All in all, he wasn’t worried. Frank Conti hadn’t moved and he was the big shark to watch.
No doubt, by the morning this thing with the boyfriend would have blown over. Brett Trachten would be caught. Greg would come for Christina and they’d all be sprung from this trap.
The moon was big, bright and so far away—a million miles. The same moon he’d watched from his bedroom window as a kid. The same moon he’d watched through bars at Wilhelm.
He unlocked the front door and slid soundlessly into the dark living room. From her spot by the window Daisy lifted her head and growled, low in her throat.
“Hiya, girl,” he murmured and she stood, gave her big body a shake, then came over to lick his hand.
It took J.D. a moment to see Sam sitting at the kitchen table, watching him.
Waiting for him.
“Hi,” J.D. said, feeling his chest grow cold under her icy gaze.
“Hello.” She managed to be cordial but J.D. heard the emotion under the veneer of politeness. She wanted to kick his ass. The anger that simmered in his blood leaped in response.
“Where have you been?” She took a sip from the mug in her hands, as if it were just a casual question.
He leaned against the door frame, ready to give her the fight she seemed prepped for. “Well, Sam, I didn’t think you cared.”
“Spencer asked about you all day,” she said and part of his self-righteous anger popped and he sagged slightly against the wall. “You told him you were his father and then you left.”
“There were some things I had to take care of.” Even as the words came out of his mouth he was painfully aware of how lame they sounded. “Important things.”
“Really?” she asked, sarcasm like razor wire from her mouth. “More important than Spence?”
There was nothing he could say. He had no defense. He’d hid most of the day because he was scared. The phone call from Greg was an excuse. A weak one. Because the boyfriend wasn’t a real threat.
What was real was the regret that he’d told Spencer anything. That he’d stayed in that kitchen this morning when he knew he should have left. Now the boy would want something from him he didn’t have to give. That he’d never had to give.
The same things Sam wanted and he’d never been able to give her.
“Why did you tell him? If you feel this way?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business, Sam.”
“Not my business?” she cried. “I spent the whole day cleaning up your mess, J.D. The kid was heartbroken wondering why you’d leave like that.”
Walk away, he urged himself. Don’t get into this fight. You can’t win it. But the caution was useless. He was riveted to the floor, drilled by the look in her eye. Stupidly, foolishly, he tried to redeem himself.
“My buddy with the FBI called,” he said and Sam sucked in a deep breath, her anger turning suddenly to a fear so profound he could feel it. “The boyfriend didn’t go in last night. He’s on the run.”
“What does this mean?” she whispered.
“They think he’s on the way here.”
“Here?” Sam asked. “What are we supposed to do?”
“We wait.”
“For?”
J.D. shrugged. “The boyfriend to join the party, I guess.”
“Are you being cavalier in an effort to comfort me or piss me off?”
He forced himself not to smile. “Comfort you,” he said. “The FBI is looking for him. I’ve got some guys looking for him. I’m here. Nothing can happen. Besides, he’s not the one we need to be scared of. According to Greg, Christina and the boyfriend are very close. He loves her. He won’t hurt her.”
“Should we send Spence away?” she asked. “He’s supposed to stay here for four days while Jennifer gets back to her job.” He could tell she was beginning to spin. “We can tell Deb to stay away for a few days. We could call Jennifer and send—”
He touched her arm. A shocking spark of electricity blew up between them and she shut her mouth so hard her teeth clicked. He pulled away, clenching his hands.
“No,” he said. Why couldn’t anything be easy, he wondered. Just one damn thing. He simply wanted to do his job and leave. “I don’t think we need to send him away.”
“J.D.,” she whispered, “what is going on?”
“Nothing we can’t handle,” he told her. “No one is going to hurt anyone. He’s just a kid and he’s looking for his girlfriend. It’s not a big deal.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist and watched him with liquid eyes.
“Sam, I’m serious. It’s not—”
“I trust you,” she said and the air emptied from his lungs. “I can’t believe it. I want to beat some sense into myself, but after everything you’ve done to me I still trust you. There’s something wrong with me. There’s been something wrong with me since the moment I met you.”
It was a slap across the face, a punch in the gut. Not even her admission of trust could take away the sting. She trusted him, but she didn’t want to.
He caught sight of his sleeping bag by the table. “I guess I’ve been moved,” he said and stepped around Sam to retrieve it. To get away from her.
“Spencer is on the couch upstairs. You can have room two. The door is open.”
This was for the best, he thought. Being up in that apartment with her was like ripping off his skin.
“Why did you tell him?” she asked again.
He paused in the doorway, knowing exactly what she was talking about. The question had run him in circles all day. And he didn’t have an answer so he didn’t give her one.
“Yesterday you wanted nothing to do with him,” she persisted, despite his silence. “And now you’ve told him. So why—” She cut herself off. “Forget it,” she said, disgust so ripe in her voice the room smelled of it. “I’m so sick of pulling answers from you. You’ll either tell me or you won’t.”
He couldn’t say anything and she threw her hands in the air. “Have it your way, J.D. If your life is so damn better all by yourself, be my guest.”
He didn’t know what she wanted from him. Did she need to hear that he had no freaking clue how to handle this situation? Wasn’t that pathetically obvious? Couldn’t she see that he was an emotional idiot? Why did she need it spelled out?
She practically threw her coffee mug into the dishwasher, slamming the door so hard the kitchen windows rattled.
“What do you want from me?” he asked as she stomped across the kitchen. Screw trying to guess. Screw always being wrong. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, or supposed to do. If she had an expectation, she could damn well share it.
“I don’t want anything from you, J.D.,” she said, her chin up, her chest out, her gaze nowhere near his.
He laughed, he couldn’t help it. The woman was a terrible liar. Despite the anger, despite the lies, she wanted him so much he could practically taste it. It was there, it was always there. Under her pride, her anger and confusion was her desire for him. Her want and need for him that lived in her like an eternal spring.
And he knew it was there because his want and desire and need for her lived in him, too. A multiheaded monster he couldn’t control. And right now, with so much between them, the monster wanted free rein.
“That’s not true and you know it,” he told her, happy to rock her off that high horse she was perched on. She wasn’t perfect. She hadn’t handled things right, either. And even though she thought something was wrong with her, given the chance she’d let him right back into her bed.
“It was only sex, J.D.,” she sneered, throwing his words in his face. “Remember?”
It had been so much more to him, his time with Sam. It had been a glimpse of something clean. Good. It had been a sanctuary, untouchable, utterly removed from his life.
And her throwing around those words pretending she didn’t care pissed him off. The same it had pissed her off when he’d done.
“I’m not talking abo
ut sex, Sam. You wanted something from me every single time I walked in the door.”
“No,” she breathed. “I never expected more—”
“Cut the crap.” He leaned across the table toward her, ready to pull out the big guns and reduce her to his same mess. “You wanted me to be your white knight. You wanted me to save you from the way you’ve been throwing your life into this shelter. You wanted me to be a reason to—”
“Stop it, J.D.”
“You wanted to love me.” He kept digging at this sore spot he’d known about since the first moment he met her. “And you wanted me to love you.”
She breathed hard through her nose and he wondered if she was going to slap him. God, he wished she would. Just so it would give him a reason to put his hands on her again.
“You might be right,” she finally whispered. “But if I felt something for anyone, it was the man I thought you were. I don’t care about you, Jakos. But you owe Spence something. An apology. Something. He’s just a kid, J.D. He doesn’t understand.” Her righteousness and integrity were a magnet that refused to let go of him. So he stood there feeling the pulse of her anger join his, beating hard in his gut. “I don’t under-stand what’s wrong in that head of yours, but listen. If you are going to treat Spence this way—letting him in and shutting him out the next minute—then leave right now. Just walk out. I can handle Christina and her father. But I can’t handle you hurting that boy anymore because you’re such a mess.”
She was right. She was more than right. Those words were the same ones that had been running on an endless loop in his head. And once again he didn’t have an answer. She acted as if it was so easy to let that kid in.
But that was because, for her, it was.
Not that she’d know, not that he’d ever given her a chance to know, but for him, letting that kid hang around was like dragging his father out of the grave.
Every fear he’d had of turning into the old man was back, haunting him, making him crazy.
I want her to know.
The thought was a quick-acting poison ceasing all lung function.
More times than he could count over the past ten years he had lain in bed with her, watching her sleep, and he’d been so close to telling her. Seconds away from waking her up and spilling all of it, so he could finally be free. Could finally have her or lose her one way or another. Without the lies and secrets.
“I’m scared,” he said and they both jerked as if a gun had gone off. He stood at the edge of a cliff, balanced on nothing, a vast, terrible, scary emptiness all around him.
“Of what?” she asked. “Spencer? J.D., he’s just a kid, he doesn’t want anything—”
“I’m not scared of Spencer.” Adrenaline screamed through his system, every instinct demanding he leave. Demanding he keep his stupid mouth shut.
“Then what?” she asked, kindness a thin thread through her voice.
Ah, God, this was the woman he cared for. Caring and compassionate, strong and resilient.
She was a bright light against the blackness that sucked at him.
And that’s why he’d never told her. He’d never wanted that blackness to get near her.
“J.D.?”
“I’m scared he’ll be like me,” he said. The words escaped from his gut, making him light-headed. The world seemed to stop. Sam didn’t seem to be breathing. He sure as hell wasn’t. “I’m scared he’ll be like me, like my father—”
“Your father?” she asked, her voice trembling. He wanted to touch her. He wanted to be held by her and become everything she used to believe he was. The white knight crap. All of it.
But it was never going to happen. He was nobody’s white knight. He was a killer, born of killers.
J.D. looked at her face and couldn’t believe he’d ever touched her, that she’d let him.
All around him things were breaking. Lines that he’d told himself he’d never cross were being washed away and without them, he didn’t know where he was. Who he was.
“We’re not—” he took a deep breath “—good men.”
“J.D., you’re beginning to freak me out.”
“I didn’t tell you my name because you can find me on the Internet. One Google search and you’ll know all about Jakos Diavoletes Kronos and then—” What the hell was he doing? He couldn’t go back from this.
“What?” She was somehow closer than she’d been just a second ago. “What would I find out?”
“My dad was a thug. A gun for hire. Mostly for the mob.”
“The mob?” There was a buried question in that question and he shook his head.
“Not for Francis Conti, though Frank would know my dad. He’d know me.”
“How?”
“Do the search,” he said. “I was all over the East Coast papers twenty years ago.”
“Why don’t you just tell me?” she said, her voice so measured and calm, he felt some of the panic gripping him ease. “Instead of playing whatever game it is you’re playing.”
Oh, God, if this were only a game. But he was here. Finally. After ten years of circling this spot he was right at his crossroads. He looked at her face and found the strength to put it all on the table.
“My dad drank. A lot. And he wasn’t a happy drunk. My mom left when I was nine, she took my sister and probably a couple of broken ribs one night. So then it was just Dad and me and the booze.”
“Oh, no.” Her voice trembled and he knew she’d seen enough to know what his childhood had been like.
“I don’t want your pity.” He bit the words out. “I’m telling you so you can finally stop expecting more from me. So you can finally understand that having that kid around me is a bad idea.”
“You’re not like your father,” Sam said, getting right to the point. “You’re worried that Spence will be like you and your father and he can’t be because you’re not like your father.”
“You don’t know that.” It wasn’t a denial. It was simple truth. She had no clue, because he’d lied to her from day one. He was exactly like his father and if it hadn’t been for Uncle Milo, he’d probably be in jail right along with him.
“I do,” she said. “You can give me the wrong name and lie to me, but you can’t hide who you are. Not at the core—”
“Sam, when I was fifteen, I beat my dad’s head in with a baseball bat.”
She gasped, swallowed air as though she was drowning and raised a trembling hand to her mouth.
His entire body buzzed with adrenaline and the urge to run was like a freight train down his spine. But he forced himself to stand his ground, to keep looking right into her eyes. To see the horror.
“You were just a kid,” she breathed.
“Hardly.” He laughed. He’d stopped being a kid the night his mom left him behind. “I was a man, Sam. Had been for a number of years.”
“It was self-defense, wasn’t it?” she asked, clearly reaching for straws. “I mean, he was drunk, right? Abusive?”
“That would make you more comfortable, wouldn’t it? It would make the way you still feel about me tolerable. Make it okay for me to be around that boy upstairs.”
She nodded, her lips bloodless in the moonlight.
Taking a chance, he reached out and touched her, stroked her arm, held her cold hand for the very last time.
“He was drunk. He was abusive,” he said.
She sighed with relief and he dropped her hand.
Bye, Sam.
“But it wasn’t self-defense. It was premeditated and it would have been murder if the damn bat hadn’t slipped out of my hands.”
“No.” She groaned, her throat working, and he could taste the bile burning in his own throat.
Her breath came in ragged gasps and she backed away, bumping into a chair, putting distance between herself and him.
This was right. The way it should be. A woman like Sam, always looking out for people, should back away from him with horror in her eyes. He should disgust her. Terrify her.
&n
bsp; He was, after all, his father’s son.
“Three months after putting my dad in the hospital, I was arrested for aggravated assault. I was collecting money for Francis Conti.”
Sam reeled backward, her face white with shock. “You worked for Conti?”
“My first job,” he said. “Luckily, I got arrested or I’d probably still be working for the man.
“So,” he said, his voice mocking. The longer she didn’t look at him, the more he hated himself. “You can see my reluctance to welcome the boy into the family. The legacy should have ended with me.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but no words came out. Tears welled up in those eyes and fell down her cheeks, but still she said nothing. Her lips trembled, her throat bobbed and any moment he expected her to point at the door and tell him to go.
But she didn’t.
“J.D., you were a kid. A boy defending himself against his father. The courts—”
“Sam!” he nearly yelled. “I kept a bat under my bed for three months. I waited for him to come after me. I planned it. And then I beat a man up for money, Sam. A man I didn’t know. A man who’d done nothing to me. I stepped right into my father’s shoes. That’s what I am.”
She shook her head, blinking rapidly as if she didn’t understand. “That’s not true, J.D.” She reached for him and he slapped her hands away, appalled.
J.D. panted through the pain. He felt sliced in half, like his guts were outside his body, flinching and cringing from exposure.
But now, at least, he was free. He could stop torturing himself with the fairy tale of life with Sam. Or Spence. J.D., the man he’d been at Serenity, was burned to ash.
He was never going to be anyone other than who he was. The only thing that had changed was that now Sam knew it, too, even though she seemed bent on pretending.
“What is wrong with you?” he said. “You should be kicking me out. You should be protecting that boy from me.”
“You were a kid,” she said, stepping toward him. “Someone should have been protecting you. What happened when you got out of jail?”
“My uncle Milo picked me up, gave me a job working for him.”
“Doing what?”
“He was a private investigator.”
The Story Of Us: A Secret Baby Romance (Serenity House Book 1) Page 12