by J. C. Reed
I couldn’t reply. Every fiber of my body wanted him, but getting what I wanted wasn’t an option.
“Why are you holding back?” he insisted.
“I can’t,” I whispered, prying my gaze off him. “As much as I want to, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“That’s a shame. You’re a challenge. I’ll have a great time figuring you out. But damn, you’re shy.” He leaned in to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. Ever so slowly, he trailed his fingers down my naked skin to my shoulder.
Shy? He couldn’t be serious.
“God, woman.” He let out a sharp breath. “Put something on before I forget what my mother taught me and ravish you on the spot.”
“What?” I laughed. Where did that come from? My clothes weren’t particularly revealing. Besides, it was hot outside. What the heck was I supposed to wear? A ski suit?
“I’m not the kind of man who imposes.” He looked at me with way too much intensity. “You’ll have to ask for it, because I’m not going to force myself on you.”
He smiled and winked as he grabbed the cookie jar out of my hands and plopped down on a chair, biting heartily into a chocolate chip cookie. “Now, that’s a cookie I like.”
I stared at him. What was that supposed to mean? That he liked me? I wasn’t sure. Nor was I sure whether he had actually meant the cookie or me.
“What was that?” I sat down and turned to regard him, my heart beating frantically in my chest. Jude’s words about relationships rang in my ears, and my doubts that he wanted me slowly dissipated into thin air. In the soft light of the setting sun, he looked more stunning than ever. And that was the problem. I couldn’t be attracted to him.
“Make whatever you want of it.” Chase shot me a sexy smile and finished his cookie. “All your decision. As far as I see it, you’re single, I’m single. I like you. You like me.” He shrugged. He put the jar on the table and leaned forward. “You do the math.”
I looked at him, struck speechless. He was still smiling, but his expression had turned into one of bewilderment. Only too late did I realize that he was watching my reaction.
“Yes, I like you, Laurie. Why is that so hard to believe?” He cocked his head to the side, his eyes narrowing at me with a sudden interest. After a small pause, he said, “Tell me. Have you ever been with a man?”
Oh, lord!
I turned my eyes away from him to hide the shame in them. There was nothing I could possibly say. Nothing I could explain to him. He sat down next to me, and his hand gripped my chin, forcing me to look at him.
“There’s no reason for you to be ashamed, Laurie. Just tell me the truth.” He regarded me with a warm expression in his eyes. “If you don’t want me to date you, I understand, but I’ll need a reason.”
He thought I had a choice. I inhaled a sharp breath and let it out slowly.
“You don’t understand,” I began, my mood plummeting to new depths.
“I do, actually. I get it. After everything you told me yesterday, I understand you more than ever. You’re shy, and you need more time. I just need you to say it.”
I looked at him in dismay. Why the heck did he keep talking in riddles?
“Oh, my God,” I whispered when the penny finally dropped.
The fact that he thought I lacked sexual experience was the big deal here, but he was way off the mark.
I had literally no experience.
I got up, but Chase grabbed my hand to stop me from walking away, and pushed me back down.
“It’s not a problem for me, Laurie,” he said, all cocky confidence. Of course it wasn’t a problem for him. “I didn’t want to tell you, but I want us to be honest with each other. So, I’ll make the first step.”
“What did you not want to tell me?” I whispered as my mind conjured hundreds of possible scenarios. That he was married. Engaged. Played for the other team. Wanted me sexually, but wasn’t interested in more. Strangely, that possibility upset me the most.
His hands settled on the side of my thighs, just above the knees. His light touch built a strange contrast to the determination in his eyes.
“Yesterday, when you were—” He paused, carefully selecting his words.
“Drunk,” I prompted.
“Yeah, that.” I expected amusement to cross his face, but his expression remained strangely pensive. “I left you in the car with Jude to say goodbye to Clint and Shannon when your stepfather pulled me aside for a chat.” He scowled, as though the recollection wasn’t a pleasant one.
Suddenly, my pulse quickened, and fear whipped through me. Clint and I didn’t exactly have a loving father-daughter relationship. We weren’t even friends and had nothing in common, but all those years we had gotten along more or less amiably because I had made sure to keep out of his way. He couldn’t have told Chase the truth. Not without consulting me first. Or could he?
“What did he say?” I asked, warily.
“Not much. Like you, he’d had a few glasses too many and was rather cryptic. But he did something else that didn’t make sense to me.” His scowl deepened as he regarded me intently, probably watching my reaction to what he was about to say. “Like I said, I want us to be honest with each other.”
“What did he do?” My voice came out shrill as blood rushed in my ears.
He hesitated. “He offered me money to break off our engagement.”
Chapter 14
I stared at Chase as his words slowly sank in. Clint had offered him money to leave me without knowing that Chase and I weren’t really engaged. We weren’t even together. In spite of our differences, I had always thought that Clint and I had a silent agreement. That he wanted me to find happiness and the closure I had waited for, while I kept silent about the past. I expected him not to meddle in my affairs just as much as I wanted him to move on and leave me alone.
“Why would he do that?” Chase asked.
I shook my head, signaling that I didn’t know. And, truth be told, I didn’t know. The entire situation shocked me just as much.
“Are you sure that’s what he said? Maybe he offered to help with money, or—” I stood up and began pacing the kitchen up and down, my thoughts a maze of confusion and hurt. But in my heart I knew the truth, even though I had yet to admit it.
“There’s a lot you haven’t told me.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. He was spot-on.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
Chase moved behind me, and his strong hands settled on my upper arms with enough pressure to force me to turn around. I raised my gaze to meet his. The gentleness I found in his eyes destroyed my last reserve.
“I know it’s hard, but I’m here to help.” His arms wrapped around me, pulling me against his chest. I buried my face in his shirt and took deep, calming breaths to help me control the tears gathering behind my closed eyelids.
I couldn’t cry.
I hadn’t cried in years. With my walls up, the tears were long depleted—or so I had thought. But now the walls were coming down, shaking me to the core.
“Please don’t ask me to,” I whispered weakly.
“But I want to help you,” Chase said. “Let me help you, Laurie. I see how much this pains you.”
“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.” My voice came so low that I doubted he had heard me. For a few moments he remained silent, confirming my thought. Then he lifted my chin to meet his gaze, and I noticed the stubborn expression in his eyes.
“I want to get involved in whatever you’re involved in.” His words took me by surprise. “I want you to trust me. Even if it’s hard to believe it, I want you to know that you’re no longer alone. I’m going to help you.”
“But you don’t even know what it involves.”
“Doesn’t matter. All I see is that you’re hurting. You’re scared.”
I laughed darkly. Scared was an understatement. I was freaked out. There was so much panic inside me that it made me wish I could just run—far away. If it weren’t for Ch
ase’s hands holding me, I might just have.
“I can see that this man has hurt you, Laurie. Don’t even try to pretend it’s not true.”
A tear rolled down my cheek. I wiped it away, angry at myself, angry at Clint for pushing me into such a situation, angry at Chase for not running away when he should have been.
“Why do you want to help me, Chase?” I asked, ignoring his previous statement.
“Because you’re special.” A soft smile played on his lips. “I really like you, Laurie.”
“But you don’t know me,” I said, unable to hide the anger in my voice. “You know nothing about me.” I yanked myself out of his embrace and was turning to leave when his hand grasped my arm, keeping me pinned to the spot.
“Then let me get to know you,” he whispered. “The real you.”
I snorted. “Trust me. I’m a horrible person. You don’t want to know me.”
“Leave that to my judgment.” His voice was hard. “Even though we’re not together, I’m still your fiancé. And to your stepfather: fuck him. I’m staying. That’s what I said to him, you know?”
My heart lurched as I stared at him in dismay.
“Money can’t buy me.” He regarded me, his gaze hard again. “I chose this job because I wanted to. Not because I had to. And now I want to help you.”
He wanted to stay. He wanted to know. He stuck with me even though he didn’t have to. Only God knew how much money Clint had offered him. Money I didn’t have.
I struggled to choose between the conflicting thoughts in my head. In the end, I found myself nodding, defeated.
“Fine,” I said sharply. “I’ll tell you what I can, and then you can make up your mind whether you want to do this. You can decide what to think of it.”
What you think of me.
“I won’t change my mind.” His hand cupped my face. “Whatever it is, thanks for trusting me.”
I shrugged in indifference, even though his soft expression rattled me to the core. It wasn’t a matter of trust; it was a ploy to push him away.
“We should sit down. Then I’ll tell you.” I was ready to reveal the parts that made sense. The parts Jude knew. The parts that were ready to be unveiled. Everything else I’d keep in the dark, the way I liked it to stay. No questions asked.
Chapter 15
Once I began to speak, the words just gushed out with no regard as to who was listening. It was as though a rivulet of emotions had given way to a river bursting the dam that had acted as its walls. I kept my head low, my gaze avoiding the man sitting beside me, listening in silence as I told the story I had kept buried inside for years.
“I never knew my father, only that he was someone very important and rich. So when he died shortly after I was born, my grandparents insisted my mother remarry because they didn’t want to see me growing up without a father,” I began. “She married Clint when I was about eight, and shortly after we were playing happy family.” I shrugged, sensing Chase’s unspoken question from the way he seemed to tense up. “I didn’t mind. Because I had never met my father, it was nice to have someone around. Someone who asked about school and pretended to care about what I was wearing. And then I was sent to a private school, and we didn’t really spend a lot of time as a family, except for the festive holidays.” I looked up and smiled.
Chase smiled weakly, but remained quiet which, I figured, was my clue to continue. “It was shortly after my ninth birthday that things started to change. It was a hot August day when my mother became really sick. Around that time Clint took over her business affairs. As time went by, she got worse and started to be gone for weeks at a time. Sometimes Clint took me to visit her in those hospitals. They looked more like rest homes with bars on the windows and nurses watching her day and night.” I looked up into Chase’s frown. “Only later, as I grew older, did I understand that it was a mental health institution. Eventually, Clint explained that she had suffered a nervous breakdown and as such had to be treated, but the treatment wasn’t really working.”
“She was being treated for a mental breakdown?” The incredulity in Chase’s voice didn’t escape me. At some point he had leaned forward, elbows resting on his thighs, as though he was eager to hear the story but didn’t want to press too hard. I moistened my lips, unsure whether he’d think me crazy if I told him the rest, even though I wanted to…badly.
I nodded. “I guess he wasn’t really telling me the truth…or the extent of her mental problems. Maybe he thought it’d be too hard for me to accept what was happening to my mom. What girl wants to acknowledge that her mom is sick in the head while all her friends go shopping with their mothers and have a great time?”
The images began to take shape in my mind—grim pictures painted in sadness and despair, in the colors of a child’s ignorance and her inability to grasp the bigger meaning.
“I remember her coming home one day,” I whispered, lost in reminiscence. “She seemed fragile, horribly thin, but she was so much better. She laughed a lot and wanted to spend time with me. She kept making promises, that we’d do some gardening together, which she’d never done before. And that we’d grow wild rose bushes around the fence, which was absurd because she wasn’t into gardening or any sort of outdoor activity. It was like she was a completely different person, but I didn’t think anything of it. All that mattered to me was that she was back and seemed healthy. I was so thankful that she wanted to spend time with me. And then the weird things started to happen.” I looked up into Chase’s face. His eyes were hooded by dark lashes, but there was a glint of pensiveness in them.
A soft shudder ran down my spine, and for a moment I was pushed back into the body of a child, watching my mother’s frail figure from the huge bay windows in the living room.
“What weird things?” Chase asked softly.
I shook my head, hesitating, as I let the memories invade me until my throat felt tight and my hands started shaking.
“She began to lock herself in her room, always flinching at every sound. She freaked so much she kept sending me out of the house to keep me away because I made her nervous.” I paused as I allowed the picture of me, as a ten-year-old sitting on the lawn, gazing up at the dark windows and wondering when she’d let me in, to cloud my vision. It was such a bleak memory that I flinched and instantly pushed it to the back of my mind.
“I don’t know why she was so afraid,” I continued. “But she always tried to hide her fear, as though she didn’t want to burden me with it. A few times I crept back into the house to watch her from the staircase. She was always standing in front of the window in her bedroom, surveying the driveway for hours until Clint came home from work, and then she’d get dressed and join us for dinner, like she hadn’t been this nervous mess all day long.” I shuddered. “It was eerie watching her turn from one person into another just like that. I became afraid. Not for me, but for her. I feared that she’d fall back into her mental health problems. And she did eventually.”
“Do you think that”—Chase paused, considering his words—“Clint might have hurt her?”
“I don’t think so.” I shook my head, even though the possibility had crossed my mind countless times. “I mean, not that I know of. I saw her getting dressed. She had no bruises on her body, if that’s what you’re referring to. She just seemed crazy, always talking to herself.”
“Did you ever talk to Clint about her mental problems?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Chase asked.
“Because I thought he knew. I mean, it was he who insisted she get professional help. How could he not know? They were married. They slept in the same bedroom, for God’s sake. Her nails were always bitten to their pulp, and her gaze was that of a crazy person. But even if I wanted to talk, Clint was always busy. Sometimes he didn’t come home for days and could barely be reached on his phone. I couldn’t talk to someone who had turned into a stranger again.” I fell silent again as I fought the feelings of guilt bubbling to the surface.
/> The guilt of knowing too much. Of not having done anything—when I should have. For many years, I had blamed myself, wishing I had talked to someone about the change. But it had come gradually, sneaking up on her like a venomous snake, until, one day, it was too late.
“It took me years, but now I understand why Clint sent her to get professional help,” I began slowly, and opened my fist. The tissue between my fingers was crumpled, reflecting the state I was in. “One evening, when she couldn’t reach Clint, I found her in the garden, crying. She was holding a pregnancy stick in her hands, so I asked whether I was going to have a brother or sister.” My mood darkened as I thought back to that fateful day. “I had never seen her so furious in my entire life. I had seen many shades of hers, but never anything like it. Her eyes were burning with rage. She was just—”
I broke off, struggling for words, but Chase didn’t pressure me. Instead, his gaze lingered on me patiently, waiting for me to resume my narration when I felt ready for it.
“I’m sad to say, but it was in that moment that I thought she should never have left the institution,” I said weakly.
Chase’s hand around mine anchored me in the present so I wouldn’t get lost in the past I had often relived it in my thoughts.
“Did she hurt you?” he asked softly.
“No, that’s not it. She never did.” My voice was weak, almost childlike. “But that day she was erratic. Crazy. She started to smash things and talk nonsense, like that the devil was coming to get her and her baby, and she held a shard of glass to her neck, threatening to kill herself.” I took a deep breath. “I think she was scared and that fear somehow changed her. Anyway, she made me swear that I wouldn’t tell anyone about the baby, and I didn’t. But”—I looked up into Chase’s eyes and found him listening intently—“I found the pregnancy stick later in the trash. It showed that she wasn’t actually pregnant. It was just her imagination. I think not telling Clint about the imaginary baby was a mistake.” I drew a sharp breath. “If I had told him, he could have helped her. A few days later, when I thought things had calmed down, she committed suicide while he was away. The police said she had poisoned herself, and all her clothes were found scattered in her bedroom, like she had raided her closet.”
