Discover Me & You, A Devil's Kettle Romance: Book 2

by Susan Sey

  Those eyes narrowed. “Faltered how?”

  CHAPTER 27

  SHE DROPPED HER gaze. She couldn’t look at him and tell this part. “You were born in August and Shay was gone by September, off spending her money, I guess. Peter had left for college by then, and Brett was as deep in the bottle as I’d ever seen him, what with everybody talking about how he’d killed his wife. By January, I was out of my mind with grief and loneliness. It had been nearly six months since I’d held you but I could still feel you in my arms, the soft, warm weight of you, the clean baby scent of you. It was like phantom limb syndrome, where an amputee can still feel their missing hand or foot or whatever, and it drives them mad. You were like that for me. I ached for you, but you were gone.

  “Only you weren’t. I could see you every day. I knew exactly where to find you. I knew it was the right place for you, too, and I tried to stay strong. I tried so hard but one night I broke. I went to Hill Top House and I rang the bell and I begged.”

  She spread helpless hands and gave thanks for that clean, bright space between her heart and the tears that wanted to rise. But God, they were right on the other side of the void, so close to the surface. “I was like a junkie who needed a fix. I must’ve been terrifying.”

  “You said you wanted Matty,” Bianca said.

  “I did.” She blew out a breath. “I didn’t want to take him from you, though. I only wanted to hold him. I was like a nursing mother who’d been separated from her baby. It was almost feral, the way I craved him in my arms.” She smiled faintly. “I don’t even know what I said. I only remember that Georgie came into the foyer then, and she was holding him.” She shifted her eyes to Matty. “Holding you.”

  “You were feral,” Georgie said. “Your hair was out to there, and your eyes were—”

  “Recognizable,” Matty finished for her. “You couldn’t look at her without knowing I belonged, somehow or other, to her. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” Georgie allowed, “but she wasn’t fully with it, either, Matty. You have to know that. She wasn’t in her right mind and she wanted you.” She touched her brother’s hair with a loving finger. “And we weren’t having it. You were ours. As much ours as hers, anyway, and she was scaring us.”

  “More importantly, though, I scared you,” Willa told Matty. “You cried.”

  “I did?”

  She lifted stiff shoulders. “You didn’t recognize me. You weren’t my brother anymore, you were hers. It was her arms you wanted, her neck you hid your face in.” She gave him a plastic smile while her heart tried to bleed. “And that was when I finally snapped out of the fever dream I’d been living in the past six months. That was when my heart finally got it. You were gone. Truly gone.” She shifted her eyes to Bianca’s. “So when your mom offered me one final cash settlement in exchange for my signature on a document forswearing any future claim to familial rights, I signed it. You were already lost to me whether I took the money or not, and it was just me and Brett by then. With the way he was drinking?” She shook her head. “I was essentially the only adult in my life. Let’s just say the money came in handy.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Jax murmured, and Addy just rubbed a damp cheek against her shoulder.

  Georgie stared. “I thought you came to shake us down. I thought you came to ask for more money. I thought—”

  “You thought I was monster enough to look at my own child and see dollar signs. You thought I was just like Shay.” Willa shrugged. “You had reason to.”

  “I hated you.”

  “And honestly, I respected you for it. If Matty had been mine, I’d have destroyed anybody who tried to hurt him.” She lifted a brow. “I’m not going to thank you for it, though. You made high school a living hell.”

  “I’m not going to apologize any more than you’re going to thank me.” She shrugged. “But we both know what we know.”

  Willa nodded. That was as close to a peace treaty as she and Georgie would ever hammer out, she figured. “So I took the money, and did my part to make sure that nobody had any reason to ever look my way where Matty was concerned. I kept my head down, my hat on, my mouth shut. I went to the woods and stayed there as much as I could. There was comfort in it. Safety.” She smiled faintly. “People think animals are dangerous but they’ve never been caught in the crossfire when the alpha females of Devil’s Kettle go at it.”

  “Amen,” Addy said fervently. Bianca sent her a sharp look and she made a face. “What? I love you, Bianca, but you’re terrifying.”

  Bianca smiled smoothly. “Thank you, darling.”

  Georgie caught Willa’s eye and delivered her own version of that slick, dangerous smile. “I learned from the best.”

  “Davis genes run strong and true,” Willa admitted. She nodded at Matty. “He’s yours to the bone. Outside of those eyes, there’s not a bit of Shay in him.”

  Brett said, “Thank Christ.”

  “There’s plenty of Diego, though,” Addy put in. “Enough to worry me sometimes.”

  Matty smiled grimly. “And not enough to satisfy my mom.”

  “Untrue, darling.” Bianca cupped a fond hand around his nape. “Seeing Diego’s old sketches reminded me of how messy and unformed emerging talent is. You have to let it be born before you can guide it, and that means letting it take whatever shape it will.” She patted his cheek. “You really want to draw graphic novels?”

  A knife-sharp smile dawned slowly across his face, a budding version of Bianca’s favorite weapon. He said, “Comic books.”

  She sighed but fluttered serene fingers. “Go for it. Gorge on it. Draw caped crusaders until you’re sick of them. And when you’re finally satisfied, when you’re ready for more, we’ll talk.”

  He eyed her cautiously. “No more Friday Art Academy?”

  “Not until you ask for it.”

  “Sweet.” He turned to Jax, his grin boyish and delighted. “What about my job at the station?”

  Jax smiled back, as boyish and delighted as his brother, and Willa understood that this smile, too, was a Davis legacy. “Oh, your butt is still mine until school starts.”

  “Aw.” But the disappointment was all for show. Underneath it was satisfaction and love. Matty knew he was adored. Knew he was wanted. Knew that he was part of something unbreakable and true.

  “Don’t take it so hard, kid,” Jax said. “Graham Graves has his eye on you to help him run the hose for the Devil Days slip-and-slide.”

  Matty blanched. “He keeps asking me to lift with him.”

  “We’re firefighters, son,” Jax said solemnly. “We run the slip-and-slide shirtless.”

  He blinked. “I’m nearly six feet tall, and I weigh like 130 pounds.”

  “Hence the weight room.”

  Matty scowled. Jax laughed. Georgie rolled her eyes.

  “Can we get back to business, please?” she said. “We still haven’t dealt with the big question of the night.”

  Willa tensed. “Which is?”

  “If Gerte has anything to say about it, everybody’s going to know I’m not Matty’s mother by sunrise, if they don’t already. They’re going to think you are. So do we let that misunderstanding hold? Or do we rip the Band Aid off and go public with the whole thing?”

  “Shay is a sociopath,” Willa said slowly. “That means delusions of both grandeur and persecution. She knows in her bones that she was born to be rich and famous, and if she’s not, it isn’t because she doesn’t deserve it. It’s because everybody’s jealous and they’re undermining her. So if you think there’s a chance in hell she’d let me be publicly named as mother to the kid who could grow up to be the next Diego Davis, you’re wrong. It doesn’t matter what you say, or what story you tell. If the news breaks that Matty is Diego’s son rather than his brother? Shay’s coming home.”

  “So we don’t break the news,” Bianca said firmly.

  “I don’t think you have a choice,” Brett said quietly. He dropped his elbows to his knees and studied his lin
ked fingers. “Unless Gerte’s changed completely since I went to prison, half the town already knows Diego’s the father by now. And possibly a reporter or two as well.”

  Peter Zinc pulled up to the unimaginative square of aluminum siding he’d grown up in and parked behind a small army of cars spanning the gamut from a sleek BMW to a firetruck. Shit. The Davises had beaten him here. He’d avoided the gallery tonight but gossip moved faster than fire in Devil’s Kettle, and it hadn’t taken more than five minutes for him to hear the whole story.

  Jesus. Willa and Diego? He hadn’t seen that one coming. Of course he hadn’t. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think back. He’d been so wrapped up in his own plans to get the hell out of this place, he hadn’t had the bandwidth to pay attention to anything else. Between busting the grading curve in every class and busting his ass on the football field, he’d been too busy to check up on Willa. She wasn’t his job, anyway. Christ, he’d been a kid himself. He’d had his hands full.

  But if he had taken a minute to pay attention? If he had stopped his feverish marathon of maximizing opportunity, would he have wondered why exactly Diego had sought him out? Sure, Peter had known his shit, math-wise, but so had Diego. It had taken about three minutes to understand that Diego and numbers got along just fine. He’d assumed the kid just liked to fuck with authority, which Peter fully respected. As to why he’d chosen Peter for his partner in crime? Well, Peter was a Zinc, easily thrown under the bus if they got caught.

  It was a risk Peter had been more than willing to take. Social capital, after all, was the one element of success you couldn’t earn, buy or fake. It lay at the intersection of breeding, money, charisma and admiration, and you either had it or you didn’t. Peter didn’t, but an endorsement from somebody who had it in spades might correct that. Somebody like Diego Davis.

  It had never crossed Peter’s mind that Diego might be after anything beyond a convenient scapegoat. Jesus. Willa had been all of fourteen, skinny and needy and only barely civilized. Why would he have thought anything like that?

  Because you knew Diego, his conscience whispered. Because you knew what he was. Because you know that even if he’d come right out and named Willa as his price for a golden ticket to social glory, you might’ve looked the other way. You might’ve.

  Shame touched him with greasy fingers and Peter rolled his shoulders impatiently. God, enough. The past was the past, and there was no changing it so there was no point in raking himself over the coals for something he hadn’t even been consciously aware of.

  Besides, why rake himself over the coals at all when Georgie was inside? She’d do it for him, and happily.

  And you deserve it, his conscience whispered mercilessly.

  He switched off the ignition and started for the cabin, walking straight toward the past he’d run so far and so fast from.

  CHAPTER 28

  THE SILENCE GREETING Brett’s weary pronouncement wasn’t, to Eli’s ear, either shock or disappointment. It was more like the moment between dropping the match and the flames roaring to life. It was an airless vacuum suspended in time, with no room to react, only to dread.

  And into that moment walked Peter Zinc. He didn’t bother to knock, just opened the door and walked in like he owned the place. Like he had a right to the family within it. A hot spurt of fury leapt up inside Eli and he forced himself to blow out a slow breath. Rage was sloshing around inside him like a restless ocean tonight and every revelation lifted the tide another inch. It was just looking for a handy outlet, and Peter looked awfully handy. But walking into one’s childhood home without knocking wasn’t, Eli reminded himself carefully, a punching offense.

  “Hey, Willa,” Peter said smoothly. He was a tall guy, like his dad, well over six feet, and lanky with it. He’d shaved his head down to a shine, and while Eli hoped it was a pitiful response to a receding hairline, he had to admit the guy had the bones for it. He was prettier than most women. There was, he supposed, some cold comfort in that. Peter shifted his dark gaze to his father. “Dad.”

  Brett shot out of his chair and stood uncertainly. “Peter. You’re, uh, here.”

  Peter sighed ruefully. “I am.” He looked around the little cabin, his dismissive gaze touching on the shabby couch, on the scarred kitchen table, on the ancient pine-paneled walls. On the sister he’d abandoned, sitting so composed and silent in the middle of it all. “And everything’s just where I left it.”

  “It’s good to see you,” Brett offered.

  Peter only smiled at that, and Eli wondered what it was with this town and the smiles that meant everything but welcome.

  “Why are you here, Peter?” Willa asked. She studied him curiously. “You’ve been back in town for years now and you’ve never come here before. Why are you here now?”

  “I heard the news,” Peter said, and slid his hands into his pockets. “Guess you had yourself quite a night.” He nodded toward Matty. “And I’m not talking about just tonight, either. Sounds like you and Diego had yourselves quite a summer back in the day.”

  Georgie surveyed her ex-fiancé idly. “You’re such a dick, Peter.”

  “If you like.” His smile grew and Eli wouldn’t have been surprised to see a few extra rows of razor-sharp teeth, like sharks had. “But at least I had the decency to offer you marriage in exchange for the Davis name.”

  “Try the Davis money,” Georgie sniffed.

  “They don’t come apart.” He glanced at Willa. “Unlike, evidently, my sister’s legs.”

  Eli wasn’t even aware he’d moved until he found himself standing over Peter’s prone body, his knuckles singing with pain, his brain alive with satisfaction. But his fists wanted more. He wanted Peter to get back up so he could hit him again. Punching was like salty snacks. Once you started, one was never enough.

  “If you get up,” he said tightly, “I will put you back on your ass.”

  “I believe you,” Peter said. “Fuck.” He sat up and touched a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. “You pack one hell of a punch for a little dude.”

  “There’s more where that came from,” Eli told him. “Please get up.”

  Peter laughed and Eli had the strangest impression that he was tempted. Like he almost wanted Eli to punch his stupid face in, to whale on him until oblivion claimed him and he could float away on the blackness. Eli had known guys like that on the fireline. Part of the convict crews, usually, or guys who’d done time. Guys who sought out the pain and the risk because they thought they deserved it. It wasn’t a job for them so much as penance. Or a daily round of Russian roulette.

  It was enough to uncurl the fists at his sides, to push him back a step. He’d been, he realized with a dull shock, straddling Peter’s expensive loafers, just waiting to swing again. Christ.

  “Are you finished?” Jax asked him. “Because I’ve got next ups.”

  “Stop, both of you,” Willa said. “He’s just winding you up. Don’t let him.” Eli turned to look at her. She, however, was looking at Peter. “Stop stalling, Peter. What are you really here for?”

  He drew up his knees and draped his arms across them. “I just learned I have a nephew, Willa. You don’t think that’s enough cause to visit?”

  “You have a brother,” she told him shortly, “and no.”

  “A brother?” Nothing in his face or posture even shifted, as far as Eli could see. One eyebrow winged up, though, and some seriously genius-level machinery kicked into high gear behind his eyes. It was…disconcerting, Eli decided. That kind of brain power wrapped up in such an emotion-free package. He sighed. “Shay?”

  “Shay.”

  He palmed his face. “Christ.”

  “What do you want, Peter?” Willa asked again, her voice as blank as her brother’s heart.

  “A minute to digest this.” He glanced at Matty, then at Bianca. “Seriously? Shay?”

  “She led us to believe it was Willa.” Bianca smiled tightly.

  Georgie’s smile was more leisu
rely but no less dangerous. “And Mom led the entire town to believe it was me.”

  “But it was Shay,” Willa said softly. “It was always Shay.”

  Peter turned dispassionate eyes to his father. “Is that why you killed her?”

  At the far end of the couch, Addy gasped sharply. She was probably the only person in this room with a pure enough heart and a clean enough conscience to be truly shocked at the accusation.

  “I didn’t kill Shay,” Brett said wearily. “She took off. Once Bianca paid her, she left. Disappearing like that was just a flourish, a final fuck you to me and our marriage.” He smiled sadly. “If I landed in jail for it, so much the better, I’m sure.”

  “You didn’t, though.” Peter’s gaze didn’t waver.

  “Not for that, no.” Brett lifted his shoulders. “I made my way there all on my own.”

  “You did,” Peter agreed. “Well played, sir. I’m sure your father of the year trophy is on its way.”

  Georgie said, “You really are a dick, Peter.”

  He shrugged amiably. “Okay.”

  “Peter.” Willa leveled a gaze at him that should’ve sliced him in two. “Either tell us what you’re here for, or get out of my house.”

  “Fine.” He unfolded himself to his full height, dusted off his trousers and turned to Jax. “The good people of Devil’s Kettle have been trying to reach you for over an hour, chief.”

  “Why?” Jax was on his feet instantly. “I’m not on call.”

  Peter rolled a shoulder. “There’ve been reports of smoke from the state forest lands north of town, and the DNR wants somebody to go up there to check it out. You’re the closest responder with wild land fire training, which means you got the short straw. Time to go, Smokey Bear.”

  Eli frowned at Jax. “Lightning strike?”

  Jax sighed. “It was one hell of a storm.”

  “And you’re riding one hell of a fuel load.”