by Alison Kent
“You’re still here?” he asked as she slipped through the curtain partitioning his room from the others.
Her face was pale and drawn, with purple half-moons shadowing her eyes. They were the same color as the bruise he’d left on her throat, the one she’d tried to hide with her hair. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
He lifted his arm. “It’s just a hand.”
“Three broken bones, forty-two stitches. That’s just what it is.”
Yeah. That was going to hurt. “So much for safety glass, huh.”
She came to him, touched his knee, his face, then laced her hands in front of her. “Good lord, Casper. What were you thinking?”
That I couldn’t let you walk out of my life. But he was stopped from saying anything by the curtain fluttering again.
“Here you go, Ms. Mitchell,” said the woman wearing aqua Coleman Medical scrubs and thick white shoes. “Your copies of the paperwork.”
“Thank you.” Faith took the packet, holding it at her waist as the nurse turned to Casper, her cloud of red hair bobbing.
“Dr. Pope will be in with your prescriptions and follow-up orders in a few minutes,” she said, checking the tape on his bandage, the buckle on his sling.
“Thanks.” Casper waited on saying more until they were once again alone. He nodded toward the envelope. “What’s that?”
Faith clutched it tightly, her fingers crushing the bulk of it. “Paperwork. Like she said.”
“What kind of paperwork?” he asked as if he already didn’t know.
“I was settling the bill.”
Yeah, that’s what he’d thought. “You paid my bill.”
“You don’t have insurance.”
“And I don’t have cash.”
She met his gaze squarely, exhaustion grooved deep at the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t want them to wrap you up and send you off to the county hospital. I wanted to make sure they took care of you here.”
“They did,” he said, and before she could get out another word or he lost his nerve, he added, “And now it’s your turn.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked, her brow a vee of knitted disbelief.
He thought back to the day in the bank when she’d accused him of being crass. “Nope,” he said, letting her stew a few more seconds. Then he said, “Tell me about the money.”
At that, she tightened, going stiff and stuck-up. “That’s my business—”
“Fuck that, Faith. My business is your business is my business.”
But she was shaking her head. “Our partnership only covers the house—”
“I’m not talking about the fucking house.” Biting off a sharp, “Shit,” he rubbed away the anger pounding like a horseshoe hammer in his temple. “You’re going to be honest with me now. After what you did to me in that room earlier tonight, you owe me.”
She spun on him, and he swore he could see the words, “I don’t owe you anything,” stuck on her tongue, and he knew she was right. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to press. He wanted to know. He needed to know. Wherever the money had come from, that place had its clutches in her and she needed to pry them loose.
They couldn’t go anywhere if she didn’t pry them loose.
She collapsed then, leaned against the supply table beside his bed, gave a weak gesture to encompass so many things. “I shouldn’t have offered you the money in the first place.”
“Where’d it come from, Faith?”
She walked away, rubbing at her forehead, her heels once again clicking time. “I never wanted it. I did a stupid thing and people got hurt.”
“Did you get hurt?” he asked because they were finally getting somewhere.
“Not nearly enough. Not nearly enough.”
He’d come back to that later. “When did you do this stupid thing?”
“In college.”
“And who’d you do it with?” Because he could never see Faith being stupid alone. She was too in the moment, too on the ball. Too completely aware of every single move she made.
“The son of the dean at the school of business.”
Yeah, that could be stupid, but there had to be something more than a sex scandal, what with the kind of money that came her way in the end. “You did more than fuck him.”
Her gaze sliced into him, her eyes narrowed, her frown wrinkled and harsh. “Yes, we had a sexual relationship. We also dated for two years.”
Fine. It wasn’t just sex. “This dean’s son have a name?”
“What does it matter?”
It didn’t, but he wanted to know. “What was his name?”
“Jeremy,” was all she gave him. Then she added, “Jon.”
Okay. Unexpected, but okay. “And what bad thing did you and Jeremy…and Jon do?”
“Jon was Jeremy’s father,” she said, her voice level, her gaze level, too. Both calm now. Both cool.
“The dean,” he said, feeling tension like a vise in his jaw.
She nodded, her arms crossed, the envelope still in her hand. “He’d been widowed young. Raised Jeremy on his own. They were…well-to-do. Old money. And Jon…He was very attractive.”
“You did the father, too,” he said, and he thought his jaw might pop.
Another nod, more clicking of her heels as she paced. “I was dumb. I was nineteen.”
“He was what? Forty-something?”
“Jeremy was twenty when he was killed. Jon was forty-five.”
“Wait,” he said, shaking off the drugs and sitting taller as if it would help catch her words. “Jeremy was killed? You’re losing me here, Faith.”
“Jeremy was…wild. Reckless. His mother died when he was a boy. Jon had been a single parent. One whose own parents had solved any problems he had with money. The best private schools. The best tutors. The best lawyers when he’d gone off the deep end of privilege. The best psychiatrists.”
“This is the father you’re talking about. And he told you all this.”
“Yes, Jon. And he used his family money to treat Jeremy the same way. He’d turned out okay…”
“And he thought the kid would, too. As long as he kept on spending.”
“Something like that.” She stopped pacing, stood beside him at the foot of the bed. “Jeremy had the car, the clothes, the whole look. He could get tickets to anything. Backstage passes. He flew first class. His family had, or I suppose still has, homes on both coasts. West Palm Beach. Cape Cod. Malibu. Bainbridge Island.”
“You hit the jackpot.”
She stiffened. “I was in love with him. Or as in love as someone can be at nineteen. I didn’t need him to take me anywhere. Or to buy me anything.”
But he did because that’s all he’d been taught to do, Casper surmised. “So what happened?”
“Jeremy left me alone at his house one night. He had something to do,” she said with a wave of her hand. “He did that a lot, left me because he had something to do. Jon came home. Found me staring out the window in the library, watching for Jeremy’s car. He came up behind me. We talked. We were both worried about Jeremy, the direction he was heading. Jon put his hands on my shoulders. I leaned back against him. Then he…”
“He what?” Casper asked, not really wanting to know.
“He kissed my neck. He…touched me.”
“And you let him.”
She took a deep breath, was slow to blow it out, as if weighing her admission. “I was lonely. We were both lonely. And Jon…He wasn’t a boy.”
Meaning he knew how to fuck. How to show her the kind of good time his son couldn’t. Or wouldn’t because he was too selfish. “How long?”
“What?”
“How long were you with the old man?”
“I don’t know. Several months.”
“Until Jeremy-boy caught you.”
“It was ugly. He was…ugly. Furious, and I know he was hurt, but the things he said…” Her shudder shook the bed, and Casper had to force himself not to reach for her. “He’d neve
r loved me. That was obvious. He’d been on the rebound. I caught him. I still don’t know how, or why. There were dozens of girls he could’ve picked from.”
“But he wanted you.”
“And I wanted him. Don’t get me wrong. I tried for a long time to make things work.” She pushed off the bed, turned to face him, her focus on his bandaged hand. “The afternoon he walked in on me and Jon…” She shook her head, her chin trembling, tears welling. “He ran out screaming, got in his car, and took off before Jon could do more than get his pants on. Jeremy didn’t even make it off the street. A big furniture delivery truck had just pulled into the intersection. Jeremy slammed into it. His car was a convertible. And he wasn’t wearing his seat belt. The police said he hit the side of the truck first, then the pavement. Jon saw it all.”
Jesus H. Christ. “Did you?”
“No. I’d started to run out, too, but with Jon half-dressed and sprinting after his son, I knew anyone who saw me would put two and two together.”
“And that two and two could’ve put an end to Daddy’s career.”
“Honestly, I’m not sure he was as worried about his career as he was his place in the family. The prestige of the name.” She looked down, picked at a rough nub of denim on his thigh. “The family had me sign an agreement. And paid me not to talk about the affair.”
“Hush money?”
“That’s not what they called it, but that’s what it felt like. I didn’t want it. I wouldn’t have talked. Who would I have talked to? To what purpose?”
“So what did you sign?”
“The agreement had me giving up all rights to sue over anything arising from the affair.” She closed her eyes, opened them, turned away. “I wouldn’t have sued. It was humiliating. The whole process. Jon sat across the table in the lawyer’s office, so put together, like he belonged in one of those old-money clubs from a British novel. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye.”
She took a shaky breath, blew it out, and reached for the curtain to catch herself. “I wanted out of there. To never see him again. Most of that was guilt over what we’d done, what had happened to Jeremy because of it. But a huge part of it was shame over the hurt I caused my family.”
He watched the play of emotions ravage her face. He thought about Boone and Coach and Mrs. Mitchell having to face what their sister, their daughter had done. And yet…They loved her. He couldn’t see them ever doing anything else, no matter what she’d been mixed up in.
“They sent me off to school, and that was what they got for it. The Mitchells’ perfect daughter, sleeping with a father and his son, getting one killed, taking a million dollars from the other. Yeah. Something to really be proud of.”
He wasn’t going to beat her up over something she’d spent ten years pummeling herself for. “How did you get hooked up with Jeremy in the first place?”
“I don’t know. I was bored. He was exciting.”
He found himself grinding his jaw again. “Exciting.”
“Yes, exciting. I was nineteen. You were gone by then. Boone was gone by then. Things weren’t the same. I wasn’t the same.”
“No more cheerleading?”
She tossed back her head and laughed, the sound coarse and bitter. “Are you kidding? I was captain of the squad, but it was less about team spirit than it was about the leadership skills looking good on my college applications.”
Huh. “Colleges like cheerleaders?”
“They like leaders period. Student council presidents. Members of the debate team.”
“And you were those, too.” He’d been gone by then and hadn’t known.
She nodded, as if struck by an absurd truth. “I was a straight-A student with a 4.2 GPA. I was class valedictorian. I scored 1540 on my SATs. All of that got me the scholarships I needed for school, and I don’t regret a minute of the work, but it didn’t leave time for fun.”
“And you wanted to have fun.”
“It seemed like the thing to do.”
“Fucking a dude and his dad seemed like the thing to do?”
“Not that. The rest. Stepping outside of my comfort zone. Living a little. Going wild,” she said with an exaggerated wave of her hands. “Whatever you want to call it.”
“I’d call it being reckless.”
“I guess.”
“Like me.”
She shrugged.
“So that’s why you’re with me now?”
“No,” she said, and he saw in her eyes that she meant it. “Not now.”
“But at first.”
“Maybe that was some of it.”
“And the rest?”
“I think you know.”
“I make you wet,” he said because he was feeling mean. And hurt. And mean.
“If that’s what you think…” She turned, picked up her purse, and stuffed the envelope with his bill inside. He leaned forward as she reached for the curtain and snagged her back.
She didn’t try to pull free, but stopped.
“That’s not what I think,” he told her, letting her go once he was certain she wasn’t going to scamper off like a calf from a chute. “I’m sorry. About all of it.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
“I have everything to apologize for.” He looked down at his hand, the bandage like a big white flag of surrender. “I know the state of the ranch finances. I should never have come to the bank and asked you for money.”
She met his gaze, hers resigned, the smile pulling at the edges of her mouth a sad one. “I thought it started in the kitchen. When you caught me with the strawberries.”
He groaned, his still-healing ribs aching as he did. “Yeah, but if I hadn’t come to the bank, I wouldn’t have spent that whole day thinking about you giving me a sign.”
“Did you?”
“Oh, yeah. I thought about all the ways it might happen. But in a million years I never would’ve thought I’d find you bent over in front of the fridge. Your tits dangling. Your ass all up in the air. I could’ve popped a load just looking at you.”
Of all things, her face colored. “It wasn’t really a sign, you know. I was just eating out of frustration.”
“Frustration?”
“Because you weren’t there. You said you would be. That we’d talk more that night.”
So she had wanted him. From the very beginning. He hadn’t tempted her into something she hadn’t thought about, too. “I tried, but then there was Clay…”
“Do you regret it? Being with me?”
His head came up sharply. “No. Never. Don’t even say that. You’ve been the best time of my life.”
“Been?” she asked, holding his gaze, hers steady while his wobbled because he didn’t know what she was asking him. What she wanted to hear him say.
“Not been,” he finally said, wanting to add are, but that was all he had time to get out before bootheels sounded on the tiled floor seconds before Dr. Pope pulled open the curtain.
“Faith. Casper.” The doc looked from one to the other before consulting his clipboard. He made no comment on what he’d heard, or even an indication that he’d heard any of the conversation Casper wanted to push him out of the room to finish. “You ready to get out of here?”
“I was ready when you whipped that last stitch,” Casper said, and when he glanced over at Faith with a weak smile, she was gone, the curtain swinging in her wake.
THIRTY-SEVEN
ONCE OUTSIDE THE ER, the night air like a furnace blast after the frigid hospital temps, Faith took the first full breath she’d managed for hours. It was a shaky breath, unsatisfying, filling her lungs in short, tire-pump bursts, and it came back out just as ragged, tearing holes in the inner tube of her chest. The tears she’d been holding back burned as they filled her eyes.
She looked up, blinking rapidly, the sky a platter of indigo lit by the moon and salted with planets and stars. She wanted to blame her urge to cry on exhaustion, and emotional stress, and a successful party pu
t to rest after weeks of fine-tuning the details. And all of those things were there, but they only added pressure to the root ball of the growing, living sadness inside of her.
That’s where these particular tears sprang from. They felt like mourning, like sorrow. Like the end of something beautiful that hadn’t had the time it needed to bloom. Like if she took one wrong step, she would fall and break into too many Humpty Dumpty pieces. She wasn’t a fragile egg. She was strong. Look what she’d pulled off in a matter of weeks, the house, the party, the affair…
“Time to cowgirl up,” she told herself, swiping at her cheeks and catching sight of Boone leaning against the front of Casper’s truck where she’d parked it. He pushed off the grill and straightened, pulled his fists from his pockets, and held up his hands. And that’s when she fell, cracked and fragile, Boone catching her before she collapsed to the ground.
She sobbed against his chest, her body wracked, her knees buckling, Boone her only strength because she had none left. She cried for Casper and his childhood and for his house and for herself. She cried for her parents and for the mistakes she’d made and for all the wrong things she’d done. She cried for Clay and for Kevin, for Jeremy and Jon.
And even when she was all cried out, she knew loving Casper was right. He was her everything, strong in ways she wasn’t, selfless behind a mask of crass behavior, a lover who knew what he wanted and took it, all while seeing to her needs. He made her laugh and made her think and made her care.
He had her seeing things through his eyes, and for all he’d gone through in his life, his insight reflected great depth and clarity. He was an amazing, amazing man. How could she not love him? How could she not want to be at his side for the rest of her life?
How was she going to get him to see they were meant to be together—the no-sisters rule be damned, she thought with a sniffling laugh.
