He’s back, my broken king. Though forever scarred, he’s whole again, and he’s completely mine.
“This is what you want?”
“Yes. It’s time.”
“You’re sure?”
He loosens his grip on my hair, his warm breath hitting my lips as he bends. Molten eyes penetrate mine, the only sign of emotion in his otherwise stoic expression. Only this man could make the possibility of dying together seem romantic. But he’s searching now for any trace of fear. Fear that no longer exists and won’t as long as we’re in it together.
“Positive.”
His reply is a slow nod before his eyes dip, and his free hand wanders to the slit of my dress, his finger gliding up my thigh. His nostrils flare when he finds me bare, gathering evidence of my need for him on the pads of his fingers.
“I hope you weren’t planning on leaving this room tonight, Trésor.”
He separates me before pressing his fingers in, his hold on me tightening as he feels my desire. My mouth parts as he leans in and runs his tongue along my lower lip. Body humming, I slide my hand down the silky material of his tie and down to cover his cock which jerks in reaction to my needy touch. Fingers entangled in my hair, he tilts my head taking advantage of the access before pressing his full lips to my throat. My moan fuels the movement of his finger, and in seconds I’m moaning his name.
Taking his time, he thoroughly covers every inch of exposed flesh at my nape before staring down at me with satisfaction—a man on fire, as whole as a man can be after all he’s endured, as I whisper the words he’s been waiting for.
“Let’s get back to work.”
The tick of a grandfather clock and the intense stare of the woman sitting across from me has me on edge. It’s been a solid minute of uncomfortable silence since we sat down. She lifts her teacup, never taking her narrowed gaze off me as I clear my throat. It was a short trip from Triple Falls back into the pits of hell, and this is part of my penance and one of Cecelia’s few conditions for re-entry. I was told in great detail of how it was ‘on me’ to right the wrongs of my past and explain my behavior to the people who mean most to her outside of our exclusive world. One of which is now looking at me as though plotting my slow and painful death.
Cecelia bristles at my side before bursting into laughter. “Christy, ease up on him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the man sweat this much.”
I keep my stare on Christy, another oversight and the very ‘best friend’ of my future. A friend who’s had to pick up her pieces over the years due to the nature of our relationship. It’s clear now, even with ample warning from Cecelia, I wasn’t prepared enough when she opened the front door of her colonial-style home in suburbia Atlanta. When we arrived, Christy rushed her husband away, along with their two children to Home Depot—which was, I’m guessing—a safe enough distance from where the inevitable mushroom cloud couldn’t be seen.
For me, this is both penance and Cecelia’s price—for Christy, this is a day of reckoning.
She seems ready to burst now as she slurps from her cup again and darts her eyes from Cecelia to me in accusation.
“I’m listening.”
Cecelia looks over to me. “The floor is yours.”
I open my mouth to speak and close it, unsure of why I agreed to explain my motives to the Atlanta Housewife from hell. Well, I do, but I’m not happy about it.
“We are together now,” I slice a hand through the air, “end of.”
“Tobias,” Cecelia hisses in clear warning.
I can practically see the steam coming out of Christy’s ears and I relent and take a patient breath. “Why don’t you ask me what you want to know?”
She comes in, guns blazing. “Have you stopped punishing her for sleeping with your brother?”
Cecelia sucks in a breath, and I glance her way before turning to address Christy.
“Nothing to forgive.”
“Bullshit, you tortured her for years.”
“Christy, there’s a lot you don’t know,” Cecelia interjects. “A lot.”
“Yeah, like what? This asshole didn’t claim to love you and then toss you to the side? He didn’t rip your heart out a second time a year ago and stomp on it for good measure?” She stands abruptly, discarding her tea and saucer on the table, before putting both hands on her hips. “I understand you were grieving your brother, and I’m truly sorry for that, but that’s no excuse to treat a woman the way you treated her. It’s unforgivable, and you’re here now, for what, my blessing? Fat chance. It will be a cold day in hell. She faithfully loved you for years but did you? Did you ever once ask about her life or the people in it? Have you even bothered to meet her mother?” Christy’s scold shifts to Cecelia. “And you brought him here thinking I will be okay with it? I’m not okay with this!”
She’s lied to her, repeatedly, to keep me safe, damaging her own relationships with the people closest to her for my protection while alienating herself in the process. And through it all, she’s been alone—alone with her knowledge, alone with the truth, and isolated because of it, her pattern mimicking my own.
“Christy,” I address her, and her attention slowly shifts to me. “Please, for her, not for me, for her, listen to what I have to say.”
“Now you have something to say?”
“Plenty. And you’re right, I am the bad guy, and I treated her horribly. I don’t deserve her.”
“No shit! And maybe I don’t want to hear your excuses.” She stands and begins snatching toys from her carpet, and with the death glare she grants me between her hostile cleanup, I’m sure it takes great effort not to hurl them at me. After a few restless seconds of watching her, I stand and join her, picking up a teething ring. She snatches it from my hands, and I can see the fear in her eyes as I try and level with her.
“I love her.”
“You’re terrible at it.”
“I will do better.”
“Not good enough. Can you really blame her for moving on after you—”
“His brother didn’t die in a car wreck,” Cecelia says softly, and Christy flinches with the revelation, “he died from several gunshot wounds at a gunfight at my father’s mansion, saving us both.” Mouth agape, plastic keys in her hand, I guide Christy back to her seat on shaky legs.
She gapes at Cecelia before looking up at me, and I attempt to crack a joke to take some of the tension away. “And we know who shot JFK.”
“Holy fucking shit,” Christy utters for the umpteenth time as Tobias chases her two-year-old around his playground while Josh mans the grill.
Midway through our confession, she switched her tea for wine. Not long after she finished her first bottle, Josh came home and decided to barbecue in the dead of winter, which led us to huddling on her back porch as the two men juggled both the grill and one of her toddlers.
“It’s insane, I know. And I really don’t think you should tell Josh. At least not all of it.”
She looks at me with the stress of a thousand spilled secrets etched into her face and practically screams. “How can I not!?”
“I mean, you can, but I doubt he’ll let us back in the house if you do. I don’t want that.”
“You wouldn’t put me in danger,” she says confidently. “Never.”
“We have the Secret Service protecting us now, and you’re right, I wouldn’t.”
“This is absolutely crazy. I don’t know whether to be pissed, or amazed, or excited or—good God, that man has me wanting to make another baby.”
Tobias stands with the toddler in his arms as the baby points to the slide. “Don’t get me wrong, I love Josh,” she glances at her husband, who’s wearing a “eat my meat” apron over his hoodie, “but door number two sure is appealing.”
“Door number two is a reformed egomaniac and gigantic ass, who I’ll have to fight every day for the rest of my life.”
“Hot,” she says, eyeing Tobias and completely unfazed by my words as she looks back to me. “You know, eve
n if I told Josh, he wouldn’t believe it.”
“Do you believe it?”
An emphatic nod. “Every word. There were too many holes in your other stories and too many inconsistencies. Now it all makes sense. I thought you were losing your mind for a while, then you seemed to get straight with Collin, so I figured it was just a spell.”
I haven’t heard Collin’s name since we parted, easing some of the guilt associated with it. A sudden sting of remorse eats at me now at the mere mention of him. In my grief-stricken state, and my will to start a new life, I’d shifted from grieving one to another, but the full weight of my destructive path rears its ugly head now.
Christy reads my expression. “He’s okay, you know. He’s met someone.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw them together at a swanky restaurant in town on our last date night.”
“Really? Did he look happy?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“Why didn’t you text me?”
“Because ever since you moved to Nowhere, Virginia, you haven’t been texting much either.”
“I got in my head again, and I was tired of burdening you with it.”
“That’s not what this is about,” she snaps. “There’s no limit in being a friend, in being there for a friend. There’s no limit.”
“I’m sorry if my distance hurt you.”
“Well, it did.”
“I’m sorry. And it won’t happen again. I swear to you. I’ll never lie to you again. I don’t want us growing apart.”
“I don’t either, and I know why you did it. I understand it now. And I’ve got your back. But my God, Cecelia…I’m still crazy numb. Like, this shit is real?”
“One hundred percent, and mostly because of him.” Tobias glances over at the two of us after uncapping a fresh beer Josh offers him. Tucker runs up to us, bundled in his winter coat.
“Mommy slide, pease, pease, Mommy!”
In a flash, he’s pulled from the ground and hoisted over Josh’s shoulders. His sweetheart eyes shining down on us with apology. He’s a considerate husband and knows our time together is limited. “Daddy’s got this.” Josh bends and kisses Christy, and I can see her inwardly swoon. She’s happy, truly happy, and I briefly wonder if my life will ever resemble hers in any form. But the truth is, I don’t care, as long as I have them both in it. As long as I have the man who looks at me now with flaming eyes of observance, no doubt wondering the same thing as he looks to Josh wrangling his son and then to me.
I try to picture us in her scenario, in the suburbs and it doesn’t at all compute. And I know for certain it won’t be us, not anytime soon.
“So, what will you do now?”
“We’re going back in.” I sip my wine.
“Seriously?”
“With the protection and aid of the government, we’re going after them—all of them.. Any we can get to while Monroe is still in office. We’re not going to poke the bear. We’re going to fucking bitch slap him.”
“This is…so crazy.”
“I know, I came in somewhere in the middle of this, and it took me years to fully wrap my head around it all.”
“I really should have ignored you and came up to see you anyway.”
“Christy, I had to protect you.”
“I know. I’ll try not to hold a grudge, but it will take some time. But we’ll be fine. You and me, we’ll always be fine. And I’m behind you a hundred percent. But,” she shifts her gaze to me, her tone growing serious, “shouldn’t there be some perks to this arrangement?”
“Like?”
“Think you can get us out of paying taxes?”
We both burst into laughter, and two curious male heads turn our way. Tobias reads my expression and gives me a whisper of a smile before going back to his conversation with Josh.
“What in the world could those two be talking about?” Christy contemplates watching them interact. “What could they possibly have in common?”
I study Tobias, who’s at this point, completely at ease in suburbia with a practical stranger. He’s here for me because this family, these people, matter to me—because he loves me. And hopefully, our future consists of more gatherings like this even though our future doesn’t look a thing like the Baldwins. “You see a refined, nearly impenetrable man in an expensive suit. And he is that, but I don’t see that anymore. I see a boy that started as an orphan determined to protect his brother. Just a poor kid living on a bad street, intimidated by a world he didn’t understand and determined to change it for himself, for his brother, and for us. I see the man he’s grown into, who’s never forgotten where he came from and how it shaped him, no matter how much he’s evolved.”
“It’s admirable…he’s truly…he’s some kind of man.”
Tobias’s gaze drifts over to me as electricity spikes in the air between us.
“He is,” I agree.
A true king.
I turn to Christy. “I know I’ve asked a lot of you today, but I need a favor.”
I run my fingers along Beau’s ears, fighting tears. Tobias bends, repeating my movement, his suit jacket brushing the frozen grass. “We don’t have to leave him here. We can—”
“There’s no safer place than here. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
He tilts my chin up and knuckles away the evidence of my lie. “What hurts you, hurts me.”
I manage a laugh. “You won’t miss him.”
I can tell by his expression that may no longer be the truth. My pooch has grown on him. And maybe one day we’ll be able to give him a home, but he doesn’t belong in our world for the moment. He runs a hand along Beau’s back.
“Are you sure?”
“We don’t know where we’re going to end up. He needs a good home until we figure it out.” Christy stands feet away, her eyes drifting between us before I walk him on his leash over to her.
“He’s a good boy. He shouldn’t give you much trouble.” The shake in my voice gives me away, and Tobias curses behind me, no doubt out of guilt. But it was my call, and I made it. Mustering my strength, I make it only seconds before Christy pulls me into her arms.
“When will I see you again?” She asks as I hold her tightly to me.
“I’m not sure, but I’ll call you as soon as we get somewhere.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too.”
We hug until the blacked-out Mercedes pulls up to the curb, cueing the end of life as I know it. Christy releases me, her pleading gaze on Tobias. “Don’t give me a reason to come after you.”
He gives her a nod before ushering me inside the idling SUV.
And with the slam of the door, we pull away from the curb. I can feel Tobias’s gaze on me a second before he shouts to the driver.
“Arrêtez!” Stop.
The driver frowns as Tobias shakes his head, giving the order in English. “Stop!”
Confused by his outburst, I turn to him a second before he leaps from the SUV. The driver glances back at me equally as confused as I scan the streets for any threat I might’ve missed while grabbing my Glock from my purse. A minute later, Tobias opens the door with my other Frenchman in hand, both of them panting as he climbs back into the car, the dog clutched tightly in his embrace as Beau licks his jaw. Tobias flicks his gaze to me, daring me to argue with him before his lips tilt up and he speaks. “I can teach him to shoot.”
Relieved laughter bursts from me as Beau settles across our laps, resting his head on Tobias’s thigh as he lovingly strokes his ears.
“You’re getting soft, King.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“I knew you loved him,” I insist as I kiss his upturned lips.
We lace our fingers together in anticipation as we’re swept away from the curb and hurtle into the unknown, hearts pounding, excitement building between us as we speed toward our future.
“We loved with a love that was more than love.”—Edgar Allen Poe
Age Forty-Th
ree
Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France
Meet me at the finish line.
We collide in the middle of the balcony and I lift her from her feet.
“Goddamn you, you bastard!” She cries into my neck. “Please tell me being here means what I think it means.”
Eyes glazing, I inhale her scent as she shakes in my arms. It was close, too close, and we both know it. For the last seven years, we set out on a thousand dream adventure—mostly mine—and not once has she complained. We fought as often as we fucked. We moved twelve times, dodged bullets, lost friends, fought the good fight, together, and mostly side by side—which was the biggest fight of all. We struggled, felt defeated, rallied, and came back swinging. We utilized our position in every imaginable way, going head-to-head with the biggest threats, mostly corrupt corporations and media conglomerates controlled by deep state. With Cecelia’s help, Molly implemented several programs and passed numerous bills to give aid to those less fortunate.
We fought hard, and it’s been fucking bloody, but we’ve managed to accomplish a lot—and mostly come out unscathed. Preston reigned both his terms with an iron fist, and with the government’s backing and the support of the people, we managed to take out a good amount of trash. My sole focus over the last seven years was to flush out the terrorists who became notorious during Preston’s second year in office. Adversaries who made themselves known to me as I sat on the couch in Virginia years ago during our snow day. When the hairs on my neck rose, and that familiar zing struck me like a bolt of lightning, I knew, I fucking knew that I would make it my mission to rid the world of them even if I had to hunt them down and eradicate them myself.
The Finish Line Page 41
