The Last Breath (11 page)

“That situation would be too much for anybody. Not everybody would’ve agreed to come back to that kind of hell.”

“Turns out coming back was the easy part. Actually staying is so much harder.”

His hand curls around my thigh and squeezes. “I’m glad you did both.”

“I’m a mess. My life is a mess.” I draw a deep breath, clear my throat. “If I were you, I’d run as fast as I could in the other direction.”

As if in answer, he scoots a little closer on the bed.

“I mean it, Jake. I’m the last thing you need right now. Ask anybody. They’ll all tell you not to get involved with one of Ray Andrews’s daughters. We’re bad news.”

“You’re not bad news. What happened sixteen years ago to your family was tragic, but that doesn’t make you bad news. It has nothing to do with you.”

I lift my head and meet his gaze. Jake Foster just said the best thing I could ever imagine, that I am not my circumstances, and I can think of only one thing to do. I pounce, kiss him hard, maybe too hard, sliding one hand through his hair and gripping his head and holding him close, my tongue reaching right into his mouth and kissing the stuffing out of him. It’s the kind of kiss that makes my entire body hum with energy, the kind of kiss that leaves no doubt of what happens next.

Jake pulls back, panting a little, and gives me a look of mock confusion. “Does that mean you don’t want dessert?”

“Oh, yes.” I yank his T-shirt up and over his head. “I want dessert right this instant.”

14

WHEN I AWAKE,
the morning sun sits high in the sky and paints slanted patterns across the bed through the blinds. Blinking, I will my eyes to adjust to its golden light and turn to look at the man still asleep on the pillow next to me. Jake Foster is delicious. His cheeks are flushed, his thick hair rumpled, one arm thrown above his head. Delicious enough to be on a billboard somewhere. Delicious enough to scoop up and eat for breakfast.

Breakfast?

I shoot upright in bed, reality stinging my skin like a swarm of horseflies. Shit. I glance at the clock—11:07 a.m., double shit—and throw back the covers. “Shit.”

Jake presses a palm to my lower back. “What’s wrong?”

I spring out of bed, snatching pieces of my clothing from the floor. “We weren’t supposed to fall asleep. I wasn’t supposed to fall asleep. I was supposed to be home hours ago. No. I was supposed to be home last night.”

Jake yawns and sits up, reaching on the floor for his jeans. He takes his sweet time sticking one leg in, then the other, pulling them up over his bare ass.

I shove my legs through the holes of my panties. They’re all twisted and wrong and get caught halfway up my thigh, and I stomp back out. “Goddammit!”

“Calm down.” He comes around the bed to where I’m standing, picking up my bra along the way. “I’ll help you.”

“You don’t understand.” I yank my panties to my hip, inside out now but I don’t have time to care, and snatch my bra from his hand. “I’m over an hour late—scratch that, over a day late. What am I going to tell Cal? What am I going to tell my father?” Jake pushes my T-shirt over my head, holds it so I can ram my arms through the sleeves. “That I was too busy getting fucked every which way to remember I’m supposed to be taking care of him?”

He raises a brow at my choice of words but remains silent.

I find my jeans in the hallway, spot my sneakers and jacket on the floor by the front door. “This is bad. This is really, really bad.” I shove my feet into my shoes and yank my coat onto one arm, pivot to the door, then stop. “My bag. Where the hell is my bag? Oh, Jesus. I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Not exactly the sensation I was going for when I was fucking you every which way.”

The harshness of my words on Jake’s tongue hits me like an electric jolt, paralyzing my limbs and bolting my untied sneakers to the floor. “Oh. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Jake reaches an arm into the kitchen, plucks my bag from the table, drapes it over my shoulder. “How did you mean it, then?”

I can tell he’s trying to keep his voice neutral, and my thoughts skid into Reverse, my mouth backtracking. “I just meant...” My gaze drops to his chest, thinking it would be a safe place to park my eyes, but he’s still shirtless—deliciously shirtless—so I drag my gaze back up to his face. “My little temper tantrum back there had nothing to do with you. Honestly it didn’t. I’m just really angry I let myself get so distracted.”

His mouth dips like it wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. “I’m a distraction.”

“Yes. Put a shirt on so I can think straight.”

He smiles then, and good Lord, it hits me like a narcotic. Without my permission, my palm slides against his bare rib cage, up to his chest. He captures my hand, his fingers threading through mine, and pulls me up against him.

“But I do have to go,” I remind him as well as myself.

But if I’m in such a hurry to go, why am I not more eager to leave?

Jake nods, brushes a kiss on my lips, yet doesn’t release me. “When will I see you again?”

“I don’t know. Cal’s here all weekend.”

“This Cal person you keep mentioning. Is he my competition?”

“What?” I laugh. “Ew, no. Cal’s my uncle, and my father’s attorney. I just meant it will be hard for me to get away while he’s here.”

“Ah.”

“So I’ll kind of need to stick close to home, especially after bailing on everyone last night.”

“Ah,” he says again, and the disappointment in his voice makes me want to stay until next week. Jake steps back, threads the zipper of my coat, drags the pull until it stops under my neck. “Just don’t forget about me, okay?”

I give my head a little shake. Like that’s possible.

After one more kiss he opens the door, waiting in the doorway while I make my way down the stairs. At the bottom step, I turn to wave one last time. “Go back to bed.”

“I will, and I’ll be thinking about you the entire time.”

* * *

Returning to the house is the mother of all walks of shame. Past the protesters, stunned for once into wide-eyed silence when they get a load of me, wild-haired and black-eyed, puttering past them in my rental. Across the lawn and up the stairs to the door, while reporters speculate story lines for my less-than-wholesome appearance and their cameras follow my every hurried step. Into the living room, where Cal and Fannie sit on either side of my father, their expressions a combination of displeasure and surprise. I might as well be wearing a sign: Three Orgasms in One Night, Y’all. A New Personal Record!

“Good Lord, Gia.” Uncle Cal looks pissed. “What on earth happened to you?”

Fannie gives a snort of laughter and returns to her blood pressure cuff.

At her right elbow, my father flops his head back onto the pillow and glares up at the ceiling. Balloons bob in the air above his bed, their cheerful colors and message—Welcome Home!—a burning contrast to the bitter man dying beneath them. I don’t have to wonder who they’re from. Anyone who cares enough to have sent them is already here, for Dad’s first night home.

The same night I just missed.

The breath hitches halfway down my throat. “It’s just a bruise. I’m fine.”

“I’m more concerned with where in God’s name you’ve been all night,” Cal says.

I give him an I’m-thirty-four-so-don’t-even-go-there look. “Out.”

“Out?” The question carries a ton of weight. Accusation, disappointment, blame. “Out where? Stop. Don’t you dare answer that. I may be an old man, but I’m not that old.”

I unzip my coat, shucking it along with my bag onto the chair by the door, and head into the kitchen. I don’t have to turn to know the person I hear following me is Cal.

“You could’ve at least called. What if you’d been in a car wreck, or floating facedown in the Holston River? One more minute and I would’ve filed a missing persons report.”

“My phone died.”

Technically, I’m not entirely certain my answer isn’t a fib. I heard my phone’s incessant buzzing while I was...er, otherwise occupied. Somewhere around ten o’clock last night it stopped, I assume because of the battery.

“You should’ve checked in.”

I pour cold coffee into a yellow mug and pop it in the microwave. “I didn’t have a charger.”

There. That one was for sure the truth.

Cal crosses his arms, leans a hip against the countertop. “Your priorities are messed up, baby girl. Last night was your father’s first night home in sixteen years, and you missed it.”

His words ignite a slow burn deep in my belly, and guilt combines with my anger and resentment to make a fast flame. I step a little closer, stand a little taller.

“Excuse me, but as I recall, I was the only one who didn’t miss his homecoming. So don’t talk to me about priorities, and don’t you dare try to guilt-trip me. I put my life on hold to be here, and as far as I can tell, I’m the only one.”

“You knew I’d only be here on the weekends until I’ve wrapped up my case.”

“But where are Bo and Lexi? Did either of them tell you they’d help?”

Cal doesn’t shake his head, but he doesn’t nod, either.

“Figures.” The microwave dings, and I reach in for my coffee. “A little advance notice would’ve been nice.”

“I was hoping you could help me talk some sense into those siblings of yours.”

“I’d have to catch Lexi first.” A splash of resentment for my sister pools on my tongue, and I chase it down with coffee that’s just as bitter. “But Bo promised he’d call sometime today with plans for tomorrow.”

“Good. Let’s just hope he can muster up enough contrition for your father to forgive him for not getting his sorry ass over here sooner.”

Not for the first time, I wish I had Cal’s sense of conviction as to my father’s innocence. What about Dean Sullivan’s testimony and the lack of foreign prints, when my father insisted there were intruders?

What about his injuries, bruises on his forearms and a lump on the back of his head, which the medical witness testified could have been self-inflicted?

And what about the little nuggets of new information I received from Jeffrey Levine and that reporter, both of which only added fuel of doubt to an already smoldering fire? After all, if Ella Mae was having an affair, that gives my father the one thing the D.A. couldn’t sixteen years ago: motive.

For all these years, I’ve held on to my questions. Now it’s time I finally get some answers.

“Did you know Dean Sullivan still lives next door?”

Cal dips his head in a curt nod.

“Then you also probably know he turned into the crazy town drunk. But why? What happened to him after the trial?”

He lifts a shoulder. “I’m not exactly on his Christmas card list.”

“I hear his statement took six hours to extract. Isn’t that a little suspicious?”

“Six hours is on the long end, but it’s not unheard of in a murder case.”

“Six hours would be long enough to coerce someone into a lie.”

My last word jolts him like a poke with a live wire. He stiffens, snatches me by the biceps, and pulls me deeper into the kitchen, past the table and into the hallway by the back door. And then he whirls around to face me so suddenly I startle, and a swell of coffee sloshes onto the linoleum floor.

“This is one heck of a fishing expedition you’re taking me on, and I surely don’t like the hook you’re trying to sink in my side. So why don’t you just spit it out? What is it you want to know?”

“Did you ever hear any rumors of Ella Mae having an affair?”

My question clearly shocks him. His eyes widen, and his coloring fades more than a few shades. “Who told you anything about an affair?”

“A reporter asked me about it yesterday, and if jealousy was the reason Dad killed her. He said the D.A.’s office had evidence.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. I got in my car and drove off.”

He nods once. “Good. That was good. I don’t want you talking to any reporters.”

“I’m not stupid, Cal. I interface with the media all the time, and I know how they can twist your words to suit their purposes. What I need to know from you is, is it true?”

“Of course it’s not true. The D.A. who inherited this case has vowed your father will die in prison. But his allegations of an affair aren’t backed with even one lick of evidence. Ella Mae and Ray were fine. Happily married fine.” He leans back and crosses his arms. “Are we done here?”

Not even close. “Do you know Jeffrey Levine?”

Cal’s eyes darken, just for an instant, but long enough for me to see that he knows Jeffrey, and that he doesn’t like him. And then his face melds back into his courtroom mask.

“Yes, I know of Mr. Levine. Why?”

“Because I hear he’s writing a book about Dad’s case. One that proclaims he’s innocent, and that his trial was a gross miscarriage of justice.”

“He’s right. Sending an innocent man to prison for life is a gross miscarriage of justice.”

“He meant your defense. He called it shoddy.”

Now Cal doesn’t bother hiding his surprise, or his fury. His neutral expression mushrooms into something livid and then clenches. Slammed brows, squeezed lips. He leans close and lowers his voice, a gesture I know is meant to intimidate his witness.

“Listen up, darlin’, ’cause I’m only gonna say this once. Mr. Levine is a fool, and you would be, too, to think even for one second I didn’t do everything in my power to keep your father out of prison.”

Though he didn’t phrase it as a question, I know Cal is waiting for my answer. Did I think, even for a second, that his defense might have been shoddy? Maybe. Jeffrey certainly knows more about the law than I do, and I was eighteen at the time of the trial. I didn’t understand half of what was going on, and I was too traumatized to remember the rest.

“I’m just trying to figure out why you didn’t fight the verdict.”

Cal looks away, purses his lips, looks back. “That’s not really an answer, now, is it?”

I bury my nose in my mug. My memory is good enough to remember Cal’s courtroom moves. His unblinking poker face. The way his moods ricocheted from businesslike to derisive to cordial and back. This is just the first time I’ve been at the receiving end of his interrogation tactics, and I can’t say I like playing the role of Cal’s witness.

He grows tired of waiting for an answer I’m not willing to give. “I did fight the verdict, dammit. I filed an appeal with the Tennessee Court of Appeals, but it was denied.”

“I meant after that. Couldn’t you have kept going, all the way up to the Supreme Court if you had to?”

Cal all but rolls his eyes. “You watch too much TV, child.”

“I’m being serious.”

He fills his lungs with enough air to strain the buttons on his starched Brooks Brothers shirt, then huffs it out, loud and long. “It’s not that simple.”

“Humor me here, Cal.” I lower my coffee cup and soften my expression, my tone, my attitude. “Please. Please explain it to me.”

“Your father’s case took me over four months to try. It generated tens of thousands of pages of transcripts, hundreds of exhibits and a stack of pleadings higher than Mount Le Conte.” Cal’s voice has risen at a steady climb, booming on the last word hard enough to shake the windowpanes in the door behind me, and he pauses to regain his composure. “The Appeals Court looked at everything we had, and they still denied us. Based on their reasoning, none of us, including your father, who was rigorously involved in every aspect of his case, had any reason to think filing another appeal would result in a reversal of the verdict.”

I know I should feel convinced by Cal’s words—I so want to feel convinced—but Jeffrey’s allegations keep nipping at my memories of that awful time. I lean against the back door and gaze at the floor.