unForgivable (An inCapable World Novel Book 2) (16 page)

“I hate you,” I tell her.

“Right back at you, bitch. I’m fifty-one years old and you’re what? Twenty-four? I almost had you. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Go fuck yourself.” I spit out blood and pinch my nose. When Jocelyn spits and her tooth clanks along the tile a wide smile claims my face. Serves her right. I cough up blood and wipe it from my chin with the back of my sleeve. The smell of it makes me dizzy. Or maybe that’s my splitting headache. I reach down and tear a strip off my shirt. I ball it up to press it against my nose. I’m going to be in a lot of pain tomorrow. No doubt my nose is broken. I hope hers is too, though she’ll probably just get it fixed. At least I’ll always know I was responsible for
that
surgery. Maybe she’ll die on the table. No, I’m not that lucky.

“Eight names,” she says. “Eight men released on bail except for one. My husband.”

I still and turn my head to face her. She’s smiling wide, a black hole where one of her incisors used to be. I can’t even be happy about it or gloat, because I know exactly what she’s talking about. When I ran to the back room, I dropped my envelope on the floor.

And she read it.

“Jocelyn…”

“No, you don’t get to speak now. I’m holding all the cards. You will end things with my son. You will make him believe you don’t give a shit about him. Are we clear?”

“No.”

She pushes up on her elbows to a half-sitting position. “Excuse me?”

“You won’t understand this, so I don’t know why I’m bothering to explain, but here goes. Damien deserves to be happy and if that’s with me or someone else, then so be it. But I won’t lie to him and push him away to save myself. I’ve made enough mistakes in my life and I won’t be the reason he turns to you and a lifestyle he wants no part of.”

“Well then, I guess there’s nothing left to say, is there?” she says, glaring at me.

I haul off and smoke her in the chin, knocking her off her elbows to lay flat on the floor. “Yep, nothing left.”

J
ocelyn groans
as she picks herself up from the floor and hobbles out the front door in one stiletto. The other hangs from her left hand. I sit on the cold floor, legs outstretched, watching her leave, wondering how long I have before Frankie and his goons come to get me.

I’m fucked. I know it. And now I have to deal with the most obvious question of “what now?” Problem is I have no fucking clue. My first urge is to disappear, to grab my passport and run and hope that by leaving Damien behind he’ll move on and be happy without me—and hopefully his mother won’t be able to drive her talons deeper into his flesh.

He cares for her. God knows why. Pushing a kid out of your vagina does not make a woman a mother, that’s for damn sure. She hasn’t got a motherly bone in her body. If she did, she would want Damien to be happy on his own terms. She wouldn’t force what she wants on him. And I know him enough to know that his vision of happiness does not include running a criminal enterprise with his mother at his side. Crazy bitch.

This realization hits me hard. It makes me decide once and for all that Mickey couldn’t have loved me. Perhaps not even a little. I always used to say, “he loves me in his own way” but I’m not sure he managed even that. So my decision to take down the Dantes should have nothing to do with him and his promise. Not that it matters now because Jocelyn is about five minutes away from ensuring Frankie puts a hit out on me.

I rise to my feet and the pain in my muscles and joints is sharp and consuming. Cursing, I rub my hip like an old lady as I hobble to the bar. I laugh out loud when I find my envelope missing.

Fucking Jocelyn Dante.
What an asshole.

Now what? Sighing, I sit at the bar and slump forward to rest my elbows on counter. Do I sit and wait for them to come? Not likely. I could act quickly, take them out before they get to me? I have to laugh at that option. I’ve only just become a decent shot.
Decent
, not fantastic. She’s left me with few options and I feel cheated. I guess I would have liked to take them down. I wanted to be the one to do it. Was it realistic? Probably not. I probably should be relieved and perhaps I am to an extent. But the choice should have been my own.

I hate her so much I want to scream.

There is only one thing to do now. Run. Ugh. I’m not a coward, but I’m a realist and I know it’s the only choice I have. And Mona made it easier for me to accomplish. And for Damien too. Will he come with me? Do I want him to? Wow. I never thought I would be making permanent decisions that involve him so quickly and it should scare the hell out of me but I don’t feel any fear at all. Somewhere, deep inside of me, I romanticize about what running off with him will be like…and I don’t hate the idea.

I think I might actually like it. Escaping with him by my side might make me happy. Surprisingly, I feel as if heavy weights have been removed from my shoulders and I know what I need to do. I need to follow my heart and my instincts. I need to come clean to Damien about his mother and hope he doesn’t hate me for trying to shoot her dead. I need to lay all my cards on the table and see where we end up.

I grab some ice and wrap it in a dishcloth before grabbing my emergency bag and heading out the back door. With one hand on the wheel and the other holding ice to my nose, I speed to Damien’s in Mona’s old sedan. It’s late and traffic is light so it takes me mere minutes. Jocelyn’s car isn’t here.

Thankfully. So at least I’ll get to him first. I can’t imagine he’ll be happy I got into a cat fight with his mother, though something tells me it probably isn’t her first fight and it won’t be her last. He might not expect that of me, though. He hasn’t really seen me lose it, yet…though I have pulled a gun on him and he didn’t seem to hold it against me.

Man, my life seriously is messed up.

The lights are off in his second-story apartment. I bite at my nails wondering if this is the best choice, but deep down I know it is—for him. He’s been a good friend to me, and I need to return the favor. Nothing will ever repay him for all he’s done, but this is a start.

Honesty. Like I’ve never been honest before.

I reach his metal door and—just in case—I reach out and try to open it. Of course, it’s locked. I knock lightly, looking back and forth down the alley. A metal can somewhere clinks and rolls on the concrete and I jump back, staring down into the darkness. A black cat scurries across the alley to hide behind a dumpster.

I knock a little harder, deciding to give him another minute or two before I start blowing up his phone.

The lock clicks as he opens it from the other side, then the door scrapes as he frees it from the jamb. Damien is still sliding a shirt over his tattooed arms and over his chest when the door swings fully open. His hair is wild and his cheeks are rosy. As he pulls his shirt down to cover his stomach, he uses his other hand to wipe the sleep from his eyes. “Beth?” He shakes his head and his eyes go wide. “What the hell happened to you?” He takes my arm and pulls me inside, slamming the door shut behind us. After he’s locked all his locks—and I notice there is another one now—he flicks on the light to the staircase. He surveys my wounds, gently taking the ice pack from me to look at my nose. “Jesus,” he whispers.

“You should see the other guy,” I joke without any trace of humor. I don’t have the courage yet to tell him it’s his mother. Baby steps.

Upstairs, he sits me down on a stool at his island counter. He grabs a medical kit and pulls out some gauze and a bottle of something or other. I read the label and it’s says something like saline. He soaks the gauze and starts dabbing the cut above my eye and the dried blood on my upper lip, cheeks, and chin. I wince and jerk away and he apologizes and tries again. This time his touch is lighter.

“You going to tell me what happened?” he says.

“I’m afraid…you’ll be upset.”

He pauses for a beat and then continues. “Don’t ever be afraid to tell the truth. I might not like it, but it’s better than a lie. Lies have a way of destroying people.”

“Yeah, I guess I can agree with that.”

“Your nose is broken.” He leans back, takes a good look. “I need to set it.”

“Oh, God. It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”

He nods. Then, without warning, he clutches my nose and snaps it back into place. I scream out his name, curse him to hell and back, and ball my hands up to rest against my thighs.

“It’s better when you don’t expect it.”

“Fuck! I seriously doubt that.”

He tosses my cloth and ice into the sink and grabs a real ice pack from his freezer. He holds it up to my nose, gently, and I still cringe.

“Better?” he asks.

“A little, but it still hurts.” I swallow blood and almost retch at the sharp taste of metal.

He chuckles. “You look like you got dragged behind a car. I’d expect some pain for a good week or two.”

“Damien…I…I’m in trouble.”

He pulls up a chair and takes my free hand, patiently waiting for me to explain.

“Please don’t hate me.”

“Hate you? Why would I hate you?” he asks softly. “Just tell me what happened.”

“I got into a fight with your mother.”

He raises an eyebrow and then open his mouth to speak but snaps it shut. After a minute of consideration, he calmly repeats, “My mother?”

“She was in the pub when you dropped me off. She broke in somehow and she tried to take the envelope. We kind of started arguing and she jumped over the bar and I ran and then it just kind of escalated from there. But she…she saw what was inside the envelope, Damien. She knows and she’s going to tell Frankie.”

“No. She wouldn’t do that.”

“Are you kidding? She wants me to stay away from you and when I refused, she said she was going to Frankie.”

He takes a moment to process the situation, standing, and pacing as he thinks. He runs a finger along his chin, mumbling under his breath.

“It’s only a matter of time before they come for me.”

“I’ll call her. I’ll tell her to keep it quiet.”

“Damien, you don’t understand. She wants you to be a part of that family—like a
big
part. And I’m in the way. She won’t listen to what you say, even if it means upsetting you. She’s like Uncle Mickey. Nothing will stop her from getting what she wants. Think, Damien. You
know
her.”

“I’ll kill her,” he says, snatching his cell phone off the coffee table. He’s quiet as the phone rings and then he pulls the phone away from his face and punches in her number again. “She’s not answering.”

“Damien, I wanted you to hear about what happened from me. And I want to know that when I’m gone, you’ll stay away from all that.” I bite my lip. This was not what I planned on suggesting before I got here, but now I’m here, I’m too chicken to ask. Because I fear he’ll say no and I’ll have to face rejection on top of all of this.

He stops and turns to me. “When you leave? Where are you going?”

I swallow a lump in my throat, feeling mighty choked up right now. “I don’t know, but if I stay, I’m dead. And I might have lost pretty much everything, but I worry if I stay…I’ll end up getting you killed too.”

“I can take care of myself, Beth.”

When he’s in front of me, he takes my hands and looks deep into my eyes. “I promised you aunt I would look after when she left this world.”

“You knew too, didn’t you?”

He takes my hands and kisses them, avoiding the question.

I tip my head back and close my eyes. “Why couldn’t she tell me? Why? I don’t understand? What did I do wrong? Why couldn’t she trust me?”

He shushes me and strokes my hair as I lean forward to rest my head on his chest.

“She knew you wouldn’t let her die. She didn’t want treatment and she knew you wouldn’t accept that.”

I sniffle and tap my head lightly against him. “So she dealt with this on her own? Do you know how that makes me feel? I could have been there for her. I could have…I could have…”

He kisses my head and gently palms my cheeks to push my head back so I am looking up at him. “You know her. Better than all of us did. Do you think she wanted to spend her last months watching you hurt? She loved you. I’m pretty sure she went out the way she did so you wouldn’t have to stand over her in a hospital bed while she wasted away.”

“I loved her,” I say, my voice strangled.

“I know you did. And she loved you more than anyone.”

I push away and rise to my feet. After spitting blood in the sink, I turn to face him. “Is that why you were so determined to help me when we came to you?”

“At first. And I honestly did have a massive crush on you in school.”

“What about now?”

His face relaxes and his eyes gloss as he reaches out to pull me close. “I adore you. I want to be near you because of you, not her. But yeah, I promised her I’d look out for you. I promised I would be there for you no matter what. And I would have been, even if you decided you wanted nothing to do with me.”

“I knew it couldn’t just be me,” I say as my insecurity creeps in. It had to be something more.

“Beth, listen to me. I want you. However you’ll have me. I want
you
. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop.”

“I’m nothing special. And I’m…” Tears spring from my eyes and trail down my cheeks. “Look how fucked up I am! I have nothing to give you.”

“If you’re leaving, I’m coming with you. There’s nothing left for me here now.”

“I can’t let you do that,” I say, shaking my head.

“I’m not asking you.”

“Damien, we haven’t even been on a date!”

“We have something to look forward to then.”

I groan at him. “I wasn’t going to show you this. I wanted you to make your own choice. But…” I take the passports from my pocket and hand him his.

He opens it and looks up at me. “You got me a fake passport?”

“Mona did before she died. She had one made for me and one for you. Hamish gave them to me the night of Mona’s celebration. I don’t know if she meant for us both to leave together or separately, but I know she wanted us both to be free of this place.”

He leans in and presses a kiss to my lips. “Then what are we waiting for?”

I nod, scared. But not scared that I’m tying myself to him. Oddly enough, that doesn’t scare me in there slightest. It’s the thought that taking him along might hurt him in the long run—that
I
will hurt him in the long run, as Jocelyn said earlier.

“No more thinking,” he says. “We gotta move.”

He snatches a packed bag from the closet. Seems I’m not the only one who has an emergency bag. Perhaps he and I have some things in common, after all. We were both raised by criminals, after all. After he grabs a few more things, we race out to his car. He flicks on the headlights and we peel off, his tires squealing. His phone rings not once but four times on the way to the airport. He doesn’t answer it on Bluetooth and he doesn’t pick it up to check the number. I’m not quite so dismissive. I snatch it and read the number, rhyming it off to him. He glances at me from his peripheral, his lips drawn in a straight line.

“Your mother?”

He doesn’t answer and I know I’m right. I almost want to answer it the next time she calls, so I can hang up on her.

“She was wild at the pub. What’s she gonna do when she finds out I stole you?”

He grins. “Is that what you’re doing? Stealing me?”

I shrug. “Maybe.”

“Then by definition I wouldn’t be yours, and we both know that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

I reach over to touch his face, running my finger along his stubble. Just when I think he couldn’t be any sweeter, he proves me wrong and pulls me in deeper.

“So,” he says. “Where do we want to go?”

W
e stand
in the security lineup at the airport. I fidget and chew on my nails. Every muscle in my body is tense and apparently, it’s obvious.

“You need to relax,” he whispers. “They can smell fear.”

I frown at him. “That doesn’t help me.”

He’s as cool as a cucumber. Pretending to text on his phone and looking up, bored, every minute or so. We move through the line and when it’s my turn, I swear the big guy from border security is eyeing me. I’m positive I’m getting a gloved finger up my ass, but he waves me through. Damien, on the other hand, has to spread his legs and go through the x-ray machine.