Now she had to dump more bad news on her cousin. “We need to talk about something else.”
This was going to suck, but she needed to know. They’d never talked about what legal provisions Sarah had made for the kids. It was her fault. She kept thinking if she didn’t talk about it, it wouldn’t happen.
“Eddie was released from prison.”
Sarah’s eyes flew open. “What?” she gasped. “No. No!” She shook her head. “He’s not supposed to be out for another five years. He can’t be out.”
“I know,” she said softly, trying to calm her down. “I know.”
Sarah sucked in air, hyperventilating. The machines beside her bed started beeping and Denise hit the call button. “Calm down, honey. Please.”
Fear shone from her eyes. Sprocket stood and woofed as Nadia opened the door.
“What’s—” Rushing to the bed, she lifted the oxygen mask hanging from the rack next to it. She fit it over Sarah’s head and turned the valve on the wall.
Sarah inhaled deeply, never breaking eye contact with Denise. Her breath fogged up the clear plastic with each heavy exhale.
“What happened?” The nurse reached into the pocket of her scrubs and pulled out a stethoscope.
“I had to give her some bad news.” Denise shoved her hands into her pockets and scrunched her shoulders.
Nadia held the earpieces over her ears. “Let’s avoid doing that again, okay?”
Denise nodded. It was a lie. She had more.
Nadia listened to Sarah’s chest, then removed the stethoscope and wrapped it around her neck. She grasped her tiny wrist and looked at her watch. After several seconds, she looked back at Sarah. “You okay now?”
Her breathing had evened out and her cousin nodded.
Nadia removed the mask from her face. “I’m going to hook you up to the nose hose.” She opened her mouth, but the nurse cut her off. “I know you don’t like it, but you need to wear it for a while.”
She sighed. “Okay.”
Nadia wrapped the clear plastic hose around each of her ears and adjusted the flow of air. She looked at Denise. “Not too much longer.”
Denise nodded and waited for the click of the door closing.
Sarah’s eyelids sank closed. “Tell me the rest.” The blue circles under their depths seemed even more pronounced than they had only minutes ago.
Resuming her position on the bed, Denise wrapped her hands around her cousin’s again. “He skipped parole.”
The weak hand clenched. “How do you know?”
“The FBI came to the house looking for you.”
She opened her eyes and tears spilled over. “How did they know where to find me?”
“Several ways, I’m sure, they’re the FBI.” Sarah didn’t smile at her poor attempt at humor. “He’s been calling the house.” Denise licked her lips. “Kaden’s talked to him a couple of times.”
Sarah’s hand crashed to her chest. “What?”
“Kaden has questions.” She wasn’t sure how much he and Kimber knew about the man who fathered them. “How much do you want me to tell them?”
Sarah took a shuddering breath. “All of it.” Her whisper was harsh—full of pain, fear, and anger.
“Are you sure?”
Tears fell freely. “Yes. I wouldn’t have chosen this, but they need to understand exactly how dangerous he is.”
“Even what he did to you?” She didn’t like that idea. Didn’t understand the purpose of telling the kids.
“Use your best judgment. But tell them why he went to jail.”
“Okay.” Relief flooded through her. Thank God. She hoped she would never have to tell them exactly what kind of monster their father was. “We need to talk about their guardianship.”
“I took care of it right after I was diagnosed.” Her voice had grown weak and her lids drooped. The conversation had taken a lot out of her.
Guilt shimmied through Denise, but she needed to start making arrangements for the kids. “I’ll talk to Mom and Dad about the best time to transition the kids. Might be best to wait for the summer since it’s only a few months away.” That way they wouldn’t start a new school when the year was almost over.
Sarah fought to keep her eyes open. “You, Denise. You’re their guardian.”
“What?” Shock slammed into her, knocking the breath right out of her chest. “Sarah, that’s not a good idea. Mom and Dad are the best option.”
“You’re the best option.” Her voice was surprisingly strong.
“Sarah—”
“I love your mom and dad—more than my own parents—but they’re too old to take care of an eight- and nine-year-old.”
“I’m not equipped to take care of them. I don’t know how to be a mom.” Shit, some days she had a hard time taking care of herself. It’d never crossed her mind that her parents wouldn’t get custody. They were making room in their house for K-Squared. That was the plan.
Sprocket put her nose in the back of Denise’s knee and pushed. Her left hand fell to her dog’s head.
“You’ve been doing it for the past three months.”
“That’s a temporary arrangement so they wouldn’t have to move schools in the middle of the year,” she argued.
Sarah’s eyelids fell again. “Now it’s permanent. I’m giving you the best of me.” Her voice faded and she drifted off.
Denise palmed her forehead and stood. What was Sarah thinking? There were still periods she struggled to make it through the day. How was she supposed to do that with two kids?
Sprocket all but sat on her feet and stared up at her. “Rawr rawr.” She sounded like Scooby-Doo.
Her wet nose pushed at Denise’s hand and she scratched her behind the ear. “I’m not freaking out girl, but…fuck.”
A soft knock sounded before the door opened and Sarah’s doctor peeked her head in.
Denise moved to the door and stepped out of the room, holding the door for her dog. “Morning, Dr. King. She just fell asleep.”
“Good. She needs to rest.” She slipped her hands into the pockets of her white coat.
Do they learn that stance in med school?
“Nadia said she had a small episode.”
Guilt played at the edges of her mind. What a cluster. “Yeah. I had to give her some bad news.” Dr. King gave her a stern look. “It was something she needed to know, Doc. I wouldn’t have told her otherwise.”
“It’s important that she not become agitated.”
She stared over the doctor’s head, down the long hall. It wasn’t going to be much longer. That’s what she was hinting at. Wow, she’s short. The errant thought popped into her head. She needed to focus. And not on how she felt like a giant standing next to the petite doctor. “How long?”
Dr. King pressed her lips together. “Weeks, but that’s honestly optimistic. More likely a week.”
Denise took a shuddering breath. Fuck.
Chapter 3
Denise pushed open the door and ushered the kids in under her arm. “Shoes off.”
“Can we play with the dogs in the back?” Kimber’s big, doe-brown eyes stared up from her porcelain-doll face. One of her pigtails had drooped, giving her a lopsided appearance.
“Please, Aunt Denny?” Kaden, a male version of his sister, chimed in.
“Go ask Aunt Bree.”
“Yay!” They bounded out of the mudroom and into the kitchen, yelling for Bree. Denise knew she’d let them play outside. Hell, they deserved it after the morning they’d had.
She sighed and kicked off her shoes. Sprocket sat and licked her chops, staring up at her. “Go on. You can play, too.” Giving Denise a big puppy grin, she trotted after the kids. Sometimes she wondered if Sprocket forgot she was a dog. Or maybe she was the one who forgot Sprocket was a dog.
“Hey. How’d it go?” Bree stood at the counter chopping vegetables.
Denise opened the fridge and pushed food around the make room for the bowl of fruit salad she’d brought. “As
well as can be expected.” She grabbed the pitcher of tea Bree always had ready. “Sarah slept a lot and the kids were sad.”
Setting the pitcher down, she stared at the counter. “Am I doing the right thing? Making them see her when she’s like this?”
Bree stopped chopping. “They’ll regret the time they missed later in life if you don’t.”
Leaning back against the counter, she ran her hands over her face, before scraping her hair behind her ears. “Maybe. What if I’m just damaging them?”
“Kids are resilient.” Her friend leaned a hip against the counter. “Have you talked to Dr. Tailor about it?”
“Yeah.” She dropped her hands. “She gave me a reference for a grief and family counselor, but I can’t get an appointment till next month.”
“Your parents going to take them?”
It welled up out of nowhere, an unstoppable force she had no control over. She dropped her head and blew out a breath, letting her hair fall around her face like a curtain.
“What?”
Fighting to keep her emotions at bay, she struggled to speak past the lump in her throat, but all she could do was shake her head. God, she hated this stupid fucking weakness.
Bree crouched down to look at her through the curtain of hair. “Denise…what?”
A tear escaped. “Sarah’s giving me custody.” Her voice sounded harsh in her own ears.
A second tear followed the first then a third.
“Shit.” Bree grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the kitchen, down the hall to her bedroom. Closing the door hard, she thumbed the lock. “Talk.”
“What am I going to do?” Tears flowed freely, no matter what she did to stop them. Why couldn’t she stop them? She sat on the bed, defeat hammering at her defenses.
Bree sat next to her and pulled Denise’s hand into her lap. “About what?”
“Everything. I don’t know how to take care of kids.”
“You can’t do any worse than some people,” she said dryly.
She pulled her hand away. “Bree, I’m being serious.”
“So am I.” She reached over and snagged some tissues from the box by the bed. Handing them to her, she waited while Denise blew her nose. “Lay it out. What’s your first concern?”
She wadded up the tissue and tossed it on the bed next to her. “That I’m going to screw up. That I’m going to screw them up.”
“Do you love them?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then I’m pretty sure you can’t screw them up. Next?”
She sighed and tilted her head back, unsure whether Bree’s dismissiveness was helpful or not. “Where are we going to live? We can’t live at the rescue in my little apartment and I refuse to stay at Sarah’s. The area isn’t safe and the schools suck. And that’s another thing.” She threw up a hand. “How do I even begin researching schools?”
“Well, the schools in this district are good.”
“Okay. But I can’t afford a house in this area.”
Bree bit her lip. “You could if you rented my house.”
Her brows pinched together. “What?”
“I was going to tell you this afternoon while we were getting the food ready, but Jase and I are moving in together. To his house.”
“Oh my God! When did that happen?”
“The day after Gran’s birthday.”
“You mean the day after you freaked out?”
Bree rolled her eyes. “Yes, the day after I freaked out.”
Denise hugged her. “I’m so happy for you.”
“Thanks.” Bree squeezed back, then released her. “But that means I need to get a renter.” She shrugged. “I’d rather rent to you than to some stranger.”
She leaned back. “I can’t afford the rent on this house.”
Bree gave her a baleful look.
“Bree.”
“Denise.”
She knew that look. Sometimes the woman could be even more stubborn than she was. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“No. The house is perfect for you and the kids. And it saves me having to hire a management company because I know you’ll take care of it.”
Sucking up her pride, she gave Bree a small smile. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. All that was superficial. You’d have figured it out on your own given enough time.” She tilted her head, her gaze searching. “Tell me why you’re really scared.” Her voice was low. She was going to force Denise to say it.
To give voice to her greatest fear.
“What if…?” She swallowed and shifted her gaze away. “There’s still a lot of darkness inside me. I still have nightmares where I’m interrogating someone.”
“Okay?”
“It scares me. That I still have them. That, somewhere inside me, that person still exists. That I’m still capable of doing those things.”
Bree leaned forward. “You are a long, long way from that ever happening again, Denise.”
“Am I though? What does it say about me that I could even do that to another human being? I’m not a good person.”
“When was the last time you talked to Doc Tailor?”
She blinked. “A couple weeks ago. Why?”
“Because you are so far off the mark about who you are, it’s not even funny. You save puppies, for crying out loud. It’s not like you’re trolling bars for unsuspecting guys to torture in your basement of horrors. It was your job and you did it. It doesn’t define who you are as a person.”
“But I was really good at it,” Denise said. Really, really good at it.
“So? I’m good at my job.”
“You help people.”
“So did you. Maybe not in the conventional way, but how many lives were saved from the intel you got from detainees?”
“It’s not the same,” she said, shaking her head.
Bree pursed her lips in frustration. “I think you need to talk to Doc Tailor about these particular ideas you have, but why exactly do you think it will affect K-Squared?”
“What if they try to wake me up during a nightmare? What if I hurt them somehow? Lose my temper because I’m having a bad day? What if I start to have those thoughts again?”
“You mean hurting yourself?”
“Yes.”
“It’s been years, Denise, why do you think it would happen now?”
Because it was always in her, playing in the far corners of her mind. That one moment when it seemed like it would be so easy to make everything stop. It was never an active thought—more like a bad memory that lingered. Shame that, no matter how hard she tried and no matter how much therapy she had, would never go away. It would always be there to remind her that at her weakest, she’d almost given up.
“I still have dark moments. Never as bad as it was then, but still. They don’t need to see me like that. Not after watching their mom get sick. How can I be there for them, when there are times I have a hard time being there for myself?”
The door rattled, followed by a knock.
“Hang on.” Bree squeezed her leg and answered the door, opening it a crack.
“Everything okay?” Jase asked.
“Yeah. We just need a few minutes.”
“Okay. Chris’s here.”
“Oh,” Bree said. That word contained a wealth of questions she knew Bree would ask. “Okay. We’ll be out in a bit.”
Denise dropped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, errant tears sliding down her temples into her hair. She heard them kiss and indistinct whispering before the door clicked closed.
A dull pain echoed in the hollowness of her heart.
Bree sat on the bed, one leg bent, and looked down at her. “I’m going to let you in on a secret.”
This should be good. Bree had become very philosophical since almost being killed by her deranged assistant. “What’s that?”
“When you care about someone more than yourself it makes you stronger. More resilient.
No
t likely. Denise turned her head. “I think that ship has sailed.”
“I was talking about the kids. Who were you thinking of?”
She stared back at the ceiling. “No one in particular.”
“Then what ship were you talking about?” Nope. She wasn’t going to let it go. “The S.S. Christopher Nolton, by chance?”
That deserved a glare. “You just kissed Jase. Who else was I supposed to think you meant?”
The stupid woman grinned at her, having no idea how close she was to having her head shaved while she slept.
“Your death glare doesn’t work on me.” Her smile faded and her eyes lost their teasing light. “Kimber and Kaden. You love them. You will do anything to protect them and keep them safe.”
A heavy weight settled in her chest. “What if what I need to protect them from is me?”
“You’d never hurt them.” Her voice was strong, sure. Bree’s belief swept over her. “If I thought that for even a second, I’d be the first one to support your parents taking them.” Absolute trust.
“Not physically. But emotionally? What do I do if—”
“You call me. You call your parents. You call Gran.” Bree stood and jammed her hands on her hips. “Why the hell are you acting like you’re going to be doing this by yourself.”
She came up on her elbows. “Because I’m worried I’m going to screw them up and they’re going to hate me.”
“Tell you what. How about if I promise to tell you when you’re being a raging, selfish cow? Like now.”
That brought her back up to sitting. “How the hell am I being selfish? I’m trying to do what’s best for K-Squared.”
“Have you asked them what they want?” Her voice rose and she pointed toward the rest of the house. “How do you think they’re going to feel when they lose their mom and then their aunt because you pawn them off on your parents?”
Fuck. She flopped back on the bed. She was being selfish. “I hate you. You know that, right?” There was no heat in her words.
“You love me.” The bed moved as Bree sat back next to her. “You hate when I’m right.”
“Whatever.” She blew out a breath. “There’s more.”
“Afraid they’re going to find your vibrator collection?”
Locked-Down Heart (Combat Hearts Book 3) Page 2
