Someone knocked. I didn’t have the energy to answer. Missionaries, probably. Or a lost pizza guy. They’d get the hint. Seconds later, the latch snicked open, and Jackson walked in. Maybe I should have locked that.
He stopped next to my chair, nothing but concern in his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Pixie. What can I do?”
Instinct told me to fall into his arms. To lose myself in the comfort, the way we always did with each other. It wouldn’t help, though. Hugs couldn’t fix this. “Nothing. There’s nothing to do.”
“I took the rest of the day off.” He sounded so kind. So sympathetic. “We’ll go wherever you want, even if it’s just here.”
No. I didn’t want here to be a place I was comforted. This wasn’t ours. Something snapped inside me. Days and months of holding back. Being diplomatic. Trying to figure out which way was up, and how to right a series of mistakes that weren’t meant to hurt anyone. At work and in my personal life. It was all a mess, and every time I tried to make things right, I made them worse. So maybe the answer was to stop trying so hard. “I want for this to not have happened. I want Kitner to rot in hell for setting me up.”
Jackson rested a hand on my shoulder. “That’s fair. Since it’s not an option though, what do you want to do instead?”
Irrational irritation flooded me. He was working to help me. To calm me down. It was kind and thoughtful, and so very Jackson. And I didn’t want to be reasonable. “Fuck it all, Jackson. What I want is for you to be furious alongside me. I need to rage over this. To vent and scream and hate the world. I don’t want you to wrap me up and tell me it’ll be okay, because right now it’s not okay, and I can’t see past now. I want you to get angry. To lose your cool. To tell me what you’re actually thinking, instead of glossing over this in that fucking calm voice of yours.”
I should take back the last few words. Even if he hadn’t cringed, I’d know that. But the words were out there, and I didn’t know if I wanted to cover them up again.
Jackson stepped back. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
The sterile apology. The patronizing calm. It snapped something inside. “Stop being fucking sorry. Sorry won’t fix this. Sorry isn’t vengeance. Hate my boss for setting me up, hate a system that trusts computers that can be tricked over people who know their jobs. Hate me for not getting over Carter. Be pissed about something.”
“I’ll come back later. Once you’ve chilled out.” Jackson spoke through clenched teeth.
“Fine. Do that.” I was being cruel. I was being completely unreasonable. Part of me knew I needed to back up now, or things would break and change forever, but it wasn’t enough to stop me.
Jackson shook his head, spun on his toe, and stalked toward the door. He paused, hand on the knob, and whirled back to face me. Fire danced in his eyes—a fury I’d never seen from him before. “You know what? I am mad. Pissed off as hell. You want rage? You want me to stop trying to paint sunshine on things? This thing at work isn’t your fault. You tried. This firing you thing? You got shafted. But I hate what you have with Carter. I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t bother me.”
Of course he’d latch on to what I said about Carter. That was the perfect way to fuck things up completely. My laugh was bitter. “Thanks for your support.”
“You wanted to make this personal. You wanted a verbal punching bag, and I’m here for you when you need a shoulder, but I didn’t sign on for what you’re doing now. So you’re in the mood to use getting fired as an excuse to lay this all on the line? Let’s do that. Spew it all out into the open. Make some new scars. Reopen some old wounds, because you can’t cope with grief.”
“Sorry we can’t all be zen masters like you.” I needed to stop talking. To plug this out-of-control demon spewing from me. But I didn’t know if I could. It was as if a cord had been yanked, and I knew now that we’d started, if this didn’t all come out with Jackson, it wouldn’t matter if we backpedaled and I apologized. Things were never going to heal between us.
“Carter wouldn’t be here right now. He’d be back at the office, screaming at Mark Kitner on my behalf.” I bit back a wince as soon as the words were out. That had been too much.
“Would he?” Jackson asked. “He watched you leave, right? Do you think your big, bad protector is doing that right now? Screaming at a boss he barely knows, for something he never has to be involved with? Is that even what you want? You’d willingly go back to being the girl who lets everyone else make her decisions? Who regrets the only choice she ever made on her own at that point in her life? You still love Carter, and you knew that when you said yes the other night. You’ve never even tried to stop caring about him. I’m not a good enough man to pretend that doesn’t devour me.”
Every new word dug deeper, gouging me. And they were all true. The fire was fading from my argument, leaving me grasping for a retort. “You said you were okay with what happened. You said it was sexy and that you didn’t have a problem sharing me. You suggested we go through with it.”
“I’m fine with Carter as Dark. And yes, you fucking him was one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen. And yeah—sharing? I’m still okay with that, if we both agree on it, but only if I know you’re coming home to me at the end of the night. That’s so much of what makes this work. That’s the thing this arrangement has to have. Trust.”
“And you don’t trust me.” I didn’t have to ask. The statement was rhetorical.
“You’re still second-guessing a decision you made five years ago. You don’t trust yourself. How am I supposed to?”
I didn’t know what to do or say. I’d just wanted an outlet for my anger at work, and now I’d opened this can that could never be closed again. “You’re right. There are times I question my own decisions. If that’s a problem, we’re a problem.”
“That’s what you want. Really?”
“No, it’s not.” I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t cave now. “But you don’t trust me to make that decision, remember?”
Jackson’s frown vanished behind a stony mask. “Goodbye, Zoe.”
Chapter Fifteen
The door closed behind Jackson, and it flipped a switch on my tears again. Except, unlike earlier, they felt justified this time. Not just the result of a long week of culminating stress, but as if I were mourning that things would never be the same again.
My entire body shook until I hurt everywhere, and I deserved it. I didn’t know why I’d just picked the bitchiest fight ever with him. Each new thought dragged me further into a hole of self-loathing. I’d just been fired for suspected embezzling. What was I going to do if I couldn’t get another job?
Worse—what if Jackson and I were really over?
He wouldn’t be stuck with a disappointment like me anymore. I stumbled into the bathroom for some tissue. When I flipped on the lights, wide blue eyes stared back at me from my reflection. Red-rimmed, puffy, and bloodshot. It was the face of someone I didn’t recognize.
I blinked, and so did the woman in the mirror.
Was that really me? I sniffled, and she did too. It wasn’t my face, distorted by grief and self-pity, that I didn’t recognize. It was everything else. The haircut, sweeping my straight hair back from my face and framing it in a way I’d never managed as a girl. The tattoo winding around my neck—ink I’d wanted for more than a decade but hadn’t dared get until recently. My blouse. Sure, the polished cotton was wrinkled from the way I’d been sitting, but it was also vibrant, form-fitting, and complimentary. Unbuttoned just enough to hint at the figure underneath, but not so much as to be unprofessional.
Each bit of my reflection was just a visual thing. Something that looked pretty, or was meant to catch gazes. Draw attention—in a lot of cases, Jackson’s attention. The name surged with a new pain inside me, and I gasped. All put together, it was more. It all represented how much I’d changed since I was younger. The differences Carter was talking about. Some of it was because of my time with Jackson, but just as much was thanks to Carter and the way h
e’d opened my eyes.
All of it was because I hadn’t liked the way my life was going, so I’d made changes.
I turned the faucet on full-force, and splashed cold water over my face. The shock stung and helped drag me further from the pit my psyche was determined to plummet into. I wouldn’t do the wallowing, self-hate thing. I refused. Things weren’t going the way I wanted, but picking fights with Jackson and Carter wasn’t the solution. It was time to make another change.
My mind skipped ahead several steps, before I could catch up. What hung between Jackson and me now was never going away. I needed to make things right, anyway. With him. With Carter. And I was going to get a little vengeance. If I had any say in it, Mark Kitner would go down for what he’d done to so many of us.
I took several minutes to compose myself and make sure I could speak without losing my shit. Then I dialed Jackson’s number. A text wouldn’t work this time. My heart flipped over when I heard the click of someone picking up. I’d been afraid he wouldn’t answer.
“What?” His voice sounded as rough as I felt.
The tone hurt, but something far more serious would be wrong if it didn’t. I wouldn’t chicken out on this. “I’m sorry.”
“Too little, too late, Pixie.”
A smile slipped out at the use of the nickname. It was probably a good thing he couldn’t see my reaction. “I know. I was horrible earlier. I can’t take it back, and I’m not sure that would be a good idea anyway. Tell me you didn’t mean what you said.”
Silence met my demand. I let it spread between us.
He finally spoke. “I would have phrased it differently if I hadn’t been pissed off, but I meant it.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, to get an external source of pain to focus on. A target to keep me here. “I need you. And I need your help.” I forced out the next words, knowing they had the potential to obliterate any headway I’d just made. “And Carter’s.” Technically, it didn’t have to be Carter. Ryan or Tasha would probably be just as willing to help. And I might still need to ask one of them. It would be better if it came from Carter, though.
Jackson growled. “You have a really fucked-up way of trying to make things better.”
“I know. I have my reasons, though, and I’m hoping we can figure it out together, if you’ll give me another chance. To be what you need, to be able to trust myself, I need to fight for what I want. That means you. I’ll fight to the ends of time for you, because I love you. But I also need your help proving they screwed me over at work, and there’s not a lot of time for that.”
“Why do you want me there?”
“Because having you by my side is better than not.” There was more to it, though. “You’re brilliant with numbers.” He’d majored in accounting in college, though he wouldn’t tell most people. “I need your eyes and mind on this.”
“They already fired you. Why do you care what happens to their numbers at this point?”
“Because I meant pretty much everything I said earlier. Including that I want to see Mark Kitner burn for this, if he’s behind it.” So I wasn’t completely past the petty me.
“If you’re going into this, looking to blame him, the proof will lean in that direction. That kind of bias will only mar your results.” Jackson—the voice of reason even in the face of a minor catastrophe. Another reason I loved him so dearly.
“I know. That’s why I’m calling the two of you,” I said.
The sound that carried over the line was somewhere between a laugh and a strangled cough. “I’m not a neutral party either. I’d see him suffer for what he’s put you through. And Carter’s no more objective than either of us. Besides, if you want to work side by side with me and see if we can heal, he’s an obstacle.”
I’d expected resistance. I wouldn’t cave now. “He’s not going away. It doesn’t matter how much either one of us wants to pick and choose between what parts of our relationship we have with him. I bet you’re almost as reluctant as I am to cut him out of your life, and you can’t just have the good stuff that existed before you two met in person. Before—as you keep putting it—he became more than just Dark.” I was guessing at that; maybe Jackson and Carter didn’t really like each other. But something in my gut told me I was right. “Besides, he’s got an eye for detail. Between the three of us, we can pull everything together, send it off to a couple of higher-ups, and let them draw their own conclusions about what Mark Kitner’s been up to. Even if he’s not the one embezzling funds, his personal vendetta against… well, half the company as far as I can tell, has covered it up. They won’t like that.”
“Wow.” Awe had replaced some of the exhaustion and anger in Jackson’s voice. “You’ve thought this through.”
Not really. I’d made a lot of it up along the way, but it was working for me so far. “Are you in?”
“I’m going to try be the bigger man and let the stuff with Carter slide, but I don’t promise I’ll manage.”
A flicker of hope split through the muddled mess of my emotional state. “Then you’ll be here tonight?”
“I’ll be there. It still doesn’t change what was said earlier, though.”
“I know.” I smiled. “But you’ll be here, and I’ll use it as an excuse to chip away at your rough exterior until we find a new way through that too. I love you completely, Jackson. Carter or not, that hasn’t changed.”
****
Jackson sat at my kitchen table, laptop in front of him. I’d been wounded when he picked the farthest seat within reasonable distance from my spot, but I understood. Neither of us spoke, and there was a lot of clicking and typing, even though we hadn’t started working yet.
Someone knocked, and I swung the front door open for Carter. “Thank you for coming,” I said.
Carter studied me. “I’m not sure why I’m here.”
“Because you’re a good guy?” I kept my tone light.
“Really, I’m not.” He stepped past me, and I locked the door behind him. “I’m the guy trying to steal a woman who dumped him, from a man who’d probably be his best friend—or more—under most other circumstances.”
“That didn’t escape me.” I nodded at the open space that was my living room and dining room. “Pick a seat.”
He dropped his laptop back on the kitchen table, next to Jackson’s setup, and then set a brown paper bag next to it. “I brought beer, by the way.”
“Jackson brought caffeine. You can put the bottles in the fridge.” I didn’t have to see what it was, to know it would be bottled and either imported or microbrew I settled back into my spot on the sofa and told him the same thing I’d told Jackson. “We’re not cramming for exams.”
“No, but we might as well be.” Carter looked between Jackson and me. “Did I miss something?”
Jackson shook his head, grabbed Carter’s power cord, and plugged it into the wall. “Not as much as you might think.”
So far, this was almost going better than expected. Which still wasn’t great, but the night was young. “Did you get it?” I asked Carter.
He plugged a USB stick into his laptop. “I filched an entire history’s worth of confidential files from my employer, yes.”
I cringed at the subtle dig that he still had a job, and he shrugged apologetically. “Let’s do this,” I said.
Chapter Sixteen
A few hours later, everything Carter and I had seen in the files this morning was coalescing into a whole picture. We didn’t have account numbers, so there was no proof Kitner stole the money, regardless of how much I wanted that. But there was a distinct paper trail that pointed to his antics being responsible for hiding the numbers. To me, it meant he was either the unluckiest asshole on the planet when it came to how he’d gotten petty revenge, or that getting revenge on Ryan and me had just been a convenient excuse to hide something he was already doing.
The biggest ding against Kitner, though, was the beginning of a new trail pointing to Carter. If the audit had happened three or six
months down the line, Carter would have looked guiltier than me, just like the signs now pointed to me instead of Ryan.
Except Kitner was getting careless, as far as we could tell. Some of the hints that pointed to Carter—file check ins, modifications, and other changes that had his login associated with them—had happened before Carter had even started. Pretty much right after his first interview.
Only the bank could confirm whose account held the money, but the top brass would know what to look for, based on everything we’d put together.
The tension in the room had slowly lifted once we started working. As we wrapped up, a silly euphoria snaked in.
“Giving or receiving?” Carter asked.
“Oral?” Jackson laughed. “Giving. Absolutely.”
I didn’t know if I’d ever get used to how easily they slid into the explicit joking and teasing. It felt good to see them chilling out. Even if they were halfway across the room.
“I could have called that.” Carter knocked back the rest of his beer. “Though, I know you’re getting as good as you’re giving.”
Heat flooded my body. “He does do this thing with his tongue and fingers…” Was that okay to say? Was I taking things too far?
Carter held up his hand, palm out. “I don’t want details unless they come with a hands-on demonstration.”
“Get back to me when I’m not still trying to shake numbers loose from my skull.” Jackson shut his laptop. “Answer your own question.”
Images I shouldn’t be lingering on taunted me. Jackson on his knees, dragging down Carter’s zipper, working his cock free, and taking it into his mouth. My senses flared to life at the vivid fantasy. I could help or watch. Which would I prefer? I shook the thought aside. Definitely not an idea I could afford to entertain.
Carter stowed his equipment too. “No comparison. I couldn’t even start to pick one over the other. It all depends on who’s doing the giving or receiving.” He winked at me and turned his attention back to Jackson. “Burying my face in a gorgeous, smooth pussy? Incredible. Then again, having the right head bobbing between my legs, full lips wrapped around my cock…”
Roll Against Regret (3d20) Page 7
