Two men he’d felled coming to protect Callie. No, he hadn’t killed them, but if she’d been hurt . . .
You would have.
The breath rushed into his lungs, sharp and painful, and he felt gentle hands at his waist, pulling him back around, and there were Callie’s sea-blue eyes looking into his.
And he knew. In that moment, he was understood.
He would do anything to protect her. Anything to keep her safe. Kill. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Anything at all. And the hell of it was, she’d never be safe. He could kill the senator, but that wouldn’t be the end because there was always something else out there that could potentially hurt her.
He could lose her at any time.
There was, in fact, only one way to make sure she was entirely safe and that was to keep her locked up. Never allow her to go out unless he was with her, never allow her to do anything by herself. Never allow her friends or a job, or a life of her own. Never even allow her out of the house at all.
And that’s why you can never have her.
The truth of it was heavy and slow and relentless, like a glacier moving. Freezing him all the way through. Because of course he couldn’t have her.
She wanted freedom, she needed it. She’d never had it before and that had been the whole point of him rescuing her. So she could have a life of her own and the freedom in which to build it.
But not if she was with him.
Jack found he’d taken a step back from her. Then another. Because any closer and he’d reach for her. Any closer and he’d close his hands around her and he would keep her. He would take her choices away from her forever and keep her.
“Jack?” She started to come toward him.
“Stop.” The word burst out of him, raw and desperate. “Stay the fuck where you are.”
She halted, her lovely face full of confusion. “What? What’s wrong?”
He knew what he had to do now and it was obvious. It had been obvious right from the start, but he’d been too blind with desire to see it. Too blind with need, with want. Too blind and too fucking selfish. He’d been thinking about himself, thinking about saving her because of Molly, because he wanted a stupid job.
But he couldn’t think of himself anymore. He had to think of her.
She’d had a lifetime of being viewed as her father’s property, of being controlled and crushed and trapped by him. Of having everything she loved taken away from her. And that wasn’t going to happen again.
All he’d intended was to set her free. So he would.
“Jack?” She was starting to look worried now, as well she might, because what he was feeling was probably written all over his fucking face. The possessive, hungry need to pull her close and make her his in every way there was.
Abruptly he turned, reaching for her guitar case and throwing it on the bed, then grabbing her little bagful of clothes and chucking that beside it.
“What are you doing?” Her expression turned bewildered. “Jack, for God’s sake, talk to me.”
“Get your things.” He jerked his head toward her stuff on the bed. “Get out of here.”
She stared at him, shock dawning on her face. “What are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.”
“You need to go.” He reached into his back pocket and grabbed his wallet, took out all the cash he had in it, which wasn’t much. Then he chucked that on the bed too. “Leave. And take this with you.”
“No.” Anger sparked in her eyes. “Not until you tell me what the hell is going on.” She began to come toward him again.
But this time he looked at her and let her see the darkness. “Come any closer and you will never leave this room, Princess. I will chain you to this bed. I will keep you here with me. You will be mine and that freedom you wanted? It’ll be fucking gone. You’ll never have it again, understand?”
She frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”
His jaw ached and his chest had begun to hurt too. He wanted to close the distance between them, pull her to him, take her, make her his.
Here she was on the brink of freedom, finally getting out from under her father’s thumb, and all he wanted was to drag her back under his. Because he would never let her go. He would lock her in a cage and keep her there.
But he wouldn’t. He refused.
“You don’t have to know,” he said roughly. “All that matters is that you get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck away from me.”
Her chest rose and fell, fast. Getting faster. “I don’t want to get away from you.”
“You have to.”
“Why?”
“I already told you why.” He had to grind the words out of him. “I’ve been telling you from the moment we fucking met. I’m not the man for you, Callie. I never have been. You need a man who’s going to free you, not one who’ll put you in a cage. And believe me, I’ll do that. I’ll cage you, clip your wings. I’ll lock that fucking door so tight you’ll never get free.” His own breath was coming fast and hard. “You don’t want that. Not after the life you’ve had.”
The look in her eyes flared, like she’d been slapped. “No. No. You don’t get to tell me what I want. You don’t get to make my decisions for me. I made my choice, Jack King. I made it the moment you walked into that club. My choice is you, whether you like it or not, and you don’t get to take that away from me.”
“Sorry, Princess, but this is one choice you don’t get to make.” He made the words sharp and cold and flat. Like a knife. Sliding it into her at the same time as it cut him open, slicing him down to the bone. “Don’t forget this is my choice, too. And I don’t choose you. I don’t want you. I don’t need you. So get the fuck out of here and don’t you ever fucking come back.”
* * *
Callie stared at him, at the hard set of his jaw and the muscle flicking in it. At the cruel line of his beautiful mouth, and the green of his eyes, sharp and jagged as cut glass.
He looked hard and cold, like a statue carved out of granite.
And she felt like he’d just reached inside her chest and pulled out her heart.
She didn’t know what had prompted him to tell her to leave so cruelly, but it obviously had something to do with the way he’d lost it with her father. With how he’d come into the room like a goddamn hurricane, a force of nature, punching her dad in the face, knocking him out cold. Then taking out his gun, obviously ready to finish the job.
She couldn’t deny the way her heart had leapt when he’d come into the room, or the way a vicious part of her had relished those punches he’d delivered to her father’s stupid, smug face. Though she certainly wasn’t ever going to let Jack pull that trigger.
But she knew why he’d lost it. She knew. It had to do with his sister, with his own father, with wanting to protect her from the same fate that had befallen Molly. And right now, sending her away, he was trying to protect her from himself.
He’d told her he was going to lock her up, keep her in a cage, never let her go, and she should have been frightened by that, but she wasn’t.
No, what frightened her was leaving him.
She knew in her bones that he wouldn’t do that to her. That it was simply his fear talking. His fear that he was like his father, like hers. His fear of not being able to protect her. But he wasn’t like either of those two assholes and as for not being able to protect her, well, she had no good answer to that.
She’d thought she’d let him know what kind of man he’d been before, when she’d run her hands over his scars and told him what she’d learned from him, what he’d showed her about herself. What he’d made her feel.
Except apparently that wasn’t enough.
Now she didn’t know what to do, and what was worse, she had a feeling that there wasn’t anything she could do.
He didn’t see what she saw in him. He only saw his failures.
Tears pricked her eyes and her heart ached, and she tried to hold on to her anger, because that was easier but it slipped out of he
r grasp every time she tried to hold on to it. Leaving her with nothing but pain.
“I don’t want to leave,” she said thickly. “I want to stay here with you.”
His expression didn’t soften. “You can’t. You have to go, Callie. Right the fuck now.” He moved suddenly, going to the bed and grabbing her stuff off it, striding to the door and putting her guitar case carefully in the corridor, stuffing the cash into her bag before putting that next to her guitar. Then he straightened and held the door out, his gaze implacable. “Go.”
She swallowed. “I know you think you’re doing this to protect me, but you’re not. And if you only ever understand one thing it’s this.” Her voice was thick but she made herself go on. “I would never have fallen in love with someone like my father. Never ever.”
Something flickered across his face then, something sharp and anguished, but then it was gone. As if it had never been. “Princess,” he said, flat and cold, his green eyes like glass. “Just remember that your mother probably thought that too. And look how that turned out.”
The words cut through her like a scalpel, peeling back her certainty, exposing her doubt. And the worst thing was, there was nothing she could say to that. Because he was right. Her mother had loved her father once, and it had brought her nothing but pain.
But no, Jack wasn’t like that. She knew it, felt it deep in her heart, in her soul. Yet all the certainty in the world wasn’t going to help her now, not if he didn’t believe it himself.
She’d never felt so powerless.
There was nothing to do but move to the door and she did, trying to hold her head up high, trying to hold on to that last shred of anger.
But she didn’t walk through right away. Instead she paused and looked up into his green eyes. “I trusted you,” she said quietly. “I wish you’d trusted me.”
Then without waiting for a response, she walked on through the door, picked up her stuff, and walked straight on down the hallway.
And away from Jack King forever.
She was halfway down in the elevator when the pain hit, like her soul was being ripped in two, and she had to lean back against the wall of the elevator car because her knees felt weak, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
By the time the doors opened, though, she’d wiped them away.
She didn’t know what was going to happen with her father and she had no idea where she would go next, but one thing she was sure of.
She would survive her father, she’d survive losing Jack.
She was strong.
The sunlight was bright as she stepped out onto the sidewalk and at first she didn’t see the long black limo pulled up to the curb. Then she did, and for a second it made her go cold all over, because a limo meant her father.
But then the window lowered to reveal a woman’s delicate, pointed face. “Miss Hawthorne?” the woman asked. “My name is Faith Beasley. Can I have a word?”
Callie blinked. “I’m sorry? Who? What?”
Faith gave her a polite smile. “I think it would be better if you got into the car.”
“No,” Callie said automatically, her brain still struggling to process whatever the hell was going on.
“Don’t worry,” Faith said very calmly. “I promise I’m not here to take you back to Boston. Or anywhere else, really. I’m from the 11th Hour, the operation Mr. King is a part of.”
Oh, right. The people who Jack was working for and whom he was suspicious of.
Callie narrowed her gaze. “He doesn’t trust you. Why should I?”
The other woman’s smile didn’t so much as flicker. “You have no reason to and I’m afraid I can’t give you one, not right now. But what I can give you is my word that ten minutes is all I require of your time. Then you can be free to do whatever it is you want to do.”
Suddenly Callie was tired of arguing. Tired of fighting. And right now, she was kind of tired of being strong, too. Besides, what the hell did she have to lose anyway? It wasn’t like she had anywhere else to be.
So she let out a breath and nodded, and when Faith opened the door, she chucked her guitar case and bag inside before climbing in.
There was no one else in the limo, only Faith, small and slim, dressed in a dark blue pencil skirt and a perfectly tailored matching jacket. Her black hair was straight and shiny, and brushed her shoulders, her gray eyes disconcertingly direct.
“What do you want?” Callie asked, not bothering with niceties. She was tired and hurting, and all out of fucks to give.
Faith folded her hands in her lap. “I want to talk to you about Jack King.”
An arrow of pain stabbed Callie in the chest. “Why are you talking to me then? He’s upstairs right now with my father—”
“Yes, I know,” Faith interrupted levelly. “You don’t have to worry about your father. Mr. Night has that in hand. It’s Mr. King I’m worried about.”
It was Mr. King Callie was worried about too. Except he’d made it clear he was none of her concern, not anymore. “I don’t know what you’re hoping to get from me. He let me go.” She hadn’t meant it to sound quite so pathetic, but the raw note in her voice bled through all the same.
Faith’s expression didn’t change. “You mean, you let him go.”
A thread of weary anger wound through her. “No. He told me to leave and so I did. And anyway, what business is this of yours?”
Far from chastised, the other woman merely looked at her. “I’ll be honest, Miss Hawthorne. The team needs Jack King. We need him badly. His skills are unparalleled, there’s no one quite like him, and there’s no one else we can get to replace him. He’s exactly what we want. But this mission has been . . . mishandled. Badly. And so has he. We need him on our side. And to get him on our side, we need you.”
Shock pierced the dull, heavy feeling that had begun to settle inside her. “I’m sorry? Are you seriously asking me to—”
“Convince him to be part of our team? Yes. I am.”
Her throat felt tight. “You seem to think I have more influence with him than I do. He won’t listen to me. I tried to make him see . . .” She stopped, not sure why she’d begun to tell this complete stranger everything. “Anyway, he sent me away. He doesn’t want me, Miss Beasley.”
Faith tilted her head, her black hair falling over her shoulders, glossy as a raven’s wing. “I don’t think that’s true. He was willing to put his position with us at risk for you. He was willing to put his life at risk for you.”
“There were reasons for that. He has a past that—”
“His past is irrelevant. What matters is the future.” Faith’s gaze was clear and relentless. “We need him, Miss Hawthorne. So we need you.”
Callie tried to swallow past the lump in her throat that simply wouldn’t go away. “You don’t need me. I’m just a stupid socialite.”
“Maybe you once were,” Faith murmured, that clear gaze sweeping over her. “But you’re not now. Are you?”
And it came to Callie, all in a rush, that right here, right now, was another decision she could make for herself. About where she wanted her life to go and who she wanted to be. Because for the first time in twenty-two years, she had the freedom to make it.
You’re not powerless. You never were.
The words were soft, lurking in the back of her mind, and following hard on the heels of the first realization came another.
She hadn’t made a decision back up in that hotel room. She’d thought she’d made a choice, but when push had come to shove, she’d caved. She’d crumbled.
She’d let him make the decision for her.
“No,” Callie said slowly, feeling something in her chest gather strength, gather power. “You’re right. I’m not.” She leaned forward all of sudden, fixing the other woman with a hard stare. “Okay. I’ll help you get what you want. But in return, I want you to do a little favor for me.”
Faith’s smile became a little warmer, a little more natural. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I think you’ll do ni
cely.”
CHAPTER 18
Jack paused outside of Mac’s Bar and looked at the sign with the missing M.
It was dark and the Gaslamp was full of people, and he had a very strong urge to simply walk on by and not go in. Find some other bar and go drink himself blind.
But he’d received a text from Kellan an hour or so ago telling him he had to drop by the 11th Hour HQ, to clear up a few legal loose ends to do with the Senator Hawthorne mission.
Legal loose ends. Fucking interesting way of putting it.
Minutes after Callie had walked out, Kellan had turned up at the hotel room, followed by a couple of men Jack didn’t know. And suddenly everything had begun to move very fast.
Senator Hawthorne and his guard were somehow spirited away without the hotel noticing—without anyone noticing—while the room was cleaned up, Kellan directing the process.
Apparently, Kellan had followed Jack after he’d left the 11th Hour HQ, which was how he’d known where to find the hotel Jack had been holed up in with Callie. He didn’t seem to worry about where Callie had gone, which Jack found strange, but then cleaning up the mess Jack had left with the senator seemed to be of prime concern.
Jack, still struggling to hold on to his rage and the odd emptiness that had opened up inside him after Callie had walked out, had stood back and let whatever shit happened, happen. Because he’d done what he had to do and now it was over. The whole goddamn thing was over.
Callie was gone, Callie was free, and that was all that mattered.
The only thing he was concerned about was the senator, and once Kellan had finished cleaning up the hotel room, he’d told Jack that Night would deal with it. Jack felt compelled to point out that Night was supposed to have already dealt with it, so why was the senator here in San Diego instead of where he should be, in Boston? And how the fuck had he found out where Callie was?
Those were questions Kellan couldn’t or wouldn’t answer, but apparently, Night had it all in hand now and that was the main thing.
Jack had thought that was bullshit and had told Kellan so.
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