She grinned wider. “Oh-kay.”
Like that explanation totally satisfied her. Her mind innocent enough that she didn’t have to consider the fact that I wasn’t going to be there that long.
That her mother hated me. That she was going to hate me more when she found out what I’d done.
“You wike unicorns?” she suddenly asked. “I’s want a story about unicorns. The magic kind. Good magic, not bad,” she said, all too seriously. “Bad’s bad.”
I almost laughed.
Of course, she did. The proof of it was painted all over the front of her shirt.
Shit.
What did I think I was doing? Coming here like this?
I hadn’t exactly thought this through, had I?
Definitely hadn’t even begun to ponder what it might be like being here and having all of this rubbed in my nose like a fucking tease.
My life back in Atlanta had been nothing but long, grueling days taking over companies, building some back up and selling others, building and destroying and building, over and over, going after every fucking dollar I could make.
When that left me empty, my nights were wasted on expensive bottles of scotch and any nameless, willing bodies I could find, fucking myself into oblivion.
Like it might hold the power to erase what I’d left behind.
The proof of it was huddled right there, grinning up at me like I might be a good guy. Someone she could trust.
Not the pathetic piece of shit who was responsible for getting her and her mother into this situation.
Not that Joseph hadn’t done a bang-up job of getting them there, himself.
“All right then, no bad magic. Just good magic. Do you have a book like that?”
Warily, I glanced around, catching Faith who was standing at the doorway like this was causing her as much grief as it was causing me.
I ripped my attention from her and turned it back on the little girl. She was frowning at me. “No, silly.”
There she went what that adorable drawl, dropping the ‘l’s’, looking at me like I was crazy. “You tells the story in your head.”
Right.
Okay.
I gulped all the uncertainties down and made up the most ridiculous story I could conjure.
One about five magic unicorns who protected a little girl. A little girl who wandered and got lost.
About how scared the unicorns were that they couldn’t find her.
So what if I hid a message right in the middle of it.
She’d scared the hell out of both of us today.
I wanted to beg her never to do it again.
But it was what Mack had called and told me about this afternoon that left me vibrating with barely contained rage.
The need to hunt some fucker down barely controlled.
Someone had been in Faith’s car. Left another threat.
Right out in the fucking open.
The only thing I wanted to do was stop this. It made me feel worthless that I didn’t even know where to start.
The only thing I could do was be here.
A soft giggle filtered from Bailey, something like belief in her gaze where she had her head angled to the side, staring back as I let the story fall from my tongue.
“You a magic unicorn?” she asked me like she’d plucked that message right out of the story. “You gonna sway aww the bad dragons?”
A clusterfuck of emotions ripped at me from all sides.
“I’m going to try,” I told her.
I still wasn’t sure how to deal with them, but I knew I had to push through. Deal with this, with this feeling, until I knew they were safe.
I owed them that.
I owed them everything.
I could feel Faith behind us.
Watching us.
Could feel the torment radiating from her.
I wanted to stand. Go to her. Tell her everything was going to be okay.
That I was going to take care of them both.
“You better get to sleep now,” I told Bailey, agitation swelling.
She climbed down under the covers. “You be here in the morning?”
“Yeah, I’ll be here in the morning.”
“You make me breakfast?”
God, this kid.
Deeper and deeper.
“Sure.”
“Pop Tarties?” It was all eager, hopeful question, like she was wondering if I could even manage that, or maybe she was just like I’d been as a kid, stealing every sweet I could find.
I locked the direction of that thought down fast.
Mock offense had me dropping my mouth wide open. “What? You don’t think I can cook you a real breakfast?”
Her head shook, letting me know my cooking skills were definitely being called into question. “Grampa says toasters are made for men.”
The second she mentioned him, old hatred ripped through my veins.
Spite and animosity.
A bolt of a memory that cut through me like a bullet. A slap of words that had stung like a bitch.
“Stay away from her? You hear me?” His face had been contorted in disgust. “You aren’t worthy of her, and I won’t stand aside and let you get her dirty.”
I wasn’t that pathetic kid anymore. But it sure as hell wasn’t like I was any better.
Cringing, I shook the memory off, mentally scraping it from where it’d been etched like a scar into my skin. I wasn’t going there. I had a better use for the bitterness that remained.
Besides, could I have blamed Faith’s father? I hadn’t done anything but prove him right.
“Well, I don’t know that much about your grandpa, but this guy right here has had to take care of himself for a long, long time. I know my way around the kitchen.”
“You gonna take care of me?” she asked, all bright and shining anticipation.
I gulped around the impact of it. Like she just trusted me to. Without question.
“I’m going to try to,” I mumbled, knowing I was a damned fool. Such a damned fool. “God knows, I’m trying.”
I muttered the last.
“How abouts eggs and bacons?” she offered. “And owange juice?” Her face lit up in unfound glee.
Yeah. Like I was going to reject that.
I ruffled my fingers through her hair, trying to ignore the tug at my spirit. “Yeah, sweet one, you can have whatever you want.”
Her eyes went wide, but her voice tipped to a whisper. “And a cookie?”
Oh shit.
I’d walked right into that one.
“Maybe after you eat all your breakfast.”
“Deal,” she drawled in that sweet way.
God, this kid was going to do me in.
Tentative footsteps edged up from behind, and I forced myself to standing, my gaze tangling with Faith’s for a beat.
Tension and need and pain.
I tore my attention away and looked back at her daughter. “Goodnight, Bailey.”
“Nights,” she said, and I backed away, into the darkness.
Doing my best to run from the light.
Maybe Joseph was still playing the puppeteer, after all. Pulling these fucked-up strings and dangling what he’d had in my face.
All the while laughing his ass off from somewhere on the other side.
One last begrudging kick to the gut as he reminded me what was his.
What he’d taken from me.
Because watching Faith kneel at the side of her bed? Run her hands through that little girl’s hair? Whisper her love?
I’d never felt as if I had less than right then.
Destitute.
Penniless.
Impoverished in a way that hollowed me out.
Sixteen
Faith
I kissed my daughter’s forehead, fighting with all of me against the sorrow I’d felt at seeing Jace with her that way.
Fighting against the way she was lookin’ at him.
As if he might be the sun.<
br />
As if he might be there to fill a little of that void that echoed through these walls.
It was all so hard to ignore as she hugged that Beast doll tighter.
Her security blanket.
I tried with all my might to ignore it, to forget the night he’d given it to me and focus on the day when she’d found it buried under a pile of old clothes in the back of my closet.
I lifted the sheets, and she snuggled in. I ran my fingers through her soft, soft hair.
My mind was still spinning with the tale Jace had spun for her. As if he already knew her. The man telling her the type of sweet fantasy she loved so much.
One where everything was good and right and bad never prevailed.
I wanted it to be the truth.
So badly, I wanted it to be the truth.
But the reality was that we lived in an evil world.
One where hearts got broken and our dreams got smashed.
Ones where daddies sometimes didn’t come home after they’d promised they’d be right back.
I stayed there with her, needing the space, the time with her.
The distance from Jace.
I knew him being here was going to be hard. I’d just had no idea how much.
Bailey finally fell asleep while I just knelt there, and I leaned up, kissed her forehead, and then ran my nose along the softness of her cheek.
Heart pressing full.
So full.
So perfect.
“Good night, Bailey Button.”
God knew, she was the hook that kept everything together.
Slowly, I climbed to my feet, quiet as I moved across the floor.
A shiver of awareness skated over me the closer I got to the door.
I should have known.
Jace was standing on the other side of the hall, his back pressed to the wall as if he’d been listening all along.
I froze in the hazy shadows the old house had fallen into, his profile still strong in the suggestion of night.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said, though I could see him flinch, the jerk of his muscles in his arms. “About that room.”
Hurt fisted my heart at the thought of what he’d implied about the room that he’d thought should be his.
I shoved it down, said, “It’s okay.”
I got stuck there, staring out at him, wishing I didn’t find comfort in the fact he was there. Wishing it didn’t feel as if he was supposed to be. These walls forever echoing with his presence.
With the remnants of his ghost.
I’d ignored it for so long. Pretended I couldn’t hear his whispers trapped in the grain of the wood.
“She’s beautiful, Faith.”
Emotion swam.
Old love that tried to claw out of the rubble of demolished dreams.
“She’s the best thing I have ever been given.”
“You named her Bailey,” he murmured, hurt and regret wound with the pained taunt.
“I guess some dreams don’t die, after all, do they?” I whispered.
His lips twisted, and he cast his face toward the floor. “And sometimes those dreams are stolen from us.”
I had the urge to move across the hall, force him to look at me, and demand he tell me what he was really thinking, what he was really feeling. To demand to know how he could have walked away from me the way he had.
But I couldn’t regret our history. My direction ripped out from under me before I was set on another.
My daughter at its end.
I’d never, ever wish for that to turn out differently.
“I think I’m going to call it a night,” I forced myself to say before I did something stupid. “There’s a casserole in the refrigerator you can heat up if you’d like something to eat. Make yourself at home.”
It was only eight, but I wasn’t prepared for this. For the moments when he would actually be here and not just working.
Telling the man to make himself at home was a foolish statement in and of itself.
I knew I needed some space. Time to think and clear out the muddle of thoughts clouding my brain.
“Yeah,” he agreed, pushing off the wall and heading for his room.
He paused at the doorway and peered back out. “I’m going to hire a few guys to help me work on the house, Faith. I might be able to do it myself, but Bailey would probably be grown by then, and I’m thinking that’s not exactly what you had in mind.”
There was a sadness mixed in with the amusement he tried to inject into his tone, and there was a really stupid part of me that wanted to tell him that was fine, he could stay for as long as it took.
There I was again, playing the fool.
“I’ll never be able to fully repay you, Jace, for doin’ this for me. For doin’ it for Bailey. For being here for us.”
There was no question some of this was about the money. After all, it was what made the world go round.
It might not buy happiness, but it sure was the solution to some dire situations.
But it was more than that. He’d returned, put a hold on his own life to come here and make sure ours was safe.
Whatever the reason, I couldn’t find anger in that anymore.
He offered a short nod. “The only repayment I need is that one day I might see a real smile on your face.”
He rapped his knuckles on the doorframe after he said it, not giving me a chance to respond before he disappeared inside the room, quick to snap the door shut behind him.
Leaving me staring there at the vacant space.
Space that had never felt so alive.
Seventeen
Faith
Sixteen Years Old
“Can I get this, too?” Faith asked, grabbing a Snickers bar from the display.
Her mama glanced up from where she was scrolling through her shopping list for the hundredth time and double-checking to make sure she’d gotten everything.
Faith swore that it didn’t matter how many times she checked, every time they got home, they’d forgotten something, and her mama would have to turn right around and send her back to the store.
“Just as long as you don’t ruin your dinner,” her mama said.
Faith all but rolled her eyes. “I’m almost seventeen, Mama, not four. I don’t think you have to tell me not to ruin my dinner.”
The belt moved forward, and Faith grabbed a divider, tossing the candy bar onto it, and she began to load the contents of their cart onto the belt.
“Just because you’re almost grown doesn’t mean you’re not my baby,” her mama shot back. “It’s my job to warn you of all the dangerous things in this world. The pitfalls of chocolate bars included.”
Faith fought the affected smile that pulled at her mouth. Her parents were the best.
Courtney would have loved to pretend her parents didn’t exist, but Faith hadn’t ever reached that stage where she felt as if her parents were dumb or embarrassing.
She guessed she should be embarrassed that she spent more time with them than anyone else.
“Well, I’ll be sure to save it for after then. Daddy is grillin’ my favorite, after all.” Faith waved the package of sirloin toward her mama before she set it onto the belt and continued to unload the rest of the groceries.
Veggies and rice and potatoes.
Eggs and bacon for the mornin’.
All the makings for a fresh-baked apple pie.
No wonder she stuck around.
“I swear you bribe me through food to make sure I’m home to study every night, don’t you?” Faith teased.
Her mama grinned. “Every mother has her ways,” she told her, leaning down to grab the gallon of milk she’d placed under the cart. “Yours happens to be through your stomach.”
“I thought that was Daddy?” Faith tossed out, laughing lightly.
“Like father, like daughter.”
“Oh lord, don’t tell me I’m gonna end up chained to a ratty old recliner watching sports every night.�
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Her mama chuckled. “God forbid.”
The customer in front of them paid and walked away, and her mama moved around Faith to push the cart the rest of the way through to the bagging station.
Faith distracted herself with the garbage magazines that lined the racks.
Apparently, Angelina and Jen were fighting it out for the covers the way they always did, another child star had turned into an addict, and there was some poor waitress getting slammed for having the audacity to date a celebrity.
She didn’t believe a word of it, but she reached out to grab one anyway, only for her hand to freeze midair when she heard the low voice from off to the side.
“Would you like your milk in a bag, ma’am?”
She swore, she could hear the creak in her neck as she slowly shifted her head that direction.
A sizzle of intrigue and a shot of that terror slipped through her insides as she looked that way to find Jace Jacobs bagging their groceries.
That terrifyingly beautiful boy with those copper eyes that uneasily flickered between her and her mama before they dropped down, only to dart up again for the flash of a second.
As if he didn’t know where to look.
And Faith? Faith just stared.
“Oh, no bag, thank you. We can manage just fine.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled.
Those intense eyes stole a quick, furtive glance at Faith before they dropped back down in discomfort.
He started to work a little more quickly, tossing all their stuff inside as if just touching it made him self-conscious or uneasy, the barest hint of that hostility coming out with the way he worked.
His arms straining.
Muscles flexing.
Faith suddenly realized all the little luxuries he was piling high in those bags. And she wondered if he was hungry. If he hated her for flaunting it, literally right under his nose.
But she was sure there was something more to it. Something different that shot between them, as if he were hooking her with something unseen with every glance that he stole.
Something that made her heart flutter and her skin go sticky with sweat. Right underneath the air conditioning vent that was pumping freezing cold air.
She could feel her mama’s gaze bouncing between the two of them, and something sly rode to her mouth when she fully set her attention on Faith for a beat.
More of You: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel Page 11
