Emotions—such messy, ugly things, the kind she didn’t trust herself to get messed up in, not with other people—tangled inside her and she felt like a pressure cooker, one that might explode. That didn’t keep her from shoving them all down, locking them all up, and shoving them into a dark corner where she could ignore everything for a while longer.
“But what?”
She tugged her hand away, unable to explain it.
How could she explain it?
There really weren’t any words, she didn’t think.
Slowly, she reached out a hand and closed it around the bottle in front of her, pressing it to her brow, and focused on the chilly feel of it on her overheated skin. All around her, there was noise, too much noise and not just the music that was blasting too loud, not just the raised voices of people struggling to be heard over the chaos.
Everything was noise.
She couldn’t find any silence inside her head, not unless he was there.
But saying that would just make her seem … crazy.
Chapter Three
Dropping the phone in the cradle, Chris pondered her options.
Five minutes ago, she’d spoken with the sheriff—one thing about living in a town the size of Madison … when you had a best friend who worked for the county and a connection to an open case that had been on the books for years, the people at the station didn’t tend to bat an eyelash when you called and asked to speak to the man in charge.
The man in charge had just told her that Guy was taking a few days’ personal time.
Personal time.
What the hell?
With her feet on the bare wooden planks of the floor, she pressed her hands to her face and tried to pretend she wasn’t worried, wasn’t upset.
Tried to pretend she wasn’t thinking about what had happened on this very bed, three nights ago.
She hadn’t seen him since.
It wasn’t connected. Couldn’t be.
He was just taking personal time.
Her throat knotted up but she managed to lie to herself.
She was tired. She was stressed.
She hadn’t been able to sleep, so last night, she’d gone into Shakers, dressed to work. She hadn’t been on the schedule, but she’d hoped against hope that Adam could use a hand and he’d taken one look at her and just jerked his head at her. She’d joined him behind the bar and he’d let her help him pull beers and mix drinks until the place shut down at two a.m.
By the time they were done, she was a hundred bucks fatter in the wallet, her feet hurt, and her head felt like it was going to split open.
Tired as she was, she should have slept like a rock, but instead, she’d lain awake, staring through her window, waiting for the lights to come on in the little apartment across the way.
They never did.
Today, damn it, she was going to find him.
Fortunately, though, she already had a good idea of where to look for the son of a bitch.
If he wasn’t here, there was only one other place he was likely to be.
* * *
The roughed-out log cabin wasn’t much. Perched on the edge of the Ohio River, nearly an hour away from Madison, it was Guy’s personal retreat. He came to fish or just get the hell away from people.
Too fucking bad, she thought, kicking a leg over her bike and staring up at the cabin. Some people might have enjoyed the picturesque drive out here. It had just given her more time to brood, steam, and work herself up. She was probably as close to exploding as she’d been in a good long time.
The door swung open and she found herself staring at the very object of her wrath.
Guy, in the flesh.
Her heartbeat kicked up and she had to swallow the spit that had suddenly pooled in her mouth.
The very, very nice flesh. Curling her hands into fists, she used the bite of her nails into her palms to help get centered. It wasn’t much, but every little bit helped, she figured.
He’d just walked out.
After that night together, after him telling her how he didn’t want her to regret it and how he thought about her—okay, he thought about her naked, or her ass, whatever.
Still.
He’d kinda made her think … crazy things.
Then he ignored her.
He’d gone three days, completely ignoring her.
That slow burn of lust settled in her belly—it was a familiar ache, something she’d gotten used to ignoring when it came to him. She needed him for a friend more than she needed him for a lover.
Or so she’d thought.
But then they’d had that night—it had been as amazing as the first night and she needed him like she needed air and he’d just walked away.
She jutted her chin up as he continued to watch her.
Then he turned around and walked back into the cabin.
The door remained open.
Oh, hell. She was just going to have to kick his ass.
* * *
Weariness bore down on him.
He’d spent the past three days trying to come to grips with the sucker punches that had come his way over the past few weeks.
He’d loved Nichole Bell.
She’d been the mother he’d wished he’d had.
When she disappeared, he’d cried into his pillow, muffling his sobs because if his dad heard him crying, he’d beat the shit out of him. Not that Theo Miller ever needed a reason to whale on his only child, but if he had a reason, the beatings were that much worse.
Guy had loved her, loved the way she’d come up to him when he was over there, how she’d hug him, carefully, like she knew he wasn’t too sure how to handle affection and once he’d learned that all she wanted was the hug, he’d hug her back. Then she’d hug him tighter. She was the one who’d taught him that women were strength.
He could still remember how she smelled like oranges and spice and vanilla.
For years, any of those scents had been a twist in his heart.
Even after he’d come to accept that she was gone, he’d look for her, whenever he saw a petite, dark-haired woman.
The discovery of the car hadn’t exactly brought closure, but he’d been … almost relieved. Ready to say good-bye, and he’d been glad, in a way, because he knew Chris—and the others—had needed this.
But then Jensen had shown up in his office, with her slick city lawyer boyfriend.
He’d known.
Just seeing the look in Jensen’s eyes, in Dean West’s eyes.
He’d known.
Not the specifics, hell, no. But he’d known somehow it was connected to him.
There were still so many questions, though, questions that Theo was refusing to answer. After three days of enforced solitude, he was working to make himself accept his part in it. Make himself swallow the bitter pill, make himself deal with the words his father had hurled at him
“You fucking son of a cunt! You keep your mouth shut … you’ll burn if I do. I’ll tell them all you knew. That you helped.”
Nothing but the desperation of a man staring down the business end of a gun. Guy knew that well enough. But all of this added up to yet another scar on the Bell family and they already had enough. And Chris …
The door slammed shut behind him.
He had to fight not to flinch.
Of course she was here. After the night they’d spent, after everything she’d been dealing with, how could he not expect her to come looking for him?
She always came to him. It was something that he both needed and hated, because he needed her, more than he needed to breathe, it seemed. But she didn’t want the things from him that he wanted from her.
She wanted comfort, wanted silence. Wanted a million things, and he just wanted her.
Feeling the weight of her gaze, he turned to face her, leaning against the counter behind him, his hands curling around it so he didn’t give in to the temptation to reach for her as she came even closer to him.
“What
in the hell are you doing?” she demanded.
“Taking some personal time,” he said levelly.
It had been his idea to take a few days away from work. Piss-poor timing, he knew, but the sheriff hadn’t been able to deny it made sense. Fifteen years ago, Guy had been tangentially involved in what was likely going to be a manslaughter case. They didn’t need him around right then.
He didn’t need to be around right then.
If he could cut the ties that bound him to Chris, he’d just leave Madison altogether. She was the only thing that really held him here, but those ties were strong, forged of iron and lust and love and need. To cut those ties, he’d have to cut out his heart.
“Personal time.” She continued to stare at him, her eyes glinting, sharp and brittle. “What did you do? Roll out of my bed and just decide you needed a few days away? Just like that?”
“Actually, I’d put the request in the day before the memorial.” Setting his jaw, he looked at the wall past her. “I should have mentioned it before that. This isn’t exactly the best time for me to be around, Chris.”
“Not the best time.”
The wooden tone of her voice was so unnatural, he couldn’t help but look at her and the shattered expression on her face ripped at him.
“Aw, fuck,” he muttered, shoving away from the counter. “Chris, that isn’t what I…”
“No.” She shook her head, her throat working as she swallowed. Vivid bursts of ink, those sexy, insane bursts of color that bloomed on her flesh moving as her chest shuddered, a ragged breath easing out of her. “Fifteen years, I waited for answers. Now I have some of them, and the person I always turn to just up and leaves.”
He closed his eyes.
“Okay. Fine. I get this is hell on you, too. I thought maybe we could help each other through it. But you don’t want that. I’ll see you around.” She turned and headed for the door.
She was two feet from the door when the threads of his control broke. Slamming a hand over her head, he shoved the door closed as she went to slip outside. When she attempted to jerk it open, he simply outmuscled her.
When she spun around and glared up at him, he glared back. “You get that this is hell on me,” he said, echoing her words. “You have no idea what kind of hell this is.”
Her lip quivered, a snarl forming on her face. “Poor Guy. Your fucked-up daddy is even more fucked up than we thought. You really do have daddy issues, don’t you?” She gave him a look of mock pity and reached up to pat his cheek.
He caught her wrist, pinned it to the door.
Her breath caught, the pupils of her eyes spiking, swelling. He leaned in. “Daddy issues … you think that’s what this is about, Tink?” The scent of her flooded his head. She smelled so fucking good. She always did. Roses and flowers and herbs and woman. It sent his blood, and his common sense, draining southward.
But it was so hard to worry about common sense, or anything else, when her lashes dipped low over her eyes, when her tongue swept out to dampen her lips. When everything in him screamed for another taste of her, to feel the press of that slim, strong body pressed against his own again.
“Daddy issues,” he muttered, shaking his head in an attempt to clear it. Unwittingly, he stroked his thumb against the soft, sensitive skin of her wrist. “My daddy issues are all centered on the fact that now I want to find a way to murder that son of a bitch. Every tear you’ve shed over the past fifteen years is because of him. Every time you’ve woken up in the middle of the night and called me because you couldn’t sleep, it’s his fault. When you weren’t able to have your mother come to graduation? That was his fault, too. You once told me how you weren’t sure you wanted to get married, not ever. Because your mother wouldn’t be able to be there to see you. And that’s his fucking fault. All this time, all these years, you waited and you wondered and you hoped, and he knew she wouldn’t come home. He knew why. He is why. You think I’ve got daddy issues? What I’ve got are murder issues—trying not to murder that bastard.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes and she turned her head aside, a soft sigh shuddering out of her.
He let her wrist go and stepped back.
“Yeah, Chris. This is hell. But it’s hell on me because he destroyed your life. And I came from that.”
* * *
He went to turn away and she reached out, unable to stop herself.
Under her hand, the muscles of his bicep bunched, hard as a rock, but warm, yielding to her touch. “I’m sorry,” she said, forcing the words past the knot in her throat.
“Don’t.” He shrugged her touch away and that alone sent a splinter of pain driving deep into her heart.
She pulled her hand back, curling it into a fist as she watched him drop onto the couch. Wide shoulders slumped as he dropped his head into his hands. “I don’t want fucking apologies,” he said, his voice curt. “Not from you.”
Bitter regret burned inside. She stared at him, uncertain of what he did want, what she could say.
“What’s wrong with us?” she asked quietly.
He lifted his head, stared at her. “My father killed your mother, Tink. Did you really think this wasn’t going to tear into us as well?”
“Your father.” She shook her head. “Not you. But if you want to give him another casualty, you go ahead. Let him take you from me, too. I was thinking he’d taken enough from me, but what the fuck do I know? I’m just the clueless little idiot who almost failed high school.”
She turned on her heel, fumbled with the door, her fingers awkward, stiff. She heard him coming up behind her and she hurriedly managed to get the door open, jerking it shut behind her.
She heard him calling her name, heard him tell her to wait.
She didn’t want to wait.
She just wanted …
His arms came around her, his voice a broken, ragged whisper in her ear. “Don’t go.”
A sob ripped out of her, all the tears she’d kept pent up ever since she’d heard the truth.
She hadn’t allowed herself to cry, because there was only one place, one person she’d ever felt safe with.
And he’d abandoned her. Struggling against him, she tried to break free.
He just hugged her tighter, one hand cradling the back of her head, the other a steel band around her torso. It might have been the only thing that kept the pain from ripping her apart.
“Shh…” His deep, soft voice was a rhythmic murmur in her ear. “I’ve got you, Tink. I’ve got you.”
Chapter Four
The sun turned the river to fire.
Sprawled on the low-slung carved bench with her head on Guy’s chest, Chris stared out over the water, a dull headache pounding at the base of her skull. She didn’t know how long she’d cried, but it had been long enough that she almost felt ill from the headache.
As though he somehow picked up on the pain, Guy’s hand trailed up her back and settled on the nape of her neck, his fingers digging into the muscles and slowly kneading away the tension.
She groaned and turned her head, giving him better access.
“You’re a mess of knots,” he said.
“I’m a mess period.”
“You’re not a mess.” He sighed, his chest rising under her cheek. “You’ve been kicked too many times lately, that’s all.”
“I wish I could kick back.”
He squeezed her neck lightly. “You can kick me. I shouldn’t have bailed like I did. Especially not after we…”
Despite the hurt that still gnawed her, she found herself smiling. Looking at him through her lashes, she said, “I think the correct term would be fucked like minks. I read that in a book once. We fucked like minks. All night.”
A chuckle rumbled out of him. “That’s the correct term, huh? Okay. I shouldn’t have bailed after we fucked like minks all night. I just wasn’t thinking. Besides, you said you just needed the night. I figured…” He shrugged. “The night was over. Thought that might make it easier on us both.”
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“Easy and I haven’t had a passing acquaintance in more than fifteen years. I gave up on easy the night my mom disappeared, Guy.” She sat up slowly, staring out over the river. She was quiet for a long moment and then she turned her head, staring at him. “Why would it get easier if my best friend just bailed?”
He didn’t answer, a muscle pulsing in his cheek.
“I guess you needed a break from it.”
He had nothing to say to that.
She jerked a shoulder in a shrug. “Hell, I would. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to look at me if I were you. I’m a needy little brat lately. And your dad…” She closed her eyes, shook her head. “It’s not your fault, you know. What he did. It’s not. Not at all.”
“You’re not a needy little brat.” He cupped her face in his hands, his fingers pushing into her hair.
She cocked a brow at him.
Despite himself, he had to laugh. “Okay, maybe you are a needy brat. Sometimes. But that’s not it.” He sighed and lowered his head, pressed his brow to hers. “He’s why this happened. Why shouldn’t you want a break from the reminder? The memories? From…”
Chris slid her hands around his waist. “But that would require needing a break from my best friend. I don’t want that.” She settled her head against his chest. “I need you, Guy.”
* * *
I need you.
Words that could mean everything to him, if they only meant a little bit more to her. Or a little something else.
He rubbed his cheek against her hair, staring out into the night. “I’m right here, Tink.” Right here. Where he’d always be, because he couldn’t cut himself away. “For whatever you need from me, whenever you need it.”
Her hand fisted in his shirt, tugged, tangled.
“I want him dead. It feels so wrong to say that, because he’s your dad,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper in the night. “He was always an evil son of bitch. I wanted to hurt him every time I knew he hurt you. Then you were old enough to hurt him back and I wanted to cheer for you. But … now…”
She pulled back and stared up at him.
He stroked a finger down her cheek. “Trust me, Tink. I want the same thing.”
“Don’t say that.” She sighed, reaching up to catch his wrist, squeezing gently. “I don’t think I could ever kill somebody. I’d like to think I could … and maybe if somebody broke into my house and I got my hands on a bat, I guess I could defend myself. But I couldn’t just kill somebody. But you…”
Long For Me Page 3
