Fatal Response

by Jodie Bailey

  Then it had vanished.

  Erin squeezed her fist around the gloves, desperate to feel something. “What happened to us?” Her teeth dug into her tongue. Those words were not supposed to be out loud.

  Maybe he hadn’t heard her.

  Oh, he had. Everything about him stilled before he spoke, his voice as soft as hers. “I guess...” He inhaled deeply and stared at the old red plaid couch, the lines around his mouth tight. “I guess when the foundation is weak it doesn’t take much to knock the whole house down.”

  “You’re right. We got married too young. Maybe if we’d waited...” The misery was as fresh as it had been the day he’d packed his bags and left without her. “Or I should have gone with you.” She’d never said those words out loud, hadn’t even dared to think it. She’d spent years blaming him for skipping out when he knew her father needed her, but maybe it had been the wrong call, choosing her father over her husband.

  He chuckled, but the sound was bitter. “Or maybe I should have been less insecure.”

  Whoa. Of all the things she’d expected him to say, this wasn’t one of them. “You? I can’t remember you being insecure a moment in your life.”

  Stretching his legs in front of him, Jason dropped his hands to his thighs. “At first, I got why you couldn’t tell your dad we were married. There was no doubt it could end badly, and I couldn’t be responsible for something happening to him. But as the months passed...” He shrugged as though whatever came next wasn’t important.

  But it was. Because this was what they’d never had. The truth. An honest discussion. Everything had simply...ended.

  Erin turned to him, legs crossed, her knee brushing his hip, hardly able to keep from grabbing his arm to force him to keep talking. “Don’t shut down on me. I need to know. I need to be able to...” To find closure? To shut the door on them once and for all? Because even if she admitted she still loved this man beside her, the circumstances hadn’t changed. Her father still hated Jason, and he needed her more than ever as the years piled on him.

  Jason stared at the toes of his hiking boots. “Eventually it started to feel like you were no better than my parents.”

  The words hit Erin in the chest so hard she gasped. “What?” It was an exhalation, a barely there exclamation which held all of her shock.

  His eyes had taken on a faraway look, as though he was talking without realizing she was beside him. “We were married. We were supposed to be family, but I was in the ridiculous position of living a double life. We had this amazing private world where we were everything to each other, but that world could never be in the open. I couldn’t hold your hand in public in case someone told your father. I couldn’t let anyone find out I’d married the most amazing woman in the world.” His voice was husky, deep and fraught with an emotion Erin could almost feel. “It started to feel like it wasn’t about your dad at all, but maybe you didn’t want anybody to know. Maybe you were ashamed of me, and I wasn’t good enough. Maybe I was the same kid who couldn’t even get his parents to care, let alone the woman he loved.”

  Her heart tore. To think she’d made him feel that way, had wounded the man who’d never done anything other than love her. “Jase...” Erin breathed his name, held a hand out to him, then realized she still held oil-stained gloves. Wiping her hands on her jeans, she rested her fingers on his chin, turning his face toward her, and laid her palms against his cheeks, desperate to make him see. “Jase, no. I hated it. I never knew.” Her thumb stroked the rough stubble at the corner of his lips. “I never knew you... I mean...” His eyes caught hers and all of the words died. His gaze held the same emotion it had held the first time he kissed her.

  Before she could stop herself, she met him halfway, their lips brushing softly. She started to pull away but his hands slid up her arms, along her neck, into her hair, drawing her closer. He deepened the kiss and she responded like he was fresh air after exiting a smoke-filled house. Like he was everything she remembered and so much more. He was the man who’d always cared for her. The man who’d made her believe she could be anything she wanted to be.

  He was her safe place.

  * * *

  He was lost. Gone. Finished.

  All there was in the world was Erin. Time folded onto itself as though they’d never been apart. Nothing had changed. His heart shifted into those places deep inside where he’d never truly been able to shake her.

  Her kiss still had the ability to turn his world completely sideways, driving away everything that had come before her or that would come after her.

  Almost.

  The tiniest alarm fired off in the back of his brain. He couldn’t do this. He shouldn’t do this. She was still tied to her father.

  And Jason had brought danger to her doorstep in a way he’d never imagined he could.

  By sheer willpower, he broke the kiss and slipped his hands from her hair, allowing himself one last sweep of his thumb across her lips as he watched her brown eyes and prepared to break both of their hearts. Before she could react, he jumped to his feet and paced away from her, staring at the blank white wall, trying to get his pulse back to where it ought to be, trying to erase the heat of her lips from his.

  Behind him, Erin’s breathing sounded as ragged as his did. If he turned toward her before he fully took control of his emotions, he’d be on his knees beside her, kissing her again like no time had passed since the last time their lips had touched a lifetime ago.

  What had he done?

  More important, how did he undo it?

  He swept his hand back through his hair and wished there was a way to reverse the past two minutes.

  The problem was he didn’t want to.

  “Jason.” Erin’s voice behind him was low and determined. “I’m sorry.”

  He closed his eyes against the pain in her voice. “No. This was all me. I knew better than to come here. I could have trusted Wyatt to keep an eye on you, could have called you, but—” He waved a hand and sliced off the next part of his confession. But I couldn’t stay away from you.

  This room was a lost space out of time. It looked and smelled the same as it always had. Even her easel still sat in the center of the room, the painting of the run-down house she’d always had a soft spot for still resting there, exactly the way it had been the last time he saw it. This place was a museum of their past, and he’d marched right in knowing full well what it would do to both of them.

  No, she shouldn’t blame herself when he was the one who’d lit the match and played with fire.

  “It’s not that. I’m sorry you felt that way. I never knew.” There was a rustle behind him. She’d stood, although he could tell from the sound she kept her distance. “I never considered how you felt. It was selfish of me. And if I could go back and do it over—”

  “You’d still choose your father over me.” He hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but there they were. The truth. The words that had cut him into pieces but he’d never spoken to anyone.

  Erin gasped, but Jason kept talking, the dam breached. “It’s not a choice you should have ever been forced into making. It’s not a choice any daughter or wife should be forced into making.”

  Jason faced her, and when he did, he wished he hadn’t. She looked stricken, as though he’d accused her of some horrible crime. In the grand scheme of things, maybe he had. Because he’d been laying all of the responsibility for the dissolution of their marriage at her feet, and for the first time, standing in front of her, he realized it was wrong. It took two people to build a marriage and two to destroy it.

  He’d been wallowing in self-pity for so long, blaming his parents, Erin, her father for all of his troubles...

  Yes, he was more of the problem than he’d wanted to admit. If he’d been a bigger man all those years ago, he would have insisted she tell her father. Would have stood by her and supported her no matter wh
at the fallout. He’d known all along how Kevin Taylor held sway over his daughter, had talked to Wyatt more than once about it.

  But he’d been selfish then, had never tried to rescue her for her own good. He’d merely worried about his own reputation, his own pain, growing increasingly resentful as the months passed.

  Jason turned his face to the ceiling, where cobwebs clung to the exposed rafters. They were like the ones that had cluttered his thinking for years. It was as though a sudden wind blew them away and showed him his own self-centered soul.

  He couldn’t let her take the blame any longer. “Making it about you was wrong. I’m sorry.” It almost hurt to say the words, they’d been buried under his own landfill of trash for so long. “I made it sound like everything was your fault.”

  “Maybe it was.” She waved her hands in front of her as though she could clear the air between them. “It’s ancient history. Over and done. There’s no reason to discuss it. What happened...” She flicked her gaze to where they’d been sitting moments earlier, her expression heavy with the kind of sadness he’d sacrifice his right arm to take away. “It shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have kissed you. I shouldn’t have let myself get carried away by memories, because they aren’t the present. And you’re right. I’d have still chosen my father over you because you can take care of yourself. He can’t. You have your health. I wrecked his. He’s my responsibility. Mine alone. I forgot that when I married you.”

  The bald confession cut Jason so deep he winced. Sure, he’d said it first, but hearing it come from her mouth... It was the ultimate rejection.

  And to hear her say, out loud, she still bore the guilt of her father’s stroke...

  Anger. Her pain fueled anger that threatened to force Jason into a showdown with Kevin Taylor. Because nobody... Nobody got to treat the woman he loved like she was worthless.

  The realization stopped his thoughts cold and left him staring at Erin, his muscles going slack. He still loved her. This drive to protect her wasn’t about guilt; it was about them. If a murderer took her away from him, it would wreck him. She was still the one who held his heart. Had always been the one to hold his heart.

  Erin’s head tilted to one side, and one eyebrow lifted. “Jason?”

  He had no idea what to say. If he confessed, would she listen? After all, she’d kissed him, but then she’d taken it all back as quickly as she’d done it. She’d confessed her father came before him and would always come first. Whether or not she ever loved him again, he had to get her out of the house, away from a man who was slowly destroying the essence of who she was created to be.

  Behind him, footsteps clomped on the stairs. Jason turned toward the sound, prepared to defend Erin, but it was Wyatt who came into the room, his cell phone still in his hand.

  Jason’s shoulders sank. There wouldn’t be any more discussion. It was for the best, because if he opened his mouth, all of the wrong things would probably slip out.

  After one last unspoken question, Erin turned her back on Jason and focused on her cousin.

  Wyatt stopped halfway across the huge room, his gaze bouncing from Jason to Erin. He had to sense the tension in the air. It was thick enough, alive enough, to start talking all by itself.

  But when his eyes came back to Jason, it wasn’t confusion or question sparking there.

  It was pity, with a hardness around the edges that spoke of anger.

  Jason’s defenses immediately rose. Had Wyatt heard part of the conversation? Was he here to escort Jason out once and for all, to choose family over friendship, even if family’s ideas were so twisted they’d dragged Erin into a stinking swamp to drown her in muck-covered guilt?

  He started to take the offensive but bit the words back before they could leap off his tongue. His training had taught him not to move on assumptions. He’d wait, let Wyatt say his piece, gather his intel and mount a defense from there.

  Wyatt turned his full attention to Jason. “The phone call I got? It wasn’t about the Overton Road incident.”

  Time froze. Just like the instant before Lisa Fitzgerald told him Crystal Palmer was dead, Jason could sense it coming. Another blow. More bad news.

  Erin heard it too. She slid around the easel and moved to stand slightly behind Jason’s right shoulder, the warmth of her presence infusing him with the strength to stand.

  He swallowed hard. “Who is it?”

  Wyatt exhaled loudly and stared at his phone. “Wilkes County fielded a call to an apartment complex near the base. Female in her midtwenties, went for a run, came home and suffered cardiac arrest. Her fiancé found her.”

  Fiancé.

  The only engaged guy on the team was Rich.

  Oh no. No. He was closer to Rich than to any of the other men. They’d trained together the longest, had split the cost of housing when they’d had to live off post, had been the token single guys all of the wives took in and fed... Until Rich met Amber Ransom and his whole world changed.

  Amber couldn’t be dead. They’d celebrated the engagement the night of Angie’s murder and Crystal’s death. Rich was so gone over Amber, so in love, so full of the kind of dreams Jason himself had once had... He couldn’t imagine how Rich must feel.

  But then Erin gasped behind Jason and he knew exactly how Rich’s life was shattering.

  He wavered and reached for the easel to regain his balance.

  Erin’s arm slipped around his waist and she moved in front of him, pulling his head close to hers, her cheek resting against his. Their argument was meaningless in the face of this new onslaught of pain. “It’s okay. You’ve got this.”

  But he didn’t. He didn’t have any of it. And Erin could very soon pay the ultimate price.

  THIRTEEN

  Erin dropped the frozen chicken-and-veggie dinner onto the counter and stared at the package. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast but, to be honest, she wasn’t hungry and a frozen dinner held zero appeal. Pulling the freezer drawer open with her foot, she shoved the dinner back in, then leaned against the fridge. She crossed her arms and rubbed her biceps through her heavy Appalachian State sweatshirt. A relic from a happier time, it had always brought her comfort.

  The house was too quiet, leaving too much room for thought. Erin was almost never home at night. Her hours at the fire station were designed to keep her close to her father during his waking hours. And she was definitely never home alone.

  An empty house was either freeing or frightening. Wyatt was outside, watching the house, walking the perimeter. She’d needed a break from the constant supervision, but her cousin wouldn’t go far.

  On top of the refrigerator, the Ruger revolver Jason had given to her years ago rested. This afternoon, she’d slipped it from the glove compartment in the Bronco, cleaned it and loaded it. Even with her personal “bodyguards,” something in her needed to be able to protect herself. The possibility of having to fire the thing at anything other than a target nearly buckled her knees, but the fact it was within reach gave her some measure of comfort. She could defend herself from an intruder if forced.

  Too bad she couldn’t defend herself from her own thoughts.

  That kiss...

  It had been the most natural thing in the world. The most right thing she’d done in years. There was no denying it now, not since she’d let herself go and allowed herself to feel.

  Jason Barnes still had the ability to tug at her heart. The longer she was around him, the stronger the pull toward him came. The longing to fall back into what they used to be to one another was as overpowering as the fear of an unknown assailant.

  And there was nothing to be done about it, because everything that had driven them apart eight years ago still stood between them.

  Wyatt and Erin had convinced him to go to Rich. He’d needed to be with his team, to grieve. He’d fought them every inch, until Wyatt insisted he would take t
he night off and wouldn’t leave Erin unguarded.

  After the things Jason and she said to each other, Erin was certain he wouldn’t want her company anyway. In all the years they’d been together and apart, she’d never once considered how their secret had affected him, the weight he must have carried. How must he have felt every time she’d had to turn away from him in public?

  Dear Lord...

  She wanted to ask for forgiveness, to beg God to heal Jason’s broken places, but the thought of his pain cut her heart in two and twisted the pieces in her chest. It was too much to know she’d caused him pain when she’d loved him so much. If she could go back and do it all again...

  The truth cut even deeper than she’d imagined it could. As long as she was responsible for her father, nothing would be different.

  If she’d truly loved Jason when they were married, wouldn’t she have found a way to be with him no matter what?

  This was why finding peace in the barn or acknowledging she still felt something for Jason didn’t make anything better. Jason could only play protector and never be hers again, because while she was free in his arms, she wasn’t free outside of them.

  And he knew it.

  While he might come back tonight to keep an eye on the house, he wouldn’t contact her, and he definitely wouldn’t take her to dinner with his team. In light of recent happenings, it was probably canceled anyway.

  So she’d pulled on her most comfortable jeans and most comforting sweatshirt and resigned herself to reruns of The Andy Griffith Show. A black-and-white trip to a simpler time might alleviate her stress enough to let her sleep.

  Probably not. After Jason left, Wyatt had helped her rotate the tires on the Bronco. Then Erin had spent the afternoon in her room, praying for Jason and his team while Wyatt had given her space and stood watch somewhere outside the house.

  Jason’s team was on her mind constantly. She’d never been to combat, but she’d fought fires, worked accidents and performed rescues with her fellow firefighters.