Faith turned and passed by me on the walk. Pinned to the spot, I watched her go, feeling her unease, how hard it was for her to leave her daughter.
We both knew Bailey would be fine with her parents and that a cruiser was set to come by this address several times during the night, but the worry was still there.
Sometimes, knowing something and trusting in it was the hardest thing to do.
I blew out a strained breath, again wishing I could change it. Take it on for her. Let her know it would all be okay.
I watched her climb into my car, that feeling I kept trying to fight stirring inside me.
The fact that this woman was supposed to be mine.
I wanted to go after her. Comfort her. Make her promises I didn’t deserve to make, but I knew I owed her father a word or two.
I tried to work myself up to it, figuring out what to offer him, what I could say that would make any of this better, but he beat me to the punch. “You’ve got a lot of fuckin’ nerve.”
I swung my attention over my shoulder to where he stood glowering at me from the porch.
Bailey and her grandmother had already disappeared inside.
Anger surged through my veins.
He had no idea why I was there. What I was willing to give.
I beat it back.
He deserved his indignation. I’d let him have it.
“Excuse me?” I said, feigning like I hadn’t heard correctly, gearing myself up for him to lay into me.
I could feel Faith watching us from my car that idled at the curb.
“You know, I was right inside the day it happened,” he said, his teeth clenching as he gritted the words.
I frowned at him, not exactly sure what he was getting at.
“I heard the sirens. They just kept coming and coming. It seemed like it was going on for hours.”
Disquiet pulsed. Stretching tight against my chest as I slowly came to the awareness.
“I knew it.” His face contorted. “I just had this feeling that whatever it was, the sirens whizzing by, the helicopter flying in overhead, that everything was getting ready to change for us, and not in a good way.”
Grief and guilt.
It reached out and grabbed me by the throat.
Squeezing hard.
“I wasn’t even surprised when Mack showed up at my door, asking me to come with him to give Faith the news.”
Agony clawed at my spirit. This mix of hatred and sorrow.
His eyes squeezed closed, and his hands fisted at his sides. Preparing to fight against going back to that day. Or maybe he was just holding himself back from coming at me.
Taking a swing.
Blame it on me. It was my fault, anyway.
“Faith . . . she crumbled in my arms that night, Jace. Weeping. Screaming her denial.”
I could have stopped it. I could have stopped it.
Anguish pushed at the night, and I swore I could physically feel Faith’s in that moment. Could feel her from behind where I thought maybe she was chained inside my car, unable to bear witness to what her father was telling me.
Like she couldn’t experience it all over again.
His eyes latched on to mine. A dark threat, the brown color lighter than Faith’s but just as genuine and real, holding nothing back.
“And I have to wonder . . . wonder if her grief that night came even close to being as bad as it was when you left her.”
The man had to have sucker punched me in the gut. Or maybe got me with a swift kick of a steel-toed boot.
Because a pained wheeze gusted from my lungs, the impact of it close to buckling me in two.
Denial pulsed from the darkest place inside me.
She’d chosen Joseph. I had to remember that.
But her father kept right on, driving knives into my consciousness, the pain so intense I was sure I was seconds from blacking out.
“You don’t know what you did, Jace Jacobs. The pain you caused. And now you’re back, and you think I’m gonna stand here and watch you hurt my daughter all over again? You might have rolled up here in a fancy car and wearing a fancy suit, but that doesn’t change who you are.”
I whirled all the way around to face him, anger coming off me in menacing waves. “Are you joking right now? Have you forgotten why I left? You were there that night, remember?”
“Yeah, I do remember.” There was a threat behind it. “It was the choices you made that got you there.”
A disgusted snort blew through my nose. “You don’t know the first thing about me. You never have. You saw what you wanted to see, just like the rest of the town. If you knew me at all, you’d know the last thing I want is to cause Faith any more pain.”
I was there to stop more of it.
Do my best to fix what had gone wrong.
His gaze narrowed. “Is that so? Then what exactly are you doing here?”
My attention swung to the car.
Faith was angled to the side, watching us, like she was trapped inside.
My eyes flew back to her father, hard and emphatic.
“I’m here to fix what Joseph wrecked.”
Uncertainty blanketed his face. “What are you saying?”
My head shook. “Don’t act like you didn’t know Joseph was rotted to the core. Or did he have you blinded, too?”
Her father fidgeted.
“And you thought he was what was best for her, didn’t you?” I continued, unable to stop the accusations from dripping from my tongue.
“You were the one loaded down with all that shit.”
You have no idea the circumstances. What I was protecting, I wanted to scream. I didn’t. I knew it wouldn’t matter, anyway. It wouldn’t change who he thought I was.
Disgusted, I started walking backward as I faced him, my head held high.
Right where it should have been back then.
“Think you should know, I’m not the same scared, pathetic kid I was back then. I cower to no one, least of all you. I’m not going anywhere.”
Not until I was sure their world was a safe place. Until I could give back a little of what I’d stolen.
The asshole almost grinned. “We’ll see.”
Twenty-Five
Faith
Jace hustled around the front of his car after he passed off the key to the valet.
I shivered watching him, the way his lithe body moved beneath his fitted dark-gray suit, his face striking in the spray of headlights that lit him up like he was supposed to be the jaw-dropping finale of some Fourth of July fireworks display.
At least that was the way he left me.
Feeling awed and stunned and a little stupefied.
Foolish girl.
But it didn’t matter how much I chastised myself or tried to scold my thoughts into submission.
It didn’t matter how many times I tried to tell myself it was too soon.
That I wasn’t ready.
That I was never going to be ready for someone like Jace Jacobs.
The reaction was the same when he got to my side, opened the door, and reached in to help me out.
I let him wrap my hand in his.
Heat flashed up my arm at the contact, and my breath left me on a stuttered rasp, every inch of me shaken by the force of the energy that roared. So loudly I could hear the howl of it in my ears.
He helped me onto unsteady feet, and still I wobbled forward.
“You okay?” he asked, his own voice seeming a little strained, which I was betting had a whole lot to do with whatever my daddy had told him back at the house.
I’d warned my father not to say a word. Told him I was grown, and I could make my own decisions and that I got to make my own mistakes, too.
The fact he obviously hadn’t listened had made me angry, but I’d decided to hold back, figuring it was better to let them get out whatever the two of them needed to say to the other, anyway.
Jace had my hand clasped in his, held between us and up close to his chest, watching me with concern where he stood a few inches from me. That space between us felt just as heavy as the night.
I swallowed hard. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure about that?” A tease glinted in those copper eyes.
Getting away from the house had seemed to lighten Jace. Something easy gliding into his demeanor the farther we’d gotten away from Broadshire Rim. Maybe, to him, it’d felt as if we’d been leaving the threat behind.
To me, it was as if I were getting the chance to put some distance between all the grief and hurt.