Shielded in the Shadows

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Not that they were necessarily going to have one, but...

  “There’s that distinct possibility.” There was no humor in his tone. Or sarcasm, either. Still...

  “You don’t sound happy about that.”

  “It creates all kinds of difficulties.”

  Like her getting upset and leaving the bed because he hadn’t told her something. Because she’d been hurt.

  “Acknowledging the complications of a situation helps minimize them,” she said.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Do you want to stop seeing each other? Other than if necessary for work?”

  “You’re being targeted, Em. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Right. Because of the job. She was hugely grateful for that. And for the police patrol, too. But sooner or later that was going to have to end. It was not like the city could afford to be her bodyguard forever.

  “Do you want us to stop...everything personal?” If that was his choice, then...

  God, don’t let it be his choice.

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then let’s leave it at that.”

  “At what?”

  He put an arm over his eyes. Then sat up. She missed the warmth of his feet against her.

  “We continue to have a personal side to our relations and see where it goes.”

  As in...see if it took them into a partnership that might not end? She had to know but was afraid to ask.

  Didn’t want to push him. Or herself, either.

  “We’ve worked well together, this past week and a half,” she said, thinking about all that they’d been through. Disagreeing about Bill. Her accident. Dinners and the greatest sex she’d ever had. He’d been a companion through much of it. Professional and otherwise.

  “I like having you around,” she admitted.

  His sideways glance at her contained a grin. Her body started to flame again. “I like being around,” he told her.

  “So if we both keep liking it...say, for a long time, we’re agreeing to let that happen?”

  He looked her way again. Nodded.

  “And if, at some point, we want more, like to become a family of some sort? What then? I’m not talking about you fathering my child, or even being a dad, but more like an uncle...”

  Still turned her way in the darkness, he leaned back and slightly away from her. “It’s not going to happen, Em. The family part. I’m never going to marry or be any kind of a father figure to any children. It’s a choice I’ve made. I thought you understood that.”

  He didn’t speak with ease. She could hear the intensity behind his words. And the pain.

  Reaching a hand up to his face, she broke all their rules at once. “Why?” Pushing. Wanting. Needing. She wasn’t sure what she’d want their bond to look like in the future. Wasn’t sure she’d ever trust life and love enough to marry again. But she knew she needed to know if there was a chance. “I need to know why, Jayden.”

  He remained silent, let her touch him, but didn’t touch back.

  “I want this—us—more than anything I can remember,” she said, unable to just give up. “We fit each other...” At least for now. Committed to their work like they were...anyone else would be hurt by the job coming first, but not Jayden. And not her. They understood the need. The drive.

  “I just need to know why, Jayden. Please?”

  When he shook his head, the disappointment was so crushing, she couldn’t get up at first. Her hand slid from his face, but she sat there, struggling. Not knowing what to do.

  Afraid she was going to cry. And that was something she’d promised herself she’d never do again. Not over a man...

  “I killed a boy.”

  Emma had no idea what she’d been expecting, but it most definitely had not been that. Unmoving on the couch, she stared at the man with whom she was afraid she was falling in love. And his face was filled with a pain more severe than anything she’d ever known.

  * * *

  Jayden had never expected to hear those words, in his voice, outside his own head. Wasn’t even sure he’d said them aloud at first, as he sat there trying to make out Emma’s expression in the darkness.

  “He was my friend. Or rather, a kid that worshipped me that I took for granted.” He wasn’t going to spare himself. Especially not with her.

  Things were getting far too emotionally dangerous, threatening his life as it needed to be.

  She wanted to open the door to signing on with him. Because she didn’t completely know him.

  That was why he had to tell her.

  “What happened?” She hadn’t pulled back. If anything, she’d leaned closer.

  “I grew up an only child who could do no wrong, in a wealthy home with parents who adored me. I was entitled, self-centered, and sure I’d get my own way, whatever way I chose that to be. I worked hard, but things came easy to me, too. I was a B student because I didn’t need the A and didn’t want to spend time studying. I wanted to play sports, any and all of them. I chose football, was the quarterback of my high school team all four years, made state, and then chose not to play in college. Too many other things that I wanted to tackle.”

  “Did you do drugs?” she asked.

  “No.” His father wouldn’t have tolerated that. “But I could put away some beers. And I used a fake ID and went to a strip club for my sixteenth birthday.” He was giving her the stuff that mattered. The misdeeds that defined him.

  “Did you ever get arrested?”

  “No.” That would have changed things with his Dad, too.

  “It sounds like you were a normal guy with a great life. You were lucky, yeah, to be born to good parents with financial security, but you didn’t squander the opportunity. You made the most of it.”

  He’d done what he’d wanted to do. Period. Just turned out that what he’d wanted to do had served him well.

  Leaning forward, he put his elbows on his knees, looked at the floor. “There was this kid, Emory Smith. He was in my high school, a couple of years behind me. He used to tag around after me whenever he could. Like an adoring puppy. I liked being so great that I had fans.

  “Emory tried out for football his sophomore year. He wasn’t real big, or all that tough, but he was in great shape, had determination and dedication, and a leg that wouldn’t quit. He played first string kicker my last year. And then his last two years after I left. Helped take the team to state again the year after I graduated.”

  Emory had studied, too. Had straight A’s. And worked twenty hours a week at some fast-food joint.

  “My freshman year of college at the University of Southern California, I pledged the most prestigious frat on campus. I quickly rose up the ranks. And I learned how to drink. Really drink. Anything. Anywhere. As much as anyone wanted to give me. I wasn’t playing football, but I was still working out, playing intramural sports, having a great time. I thought life was great. A game that was never going to end.”

  There would always be an end. That’s what he needed her to understand.

  “Emory used to come down to campus to hang out,” he continued. “He kept saying that he couldn’t wait to graduate and get to Southern Cal. I knew he had better things waiting for him, but I didn’t say so. I just kept telling him, ‘Yeah, kid, you do that.’ He got a scholarship to Harvard, for Christ’s sake. He was going to change the world. I never figured he’d give all that up. I thought he was just talking, you know, like kids do. That whole Southern Cal thing, I never took is seriously.”

  “What happened?” Her question came again. Softly. Almost as though she knew he needed to be led over the bridge that wasn’t going to let him turn back.

  Or go forward, either, as she’d soon find out.

  “He followed me to Southern Cal.” He told her the god-awful truth. “He’d been scouted by the
team, got a scholarship there, too, and started in the very first game of the season. Damn near set a field goal record. He’d wanted me to come to one of his games, but I was done with that. I didn’t want to be out on the field badly enough to do the work required. And if I couldn’t be out on the field, I didn’t want to be there. College football isn’t like high school. Physically, maybe they’re similar, but in high school, to most of the guys, it’s a game. In college, it’s work. With the goal of making it a career.”

  “You were smart to see that. And make the appropriate choice for you.”

  He’d been all about a good time. Living life. Doing pretty much whatever the hell he’d wanted to do. He was a golden boy.

  “Did you do well academically?” she queried.

  “Yeah.” He’d done what little he’d had to do to meet his father’s minimum requirement of B’s across the board.

  Eyes adjusting to the near darkness, with only the moon to light his view, Jayden could still pretty much make out every nuance in Emma’s face. She focused on him, as though prepared for whatever was to come.

  As if she already knew death waited at the end. Which of course, she did. He’d told her he’d killed a boy.

  “Even after I ditched his first game, Emory was still hanging on me, so I thought I’d do him a solid and sponsor him for the frat. He could meet up with some of the coolest guys at school, guys who were his own age. I figured I was giving him the best days of his life. Four years of them.”

  “You were being kind.” The words were firecrackers. Soft, almost whisper-like firecrackers.

  “In order to get into the frat, pledges had to pass some...tests.”

  “Hazing,” Emma said.

  He shrugged. He’d gone through it. Hadn’t felt hazed. It had all been a big game to him. A challenge. He’d never felt better the night he’d been the first to make it back to the frat house. He’d been appointed freshman liaison to the fraternity’s campus board for how well he’d done that night.

  “Pledges are taken out by their sponsors, dumped in a particularly dense part of some woods with more alcohol than they could ever drink, a tracking device and nothing else. No compass. No phone. Their only challenge was to make it back. Their upperclassman sponsors tracked them and if, in a specified amount of time, they weren’t headed in the right direction, they were picked up. Dropped off at campus. And let go.”

  His chin sinking to his chest, Jayden tightened up. His lungs. His muscles. Everything about him grew tight. Uneasy.

  “I can see what’s coming,” Emma said, still attempting to rescue him from himself. There was nothing she could to change his story. “You were Emory’s sponsor, so you had to be the one to go pick him up when he didn’t make it back.”

  He looked at her. So far, she had it right.

  “When he knew he’d been dumped by you...after all those years of idolizing you, of giving up Harvard to be close to you, he committed suicide, didn’t he?”

  Wouldn’t have made him feel any less guilty if he had. But...

  “No.” He continued, “When I dropped Emory off, I gave him the same edge I’d been given when I was a pledge. I told him about a cliff not far from where we were, practically led him to it. I told him if he jumped, he could swim across the lake and be within a hundred yards of the house. A couple of the other guys were giving their pledges the same advice. We’d already decided to let the three of them in... The other two made it back. They had to search the lake for Emory’s body.”

  A look of horror passed over her face. It was a vision he was never going to forget. Because it was a replica of the same look he saw in his mirror every single morning.

  Chapter 22

  Emma ached all over. Ached to take Jayden in her arms and ease his pain. Ached for him. With him. He hadn’t killed anyone. But he’d unknowingly sent a young man to his death.

  No way that wouldn’t have changed him forever.

  Processing in the way she knew, she asked, “Were there any charges pressed?”

  In today’s world there might have been, but back then...

  “No. No one forced him to jump off that cliff. And he didn’t tell anyone he wasn’t a strong swimmer. Two other guys, who’d both had more to drink than he had, made it back. Emory didn’t even have enough alcohol in his system to be considered legally drunk. And our folks could all afford to get us the best lawyers.” He said the last word with bitterness.

  “Your parents got you a high-powered lawyer?”

  “They tried. I fired him. I was an adult and within my rights to do so. I planned to use a public defender. Maybe I thought it would look better. I don’t know what I thought. As it turned out, we hadn’t needed lawyers. The fraternity was disbanded, though.”

  “What about Emory’s family? His parents? Did they come after you?”

  “Not that I was ever made aware. I’ve always figured they probably tried. They would have to have wanted to. I apparently had more control over their son than they did...all their years of teaching, of guiding...and I, in my obliviousness, undid it all. I knew how much value he put in what I said. I should have been more responsible to that.”

  Maybe. But he’d been a kid, too. Not a parent.

  “You’ve never talked to them?” she asked. “Even at the funeral?”

  “I didn’t go. I didn’t want to cause them any more pain...”

  “And since?”

  “The same.”

  “You deal with people who have things to be sorry for every day of your life, Jayden. What’s one of the first things they’re told to do if they want to get right with themselves and their world?”

  “Make amends.” He glanced away and then back. “No way I can bring him back,” he said. “I can’t help this one. Except, by living in such a way that I don’t cause them further pain or bitterness. Like having a family of my own when they’ll never have the grandchildren Emory could have given them.”

  What he said made logical sense. But it didn’t sit right with Emma’s heart. Her own choices didn’t sit all that great with her heart most of the time, either. Not in an emotional sense. Ms. Shadow tended to have more control in that area.

  “It still seems like...you’re deciding for them how they feel. What they need. Maybe you should at least try to see them. Maybe they’d welcome a chance to yell at you, if nothing else. It might help them. And if they don’t want to see you, they’ll mostly likely just refuse the gesture.” He had to at least try. It seemed so clear to her.

  He didn’t respond.

  Other than his own self-loathing, Jayden showed little emotion at all. She understood. That kind of pain didn’t let itself out. Didn’t let you know even a moment’s relief.

  “When my baby died, I wished they’d throw me in jail,” she said, though this wasn’t about her. She just had no coping skills to share with him on this one. Sometimes the pain was so deep, the best you could do was sit in it with someone.

  He glanced over at her then and the look in his eyes...she didn’t really get it. They glistened. And weren’t completely dead.

  “Instead we’re left to pay a silent price for the rest of our lives.” He nodded as he held her gaze.

  She got it then. The thing between them. It was a whole lot more than a fling. Way beyond business. They were like souls, meeting in the only place they ever could.

  Aloneness.

  They could hang out. Talk. Have sex. She could maybe even raise a child. But ultimate union? Their personal prisons weren’t ever going to allow that.

  She scooted over to him. Wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her head in his chest. They might not have it all, but they had something.

  When his arms finally wrapped around her, too, squeezing tight, she was thankful they no longer had to be solitary in their confinements.

  * * *

  Standing in the sh
ower the next morning, Jayden tried to wash off everything that was different about him and return to the person he knew. He’d left Emma’s house before she was even out of bed. Purposely. Though he’d joined her back in bed the evening before, he’d lain awake most of the night.

  Was he helping her, a woman grieving for the child she’d lost when she’d been still partially a child herself, a woman who had a sizable collection of past relationship hurts? Or was he just serving himself?

  Did it matter if he was getting what he wanted in being with Emma, as long as he didn’t have a family with her?

  Walking away from her, once they’d caught whoever was behind the threats, didn’t seem right. And yet...finding his own personal happiness...not right, either. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t waltz out and have what he’d stolen from Emory.

  There were some things that couldn’t change.

  His father had taught him that.

  Stopping with his head under the spray, he straightened, pulling himself out of the water completely as that last thought occurred to him. His father...who never changed. Sometimes that was a good thing.

  And Jayden had witnessed times when, while it wasn’t necessarily bad, it seemed...sad somehow. Like never tasting new foods. Such a small thing. But almost seemed...wasteful...somehow, to have perfectly good taste buds in your mouth and not let them have an experience...

  Shutting off the water, he grabbed his towel. Dried off as he always did. Top down. Feet last. And thought about Emma’s suggestion that he try to see the Smiths.

  He wanted to hate the idea. To know in his gut that it was wrong. He’d been over the question in every way he could ask and answer it during the long night hours.

  And feared that it was himself he was sparing by staying away from Emory’s parents all these years. How could he face them, knowing what he’d done?

  Because, like Emma had said, if the Smiths didn’t want to see him, they didn’t need him to protect them from it happening. They’d simply say no.

  It would be different if they’d ever told him to stay away from them. Then he’d be doing so for their sakes. Out of respect.