More of You: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel

by Jackson, A. L.

  “You know this isn’t about you helping me.”

  “That’s exactly what this is about, Faith. I’m here to help you.”

  I’m here to protect you. Take care of you until I get you out of this mess. God knows, if I wasn’t such a selfish bastard, I might have been able to stop it from happening in the first place.

  Moving back toward the steps, I dumped the huge box that held the saw and table onto the ground before wiping more sweat away.

  I could feel her. The emotion that came from her, like it was pinned to the air, caught up in the stagnant heat waves with nowhere to go.

  “I don’t want your pity,” she finally whispered. There was no missing the grief coming through on the words or the way they cracked with the sob she was trying to hold back.

  Funny, considering it was me who’d never wanted this girl to pity me.

  She was the one who’d made me strive to be better.

  Change my situation.

  Made me see I didn’t have to be another victim of circumstance.

  I dropped my gaze to the ground, hands on my hips, my chest heaving.

  Knowing I wasn’t equipped to handle this.

  What I felt and what she was going through.

  The impact of her grief and my regret colliding might send the rest of the house crashing to the ground.

  I had to suck it up and lock that shit down. Remember why I was there.

  Standing at the base of the steps, I looked up at her. Her little girl had pried her head free of her mother’s chin, her eyes wary and curious as she peered out at me.

  A tremor rolled through my chest.

  I tore my attention from the little girl and turned it on Faith, which wasn’t exactly helping matters, either.

  My eyes narrowed in emphasis, praying she’d get it. “Pity you? I don’t pity you, Faith. Does it kill me that you’re going through this? Am I worried about you? Do I want to go on a mission to track down whoever is threatening you? Do I wish I could fix it? Yes. But there’s a big difference between the two.”

  Those chocolate eyes swam with moisture, and she hiked her little girl up who was sliding down her body, running her hand over the back of her head.

  I wasn’t entirely sure which of them she was comforting, the two of them clinging to the other, each the other’s support.

  “You can’t say those things to me.”

  I stepped onto the bottom step, hand clenching the railing to keep myself from getting any closer. From rushing the rest of the way onto the porch and pulling her against me.

  Was surprised the rickety wood didn’t bust in two from the force.

  Because my muscles flexed and contracted and tightened.

  Body roaring. Demanding I make a claim.

  Mine.

  She’d always been mine.

  “I’m only speaking the truth.”

  The little girl popped her thumb from her mouth, grinning up at her mom. “The truth is good, Mommy. Always, always tell the truth.”

  Her tiny voice nearly bowled me over, the little thing dropping all her L’s. It sent her voice into this sweet, innocent drawl.

  Guilt blazed a path through my insides. Hurt lining the middle of it. My head trying to shut the little girl out, ignore her, hate her like the bastard I was while my spirit threatened something I couldn’t allow it to feel.

  “We’re barely making it, Jace. Barely surviving. I can’t have you here making things harder on us.” Somehow there was an apology in her voice, as if she were the one who should feel ashamed.

  “And the only thing I’m here for is to lighten some of that load.”

  Stupidly, I took another step up, getting closer to her and that little girl who sent a tumble of fear sliding beneath the surface of my skin. “Please, Faith. Let me help you. Let me be here until Mack figures out who is doing this.”

  She blinked, turning her head away. It was almost like she couldn’t keep looking at me and hold her ground. “It feels too complicated. Everything’s twisted and mixed in a way it never should have been.”

  Knives.

  I felt them slicing right through the center of my chest.

  She’d always been so honest. So damned, brutally honest.

  Wearing that beautiful heart on her sleeve.

  And I’d been the asshole who’d reached out and plucked it free.

  Smashed it in the palm of my hand.

  I’d known it then.

  I knew it still.

  “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but coming here, helping you . . . helping her?” I gestured with my chin toward her child. “It’s not one of them.”

  What was I doing? Saying?

  But I couldn’t stop it. The worry that bound up inside me.

  “Jace.” Faith blinked a bunch of times, bouncing the little girl like she was an infant, like she was trying with all her might to keep her emotions at bay. But tears streaked from her eyes and raced down her cheeks.

  Fuck.

  I was a fool.

  Because I reached out and caught one. Remembering the way it’d felt when I’d had that same soft skin of her cheek pressed to my bare chest, the girl running her fingers over my abdomen as she’d dreamed her dreams, her voice a whisper in the darkness.

  “Let me help you,” I murmured, my thumb lingering on her skin for a beat too long. “Please.”

  Helping her with the house was an easy excuse to get close to her. A way to be around to look out for her.

  But there was something about the thought of fixing this place up that felt like I was making amends. Atoning for a sin.

  She flinched under the touch, backing away a step to put some space between us.

  She looked away again.

  But I could feel it.

  Her wavering. Giving.

  She’d returned to bouncing and squeezing the chubby thing in her arms when she swung those eyes back to me. “All this hurts, Jace.”

  “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  She’d been hurt enough.

  “You have your own life. Your career. You don’t need to be wasting time here.”

  I have nothing.

  I didn’t say it. I just sent her a grin. The one that had always gotten me what I’d wanted from her.

  So maybe I’d resorted to playing dirty.

  “It’s my company, Faith. I get to say when I come and when I go. When I work and when I don’t.”

  And I was staying. No one was going to get close to her. Hurt her. I’d die before that happened, just as gladly as I’d put the asshole in the ground.

  “Jace . . . this is insane.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s logical.”

  She frowned at me, some of the strain draining from her tone, and for the first time, lightness made its way in. “Logical?”

  “Yup.”

  She arched a brow, almost playful in her reasoning. “Like showing up here at the break of dawn with a bunch of construction supplies strapped to the roof of a brand-new Porsche? That kind of logical?”

  I roughed a hand over the top of my head, chuckling under my breath. “Uh . . . yeah . . . just like that.”

  “Sounds reckless to me.” All the playfulness had vanished.

  “I’ll try to be careful.”

  Those words climbed to the space between us as if they were alive. A promise and a threat.

  I hesitated and then I dealt the lowest blow I could go. “You’ve always dreamed of getting this house into working order so you could turn it into a business. I can do that for you. And if you don’t want me to do it for you, at least let me do it for her. This place isn’t safe in the state it is in right now.”

  It wasn’t safe all around.

  Not the place or the people or the threats that remained.

  I pushed my foot against the loose board beneath me to prove my point. “I’m willing to bet the entire place is falling down around you. And you know it would be good to have an extra set of eyes around here.”

&nb
sp; No doubt, I wouldn’t be her first choice for the job. That didn’t mean I wasn’t the one who was meant for it.

  Her little girl grinned like my helping repair the house was the best idea she’d ever heard. “Every’fing’s broke, Mommy.”

  Faith looked at me like I’d punched her in the gut, her attention sweeping to the child who was blinking up at her like she was trying to talk her into the same thing.

  Faith pushed out a frustrated sigh, her voice going hard. “Fine. You can fix this porch. That’s it. Then you need to be on your way.”

  Six

  Faith

  He’d try to be careful?

  Good Lord, what had I gotten myself into? I pressed both palms to my face, scrubbing hard before I dragged my fingers back through my hair as I peered out the big window to the porch he was working on.

  The man was bent over the portable table saw, dragging a pencil down a plank as if he’d spent the last ten years putting things back together rather than sending them crashing to the ground in a heap of rubble.

  That was the way he’d left me.

  Rubble.

  It was Joseph who’d picked up those shattered pieces. Dusted me off.

  Held me up when I didn’t know how to stand. Maybe at the beginning it’d felt wrong to fall for Jace’s cousin, and God knew, it wasn’t something that happened overnight.

  I wasn’t struck by the brush of his hand.

  Jace had been a thunderbolt.

  Joseph had been my comfort after the storm. A friend who’d been there for me until he’d grown into something more.

  My gaze moved to the living room floor where Bailey was on the rug, attempting to stack a big blue block on a small red one and rambling to herself as if she could verbally coax it into balancing.

  My ribs squeezed against the swell of love that engulfed me.

  So powerful.

  The child was the center of my heart. Given to me right smack dab in the middle of two tragedies.

  A reminder that there was a bigger purpose to my life.

  More than the two brittle, battered pieces of my heart that had been shredded and scattered between two men.

  I thanked God that she could sit there as if it were any other day. As if three months ago, we hadn’t lost Joseph. As if two nights ago, someone hadn’t been in our house, filling me with a fear unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

  My cell rumbled on the end table next to the couch.

  I nearly jumped through the roof.

  “Phone, Mommy!” Bailey shouted so loud I would have heard her even if I had been upstairs.

  “Thanks, Button,” I rushed, scrambling that direction, thankful for the distraction. My hands were shaking when I picked it up, not exactly sure what I was going to say when I saw the name on the caller ID.

  My voice was a frail fumble as I pressed my phone to my ear. “Hey, Courtney.”

  “Hey, I hadn’t heard from you this morning, and I wanted to check on you. Are you okay?”

  How was I supposed to answer that?

  Because I wasn’t okay.

  I didn’t know if I was ever going to be.

  “I’m doing the best that I can,” I answered.

  Her worry was palpable, floating through the line in the slow breath she inhaled. Finally, she said, “I don’t like this . . . you bein’ there alone.”

  With the heel of my hand pressed to my eye, I almost laughed, though there wasn’t a single thing funny about it.

  The last thing I’d ever wanted was to be alone here, either.

  Now . . . now I wasn’t. I was surrounded by the presence of the man I’d never wanted to see again, and somehow couldn’t help but find comfort in his return.

  Oh, were those the most dangerous sort of thoughts I could ever entertain.

  Banging struck up from outside, the walls shaking with the telltale sounds of a man at work.

  It made something inside me tumble, old instincts right there, threatening to surface.

  Courtney mistook my quietness for something else entirely. “I bet you didn’t sleep a wink last night, did you?”

  Courtney instantly shifted into her take-charge demeanor. “That’s it. I’m gonna pack a bag and come stay with you two until Mack makes an arrest. It probably isn’t helping that Jace showed up in town. It’s a miracle you haven’t lost your mind. You need someone there with you.”

  Oh, I had half lost my mind, all right.

  My stomach in knots, and my heart doing these stuttered, scattered jumps.

  Finally, I pulled myself from the stupor. “You aren’t goin’ to do anything of the sort. You have Felix. There is no way I’m going to ask you to leave behind your new boyfriend to come stay with me. That’s not right, and you know it.”

  “It’s not like we’re livin’ together.”

  My brow lifted. “You might as well be.”

  “I do have to admit that I don’t mind the man spending the night. He’s ridiculous in bed. It shouldn’t even be legal, the things he does to me. He does this thing with his tongue—”

  “La, la, la, la, la.”

  I might as well have shoved my fingers in my ears like I used to do when we were thirteen. The woman had no filter, and if she’d been given one, she’d have long since ripped it off. No topic was ever off-limits with her.

  “What? Don’t tell me you don’t want all the details.”

  “I don’t want all the details,” I deadpanned.

  The girl had been giving me all the information I could do without for all my life. She was lucky I wasn’t scarred from some of the stories she’d told.

  “Hey, I’m just tryin’ to give you the good stuff since you’ve been dealing with so much bad.”

  “I think I can do without your good.”

  More banging echoed from outside, and there was nothing I could do to stop myself from inching back to the window, pressing my palm to my forehead, and wondering if I had some sort of a fever.

  The saw suddenly made a high-pitched squeal as it came to life, the blade spinning, screaming as the teeth tore through a piece of wood.

  Like some kind of sick, twisted voyeur, I peered out, watching him. Head dipped down, Jace guided the piece of wood through, his attention rapt on the job he was doing.

  Meticulous.

  Careful.

  “What’s that sound?” Courtney asked, so quickly I could almost see the lines twisting on her brow.

  Crap.

  This was so not goin’ to go over well. Hell, it wasn’t going over well with me.

  The saw trailed off before it struck right back up again.

  I still wasn’t saying anything, just staring out the window like a fool.

  “Faith, are you there?”

  “Yes,” I finally managed.

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Jace is here.” It tumbled out like a confession.

  She sucked in a breath. Anger and mortification. “Tell me you still have that shotgun.”

  “Courtney.” I couldn’t help but chastise her.

  “What did your daddy tell you that thing was for? Intruders. And that man is an intruder.”

  “He’s not any danger.”

  “Really?” she challenged.

  “Not in the way you mean.”

  “No, Faith, he’s a danger in exactly the way I mean.”

  My head dropped. “I know.” I breathed the words through the strain.

  “What the hell is he doin’ there?” she hissed.

  “Fixin’ my porch,” I hissed right back.

  “Holy Mary,” she wheezed. “It’s worse than I thought.”

  I groaned. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Um . . . hello . . . that is a no-brainer, Faith. Kick him to the curb.”

  “He said he’s just here to help.”

  The problem was, I needed it.

  God, I needed the help.

  By some miracle, Joseph had gotten the money together to buy this place when it’d gone into
foreclosure four years ago. We’d had every intention of fixing it up, investing in it until it provided a return.

  Owning this house was something I’d dreamed of for all of forever, since the day my mama and I had gone for a walk when I was seven and I fell in love with the place.

  With the mystery.

  The beauty and the history.

  The only thing I’d ever wanted was to make this place a destination, nothing but welcoming rooms and smiling faces and meals I’d prepared shared in the expansive formal dining room.

  In reality, it was nothing but a burden. Dangerous, just as Jace had said.

  But more than that? Jace had been right with the quiet implication he’d uttered, when he’d tilted his head in emphasis and said I could use an extra set of eyes around here.

  Being out here alone had left me vulnerable.

  “Help?” Her tone was sharp.

  “That was what he said.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’d gladly help get you right out of your panties.”

  I gasped, whirling around, covering up my phone like it might shield Bailey from what Courtney had said, because I was pretty sure she’d issued it on a loudspeaker.

  Bailey was on her knees, babbling out a made-up song.

  I jerked back around, my voice a barely there whisper, shoulders curling down as I hunkered over the phone. “What is wrong with you?”

  “You know me well enough to know I’m not gonna tiptoe, Faith Avery. I’m gonna call it as I see it, and I saw the way he was looking at you yesterday. That man’s a wolf who is bound to eat you up.”

  Hurt balled up in my belly, so big I could feel it pushing at my heart. “No, Courtney. He’s not. The only way he could hurt me again is if I let him. Besides, I’m married.”

  She sighed a painfully elongated sigh, as if she wanted to be there to hug me when she let go of the reminder. “No, honey, you’re not.”

  Sorrow.

  It swelled like a flood.

  Deep. Dark. Suffocating.

  I dropped my face into my free hand, trying to keep it together.

  I wasn’t a weak woman. I’d never been. So why did it seem like every time I turned around, I was falling apart?

  I choked back a cry before it broke just a little.

  “Hey,” she whispered, “I’m not tryin’ to be hard on you. You’re free to make any decisions you want. If you want Jace to help out, and he means it? Then fine. I just want you to be careful. You and Jace have a whole lot of history, and a whole lot of it isn’t the good kind. But you have to know, the only thing I really want is for you to be happy. You deserve it more than anyone I know.”