by Shayla Black
It wasn’t this way when we were just teenagers. It wasn’t like this at all.
The power he and his brothers now have comes with violence I’ve never seen before and a harshness that’s required to survive. Shopping for fucking groceries is his way of showing me it’s normal, it’s okay, that life is more than that brutal side of the Cross brothers and what they do.
I can’t look past the darkness though. It’s never going to feel “okay.” This sense of danger that lingers in my blood is always going to be there.
I have to find my place with it. That’s not something he can help me with. I have tried. I thought I was there. I was wrong.
It’s caused damage I can’t take back. That’s what hurts the most. I can’t take this last month back.
“You all right?” A deep baritone voice from behind me startles me. With a quick intake of breath and my hand reaching up to my rapidly beating heart, I turn around to see a man standing there. He’s older, maybe in his late forties. Kind eyes with gentle lines surrounding them meet mine.
It takes me a moment to realize when he arches his brow that he’s waiting for my response.
With a few blinks to bring my mind back to the present and a shake of my head, I tell him, “Fine, sorry.”
I push my cart forward thinking I’m blocking his path, but he doesn’t have a cart and he doesn’t seem to have any intention to move either. His boot-clad feet are firmly planted and my eyes move from them, up his dark-wash jeans and button-down white shirt to his questioning gaze.
“I’m fine.” My voice is stern and carries a harshness I don’t like to use with strangers when I repeat myself; this guy needs to stay the hell out of my business.
When he crosses his arms, I can tell he has some muscle to him. The cotton fabric tightens around his biceps, just as my hands do on the handle of the cart. There’s an air to him that changes, a knowingness about him that sends a chill down my spine.
It’s a look I recognize. It’s a look I don’t like. The type of look that makes me want to run.
“I don’t think you are fine,” he challenges and the bitterness of having this man judge me creeps into the snide response I’m ready to spit out at him. He continues, stopping my words and any breath I was daring to take. “I know he’s a murderer. I know he killed your foster father. And it looks like you’re having a difficult time dealing with things… just from my perspective, Miss Fawn.”
That prick that has crawled slowly down my spine flows over my body in a single wave, nearly buckling my knees. I can feel the color drain from my face. Slowly, just like the twine fraying and unraveling. I don’t know who this man is, but I know damn well I shouldn’t be talking to him.
I have to concentrate on keeping my breathing steady — in and out — and focus on not reacting.
Murderer.
My foster father.
Daniel didn’t kill him.
My eyes dart to the man and I try to hold his prying gaze.
My head wants to shake just slightly, it wants to deny what he’s saying, but it can’t. I can’t react. I can’t show him a damn thing.
Daniel didn’t murder him though. That happened years ago. Before I ever even thought of leaving this place, before everything else happened. I want to speak the words, the need to defend Daniel pushing the words toward the tip of my tongue.
I bite down on the inside of my cheek instead, screaming in my head to stay silent. But silence brings questions. Not just mine but also this man’s.
I’ve never questioned my foster father’s death. It was a burglary. That’s what the news said.
The Cross brothers are good at covering things up. I’ve heard and seen things though. Especially recently.
I know what Daniel’s capable of and what he’ll do out of anger. I know he loved me back then. What my foster father did… That’s the second reason I stay bitterly quiet, even as the questions choke me. I hate even thinking of that man. I was only a child and he was a predator. I’d rather spit on his gravestone than mention his name.
The third reason I keep biting the inside of my cheek until I taste a tinge of blood is the most important. The man who stands silent in front of me knows more than I do. I may be the sorry excuse for a woman Daniel’s chosen to be his wife, but I’m not stupid. I’m smart enough to know when to keep my mouth shut. So I do. I stand there, waiting to see if a threat comes.
Near silence reigns with only the steady hum of the coolers behind us as I stare back at him.
After a moment, his lips kick up into an asymmetric smile. “Did you not know?” he questions but doesn’t wait for a response. “Maybe you didn’t know then, but you know now.” His eyes narrow as he nods, persuading me to believe him.
“Who are you?” It’s the first question I imagine Daniel asking when I tell him what happened.
“Cody Walsh. Your boyfriend knows who I am.”
“Fiancé,” I correct him.
His forehead scrunches when he stares down at my hand, the one lacking a ring, and subconsciously, my thumb runs over my ring finger.
“Congratulations,” he comments. His demeanor has completely changed with every passing minute that he scrutinizes me, trying to determine where my place is in this world.
Truth be told, I have no idea what he’ll find; I’m still trying to figure that out myself.
“Addison Fawn … soon-to-be Addison Cross,” he says but doesn’t infuse any type of emotion into the statement. It’s only matter-of-fact. “Any relation to Bethany Fawn?”
Confusion travels over my face as I try to recall a Bethany of any sort.
“Oh, you don’t know that either? She’s the woman Jase, your fiancé’s brother, has been seeing.” Again, I don’t answer, and I try to keep from giving him any response in my expression. He only smirks as he walks past me, letting me know to tell Daniel he said hi.
“Will do,” I manage to bite out without an ounce of resentment as I accept his challenge.
I didn’t know Daniel’s brother was seeing anyone. I sure as hell don’t know a Bethany Fawn. Apparently, I don’t know a lot of things.
What I do know is already destroying me.
2
Daniel
A hint of lemon in the wood polish invades my lungs as I breathe in deep, gripping the armrests of the wingback chair.
I can’t look at my brothers, neither of them. I’m breaking down. The farther away Addison is, the worse I crumble. If they look too closely, if I speak too loudly, they’ll see every fucking crack.
Too bad I can’t help myself during this bitch of a conversation.
“We have a soft truce.” Carter’s voice is calm, but he knows my reaction will be anything but.
“Fuck that,” I say, letting the darkly spoken words fall without looking at either him or Jase. I stare past my brother and into the woods that line the property through the paned window behind him. The shades of green blur as my blood heats with anger.
“He stays out of our way and we give him details. That was the truce.” Carter speaks in time with the tapping of the pen in his hand on the desk.
“Going up to Addison and scaring her isn’t exactly staying out of our way.”
“He scared her?” he questions me and I don’t have time to push out the snide remark: How the fuck else should she feel?
“Maybe we pissed him off with the last deal? We didn’t exactly keep our word,” Jase says carefully, and I can feel him watching me, gauging my reaction with every syllable, but I use everything in me to stay still and not give them any more than I already have.
Leaning forward, my throat is dry as I speak clearly to both of them. “He walked up to my soon-to-be wife. He tried to get to her, to get in her head.” My back hits the chair as I force myself to stay seated and not turn over every piece of furniture in my brother’s office. “He left like a coward before I could get my hands on him. I want his fucking head!” My pulse races as I lose control with the last sentence.
W
e own this town. We own the cops.
Cody Walsh is supposed to be easy. He’s supposed to be predictable. All that went to shit last month. Just like everything else.
Carter ignores me, or at least he ignores my anger to instead direct his comments to Jase. “If Walsh is pissed about what we did, he’ll get over it. We do what we have to.” Facing me and hardening his voice, he asks me, “What exactly did he say to her?”
“That we killed that prick. That he knows I’m a murderer and he knows she’s not okay.”
“That’s how he said it?”
Carter’s constant questioning makes me inhale sharply as I straighten my shoulders and stare him down, not giving him a single word in response. Not trusting myself to speak.
“He still needs us.” Carter speaks first.
“And we still need him,” Jase reminds us all. It’s his ass on the line. This is all his fault. His sloppy choices made us take the deal with Walsh.
Although Carter’s talking to Jase, the statement is directed at me. “Until we find the footage he’s blackmailing you with, his head stays on.”
My blunt nails tap along the polished wood in a soothing rhythm, so at odds with what I feel. “And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Let him scare her? Let him get to her?”
“No,” both Jase and Carter say at the same time. My eyes dart between the two of them, judging their response for sincerity until I can nod.
With my thumb brushing against the fleshy tips of my fingers, I ask Carter, my older brother and the one I rely on in order to move forward every day in this shit of a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into with a dirty cop, “What can I do?” I feel weak asking them rather than acting. I hate this and I know they can feel the turmoil rolling off of me in waves as I close my eyes and try to loosen my tight throat. “I need something to give her. Something to make all this better.” There’s nothing to make it better, a voice hisses inside my head and I lean forward, burying my face in my hands. I grit out the words between my clenched teeth as I add, “I fucking hate this.”
“For now, I’ll remind Walsh that our women will be respected and they stay out of it—”
“She said…” I have to swallow the hard lump in my throat before continuing as I stare past him again at the ambers and emeralds of the trees. “She said he seemed concerned, then he was… gauging her. He’s trying to flip her.”
“Concerned?”
“She isn’t handling the recent events well.” I can barely get out the words. Each syllable claws the back of my throat before it’s spoken. “He approached her, she said, because she didn’t look like she was doing well.”
The leather behind Carter groans and protests as he readjusts in his chair opposite the desk from me.
“If he thinks she’s a weak spot, he’s wrong,” I tell him and there’s more defensiveness in my cadence than I wanted. “She would never tell anyone anything.”
“No one thinks she would.”
“That’s why he brought up the foster fuck? You think he was gauging her to see if it was true? To see if she knows anything?” Jase asks.
“That’s what she thinks,” I answer him. “If he’s trying to get more dirt on us, we need to end this now. Finish him.”
“He can’t know for sure about her foster father, how many fucking years ago was it? And Addison would never give anything up.”
“How did he know?” I question them. It happened a decade ago. No one ever knew. It was only us.
“Forensics, maybe evidence.” Jase sounds suspicious but shakes his head at the thought and shrugs as he adds, “Maybe word on the street, but I don’t see how.”
“He’s bluffing. He had a hunch and he’s testing us to see if we’ll play into his hands.”
It’s quiet as the information is digested. This balancing act is getting harder and harder. What was once planks of wood feels like a thin tightrope now.
Carter takes a deep inhale before speaking. “Let’s make him feel comfortable. That’s the only way we can use him until we’re safe to get rid of him.”
Make him feel comfortable… I’m seething inside. This isn’t the way things used to be. It’s complicated and every move we make only gets us deeper and deeper into bed with the devil.
“Did you tell Addison about her father—” Carter starts to ask, but stops and corrects himself. “Foster father?”
I simply nod before replying, “Last night when she told me.”
I remember the way she couldn’t look me in the eyes before I told her. The way she turned her back to me to go to the bathroom. The way her knuckles turned white as she stood there gripping the doorknob, not moving but not asking. She wanted to know, but she knows better than to ask. That’s what we decided. I tell if she asks, but she never asks. She doesn’t want to know. “I told her because I thought she’d want to know the truth.”
“It’s been years.”
“A decade.”
“She never even considered it was us back then.” I repeat my thoughts, but out loud now. “No one did.”
“What did she say?” Jase questions, concern clearly written on his face.
The vision returns to me of her eyes closing slowly, her chin dropping as she took in a shuddering breath. Her response came out as nothing but a whisper and then she closed the door to the bathroom, leaving me sitting there, watching the glass knob and wishing it had been my hand she was holding when I confessed.
“She said, ‘thank you,’” I tell them.
“Do you think she gave anything away to Walsh?”
“No,” I say and my answer is hard as I glare at Jase. He stares back, unmoving, but there’s sympathy in his expression.
“He can’t prove anything,” Carter says between us, cutting through the thinly veiled tension.
“Since when do we let someone make us feel threatened?”
“Since he has evidence that will put me away for life,” Jase answers me. “We tread carefully until Declan can find something on him and get rid of every shred of proof Walsh has.”
“He’s digging into everything he can so we’ll work with him,” Carter says, then clears his throat and sits back farther in his chair. “I’ll send him a message, letting him know not to go near Addison and that his concern is unwarranted.”
“A message?”
“It’s the safe—”
Anger forces me to rise from my seat. “A fucking message?”
“Calm down.”
“You aren’t the one who lost a baby! I lost my child.” The strength in my voice is all but forgotten as I voice it for the first time. They already know, but I haven’t said it yet. I haven’t had the audacity to breathe that truth to life. “Your wife is still pregnant. Mine isn’t.” Everything cracks. The air, my voice, my damn insides shatter to brittle shards.
They sit there in silence as I slowly retake my seat. Just breathe. Calm down. How can I do either when everything is falling apart?
Jase’s firm hand squeezes my forearm as he tells me, “I know it’s difficult on her; we need to keep her safe and protected.”
“It was stress. That’s what the doctor said. She lost the baby and this bullshit isn’t stopping. It’s getting worse.”
All that surrounds me is silence. All that lingers inside of me is guilt. I don’t know how to fix this, and I don’t think anyone else knows either.
“She isn’t supposed to know anything. That was our deal. But she sees how tense everyone is. She knows how much danger we’ve been in. She’s witnessed shit firsthand… I don’t think she can handle this. She wasn’t supposed to know any details. That’s what she wanted.” The admission flows from me like a Catholic at church. Safe in the confessional, waiting to hear my penance, praying for it all to be okay. Just tell me what to do to make it all right.
“Maybe that’s the problem,” Carter suggests, and I lift my blurred gaze to his dark one.
“What?” At least my question is presentable.
“Maybe she should k
now,” Jase says before Carter. “Maybe if she knew details, she’d feel like she has more control. Control is a damn good way to deal with stress. Even if it’s only in details and not action.”
I don’t have time to answer; a knock at the door interrupts the conversation. It’s a soft rap, quick but firm.
Before Carter can tell whoever it is to come in, the heavy door creaks open, bringing with it the light from the hall, and Addison’s shadow spills into the room before she does. Her hand stays on the edge of the door when she asks, “Is it all right if I come in?”
My brothers don’t answer for me, but I nod once.
The room’s so quiet I can practically hear her swallow as she steps into it, not shutting the door for privacy. “I just remembered something. Something I didn’t tell you.” Our eyes lock as she wrings her fingers around one another. Her hair’s still damp from the shower, making it look darker than her dirty-blonde should be. Her lack of sleep is just as evident. Still, she’s beautiful.
She clears her throat, staring at the intricately woven rug beneath the desk and stopping a small distance from me in her bare feet.
Her small form clothed in loose pajamas is at odds with the three of us. She belongs here though. She is my counterpart in every way. I only wish I didn’t hurt her like I do.
“He brought up my last name,” she finally says clearly. Her admission makes a deep crease settle in my forehead.
“Fawn?” I question and that gets Jase’s attention.
She nods, glancing between Jase and me. “He asked if I was related to Bethany.” She speaks directly to Jase as if he’d have an answer, but he wears the same expression I do.
“I never really knew my family, so… I don’t know.” The insecurity in her tone is undeniable, as is her curiosity.
“You should ask her,” Jase comments. “We can have dinner tomorrow night.”