She brushed away what looked like the last of her tears and sighed. “The only person I’ve told all that to is my attorney. Well, and the people who helped me get away.”
He noticed her shoulders relax. “How does it feel?”
“Liberating.”
“Your secrets are safe with me. I want you to call anytime you feel the need to murder all your cleaning supplies.”
There it was. A little laugh as she lowered her forehead to his shoulder.
He took the moment to wrap her in his arms. He kissed the top of her head since it was the only part of her available to him.
“Matt?”
“Yes?”
“I’m starving.”
For some reason, her words eased the tension and made him laugh.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Matt had turned an unused back room in his house into a personal gym. He couldn’t stand the meat markets that people went to in the name of fitness. And the places that screamed testosterone were filled with an equal amount of hard bodies that hadn’t touched a carb in a decade. He didn’t relate to either side of the spectrum, so a home gym solved his problem.
Right now, his workout space gave him every tool needed to push himself into exhaustion.
He’d taken Erin to an early dinner in Ventura and held her hand while they walked on the beach. She told him that being an accomplished liar about her personal life had become second nature. She didn’t like that her truths required others to lie for her.
Keeping her secrets would be easy enough except when it came to his family. They were close, and secrets were hard to keep around them.
Grace was the worst at pushing if she felt there was something to learn.
His mom was downright cunning in learning the truth. It was like the woman laced your coffee with truth serum, and before your first spoonful of cereal she had every detail.
Dad would sit back and wait you out. Once in a while he’d play the guilt card. “You don’t think my opinion is valuable?”
And hell, Colin was the one Matt went to and told everything to. In his defense, he didn’t spill to the rest of their family.
This time, he had to keep the vault shut. He’d promised Erin.
The woman had every reason to believe her ex, and Matt would continue to refer to the man as her ex even if his signature wasn’t on the divorce papers yet. He was capable of killing Erin just to prove he could.
The images that she’d painted for him were horrific.
With music pumping, Matt pulled off his shirt, put on a pair of boxing gloves, and slowly started to work his upper body. He didn’t have a face to picture, but that didn’t stop him from jabbing the punching bag hanging from a special hook in his ceiling. What he wouldn’t do to have five minutes with the man responsible.
“Who?” He jabbed with his right fist.
“Hits?” He crossed with his left.
“Women?” Left, right, left, left.
He chanted with every punch.
Put a dent in his bag for every tear Erin had shed.
He imagined the face of a man he hoped he’d never meet, broke his pretend face, and blackened his nonexistent eye.
“Fucking coward!” He punched the bag again and again.
When he was done, there wasn’t any strength left in his arms, his back screamed in protest of the workout, and someone clapped behind him.
Matt swiveled around and drew his hands to his face.
“Colin.”
“That was impressive.” His brother crossed the room and patted the punching bag. Once he stopped it from swinging he looked at Matt.
“How long were you standing there?”
“Long enough to know that you’re pissed at someone and I’m glad it’s not me.” He crossed to the radio and turned it off.
Matt wrestled the gloves off his hands and tossed them to the side. He reached for a bottle of water and sat on one of his workout benches.
“You want to talk about it?” Colin asked.
“No.” His denial was too fast.
“This is about Erin, isn’t it?”
Fucking vault.
Matt stayed silent. He wasn’t a liar. It wasn’t in him.
He kept silent.
“You know I won’t say anything,” Colin told him.
Matt guzzled the bottle of water, wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. “And I promised to do the same.”
Colin nodded a few times. “I’ll grab the beer. You hit the shower.”
Ten minutes later they sat on Matt’s back patio. “I’m surprised you’re here. I thought you’d be at Parker’s tonight.” It was Saturday. A full day since Matt had been challenged to keep Erin’s secrets. In that time he’d mowed his lawn, washed the truck and his RV, and fixed the timing chain on his dirt bike.
“I’ll see her later. She said Erin wanted to talk to her.”
“Oh?” Matt looked at him.
“She didn’t say why. I was going to suggest you come to my place for happy hour but realized it had been a while since I’ve been here.”
Matt sipped his beer. “It’s going to be strange when you move for good.”
Colin placed his heels on an adjacent chair. “I’m renting out the house.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Parker and I talked about it. The income will pay for the mortgage, insurance, and taxes with a little extra. I suggested selling, but she thought it might be wise to hold on to it until after her brother was old enough to actually collect his inheritance from the sale of her place.” When Parker’s parents passed away, they’d put a stipulation in their will that any money from the sale of the family home be held in trust until each of them had turned twenty-two. So while Parker was in the clear and her sister, Mallory, was nearly there, Austin still had four years to go.
“That’s a big decision.”
“The house?” Colin asked.
“Yeah.”
“Not really. It’s a house. Sure, Parker’s place isn’t really hers or mine, but leaving it doesn’t feel right.” The Sinclair Ranch was ten acres of prime real estate with everything you could want. The downside was the home had been kissed by a wildfire and the barns had burned to the ground, and the following winter washed away a lot of what was left with the most rain Southern California had seen in seven years. But hey, it had a pool and a guesthouse.
It had Erin.
“Have you guys talked about keeping Erin there?”
Colin turned to him. “Did she suggest she wanted to leave?”
“No. Not to me. I think she’s happy.” Secluded and alarmed with people close by who could be there for her. “I feel better knowing she has people around.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“I work long days. I don’t like the thought of her being alone.”
Colin stayed quiet.
Matt joined him in the silence.
They both took a drink from their bottles.
“Any chance your desire for Erin to have someone around has anything to do with the imaginary face you put on your punching bag?”
Matt sat his drink aside.
Vault.
And then there was Erin’s safety.
“It’s a pretty isolated property. You can never be too careful.”
Colin’s legs dropped off the chair. “Damn, Matt. Do I need to worry here?”
He shook his head. “If there was anything imminent, I’d have to break my vow to keep my mouth shut. I would never put a promise in front of anyone’s safety.”
“If it changes?”
“I’ll let you know. For now, it would be nice to know when you’re not going to be around so I can make an excuse to be there.” Because if Dickface, or whatever the ex’s name was, was staying away because of a restraining order, he might decide to pay a visit. “How soon will the gate camera be up and running?”
“Running cable this week.”
“Need help?”
“I’m never
going to say no to free labor.”
Colin’s feet went back up on the adjacent chair.
“Thanks for not prying, brother. I want Erin to trust me, and screwing that up so soon wouldn’t bode well for anything lasting.”
“Does that mean things are progressing?”
He watched the condensation on his beer drip down the side of the bottle. “Man, I really hope so. We had dinner, but it wasn’t quite a date. She keeps saying she’s not ready for the whole dating deal, but sometimes when she looks at me I get the feeling she’s not even convincing herself with that story.”
“We’ve all noticed the attraction, and if she’s revealing secrets to you, then there’s something there. Be patient.”
He grunted. “Because I’m great at that.”
Colin laughed. “Bring her to a family dinner.”
“I’m not sure she’ll agree.”
“You know she won’t miss our engagement party.”
Matt hadn’t considered that. “I like the way you think.”
“Aren’t you at work?” Erin asked Matt. The man had called her every night he didn’t actually see her. And he’d made plenty of excuses to be on the property since she fought the bottom of her sink with the back of her head.
“I’m not on a call.”
“I would hope not.” Erin sat on the patio by the pool as the sun dipped below the horizon. The late spring heat was bending a little and giving the air a cool edge.
“What are you doing?”
She looked at her laptop. “Attempting to work.”
“Are you distracted?”
“Only by a man who keeps making excuses to talk to me every night. Most people just text.”
“Texting is lame. I mean, I’ll do it, but talking is much better. So much is lost in translation.”
Erin closed her computer and set it aside. “Did you have a busy day?”
“You mean you haven’t been watching your app?”
She feigned innocence with a gasp and then said, “I don’t open it all the time.”
Matt slowly chuckled. “See there. If you’d texted that to me, I wouldn’t have heard that little noise you made, and I might even have believed you. But since we’re talking, I know you’re full of it.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” She was smiling.
“Uhm, ah . . . ,” he stuttered. “I’m calling you a skilled bender of the facts. A confession you made to me not too long ago, if I remember correctly.”
Yeah, she had told him she’d become a chronic liar after leaving Desmond.
“Well, I hope people are on their best behavior and you can get some sleep tonight.”
“Midweek is always a little less crazy than the weekend. Unless it’s a full moon. And that’s next week.”
She laughed. “You know when our next full moon is?”
“Yeah. I rearrange my schedule if I can.”
“That’s nuts.”
“You think that now. Just keep that app open and off silent mode on the next full moon and see how much sleep you get.”
She was half tempted to do it.
“So, Colin and Parker’s engagement party. You’re coming, right?” he asked.
“I couldn’t exactly say no. Parker asked me to bake a cake.”
“Oh, no.”
“What?”
“Cake. I haven’t had your cake yet?” His voice carried a singsong tone as he spoke.
“Why did that sound sexual?”
He laughed. “I haven’t had that yet either.”
The word yet stuck out, but she wasn’t about to bring attention to what he’d said. “You’re impossible.”
“I know. How’s your head today?”
Every day, the same question. “It only hurts when I lie on it.”
“I bet a hemorrhoid pillow would fix that.”
The image said yes, the possibility of the smell said no. “I’ll continue sleeping on my side, thank you.”
He paused for a second. “How are you sleeping?”
With one eye open. “Not bad.”
Matt hummed. “You don’t have to pretend with me.”
“It’s a little hard when I roll over and catch the back of my head. I’m sure it will improve once the stitches are out.”
“Erin?”
“Really, Matt. I’m getting enough.” Yet as she was talking she found her mouth opening in a yawn. “I even nap during the day sometimes. Helps make up for what I don’t get at night.”
“I guess that’s okay.”
“Glad you approve. Now go back to work,” she teased.
“I’ll see you on Sunday.”
“Ha. Does that mean you’re not going to call the rest of the week?”
“Duh . . . no.”
She didn’t think so. “Thanks for checking on me,” she said.
“Anytime.”
She disconnected the call and imagined Matt walking back into the fire station. Was he wearing his blue uniform, or was he dressed down in a T-shirt and slacks? He kept his hair short and his jaw clean-shaven. At least that’s what she’d noticed about his appearance when he was working. If he had a couple of days off, he’d leave his five o’clock shadow alone. She liked the contrast. Work Matt and play Matt.
He was being overattentive after their discussion about her past. It would be easy to feel guilty about taking so much of his time, but the reality was, she liked his attention and his concern. It felt as if she’d carried the burden of her abusive husband alone the entire time she had been with the man. When she’d told Renee, it was a hard delivery of facts without all the emotion that went with it. Yeah, she’d cried a couple of times, but when Erin was in the process of leaving Desmond she had been terrified he’d find out what she was doing and didn’t give herself permission to fall apart.
And now she didn’t want to give him the power to make her cry again.
She pushed Desmond out of her head and gave Matt the space. Before long, she was three chapters into the book she was editing, and the coolness in the air drove her inside.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Baking a cake was the easy part. Showing up at Matt’s parents’ home, on the other hand, made her want to vomit. Right when Erin was starting to put on the pounds she’d shed, here she’d lost her appetite simply by being around people she didn’t know.
Mr. and Mrs. Hudson, Emmitt and Nora, she’d met a couple of times since they had accompanied Colin over to the property. Mallory’s live-in boyfriend, Jase, was a cousin to Matt, so she’d met him. But then there was the rest of Matt’s family, a grandmother that flew in just to meet Parker, an aunt on Nora’s side with her husband, and a handful of family friends.
Yeah, Erin wanted to curl up in a corner and hide.
Instead Nora had taken the cake out of her hands when she hit the door, Grace placed a glass of wine in it, and Matt snuck to her side and greeted her with a kiss on her cheek. How had they become so familiar? She wasn’t about to turn his affection away.
There was tons of chatter and music coming from speakers in the family room.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Matt whispered in her ear.
“You have a nice family, but . . .”
He placed a hand on her waist and moved her forward. “They won’t bite. Grandma Rose will talk your ear off, but won’t remember a thing you talked about tomorrow. Colin and Parker are the center of attention right now, not you. Relax and have fun.”
No sooner did Matt’s words reach her ear than his aunt walked up to them and reached out her hand. “I’m Aunt Bethany, you must be Matt’s girlfriend.”
Erin’s jaw dropped.
“We’re just dating, Aunt Beth.”
Beth had the same eyes and mouth as her sister, Nora. But unlike Matt’s mother’s soft disposition, Beth carried herself a little more vocally. “Isn’t that what I said?”
Instead of correcting her, Erin reached out her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Colin says you’re Park
er’s roommate.”
“I live in the guesthouse, yes,” Erin told her.
Beth smiled. “Isn’t that convenient. You can double date and never leave the house.”
Yeah, Erin wanted out of this conversation . . . yesterday.
“How are Jasmine and Karl doing? I’m surprised they’re not here,” Matt said.
“Fine, fine. Busy.” She leaned closer. “I think they’re trying to get pregnant and she’s ovulating . . . so . . .” Bethany lifted her eyebrows a couple of times before winking. “Can’t wait to be a grandmother.”
Matt turned to Erin. “Jasmine is my cousin, and she and Karl have been married for two years.”
Bethany tapped a finger on the glass she was holding. “I’m not getting any younger.”
“Hoookay, then. You know what, Aunt Beth, I promised Erin I’d show her that thing I did in the backyard.”
“What thing?” Beth asked.
“You know . . . that thing, right, babe?” He looked at Erin and nudged her with his hand.
“Right. The, ah . . . artsy thing.”
Matt’s eyes lit up.
“You did an artsy thing?” Beth asked.
“It was when I was a kid.” Matt waved her off. “Women like that stuff.”
Apparently Aunt Bethany bought it. She dropped the subject and moved aside. “You must be Mallory . . .”
“On to her next victim,” Matt whispered in Erin’s ear as they walked away.
They chuckled as he navigated her out to the backyard.
Matt’s younger cousin was outside with Austin.
“Escaping the chaos?” Austin asked him.
“Fresh air,” Erin said.
He laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“When is your graduation?” Matt asked.
“Thursday. The last day of school was Friday. I can’t believe it’s over.”
“It goes by quick.”
“I’m surprised you’re not out with your friends.” Erin sat her wineglass down after only one sip. She really didn’t have it in her to drink around strangers.
“I have my whole summer to hang with them. Parker only gets engaged once.”
Erin felt her heart swell. “You’re a good brother.”
He shrugged. “Don’t tell her. She’ll expect it.”
Matt led her away from Austin and toward the back of the yard.
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