More of You: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel

by Jackson, A. L.

  “Okay, Mommy. You be a good girl, too.”

  I would have laughed if her father weren’t clearly stabbing me over and over in his mind.

  Faith’s mother took her by both of the cheeks, searching her face. A real mother. The way a mother should be. The way Faith in turn had become for her own daughter.

  Sometimes it chafed, seeing it displayed so profoundly. So real.

  “You go and have some fun and don’t worry about a thing. You deserve a night out, you hear me?”

  Faith reached up and grasped her mom by both wrists, giving her a squeeze, something transpiring between the two of them. “Okay, Mama.”

  Her mom smiled a wistful smile. “All right, then. Go on.”

  Faith turned and passed by me on the walk. Pinned to the spot, I watched her go, feeling her unease, how hard it was for her to leave her daughter.

  We both knew Bailey would be fine with her parents and that a cruiser was set to come by this address several times during the night, but the worry was still there.

  Sometimes, knowing something and trusting in it was the hardest thing to do.

  I blew out a strained breath, again wishing I could change it. Take it on for her. Let her know it would all be okay.

  I watched her climb into my car, that feeling I kept trying to fight stirring inside me.

  The fact that this woman was supposed to be mine.

  I wanted to go after her. Comfort her. Make her promises I didn’t deserve to make, but I knew I owed her father a word or two.

  I tried to work myself up to it, figuring out what to offer him, what I could say that would make any of this better, but he beat me to the punch. “You’ve got a lot of fuckin’ nerve.”

  I swung my attention over my shoulder to where he stood glowering at me from the porch.

  Bailey and her grandmother had already disappeared inside.

  Anger surged through my veins.

  He had no idea why I was there. What I was willing to give.

  I beat it back.

  He deserved his indignation. I’d let him have it.

  “Excuse me?” I said, feigning like I hadn’t heard correctly, gearing myself up for him to lay into me.

  I could feel Faith watching us from my car that idled at the curb.

  “You know, I was right inside the day it happened,” he said, his teeth clenching as he gritted the words.

  I frowned at him, not exactly sure what he was getting at.

  “I heard the sirens. They just kept coming and coming. It seemed like it was going on for hours.”

  Disquiet pulsed. Stretching tight against my chest as I slowly came to the awareness.

  “I knew it.” His face contorted. “I just had this feeling that whatever it was, the sirens whizzing by, the helicopter flying in overhead, that everything was getting ready to change for us, and not in a good way.”

  Grief and guilt.

  It reached out and grabbed me by the throat.

  Squeezing hard.

  “I wasn’t even surprised when Mack showed up at my door, asking me to come with him to give Faith the news.”

  Agony clawed at my spirit. This mix of hatred and sorrow.

  His eyes squeezed closed, and his hands fisted at his sides. Preparing to fight against going back to that day. Or maybe he was just holding himself back from coming at me.

  Taking a swing.

  Blame it on me. It was my fault, anyway.

  “Faith . . . she crumbled in my arms that night, Jace. Weeping. Screaming her denial.”

  I could have stopped it. I could have stopped it.

  Anguish pushed at the night, and I swore I could physically feel Faith’s in that moment. Could feel her from behind where I thought maybe she was chained inside my car, unable to bear witness to what her father was telling me.

  Like she couldn’t experience it all over again.

  His eyes latched on to mine. A dark threat, the brown color lighter than Faith’s but just as genuine and real, holding nothing back.

  “And I have to wonder . . . wonder if her grief that night came even close to being as bad as it was when you left her.”

  The man had to have sucker punched me in the gut. Or maybe got me with a swift kick of a steel-toed boot.

  Because a pained wheeze gusted from my lungs, the impact of it close to buckling me in two.

  Denial pulsed from the darkest place inside me.

  She’d chosen Joseph. I had to remember that.

  But her father kept right on, driving knives into my consciousness, the pain so intense I was sure I was seconds from blacking out.

  “You don’t know what you did, Jace Jacobs. The pain you caused. And now you’re back, and you think I’m gonna stand here and watch you hurt my daughter all over again? You might have rolled up here in a fancy car and wearing a fancy suit, but that doesn’t change who you are.”

  I whirled all the way around to face him, anger coming off me in menacing waves. “Are you joking right now? Have you forgotten why I left? You were there that night, remember?”

  “Yeah, I do remember.” There was a threat behind it. “It was the choices you made that got you there.”

  A disgusted snort blew through my nose. “You don’t know the first thing about me. You never have. You saw what you wanted to see, just like the rest of the town. If you knew me at all, you’d know the last thing I want is to cause Faith any more pain.”

  I was there to stop more of it.

  Do my best to fix what had gone wrong.

  His gaze narrowed. “Is that so? Then what exactly are you doing here?”

  My attention swung to the car.

  Faith was angled to the side, watching us, like she was trapped inside.

  My eyes flew back to her father, hard and emphatic.

  “I’m here to fix what Joseph wrecked.”

  Uncertainty blanketed his face. “What are you saying?”

  My head shook. “Don’t act like you didn’t know Joseph was rotted to the core. Or did he have you blinded, too?”

  Her father fidgeted.

  “And you thought he was what was best for her, didn’t you?” I continued, unable to stop the accusations from dripping from my tongue.

  “You were the one loaded down with all that shit.”

  You have no idea the circumstances. What I was protecting, I wanted to scream. I didn’t. I knew it wouldn’t matter, anyway. It wouldn’t change who he thought I was.

  Disgusted, I started walking backward as I faced him, my head held high.

  Right where it should have been back then.

  “Think you should know, I’m not the same scared, pathetic kid I was back then. I cower to no one, least of all you. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Not until I was sure their world was a safe place. Until I could give back a little of what I’d stolen.

  The asshole almost grinned. “We’ll see.”

  Twenty-Five

  Faith

  Jace hustled around the front of his car after he passed off the key to the valet.

  I shivered watching him, the way his lithe body moved beneath his fitted dark-gray suit, his face striking in the spray of headlights that lit him up like he was supposed to be the jaw-dropping finale of some Fourth of July fireworks display.

  At least that was the way he left me.

  Feeling awed and stunned and a little stupefied.

  Foolish girl.

  But it didn’t matter how much I chastised myself or tried to scold my thoughts into submission.

  It didn’t matter how many times I tried to tell myself it was too soon.

  That I wasn’t ready.

  That I was never going to be ready for someone like Jace Jacobs.

  The reaction was the same when he got to my side, opened the door, and reached in to help me out.

  I let him wrap my hand in his.

  Heat flashed up my arm at the contact, and my breath left me on a stuttered rasp, every inch of me shaken by the force of the ener
gy that roared. So loudly I could hear the howl of it in my ears.

  He helped me onto unsteady feet, and still I wobbled forward.

  “You okay?” he asked, his own voice seeming a little strained, which I was betting had a whole lot to do with whatever my daddy had told him back at the house.

  I’d warned my father not to say a word. Told him I was grown, and I could make my own decisions and that I got to make my own mistakes, too.

  The fact he obviously hadn’t listened had made me angry, but I’d decided to hold back, figuring it was better to let them get out whatever the two of them needed to say to the other, anyway.

  Jace had my hand clasped in his, held between us and up close to his chest, watching me with concern where he stood a few inches from me. That space between us felt just as heavy as the night.

  I swallowed hard. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure about that?” A tease glinted in those copper eyes.

  Getting away from the house had seemed to lighten Jace. Something easy gliding into his demeanor the farther we’d gotten away from Broadshire Rim. Maybe, to him, it’d felt as if we’d been leaving the threat behind.

  To me, it was as if I were getting the chance to put some distance between all the grief and hurt.

  I huffed out the semblance of a laugh. “Um . . . no, Jace, I am definitely not sure that I’m fine. But I’m tryin’ to be.”

  Warily, I looked around us. Strangers whizzed by, this area so far away from the outskirts where I lived that there wasn’t a soul that I knew. No one to look at me with pity or disdain or questions.

  Oh, but inside, there would be plenty.

  He squeezed my hand. “Fun.”

  My head shook, and I could feel the smile trying to climb to my mouth. “Fun. Tons of it.”

  The words were nothing but a mockery of the way I really felt.

  “I’m serious. Tonight, you’re having fun. Letting go for a little while. First on the list is getting you inside to get you a drink.”

  “I think I need about ten of them.”

  His laughter boomed, bouncing against my thrumming chest, and I decided right then, that I was.

  I was going to let go for a little while.

  Rest in his security.

  Even if it would be short-lived.

  “Don’t tell me I’m going to have to carry you out of here over my shoulder before the night is over,” he teased.

  Swept up in the lightness, I knocked into him as he led me through the door. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it.”

  I peeked over at him. Wondering if he remembered all the things we’d shared. How we’d once been. The way he’d made me feel.

  And I was wondering how it was possible he still made me feel all of it.

  I beat back the guilt that rippled inside me. What threatened to rise up and take me under.

  Not tonight.

  Tonight, I was just gonna breathe. Let him hold some of the burden that constantly weighed down on my shoulders.

  He leaned in, his mouth suddenly at my ear. “Do you remember that night?”

  A flush raced my skin, hot and heated and so very wrong, but I was whispering back anyway, “I remember everything. Do you?”

  Oh, I was a fool, inviting him into those memories.

  Memories that spun and danced and enticed.

  He set his hand on the small of my back, and a tremor rolled up my spine and spread out, his words sending goose bumps racing across my skin.

  “Do you think I could ever forget a single moment with you? Not ever. Not for a second. You were the only good thing I ever had.”

  My heart tumbled right in the center of my chest.

  For a beat, his eyes flashed beneath the glittering lights so severely I was pretty sure he could see all the thoughts inside my head.

  Loving him.

  Needing him.

  Adoring him.

  Then he straightened, situated the button on his suit, and guided me inside.

  We stepped deeper into the trendy bar. Inside, the walls were dark, the wood aged, and the brick roughened. Lights dull and hazy.

  The bottom floor was a big, open space, and a long bar stretched the length of the back wall.

  The three levels upstairs boasted smaller spaces, specialty bars and secluded rooms filled with leather furniture, coves for conversations, and private rooms for intimate parties.

  Nooks everywhere, making a person believe they could get lost and forget the rest of the world existed outside of the secreted walls.

  I couldn’t help but think how nice that might be.

  Jace scanned the massive room, looking for the group within the people moving on the dance floor and packed close to the stage, a band called Carolina George clearly drawing a huge crowd.

  Or maybe it was just the atmosphere.

  Darkness cut by the flashing lights.

  The air heated, dripping with sex.

  Almost suffocating.

  Or maybe it was just that the only thing I could feel was this man. Every step he took reverberated against the floorboards.

  Splintering out, becoming mine.

  The energy overwhelming.

  Too much.

  Making me feel flushed and overheated and a little dizzy.

  Jace squeezed my hand a little tighter.

  Giving me calm.

  Strength.

  “Ah, there he is. The party can begin,” Ian called when he caught sight of us making our way through the packed crowd, a glassfull of something dark like a beacon lifted in the air. “Or are you actually here to tell us to watch out for ourselves?”

  There was a gleam in Ian’s eye. A tease and something true.

  Jace laughed, not removing his arm from around my waist when he reached out to shake his brother’s hand. “What are you talking about? Parties are nothing but a bore without me.”

  “Sure, sure. This from the asshole who was always telling us what to do.” Ian was all smiles as he looked at Mack for backup, pointed at Jace as if he were the brunt of the joke. Proof that he had been a downer when he’d always been the one protecting them.

  My chest stretched tight when I was struck with that truth. He had. He’d worried so much about them all. And then he’d just . . . walked away. I still couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Ah, I guess he can be fun once in a while,” Mack said with a wink. He stood from the round table where he was sitting to shake Jace’s hand.

  Then he turned to me, edging Jace out, and hugging me tight. “So glad you’re here tonight.”

  He really was a good guy. Worked hard at his job. But I knew what happened to Joseph had struck close to home for him. That the case haunted him in a way that I was sure kept him up at night.

  “It’s your birthday. I wouldn’t have missed it,” I said.

  He edged back, looking me in the eye. “You’re a good girl, Faith.”

  “Ha, that’s just what she wants you to think.”

  My attention jerked to the side to Courtney, who’d broken through the crowd, Felix wrapped all around her from behind, his face pressed into her hair.

  “Just because I’m standing next to you, it doesn’t mean I’m reflecting who you are,” I shot back.

  Her mouth dropped open. “That hurt, Faith. Hurt bad.”

  But she was grinning the way she always did, and she stepped up to hug me. Then she grabbed me by the outside of both shoulders, looking me up and down.

  “I told you to wear something sexy, I didn’t tell you to come in here and completely show me up. You make every single person in this room look bad.”

  My chest heated, the warmth crawling my neck to land on my cheeks. “Courtney. You’re ridiculous. Have you looked in the mirror today?”

  “Have you?”

  My head minutely shook.

  She swung hers in Jace’s direction. “Of course, it doesn’t help that you’re with him.”

  That blush became a full flush.

  Clearly, she
’d been pre-gaming, a buzz making her words come fast and unfiltered. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t completely right.

  The man was something to look at. So dark and powerful and massive where he stood two feet off, watching me say hello to everyone.

  The man delicious.

  Decadent and dangerous in a way that was making my belly twist and my mouth water.

  There I went, mind tumbling down that treacherous path. A path that led right to the man I’d promised I’d never allow to hurt me again.

  I had to rip my attention away from Jace when Mack started introducing a bunch of his friends from the station and some of his other friends. Everyone had taken up residency at a few of the round tables along the wall. Close to the stage, but far enough back that everyone could still relax.

  I smiled, recognizing a few of them, wondering how many others had heard what I’d been through. If any of them were speculating. Judging me for being there.

  But I couldn’t contemplate that.

  Not when Jace was suddenly back at my side, his arm firmly planted around my waist, his voice nothing but a growl in my ear. “Stay close.”

  To him?

  It’d always been impossible to be anywhere else.

  Twenty-Six

  Jace

  A couple of hours had passed since we’d first arrived. The club had gotten busier, packed wall to wall, droves of people crowding into the enormous space.

  Carolina George had just finished playing an incredible set.

  The country band was well-known in the area, traveling from Southern city to Southern city to play in dive bars and huge venues alike, their following growing greater.

  People flocked all the way from neighboring states to get a chance to listen to the angelic voice of Emily, their lead singer, whose talent was out of this world.

  When they had ended their set for the night, a DJ had taken over. Dance music pumped from the speakers, a low resonating bass, the vibe shifting into something seductive and dark.

  I’d been surprised when Courtney had managed to lure Faith onto the throbbing dance floor.

  But there she was, out there in a circle with Courtney and some of their other friends.

  Having fun.