“I thought you were tired,” I reminded him.
“Thought of movin’ on,” he stated and I was back to staring.
Then I thought I got it, it hurt but whatever. I had wine and, tomorrow, I’d call the girls and then, in about fifty years, I’d get better so I invited, “There’s the door. Move on.”
“Was this close to it,” he continued.
“Chace –”
“Then you came back into town.”
I felt my head jerk in surprised confusion.
Chace kept speaking.
“Decided with one look at you, I’d put up with it, all the shit that was gettin’ worse at work ‘cause my end game would be you.”
Was he saying what I thought he was saying?
“The town’s sweet, cute, quiet, pretty librarian in my bed, my ring on her finger, enjoyin’ it as I taught her how to enjoy it, plantin’ my babies in her, building a family.”
Holy fraking frak!
He was saying what I thought he was saying!
No, he was saying more.
I stopped breathing.
He continued talking.
“One look, at the grocery store, you in the aisle, your nose in a book. Stared at you, so fuckin’ cute, but I had no clue how you could shop and keep your nose in a book. But there you were, doin’ it. You looked up, saw someone you knew, smiled at them and I knew eatin’ all that shit at work would be worth it when I was ready to make my play. That cute in my bed. That hair. Those eyes. That smile. Definitely worth it. So I ate it, bidin’ my time, gettin’ the wild out of me so all I’d give you was sweet. You’d move to Gnaw Bone, Chantelle, I knew you would so I could kiss that bullshit good-bye, get myself out of it without takin’ you away from the folks you loved when I claimed you.”
Holy frickity fraking frak, frak, frak!
I forced air in my lungs.
Chace moved toward me and kept talking.
“Waited too long.”
I watched him come to me, my heart beginning to beat harder and my feet no longer not moving because I was trying to be cool but because I was frozen solid with shock. He came to a halt one foot from me so I tipped my head back to look at him.
He lifted a hand, pulled the wineglass from mine and set it on the counter with an alarming-sounding clink.
I looked at the glass in a vague effort to ascertain that it wasn’t broken then I tilted my head back to look back at him, mouth open but I didn’t say a word.
He did.
“He touched you.”
I blinked because I didn’t understand his words.
“What?”
“He touched you,” Chace repeated.
“Who?” I asked.
“My father. He wasn’t only in your presence, you, my Faye, mine, cute and clean and sweet, he touched you. Took your hand, held it,” he stopped speaking abruptly, sucked breath in through his nose then bit out, “Put his mouth on you.”
Okay, now, what on earth?
“So?” I asked quietly when he said no more.
“He likes kink.”
I blinked again because these words were unexpected and also I didn’t know what they meant.
“What?”
“Kink,” he ground out then, “Sex, darlin’, can get adventurous and you don’t carry on with this bullshit play you got goin’ on, we’ll have time, I’ll show you how and we’ll explore that in good ways that we both like. But it can also get weird. To each their own. I don’t give a fuck what someone does to get off. What I do not need to know is that my Dad likes it weird and when I say weird I mean sick-fuck, turn your stomach,” he leaned into me for emphasis even though he put undeniable verbal emphasis on his final word, “weird.”
I didn’t want to know this. I didn’t want him to know this. I didn’t know why he was sharing this. And I didn’t want to know how he knew this.
But he told me.
“Misty and a girlfriend took an assignment from Arnie Fuller and they did that shit to my Dad. They also taped it. They also blackmailed him with it. And I’ve seen that tape.”
My mouth dropped open as my stomach clenched and bile filled my throat.
I closed my mouth to swallow it down.
Chace’s eyes moved over my face and when they locked on mine, he whispered, “Yeah. That unpleasant enough for you, Faye?”
It definitely was.
“I –” I started.
“Gets worse,” he cut me off and I blinked again.
Worse?
How could that possibly get worse?
Chace told me.
“Her play, soon’s you get over the shock of learning that jacked up shit, you’d figure out. But still, I’ll tell you. She used that tape to get money from my Dad. Arnie used it to get my Dad under his thumb and Misty used it more to get my ring on her finger. They played that tape for me and told me the way. Either I marry Misty and tow the dirty cop line or my Mom sees that tape. So I wind up with a fuckin’ wife who did my Dad dirty in more than one way. I got that shit burned in my brain and her slut ass sleepin’ in my fuckin’ bed. Top that, through that shit, I know what they’re doin’ to Ty, I know why and I can’t do one fuckin’ thing to stop it or my Mom pays. In the end for all I know, I got no shot at anything, Misty doesn’t let me go or shit doesn’t get cleaned up. No future. No family. No you. Nothin’ that I wanted, wanted all my life, important things like a woman I loved in my bed and kids we made under the roof I provided by doin’ good work I was proud of. Just a bitch in my bed and a Dad who cheats on my Mom and how he cheats a memory I will never, ever erase.”
Oh my fraking God.
“Chace –” I whispered.
“You want more?”
My heart seized.
“More?” I breathed.
“Yeah, Faye,” he leaned in deeper, “more.”
I didn’t but I would take it. Still, he didn’t give me the chance to accept or refuse.
He kept right on going.
“Before Misty, before she did that to my Dad, I was Frank. I did what I could for the citizens of this town knowin’ things were gettin’ ugly but keepin’ my nose clean. I worked my brothers, hopin’ they’d turn from the dark side. After they had me, after I saw that tape, I had no choice but to join their ranks. My mother saw that, tonight, she was good, tonight, you helped her keep it together but she saw that, Faye, trust me, she’d unravel. Hospital stay. My count since I could remember, she’s had four. One lasted six months. This would destroy her. If by some miracle she got better, she couldn’t live with him. Problem is, she can’t live without him. Knowin’ that, knowin’ she had nothin’ good to get out for, she might never recover. I don’t want my mother in a hospital the next thirty years. I got no choice. Keep my mouth shut, take my envelopes filled with dirty money, look the other way and step up when they gave me an assignment.”
“You returned the money,” I reminded him quietly. “It said so in the papers.”
“Yeah, but when my father’s cronies, The Elite, got their shit in another mess, this mess involving Arnie, a mess that had to be sorted with muscle behind a badge, they sent me. With no choice, I went.”
I didn’t understand.
“Chace, I don’t –”
“A man tried to horn in on Arnie’s blackmail and extortion business and they sent me to talk him down. Except, to talk him down, I had to use my fists and with that tape in an envelope ready to be couriered to my mother, I had no choice but to do it.”
I understood then and, involuntarily, my feet took me a step back and, not that he could, but still, Chace didn’t miss it.
“Yeah,” he whispered, his face as hard and harsh as his voice, “see that dark gathering now, don’t you, baby?”
“You went to Internal Affairs,” I whispered.
“Yeah, I did. I took as much of it as I could stomach then I swung my mother’s ass out there and went to IA. Fun choice, my mother’s mental health or my ass.”
“And the town,” I added.
�
��Yeah, and the town. Detective Chace Keaton, the courageous hero who brought down a band of dirty cops. They hid the fact I was one. They hid the fact that for years I did shit or didn’t do shit I should have when people were getting fucked. Not just a little, like your Dad gettin’ pulled over, which, by the way, Faye, I knew was happening but couldn’t stop. But a lot, like Ty Walker losin’ five fuckin’ years of his fuckin’ life rotting in a prison states away, doin’ time for a crime he did not commit. Your Dad said when a wrong’s bein’ done, you’re no person he’d want to know if you don’t do what you can to make it right. You live by that too and I’m that person you don’t wanna know.”
“Chace, you did something,” I reminded him.
“And, before, I did other things, Faye. I was that wrong.”
“You were forced to be.”
He shook his head. “A stronger man would not have been forced to be.”
“Your mother –”
“I could have walked away,” he told me.
“I wouldn’t have,” I returned instantly.
At my words, his body jolted.
I kept talking.
“Someone intended to harm my Mom, Dad, Liza, the boys, any of my family or someone I loved, I’d do what I could to stop it. Anyone who loves someone would.”
“Even lie down with filth?” he asked, disbelief heavy in his tone.
“Whatever it took,” I answered.
He shook his head. “No, darlin’, easy to say, harder to do.”
“I don’t mean it was easy, I mean I would do it.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can. You were raised by Silas and Sondra Goodknight. You would make the right choice. I was raised by Trane and Valerie Keaton. I made the wrong one.”
“You made the only choice.”
“In hindsight, everything seems clear but at the time, it was not and I had choices. I just didn’t make the right ones.”
“You loved her and your hand was forced. It took you a while but you eventually saw your way clear and got the town clear and, incidentally, it’s debatable if that was the right choice since I can assume it made her more vulnerable than she already is.”
“And before that, Faye, I beat a man into givin’ me shit he was holdin’ over a bunch of men who didn’t deserve that effort.”
I felt my flinch and saw his face get harder when he caught it but I powered through.
“You did it for Valerie.”
“I did wrong.”
“You did what you had to do.”
“Yeah, and it… was… wrong.”
But I’d had enough.
And so had Chace.
It was time to break through.
“God!” I threw up my hands, losing it. “Do you not understand that the power behind the love of your actions for your mother and, what you don’t get, Chace, also for your father is a beautiful thing you should be proud of?”
His body locked.
I didn’t catch it. I was on a mission and was already too far gone.
“Do you not think that I don’t think that, if you loved me that much, if you turned your back on everything that was you in order to protect me, that I wouldn’t love you more? Love you more because you loved me so much you’d do everything you could to keep me safe? Even going so far as losing you? But what you don’t get, Chace, is that you never lost you. What they did was wrong. What you did was right.”
Chace didn’t move, not even to twitch and I still didn’t catch it.
I was on a roll.
“If you made another decision because you were all fired up to be the man you had to be, to protect the future you wanted, that would have been selfish. The choice you had was no choice at all. Save someone you love from a breakdown or save a town and your own ass. You’ve lived your whole fraking life protecting her. You’d been conditioned since birth to make that play. But even so, you actually took the harder road to do the right thing even if it meant you were forced to do wrong while you were on that road. It was selfless, it was brave and it was heroic. More so because, God willing, Valerie will never know you had to do the things you did to protect her. So she’s shielded from that too, knowing the way she is that she can’t help meant her son went through that for her. So you did it knowing you’d not even earn her gratitude. You did it knowing all you’d get is shit but she’d have peace of mind.”
Chace just stared at me, unmoving.
I kept ranting.
“If my father knew this, he’d admire you. If my mother knew this, she’d adore you. If the town knew this, they’d revere you more than they already do.”
“Right,” he said softly. “You think you got that figured out then what about Misty?”
“What about her?” I snapped.
“She was my wife. I treated her like shit. I cheated on her and, in the end, I didn’t protect her.”
Not this again!
“Fraking heck, Chace!” I clipped. “She wasn’t your wife, she was your albatross! Your prison warden. Ty spent five years behind bars. You spent six in a different kind of prison. It isn’t even sane what she did to you, thinking you would get over it and fall in love or attempt to find even minimal contentment in that kind of arrangement. I couldn’t wrap my head around what she did to Ty and I really can’t wrap my head around what she did to you. It was the same and yet it was worse. You didn’t like her so you didn’t pretend to like her. You didn’t marry her for love so you carried on with your life like she wasn’t there. She bought that by doing… doing…” I faltered, too beside myself to find words then sallied forth, “what you would call seriously jacked up shit. When she was alive, you didn’t give her a thing she didn’t deserve including what happened to end her life. That is also not on you whether you shoulder it or not. Shouldering it is your decision, not your responsibility, not your curse. Your decision. One you can also decide not to do. No one, but no one who thinks clearly, and they don’t even have to love you like I do, would disagree with me.”
“Baby –” he started on a tortured whisper but I was still gone.
“No!” I snapped, lifting a hand between us. “I’m not done. I know you’re older and more experienced than me but what you need to know is that if you trusted me with that information about your father, as vile as it is, it would have given me the tools to handle tonight a lot differently. I could have avoided his touch so that wouldn’t upset you and I could have smoothed our departure so your mother wouldn’t get distressed. If I was aware of the situation, I could have finessed it. Which I will do in the future if we have a future that doesn’t include me wanting to kick you in the shin or attempt to shake some sense into you even though you’re bigger and stronger than me and if I can control my desire to punch your father in the nose!”
I was working myself up and getting louder as I carried right the frak on.
“I mean, I can’t believe this! This is your dark? This is your big secret that’s going to drive me away? This is what’s eating you? The fact you’re a good man, a fantastic son and when faced with impossible choices that would bring most men to their knees, you carry on being wonderful, taking care of runaway, abused kids, teasing your new girlfriend, making her feel like a princess and giving her amazing orgasms?” I leaned into him, eyes narrowed, “Seriously?”
Then I wasn’t leaning into him anymore because I was over his shoulder, he’d turned and was prowling to the bed.
“Chace!” I snapped at his back. “I’m not done ranting!”
He bumped me on his shoulder. I sucked in breath as I flew through the air, landing on my back in bed and I didn’t get another breath in me before he landed on top of me.
“You’re done,” he growled in my face.
“I am not,” I hissed in his.
Then I was since he was kissing me hard and the fingers of one his hands were pulling down the zip at the back of my dress.
Okay, that kiss was good, better than most
and they were all super good so that was saying something. Apparently, heightened emotions made for effective kisses.
Still, when he tore his mouth from mine, I ranted on, if a little breathlessly, “I’m not done straightening you out.”
Chace’s response was nonverbal. His body arced away from mine and whoosh! My dress was pulled over my head, taking my arms with it. When it was gone, Chace’s hand was on my belly, his eyes on my body.
“Knew it, that dress, you sittin’ next to me all night, knew you’d give me this later,” he muttered to himself, his hand gliding down my belly so his fingertips could trail the waistband of my panties.
He liked the undies. Nice to know but nothing new.
“Hello?” I called and his eyes came to mine. “We’re fighting, remember?”
Two things happened at once. Chace’s lips came to within a breath from mine and Chace’s hand slid into my panties.
I stopped breathing.
“Get ready, baby, you’re about to get something new.”
“And that would be?” I asked tartly (but still breathlessly which took the sting out of my tart, unfortunately), putting my hands on his shoulders, preparing to push.
“Make up sex,” he answered, his fingers in my panties moved in a way I liked and my belly plummeted and my fingers, instead of pushing (frak!) curled into his jacket.
I fought his pull and informed him sharply, “We aren’t done fighting.”
“Yeah we are.”
“No we’re not.”
His middle finger slid hard over my clit and then glided deep inside and it felt so fraking good, I gasped, my hips jerked but the rest of my body melted under his.
I was hazy but I could still feel his lips smile against mine before he muttered, “Oh yeah we are.”
Then he kissed me and we were.
Done fighting that was.
We weren’t done with other things.
Sex, as I’d mentioned before, was awesome.
Make up sex was out of this world.
Heightened emotion didn’t only make for effective kisses, it made for effective everything.
I didn’t think either of us held back during sex. Sometimes Chace controlled the intensity. It was rare but it could happen that I might get a little timid with nudity but Chace had a mind to that and never pushed.
Breathe Page 43