That would be a change of pace. I smiled at the thought of being the one to pry information from Chasin for once.
You got one life, baby, just one.
And if things worked out, I’d be living it with Chasin by my side.
The butterflies hit my stomach and I decided I really liked the way they felt.
21
Chasin knew he’d been a dick. This time unintentionally. He did have shit he needed to take care of at the office—none of it pressing but important nonetheless. He’d left because he was pissed at his parents, embarrassed at their presence, but also he needed to wrap his head around what had happened.
Or more to the point, what he’d felt when Genevieve had wrapped herself around him, doing her best to protect him from the two people who’d continuously caused him harm. Incidentally she’d succeeded in cushioning the blow. He wasn’t nearly as angry as he normally was when he had to deal with his mother alone.
“You get your shit sorted?” Holden asked as soon as he walked into the house.
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask his friend the same question. Years, Holden’d been playing a stupid game with a good woman. A woman who had belonged to him heart and soul but Holden had let her go. And all it had taken was one drunken night and a bad decision for her to be lost to him in a way Holden hadn’t been prepared for.
Chasin was the only one who knew all three sides of the fucked-up love triangle. Each side was at fault. However, one of the people in the equation was gone, in a very real way, never to return. It was time Chasin came to grips that a man he’d loved like a brother and respected deeply wasn’t without responsibility in continuing to drag his marriage through the mud by keeping the Holden-Charleigh-Paul saga very much alive.
Paul had loved Charleigh when she wasn’t his to love, then he’d taken advantage of a very drunk Charleigh a month after Holden had ended things. She was hurting and vulnerable, and as much as it fucked with Chasin’s head to think about it, Paul took advantage of that, thinking he’d found an in.
A month after that night, Charleigh missed her period and Paul got in there, married her, and they had their daughter, Faith. But Paul never stopped needling her about Holden. Chasin knew this because Paul had come to him on more than one occasion to bitch about his wife loving another man. He did this after he’d ply himself with booze, and the booze came out because Paul was riddled with guilt. He knew he’d done wrong, but he loved his daughter so much he took the guilt over what he’d done to her mother and Holden—that being making it impossible to work their shit out and be together. But there was no way Paul was leaving his daughter to give Holden a clear shot at getting Charleigh back.
Then Paul took a barrage of bullets, and with his dying breath, Paul gave Charleigh back to Holden. Chasin was at Holden’s side as he tried to save Paul’s life. And Holden had tried for a good long while, not willing to give up. Holden did that for Charleigh and Faith, so they wouldn’t lose him.
In the end, Paul was gone and Holden was fucked-up worse than the rest of them. And that was saying something because they all felt the loss of their teammate.
Now years later, Holden wallowed in guilt. He took pieces of Charleigh but still refused to let go of the past. He lived alone in his misery.
“Yeah, I got my shit sorted,” Chasin grunted. “The prints from the package that was left at Genevieve’s uncle’s came back. They’re not in the system. I looked back over everything Bobby had documented and went back over the reports Tennessee sent. I’m beginning to wonder how thorough they were looking for prints. Detective Loughry’s police work leaves a lot to be desired. It’s clear he wasn’t taking this seriously, so I have to wonder what he missed. And the dressing room that was destroyed wasn’t printed because Genevieve’s team didn’t want the press. Bobby pushed for the police to be brought in, but in the end, she lost. So that’s a bust, even though Bobby took pictures. And we have DNA from the break-in but no prints. How the hell is that possible? Did he jerk off with a glove on?”
The question tasted dirty. Chasin didn’t want to think too hard about what some sick fuck had done in Genevieve’s house. The whole situation pissed him off, but the break-in and what had been done in her room, on her bed, and the photo of the stalker defiling it in the grossest of ways, made his gut tighten.
“And the threats against you? You still keeping that from her?” Holden returned.
“For now. She’s got enough on her plate. She freaked out when I told her Bobby needed protection. She finds out there’s been a direct threat against me, she won’t take it well. She just fired her manager, got shit shoveled her way from that jacknuts, Len. Which by the way, his prints are in the system from his DUI and didn’t match the prints on the envelope and pictures, but he was still looking at her in a way I didn’t like. Chad Briggs is out, too, not a match. We’ve had drama after drama and I think before my asshole parents showed up, I finally made some progress getting her to let me in. So, no, I’m not piling this on top of her.”
“I think it’s safe to say you made progress, which might all be erased if she finds out you’re keeping this from her.”
Holden had a point, a good one that Chasin had already thought about. But he was willing to take his chances and hope she’d understand when he explained why he didn’t pile more stress on her back when she had more important things to worry about than a threat that would never amount to jack shit.
But he didn’t miss Holden’s comment. “What do you mean it’s safe to say I made progress?”
“She go head-to-head with your egg donor?”
“Already told you she had words with Nancy.”
“Right, but you didn’t tell me in normal Chasin-fashion that you tried to kick her fine ass back upstairs so you could go at it alone. She didn’t listen and had your back. And what you don’t know is, she’s been worried since you left that you’re mad at her because she called that cunt a whore.”
“What?”
Holden nodded. “I refrained from calling your mother the C-word in front of her but just barely when I saw your woman agonizing over the possibility of you being upset with her. She also sat here all afternoon running plans with Bobby, but not making any decisions until she’s talked to you. So, yeah, I’d say you made progress. Find a way to tell her about the threat. I’m not saying you blurt that shit out the second you hit your bed tonight, because, brother, with her ass in my bed, I wouldn’t be talking about stalkers, either. But—”
“I let that shit slide twice. There won’t be a third. You can imagine if I don’t like you talking about my woman’s ass, I really don’t like hearing you talking about her in your bed.”
Chasin watched Holden’s torso jerk. Then his head tipped back and he roared with laughter. As Chasin watched, he didn’t find anything funny, so he waited for Holden to burn out his hilarity.
“So, it’s like that?” Holden sputtered.
“Well beyond that.”
“Never knew you to be possessive of a piece—”
“Seriously?” Chasin barked, and Holden waved his hands in front of him.
“All right, I was kidding. Chill out, caveman. You better get upstairs to your woman, I know she’s up there awake waiting on you.”
Without sparing Holden another thought, Chasin jogged up the stairs, made it to the open door of his bedroom, and stopped dead.
He stood there with his lungs burning because he wasn’t breathing. The sight before him so fine, he couldn’t. Evie sitting in the middle of his bed, hair up in one of those messy knots that women wore, wearing one of his tees. She was sitting with her bare legs crossed, so he couldn’t see what kind of shorts she was wearing, or if she was wearing any at all. Her guitar was on her lap and papers were scattered around the bed. He did another scan and started breathing.
Christ, she was beautiful, but sitting there in the middle of his bed holding a guitar, she was stunning. And suddenly a vision flashed of the last time he’d had her in a bed. Naked
and spread out for him. Her humming that sexy-as-fuck sound and him taking his time, giving her slow glides after he’d fucked her silly.
Great memory.
But he planned on making new ones, better ones, and they were starting on those tonight.
“Hey,” she muttered.
“Hey, baby. You all right?”
“I was gonna ask you the same thing,” she returned.
“You done playing?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Clean off the bed, I’ll be right back.”
Chasin moved to his dresser, scanning the room as he went. No suitcases in sight, he opened a drawer where his shorts normally were and found folded tees instead. Smiling to himself, he closed it and opened a few more until he found what he was looking for.
“I…um…had to rearrange—”
“Told you to unpack, sweetness. Figured you’d have to move stuff around.”
He took his shorts into the bathroom, did his thing, and a few minutes later, he turned off the light and made his way back into the bedroom. First, he went to his nightstand and flicked on the table lamp, then to the door where he flipped the lock. He hit the light switch, turning off the recessed lights, and moved to the bed now devoid of the clutter.
Once he was settled in bed, he tagged Genevieve’s hand and pulled her close.
“Settle in, Evie.”
It took Genevieve a few moments to relax, her head on his shoulder, torso pressed against his side, long legs resting next to his. She was close, but Chasin wanted her closer. He reached down and hooked her thigh over his, forcing her to turn and cuddle in. Then he found her hand and pulled it to his chest, holding her palm over his heart. He knew it was jackhammering in his rib cage. Had been since he’d walked into the house.
“It was a shit thing for me to do,” he launched right in. “I was angry and didn’t want you to see.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve—”
“You should always feel free to be you,” he interrupted. “And I wasn’t angry with you. I was pissed at them. It’s no secret I hate her. I’m thirty-four years old, I’ve been out of their house for sixteen years. I’ve been back to visit maybe fifteen times, and those times were so I could see my dad. And this is fucked-up, but every time I went for a visit, I hoped I’d walk in the door and either my dad would’ve kicked that bitch out of his house or he’d tell me he was leaving her. Instead, I’d show up and everything was the same. It was like a bad movie playing on repeat. She’d bitch at him about one thing or another and he’d take it. It’s bad enough knowing that she fucks around on him, but to watch that woman boss him around turns my stomach. I don’t get why he stays, never did, but I wanted a dad so badly I kept going back to see if he was ready to be a man.”
Lost in his thoughts, Chasin grew silent. Genevieve filled that silence.
“I’m sorry. I know what it feels like to have the people who gave you life let you down. I don’t think it matters how old you are or how long you’ve been out of their house, that pain is still there. It might not be the constant nagging it once was, but parts of it still linger.”
She was not wrong, and it was the parts that lingered he wanted gone.
“I saw Holden when I came in. He said you were worried I was upset that you called Nancy a whore. I need you to understand this, that woman means nothing to me. There is nothing you could ever say to her or about her that would bother me. I was pissed at them, but I was more pissed at myself for wasting so many years thinking my dad would come around.”
Chasin tightened his grip on her hand. “But he proved today, not only will he never be the dad I need, but he’s just as bad as she is. The shit he said, the way he looked at you, looked at me when you were in my arms, broke something inside of me. That small sliver of hope I had that one day I’d have a dad, died. He killed it. So I need time to get over my embarrassment, my anger, and the pain of losing him.”
Chasin felt his heartbeat kick up a notch. “Once I got that settled, I need to sort out my feelings about us.”
“Us?” Genevieve stiffened and started to pull away.
Chasin put pressure on her hand and didn’t allow her to move. “I need you right where you are.” She stopped struggling but remained stiff. “We started out good. Then I fucked us up. And ever since, we’ve been playing hide and seek. I don’t mind playing games with you, baby, as long as in the process no one’s getting hurt. I haven’t hidden what I want from you. I haven’t hidden how I feel. And, babe, you haven’t either. I know I cut you deep when I pulled my shit—”
“I’m done playing games, too,” she blurted out, and relief washed over Chasin.
Thank fuck.
Finally.
“I saw it. Earlier when your parents were here, I saw it, what they did to you. But I want you to know that before that happened, I’d already decided to stop being stupid. Obviously, I was still struggling with trying to figure out how to let my shit go. But even without witnessing it firsthand and just hearing you talk about her, I understood what happened the night you left. It hurt, I was crushed, but I don’t blame you. I keep doing the same thing to you and I know it’s not fair. I react before I think. I keep forgetting you’re not all the other assholes who’ve screwed me over.”
She grinned up at him. “So, I’ll make you a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“I promise to work on being defensive and shutting down, if you stop apologizing for that night. In a way, I’m kinda glad it happened.”
“What?”
“I met you on a Friday,” she started and settled back in. “And by mid-afternoon Sunday, I was in love with you. At first, I didn’t believe you didn’t know who I was, but after a few hours, I knew you were telling the truth. Part of why is because while we were sitting on the porch talking, the radio was playing, and twice my songs came on and there wasn’t even a flicker of recognition. Then we started talking about our favorite music and you told me you hated country.” Chasin felt her smile against his chest and thought back to that night.
“You don’t like country?” Genevieve pouted.
Fucking adorable.
“Nope.”
“What do you like? That screamo, death metal?”
“Mostly rock.”
“I guess rock’s okay.”
“You guess?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll still like you even if y’all don’t like my music.”
“Your music?”
Something flashed in her pretty eyes but he didn’t know her well enough to decipher it, then it was gone and she was smiling again.
“I’m from Nashville. Country music’s my jam.”
He’d totally missed it. And thinking back, she’d slipped up a few times, but he’d been so caught up falling for her, he’d missed them all.
“We talked a lot but not about anything important. I didn’t know what you did for a living, you certainly didn’t know what I did. We talked, we laughed, we had sex, and I was falling in love with you, but I was scared because everything was built on a lie of my making. I didn’t want you to know who I was. That last night when we were in bed, you fell asleep first, and I was lying awake trying to find a way to tell you before you left in the morning. I didn’t want what we had to be a weekend hookup. I wanted to see you again, and I knew you felt the same because you’d asked me to go to dinner with you. I said yes, even though I knew I couldn’t go because there’d be a chance someone would recognize me.”
She shifted in his arms. “When I got up to call Bobby back, I was gonna tell her about you and ask her for help about how to tell you. But she started in about me being safe and how worried she was. Then you caught me on the phone and everything went to shit. I’m not happy about that part, that hurt. But now I’m thinking it was better that way. Everything came out and there’s no more hiding.”
Chasin disagreed. He wasn’t happy he’d hurt her, and he wasn’t happy he’d acted like a dick and lost her. But he also couldn�
��t say that after the two days they’d had together, where he’d fallen in love with a woman he barely knew, how he would’ve reacted to her telling him who she really was. He wanted to believe he would’ve understood, but knowing himself, he would’ve found her omission to be a lie and probably ended it almost the same way. Maybe worse.
So she was right.
“Means a lot to me you had my back earlier. That was part of what I was sorting out. You gave me that, and I didn’t want to repay that gesture with my anger, so I left.”
He stroked her face. “No games, no bullshit, I’m in deep, Evie. I’ve fallen in love with you. So I’ll take that deal. But you have to know I understand, too. I know why you retreat, I’m just not gonna let you do it anymore. You’re safe with me; safe to be who you are, who you want to be, how you want to act.”
“I’m getting that,” she mumbled against his chest.
“So we’re moving forward, together.”
“Yeah,” she answered, even though he hadn’t presented it as a question.
“Good. Now that that’s settled, we have one more thing to talk about. And I hate to bring this up in bed, and it will be the last time this shit encroaches on us, but I need you to know.”
He held her tighter, to brace her for his next words. “We found prints on the envelope left at your uncle’s house, and since Len was in the system for his DUI, we had his prints. We also ran them against Chad’s. Neither is a match but, honey, Len’s into you. I know you saw it. You fired Melissa so there should be no further communication with him, but if he tries, I wanna know about it.”
“Okay.”
“Now, Holden told me you and Bobby were talking while I was gone. Everything go okay with that?”
“Yeah. Can I tell you about it in the morning?”
Genevieve’s leg hitched higher, her heat pressed against Chasin’s thigh. For the first time since he’d laid down next to her, he allowed himself to fully take in their position. Her full tits pressed against his side, the smell of her hair, her skin, the feel of her bare leg over his. Now that the conversation they needed to have was over, he was moving them along, or as it would be, Genevieve was. The hitch of her leg indicating she was done with their talk.
Chasin's Surrender (Gemini Group Book 5) Page 18