Long Way Home

by HelenKay Dimon

  This time when she gestured him inside, he moved. Two steps and he crossed the threshold. Another few and he walked past the small love seat in the room’s cozy-bordering-on-claustrophobic living room area by the door. He got close to the bed with its stacks of pillows and the crumpled blue throw at the bottom and turned around to face her again.

  “That sounds good. Kind of hot, actually, which could be your game.” He stopped to rub the back of his neck. “But I want a real answer.”

  “You were done with me, but I wasn’t done with you.” Not even close. Even with the trembling moving through her and the mix of dread and excitement shaking her bones, she knew he was the one.

  “Uh . . . okay.”

  But that doesn’t mean she’d made her point. “Still hot, or did I slip into creepy?”

  “You lied to me.”

  She closed the door and leaned her back against it. Even with the thick socks she wore, a chill continued to move through her.

  Curling her toes under, she stopped looking at the floor and his feet. Her gaze traveled over him and ended with his lightly tanned face and the dark scruff around his chin.

  Time for more honesty. “I did. I absolutely lied. By omission—but that doesn’t make it better.”

  If possible, his frown deepened. “Okay, what the hell are you doing?”

  The sharp whack of his voice tore through her. She leaned over, tempted to turn the volume up on the television and drown out his skepticism, but snapped it off instead.

  “What?” She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. Unsure what to do with her hands, she grabbed on to the edge of her shirt. “I thought you wanted the truth.”

  “You’re admitting you set me up?”

  He just never stopped with this accusation. He’d been beating this drum since that night he came home all fired up and yelling about how she’d betrayed him. “I’m admitting I went out of the way to meet you because Walker was obsessed with you.”

  “Still is.”

  She ignored that because she could only deal with one mess at a time. “You came up to me in the bar—”

  Callen’s hands went to his hips, and his intense gaze never wavered. “The bar where I always hung out. Where you stalked me, knowing I’d see you, with the way you look, and sit down next to you.”

  Because of the compliment buried in there, she’d swallow that accusation, too, but she was reaching the end of her tolerance at warp speed. “We talked.” For hours, but she decided not to remind him of that. “I gave you my phone number, and the next night—”

  “Yeah, I get it.” He dropped his arms to his sides. “It’s seared on my brain. Used to be a great memory, but now I see it as the first step in what you hoped would be my demise.”

  Not like him to be so dramatic, but that’s the version of Callen that greeted her now, and she played a role in stoking his extreme paranoia, so she had to deal with it. “It’s still a good memory. Maybe I should tell you the version I remember?”

  “I know what happened. Physically, with us.”

  So did she. Every minute. She’d gone back to his place. He drove her home the next morning and never left. He moved in, they hung out, doing everything people forging a life together do. “When I was with you, Walker was the last thing on my mind.”

  “But you reported back to him.”

  That was one sin she would not accept. “I did not. Us, the two of us after the initial meeting, that had nothing to do with Walker.”

  “No, no.” Callen held up a finger, then balled his hand into a fist. “You don’t get to do that.”

  She knew he wasn’t threatening or attacking. The anger inside him burned bright enough for her to see it. Feel it. He clenched his hand as a way of holding back the sensations coursing through him. She’d seen it before, on the rare occasions when he talked about his father.

  Charlie Hanover.

  For a dead man, he sure as hell messed everything up.

  “You don’t get to pretend the deception magically ended once we started fucking. That somehow the timing means what you did doesn’t matter.” Tense energy continued to roll off him and bounce around the room. “I know you want to absolve yourself from guilt, but that’s not happening.”

  “Is that what you think?” Her head pushed back from the whip of his fury.

  “Yes.”

  “God, Callen. I am well aware what keeping things from you cost me. You walked out.” She choked on the words. Desperate not to lose it, she stopped and stared at the ceiling, forcing her mind to focus on the moment and not on the pain that had rubbed her raw over the last few weeks. Somehow she lowered her head and looked at him again. “You left, and I didn’t know where you were or how to find you. That tore me apart.”

  “You should have asked Walker.”

  The words hit her like a fist to the stomach. Since she guessed that was the hope, she grabbed on to the doorknob to keep from doubling over.

  Already emotionally bleeding, or at least feeling like she was, she dove in. If Callen intended to break her, she would hand him every last inch. “Walker wasn’t talking to me, because I had the nerve to fall in love with you.”

  Callen shook his head as he stalked toward her, as if he could walk through her to the door. “I can’t do this.”

  “Listen to me.” She lifted a hand to touch his face.

  “No.” He jerked away as if he couldn’t stand the contact. His arm went around her to the door, but his hand slipped off the knob. “Do you understand what the last three months have been like for me?”

  God, she did. She’d spent so many hours sitting on the floor, battling conflicting bouts of numbness and pounding sadness. “Yes.”

  “You lied to me. Just decided I didn’t get to hear the important information that impacted my life.” He stepped back. The words tumbled out of him as if he were pacing and talking to himself instead of having a conversation with her. “Of course, why should you be any different? The woman I thought was my mother lied to me, too. Apparently that’s a thing with the women in my life.”

  Thought was his mother? “What does that mean?” Grace tried to get him to look at her. Ducked when he ducked. Moved when he did.

  He finally looked up again. “I’m supposed to believe you don’t know?”

  The shock and despair in his green eyes stole her breath. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Grace, enough. No more lies.”

  She sensed he leveled a new accusation in her direction. Something important. Something big. “You seem to think I sat in a room plotting with Walker the whole time.”

  Callen treated her to a firm nod. “Basically.”

  He had every right to play the victim card, but the fact that he kept throwing it down and not listening made her crazed. Anxiety built in her gut until she thought she’d scream. Reining in all the frustration buzzing in her head took a second, but she managed it.

  “I wanted to know the man who was driving my partner insane.” Callen opened his mouth, and she had to fight to keep from putting a hand over his lips. She rushed her words instead. “And do not ask me again if he was only my partner.”

  “It’s a logical question, under the circumstances.”

  Score one for Callen.

  If he wanted to drive her to the edge, he’d found the perfect way. This was a sensitive subject, and the jabs questioning her fidelity could make the other news she had to tell him a complete nightmare.

  Gritting her teeth, she called on her last reserves of calm. “Walker is a friend. A good friend. You were the only one I was sleeping with, the one I loved and—”

  “Stop saying that.” This time Callen put up a hand as if to knock away her words.

  She refused to back down. Not on this. “At first I didn’t tell you about my relationship with Walker because I didn’t expe
ct to fall for you. Then I couldn’t figure out how to say it.”

  “You didn’t even try.”

  “I knew about your trust issues.” It was a delicate and small way to say such a massive, all-encompassing thing.

  Callen’s eyes bulged. “Gee, I wonder why I had those?”

  She leaned the back of her head against the door. “I messed up. I will say it a thousand times if you want. I will get on my knees, tell your brothers, put it on the Internet. However you need me to say it, I will. I made a mistake.”

  “A pretty fucking huge one.” The words were harsh, but much of the anger had seeped out of his tone.

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. We agree on something. Lucky for us.” He reached for the door again, but his palm flattened against it instead, right by her shoulder.

  She wanted to touch him, was dying to touch him, but she held off. “Answer this. If I had told you who I was that next morning, after we met and made love and spent the night all over each other, what would you have done?”

  “Left.” His elbow bent and he dipped in closer. “But don’t act like that proves something. If you had confided in me, I would have been able to make an informed decision.”

  She could smell the soap on his skin. “To leave.”

  “And I would have gone before we moved in together. Before I . . . got attached.”

  She grabbed on to the way he stumbled over the words, hoping it meant something for this usually-so-sure man to fumble. “You make me sound like a favorite pillow.”

  “Don’t turn me into the bad guy in this.”

  “I’m trying to get you understand.”

  “What?”

  When it looked like he was going to push off from the door and move away again, she wrapped her fingers around his arm. She would have slipped them around his neck and held on but she knew he wasn’t ready. He had to make the move. “I have been trying since the night you confronted me to make you listen. You dropped the bomb about us being over and left. We never talked, and you refused to communicate.”

  He lifted his head and stared at her. “You’re missing the point, Grace. You had to be confronted. You didn’t tell me on your own. I found out who you really were, what you did for a living, because I saw you with Walker. You had no choice but to confess then.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” She leaned in until their foreheads touched. At least some part of her made contact. “I am sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

  Callen shook his head, and his hair rustled against hers. “You have to leave.”

  The bumpy turn in topic had her reeling. “The motel?”

  With a loud exhale, he broke the bond and put some air between them. “The state.”

  “No, Callen.” She tightened her hand on his arm. “That’s not going to happen.”

  “I don’t want you here.” Nothing in his tone suggested that was true.

  Taking the risk, this time she skimmed her fingertips over his chin, loving the roughness of the stubble against her sensitive skin. “Or is the problem that you’re afraid to have me close by?”

  “I’ve never lied about wanting you. Even now I . . . fuck me. I knew this would happen.” He took her hand and flipped it over, placing a soft kiss in the dead center of her palm. “I do want you.”

  Some of the iciness inside her melted. “Callen—”

  “It’s the only fucking thing we’ve ever gotten right. The bedroom. There we communicated fine. Problem was it only happened there.”

  “That’s not true.” She wouldn’t let it be true. What they had went beyond the physical. Maybe it started there, but it grew into something. Something that would now bind them forever.

  Her thoughts brought her full circle. She came to town for a reason. “We need to talk. There are things I need to tell you.”

  “Forget talking.”

  Before she could blink, his palms covered her cheeks and his mouth covered hers. Hot and deep, he kissed her. His mouth slanted over hers and the force of his will pounded into her. She could feel the desperation and anger, the loneliness and the last bits of those pent-up feelings he claimed not to have for her.

  This was no subtle peck. This amounted to a claiming, a reminder of what they once were. Long and lingering, he kissed her until she forgot all the bad times and a giddy lightness filled her head. When he finally pulled back, she felt dizzy, like she could put her head on his shoulder and stay there forever.

  But she had to tell him. So much of how everything soured between them came from her holding back and trying to figure out the right time to drop news. “You need to know—”

  He backed her into the door and his body covered hers. His hands traveled from her face to her back. “Do you want me to stop?”

  She grabbed on to the back of his shirt, dragging the material until it balled in her fists. “No, but we have to—”

  “Later.” His lips brushed over her cheek to the top of her ear.

  The smell and taste of him . . . the man went to her head. Common sense pushed out and her brain short-circuited until she had to fight to hold on to a simple thought. And when he licked there, right behind her ear, her insides went wild.

  “Last chance.” He kissed his way down her neck to her collarbone. “Tell me no.”

  “Never.” She didn’t have the willpower. With him, her mind melted into mush.

  She could feel him shift around. A hand left her and he patted his back pocket. The swearing came next.

  Half out of breath and in between kisses, he whispered in her ear. “I don’t have anything with me.”

  “Right.” The comment splashed over her like a bucket of ice-cold water. Her hands went to his chest. She caressed him even as she tried to give her brain a second to reboot. “It’s okay.”

  “I didn’t bring a condom. Stupidly thought that would keep me out of your bed.”

  Birth control. Yeah, this was her moment to blurt it all out.

  Her fingers skimmed over his shoulders and she tried to hold on. Anything to keep him from running again when he heard the news. “Maybe we should stop and talk.”

  “Are you still on the pill?”

  Looked like their communication was as off-kilter as ever. She fell back on a half-answer. “We don’t need a condom.”

  His fingers went to her shirt, and the first button popped open. He kissed every inch he uncovered.

  This has to stop now. She put her hands on his cheeks again and forced him to look at her. “Okay, wait.”

  His gaze searched her face. With every second that ticked by some of the cloudiness left his vision, and he straightened up. “Right. This is fucked-up.”

  “It’s not that.” She could feel his erection pressing against her and his heartbeat hammering under her hand.

  He stilled. “Do you see why you need to leave town?”

  “I want this. I want you.” She tried to tighten her grip, but he was already moving.

  “I did.” He dropped his hands then. Let go and stepped back as if stopping and walking away were the easiest things in the world to him.

  “Callen?”

  “I don’t anymore. This is runaway train bullshit, wild and crazy and so damn dangerous neither one of us will survive.”

  The first sentence stuck with her. The words sliced through her but she refused to flinch. Not after the last few minutes when a tiny flicker of hope had taken hold in her belly. “It sure felt like you wanted me a minute ago.”

  With a gentle touch, he moved her to the side, and she was too stunned and confused to stop him.

  The sadness moved back into his eyes. “Go home, Grace.”

  Before she could tell him she was home, he was gone.

  Chapter Five

  Declan stood in the doorway to one of the house’s extra bedrooms and watched his mom pack her suitcase. She lived
in California but had been staying at Shadow Hill for more than three weeks. He knew friends were taking care of her cat and the small place she’d bought. It was the first house she’d owned and she hadn’t managed to scrape the money together for that until a few years ago.

  Never mind that Grandma Nanette lived in this sprawling place or that Charlie had money squirreled away everywhere—other people’s, but still. Mom always suffered. Always went without. After years of struggling with depression and poverty but keeping her head high, the bullshit with Callen had her shoulders stooping and her face pulled taut with tension.

  He looked at Leah where she sat on the bed next to the open suitcase, taking things out as quickly as Mom put them in. Loving Leah made him wonder if Charlie had ever felt anything for any of them. Declan couldn’t imagine picking anything over her.

  Not sure what to say or how to break through the impasse, he tried a simple question. “You’re really going?”

  His mom smiled then with only a twinge of sadness at the edges. “Not from Sweetwater. Just out of this house.”

  “Is there really a difference?” Declan could feel her pulling away. When she let them each go as teens, sending them into the world, she’d taken a huge step back. She didn’t hover or interfere. It was a sharp break between childhood and adulthood, but he guessed it might have been the only way for her to let go of him and Beck after losing Callen so many years before.

  Leah made a grumbling sound. “She’ll be five minutes away.”

  The argument made perfect sense, but Declan couldn’t silence the nagging doubts floating through his head. This felt like one more break to him, another way for his mom to let distance do the healing. A theory she seemed to believe in and he rejected.

  “Yes.” She brushed a hand over his hair as she’d been doing since he was a kid. “Callen needs some space. You all need some space.”

  Declan touched the back of her hand. “No one is asking for that, Mom.” In fact, he was desperate to keep her close, fearing that even a mile or two would widen the gulf between her and Callen to an irreparable distance.