salad. “OK, what?”
“Jesus.” He ran his hands through his hair and over his beard, agitated beyond belief that he couldn’t ever seem to get it together around this woman; his calm, cool, controlled persona just crumbled to dust and ash. “OK, look, I’ll just say it. Alright?”
“Alright.”
“Years ago, when I first moved to Colorado, I used to work at a garage. Not where I work now, the place had nothing to do with The Road Devils. I was twenty-eight and just back from three years in Iraq, and all I wanted was something normal. A job, a truck, a small house to buy and fix up, meeting the guys from work for a beer on Friday, football on the TV. You know? A life that I could predict and relax into.”
“Yes,” Jo said quietly. “I know exactly.”
“Yeah, I bet you do. It’s what you’ve been doing these past few months.”
“Trying to do. It’s been touch and go.”
“You’ve been kicking ass, Jolene, and that’s in spite of me standing in your way every chance that I got. You’ve just blown past me and through me, just carried on building and going strength to strength.” He paused. “And of all the things I feel bad about where you’re concerned, that’s probably number one – that I, someone who knows damn good and well how much someone who’s left a bad, awful situation needs normality and calm, made it even harder for you to get those things. Starting again is exhausting and takes real guts, and I’m fully ashamed of myself for making it harder for you. I barely scraped my life together after Iraq and that was with no opposition. I can’t imagine what I’d have managed if I’d had some arrogant jerk cutting me off at the knees at every turn.”
“Well,” she said, still a bit taken aback at this new, gentle, understanding Silver. “I wouldn’t compare leaving a deadly conflict in the Middle East to leaving a bad marriage…”
“Why not?” Silver asked her. “Violence is violence, hatred is hatred, fearing for your life is the same no matter what makes you feel that. We both survived some serious crap, Jolene, and we earned our right to peace. I had no business – fucking none – trying to take your peace away from you, just because I had a shit experience.”
“You mean in Iraq?” Jo said, still surprised that Silver had been a military man, even if it had been years ago.
“Sure in Iraq, but everybody did. That’s life in a war zone, it’s nothing but shit experiences.”
She nodded, trying to not think about what Silver must have seen and done over there – she couldn’t even imagine that life, not for soldiers or civilians, and she felt her heart open up to him. Just a bit. He’d said that whatever the problem was that he’d had with her, it had nothing to do with whatever had happened in the Middle East… but there was no way that he’d left that situation unscathed. There had to be damage somewhere.
“No, the really shit thing that happened was that in the garage where I worked, there was a woman. “ Silver’s eyes narrowed, his face tightened. “She was up in the office, and she started flirting with me pretty much from the word go. I wasn’t interested, though, mostly because I was readjusting to life stateside and I was trying to hold things together from day to day, just basic things like showering and showing up to work on time and paying the water bill. You know? I had to just get through the day most days, and I couldn’t hand
le a full-blown office romance.”
“I get that. Post-traumatic stress is real, and not everyone can re-enter society easily.”
“I was doing mostly OK, most of the time. I could handle stuff as long as I could schedule it and control it, see it coming. A nine-to-five work routine, repair jobs that I knew about in advance, working with the same people every day, none of them getting blown up or shot in front of me… all that was what I needed. What I couldn’t handle was any kind of surprise, or anything that came at me without warning. Nothing beyond my control.”
“Yeah. I can see how romance would be off the table.”
“Right?” He gave her a grin, but it wasn’t real: it didn’t reach his eyes. “But this woman, she wouldn’t quit. I mean – she really wouldn’t. She’d make up reasons to come down to the garage work areas and she’d zero right in on me. She’d brush up against me, and stay late and angle for an invitation for a drink, and at some point every day she’d ‘accidentally’ bend over and flash me her bra-less boobs.”
“Oh boy. Subtlety wasn’t her strong suit, clearly.”
“I don’t think she even knew the meaning of the word.”
“So – something happened with her?”
“Yeah. You could say that. After about two months it all got too much and I was so completely not interested, and I finally just told her so. Said that no matter what she said or did, it wasn’t ever going to happen, so she could stop hanging around embarrassing herself and showing me her sad little tits.”
“Ouch.”
“I wasn’t nice and I get that. I didn’t have to go there, I could have handled it better. But… I didn’t deserve what she did next.”
“What did she do next?”
Silver took a deep breath, then another, the he blurted it out:
“She went to the cops and told them that I’d raped her.”
“What?” Jo almost screamed. “She what?”
“Yeah,” Silver said heavily. “She accused me of raping her.”
“But – but –” Jo was beyond horrified. “I mean… evidence. Did she have any?”
“She had marks and bruises on her body. Not many, but a few.”
“That’s the kind of thing that I can do to myself with a wooden spatula and some willpower,” Jo pointed out. “What about… ummm.. you know. More intimate evidence.”
“She told the cops that I’d used a condom, so no semen to be found and matched. But there was some evidence that she’d had rough sex.”
That stopped Jo. “So – was she really raped by someone? And she blamed you?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. I’ve gone back and forth about it for years. Sometimes I think that something had to have happened to her, something bad, and she accused me out of genuine confusion. Maybe the guy looked or sounded like me in some way, or maybe she accused me by mistake and then couldn’t admit that she’d messed up when the whole thing got out of control. Other times – times when I’m angry at her – I think that something happened and instead of going after the real guy, she used it as a way to get back at me. And when I’m fucking furious and really convinced that she was a manipulative little bitch, I’m sure that nothing happened at all and that she made the whole thing up, set it all up. Went out and had sex voluntarily with someone, came home and beat herself around the face and neck and breasts, maybe had the guy that she had sex with do it – and called the cops on me.”
“For revenge? Because you wouldn’t date her?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time that a woman has accused a man of violence that never happened. I mean… a part of me wants to believe that she was hurt in some way, just because I want to think that she was confused and upset, and went to the cops and accused me with the genuine belief that it was me. But that means that she’d had to have been raped for real, and I hate to think about that. So that leaves me with the whole idea that she lied about me to get back at me… and that would mean that she was an evil, malicious monster. The thought that a woman would ruin a man’s life just because he rebuffed her rudely is a terrifying one, and even though it absolutely happens, I don’t want to face that as my reality.”
“What do you really think?” she asked him.
“Really and truly and I hate to say it… I think she flat-out lied.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because according to a guy who I know who’s still at the garage, she’s accused two more guys of the same thing since, and they were both people who she’d hit on and they’d said no.”
“Jesus. Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“She sounds ill. Like mentally not well.”
“I’ve thought about that, many times. I don’t know if she needs help and treatment, or if she’s a woman who enjoys wrecking men’s lives, but there’s a pattern that can’t be denied.”
“So you don’t know the truth.”
“And I never will.”
“You said…” Jo hesitated. “You said that she ruined your life.”
“Damn straight she did.” Silver looked down at his large hands, saw that they were clenched into fists. He gently opened his fingers and forced himself to calm down. “I went to jail for six years.”
“Holy Christ above…” Jo was stunned, just completely floored. “Based on what? Your word against hers?”
“Yep. Pretty much.”
“You had nobody to alibi you?”
“No.” Again that twisted grin. “I was home alone that night, eating pasta and doing my laundry while watching bad TV.”
“Goddammit.”
“Oh, I know. What a night to not meet the guys for beer, huh?” He shook his head. “The reason why I freaked out when I saw you in the office that first day is because I promised myself after I got out of jail to never, ever mix business and personal. Like fucking never. And then –”
“And then you did,” Jo said quietly, seeing it all now. “With me.”
“I didn’t know that you were you,” Silver said. “How could I? It’s still just so fucking incredible to me that we met over in Nebraska and both ended up here. I mean – what the actual hell, you know?”
“Oh, I know.” Jo took a sip of wine. “I’ve contemplated the utter fucked-up-edness of the whole thing many, many times.”
“So after the joke of a trial and being found guilty because as an ex-soldier, I’m obviously a violent and horrible man, my life was over, to all intents and purposes. I was fired, I lost my little house, I was in jail for something I didn’t do. The name Zeke Bennett was in all the newspapers so my reputation was smeared beyond saving. I knew that I’d have a record when I got out and that nobody was going to hire me ever again… I mean, I thought it was over. My future wasn’t just bleak, it was a dark tunnel and I didn’t see an end. I was – I was very depressed. I didn’t want to carry on some days.”
She looked up sharply at something in his voice, something hopeless and small. She’d read about people’s lives being destroyed by false accusations and every single account mentioned suicidal thoughts, feelings, actions.
“Silver? Were you – did you think about ending it?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. Many times.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jo whispered, staring at this big strong man who’d been so damn near broken by what had quite probably been a vindictive lie. “I can’t imagine starting again with no chips in your hand at all.”
“I had one. Just one. I met Cole while I was in jail and we became friends. He offered me a chance that I never in a million years saw coming.”
“Cole?” Jo said, surprised. “You mean Cole, the Road Devils bartender? He’s been to prison?”
“Yep and yep. Anyway, he knew that I didn’t have anything waiting for me when I got out of jail, so he told me about The Road Devils. He was already patched in and he invited me to prospect when I was
free. He said that the club would take me in, give me jobs, help me earn a living. Get me back on my feet.”
“Wouldn’t that be a parole violation?” Jo asked in a small voice. “I mean – the club was a criminal organization then, right?”
“You’re a smart cookie, ain’t you?” Silver said, amused and impressed at her quick connecting of dots. “And yeah, you’re totally right: my associating with them was a huge no-no. I did it anyway.”
“You never got caught?”
“The club has always had certain people on the payroll,” Silver said carefully. “Including cops, parole officers, lawyers, judges… and these connections help in certain situations.”
“Ah.” Jo digested that fact, made aware yet again that the club had been quite the corrupt, illegal, dangerous entity once upon a time. “I see.”
“I’ve done lots of things that I’m not proud of, Jolene. Many, too many to count. But I will never regret accepting Cole’s offer to prospect and patch in. Never. That one decision changed my whole life right at a time when I saw no up-side to living – I got a family of brothers, a place to call home, work at The Garage, money to put food on my table and to buy my second house as an investment. I broke my parole conditions every single way that I can think of… and I would do it all again in a goddamn heartbeat.”
She nodded quietly. She understood, completely and totally.
“So the thing was, you showed up at the office and told me that you were the new accountant, and I realized that I hadn’t just crossed the line between business and personal, I’d fucking backed up and taken a run at it before leaping over it by a good fifty feet. I also realized that I’d been an utter bastard to you back in Omaha, the way that I just walked out the door the morning after and it suddenly occurred to me that you could accuse me of anything that you wanted, if I’d pissed you off enough. You could have taken my whole life away from me – I mean, why not, right? It’s happened to me before. And with my record, it’s pretty probable that I’d be back in jail, back to nothing, back to being –”
The Devil's Silver (The Road Devils MC Book 2) Page 24