The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel) (22 page)

Lips that I kissed not long ago.

The taste of him, the sensation of his body against mine, is suddenly fresh in my mind, and heat stirs low in my belly. As I take another sip, he glances up, catching the intensity in my gaze; how could he not? Again warmth flushes up my neck, into my cheeks.

He stills for a moment, his black eyes darkening at the interest he’s detected in mine. “You didn’t have to go to bat so heavily for me, Rach.”

I blow out a heavy breath. “It almost backfired. I hope it doesn’t yet.”

“You put everything on the line for me—your paper, your own standing in this community.” Sensual tension shimmers, dark and layered. Dangerous and fragile. I wonder if we’re ready for the damage that might be caused by the bombshell we dropped today. I glance at the laptop, almost scared to look now.

“No,” I say softly. “Not just for you. For something bigger than us. For truth. For justice. For Quinn and Sophia and Peter. This is about the town healing, about the Zukanov family finding closure. It’s about me doing the right thing with the newspaper, the thing my grandfather would have done.” I push hair back that has fallen over my eye. “Ironically,” I say with a soft laugh, “it means being vilified in the process. And while justice and closure might come of it, there’s no way this can happen without some kind of collateral damage. And that sucks. I don’t want to tear lives apart, either.”

“Whoever committed this crime is the one tearing lives apart, not you. It’s something they put in motion themselves a long time ago.”

“Right.” Ripples in a pond. Sometimes they take time to reach a distant shore. Sometimes they grow in power as they travel, a silent, insidious surge.

He’s silent for several beats, then a smile curves slowly over his beautiful mouth, and his eyes catch the candlelight. “We’ll make a crusader out of you yet. Sophia would be proud.”

I stick my tongue out at him. And suddenly we’re kids again. Teens. In love. The years overlapping. The force of it all is too much and I get up abruptly, go to the window. Wineglass in hand, I stare over the moonlit lake.

“You really think it was one of them?” I say. “One of those guys at the Shady Lady today, who killed Merilee, raped Amy?”

He’s silent. I glance over my shoulder. He’s watching me with a feral intensity. I know what he’s thinking. I know what he wants. I can see the desire sharpening his features. I can see it in the deep blackness of his eyes. My body wants him, too. The heat, the ache for him coils tighter and tighter in my stomach, like a spring that’s going to snap. I break the gaze, turn back to the lake. But my heart is racing and my legs are jelly.

“It’s the only place I can think to start.” Jeb pushes his empty bowl away and leans back on his hands, the firelight playing over his chest, the angry scar. “One of them, or all of them. I’m hoping that if one or more of them is innocent, they’ll crack and turn on the others to save their own skin. Or their family members, friends, might buckle under the weight of secrets.”

He gets up, sits on the sofa, pats the seat next to him. “Come, let’s see what we’ve done.”

I take a seat beside him, and for a minute I can’t focus with his bare skin so close. I can scent the soap and shampoo he’s used. I lean forward to click on the laptop. But he places his hand on my arm, stopping me.

“Wait.
I . . .
need to ask you something first, Rachel.”

My pulse spikes. “What?”

He glances away for a minute, then says, “Will you tell me about my mother, how it happened? Do you know?”

I go dead still inside. “You don’t know how she died?”

“Only that it was her heart. All Sophia could tell me was that she was found dead on the property. I don’t even know who exactly found her.”

His eyes, the emotion in them, is both fierce and tender. All the old love I’ve ever felt for him as a boy, then a young man, resurfaces, the memories swirling thick. I am reminded of the day he rescued an injured robin, how gentle his hands were. And of another day when he took me hunting and I asked him at the very last moment not to shoot the deer. How he lowered his rifle without question. This man was sensitive and empathetic, and he hid it deep from most people under a tough-ass shell. I’m reminded of how deeply I hurt him by telling the lawyers what he confessed to me about his father. Guilt slices sharp and cruel through me. For a moment I cannot speak.

“Rachel?” he says softly.

Tension builds in my muscles and my mouth goes dry. I inhale deeply. “She died right by the river.”

“She was outside? By the water?”

I clear my throat. “It looks as though she was hanging salmo
n . . .
” I force myself to meet the intensity in his eyes. “It was two weeks before they found her.”

“Two weeks? How do you know this? Through Rescue One?”

“First responders—they talk privately.”

He stares. I can see the pounding of his pulse in the carotid at his neck, under the coho. It makes the fish appear alive, as if it has its own racing heart.

“Go on,” he says.

“There’d been some wildlife activity. Bear. Probably attracted by the salmon.”

He inhales, slowly, deeply, that dangerous edge in him surfacing. The whole cabin seems to shimmer with his quiet ferocity.

“A whole two weeks, and no one called her? No one went to check on her? No one missed her? They let a bear eat her?”

I remain silent.

He surges to his feet, drags both hands over his hair, paces, his muscles rippling bronze in firelight. He’s suddenly a caged beast of a man, the cabin too small. I swallow. I cannot imagine him in a tiny cell all these years.

He stops in front of the window overlooking the lake and just stands there with his back to me. A man broken but not bowed. Compassion slices through me.

I get up, touch his shoulder. His skin quivers under my touch. Supple, and warm.

“I did this to her,” he says. His voice is strange. Distant. Husky. “I became a pariah that night, and by default, so did she.”

“No,” I whisper. “If what you say is true, someone else did this to you, to her.”

He spins around, eyes sparking with fierce emotion. “
I
f
. . .
it’s always
if
.”

“That’s why we need to prove it. So there is no doubt in anyone’s mind.”

“But you, Rachel,
you
still say
if
.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

His face darkens. “Not one goddamn person on this earth ever just believed in me, apart from her, my mother. Do you know that? Not even you. Not when it truly mattered.”

His words deliver a gut punch so powerful I step back, winded. “I was eighteen. It wa
s . . . I . . .
” But explanation fails me. We’ve been here. I suspect we’ll revisit this place many more times yet, because even in my own heart I’ve not managed to come to terms with the role I played in his conviction.

He’s breathing hard, a vein swelling on his temple under the butterfly sutures I applied earlier. It makes his cut look angry.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “Jesus, I am sorry.
I . . .
” He walks away, then spins back, pointing his powerful arm in the direction of my house. “But this is why I have to fix things before Quinn finds out who I am. I can never let this same thing happen to my daughter, let her become a pariah like me. Like my mother. Do you see? She’d be forced to wear my history like a label. A label she might not be able to shake for the rest of her life. That’s what happens when you put people in a box, Rachel. You judge them. You force them to wear a label. You force them to begin to think that they’re somehow deficient and, because of it, they make the wrong choices in life. Choices you can’t undo. This is what Sophia was trying to set right. This was why she and Peter were help—”

I touch his arm. His skin is hot, damp. The connection is electric and stops him instantly. He glowers at my hand on his skin, my pale tone against his dark. Slowly he looks up at me. Heat floods to my groin, my nipples going tight. Suddenly I cannot breathe.

He grabs me, yanks my body hard against his. His hand slides brusquely up my neck, his fingers digging, fisting into my thick hair. He pulls my head back, forcing me to look up, and he presses his mouth down hard over mine. I melt instantly, going hot and wet and boneless as I open my mouth to him. His tongue enters, tangles with mine, and I feel his other hand sliding down my waist, going round my hip, cupping my butt. He jerks my pelvis against his thigh. The length of his erection presses hard and hot against my stomach.

My mind goes blank as fire erupts inside me. I fumble desperately with the buckle of his jeans as he kisses me. I undo the zipper, and his erection swells hot and hard into my hands. A soft groan of pleasure escapes my throat as I massage him.

Jeb edges me back toward the woodstove, a moan coming from deep in his chest as I work his erection, and he lowers me to the rag rug in front of the fire. He breaks our kiss, looks into my eyes.

“Protection.” His voice is thick.

“Bathroom cabinet,” I manage to whisper, my voice hoarse. “Close the drapes.”

He leaves me lying there, blood pounding, as he goes to fetch the condoms Trey left down here. Things had been going bad between us with Quinn in the house. We’d tried a romantic tryst in the boathouse, but it hadn’t salvaged a thing. I hear Jeb in the bathroom. I have time to change my mind. I can’t—I’ve ached for this on some level since I was a teen.

He wanted me back then, too. I know it now. But he refused because I was drunk, and young, because he wanted even more, my promise to be with him for life. He wanted our first time to be special and with ceremony. He was more chivalrous and noble than any of the guys out here, yet he was the one vilified.

He comes out of the bathroom. Naked. His erection sheathed and gleaming in a condom. His thighs muscular. My throat goes bone-dry as he pulls the drapes shut over the windows facing the house. Somehow he seems even more powerful unclothed. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

He kneels naked before me. The years between then and now melt away as he reaches for the hem of my sweater, lifts it over my head. I undo my bra, let it drop. He stares at my breasts. My nipples are so tight they hurt, they ache, with the desire that pulses between my thighs. Every molecule in my body is screaming. I want him. All of him. Deep inside, his body, hair, chafing against me. My vision starts to blur as he lowers me onto my back, takes my nipple in his mouth, sucks, scores with his teeth, nipping. A scream, a pressure, builds low in my chest as I arch into him, desperate for more. He moves his tongue down my belly, slow, tortuous, slick, warm. Molten liquid flares through my groin. I feel like I’m going to blow apart. He unzips my jeans, sliding them down my hips, and he groans with pleasure as he sees my lace panties.

He slides his hand into them, cupping me warmly between the legs. I feel as though I will come just like that. I try to breathe. Try to make it last. His fingers part me and he slides one inside, then another. Moving his fingers rhythmically up inside me, he lowers his body over mine, starts kissing me again, his tongue slicking with mine as his fingers move inside me, his thumb rubbing my sensitive nub. I start to tremble. I open my legs wider, arching into his touch, wanting to feel him deeper, becoming aggressive with my kiss, biting his lips, and something snaps in him.

He yanks my panties off and we’re rolling, tangling on the rug in front of the fire. He’s between my thighs, kneeing me open even wide
r . . .
and he plunges into me. To the hilt. Hot, hard, quivering. I gasp, my fingers digging into his back as my body accommodates to the size of him. I can feel his balls, soft against my skin. Then he’s moving, sliding, driving into me. Hotter, harder, faster. I’m arching, sweating, shaking, desperate to have him even deeper yet, I’m aching for something even more than the sensation inside of me. More than sex. I’m aching to be whole. To be released.

I gasp in shock as he suddenly withdraws and flips me round onto all fours in front of the fire. I’m panting. I brace my hands and knees far apart, dipping my spine, arching my buttocks toward him, wanting him. He mounts me from behind, cupping my breasts tightly as he thrusts against me with a slapping sound, his erection hitting a sweet spot oh so deep inside me. My muscles wind tighter, tighter, I grow slicker, wetter, hotter as he slides inside me. I pant harde
r . . .
and suddenly I am frozen. Every muscle in my body is gripped in some kind of invisible vise. I can’t breathe, even my heart seems to stop.

I shatter with a scream that seems to come from someone else, not me. I’m gasping for air as wave after wave of contractions seize control of me, rippling through my insides, rippling over the length of his erection. He grips me tight against his groin, holding dead still as I come apart around his hard cock. When I sag forward, limp with release, he pulls out of me, spins me onto my back, and I flop loosely onto the rug, legs open where I am wet and hot and swollen and still pulsing. He looks down into my eyes. His features are feral, aggressive. His hair glistens on his shoulders in the firelight, and his pulse pumps at his neck under his tattoo. He runs his gaze slowly down my body.

CHAPTER 17

Rachel was sprawled naked on the rug in front of him. Real. Not a dream. But full of warm, pulsing life, her dark hair spread in a tangle around her face as she looked up at him with shining eyes, swollen lips. Her cheeks were pink, her skin painted pale gold by the firelight. Her nipples, a dark-rose color, were still tight. Jeb allowed his gaze to travel slowly down the length of her body to the dark flare of hair between her legs, damp and inviting. Her thighs lean, creamy. A serious surgical scar cut up between her groin and the apex of her thigh. Another round her hip. The skiing accident had almost torn her leg from her torso, he’d read. His chest crunched with emotion, with something he could only describe as love.

She smiled at him, a slow, seductive smile that invited him in, that clawed back the years, made every terrible thing just melt away. She reached up, taking his waist and raising her knees, opening to him. Jeb’s vision swirled into shades of scarlet and red as he lowered himself and slowly thrust his cock back into her. She was hot, tight, her muscles humming. And as he sank into her, he felt as though he’d somehow come home. Like he fit, belonged.

She wrapped her legs tightly around him, hooking her ankles behind his butt, and she raised her pelvis up, meeting him thrust for thrust, rotating her hips, rubbing him, increasing friction, heat. The ferocity of her desire, the intensity of his pleasure were blinding. His ribs hurt. He felt the thud of blood under the cut on his head. The pain didn’t matter. It had become delicious. He wanted it all and he welcomed the realness of it.

Jeb sank deeper, and even deeper, plumbing her core for something he couldn’t seem to touch. And suddenly he came. He shattered into her with explosive, blinding release, and he collapsed down into her arms. They held each other tight, and there were tears in his eyes at the sheer incredible pain and pleasure of sexual relief.

He had not made love to a woman since Amy. Since he was nineteen. And it had not been pleasant. Nothing could describe what this meant to him now. To have Rachel, finally, in his arms. The only woman he ever loved in this way. Ever wanted.

And as he held on to her, she kissed his neck, his tears, and she pushed damp hair back from his brow. She looked into his eyes, and something silent passed between them.

The moment was both so powerful and fragile. In his arms he held his future. Dreams. Her. She was open to him. She wanted him. It could happen. Yet at the very same time, it had shown Jeb just how much he really stood to lose now.

The stakes had just shot sky-high. Rachel. His daughter. His innocence.

Home.

Jeb could barely breathe.

He rolled onto his side and pulled a blanket down from the back of the sofa to cover them. They lay there together in silence, fingers entwined, listening to the crack and pop of the fire, watching moonlight behind the bare fingers of trees outside the window. It was hauntingly quiet outside after all that wind. Even inside he could feel the oppressive, crackling quietness that preceded a big storm.

“What are you thinking?” he said to her.

She turned her head to face him and smiled. “I thought it was the woman in a relationship who got to say that.”

A relationship.

“I’m scared,” she said finally. “To love you again. And I don’t know how to stop this now. I love Quinn, too.
I . . .
it all feels so fragile.”

He leaned forward, kissed her mouth. “Do you believe in fate, Rachel?” he whispered over her lips. “Do you believe that patterns are prewritten into the fabric of our universe, and we can’t escape them?”

She stared up at the rafters. “I don’t know what I believe.”

“Maybe this was always meant to be. Us. But the pattern was broken. We need to find a way to put it back together again.”

She inhaled deeply. “I feel something bad is coming.”

He moved the hair back from her eyes. He was afraid, too. This meant everything to him. He was going to keep shaking things up in Snowy Creek, but he hoped the cracks that opened weren’t going to swallow them both up, too.

They lay together for a long while, and Jeb felt it too, a sense of something evil coming. That they were presently in the quiet eye of the storm, and things were going to hit hard, in more ways than one.

Quinn knelt on her bed in the dark, watching the boathouse. The drapes had been drawn on the side of the building that faced the main house, but light glowed behind the drapes and she knew Rachel was in there. With him. A strange feeling of jealousy filled her. She missed her mom and dad so much it hurt. She missed her mom’s smell, and the cool touch of her hand on her forehead, the comfort of her voice. The sound of her laughing. She missed her dad’s grunts, like a big old bear, when he listened to her tell stories about school. It felt like there was a sock in her throat again and her eyes burned. She dived back into her bed and pulled her duvet over her head. She lay there in a tight ball, refusing to cry. It was easier to be angry.

A flat, predawn grayness bled into the sky. Rachel stirred, then sat up suddenly and scrabbled among the pile of clothes for her watch.

“God, look at the time!” She lurched up and grabbed one of the warm flannel shirts she’d brought down to the boathouse for him. “We need to watch the coverage quickly—I don’t want Quinn to wake up in the house without me.” She pulled the shirt on and hastily buttoned it over her bare breasts.

Jeb propped himself up onto his arm, smiling as he watched her locate her lace panties, pull them on, her muscles moving smooth and long and lean in her legs. He felt himself stir in the groin all over again. She was the most beautiful thing he knew.

She sat on the couch. “Come.”

He joined her, and side by side they watched the newsfeeds from CBC, then CTV, then Global Television. Rachel’s body stiffened at the clip of her arguing with Adam.

She pulled up the
Leader
web page, and together they read what Cass had written. Highlighted in a pull quote was the thrust of the article.

Jeb Cullen claims in an exclusive interview with the
Snowy Creek Leader
that four men who testified against him in court almost ten years ago lied in an effort to frame him for sexual assault and murder. Cullen alleges Harvey Zink, Levi Banrock, Clint Rudiger, and Luke LeFleur all perjured themselves because they either have something to hide, or they are protecting the real killer of Merilee Zukanov, and Cullen’s back in town to prove it.

“She did a fine job,” Rachel said. She opened up the comment threads, starting with the ones following the
Leader
article, then going to the comments on the Twitter and Facebook feeds. This thing was going viral. It was blowing up. There were comments on the pages of CBC, Global, and CTV. And the
Sun
and
Province
newspapers. Hundreds of comments, and several camps forming. There was vitriol and hate being directed toward both her and Jeb, but heavy support was also coming from several key quarters, including the civil liberties society, prisoner’s rights groups, plus the Lower Mainland Restorative Society and supporters of the UBC Innocence Project. There were hate comments being expressed toward the local SCPD cops and police in general. Others were calling for the “liars” and “perjurers” to come forward and tell the truth. Yet more comments called on the wives and families of these men who allegedly beat Jeb up to look for signs and to do the right thing. Others demanded closure for the Zukanov family.

Jeb whistled.

She turned to him. “You got what you wanted, Jeb.”

“I couldn’t have done that—not at that level—without your support.”

She dragged her hand through her hair, and for a moment they sat in silence on that little sofa in the warm cabin, trying to digest the impact of what they’d done.

“I wonder when the other shoe will drop.” She glanced at the window. “I should get back the house before Quinn wakes.”

“Rachel—”

She turned. He kissed her hard and sudden, holding her face in both hands. “Thank you.”

Her gaze flickered, and Jeb saw that she understood; he was thanking her for a lot more than the story.

“What now?” she said. “We just wait?”

“I want to go see the house where Amy shot herself.”

“Why?”

“I just want to see it.”

She frowned slightly. “You are telling me everything, right?”

“I’m not lying, Rachel.” A twinge of guilt quivered through him as he said the words. But he wasn’t going to voice his suspicions. Not until he was certain. She’d dealt with enough since his arrival.

She regarded him in silence, something unreadable entering her eyes. “I’m coming with you,” she said.

“No. You’ve done enough.”

She got to her feet. “I’m coming, whether you like it or not. I’ll fetch you and we’ll go over once Brandy has taken Quinn to bike camp. I’ll leave you my laptop in the meanwhile.”

“I mean it—I want you to step back now. You’re in deep enough.”

Her frown deepened as a cool glimmer of suspicion entered her eyes. “That’s just it—I’m in too deep to step back. This is my fight, too, now. There’s no debate, I’m going with you.”

Silence hung for a beat. He inhaled deeply.

“You’re holding something back, aren’t you, Jeb? Is it because I betrayed your confidence before, because you can’t fully trust—”

“Fine,” he snapped, memories of his father suddenly swirling sickeningly through his brain. With the memories came the familiar, nauseating crush of remorse. “Come if you want. After that I want to go see Piper Smith.”

“Piper? What the hell for?”

“Because Piper was the catalyst. She’s the one who first got that lab tech to talk about the evidence that wasn’t presented at trial. She’s the one who got into Sophia’s and Amy’s heads that Amy might have remembered something. She inspired Sophia to start the hypnosis with Amy. Amy wa
s . . .
starting to remember things.” He avoided the next train of thought. He got up and went instead into the small kitchenette to put some coffee on.

She stared after him. “Jeb,” she said quietly, darkly. “You promised me that you’d be open. I want—I
need
—to trust you one hundred percent.”

A complex mix of guilt and determination wormed deeper. He nodded, filled the coffeepot. “Want some coffee?”

“No, I told you, I need to get back before Quinn wakes.”

As she reached for her jeans, he asked, “Did Quinn ever say why she hit that kid?”

Rachel stilled, jeans in hand. He turned to face her. He could see in her eyes she knew why the fight had happened between the girls.

“Trust—it cuts both ways, you know.”

She hesitated. “The kid told Quinn she was adopted.”

It went through him like an ice shaft. Slowly, he set the pot of water down on the counter. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“I just did, Jeb.”

“Just that was she adopted, nothing else?”

“Nothing more,” she said too quickly. “Nothing about you being her father. No one knows that.”

“Sit down,” he said. “Tell me. All of it. What exactly happened at the school? Who’s the kid?”

For a moment she didn’t meet his eyes. Then she sat slowly, her face tightening. Her jeans were clutched in her hands. “Missy Sedgefield.”

“Sedgefield? As in Stacey Sedgefield, from back in our school days?”

“Yes. Stacey is Missy’s mother. A single mother. She was already pregnant the night of the pit party. Father never stepped up.” Rachel paused. Then said quietly, “Trey and Stacey are seeing each other. They’re living together.”

Jeb narrowed his eyes. “Did Missy learn from Trey that Quinn was adopted?”

“A lot of people know my sister adopted a baby, Jeb. That in itself was never a secret.”

Tension, dark, rose between them. And Jeb suddenly understood the reticence, the look of disquiet and guilt, in Rachel’s eyes. “Trey knows, doesn’t he? He knows I am Quinn’s birth father. Jesus. I never thought if it. The two of you were engaged. You were going to get married. You brought Quinn home togethe
r . . .
you told him.”

“I had to.”

Why did this grate him so? Because it was Trey? His nemesis since school. His rival for Rachel’s affection. The A-hole who drunkenly called him a half-breed that night when his hand was up Rachel’s shirt. The guy who then sat in the witness box telling the jury he’d seen Jeb drive off with Merilee and Amy, that Jeb had threatened both him and Rachel.