by Kait Nolan
“Oh no, honey, it’s totally obvious,” Livia said.
“And woohoo!” Riley cheered.
“Crap,” Autumn groaned.
“Well, but you were going to tell him anyway,” Riley said.
“Not like this!” She’d wanted to control it. Frame the whole thing the right way. But there’d been no time for it this morning, and he certainly wasn’t in the right mindset to hear it.
“Maybe it’s a good thing,” Livia suggested.
“How?”
“Y’all have lived with the status quo for years. Maybe he needs to have his world rocked.”
Autumn sighed. “Mary Alice said more or less the same thing.”
Livia threw up a hand like a traffic cop. “Hold up. What?”
“She broke up with Judd the night of the fire. I went to try to talk her into taking him back.”
“You did what?” Riley squeaked. “Why would you do that when you want to be with him yourself?”
“Because I thought he wanted to marry her. Turns out he bought her this incredibly lame bracelet as an apology for ignoring her. That was the last straw for her. She thinks he should be with me.”
“Honey, everybody thinks he should be with you,” Livia declared.
“Except him.” Autumn gave up on the burger. “Everything’s going to change between us. At best, it’ll make things permanently weird, at worst, I’ll lose him entirely.”
“Okay first, you’ll never lose him entirely,” Riley said. “Second, you’re underestimating the best case scenario where he feels the same way you do.”
Autumn didn’t dare give in to the spark of hope. “I want so badly to believe that. I want to believe that, somewhere in there, he’s still that guy who wanted to change things between us back in high school.”
“Wait, what?” Livia demanded. “This has actually come up before?”
“The day Judd got shot.”
They stared at her.
Riley reached out to lay a hand over hers. “Honey, how much of what you put in the book about that was real?”
“All of it. Except my father got home before he kissed me. Not that that made a difference to Jebediah.” Autumn jerked her shoulders. “After it was over, Judd didn’t remember the conversation. He was fuzzy on a lot of details of that day because of the trauma. I kept thinking it would come back after he healed, but it never did. And he never broached the subject again.”
“You never told him?” Livia asked.
“How could I? What if the amnesia for the whole thing is his mind’s way of giving him an out because after being shot, he can’t love me? Not like that.”
“Oh honey.” The pair of them wrapped her in a hug from both sides.
“I couldn’t risk losing him,” Autumn whispered. But now she wondered, when he read it, would seeing a recounting of that day spark his memory? Would it make a difference?
Either way, the decision was out of her hands.
Chapter 10
“Daddy, no. Nothing happened.”
“I got eyes in my head to see otherwise, girl.”
“It was just a kiss.” But it wasn’t just a kiss. It was everything. He was everything.
Jesus Christ. She’d put it all in here. Almost every fucking detail. Except Cooper had gotten the kiss Judd never had. He’d been there that day. He’d thought he’d known what she’d gone through. But reading it like this… It was like his own memories had been covered by a haze of smoke and with her words, she’d stripped that away, leaving the stark, unvarnished truth.
The moment he’d reached the section with their harrowing ordeal, he’d cleared his schedule, blown off every responsibility he could, to lock himself in his office and plow through the rest. He’d been grateful to be reading it on his phone. Not that anyone else in the department would be under any delusion about what he was reading. They’d all be reading it, too, and making all kinds of assumptions. After he and Autumn had worked so hard to curb the rumors, she’d gone and written this? No wonder she hadn’t wanted him to know about it.
And dear God, the love scenes. When Autumn had said they were erotic, he’d made some assumptions. Reading them, knowing he was Cooper… He’d spent so many years actively avoiding thinking about her like that. How the hell was he ever going to unsee those mental images? He’d spent most of the afternoon hard as a rock. It was as if she’d reached into his brain and unearthed every dark fantasy he’d never allowed himself to have and spilled it onto the page. Along with quite a few he couldn’t have imagined but now desperately wanted to lose himself in. With her.
Goddamn it, this was a nightmare. He needed brain bleach. A mind wipe. Something to help him get back the status quo.
What he had, as he pulled into his parents’ driveway at the end of the day, was a whole lot of pissed off.
This wasn’t the time or place for a confrontation. He’d just hold it together until he could get her home, and they’d talk about this like civilized people.
Nothing Cooper and Darcy did was civilized.
Shut the fuck up, he told himself.
Excuses for why they couldn’t stay for dinner were already rolling through his brain as he stepped inside, following the sound of voices to the living room. But the moment he saw Autumn, sitting calmly in one of those prim little librarian dresses that only made him wonder what she had on underneath, his mouth ran away without his brain. “You could’ve warned me.”
He could tell by the look on her face that she knew he knew. With obvious resignation, she uncurled from the sofa and strode toward him. “What would I have said? How would that conversation go?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe, ‘By the way, Judd, I poured every detail of our own private hell into a book that hundreds of thousands of people have read.’”
Dimly he registered surprise from his parents, his brothers, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Autumn. He’d expected some kind of contrition or embarrassment, but what he saw in her eyes was a spark of temper. When she spoke, her voice was deadly quiet. “I had to put it somewhere.”
Autumn rarely lost her temper. Growing up in a house of violence, she considered it the ultimate loss of control. But Judd could see the simmer and bubble of it in her eyes. Fine. If she wanted a fight, he’d give her one.
“How exactly did you decide what to keep, what to change? Cooper walked away. I stayed.” And damn, that chapped his ass.
“No, you didn’t walk away. What you did was almost worse.” She turned away from him, head dropping, shoulders slumping, as if he’d hurt her somehow.
Insult added fuel to an already raging fire. “What the hell are you talking about? Everything I’ve done has been to protect you!”
Autumn rounded on him, hands fisted, eyes blazing. “I don’t need you to protect me, I need you to love me!”
The shot hit him straight in the heart. It took everything he had to recover, to try and salvage something of what was. He aimed for reasonable. “Of course, I love you. You’re my best friend.”
“No.” She stalked toward him, the expression on her face dialed to a level of fury he’d never seen in her before. “You don’t get to hide behind that excuse. I’m done being quiet. My father spent seventeen years trying to make me and nothing ever worked. Not his hand, not the switch, not the flogging with his thick leather belt. Seeing you take the bullet meant for me is the only thing he’s ever done that scared me into silence. Not because he meant to end me—because I resigned myself to the fact that he hated me a long time before that—but because you were the only thing I ever cared about, and I saw how easily he could rip you away from me. So I’ve stayed quiet, swallowing down everything I feel because you seemed to want it that way. You decided—without ever giving me a say, giving me a voice. But I’m done. I wouldn’t be quiet for him, and I’m done being quiet for you. I won’t let you ignore what’s between us anymore.”
Before Judd could process any of her accusations, her hands fisted in his shirt, hauling him again
st her. Her mouth crushed his in a savage kiss, and he stopped thinking at all as every drop of his blood drained south. Shock held him immobile as she assaulted his senses.
She tasted of devastated fury and desperation and heat—so much unrestrained heat, he wondered she didn’t incinerate them both. With his head full of every erotic image she’d written, his traitorous hands curled around her hips and dragged her closer. He couldn’t keep up, couldn’t stop himself from responding to the demanding thrust of her tongue against his. He growled, every possessive instinct he had roused beyond belief.
But just as he slid his hand into her hair, she shoved with both hands, propelling him back a full step. “I’m moving out,” she snarled. “Good luck putting me back into your goddamned box.” Without a backward glance, she stalked out.
Judd stood rooted to the spot, breath heaving, his mouth tingling from the assault of hers, more turned on than he’d ever been in his life. He scrubbed a hand over his face. What the hell just happened?
He didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until Leo crossed his arms. “The inevitable. If you don’t go after her and fix that, I’ll be forced to kick your ass.”
Eli cracked his knuckles. “And there are two of us, so, really, stop being a dumbass.”
Judd didn’t have enough brain to dignify that with a response, but the sound of Autumn’s car starting and squealing away from the curb unlocked the shackles on his feet. He couldn’t bear to actually look at his mother before he bolted for the door.
Move out? Autumn couldn’t move out. They had to discuss this. Because she sure as hell had obliterated the goddamned box, whatever that had meant.
But as he peeled out of the drive, his radio crackled. “Chief, we’ve got a situation here.”
“This is really not a good time, Inez.”
“But Chief, the rookie ran his squad car up a tree.”
“What?”
“I don’t quite know the details of what happened, but Officer Raines ran off the road and hit a tree. There was something about a cow.”
“Is Raines injured?”
“Medical’s been dispatched, but he was conscious enough to radio in.”
Judd resigned himself to the fact that Autumn would have to wait. “Send me the coordinates. I’m on my way.”
~*~
He kissed me back.
As Autumn sped away, that single thought thrummed in her blood in a rhythm with her still pounding heart.
She’d been prepared for his anger. She had written in explicit detail about an experience that had been intensely personal and horrifying for them both. After all the efforts they’d made toward privacy in the wake of the shooting and the trial, she understood he’d feel that was a betrayal on some level. But for him to continue to willfully behave as if he didn’t understand what the rest of it meant, when she’d poured out her heart and soul on those pages, laying out everything she felt for him? That had been the last straw.
She’d wanted to scream and rage. She’d wanted to punch him. Instead, she’d kissed him, holding nothing back as she’d ravaged the mouth she’d dreamed about for years, irrevocably shattering his carefully constructed status quo.
He kissed me back.
And that erosion of his iron control had been glorious.
Autumn could’ve stopped there, her point made. But she knew him. If she didn’t keep pushing, didn’t do something to unequivocally show him that she refused to go back to what they’d been, he’d backpedal and start herding her like a goddamned border collie into the box he’d always kept her in.
She didn’t know where she’d stay tonight. Livia would offer up a guest room. Or maybe she’d make the drive to Lawley, to Nanna. Some grandmotherly fussing could be just what the doctor ordered. Either way, she wouldn’t be staying with Judd. She’d let him make all the decisions about their relationship long enough.
With that in mind, she headed downtown. It was crazy, probably foolish. But what the hell did she have left to lose?
Dinner Belles was in the midst of the dinner rush as she shoved through the door. From the surprised glances that came her way, Autumn had the sense she must look a little like a wild woman. Well, she felt it. With purpose, she strode to the counter.
“I need to see Omar.”
Mama Pearl just arched a brow before calling back to her son in the kitchen.
A few minutes later, the former Ole Miss running back emerged, a broad smile on his dark face. “Hey there, Lady Luck. What can I do for you?”
“I want to put five hundred in the pool for this week.” The low hum of the diner’s patrons fell silent as she slapped the bills down on the counter. It was the last of the cash she’d pulled out for her essentials shopping.
Both brows shot up. “Which one?”
Autumn straightened her spine. “Mine.”
Surprise turned into a delighted grin. “About damned time.”
“Hey now,” someone called, “is that even legal to bet on yourself?”
“Hush up, Tony,” Mama Pearl called. “Long as this pool’s been runnin’, she can do anything she likes. Go get him, sugar.”
Autumn sucked in a breath. “That’s the plan.”
The applause started as she turned. By the time she’d reached the door, the smattering of claps had turned into a crash of cheers. Nice to know the rest of town was in support of this lunacy because now that she’d made this very public declaration, she was starting to wonder if she’d lost her mind.
Blindly, she reached for the door, stumbling when it opened. “Oh excuse—” The words died in her throat as she took in the man blocking her path.
Her first, inane thought was that he was so much smaller than she remembered. In her mind, he’d been a giant of a man—objectively nowhere near as big as Judd, but somehow filling their house with his hatred and twisted religion. The gatekeeper to her freedom and happiness.
Prison and illness had winnowed him down. The flesh hung on his gaunt frame like an ill-fitting thrift-store suit. The eyes so like hers looked dimmer, somehow less substantial, as if they were a battery meter showing how much life he had left. He’d aged almost three decades in the years since she’d last seen him.
“Autumn.”
That voice. No matter the physical packaging, that voice hadn’t changed. At the sound of it, Autumn felt the whip of the belt across her skin, and with the phantom of remembered pain came the deep-rooted fear. The sick slither of panic wormed through her belly and sweat broke out down the middle of her back. Every instinct shouted for her to run.
She didn’t move. Couldn’t.
Judd, you swore you’d be here. The thought came unbidden, and she hated herself for that weakness. Hated that she needed him, even now. Hated that she couldn’t control the fear rising up like bile in her throat.
“Nothing to say?” Jebediah asked.
Autumn’s mouth went to cotton, her jaw refusing to move. Her pulse beat fast in her ears, drowning out everything but that hated voice.
“Finally lose all that sass?” His thin lips curved in something that might’ve been a smile, as if he enjoyed the idea that he’d finally succeeded in shutting her up.
Where was her fight? The sharp tongue that’d earned her so many beatings in her teen years, when she’d started fighting back and challenging his delusions? Why could she only stand here? She should be stronger than this. But shoulds didn’t stop the paralyzing fear, didn’t stop the shallow breaths or the trembling that wracked her limbs.
“She doesn’t have to talk to you.”
What?
Someone came to stand at her shoulder. Autumn couldn’t tell who because that would require being able to move.
“You’re lucky she doesn’t haul off and punch you,” someone else said.
“My daughter isn’t violent.” Jebediah sounded almost proud of that.
No. No she never had been until he’d threatened Judd. Her hand shook with remembered impact as she’d struck him.
Blood
. So much blood slicking across the checkerboard floor. Autumn felt hers draining out of her head, saw the gray at the edge of her vision and squeezed her eyes shut. Not here. Not now.
“Can’t say as I can make the same claim.” Omar closed a big hand around her shoulder, and Autumn wanted to weep with relief.
“Reckon you can move along, find somewhere else to eat. Permanently,” Mama Pearl added.
Autumn was dimly aware of chairs all over the diner scraping back as customers stood, crowding behind her. It gave her the power to open her eyes. The vision of blood was gone. But her father still stood in the open doorway.
Jebediah’s gaze scanned over the assembled crowd before coming back to rest on her. “There are things I need to say to you.”
“I don’t care,” she rasped. With the strength of numbers at her back, she took a deeper breath. “There’s nothing you can say that I want to hear. The time when I have to submit to listen to your ravings and hatred is long past. So stay away from me. And you sure as hell stay away from Judd or I will finish what you started in that kitchen all those years ago.”
She expected him to start ranting, raging about respecting the Holy Spirit and how she was bound for hell for breaking a commandment. But Jebediah lifted his hands in concession, backing away and letting the glass door swing shut.
Autumn was shaking so hard, her teeth nearly rattled. A warm, comforting arm slid around her waist.
“Come on back to the kitchen for little while,” Mama Pearl urged. “You’re white as a sheet.”
She wanted to say no, wanted to escape all the eyes that were now turned on her. But she didn’t have the strength to resist as the older woman led her behind the counter and through the door into the back. The familiar scents of grease and burgers made her stomach roil. Mama Pearl didn’t stop, just steered her on into an office and nudged her into a chair.
“Head between your knees. Omar, get some gingerale.”
Autumn simply did as she was told. Bent over in the chair, the gray started to recede and her breath began to level out. She’d made it through. Barely, but she hadn’t lost her shit out there. And she’d done it without Judd.
