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

by Jackson, A. L.

  I lifted my gun higher, striding that direction.

  Numb except for the fact I’d fight to the death for these girls.

  My finger on the trigger, I started shouting, deranged anger bleeding from my mouth, “Come on, motherfucker. Come at me. You want to hurt an innocent woman? A little girl, you sick fucks? Come at me.”

  Their engine revved, and I kept marching that direction.

  Two seconds of a silent war.

  Me facing down the front of that battle-ram car. Trembling finger on the trigger.

  Then the car suddenly whipped around and peeled out, flying down the street. The only trail of it the taillights that bloomed in the distance before it screeched as it careened around a corner, disappearing from sight.

  A scream echoed from behind me. Faith’s torment coming from the front seat of my car where she stumbled out onto the road.

  “Oh my God, are you okay?” There was another voice coming from the outskirts of my consciousness, a woman running to help me from across the intersection.

  I dropped my gun to my side. The shock sliding through me and draining like a pool of tar onto the ground when I turned back around to see the wreckage.

  “Oh, God,” the woman whispered, rearing back.

  No doubt, she was terrified when she saw my state, the blood that streaked from the wound on my head.

  Or maybe she just saw the violence shining in my eyes.

  I didn’t care. Didn’t give a fuck what I looked like.

  “Call 9-1-1,” I told the woman as I sidestepped her, going right for Faith, who was shaking, barely able to stand as she struggled with the bashed-in door to get to Bailey in the backseat.

  By the time I got there, she’d managed to wrench it open, her screams hitting the stifled air. “Bailey . . . oh God, Bailey, my baby, my baby. No. No.”

  Bailey’s cries echoed from the backseat.

  I looped an arm around Faith’s waist, glancing again over my shoulder, making sure the fuckers were gone.

  This time, I sure as hell wasn’t going to be unprepared if they rounded for another attack. I’d already let emotions cloud my mind.

  There was nothing. Just the hiss and whirr of the engine, the woman in the intersection on her cell, begging for the ambulance and police to hurry.

  And Faith . . .

  Faith who wailed against me, this frantic terror bleeding from her lips. “Bailey. Oh, God, Bailey. How could they do this? How could they?”

  “Shh,” I whispered, desperate to give her solace. Refuge while every cell in my body screamed for retribution.

  To silence the threat.

  “I’ve got you, Faith. I’ve got you.”

  I’ve got you.

  She writhed and cried out, “Why’s this happening to us? Why? Oh, God . . . someone help us. Please.”

  Torment rang from her mouth.

  Filled the air.

  Tortured my heart.

  “Shh . . .”

  I struggled to get myself together. Focus on that second. What was happening and what needed to be done. I tightened my hold on Faith while I edged her to the side so I could look at her kid.

  Her kid.

  Her sweet, sweet kid.

  And I realized right then that there were no longer any reservations. There was no longer trying to stop myself from falling completely for this child.

  Because I felt the snap.

  Every hard, bitter idea I’d had of Joseph’s child cracking beneath the crater of devotion that sank into my spirit.

  Bailey.

  Faith crumbled a bit, letting me hold her, and I angled her to the side as I stuffed the gun under the front passenger seat. I kept her close while I set my knee on the floor in the back so I could get a better look at Bailey.

  Fear and fury ripped a hole through the center of me.

  Blood dripped down her chin and soaked her shirt.

  Oh God.

  But her eyes, they were open wide, her chocolate gaze filled with all her trust.

  “Jacie . . . I’s need you. My mouf hurts.” She said it in that little drawl of hers, her voice scared but strong.

  Relief hit me, harder than that fucking car, and I tried to keep my cool. To keep it together and not break down in a fucking heap of tears that would be nothing but relief.

  I needed to be strong. For them.

  Possession spun a web around me.

  My heart and my soul.

  It took every ounce of control I had not to pull her from her car seat, every warning I’d ever been given about never moving someone in a crash up against the all-consuming need to wrap the little girl up.

  Hold her.

  “You’ve got me, Unicorn Girl. You’ve got me.”

  And I wasn’t about to let her go.

  I eased back out and pulled Faith closer, praying my voice would break through her fear. “She’s okay, baby. She’s okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  It was the brutal fucking truth.

  I could hear the sirens strike up from the fire station just two streets over, the whir of them coming closer and closer.

  I just stood there, a rock between my girls while we waited, an arm around Faith’s waist and my hand holding Bailey’s tiny one.

  A cruiser flew up the street and skidded to a stop at the intersection. The officer stepped out, eyes quick to assess the situation.

  Two seconds later, an ambulance came to a stop beside him. Paramedics piled out, their heavy footsteps pounding on the pavement.

  Was it fucked up I didn’t want to let go when they approached? That I wanted to stand in front of them?

  A shield.

  A guard.

  But I relented, feeling as if a physical piece of me was being pried away. Four paramedics enclosed the space.

  I didn’t go far. Hovering right there, my feet pacing, my body unable to sit still as my insides began to boil.

  As anger grew.

  As retaliation became a living, thriving being that beat through my blood.

  It only amplified when I thought of the possibility that Bailey had been hurt worse than she appeared, when she cried out when they cut her free from the seat, when Faith quietly wept at her side.

  My spirit trembled and hate screamed.

  A paramedic touched my arm, jerking me out of my frantic thoughts. “Sir . . . we need to take a look at that cut on your head.”

  “I’m fine,” I growled at him.

  The guy had the nerve to grin. “Don’t look so fine to me. You’re gonna need a couple of stitches, and we need to check for a concussion.”

  Shit.

  The last thing I wanted was to worry about myself.

  But I let him sit me on the curb, his gloved fingers poking and prodding, a light shined into my eyes.

  During the exam, there was no missing the eyes of the officer penetrating me. Clearly, he had been calculating the disaster.

  Coming to realization that nothing was right.

  This wasn’t an accident.

  It was an attack.

  His shadow fell over me as the paramedic dabbed a cotton ball on my cut.

  I winced. Took that sting and buried it with the bitterness that was building into something that should be impossible.

  So intense that I could taste the bitterness of it on my tongue.

  My stomach nothing but fists and knots of aggression as violence replaced the blood in my veins.

  I knew these people were disgusting.

  Out for themselves.

  Money the almighty end.

  Nothing else mattering but lining their pockets and protecting themselves from the consequences of their corruption.

  I’d just not expected the depravity. The type of wickedness they could sink to.

  The officer stepped forward, and I looked up at him. “I need you to call Mack Chambers. Get someone here to get what evidence they can. This was intentional.”

  Premeditated.
r />   A warning I wasn’t going to leave unanswered.

  * * *

  “I can’t believe this fucking bullshit. Right in our town? In broad fucking daylight? No different from with Joseph. Like they can’t be fucking touched.”

  Mack ranted outside of the emergency room door where I silently raged.

  I’d just had a line of stitches placed in my head, but it was my guts that were raw and bleeding.

  Faith was with Bailey, who was having additional scans done to make sure she didn’t have any hidden injuries, covering all the bases.

  As far as they could tell, her only injury was a cut to her lip, which accounted for the blood on her shirt.

  Faith had been unharmed other than the damage that was steadily being done to her psyche. These bastards wearing her down. Carving her out. Looking for something that wasn’t even there.

  Her parents had rushed over as soon as they’d heard, terrified, her father’s jaw clenched shut. I wasn’t sure what to expect when he’d approached me, my insides lined with steel as I’d prepared for his anger.

  But he’d reached out, squeezed my shoulder, unable to say anything, only giving me that silent show of gratitude before he’d turned and disappeared into Bailey’s room.

  If only I could have done more. Ended it this afternoon. Helplessness spun through the space, and I tried to blink away the blinding torment and vengeance possessing me.

  Mack had shown up looking every bit the deviant I felt. His anger as deep as mine. The venomous tattoos that screamed death and destruction on his arms coming alive beneath the bristle of his straining muscles.

  All my screaming was on the inside. Spirit exploding with fury. Soul shaking with the wrath it pumped into my veins.

  I gritted my teeth, doing my best not to lose it right there in the quiet hall. “They fucking rammed us twice, man. It was no accident. Wasn’t even close to being a simple hit and run. It was them. I know it.”

  “No shit.” He gripped the longer pieces of his blond hair between both hands. If he tugged any harder, he would have yanked it free.

  He dropped his attention to the white-and-gray speckled linoleum floor, like he was reading some hidden message written in the design. “It has to be . . . some kind of fucked-up warning. Otherwise, they would have stayed and finished it.”

  Finished it.

  His words cut through me.

  Daggers and knives.

  My back hit the wall, and my head rocked back hard in my frustration. A fresh round of pain splintered through my head when it knocked against the plaster.

  I welcomed it.

  Let it stoke the fire.

  “They could have been hurt. Killed.” Grit and hate. They seethed from my tongue.

  Mack swung his attention back up to me. “You sure you didn’t get a good look at them? Anything that I can go on?”

  I gave a harsh shake of my head. “Could barely make out two guys. Nothing of their faces. Didn’t get the license, either, but the front of the car was smashed to shit. Not sure how they even drove away.”

  Frustrated, he pushed out a sigh, warily looking up at me in his own sort of desperation. “They found it abandoned about a mile outside of town. Wiped clean. It had been reported stolen this morning from Raleigh. Wouldn’t have mattered if you caught the license, anyway.”

  “Shit,” I cursed at the floor.

  His voice was a harsh murmur, “These guys aren’t fucking immortal. They can’t just disappear. There has to be something. Something I’m missing.”

  Didn’t help that the only name I had been able to give Mack had come up as a dead end.

  Steven in the ground a few months before Joseph had been killed. Not that I was mourning that piece of shit.

  The monster who’d started the entire chain of events.

  Forcing me into running that poison for him.

  Nothing but a slave.

  Shackled.

  Every bit as real as the bars I’d found myself behind.

  Mack angled his head so he could meet my eye. “I’m going to find these assholes, Jace. I will. I promise you.”

  I lifted my chin. “I sure has hell hope so, Mack . . . because you aren’t going to like it if I find them first.”

  I wound around him, and he snatched me by the wrist. “Jace, didn’t confide all of this to you to get you hurt.”

  Yanking my arm out of his hold, I backed away. “You should know me better than to think I wouldn’t gladly die for them.”

  Spinning on my heel, I started down the hall, faltering to a stop when Mack’s grated words hit me from behind. “They killed Joseph, man. Put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.”

  His voice was jagged. Cracked and bleeding. His own regret filling the narrow hall. A plea for me to think twice. “I couldn’t stand it if I let that happen to you.”

  I swung back around, my brow twisting so tight I could barely see.

  Couldn’t see through the hate.

  The devotion.

  The protectiveness that wound inside me.

  “You, Mack? You didn’t let that happen. I did. Don’t think for a second I’m going to stand aside and let it happen to Faith and Bailey.”

  My heart thrashed in my chest. Like it had teeth and claws. Looking for a way out to avenge.

  His attention dropped to his boots. “No, I don’t. It’s just . . .” He lifted his gaze. “You have to tell her everything. What he did. What he had himself into.”

  “I know.” I took another step back, drawn to the door Bailey was behind. I gulped for the nonexistent air. “I will . . . I promise.”

  The selfish part of me wasn’t ready for this. Because I could feel it coming—everything I’d been a fool to think I might be able to keep slipping through my fingers.

  My hands fisted.

  Tightly.

  Because I refused to let go.

  Thirty-Two

  Jace

  Eighteen Years Old

  Jace did his best to ignore the way Joseph and Ian had stopped talking the second he’d come out into the living room.

  He was already on edge.

  Watching over his goddamn shoulder.

  Fighting the misery of what he’d become.

  The last thing he wanted was for either of them to know what he’d succumbed to, and he sure as hell didn’t want them to know he’d done it for them.

  Most of all, he hoped to God they wouldn’t do something stupid.

  Go behind his back and get deeper into that sort of sordid trouble.

  Steven, that cock-sucking lowlife, had been lurking. Spending more and more time at the trailer.

  Jace doubted it had much to do with the allure of his trashed-out mother.

  He always worried that they’d slip into the lifestyle they’d been bred into. He knew it was so much easier than fighting it every step of the way. He could only pray that they got that fighting was worth it.

  He dropped his backpack to the ground at the door, glaring at it like it held some of the culpability. Doing this?

  Yielding?

  It was his own form of fighting.

  “Where you been, Jace?” Joseph called, something sour in his tone.

  God, Joseph was pissing him off more and more.

  Ian laughed. “He was probably off getting himself a fine piece of ass. Pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

  Jace tried to control his temper.

  Hating the way it constantly flared.

  The way he was constantly on edge.

  He looked at them where they sat on the couch watching a movie. “I was out.”

  He sure as hell wasn’t gonna let on where he’d been.

  “To see Faith?” Ian goaded, grinning wide. “You lucky bastard.”

  Jace shook his head. “She’s not a joke.”

  “But she is hot.”

  Joseph glared daggers at Ian and then turned them on Jace. Angry in a way Jace hadn’t ever seen him before. He had no idea what his problem was lately.


  Joseph climbed to his feet and headed for the door. Jace swiveled around as Joseph jerked it open. “Where are you going?”

  “Out.” Joseph tossed out the same excuse Jace had just given them. Jace knew that was exactly what it was. A cover for something.

  Worry sloshed with the anger, like two rivers coming together and forming white-water rapids.

  “Where?” he demanded, taking a step in Joseph’s direction.

  An incredulous smirk twisted Joseph’s mouth into something defiant. “You don’t have a say in what I do, Jace.”

  Panic surged, and Jace had him against the wall again. “Stay away from Steven. I already warned you.”

  Joseph pushed Jace back.

  As hard as he could.

  Jace barely stumbled, glaring Joseph down, ready to fight the insolence out of him if that’s what it took.

  “You want to fight, Jace? Bring it on. I’m finished listening to you . . . spouting all your holier-than-thou bullshit while you’re off having all the fun.”

  Scornful laughter rocked from Jace. “All the fun? That’s what you think? That I’m off, having fun?”

  The time of his fucking life.

  Yeah, right.

  Joseph didn’t have the first clue what Jace had done for him. What he was still doing for him. The sacrifices he’d made.

  Jace pointed behind him. “Now get your ass back on that couch. I need to take a shower and meet Faith. When I get back, I expect you to be sitting right there.”

  Bitterness bled from the snort Joseph emitted. “That’s what I thought.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Jace rushed back out to the small living room.

  He was running late.

  Quickly, he shoved the blanket he’d washed and folded into his backpack, looking back at Ian and Joseph who were again sitting on the couch behind him.

  “I’ll be back in a few hours.” He stood, slinging the backpack onto his shoulder, and pointed between the two of them. “Don’t either of you go anywhere.”

  Ian mock-saluted him. “Aye-aye, Captain.”

  Joseph just rolled his eyes, and Jace slipped out into the night.

  Tonight, the moon was high and full. Washing the leaves and the ground in a milky spray, a breeze blowing through from the ocean filling his nostrils with the scent of the sea and the summer.