Constant (The Confidence Game Book 1)

by Rachel Higginson

  More correspondence, this time folded neatly in short, white envelopes—communication of some kind, only without addresses or return labels or stamps.

  They weren’t even sealed.

  I grabbed the closest one and pulled out the letter.

  Caro,

  Where are you? What did I do? Why did you leave? When are you coming back?

  I need you to come back.

  I just need you.

  Sayer

  My heart twisted in my chest, wringing out like a wet sponge. It wasn’t dated, but I could guess when he’d written it.

  I opened another letter that seemed to predate the first one.

  Six,

  I’m starting to worry. I haven’t seen you in two weeks. I expected you a while ago. Are you in danger? Is something wrong? Did I do something to piss you off?

  I don’t say this enough, but I love you, Caroline. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me. Without you I don’t think I could face the next ten years. It’s unbearable in here. And worse without you. You’re the only thing that keeps me breathing. The only thing that keeps me sane. From the day I met you that was true.

  You saved me when we were kids. And I’m a selfish bastard because I need you to save me again. Payne says the charges are going to stick. All of them. What am I going to do?

  I’m sorry, Caro. For whatever I did. For every single thing. Please forgive me. Please come see me.

  Please don’t leave me.

  Sayer.

  It hurt to breathe and my hands were trembling. But I still opened the next one. And the one after that. And the one after that.

  Did I ever tell you my dad was a cop? Crazy right? Considering the line of work I ended up in. Although it’s not so out of the question if you know the whole story. If you know that sometimes the people pretending to be the good guys are really the worst of them all. So, maybe it’s not that surprising that I joined the syndicate. They never beat the shit out of me. They never put their hands on me. Or locked me in a basement for days without food. Or did unspeakable things to my mom until she couldn’t stand her life anymore, until she didn’t even care enough about me to keep living. The only silver lining to my mom killing herself? Was that my dad did too shortly after.

  Which was good news for me until the fucking system got ahold of me. Foster care? More fake good guys taking advantage of little kids. To be fair, there were a few good homes near the end, but the damage was already done and I was too wild to settle down.

  That’s when you found me. I was a feral dog living on the streets, so close to death I felt it every day. Then Caroline fucking Valera shows up and breathes life back into me, finds me a home and gives me purpose. Do you know that you rescued me? Do you know that you saved my soul?

  I was dead before you, Caroline. Don’t make me live without you now. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to do anything without you.

  Come back to me.

  Come home.

  Take away this constant pain.

  Breathe life into me once again.

  Tears started falling and I was helpless to stop them. How could I? He had never told me about his past and it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part. I had asked him endless times about what his life was like before the syndicate, before me. He would never talk about it. He’d get that blank look on his face and clutch the key around his neck.

  How could he not have told me? How could he have kept all that a secret for so long?

  I pressed a hand to my cracking chest in a failing attempt to hold it together.

  Six,

  I should hate you. I want to hate you. The three hardest years of my fucking life and you’re nowhere to be found? I thought we were in this together. I thought we had a deal—the whole death do us part kind of thing.

  But you’re gone. And everything is falling apart here. And I don’t know what end is up, down or fucking sideways.

  You better have a good fucking excuse. Don’t you think I at least deserve to hear it?

  Come back and give it to me.

  Goddamnit, just come back.

  I read through all the letters except one. They weren’t in any particular timeline and some of them were so angry I couldn’t do anything more than weep over them. He had a right to be mad. He had a right to hate me. But every single letter ended in him asking me to come back despite how he felt.

  He mentioned his past more and more. How awful his dad had been. How he’d been abused. And then abused again in two different foster care homes. He had just started to believe he was free from the constant physical pain from someone that was supposed to love him when it turned to sexual pain from someone who was supposed to protect him. He had run away from the system only to face constant danger of both varieties on the streets.

  He credited me with getting him away from all of it.

  I didn’t deserve the gratitude. I had helped him trade one hell for another.

  But he didn’t see it that way. It was no wonder he hadn’t been bothered by the bratva’s dealings. It was no wonder he was so loyal to an organization that had given him new life, given him the means to take care of himself, to be independent.

  It was no wonder he didn’t want to leave.

  There was one letter left. I was the most afraid to open it. I’d saved it for last on purpose.

  Because unlike all of the letters before it, this one had an address. Sayer had written every letter but this one from prison, when he hadn’t known where I’d gone, when he didn’t know how to find me.

  But this letter was addressed Caroline Baker with my Colorado address. My home address.

  This was the letter he’d written when he finally found me.

  Fear stopped the flow of tears, although my cheeks remained wet as I was too focused on the letter to wipe them dry. Pulling it from the envelope, I noticed it was on a different kind of paper and written with a different color of ink. Everything about it showed the change in Sayer, no longer the prisoner, no longer wondering what happened to me.

  Caroline Baker,

  No wonder it took me so long to find you. I didn’t expect you to use something so familiar. Something you’ve used before. And Frisco of all places? Did you intend that to be a slap in the face? I honestly can’t tell. I don’t know how to read you anymore.

  I don’t know you anymore.

  You’ve been gone for five years. Does it feel that long to you? It feels longer to me. But maybe that’s because I was the one rotting in a prison cell while you moved on with your life. Maybe you don’t think about me at all anymore. Maybe in light of your new, life you’ve forgotten about me completely.

  I wish I could forget. I wish I could forget the way you used to look at me, as though I were your very reason for existing. I wish I could forget the way you would smile in that secret way, a thousand hidden thoughts locked away in your brilliant mind that the rest of us were left only to guess. I wish I could forget the way you talked to yourself or nibbled on your lip or laughed at everything Gus says.

  I wish I could forget the Mandarin, Fat Jack’s, the warehouse when we were kids, and every single time I’ve touched you and wanted to touch you and thought about touching you. The way you feel. The way you smell. The way you taste. The way you lie with such skill, that even I believed you. Even I thought you were telling the truth. I wish I could forget you, Six. More than I want my next breath, I want to forget you.

  It would be so much easier. I could move on with my life. I could save the syndicate and tell the FBI to fuck off.

  And if I can’t forget you, I wish I could just hate you. Everything would be so much simpler if I could hate you.

  But I can’t do that either. So I’m going to stick to doing what I can do. Which is to give you the life you want. I’m going to make sure the syndicate never bothers you again. I’m going to give the fucking FBI what they want so they leave you alone forever. And I’m going to quit this obsession I have with you. I’m done, Caroline. I’m letting
you go. If you can forget me and move on with your life, I can too.

  Consider this my resignation from your life forever. Good luck to you, Six.

  You’re truly free now. Just like you always wanted.

  Sayer

  I hiccupped a sob and realized for the first time that I was crying. His words were knives in my chest, stabbing at the suddenly empty place where my heart used to be. I hadn’t expected something like this. In my best-case scenario, we just never saw each other again. I didn’t have to hear these words. I didn’t have to face this truth. I just wanted an ambiguous ending to our tragic love story so I could fill in the blanks myself.

  I bent over, crushing the letter in two fists. Why did it hurt this badly? How did he still have this power over me after all this time? Why hadn’t it faded? Why hadn’t I moved on?

  And what really sucked, I mean, what really hurt more than anything was that I had been lying to myself this whole time. I had been the mark in my own stupid game. I’d been the one conned. Duped. Made to look like a fool.

  “Turn it over.”

  I jumped at the sound of Sayer’s voice behind me. Habit made me glance at my purse and the Leighton propped by the door.

  Okay, maybe it was more than habit. I didn’t want to face him, not after reading his real thoughts, not after seeing them all in cruel, heartbreaking ink.

  “Turn it over, Caroline.”

  I finally looked at him, starting at his shoes and working my way up, over low-slung jeans and a navy-blue cardigan over a gray V-neck. Finally, I braved beyond his shoulders. That long corded throat, the square jaw, those full, masculine lips, the blue, blue eyes and all that dark hair. Why did he have to look like that? Why couldn’t all ex-boyfriends just turn into toads the second things were over? So many bad decisions could be avoided in the world if women only had to face toads they were in love with and not the real men that represented their heartbreak and lost hopes and dreams and wasted orgasms.

  Well… maybe we didn’t regret the orgasms.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded, my voice hoarse with the buckets of shed tears.

  He shot a pointed look to the crumpled letter in my hands. “Damn it, woman, turn the paper over.”

  Something in his tone convinced me to do it. He had sounded almost… playful. And he managed to pique my curiosity enough to do as he said.

  The letter was a mess, crumpled and damp from my tears. And yet there was his writing again. He’d continued his thoughts.

  “Oh, good,” I whispered to the paper. “More rejection.”

  “Just read it.”

  That was a lie. Not all of it, but damn, a lot of it. Starting with “this obsession.” This isn’t an obsession, Six, this is love. And it’s deep and wild and forever. I can’t stop. And I can’t quit you.

  So yeah, I’ll give you all the other shit you want. But I’m not going to step back. I’m not going to stop trying. I’m not going to let you go.

  I’m coming for you, Caro. And when I get to you, I’m not letting go.

  Never again.

  You’re mine. And I am yours. Let’s give up this game and stop lying to ourselves. You own my heart, Caroline. It’s yours. Come claim it.

  I got to the end only to reread it immediately. And then again. “What is this?” I asked him, my voice a raspy whisper.

  “Truth,” he said simply.

  “You came here for me?”

  His mouth lifted in that half smile. “Wasn’t it obvious?”

  “You took down the syndicate?”

  This time it was a half-hearted shrug. “Payne wanted names and places and locations. He wanted every single thing I remembered. So he got it. As long as I didn’t have to testify.” He walked further into his office, pretending to examine something on Gus’s desk, but I knew it was because he was uncomfortable. He needed to move. This conversation made him restless. “It took five years, but he was able to get everyone on something.”

  “You stayed in prison to work with him?”

  “Secretly of course. You won’t find my name in any of their paperwork. Or on some fucking WITSEC list or CI database. That was the deal. Mason asked his questions, I gave him answers. We took them down slowly, but permanently. Payne’s happy and I’m finally free.”

  My one word question burned my tongue like a hot coal I was desperate to spit out. “Why?”

  “Come on, Six, you’re not this dense.”

  No, not dense. Afraid. Cowardly. Weak. “F-for me?” His eyes darkened meaningfully. “You did all of that for me? Risked your life? Betrayed your brothers? Gave up DC for me?”

  His brows drew down. “Are those supposed to be difficult choices? When it comes to you, Caroline, there’s only one choice. There’s only you.”

  “Sayer…”

  He stood there, hands tucked in his pockets, waiting on me to get it. To fully get it. But it wasn’t that simple. It wasn’t that easy.

  “You’re telling the truth?” I had to ask. I had to hear it from his lips.

  His bright blue eyes intensified, turning a shade that couldn’t have been human. They were too beautiful. Too otherworldly. Too bigger than life. Just like Sayer. And all those things he’d done for me.

  “No more lies, Caro. There’s no reason for them. Just truth from now on. Starting with, I love you. And if you never tell me why you left or why you didn’t talk to me first or what you’ve been doing for the past five years, I will still love you. If you tell me everything and I hate all of your answers and wish I could change them all, I will still love you. If you walk out of this building right now because you can’t stand the sight of me and you want something different or you’re already married or something that keeps us apart. I will still love you. I will always love you.”

  I was out of my seat and wrapped around him faster than he could blink. But he was ready to catch me. His arms were around me at just the right moment. Our mouths collided, kissing with the kind of hungry desperation that made me want more, made me addicted with just one taste of him.

  We devoured each other, unable to be sated with small, polite or PG kisses. Our clothes started disappearing next. First his glasses—they had to go for obvious reasons. Then his cardigan and my cardigan and my shirt and his shirt. We toed off our boots without breaking apart, which wasn’t easy. I stumbled backward and he followed me, his feet tripping over his half-discarded shoes. My butt hit the desk and I half wondered if he’d orchestrated the movement, because his hands were already on the back of my thighs, lifting, kissing, ripping off what was left of our clothes.

  His buckle was impossible. I hated it. After several unsuccessful tries, I tipped my head back and growled at the ceiling, making him chuckle darkly.

  “I thought you were over me?” he whispered in my ear, his breath hot and enticing and familiar all at once.

  “Never,” I told him, swore to him. “I could never be over you. No matter how far I ran or how long I managed to hide. I would always, eternally come home to you.”

  He pulled back, letting his gaze find mine. “I came to you.”

  Resting my hand on his bare chest, I said, “You came to me so I could finally come home.”

  “Say it, Caro. Let me hear it.”

  I hesitated. It wasn’t because I wanted him to suffer, but I needed him to feel the words, know how serious and honest they were. And I hadn’t said them in a while. I was rusty. They were difficult words to say. They were all of my trust and hope and fears and insecurities and future and past and dreams and goals and aspirations all in one little sentence. They were everything and all of me and both of those things at once.

  It wasn’t something I wanted to say flippantly or on command. I wanted to mean it. I wanted to swear it.

  I wanted it to be my oath and creed and life’s purpose.

  “I love you, Sayer Wesley. I never stopped loving you. I will never stop loving you.”

  His hands cradled my face, gentle and unyielding. “I went through the
seven circles of hell to hear you say that, Six. It was worth it. Every damn minute.”

  Tears pricked at my eyes again, but when his mouth connected with mine, I forgot all about them or about the sorrow, the heartbreak and years apart. Everything became about this moment, this touch, this man with his hands on me and his mouth on me and what he was doing to me.

  With one hand, he managed to finally undo his buckle. My jeans were gone next, ripped off my legs and turned inside out. And then his, so that we were finally stripped down to only underwear.

  I’d seen him naked recently, but not like this. Not when his muscles were flexed and rippling because of how he had to lean over me. Not when his corded strength was coiled for me. Not when his rough hands caressed my thighs and my breasts and parted my legs so he could explore the center of me.

  Yet while I was ogling him, I was highly self-conscious of how I looked as well. While all of his changes were for the better, mine were not as kind. He had bigger, stronger arms. I had stretch marks on my abdomen and wider, childbearing hips. He had turned his body into muscle. Mine had gone soft from too many pizza Friday nights and ice creams with Juliet and not enough time found to exercise. And yet next to him, I didn’t hate my rounder body or matured features. Next to him they felt right, designed to be this way, complements of each other in a way that I would never have expected.

  Neither of us were the same, but I preferred it that way. We weren’t the same as before. We had changed and grown and suffered and hurt and faced this world and all its hardships. So it was okay that we weren’t the same naïve kids. It was okay that we weren’t kissing as those people we used to be. We weren’t them anymore.

  We were new versions of us kissing in a new version of passion.

  And to be honest, I preferred this one.

  His fingers circled and coaxed and created a delicious ache that was soul deep. It spread through me like ripples on water, making my limbs tingle and my core tighten. It had been so long since my body had been brought to this point by someone else.