“You know why.”
He sighed again.
Of course, he knew.
He really didn’t have much of an option. There was too much history between us for him to keep me in the dark, even though he probably would have preferred to have left me hanging.
Out of his way so he could do his job.
But sometimes friendship and loyalty meant more than protocol.
The second Mack had called last night and told me the situation had escalated, there’d been nothing I could do.
I’d been in my car, a suitcase packed, the trip from Atlanta to Broadshire Rim made in three hours during the middle of the night. It was a small town twenty minutes outside of Charleston, and the one place I’d sworn to myself I’d never return to.
I hadn’t even thought it through.
The consequences.
What it was going to do to me or how being around her again was going to affect me.
The only thought I’d known was she was in trouble and I had to get to her.
Stop what should have been stopped a long time ago.
If only I could go back to that day and intervene. Make the right choice instead of the selfish, petulant one I had.
It had been one driven by bitterness and hatred.
One I’d regretted every single day since Mack had first called me and told me Joseph was gone.
Guilt clawed at my insides while this spot inside me screamed and groaned and demanded I cross the street, fly into the small police station, wrap her up, and take her away from here.
Was pretty sure that wasn’t going to go over so well.
“Where are you, anyway?” Mack asked.
“Outside.”
“Fuck . . . Jace . . . you can’t do this.”
“Watch me.”
I ended the call and shoved my hands into my suit pockets, doing my best to keep my cool, trying to listen to all the warnings that Mack had made.
Give her space.
We don’t know what’s happening.
It could just be punk kids playing a prank.
Punk kids, my ass.
Main Street was busy, the rural town bustling with people as they went about their days, yet their pace somehow slowed.
It was like the entire population had gone back in time.
Stepped into an era that was simpler.
Small shops and stores and businesses were tucked in the old brick buildings that were fronted by large windows and colorful awnings. Trees grew high where they were sporadically placed in the cobblestone sidewalks, and some hugged the sides of the buildings, giving shade to the hot, heated summer day.
It was all mixed up with the familiar, distinct smell of the pluff mud in the marshes that sat back from the sea.
I caught a few curious glances. I’d been gone for so long and had changed so much that I doubted a whole lot of people would recognize me, but I stood out enough that I was sure they wondered what the hell I was doing there.
Yeah, join the fucking club.
Because I had no idea what the hell I was doing there, either.
Torturing myself, that was what.
The police station that hadn’t been there when I left sat across the street, the two-story building tucked under a bunch of lush, green trees.
Cruisers and a couple of unmarked cars lined the curb and filled the parking lot to the side.
Sweat gathered at my nape, my body itchy.
Antsy.
I just needed to see her.
Know she was really okay.
But I guessed I really wasn’t prepared for that happening. Wasn’t prepared for a second to actually see her again.
My goddamned breath was gone when the door swung open and she fumbled out with her head dropped toward the ground. Her shoulders sagged and defeat lined her posture.
Her best friend, Courtney, was next to her, guiding Faith out with one hand on her lower back.
It didn’t matter that ten years had passed or that a whole shitstorm had transpired during that time.
She was still the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen.
Beauty.
Belief and purity and this innocence that made something crazy come unhinged inside me. It was overpowering, the need to get to her.
Protect her.
Worst was the way my body reacted.
The girl had always been so far out of my league it wasn’t funny.
Better than me in every way.
Grace.
Beauty.
My guts clenched.
None of those things meant what I’d felt for her hadn’t been real.
It’d just been stupid.
Just like right then.
Because a streak of possessiveness flew through my veins like a goddamned drug.
Energy crashed through the air.
A torrent of emotion.
Resonating.
Pulsating.
An echo of the past.
Chocolate hair fell down her back in silky waves, and I swore to God, I could feel the warmth radiating from her spirit, all this devastating goodness paired with a body that was meant for sin. All long legs and tempting curves.
My sin.
Taking her was exactly what that had been.
Since the first time I’d seen her, this girl had held the power to drop me straight to my knees.
So stunning that I went stupid.
Time hadn’t had the power to alter that.
Because there was no stopping the lust that curled my guts with a need so intense I felt lightheaded.
Or maybe it was just the guilt that clotted the blood flow to my brain.
Sorrow clung to her like a disease.
I was responsible for that.
God. I was a bastard.
But I’d be a monster if I turned a blind eye. If I stayed in my cushy office back in Atlanta and pretended like none of this was going down.
I sucked down a breath and tried to steel my nerves.
I had a purpose.
A reason.
I just needed a motherfucking plan.
Three
Faith
I felt it.
Someone watching me from behind.
I should have been terrified of it after what had happened last night. I guessed in some way I was, but not in the way anyone might think.
I could feel it blazing from across the street. As if his stare was its own entity.
I should have known better than to look that way. But there was nothing I could have done, nothing that would have stopped me from shifting my gaze that direction.
Maybe I already knew what I would discover.
Knew who would be standing there like an apparition.
My mouth dropped open on a shocked gasp, the humid air gone, nothing but this blistering heat in its place.
My knees wobbled, and my hand shot out to the station wall to keep myself from falling.
My best friend Courtney was right there, always holding me up the way she did. She surged around to the front of me, brushing the hair back from my face.
“Are you okay? I know this is insane . . . crazy . . . what happened last night. But I promise you that no one is gonna let anything happen to you or Bailey. Do you understand?”
Of course, she’d mistaken my shock for fear, the dread coming off me in waves enough to pull me under.
And still, I couldn’t find any words to correct her. I could only stare, the entirety of my attention locked on the man who stood directly across the street.
Energy crashed, like lashes of the sun.
Searing as the strikes hit my skin.
I swore that just his presence in this town had to have sucked every molecule from the atmosphere.
It left my lungs empty and starvin’ for oxygen.
My chest stretched tight in pain.
This couldn’t be happening.
How could he show up here? After all this time? After everything?
Courtney frantic
ally searched my face before she finally realized my attention was pinned in horror on something across the street.
She looked over her shoulder. Shock hit her, too.
Anger rushed through her being, and she clamped down her hold on my arm. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
My insides curled and clenched in the most intense kind of pain.
Old, old love that shouldn’t still exist.
All the hurt that went with it.
Every scar I’d prayed and prayed would heal.
I wasn’t sure I could take any more.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Courtney seethed.
Her green eyes darted back to me where I was pressed against the station wall, praying the bricks might swallow me up and let me disappear.
Sympathy was written over every inch of her face.
I hated that every time she turned around she was having to feel sorry for me.
“Stay right here, Faith. I’m going to take care of this.”
I swallowed around the bile that’d lifted in my throat, and I buried the sting of old wounds that had been ripped wide open.
Raw and fresh and aching.
I refused to feel this way. Trapped by the simple fact he was there.
He didn’t deserve it, and he was the last person I should be concerned about. The last person who deserved any of my thoughts or worries or questions.
I had real issues I had to deal with.
Disturbing, daunting issues.
Enough grief to keep me up for a thousand nights.
I grabbed Courtney’s arm right before she went storming across the road. “Please. Don’t. Just let it be.”
She looked back at me, her stylish brown ponytail that was set high on her head swishing around her pretty face. “I’m not gonna stand here and pretend as if that asshole didn’t show his face in this town. After all this time? After what happened? He has more nerve than anyone I know.”
She exhaled a sound of fury and her own hurt and grief—grief for me—and glared back at Jace.
Jace Jacobs.
The man took a step out of the shadows where he’d hidden along the wall on the other side of the street.
Right into the sun.
Oh God.
I wished he’d have remained concealed. Stayed just wisps and vapor that didn’t really exist. Wished with all my might that he wasn’t looking at me like that.
As if he knew me.
Remembered me.
It didn’t matter that he was at least a hundred feet away.
It felt as if he were standing right in front of me.
The rags he’d worn had been traded for a fitted, expensive suit. His once scruffy hair was short, styled in a sophisticated way around his unforgettable face, his beard short and trimmed and accentuating his strong jaw.
A shiver raced my spine and left a sticky, sick feeling that pooled in my gut.
A flash of that old, old love that I no longer could feel ricocheted in the depths of me. Through those dark, empty, vacant places.
It was a love I’d waited on for what had felt like forever before I’d given up and convinced myself that I had to move on before I lost myself totally.
Wholly.
I refused to call it settling.
I’d been happy. Content with a warm, comfortable love.
And there stood Jace, making me uncomfortable in his intense, potent way.
More gorgeous than he’d been. Taller and wider and older, and all of those things only made him that much more appealing.
Those eyes were fixated on me.
The color of a brand-new, shiny penny.
A coppered shimmer that ranged between red and brown and orange.
Familiar in a way I didn’t want them to be.
They watched me as if they knew me. Full of something dangerous and possessive and alive.
Soft with lies of apology.
I felt pinned beneath them.
Trapped.
Courtney clenched her jaw. “What an asshole. Someone needs to put him in his place. And his place isn’t here.”
I tore myself from his gaze and looked at her. “It doesn’t matter, Court. Let’s just go. The only thing I want is to pick up my daughter and go home. I’m exhausted, and I just want to hold her, know she’s okay.”
I’d dropped her at my parents’ house, the only place I felt secure enough to leave her before I’d come to the station.
They’d argued, wanted to be here for me.
I’d told them that the best thing they could do for me was watch my child, ensure she was safe, make her feel as if it were just any other day.
“Okay,” Courtney relented. “Let’s go get that sweet girl of yours and get you home.”
She took me by the inside of my elbow and tucked me to her side, as if she could guard me from any bad things coming my way.
I could feel them all around me.
Getting closer.
Growing stronger.
Eyes watching.
Energy pulsing.
I struggled to keep my head bowed as I let Courtney guide me down the sidewalk toward her car, which was parked at the curb, our speed increasing with every step we took.
It gave me the sense that I was fleeing.
Running.
I guessed I should have known I could never run as fast and as far as him.
Because I could feel it.
The burst of hot energy that hit me from behind.
My heart stuttered a beat.
“Faith,” he called, voice a gruff rumble of a plea.
My face pinched, and my legs went weak below me, my feet no longer able to carry me.
I wanted to jump into Courtney’s car. Have her whisk me away to a secret place where no one could touch me.
Hurt me or my daughter.
Unable to stand beneath the intensity, I whirled around, the words already flying from my mouth as I did. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”
He stuffed his hands into his suit pant pockets. The man looked like some kind of distinguished model.
Polished and big city.
So different from the rough outcast I remembered, yet so much the same it hurt to look at him.
“What if I have something I need to say to you?”
Disbelief shook my head. “And what could you possibly have to say to me?”
Grief struck across his strong features, and despite the distance between us, I could see the way his thick throat rolled as he swallowed. His voice had only deepened when he spoke again, “I’m sorry about Joseph.”
I choked over the incredulous sound that locked in my chest. I wasn’t sure if it was laughter or a cry. “You’re sorry?”
“I am. Incredibly.”
I blinked. Long and hard. Before I forced my eyes to open and remain pinned on him. “You don’t get to be sorry for me, Jace. You have no idea what I’ve been through. What I’m goin’ through. Just . . . go back to where you came from. Go home.”
I turned and started for Courtney’s car. She returned her hand to my arm in a silent show of support, though I could feel her looking back at Jace from over her shoulder.
If looks could kill and all of that. Courtney could slay a man with a single glance of her razor-sharp eyes.
But Jace Jacobs was still standing, his words darts where they impaled my back. “I am home.”
At his assertion, I stumbled a step and my hands clenched into fists. Somehow, I managed to force myself to keep walking.
A long time ago, he’d promised me I’d always be his home. That together, we were gonna build a castle.
And the man had never been anything but a liar.
Four
Faith
I shot upright in bed, gasping through the remnants of the dream and the fear clouding the sanity of my mind. Again, I’d fallen into a restless sleep. Sucked down by the exhaustion, only to immediately jolt from sleep.
The sheets were tangled around my legs, sweat
slickin’ my back so that the thin fabric of my tank stuck to my skin.
I sucked in a staggered breath, trying to calm the terror that clanged like a thunder through my veins.
A constant thrum, thrum, thrum, that beat and bled and threatened everything that was important to me.
Blinking through the haze of night, I threw off the sheets and climbed to my shaky feet.
Maybe I should have given in and let either Courtney or my mama and daddy spend the night.
But I’d told them I couldn’t be held prisoner in my own home.
That it wasn’t right to uproot their lives, especially since Mack had promised he would have an officer driving by the plantation several times throughout the night, the entire squadron keeping a close eye on us.
Still, he’d warned me that I should be careful just in case.
Watchful.
Make sure all my doors were locked up tight.
As if I wasn’t already jumping at every sound. Peering out the windows with each rustle of the trees and craning my ear every time the old house groaned. All the while, I’d be clutching my phone, at the ready to dial Mack if there was even a hint that someone might be trying to get inside.
It was just my luck that the old walls loved to moan all night long.
The hardest part was I had this overwhelming urge to take possession of my life. To pick up the shattered pieces and splice them back together. To find my strength in the midst of all the turmoil.
But how could I do that when I could feel danger lurking all around us? Dragging us into darkness when all I wanted was to reach for the light.
For safety and joy.
Heart still beating wild, my feet inched across the worn, hard planks of my bedroom floor, senses set to high alert.
Awareness prickled across my damp flesh.
But I wasn’t afraid the way I’d been last night.
No, instead I was finding some sort of comfort in the disorder.
A fool who found security in the danger.
I edged toward the window that I’d already checked twice to make sure was locked. Off to the side of it, I pulled back the drape so I could peer into the night.
I sucked in a breath that didn’t seem to have anywhere to go. My heart took off at a sprint, part of me filling right up with indignant fury.
More of You: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel Page 2