Darker Than Desire

by Shiloh Walker

  Sybil put herself between them. “Say it,” she warned. “Say it and you’ll find yourself an ugly, messy smear on the ground.”

  Leslie was still gaping at her in shock as Sybil turned on her heel and strode back toward her office. Away from David. Away from Leslie.

  Sybil and David hadn’t talked since the night of Abraham’s funeral. Once, she’d tried to call David. He’d answered with a cool, Now’s not a good time.

  Fine. If he was pulling back, just let him. But she’d be damned if she listened to the bile Leslie had been about ready to spill from her noxious mouth.

  Just as she’d be damned if she stood around staring at him soulfully and hoping he’d look at her. Just once.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  For a moment, David almost went after her.

  Sanity intruded, reminding him of his decision to put distance between them.

  The sight of the woman lingering where Sybil had been reaffirmed that decision. Her eyes lingered on him, skittered away, then returned, something that was revulsion and curiosity and disgust dancing in her gaze before she finally made a quick retreat, moving in the opposite direction.

  He’d never expected to be able to hide what had happened if he had to come forward. He’d never planned to, not really. He was tired of living behind masks and secrets. The shame, a familiar, ugly burr under his skin, would never fade, but the logical part of him understood that the shame didn’t really belong to him. If a bitch like Leslie Mayer wanted to look at him like that, that was her problem. Although it pissed him off that she’d upset Sybil.

  All the more reason to stay away from her. All the more reason.

  It would make it easier for her, in the end.

  That nebulous end …

  Lately, he’d been thinking about it, like there really was an end for him. He’d focused on an end, thought about it. Lately, the idea of an end obsessed him. Probably because he was so tired.

  “Think about that later,” he muttered as he came around the corner, eyeing the sign above Benningfield and Son. He was still twenty feet away when the pint-sized blond tornado came speeding down the sidewalk. He stayed where he was, watching as Noah’s new wife appeared around the corner. They’d been married for two weeks now.

  David had been at the wedding, watching and waiting, half-expecting something else to go wrong, but nothing had.

  Now they were back from their quick trip to Florida. Disney World, if he’d heard right, because Noah, being Noah, had wanted his new stepson along for the trip. Typical Noah.

  David stood there, watching the boy and his mother as they came to a halt. Trinity noticed him almost immediately, her calm grey eyes studying him as he closed the distance between them. He went to tip his hat at her and remembered he hadn’t worn it. He looked like he was part of this world again. Not that he’d ever been part of that other world.

  “Hi,” she said as he reached the two of them.

  Micah looked up at David and David shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. Kids made him feel … awkward. Useless. This one watched him with avid eyes, and the longer David watched him, the wider the boy smiled. “You’re big,” the boy said, his voice firm, like he’d come to an important decision.

  “You’re not.” The response surprised him.

  “I will be.” Micah puffed up his chest. “One day, I’ll be as big as Noah—I mean, my dad. I get to call Noah my dad.”

  Something just this side of adulation shone in Micah’s eyes and David couldn’t help but smile at it. “That doesn’t sound like a bad thing. Noah’s a good guy.”

  “He’s the best.”

  “Micah, why don’t you put your stuff in the car?” Trinity said, cutting in.

  “But—”

  “No buts, Micah,” she said, her voice firm. “Now go.”

  As the boy dragged his feet across the busted sidewalk, Trinity turned to look at David.

  “Hi.” Her gaze was unreadable. He might as well be looking into a mirror for all the reaction he saw there. “Ah … I’m at a loss. Do I call you David or Caine?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll answer to either.” Running his tongue across his teeth, he deliberated a minute and then added, “Although I suspect it’s going to be easier in the long run to just go with ‘David.’ ‘Caine’ was just…”

  A mask.

  Those words didn’t want to come and he just shrugged.

  Trinity just nodded. “David, then. Noah had to leave. Something urgent…” She sighed and pushed her hair back. “I guess this is one of those things where I’m not supposed to discuss it. He won’t be back in town for a few hours. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “I need the keys to Max’s place.”

  “Max’s?”

  “Max said Noah had them.” David continued to stare at her, realized it was probably bothering her. People were used to him looking away, down, anywhere but at their face. He’d developed the habit of not really looking at people a long time ago, after Abraham had pointed out to him that he looked at people like they just weren’t even there. He tried to focus, made himself see Trinity. A pretty woman, married to a man he didn’t really hate. She still didn’t look entirely comfortable around him, but he didn’t see any reason why she should look comfortable.

  “Yes, he does.” She blew out a breath and looked away. “We were over there a few days ago, cleaning up. It’s awful, what happened.”

  David didn’t say anything. It was awful. Everybody knew it. No point in him adding his two cents’. Besides, the only thing he could offer was that if he found out who’d killed Miss Mary he would like to kill the son of a bitch himself.

  “Do you know where the keys are?”

  Trinity frowned. “Why?”

  “Because Max is going to let me stay there.” He bit back a sigh. This conversation thing was a pain in the ass. Even before he’d taken off, he hadn’t cared for talking to people. When you talked to people, they acted like they had a right to ask you things, know things about you. He hadn’t ever been able to tell people shit for fear of being punished, a lesson he’d learned early on. Now, even though that wasn’t an issue, he just didn’t see the point in … talking. “Can I have the keys?”

  “I think I need to check with Noah first.”

  David arched a brow. “Can you do that then?”

  Trinity crossed her arms over her chest, her nails, painted a vivid blue-green color, tapping against her arm. “Anybody ever tell you that you’re not exactly a people person, David?”

  That startled a smile out of him. “I really haven’t ever had a reason to be a people person.” Sighing, he looked away, staring past her shoulder to the narrow slice of river he could see through the gaps in the trees. “I’d just like to get those keys.”

  “Fine. Just give me a minute.”

  * * *

  Noah hadn’t quite made it through Hanover when the call came through.

  He pulled the phone from his ear, frowned a little, then said, “Run that by me again?”

  “David is here. Caine, David. Whoever he is. He said that Max told him he could have the keys to his house and stay there. Wanted you to give him the keys. Should I?”

  Next to Noah, Layla was chain-smoking, going through the pack of cigarettes she had so fast, it would be a miracle if she had any left by the time they reached Jeffersonville. “Well, yeah. It won’t hurt anything.”

  “I just—it seemed weird, to me.”

  “Weird to me, too, angel,” he said softly, checking the traffic before pulling through the stoplight. “But David wouldn’t lie about it.”

  Layla’s gaze slid to Noah, then jerked away again.

  “Okay.” On the other end of the line, Trinity paused, then asked, “How long you think this will take?”

  “I’m not sure.” He wished he could have passed this on to somebody else. Anybody else. He’d looked at Layla, though, and seen a look that was too familiar. She’d finally hit that point. That point he’d h
it when he’d woken up in a hospital bed, convinced he’d killed somebody, and he’d been desperate, ready to do anything and everything to crawl out of the hole he’d put himself in. His dad had helped him find the rope he needed. He couldn’t turn away from somebody else looking for a rope. Even if the woman was Layla.

  “You think she’s actually going to see this through?”

  “Nobody can decide that.” Before she could ask anything else he said, “The keys are in the desk in my office at home.”

  Trinity snorted. “I know that. I am the one who organized that disaster you call an office. I’ll get them. You’re sure I shouldn’t check with Max about this? I can have one of the nurses ask him.”

  “It’s not necessary. It will be okay.” His skin felt tight, oddly itchy at the thought of David settling into that house where Max had been shot, where Miss Mary had died. But he’d think on that later. “I’ll call you once I know when I’ll be headed home, okay?”

  “Okay. We love you.”

  We … the thought of it sent a rush of warmth through him and he smiled. “Love you guys, too. Give Rocketboy a hug for me.”

  The line went dead and he dropped the phone into the cup holder, focused back on the road.

  The past twenty minutes had passed in an odd, strained silence. If the rest of the drive could be like that—

  “Is it hard, raising a kid that ain’t yours?”

  He glanced over to see Layla staring outside. The wind tore at her hair, messing it up, but she hadn’t complained, something that told him more about her distracted state of mind than she’d probably like.

  “Micah feels like he’s mine,” he said softly.

  “But he’s not.”

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t love him.” He shrugged. “I’m going to adopt him, give him my name. It’s all a formalization, though. In my heart, in my head, he is mine. He has been for a while.”

  Maybe even from the very first time Noah laid eyes on him.

  “Do you think he loves you more than his real dad?”

  Her voice was husky now, husky and soft.

  Sympathy stirred in him and Noah, not for the first time, wished he could find it in him to offer something false and empty that wouldn’t hurt as much as the truth. She had enough hard stuff in front of her. Offering her some sort of hope could make it easier.

  But false hopes, empty hopes, weren’t going to help. Not in the long run.

  He’d been silent too long and she turned her head, glaring at him, the lenses of her purple contacts looking odd with her swollen red eyes. “Well?”

  “Micah’s dad wasn’t much of a father,” he finally said. “Micah barely remembers him. Doesn’t talk much about him.”

  “I…” She licked her lips, shrugged. She took a final drag off the cigarette and then put it out in the Coke can she’d been using in lieu of an ashtray. “Maybe things can change. People can make themselves better, right? You did. And you really did change. Sometimes I hate you for it.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say to that, Layla.” Slowing at the stoplight, he looked over at her.

  She stared stonily out the windshield. “I want you to tell me I can change.”

  “That’s up to you, though. Do you want to change?”

  “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be in here with you, Preach. That’s for damn sure.” She scraped her nails down the front of her jeans, her hands shaking slightly. “I don’t want any damn thing, not from you. But look where I am.”

  Silence ticked away; the light changed. Pushing down on the gas, he pondered his response another few seconds and then finally said, “I think, if you really want to, you can change.”

  “How?” she said, her voice the faintest whisper.

  “The same way I did. By focusing on one day at a day. At first, you focus on one second at a time. One minute. And you never lose sight of what matters to you the most.”

  She slanted him a quick look.

  “You’ve got something that matters, Layla. We both know who it is.”

  “He doesn’t care about me.” She plucked at a thread coming loose from her jeans. “I didn’t really give him much reason. And he’s happier with Sybil, you know. She knows how to take care of him. I don’t.”

  “So learn.”

  * * *

  Keys clutched in his fist, David stood in the driveway, but he had yet to move toward Max’s house.

  Instead, like a moth drawn to a flame, David found himself walking toward the skeletal framework of the Frampton house. That hellhole where he’d had been broken, where he had bled and screamed behind a gag. Where he had prayed, begged for help. Where he had finally realized that prayers wouldn’t be answered. Devils might exist, might walk on this earth, but God wasn’t real.

  Ducking under the yellow caution tape, he moved closer and closer, circling around the back, remembering.

  She’d seen.

  Once.

  Lana didn’t know what she’d seen, but she’d seen something.

  They’d been finishing up. She’d been out doing whatever in the world supergirls did in their world where determination could right everything that was wrong in the world. He’d never even thought to ask her what had her out that late.

  Past midnight, certainly, because they never finished early.

  He had been stumbling, barely able to walk, but he’d forced himself to because the thought of somebody touching him had made him sick. He’d half-fallen against one of the trees and that was when he saw her, pressed half against the stone wall, lost in the darkness, save for the pale circle of her face. In the next second, even that was gone.

  He’d thought maybe he’d imagined her. He’d imagined a hundred times that somebody would see. Somebody would realize what was going on and just help.

  The next day, though, she’d looked at him, those grey eyes of hers stark and solemn.

  And he’d realized. She’d known.

  He hadn’t been trapped alone in the pit of hell anymore.

  He’d dragged her down with him and she’d suffered for it.

  Broken glass, splintered wood, crunched under his foot as he moved across the ruin of the house. It would be demolished. Nothing here was worth saving. It might have made him smile if he could find it in him. But even as he muscled a ruined door out of the way, he just kept looking for another horror.

  How long did it go back?

  Caleb Sims, one of the boys who’d tried to destroy this place, had been being abused by his father. Blue, another boy, had almost been brought in. Abel had been back in the old ring.

  There was a sound behind David and he turned, slowly. Some part of him expected to see his father there—whispering those words to him, all over again.

  Be ready to receive the honor we give you. In time, you’ll pass it on to others. Just as we pass it on to you now.

  It wasn’t his father, though.

  Hank Redding stood there, his round, ruddy face oddly pale, his hands clenched into fists gone white at the knuckles. Slowly, David nodded.

  “Hank.”

  Hank didn’t even seem to see him. Instead, Hank stared past him, looking toward the mostly intact cellar door.

  “This whole place could come down around us,” Hank murmured.

  David looked around. It wasn’t likely. The worst of the damage was from smoke and water. Still, he kind of liked the idea of the place falling down, timber by timber, brick by brick.

  “They dragged you down there, didn’t they?”

  David tensed. So, yeah. People would find out, already had, it seemed. But he’d be damned—

  “It was an honor,” Hank said, spitting the word out like it tasted foul. “That’s what he told me.”

  He might as well have hit David with a two-handed fist.

  Son of a bitch …

  David had known there had been others, but this was the first time …

  He sucked in a breath but Hank didn’t even seem to notice as he moved forward, as though drawn
by a string. “An honor … and he was so fucking disappointed when I told my parents. They thought I was sick, thought I needed help.”

  “Hank.”

  The other man turned his head, stared at David with a ghastly smile. “You know who they thought I should talk to, David? You know who they thought was the best person to offer advice to a troubled young boy?”

  Fuck—

  “They took me to your dad. Explained to him, while I sat in a room with your mother, just why they were worried, what had them concerned.”

  Hank started to laugh then, laughter that went on and on, bleeding away in what sounded almost like jagged, cutting sobs. He went to his knees, slammed a hand into the soot-stained floor. Blood streaked it when he lifted it, but that didn’t stop the man. He struck again and again.

  “Stop.” David moved to him, caught Hank’s fist. Glass glittered on the ground and David had no doubt there was some of it embedded in Hank’s knuckles now.

  The fight went out of him and Hank sat back on his knees, with David still gripping one fist. They stared at each other. “They call them counseling sessions. They had no fucking clue what they’d done. One time, they even brought my grandfather along.”

  His words trailed off and abruptly Hank surged upright with a roar.

  David didn’t do anything but watch as Hank raced for the pantry, kicking the door down and staring down into the open, gaping pit. His hands clutched at the doorjamb, his shoulders rising, falling.

  “How many?”

  Slowly, David uncoiled and came to his feet, staring at the other man’s back.

  Hank whirled around, his eyes half-wild.

  “How fucking many? How many of us did they drag down there? How many of us did they break?”

  “I don’t know,” David said starkly.

  Sagging against the wood, Hank lifted his head and stared upward. “I kept quiet. All this time. I was so ashamed, and those sons of bitches passed it on to their kids. I didn’t even know. I thought it was just me. I … I thought there was something in me that made them do it. But they were doing it to others. All those other boys, and then they grew up and started it all over again. We let them.”

  “We didn’t let them,” David half-snarled.