“Greg? Are you all right?”
Greg gathered her to him and pressed his face into the spill of her hair, letting the strands absorb the moisture still wetting his face. It was a queer sense of déjà vu, and he thought Lacey felt it, too. She pulled away first, and he saw her pain as she took in the surroundings. Greg wished she hadn’t awoken and realized he had made her do so, and reached out for her again. Lacey made a little negative motion with her head and whirled and nearly ran out of the room. Greg jumped up to follow her and found her curled atop of the covers of her double bed, her hands covering her face. He lifted her with one arm and yanked the covers back and set her between them, tucking them around her tightly, swaddling her. She wasn’t crying but was making little sounds of hurt, and he lay down behind her, spooning her, and rocked her until she drifted off. He told himself the couch was plenty big enough, and that he would get up and go put a sheet and pillow on it in a moment.
* * * *
When he woke up, Greg had no idea where he was. He felt pretty good, so he hadn’t been sleeping in a chair or on a miserable little cot. He suddenly realized he wasn’t on Lacey’s couch. His eyes adjusted to the dimness in the room, and he acknowledged he was in Lacey’s bed, and she wasn’t. He stretched and listened for a moment and then heard water running. A few minutes later, her curvy little form in the pale-pink nightshirt appeared in the bedroom door, and she visibly hesitated before turning toward the wardrobe. Greg forestalled her.
“I’ll get up if you want to sleep some more.”
Lacey made a startled sound and jumped. “Oh. You’re awake. No, that’s okay. You rest. I’m going to make some coffee.”
“C’mon, Lacey,” he urged. “You never get up this early. Come back to bed.”
Her face paled. He could see it even in the poor lighting. He had no memory of turning off any of the lights in the place the previous evening, so Lacey must have gotten up and done so at some point. He knew he had just pushed her too hard. Greg sighed inwardly and threw back the covers. He was naked, so he had pulled off his clothing in his sleep, by habit. Lacey turned her back, and Greg looked down at his morning wood. His little man was harder than it had been in months. No surprise. His cock knew who it had been sleeping beside, even if its owner had been oblivious. He shrugged and reached for his boxers, draped across his jeans on the floor. He needed to be a little more sensitive and patient, he told himself, even as his alpha encouraged him to get hold of her and put her back to bed.
“I’ll just go out and pick up some coffee from Dunkin’, b…Lacey, okay?” Greg corrected himself in what he hoped was in time. Lacey didn’t look at him but nodded her head. He kissed her cheek as he brushed past her and turned her toward the bed and gave a gentle push. “I’ll be back in about twenty minutes, so maybe lie down while I’m gone. There’s no rush.”
Greg hoped Lacey heard the unspoken implication, but she still wouldn’t look at him, and he couldn’t read her. He found the duffle bag and pulled out some clean socks, then picked up his jeans and the shirt he had worn when Mrs. Withers had come by. He’d need to get home to pack more clothes, but didn’t want to leave Lacey for a long period of time, and he somehow figured she wasn’t ready to come home with him, not even for a few minutes. He toed his shoes on and grabbed the truck keys. Time to get his woman her morning starter. He hoped to give her the other one in the not-so-distant future, to celebrate life, the need to move on. His cock flexed its agreement.
Chapter Eleven
Greg had only just closed the door before Lacey went back to the wardrobe. She sorted through her casual clothes and picked out a loose cotton shirt in pale yellow with big pockets and a long tail, and a pair of black yoga pants. She pulled a sports bra on before buttoning the shirt right up to her neck and then stepped into the bottoms. They felt a bit loose and she went to weigh herself, fully aware that she was rubbing salt into her deserving wound. She was down nearly five pounds, and she felt sick. She had already washed up earlier, slipping out of bed when she had woken, curled against Greg’s chest, his radiated heat both comforting and upsetting. She wrestled with a spurt of anger. She was feeling again, the layers of self-protection peeling back under the onslaught of Greg’s empathy and concern. Damn him. She wasn’t ready. Well, there was something she had to do, and it was something that Greg wasn’t welcome to participate in.
Lacey went to the second bedroom door, once again firmly closed and grabbed the doorknob. It took considerable willpower to turn it and push the door open, but she did it, the hinges creaking ever so slightly. She had known that they should be oiled for later so as not to wake the…Lacey pulled her thoughts back to the present. The memory of Greg sitting on the floor, crying as men did when they finally managed it, in dry, painful rasps, then came back to her, and she felt bad for him, but only for a moment. The anger returned to cleanse the memory, scrub it from her frontal lobe. He hadn’t even known about the child. It had been an accident that he had even found out, and then he had assumed, with his well-remembered arrogance, that he had some rights in the whole thing. That his shoddy treatment of her could just be swept under the rug.
Lacey ignored the little voice that reminded her Greg had suffered a trauma, too, and wasn’t impervious to the loss of their child. She wasn’t sharing her grief with him. He needed to butt out and leave her be, now. Because once he had done his duty with her, made amends like that asshole doctor had said, done his penance, he’d move on, and she would have to pick up the pieces all over again. She didn’t think she could come back from that. Lacey gathered up the little bassinet and breathed through the slice of emotional pain, ignoring the drag in her abdomen. She carried it down the stairs and out the front door and set it on the porch while she got her breath. It hurt more than she had expected and allowed for, and she was still weak. She picked it up again and made it to the sidewalk when Mrs. Withers came out her door.
“Lacey? What are you doing, dear? Where is your young man?”
Lacey wanted to scream. He’d charmed her landlady, too. Even Gladys hadn’t been impervious, talking to her about letting Greg help if he could. She gritted her teeth, cleared her head, and carried her burden to the curb where she set it down gently. From her shirt pocket, she pulled out the sheet of paper she had tucked under the newspaper on the coffee table after writing the message that morning and laid it inside, on top of the little blanket. It read Free. Please take me home. Lacey touched her fingers to her lips and pressed the kiss on the edge of the baby basket. There. It was the best she could do, and someone would take it home and put a baby or maybe a dolly inside. She joined Mrs. Withers on the porch and followed her into the house for coffee. She didn’t give Greg another thought.
* * * *
Greg pulled up to the curb and turned off the ignition. He picked up the tray holding the coffee and another cinnamon bun from where it rested on the passenger seat and swiveled out of the truck, hitting the lock button as he did so. He walked around the front of the vehicle, actually pursing his lips to whistle. He had hopes that today would be a better day for Lacey and that they might talk a little about what had happened between them. His feet stumbled to a sudden halt as his brain processed the fact that the baby bassinet, the one that had made it all real, made him actually weep with grief and loss, sat on the curb. He cautiously approached it and peered inside. He had a strange premonition that there would be something there, something that he didn’t want to lay eyes on. Instead there was a piece of white paper, printed neatly in dark-blue ink. Lacey was trying to give their child’s bassinet away to someone who might have a use for it.
The symbolism unmanned him, and Greg’s vision blurred with sudden tears and then cleared at the realization that she had carried the piece of furniture down two flights of stairs and to the curb, fresh out of surgery. His hand itched to correct her little fanny once he ensured she was okay. He ran up the walk and took the steps two at a time, balancing the coffee tray automatically. The apartment door stood open, a
nd Lacey didn’t answer his call. Greg slammed the tray down on the table and checked through the apartment. She wasn’t there, and his heart iced up before he got a hold of himself. She couldn’t have gone far. Her nightshirt lay across the foot of the bed, and she would have had to have taken a few minutes to dress, to write the note and carry out the bassinet. Greg made an educated guess and ran downstairs to knock on Mrs. Withers’s door. Mrs. Withers pulled it open in fairly short order in response to his imperative summons.
“Is she here?” he asked.
Mrs. Withers nodded. “I made her a cup of tea, and we’ve been sitting just awhile. Come in, boy. I’ll put the kettle back on.”
Greg followed the little stooped figure inside, noting that the classic Victorian architecture was reflected in the suite, much as it was in Lacey’s. The hall branched off to two big formal rooms, and onto one with a closed door that he guessed would be the elderly lady’s bedroom and bath, and then ended at the kitchen. Lacey sat at the small bistro-style table, the metal and tile furniture at odds with the rest of the decor, her little feet tucked up on the bottom rung of her chair, both hands wrapped around a tea cup. She looked up at his entry, and Greg tried to tell her how he felt just by looking at her, trying to reestablish their connection, something that had been tantamount to reading one another’s minds, until he had locked her out, pushed her away. Lacey’s face didn’t change and her eyes told him nothing. It broke his heart that she was able to hide from him so effectively. He pushed away the hint of despair and went to her.
“I would have carried the bassinet down for you, Lacey. You need to let others help you.”
“I didn’t hurt myself,” she said quietly, her eyes shifting from his. “It wasn’t heavy.”
Greg heard Mrs. Withers make a little sound that seemed suspiciously like a sob. Shit. He wanted to take Lacey upstairs where they could continue this discussion in private. As if she had read his mind, Mrs. Withers said cheerily, “Well, I hate to shoo you home, dearie, but I have my ladies’ club this afternoon and need to get busy with my baking.”
Lacy stood so quickly that the metal chair clattered across the old linoleum floor and Greg instinctively reached for her. She backed away and apologized to her landlady. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Withers. I didn’t stop to think what day it was.”
“No, no, Lacey. I enjoyed our little chat. But your young man probably wants to have you to himself for awhile.”
Greg watched Lacey’s face tighten and her lips flatten into a thin line. He hadn’t made any progress with her, or if he had, it had diminished overnight. He took her elbow and ushered her out of the kitchen and toward the front door, nodding to Mrs. Withers, who watched anxiously. Lacey was rigid in his grasp and didn’t speak again until they were behind the closed door of her apartment.
“I’d like you to leave, Greg,” she said, moving to put the brocade couch between them.
“I’m not going anywhere, Lacey. We are going to talk about some things, and you are going to hear me out.” Greg held up a hand against Lacey’s attempt to interrupt him. “I’m not giving you a choice in this, Lacey.”
She flushed and then went pale. “What makes you think that you have any right to tell me what I’m going to do or not do, Greg?”
“You gave me your submission in everything intimate between us, baby.” Greg saw her wince but resolutely continued. “This is as personal and intimate as it gets.”
Lacey laughed, an ugly, bitter sound, so different than her usual musical laughter. “You forfeited that about five months ago, buddy. You might not recall, but I do.”
“I don’t remember a great deal about that time, Lacey, as a matter of fact. I do recollect what I said to you when I walked out that final day, and I’m sorry for that. I blamed you, and that was unfair and untrue.”
“Just what is it that you want from me, Greg? If you were thinking you owed me anything, consider it paid. You’ve done quite enough, actually.”
Lacey sounded so unlike her, so bitter and resentful that Greg realized the depths of her anger were yet unplumbed. But he had to try, regardless of the price.
“I doubt I’ll ever be able to make it up to you, honey. But I love you, and I’m willing to try. I am asking you to hear me out.”
Lacey shrugged, and her shoulders slumped. She looked exhausted. She came around to the front of the couch to sit down and then curled up in a corner. For a moment Greg felt like a supplicant, and he welcomed the feeling and the opportunity. He retrieved her coffee and cinnamon bun and set it on the coffee table before taking a seat beside her, careful to give her space.
Greg started at the beginning. He summarized what had taken place the night KarLynn was stabbed and the ensuing events, now able to recite them without the incapacitating upheaval of emotions. He told Lacey that it was all he could do to focus on providing support to his partner, and indicated that she had ridden him emotionally like a rented mule. At the time he had welcomed the barrage of accusations and projected blame, because it meshed with his deep-seated guilt. The rest of his life had continued on remote control. He knew his job inside and out and recognized now that he had performed the job as if from a great distance, alienating many of his fellow officers, although his good friends, the ones who knew him, were more tolerant and not as judgmental. The bosses didn’t care as long as he kept a low profile. Lacey didn’t move throughout his prelude to what he now accepted had been unconscionable treatment of her, but was obviously listening to him, despite her flat affect and seeming indifference.
“I was locked into some kind of robotic state, Lacey, to kind of protect myself and keep on going, and I regret that you got caught up in it. You were absolutely wonderful to me, I know it.” Greg tried to explain what his therapist had helped him grasp, how his psyche had known the imperative of pulling him out of his funk and extricating him from the irrational assumption of guilt. He talked about how his inner Greg, the alpha male, had resisted Lacey’s patient and accepting presence because it was contributing to, even supporting, his passive avoidant behavior.
“Are you saying that I held you back? Kept you from figuring this all out sooner?” Lacey’s quiet question was laced with incredulity.
“It was only a part of it, honey. I refused therapy and compounded everything.”
“Sorry, Greg.” Lacey slipped to her feet and stood looking at him, seeming to tremble with rage and indignation. “To my mind, this is essentially all your fault. You created the woman you wanted, this woman. You demanded my submission, my compliance, and expected it even outside of our bedroom in many aspects. I pretty much trusted you with it all and gave over to you. Do you have any idea how huge that was? Do you? I couldn’t miraculously change back on demand. I will not own any of this, this psychobabble. Apology not accepted.”
Greg watched her walk away from him and into her bedroom. The door shut quietly, and for a moment, he almost succumbed, almost gave up. There was no point in continuing the discussion until Lacey had some time to process what he had shared with her. It had taken him a great deal of time to do so, and she was playing catch-up. He would try again to explain that he was in no way blaming her or holding her responsible for anything, but had needed to put the theory out there, as she would probably come to it herself in the future. Greg didn’t want his woman to take the blame on herself then, without his support and help to reject it. He knew her well, and the submission he so highly prized could cause her to believe she had failed him. He wouldn’t risk that. Greg tried not to think about the fact that Lacey might never have known about said theory if he hadn’t inserted himself back into her life. He didn’t think it was a selfish act. He believed that they had a future together and that Lacey needed him to be complete, just as he needed her. If that made him arrogant, so be it. He got up and went into the kitchen to figure out what they would have for their dinner. It seemed to take a considerable amount of time to organize and prepare, another thing he had failed to appreciate, but he was in training for the long
haul.
* * * *
Lacey was getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. She should have taken the damn cinnamon bun with her when she’d left Greg to his bizarre explanations. She used to take food to her bedroom when she lived at her parents’ home, anything to eat in peace. She wasn’t a doctor, but knew enough that she needed to consume more calories in order to gain her strength back. She wasn’t a shrink either, so she simply wasn’t going to consider that crap Greg had suggested, especially the little niggling, intrusive hint that his therapist just might have been on the money. She lay back on the bed and considered the plaster ceiling. Maybe she had enabled him by being so tolerant, so sweet and understanding. Maybe if she had kicked his ass, he would have snapped out of it and gotten help. Wonderful. Like she needed one more ounce of guilt. Lacey impulsively pressed one hand to her belly and whispered a little prayer, feeling the sadness creep in to the exception of everything else. Enough. This mind probing, this soul-searching was a luxury she couldn’t afford. She needed to recuperate and get back to work. Someone had to pay the bills, and the firm would understand for only so long, Gladys or no Gladys. Her bosses thought in terms of facts and, cold, clear numbers, and if she was smart, she would adopt their approach. Her guilt and sadness would just have to wait for her times away from work. She drifted off on that thought.
Done [Running to Love 4] (Siren Publishing Classic) Page 8