by Abbott, Alex
Jeremy sucked in air through his teeth, feeling like he’d taken an ax to the chest. He wouldn’t have told her any of this if he didn’t think there was a reason. He wouldn’t have betrayed Lane’s secret if he didn’t suspect…
“Kate,” he whispered. “When I told you about my sex life. You thought that was strange. I saw it in your eyes. I know. I get it. But what I do…that’s nothing next to my brother. He’s—he’s possessive. He likes to play some pretty twisted games with women. And I haven’t judged him for it, because the women are willing. But what if he got too jealous? Too possessive? It could’ve been him with your mother at the club. It could’ve been. And if Lane wanted her for himself—and he couldn’t have her—then there’s no telling what he might have done.”
~~~
KATE
I hurt for Jeremy. I hurt for him more than I’d ever hurt for anyone. To imagine a little five-year-old boy being asked to carry a secret like that all his life. It would twist a person. It would break them. And he looked like he was breaking now, gutted with guilt for telling me, gutted with guilt for suspecting his own brother of being a murderer twice over.
We were both of us so wracked with pain that I just wanted it to stop. I wanted to forget about all of this and just drive off with him, the two of us. Never to be seen or heard from again. But I couldn’t do that. “Jeremy,” I whispered, stroking his face, brushing away the tears he refused to let fall, wishing I could do something to take away his pain.
But maybe only the truth could do that.
“Maybe it wasn’t Lane,” I whispered. “We’re not going to know unless we go to the club and ask around.”
So we did.
I’ll never know how either one of us managed it. How we pulled our emotional shit together enough to get my initiation token, and put it into the automated elevator that took us to another floor entirely. And I wish I could better remember the way the Black & Blue club really looked, but the only thing I remember is that it was decorated with a lot of industrial silver, and that Jeremy and I held hands the whole time.
As if we needed to, to keep each other upright.
Which we probably did, because nobody there would talk about my mother. Or who she might have been there with.
It was part of the code of secrecy.
Luckily, it was the redheaded bartender with the butterfly tattoo who finally had the answers we were looking for. “Sorry about your stepmother Mr. Kenyon,” she said, wiping down the counter. “I heard she’d passed away. But I guess that means you don’t have to go ducking out the back door like you did last time.” Then she paled. “Oh. Shit. That was super insensitive of me.”
Jeremy gave her a tight, but reassuring smile. “Make it up to me by telling me who the guy was that she was coming in here with.”
“Aww, shit. You know I can’t say names.”
My gut clenched. Luckily, Jeremy was a rock. He put both hands on the bar and did probably the bravest thing I’d ever seen him do. “Was it my brother?”
The bartender actually startled. Then she laughed. “Your brother? Jesus. No. Not Lane.”
And I felt Jeremy sway a little bit, as if his knees were going to buckle with relief. “You’re sure.”
“Absolutely. In case you didn’t know, your brother is kind of an asshole who doesn’t always tip well. But he’s not that big of an asshole.”
“Please,” I broke in. “Can’t you tell us something more. If you don’t tell us, I’m pretty sure someone else is going to come asking. Somebody official, maybe.”
I didn’t mean it as a threat, but she clearly took it as one. Which made her angry. “I’d lose my job if I told you.”
Jeremy reached into his coat pocket, found his wallet, and put a stack of money on the bar that was so large it made me choke.
Then the bartender looked right at him and said, “Why don’t you take your money and go fuck yourself Mr. Kenyon. Because you know perfectly well that people come to this club so that they can do things in privacy. They pay for that privacy. And not just with money. They have to expose a lot of themselves just to get in the door. I’m not going to betray that.”
I was disappointed. Bitterly disappointed. But also a little bit in love with the bartender in that moment. I decided that if I ever came back to this place, and if ever there was a girl I wanted to share Jeremy with, it’d probably be her. She was tough. She was good. And I liked her.
But she’d pretty much just ruined everything.
“So, we did all that for nothing,” Jeremy said, staring out into the blackness as he drove me home.
“Not for nothing. I—I had the best orgasm of my life and we know now that it wasn’t Lane, don’t we?”
“I guess so,” Jeremy said, turning into the drive.
“It’s a good thing,” I said, putting my hand on his knee. “I think—I think death makes people do and think crazy things. Because we don’t want to deal with the reality. Your brother is just a guy who put his past behind him. My mother probably just took too many pills. And what happened tonight—”
“I took advantage of you,” he said.
My reaction during sex had obviously hurt him. In taking me to the club, he’d shown me some part of himself. He’d tried to connect with me, intimately, the only way he knew how. And given what happened to his mother, I had a much better idea of why he was so afraid to love anyone one-on-one. Even though it was Lane who had killed their mother, he felt guilty. He felt like he brought it about with his need to have her attention to himself. And he’d never let himself need another woman’s attention one-on-one for the rest of his life.
My heart broke for him. And it broke to know that I’d turned what had begun as a super hot encounter into something…less than hot. He hadn’t even gotten off. The least I could do was try to reassure him. “Jeremy, please. You really didn’t take advantage of me. If anything, I took advantage of you. You told me I couldn’t have you one-on-one. So I did what I had to in order to get you to fuck me, and you gave me the best orgasm of my life. I intend to return the favor—”
“That’s not all I want to give you, Kate.”
I didn’t know what he meant. I hoped I knew. But I wasn’t sure. And I was so drained; I just couldn’t talk about one more emotional thing. So instead, I kissed him. I kissed him as sweetly, and with as much emotion as I could. And then I said goodnight, climbed the stairs, crawled into my mother’s bed, and cried.
As if for the very first time.
Chapter Nine
JEREMY
“Where the bloody hell did you go?” Lane demanded.
Jeremy had just parted with Kate on the stairs, sent her up to bed, and was ready to trudge to his room for a shower and some serious soul-searching. He wasn’t ready to face Lane. Not yet.
But there his brother was, blocking his way.
“Trust me, Lane. You don’t want to know where I was.”
“Did you do something to Kate?”
Christ. Maybe he should have made up a lie. But instead, he tried to push past Lane, murmuring, “I fucked up with her.”
“What did you do, Jeremy? Did you threaten her?”
Jeremy froze. Then his gaze snapped to his brother. “Threaten her? What are you on about?”
Lane’s face was red. His fists were clenched. He looked like he was ready to snap. “I know you were fucking Gloria. And I know you mixed the pills in her drink. I think Kate knows it too. And if you do anything to threaten her into silence…”
Jeremy blinked. Every muscle went tense. Then his voice exploded out of him. “What. The Fuck. Are you on about?”
“His lordship told me everything,” Lane snapped. “On the way to the hospital, in the ambulance this evening.”
“Our father is in hospital? Is he alive?”
“Don’t pretend you care,” Lane growled, his eyes burning with fury. “He’s alive, but had a total breakdown after seeing Gloria’s infidelity become a news story. He told me he knew all along, but
just didn’t want anyone else to find out, because it would be too humiliating for anyone else to know that he’d been betrayed by his own goddamned son. The murderer. Twice over.”
Jeremy was pretty sure that he must be dreaming. Because not one word of this made sense. And now he was enraged. “What did you just call me?”
“You heard me,” Lane said, advancing on him.
But Jeremy didn’t take a single step back, and his lips curled in contempt. He’d been sick with guilt tonight for having suspected Lane of something that he hadn’t done. But now that guilt was replaced with bitter indignation.
So he punched Lane right in the face.
Lane hadn’t been expecting it. He staggered back. Hit the stairs. Sprawled there. And Jeremy stood over him shouting, “You. You’re accusing me. After what you did to our mother!”
Lane put a hand to his nose, as if to check for bleeding. “What I did?”
“Did you think I didn’t know?” Jeremy asked, his chest rising and falling with fury. “You threw the hair dryer into her bath, Lane. I don’t know if you blocked it out or—”
“You did that!” Lane roared. “Father told me everything. He was so shocked, so horrified, he had no one else he could tell. And I’ve kept that secret for you all my life. I never brought it up to you. Not even once. Because you were a five year old who didn’t know better. I hoped you’d forget it and become a better person. But that’s not how it happened, is it?”
Both brothers stared at one another, heaving breaths, as the slow horror of realization started to sweep over them. They and both suspected each other of exactly the same thing. Now neither one of them seemed to be able to speak.
Then someone did…
“He did it. And he used you boys to cover it up.”
Both Kenyon brothers looked up to see Albert there, out of uniform, his hair a little rumpled as if he’d been dragged from bed by all the shouting. But his eyes were bloodshot as he gave a rueful shake of his head. “He used you both, and now he’s going to let you kill each other. And I won’t have it.”
Jeremy only knew that he sank down next to his brother on the stairs, because his legs wouldn’t hold him. And the darkness closed in swiftly. “He couldn’t have,” Jeremy said, shaking his head, wondering what kind of father would not only murder two wives, but also set his children against each other their whole lives. “Our father couldn’t have done it. Not even him…”
But what if he had?
“There is no man on this earth more possessive than Thaddeus Kenyon,” Albert said, and it shocked Jeremy to hear the quiet, obedient butler whenever put a foot out of step actually use his father’s name. “Why do you think your father waited so long in life to have children? He wanted your mother to himself. He feared that children would take her attention away from him and he was right. And when he found out that she’d been unfaithful—”
“Shut your mouth,” Lane said, outraged that anyone should make such an accusation against their mother. And Jeremy shared that outrage.
“Your mother had a single indiscretion,” Albert explained, undaunted, towering over both Kenyon brothers where they lay sprawled on the stairs. “A single kiss in a moment of extreme loneliness and distress.”
Jeremy’s mind felt slow, as if sludge was in the gears. He wanted to make sense of any of this, but he couldn’t. “How could you know that?”
“Because I was the one who kissed her,” Albert said, blanching as he admitted it. “I served your mother for seven years, loving her from afar, never crossing the bounds of propriety. She was the lady of the house. I was the butler. It was tawdry to even think she might give me a second glance. But your mother was a kind woman. She saw people, not social class. Which is why she did not give me the sack when I kissed her one evening. It’s why she never told your father. I suspected he found out somehow and that he killed her for it. But until I overheard your argument tonight, I couldn’t be sure.”
“Why not fire you, if he knew?” Lane demanded.
“Because His Lordship enjoys punishing people, if you haven’t noticed. If he gave me the sack, I wouldn’t have had to watch him torment the sons of the woman I loved. The sons she doted on. The sons I have often wished were my own.”
Jeremy felt something tighten in his chest. And though he wanted to reach out to Albert, he couldn’t. Not yet. Instead, he looked away. By god, if any of this was true, his father was a cruel monster. A murderer. A tormentor. And he didn’t want to believe it.
But Lane did. “The sick bastard.”
The brothers Kenyon were still sitting on the stairs together, in wordless shock, when Kate appeared in her nightgown. Glowing a bit. Like an angel, Jeremy thought. Then he realized she was holding a cell phone.
“I found it,” she said, her eyes red and puffy. “I found my mother’s secret phone. I was crying. I was finally crying…and I needed a tissue. And this fell out of the box.”
The phone’s history told the tale. Call after call. Text after text. Sext after sext. Gloria’s lover hadn’t been Jeremy. Hadn’t been Lane. It’d been Matthew Hastings. His mate from Oxford. A Kenyon employee. A member of the Black & Blue Club.
But Matthew hadn’t been Gloria’s killer.
Jeremy was fairly certain of that.
Because in all his father’s wicked machinations, he’d given himself away. He hadn’t had to accuse anyone of stirring up pills into a drink for Gloria…that was as good as a confession in Jeremy’s eyes.
“Kate,” he said. “I think you deserve some justice. And I think we can only get it by going to the hospital.”
~~~
KATE
The problem with justice is that it’s seldom clean. Is it justice when a cruel old man on the edge of insanity tells so many contradictory stories that no one can tell if he’s a murderer or just a jealous old delusional fool? His lordship never confessed. Not to any of it. But he was so unhinged that his sons had him committed to a mental hospital, where I hoped he’d rot for the rest of his life.
But the damage had been done.
To all of us.
“I’m sorry, Kate,” Jeremy told me the night they locked him up.
I’d found him in the abandoned poolroom, sitting by himself with his feet in the water. “I wish Lane and I could do more. Could know more. I guess it’s part of the final torture of this that my father has cracked. And we may never know the whole truth of any of it.”
“I know all the truth I have to know,” I said, holding his face in my hands, drawing him into a kiss.
The first we’d shared since the night of the initiation.
He’d been avoiding touching me. He’d been kind. Tender. Stronger than I knew it was possible for a man to be in the face of such emotional devastation. So it was time for me to be strong for him. “I want you, Jeremy,” I said, staring into his eyes.
He looked away. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Do you know the kind of crazy that’s in my bloodline?”
“I do. And it doesn’t change anything. You’re not your father. I want you and I want to be with you.”
He glanced up at me, those broody eyes a little lighter than I had ever remembered them. “I want that too. But you should get as far away from me and this fucked up family as you can.”
“It seems to me that there’s only one fucked up member of this family and you locked him up tonight. You and Lane…you’re both better men than you ever knew.”
Jeremy gave a bitter laugh. “We have to start over, Lane and me. From scratch. It’s like we don’t know who we are now. It’s pretty dark stuff.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” I told him, leaning against his shoulder. “Starting over can be good. I’m doing it too. And I’d like to start by being kind to the people who have been kind to me. You’ve been good to me. And I’d like to be good to you. In any way I can. In every way I can.”
He shook his head, and took me by the shoulders, turning me to face him. “I’m fucking in love you, Kate. D
on’t you get that?”
I nearly sputtered, both with unexpected joy, and a little bit of outrage that he said it so angrily. “You’re in love with me?”
“I am. Unreservedly. And it’s miserable. It’s the most miserable, terrifying feeling I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Well, aren’t you a sweet talker…you didn’t hurt your mom, Jeremy. Or mine. You don’t have to be afraid of loving someone anymore. Because I love you, too, Jeremy. And you don’t have to be afraid to love me.”
“I’m not afraid to love you. I’m afraid that I don’t know how to make love to you.”
“Oh, I think you do. I think you practiced how to please a woman so perfectly that she’d be willing to do anything to get you in bed again—no matter who else has to be there, too.”
“That’s sex,” Jeremy said. “Not making love.”
I reached for him and we kissed. We kissed like it was the first time. And it was filled with love. He’d guided me at the club. Now, I guided him. I drew him down on top of me and we laid back with a towel for a cushion beneath us.
He stroked my face, my hair, and my cheeks. And I felt the heat well up in my body. God, he felt so good. Smelled so good. Tasted so good. And I was so eager for him, I cradled him between my thighs. He was hard. I felt it. His erection pressed against me, and his heart began to hammer.
“Make love to me,” I whispered. “I promise, you’ll know how.”
He groaned, but he held himself above me. As if he was afraid to go further. As if he still needed someone else there for it to feel safe enough for him to be connected to another person. Seeing that torment play across his face, I tried to think of a way to make it better for him. Any way. “We can call someone to join us, Jeremy. If you need to.”
“No,” he said, insistently. “I want to try it this way. I want it—I want it to be with you.”
His first time, he meant. His first time one-on-one. It was like the first time for me, too. Because I’d never had sex with anyone I truly loved. Anyone who had ever seen me truly reckless, and wild and out of control and exposed. Never got to see that love reflected back at me.
