by Brandi Evans
“You didn’t do anything,” he interrupted. “Let’s get that straight right now. Even if you were the worst wife ever, couldn’t keep the house clean or cook dinner without burning it, none of this would be your fault. His assholeness is all on him. Not you, Katlyn. Remember that.”
She nodded slowly. “Still, I—”
“No still, no but, nothing. Don’t take this on yourself. He has to own his behavior, not you.”
She backhanded away a tear then placed her hand on his, gripping him until her arm shook. “Thank you. So much. You and Maddox… Just thank you.”
His gaze dropped to their hands, tears still shining on the back of her hand. He was again transported to another time and place, to another frightened woman who’d reached for his hand. And he’d reached right back. He’d crossed the line and fallen in love with someone he was supposed to protect.
He’d fucked up.
Decisions he’d made about Emily played over and over in his head.
What if he’d have kept things professional?
What if he’d arranged to have her go underground sooner, instead of insisting she stay close just a little bit longer?
What if he’d have loved her a little less and cared for her a bit more?
What if he’d kept her alive?
What if…?
No, he refused to let himself mourn the woman he’d loved and lost. If he opened the door to his past and let his pent-up grief glimpse a single ray of sunlight, he was sure the grief would finally kill him, once and for all.
Raven checked her reflection in the downstairs bathroom mirror. Ugh. A little black dress? God, what had she been thinking?
She still couldn’t believe she’d gotten up early on a Saturday morning to go shopping, especially given she was trying to save money. She’d wanted a little something more than jeans and a T-shirt. Hey, at least she’d gotten the dress on the sale rack.
She turned to the side. The bodice hadn’t looked so tight in the dressing room mirror. The cotton material hugged her breasts like a second skin and made her look like she was trying too hard, and knowing Carter, he’d notice it the moment he saw her. But on the plus side, at least the spaghetti straps played well with her tattoos. So, there was that.
She’d left her feet bare, her hair soft, and her makeup barely there. Maybe those would counter the trying-too-hard dress and even things out.
Yeah, because she was that lucky.
“Stop fretting, stupid,” she murmured as she turned on her heel and headed for the kitchen.
She checked her watch, five after one. Carter was late. Had he forgotten about their date? He hadn’t responded to her last message about food preferences, but she’d fallen asleep so soon afterward she hadn’t given it another thought until now.
Had he changed his mind and forgotten to tell her?
Had he overslept?
Was she being ridiculous and inventing problems? Probably.
The crunch of gravel under tires drew her attention, and she hurried to the window. A sleek black Ford Fusion sat in her drive, Carter in the driver’s seat. Whoa. Talk about fitting. That was the black leather Dom of cars. Forget sleek sports cars. They were too pristine, too snooty. This vehicle was rugged, meant for performance and style while still being practical. It was the four-wheeled personification of her Dom if ever there was one.
She remained in the kitchen and watched him as he stepped from the vehicle. Whoa. Master Carter without his leathers. Nice. She’d never seen him in anything else. Of course, she’d only ever seen him at the club, so that made sense. But today, he wore a pair of dark blue jeans and a dark blue shirt which somehow didn’t clash. The shirt was untucked.
How did he look so goddamn sexy when dressed so casually?
He reached back into the vehicle and came out with a paper bag in one hand and a single flower in the other. A sunflower. A smile tugged at her lips. She adored sunflowers. She’d never been a fan of delicate flowers, but sunflowers, they stood tall and proud, thick stems and deep roots, ready to take on the world.
When Carter was about halfway up the walk and out of her line of sight, she hurried to the front door to greet him. With a shaky hand, she reached for the door.
Weird.
When had her hand started shaking?
Before he could knock, she pulled the door open. “Hey there, professor.”
“Hey there, yourself.” He gave her a long up-and-down look. “And… wow. Might I say, you look positively incredible.”
“Thanks.” She fought the urge to busy her hands over the front of her dress. “I kinda feel like a cross-dresser.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you’re the sexiest cross-dresser I’ve ever seen.”
She bit back a smile. “No, that doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Good thing I said if, huh?” Grinning, he leaned in for the softest brush of lips and then held out the flower. “Saw this on the way and thought you needed to have it.”
“Thank you,” she said, taking the flower and immediately bringing it to her nose. Sunflowers didn’t have a typical floral scent, but she liked the heady aroma of nature nonetheless. “These are my favorites.”
“I’m glad.” He held out the bag. “I also brought stuff for mimosas. Felt a bit of a late-summer cold coming on and thought the Vitamin C would do me some good.”
Raven laughed. “Yeah, because that’s how it works.”
He wagged his eyebrows.
“But it’ll go great with the paninis.” Motioning him inside, she stepped aside to allow him entrance and directed him toward the kitchen. “Pardon all the boxes. It’s more than a little bit of a mess in here.”
And wasn’t that the truth. Since her move had been put on hiatus, she’d had to dig back into the boxes she’d packed to get out necessities.
“You’re moving?” he asked when they reached the kitchen.
“Yeah. But it’s a bit of a long, complicated story.” One she wanted to talk about, but not yet.
“Is that part of the reason you were asking to pick up extra shifts at the club?”
“Yes and no. Mostly, yes.”
Careful to avoid eye contact, she dug into one of the kitchen boxes until she found a quart-sized Mason jar. This would do perfectly. All the vases, China, and other non-everyday dishware were in a taped box in the living room, but that was okay. She’d always liked flowers in Mason jars anyway. They reminded her of innocent times, like when her mom had been sober. Raven would pick her wildflowers from the meadow and put them in jars.
“Thank you, sugar pea,” her mom would say as she knelt to a four-year-old Raven’s level. “These’re the most beautiful flowers in the entire world.” And then, she’d add them to the windowsill, next to a line of other flower-filled mason jars Raven had gathered. If only they’d had more days like those.
Raven missed her mama terribly.
“You want to talk about it?” Carter asked, stepping close and pressing a palm to her upper back, between the shoulders.
“Actually, I wouldn’t mind. I mean, if you really mean it. I just don’t want to do it right this second.” She turned to him. “I’m going through some serious shit, and I could use a friendly ear.”
“Of course.” He took the flower from her, placed it on the windowsill, and pulled her into his arms. “I told you I was here if you needed to talk, and I meant it. That’s something you’ll learn about me, Genny. I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
She fought back the unexpected wave of tears pressing against the backs of her eyes. People didn’t care about her; it was a fact of life she’d long ago accepted. She was on her own, but here was Carter, taking a wrecking ball to everything she’d always thought was true. He was breaking her apart. She hoped, once the dust settled, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Since she’d sold her dining table and the weather was almost unbearably perfect, they’d opted for a picnic outside, at the very back of her property, in the shade o
f the sunflower field.
They finished off the sandwiches and mimosas. Well, the champagne portion. Carter was working on finishing off the last of the OJ. The alcohol had worked to loosen her. She was far from hammered. Hell, she wasn’t sure she’d hit tipsy, but she was certainly feeling the pleasant, laugh-inducing sensation she’d spent far too much of her life without.
Carter seemed so different outside the club and out of his leathers. She hesitated to call him sweet, but he was certainly close, holding her hand on occasion or resting his hand on her thigh.
She liked this side of him. She wasn’t sure she liked it as much as she liked his Dom side—something about being orgasmed into near unconsciousness would do that to a girl. But damn, he would be a fun quandary to work out.
He tossed back the last of his OJ. “Is this the same field of sunflowers running along the road from town?”
She nodded.
“And it’s part of your property?” he asked.
“No. My property line ends here at the sunflowers.”
“Good, I didn’t stop and pick you a flower from your own property. Good to know.”
Shaking her head, she touched the green, prickly stalk nearest her. “I spent a lot of time in these flowers as a child.”
“Playing hide and seek with the other children?”
“Hiding mostly. But not from other kids.”
A line crossed his forehead as the skin there wrinkled. “Hiding from whom?”
“My mom. The social workers when I kept running away from my foster homes. Some of my mom’s Johns after they’d get a little too handsy. Whoever.”
His entire body went still, and what she could only describe as anger and panic painted his face in dark lines. “Did one of those bastards—”
“No,” she said quickly. She didn’t need to be a mind reader to know where he was going. “None of them ever raped me or anything, although a couple times, it wasn’t through a lack of trying. One punched me once.” She pointed at the scar on her chin.
“So, that’s why you didn’t want to talk about this before. Did anything ever happen to the asshole?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. I never saw him again after that.”
“Was that the worst of what one of them did to you?” Carter asked, drawing his thumb over the scar before pressing his hand to her cheek.
“No.” The word barely escaped her lips.
She closed her eyes as that night flashed back through her mind, and she was back in her bedroom, her mother asleep across the hall. He was there, too, the buck-ass naked asshole who’d almost killed her.
“Genny?” Carter scooted closer and wrapped both arms around her as effectively as the position would allow. “What’re you remembering?”
“That night.”
“What night?”
She tucked her knees into her chest and hugged them to her; Carter never released his hold.
She wanted to talk, but it was hard. Remembering was hard. Reliving what happened as she told him everything would be harder.
“It wasn’t the first time he’d come into my room,” she finally said. “Benny. At least that’s what my mom called him when she faked an orgasm and screamed his name.” She bit back a tear. “He usually just stood there while I pretended to be asleep. That was as far as anything had ever gone.”
“But not that night?”
She shook her head. “He was buck-ass naked, a belt in his right hand, and telling me to do… stuff. He was so drunk or high his words were slurred. He got into my bed, but I kicked him hard, right in the nuts.”
“As you should have.”
“And then I ran downstairs. I’d planned to run to the neighbor’s house to call the cops,” she continued, “but I changed my mind at the last second. I didn’t want to put my neighbor in danger, so I turned to run here, to hide in the sunflowers. I figured he’d be too drunk to put in the effort to find me in the dark, especially after being kicked in the nuts but—”
She choked on the rest of the sentence.
“But what?”
She shook her head, the blackness inside clawing to get out. Shit, shit, shit, this was too hard to talk about. She turned into Carter and snuggled closer.
“It’s okay, Genny. You don’t have to.”
But didn’t she?
The memories were cancer inside her. It might be painful, but one way or the other, she had to get it out. She needed to get it out, and not just for her peace of mind. If she was going to let Carter help her, he needed all the facts.
“He caught me by my hair as he stumbled down the stairs and yanked me backward so hard I slammed into the floor and fractured my right wrist when I flung my arms out to catch myself.”
“That fucker.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head.
“He kept coming after me, so I kicked him. And I kept kicking him. Over and over and over, I didn’t stop. I flailed out with my arms and legs, too, fighting with everything I had.” Which wasn’t much considering how little and undernourished she’d been. “He tried to kick me back, but he was so fucking drunk he tripped and fell backward. Or, god, maybe I tripped him, I don’t know for sure. But he fell and smacked his head on the corner of the bottom step and—he just stopped moving.”
Carter’s arms turned to vises around her. He was a cop; he probably knew what she was about to say.
“He fucking died, Carter. He fucking died right there in front of me.”
There had only been one other time in his life he’d been this angry, when he’d considered tracking someone down and giving them a severe beatdown—the morning he’d woken in the hospital to discover Emily was dead.
But as he held tight to Genny in the afternoon sun, he was flushed with those same emotions all over again. A desire to protect, to avenge, to move heaven and earth to right all the wrongs ever done to her.
“There was blood every-fucking-where,” she said softly. “I called 911, but he was bleeding so fast there wasn’t anything I could do.”
Her concern for a fellow human, even one who’d attacked her, said volumes about her character and made him fall a little bit more.
“Head wounds bleed like crazy.” It was a dumb thing to say, but he wasn’t sure what else to say. If the asshole slammed into the step so hard he instantly went still, there was a good chance he was dead within minutes, if not immediately.
“I’d just gotten an operator on the line, when my mom came downstairs and started screaming at me to hang up the phone. She was so mad at me.”
“Mad? At you?” What the actual fuck? That hadn’t been in the police report. What kind of emotion was that for a mother to show over her child’s concern, even a mother as fucked up and drugged out as Brenda Malek?
Raven buried her face in the crook of his neck. “Benny was a regular paying customer, and I fucked that up.”
“Let me get this straight…” He sat Raven at arm’s length but maintained their physical contact. “She was pissed at you because she was gonna lose money, not because some shitbag tried to rape her daughter.”
“Pretty much.” She laughed, but no joy reverberated in the sound, only misery. Unshed tears magnified the color of her orange-brown eyes. “Welcome to my fucked-up life. Are you still sure you want any part of this?”
“Now, more than ever.”
He kissed her, and she kissed him right back. Their kiss was softer, longer, more tender than any kiss before. Slower, too. It was a kiss which burned hot with emotion and not lust, and it fed off the perfect September afternoon sun.
“What happened next?” he asked when he finally pulled back.
“Mom tried to tell the police Benny had broken in and raped her before coming after me, that it was all an accident, but no one bought her story. And my mom was brought up on charges of child endangerment or something, and it was the first time she went to prison. And I sent her there, Carter.”
“No, you didn’t, sweetheart. Her bad decisions leading up to that moment a
re what sent her to prison. Not you.”
She shook her head, her tears finally breaking free and streaming down her cheeks. “But you don’t understand. She came back from prison completely broken. I mean, she’d never qualified as mother of the year or anything, but we had good moments before. When she was sober, she was caring and affectionate. She’d play games and read to me. Our favorite goodnight book was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. We read it so many times she had it memorized. I can still hear her saying every word in that ridiculous semi-rap cadence she used. God, I loved it. I loved her. But once she went to prison, she never read it again. Going to prison completely stole my mom from me, and I can’t do that to her again. I can’t—”
Her voice broke, but not before a single word struck a chord inside him.
“Again?” he asked.
She backhanded away the tears on the right side of her face. “I don’t know what to do, Carter. Either decision I make will fuck one of us over.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, sweetheart. You’ve lost me. Walk me through what’s going on.”
“Are you sure? It’s a lot of drama and—”
“Genny.” He cradled her cheek and drew his thumb soothingly along the delicate skin below her eye. “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t.”
Nodding and tucking her legs beneath her the way kids were always taught in school, she cleaned off the tears from the left side of her cheek. “I guess I should start with her last arrest. I mean major arrest that came with prison time. It was about three years ago. Mom got picked up on another drug charge, and it was also what prompted my move from Ravenous to the main club. I needed money then, too, and given the nature of what goes on in the club, the pay there is much better than what I’d been getting at the restaurant. Anyway, Mom wanted me to bail her out again. At first, I wasn’t going to do it…”
Good for her. Her mom was a fucking leech.
“…but then, I got to thinking. Maybe I could turn this into an opportunity. So, I met with a lawyer, drew up some paperwork, and went to talk with my mom. I told her I’d bail her out under one condition, if she signed the house over to me. The place was my grandparents’, so it’d been paid off for years. Mom wasn’t happy about the arrangement, but she signed the paperwork. The nightmare-inducing shithole was mine.”
