Rest & Trust (25 page)

Sadie. He had Sadie. And maybe already somebody more than that. From his seat on one of the worn leather sofas, he watched her replenish a chafing dish of some kind of casserole. She wore her Audrey Hepburn dress, sans pearls today. He loved how she could look right in any manner of clothing—classy, like today, or punk, like the day he’d met her; casual, in jeans and a t-shirt, which was how he mostly knew her, or sweet, in her little pajamas and her always-matching underwear. She was just Sadie, no matter what. She wore her clothes, not the other way around.

She’d forgiven him for the brutish way he’d behaved the other day, and she hadn’t brought up that pill again. The time for its effectiveness had passed, and they hadn’t been celibate in the meantime. They were doing this, and it remained a decision he didn’t regret. He thought—hoped—that was true for Sadie, too, that she hadn’t simply conceded to his desire.

He understood that he’d done everything out of order; he’d asked her to have his baby before he’d asked her to take his ink. They hadn’t talked about changing their living arrangements, though she hadn’t slept at her own place since he’d been back in town, and now his house was always tidy. She hadn’t met his mother or Thomas; he hadn’t met her father. There were so many things to talk about, and neither of them seemed willing to be the one to start. They’d moved at supersonic speed to this point and then had stopped and stood still.

Sherlock knew why he hadn’t started the dialogue. Taryn had backed off a little since his text, but only in quantity. Instead, a few times a day, she’d been sending longer texts, getting into detail about the ways they were good together, giving him updates about Chelsea and Dylan. He had yet to reply to her new tactic, but he knew he was going to have to do something that would get her attention. He was busily trying to make Sadie pregnant; he could not have Taryn hanging over their heads.

But his head was still full. He’d set Jerry’s funeral as the final date that he could put off an unpleasant confrontation with Taryn and his past, and then have a hopefully much more pleasant conversation with Sadie and his future.

~oOo~

They were home that night, after the memorial and the burial, in the bedroom. Sadie sat in the middle of the made bed—he hadn’t even known he had pillow shams that matched his comforter, but apparently they’d been on the floor of his linen closet—with her big gaming computer before her. Sherlock sat at his desk a few feet away. They were online together, in game, leveling their baby toons. One of his favorite things about them was this: that they could enjoy this together, that Sadie understood him in this way. There was a language and a culture around gaming, particularly online gaming, and it meant a lot to him that he had found a woman who was part of it.

They were running a dungeon together when the doorbell rang. Then rang again. And again.

Sherlock opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a Smith & Wesson 9mm. He stood and turned to Sadie, whose eyes were wide with concern. “Stay here. Stay quiet.” Then he left the room, closing the door behind him.

By the time he stepped into the hallway, the doorbell had been abandoned for pounding on the door itself. By the time he stepped into the living room, Taryn had begun shouting on the other side of his door.

“Tim! Tim! I know you’re home! Open the goddamn door!”

Staring at the gun in his hand, Sherlock had a moment when he seriously considered using it. The sound of his birth name being shrieked at him sent a hot pulse of rage into his left eye. The damage that bitch could do right now, if Sadie…

“Sherlock?”

Fuck. She’d come out of the bedroom. Ignoring Taryn’s escalating histrionics, Sherlock turned around. “Go back to the bedroom, sweetheart. Please.”

“No. Who is that?”

He sighed and set the S&W on a nearby shelf. “It’s Taryn. My ex. I told you about her. Go back to the bedroom. I’ll handle her and be right back.”

“No. Let her in.”

“Sadie.”

“Fuck that tone of voice, I swear to God. She’s been calling and texting all this time, hasn’t she? That’s the ‘family shit’ you blew me off about when I asked, right?” She crossed her arms. Standing in the hallway in her little pajama shorts and top, her scarred thighs and pretty feet bare, she managed to look both fragile and fierce. Her heart was pounding so hard and fast that he could see her pulse fluttering in her throat. Strangely, that made her seem stronger, not weaker. Maybe because she was standing still despite that hummingbird’s beat.

“I was trying to ignore her until she went away.”

“I think I see the flaw in your plan.”

He chuckled; she didn’t. His jealous girl. Sweet fuck, this was bad.

“Let her in, Sherlock.”

Taryn was still going nuts outside; now it sounded like she’d found something to ram the door with. This was new territory; Taryn Wilkes could certainly be a bitch, but she’d never been psycho before. Of course, he’d never ignored her before, either.

He really didn’t have any other choice but to let her in. “Okay. Just…give me some space, okay?”

Sadie didn’t answer. Sherlock gave up and went to the door. He disarmed the alarm but left the security chain in place and turned the knob.

Taryn was winded from her hysterics, and her red hair flew around her face. She was wearing a baggy t-shirt and yoga pants, the kind of thing she wore around the house.

“What the fuck do you want, you crazy twat?”

He could see her trying to reassemble her expression and orient her approach more toward reconciliation than threat. “I just want to talk. I can’t get you to answer my calls or texts, so this was all I could do.”

“I answered. I told you what was what.”

“That’s crazy, Tim. We had a bad patch. We always have bad patches, and we always come back together. For six years. We just need to talk. I miss you, baby. Chelsea and Dylan miss you like crazy. Chelsea’s been drawing you pictures.”

He closed the door and released the chain. When he opened the door again, he could see that Taryn thought she’d won. A whole different woman stood on his porch. Calm and smiling.

Taryn was several inches taller than Sadie. As she stepped victoriously over the threshold, she rose up onto her tiptoes, grabbed Sherlock’s head, pulled it to her, and kissed him, all in a rush, shoving her tongue deep into his surprised mouth.

Feeling nauseated, he stood tall and shoved her away from him as fast as he could.

And then heard the unmistakable, heavy
click
of a gun being cocked behind him. Taryn didn’t hear it, and she made to move deeper into the house. Sherlock grabbed her and kept her shielded with his body.

He wasn’t protecting Taryn, not really. He knew that behind him, Sadie had picked up the S&W and had cocked it. He figured she was aiming it right at them. What he couldn’t guess was whether she’d just shoot the second she had the shot. He didn’t want her to carry that on her conscience.

Meanwhile, Taryn thought he’d grabbed her to hold her with affection, and she was wrapping herself around him. With a view like that, Sherlock thought there was chance Sadie, his jealous, fragile girl, might go for them both.

“Sadie,” he said, calmly but clearly. “Sweetheart, that’s a bad idea.”

Taryn looked up at him. “Who’s Sadie?”

He ignored her and turned his head, not enough to see behind him, but enough to be sure she could hear him. “Sadie. Come on, little outlaw. That’s not how this is going to go down. She’s not a threat to you, sweetheart. I love you. I never loved her.”

“And yet you’ve been lying to me for days. Maybe forever. Who are Chelsea and Dylan?”

Fuck—she thought they were his. “They’re her kids.
Not mine
. I swear. Taryn here aborted my kid—and that was for the best, because now I have you. There’s nothing here but a sad, desperate woman who needs to make other people feel like shit so she can feel good about herself. You’re going to put the gun down, and I’m going to turn around. No shooting tonight, okay?”

She didn’t answer, but he had to take the risk. He wanted Taryn off of him—that wasn’t helping anything, and she’d heard every word he’d just said and was getting feisty again. So he pushed her away and turned to his girl.

Who was still aimed at the door. At him. He put up his hands. “Come on, Sadie. It’s okay.”

He thought that he finally understood what she meant when she said she was ‘fizzy.’ There was something going on in her eyes that would have fit that description. “I thought you were honest. I thought I could trust you. I maybe let you make me pregnant, and you’ve been lying and lying and lying.”

With terrible timing and a surprising lack of survival instinct, Taryn, now behind him, laughed. “Is that what this is? You’re still pissed that I wouldn’t have your baby, so you ran off and knocked up the first bitch you could?”

And then Sadie pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Sherlock barely twitched as the explosive report of the gun filled the room, but the woman screamed and dropped to the floor. Sadie couldn’t make sense. She could see a new hole in the wall by the door. Had she hit her mark? She’d been aiming for the bitch’s red head, but this gun was a lot bigger than the one he’d given her at the range.

She’d been aiming at the woman’s head.

Holy fuck. Had she just shot a person?

No—that hole. But the woman was on the floor.

Through and through. Like her arm.

But wouldn’t there be blood?

Holy fuck. Had she just shot a person?

She stared at the gun in her hands, not totally sure how it had gotten there. All the thoughts in her head careened back and forth, and none of them slowed down enough to really be thought.

“Sadie. Easy, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

Sherlock walked straight toward her, straight toward the gun she couldn’t seem to lower. When he got there, he put his hands over hers. They were warm and strong. Their rough texture always made her feel safe, for some reason.

“Sadie. It’s okay. You can let go.”

“I…” She stopped; there hadn’t been any more words in her head.

“I know. Everything’s gonna be okay. Just let go.”

She did, letting her hands fall slack, and he pulled the gun from her, did something to it, and then tucked it at the small of his back.

Then he pulled her into his arms and held her, kissing the top of her head. “I’m so sorry. So sorry.”

In the familiar shelter of his body, Sadie just felt
tired
. Her brain turned completely off, and she could have fallen asleep right there, in that moment.

Then, from the floor near the front door, came, “Are you kidding me? The stupid little skank
shoots at me
, and you’re comforting her? What the fuck, Tim?”

Sadie wondered absently who ‘Tim’ was. Sherlock tensed, though, and set her back. “I need to take care of this. I’ll be right back.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. His beard tickled her nose.

Then he turned and went back to the door. Sadie watched with dispassionate interest as he held out his hand to the woman on the floor.

“Are you hurt?”

She took his hand and stood, and Sherlock roughly checked her over. Pushing him away, she said, “Of course I’m hurt. Some stupid bitch just
shot at me
!”

“Watch your mouth. And she missed. You’re fine. Now you need to listen. We are done, Taryn. Forever. I have what I want, and it’s not you.”

The woman looked past Sherlock and locked eyes with Sadie. Sadie felt a thrill of something dark twist up her spine.

“Christ almighty, Tim. She’s a child. What are you doing?”

Sherlock opened the door and grabbed the woman’s arm. “My life is not your business, Tare. Get out and stay away. If you say a word to anybody, ever, about what went down here, I’ll see to it that you pay.”

As he pushed her back through the door, she resisted and cried, “What about the kids? They need you!”

Sherlock was quiet for a couple of seconds, and that dark twist dropped from Sadie’s spine into her stomach. Then he said, “For years, you wouldn’t let me act like a father to them. For years, you told me they didn’t need me. You don’t get to change that game now. They have a father, as you love to point out. Get out, Taryn. Now, before I finish what Sadie started. You’re not welcome here.” He shoved her the rest of the way through the door and then slammed it shut.

As he turned all the locks, there was one more heavy crash, like the woman had thrown something at the door, and then silence. Sherlock and Sadie both stood where they were, frozen, waiting. Finally, he set the alarm and turned to face her.

“Sadie.”

“I…I wanted to kill her. I tried to kill her, but the gun was too big.” The enormity finally landed fully on her, and she gasped. “I tried to kill her.”

He came toward her. She took a step backward, then another; her feet tangled together, and she was falling, but somehow, Sherlock was there, collecting her into his arms before she could hit the floor.

“I got you, I got you, I got you,” he repeated over and over, holding her tightly to his chest. “I got you.”

He lifted her into his arms and carried her into the living room, where he sat on the sofa, settling her on his lap, keeping her snug against him.

Sadie had never felt so exhausted in her life. She knew there were thoughts that needed to be thought, but they all had long, sharp teeth and claws. Resting against Sherlock’s chest, she could hear the thump of his heartbeat. Steady and slow, like the world hadn’t just flipped over on its head. She let it lure her, let it transfix her.

She slept.

~oOo~

When Sadie woke, she was in bed. Sherlock lay at her side, deeply asleep. Turned away from her.

She had no memory of anything after sitting with him on the sofa, but he must have carried her back here and tucked her in at some point.

Rolling to her side, she studied Sherlock’s gorgeous back, the word HORDE inked across his shoulders in a gentle arc. She knew every inch of his body; he was the only person in the world she could say that about.

But she didn’t know
him
, not like she’d thought. That had been stupid, anyway, to think she’d known him already. They’d only been together two months. How could she have known him? How stupid was she?

Maybe not stupid, but naïve. Underdeveloped. Something. Because she’d trusted him, believed him. When he’d told her something, it hadn’t occurred to her that it wasn’t true, or that it might be a half truth, an incompletion.

There was more between him and that woman than she knew, even now. She could feel it. The way that woman had just assumed that Sherlock would come back to her, the way she’d called him ‘Tim,’ the talk of children like he’d been in their lives all along. Six years, she’d said. Sadie had still been a teenager six years ago. A sophomore in college, living at home. That woman was Sherlock’s age. They’d had something together. Something more than Sherlock had implied when he’d cast her aside as an ‘ex’ who didn’t matter. That woman
knew
him. Really knew him.

Sadie had told Sherlock that she liked the way being with him made her feel, and that was true. When they were alone together, she always felt better, stronger. Even when he’d come at her about the morning-after pill, even while he was scaring her, hurting her, still she’d felt capable of handling it. She’d been a billion times fizzier while he was away and out of touch than she had when he’d been there, yelling at her.

But she hated the way jealousy felt: sour and rending. It tore down those good feelings and left waste in their stead. It made her mad and scared and crazy, all at once.

So crazy she’d pointed a loaded gun at a human being and pulled the trigger. So crazy she’d meant to hit her target.

She’d meant to kill a
person
.

There was so much wrong in her, she didn’t even know how to begin to understand.

And maybe she was pregnant. She probably was. They’d had sex about a dozen times or so in the days since he’d asked her to let him go without a condom. If she wasn’t pregnant, then she figured there was probably something wrong with her body as well as all the things wrong with her head.

Sadie lay in the near-dark, staring at Sherlock’s sleeping back, and wondered how her life had fallen into such disarray. She’d been more together as a fucking junkie than she was right now.

This was wrong. Everything was wrong. She couldn’t deal with how wrong it all was, when it had all felt so exactly right. She’d had that right feeling in her hands for long enough to know its power, and now she just felt empty and scared.

Everything was just wrong.

Sadie turned back the comforter and got out of Sherlock’s bed, careful not to disturb his rest.

~oOo~

“Say hey, Lady Sadie. How you doin’, kitten? I was glad to get your call. Been a couple of minutes since you been by.”

Yeah, it had been a ‘couple of minutes.’ More like four hundred and sixty-something days. She’d stopped keeping exact count somewhere along the line. “Hi, Gage.”

Gage stepped back, clearing the doorway to his house. “Well, come on in, tell me what you need.”

As she stepped into his living room—just a normal, middle-class living room, not at all what television and movies would lead you to believe—Sadie muzzled the screaming voice in her head that desperately wanted her to think longer about what she was doing. Thinking was only getting her in trouble. She didn’t understand anything well enough to think.

“Just Oxy. Maybe some 20s.” That was all she needed. Just something to quiet her blood, make her arms and legs, her hands and feet, her heart, her head, stop aching and vibrating.

Gage made a kind of hissing sound, sucking breath through his teeth. “Damn. Sorry, kitten. I’m low on stock right now. Clean out of Oxy.”

“Shit. Shit. Okay.” There were a couple of other places she could try. It was after midnight, but dealers never slept. “Thanks, anyway.” She turned back toward the door.

But Gage caught her arm. “Hey, hey. You give up so fast. No need for that. I’m outta Oxy, but I know you. I just packed up some new shit tonight.” He pulled her close and drew his finger down her nose. “How about I hook you up with half a G. We can party.”

Sadie had fucked Gage a lot back in the day. Pretty much whenever he wanted, which was pretty much whenever she came by. They’d do their deal, she’d fix, and then she’d climb onto his lap and fuck him while the high took her over.

She’d thought she’d been fucking him, but it had really been the other way around. She’d never had the control she’d thought she had, of anything. Ever.

For a moment, she simply stood there and let him touch her; she was so trapped in her internal turmoil about the heroin he was offering that she barely noticed when his hand went under her top and cupped her boob.

She’d dressed quickly, in the dark, and hadn’t come across her bra. When he pinched her nipple, she finally got what was going on and flinched back. “No—don’t.” He tried to come in again, but she knocked his hand away. “Gage—for real. Stop.”

Gage scowled at her, then wiped the expression away. “It’s cool. I’m just glad to see you. All of me is glad.” He grabbed her hand and pressed it to his crotch, made her fingers squeeze around his erection. “Really glad.”

God, she hated when guys did that, put her where she didn’t want to be. She hated it so much. Yanking her hand away, she said, “God! Fucking stop!”

He slapped her. Hard.

That should have pissed her off, or frightened her, or something. Made her run, made her fight back, or something. Instead, it broke her. She dropped to her knees, crying and holding her face.

“Shit. Shit. Sadie, dammit. Don’t cry. Shit. I’m sorry. Fuck, stop crying. Shit.” Gage crouched in front of her, fluttering uselessly, but Sadie barely noticed. She held her face. She rocked. She cried.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Dammit, bitch! Get control of yourself! I barely touched you!”

Sadie cried harder. Her mind drowned in tears. Nothing made sense but that.

Finally, they ebbed on their own, and she was quiet. Gage was still crouching in front of her. When she looked up, he reached out and gently thumbed away a wet stream. “Sorry, kitten.”