Breathe (61 page)

I understood then and, involuntarily, my feet took me a step back and, not that he could, but still, Chace didn’t miss it.

“Yeah,” he whispered, his face as hard and harsh as his voice, “see that dark gathering now, don’t you, baby?”

“You went to Internal Affairs,” I whispered.

“Yeah, I did. I took as much of it as I could stomach then I swung my mother’s ass out there and went to IA. Fun choice, my mother’s mental health or my ass.”

“And the town,” I added.

“Yeah, and the town. Detective Chace Keaton, the courageous hero who brought down a band of dirty cops. They hid the fact I
was
one. They hid the fact that for years I did shit or didn’t do shit I should have when people were getting fucked. Not just a little, like your Dad gettin’ pulled over, which, by the way, Faye, I knew was happening but couldn’t stop. But a lot, like Ty Walker losin’ five fuckin’ years of his fuckin’ life rotting in a prison states away, doin’ time for a crime he did not commit. Your Dad said when a wrong’s bein’ done, you’re no person he’d want to know if you don’t do what you can to make it right. You live by that too and I’m that person you don’t wanna know.”

“Chace, you
did
something,” I reminded him.

“And, before, I did other things, Faye. I
was
that wrong.”

“You were forced to be.”

He shook his head. “A stronger man would not have been forced to be.”

“Your mother –”

“I could have walked away,” he told me.

“I wouldn’t have,” I returned instantly.

At my words, his body jolted.

I kept talking.

“Someone intended to harm my Mom, Dad, Liza, the boys, any of my family or someone I loved, I’d do what I could to stop it. Anyone who loves someone would.”

“Even lie down with filth?” he asked, disbelief heavy in his tone.

“Whatever it took,” I answered.

He shook his head. “No, darlin’, easy to say, harder to do.”

“I don’t mean it was easy, I mean I would do it.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can. You were raised by Silas and Sondra Goodknight. You would make the right choice. I was raised by Trane and Valerie Keaton. I made the wrong one.”

“You made the
only
choice.”

“In hindsight, everything seems clear but at the time, it was not and I had choices. I just didn’t make the right ones.”

“You loved her and your hand was forced. It took you a while but you eventually saw your way clear and got the town clear and, incidentally, it’s debatable if that was the right choice since I can assume it made her more vulnerable than she already is.”

“And before that, Faye, I
beat
a man into givin’ me shit he was holdin’ over a bunch of men who didn’t deserve that effort.”

I felt my flinch and saw his face get harder when he caught it but I powered through.

“You did it for Valerie.”

“I did wrong.”

“You did what you had to do.”

“Yeah, and it… was…
wrong.
”

But I’d had enough.

And so had Chace.

It was time to break through.

“God!” I threw up my hands, losing it. “Do you
not
understand that the power behind the love of your actions for your mother and, what you don’t get, Chace, also for your father is a beautiful thing you should be
proud of?
”

His body locked.

I didn’t catch it. I was on a mission and was already too far gone.

“Do you not think that I don’t think that, if you loved me that much, if you turned your back on everything that was you in order to protect me, that I wouldn’t love you
more?
Love you more because you loved me so much you’d do everything you could to keep me safe? Even going so far as losing
you?
But what you don’t get, Chace, is that you never lost you. What
they
did was wrong. What
you
did was
right.
”

Chace didn’t move, not even to twitch and I still didn’t catch it.

I was on a roll.

“If you made another decision because you were all fired up to be the man
you
had to be, to protect the future
you
wanted,
that
would have been selfish. The choice you had was no choice at all. Save someone you love from a breakdown or save a town and your own ass. You’ve lived your whole fraking life protecting her. You’d been conditioned since birth to make that play. But even so, you actually took the
harder
road to do the
right
thing even if it meant you were forced to do
wrong
while you were on that road. It was selfless, it was brave and it was
heroic.
More so because, God willing, Valerie will never know you had to do the things you did to protect her. So she’s shielded from that too, knowing the way she is that she can’t help meant her son went through that for
her.
So you did it knowing you’d not even earn her gratitude. You did it knowing all you’d get is shit but she’d have peace of mind.”

Chace just stared at me, unmoving.

I kept ranting.

“If my father knew this, he’d admire you. If my mother knew this, she’d adore you. If the town knew this, they’d revere you more than they already
do.
”

“Right,” he said softly. “You think you got that figured out then what about Misty?”

“What about her?” I snapped.

“She was my wife. I treated her like shit. I cheated on her and, in the end, I didn’t protect her.”

Not this again!

“Fraking heck, Chace!” I clipped. “She wasn’t your wife, she was your albatross! Your prison warden. Ty spent five years behind bars.
You
spent
six
in a different kind of prison. It isn’t even
sane
what she did to you, thinking you would get over it and fall in love or
attempt
to find even minimal contentment in that kind of arrangement. I couldn’t wrap my head around what she did to Ty and I
really
can’t wrap my head around what she did to
you.
It was the same and yet it was
worse.
You didn’t like her so you didn’t pretend to like her. You didn’t marry her for love so you carried on with your life like she wasn’t there.
She
bought that by doing… doing…” I faltered, too beside myself to find words then sallied forth, “what you would call seriously jacked up shit. When she was alive,
you
didn’t give her a thing she didn’t deserve including what happened to end her life. That is also not on you whether you shoulder it or not. Shouldering it is your
decision,
not your responsibility, not your curse. Your
decision
. One you can also decide not to do. No one, but no one who thinks clearly, and they don’t even have to love you like I do, would disagree with me.”

“Baby –” he started on a tortured whisper but I was still gone.

“No!” I snapped, lifting a hand between us. “I’m not done. I know you’re older and more experienced than me but what
you
need to know is that if you trusted me with that information about your father, as vile as it is, it would have given me the tools to handle tonight a lot differently. I could have avoided his touch so that wouldn’t upset you and I could have smoothed our departure so your mother wouldn’t get distressed. If I was aware of the situation, I could have finessed it. Which I will do in the future if we have a future that doesn’t include me wanting to kick you in the shin or attempt to shake some sense into you even though you’re bigger and stronger than me and if I can control my desire to punch your father in the nose!”

I was working myself up and getting louder as I carried right the frak on.

“I mean, I can’t believe this!
This
is your dark?
This
is your big secret that’s going to drive me away?
This
is what’s eating you? The fact you’re a good man, a fantastic son and when faced with impossible choices that would bring most men to their knees, you carry on being wonderful, taking care of runaway, abused kids, teasing your new girlfriend, making her feel like a princess and giving her amazing orgasms?” I leaned into him, eyes narrowed, “Seriously?”

Then I wasn’t leaning into him anymore because I was over his shoulder, he’d turned and was prowling to the bed.

“Chace!” I snapped at his back. “I’m not done ranting!”

He bumped me on his shoulder. I sucked in breath as I flew through the air, landing on my back in bed and I didn’t get another breath in me before he landed on top of me.

“You’re done,” he growled in my face.

“I am
not,
” I hissed in his.

Then I was since he was kissing me hard and the fingers of one his hands were pulling down the zip at the back of my dress.

Okay, that kiss was good, better than most and they were all super good so that was saying something. Apparently, heightened emotions made for effective kisses.

Still, when he tore his mouth from mine, I ranted on, if a little breathlessly, “I’m not done straightening you
out
.”

Chace’s response was nonverbal. His body arced away from mine and
whoosh!
My dress was pulled over my head, taking my arms with it. When it was gone, Chace’s hand was on my belly, his eyes on my body.

“Knew it, that dress, you sittin’ next to me all night, knew you’d give me this later,” he muttered to himself, his hand gliding down my belly so his fingertips could trail the waistband of my panties.

He liked the undies. Nice to know but nothing new.

“Hello?” I called and his eyes came to mine. “We’re fighting, remember?”

Two things happened at once. Chace’s lips came to within a breath from mine and Chace’s hand slid into my panties.

I stopped breathing.

“Get ready, baby, you’re about to get something new.”

“And that would be?” I asked tartly (but still breathlessly which took the sting out of my tart, unfortunately), putting my hands on his shoulders, preparing to push.

“Make up sex,” he answered, his fingers in my panties moved in a way I liked and my belly plummeted and my fingers, instead of pushing (frak!) curled into his jacket.

I fought his pull and informed him sharply, “We aren’t done fighting.”

“Yeah we are.”

“No we’re not.”

His middle finger slid hard over my clit and then glided deep inside and it felt so fraking good, I gasped, my hips jerked but the rest of my body melted under his.

I was hazy but I could still feel his lips smile against mine before he muttered, “Oh yeah we are.”

Then he kissed me and we were.

Done fighting that was.

We weren’t done with other things.

Sex, as I’d mentioned before, was
awesome.

Make up sex was
out of this world.

Heightened emotion didn’t only make for effective kisses, it made for effective
everything.

I didn’t think either of us held back during sex. Sometimes Chace controlled the intensity. It was rare but it could happen that I might get a little timid with nudity but Chace had a mind to that and never pushed.

But after you’d almost just broken up with your boyfriend who you loved even though his best friend told you not to. After he’d shared with you he’d taken one look at you and knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you then let you into his deepest, darkest secrets that were way deep and scary dark. After that, you didn’t think of anything.

Not anything.

But each other and using that emotion and anything else you had to make the bad go away and bring on the good.

And the good was
good.

It was all hands, mouths, fingers, tongues, rolling, yanking at clothes, tugging at shoes, tossing them away, then clenching, scratching, licking, sucking, biting, positioning, gasping, groaning, whimpering and growling.