Drawn, I pushed to my feet and edged that way, couldn’t stay away a second longer.
She felt me approaching
She always had.
A tremor of awareness slipped down her spine, need a force that blistered across her damp, soft skin.
I pressed my nose to it, to the light sweat that had gathered on her nape.
I inhaled.
Tucked her down.
Everything I was determined to keep.
“You are a vision,” I whispered at her flesh.
Chills skated. I kissed across them. Gathering them on my tongue.
“Jace,” she whispered, barely turning to look at me from over her delicate shoulder that carried so much weight.
That’s what she was.
Delicate and strong.
Fragile and compelling.
Her attention traveled to where her daughter played quietly on the quilt she had set out for her.
I followed her eyes, my heart doing that crazy thing again, my words rough where they hooked in the air. “She is the most incredible thing.”
Impossible in her perfection.
“I’m doin’ my best . . . to give her the life she deserves.”
I felt the intensity of Faith’s stare where it landed on the side of my face. I looked back at her. “She’s incredible because of you. Because she is filled with you. With your belief and your love and your strength.”
Her throat bobbed when she swallowed, her voice pensive. “She’s not going to remember him. Soon, she’ll forget. He’ll be nothing but a vague memory in a picture book.”
Part of that felt like a slap to the face. The other totally got it. Her worry. Her devotion to her daughter bigger than either of us.
Needing the connection, I reached out and trailed my fingers down her bare arm. “I’m so sorry. That you both lost him.”
I didn’t know how to relate to that.
The idea of Joseph being here.
Not when these two were the only things I wanted.
I also didn’t want to be the dick who discounted what he’d been.
Her face pinched, and her tone turned wistful, as light as the gentle breeze that whispered through the blooms of purple roses.
“After it happened, I’d felt this consuming need to keep his memory alive. To constantly talk about him to her and show her pictures.”
Pain etched her gorgeous face when she let her attention travel back to me. “And I can feel all that slippin’ away, Jace. His memory. Who he was. And now, I’m left wondering if I even knew him at all.”
I cupped her cheeks in my hands. “Everyone has their secrets. We all have good in us, and we all have evil in us. We are all going to make the world better in some small way, and we’re all going to do some damage. You’re the one who taught me that. That we’re not all good, and we’re not all bad. That we each deal with the circumstances we’re placed in differently. It makes us who we are. Joseph included.”
Why was I talking that bastard up?
But it was true.
He’d been who he was because of his circumstances. Because he’d done it the best way that he knew how.
I was the one who’d taught him that we had to do anything we had to in order to survive.
And he’d been her husband.
Bailey’s father.
I couldn’t erase that truth. Couldn’t blot out the importance of it. No matter how badly I wanted to.
Problem with Joseph? I was pretty sure the bad had spoiled the good. That every part of him was rotted.
Moisture filled that knowing gaze, and she tucked one side of her bottom lip between her teeth. Her head swung to the side to look at the hedge of roses.
I reached out for one, for the tiny bud of pink that was all curled up, waiting to blossom, to grow into something beautiful.
My fingertip trailed down the stem, and I let it catch on a thorn, let it prick my flesh.
“Remember how this garden had been left for dead? Dried up and wilting?”
I swore that both of us could still hear it, her encouragement that had flooded my ears at that time. The girl filling me with her belief.
I tried to give the same to her, my words nothing more than a breathy whisper. “You are going to come out stronger on the other side. Because I know how great you are. Look at all the amazing things you’ve achieved, and there are so many more waiting for you in the future. I know it, Faith. You just have to believe it’s going to get better.”
“I always believed in us,” she murmured.
I palmed the side of her head, dipped in to kiss her softly.
Slowly.
With the promise that I would make this right.
Whatever it took.
I suddenly felt the tiny presence at my side. Faith and I peeled our mouths apart, though we were still clinging to the other.
There stood Bailey at our feet, grinning up at us. “Bailey and Mommy and Jacie forever. Like magic.”
She threw her hands in the air. Casting a spell into the garden surrounding us. The little girl an enchantment all on her own.
I dipped down and swooped her up. Relished the weight of her in my arms. So tiny and perfect and real.
No thorns to be found.
“Like magic,” I rumbled at her head.
She wrapped those little arms around my neck. Squeezed tight. “I wuv you, Jacie.”
My heart stuttered in my chest. Then took off racing like a wild beat inside me.
I’d done a lot of fucked-up shit in my life. Deserved the pain I’d received. Had done absolutely nothing to deserve the love these two were showering on me.
Worst part was knowing I’d done nothing but stolen it.
And I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that I was no fucking better than Joseph.
Thirty-Eight
Jace
Twenty-Six Years Old
Jace tried not to crawl right over the massive desk to the piece of shit who sat on the other side from him.
Sniveling the way he always had. Just like when they were kids, Jace could smell the pathetic, self-pity oozing from his pores. “Jace, I’m telling you, man, I need your help. Just this once.”
Just this once?
Yeah, right.
Jace was still shocked every time Joseph came crawling to him. Like he should owe him any sort of loyalty when he’d offered none to him.
When he’d stolen everything.
Framed him and then went in for the kill.
The first time Joseph had come to him for help Jace had nearly lost his mind.
Went over the edge.
Did something that he couldn’t take back and destroyed his own future because he’d thirsted so viciously to destroy Joseph’s.
And like a pathetic loser, Jace had given in.
Helped the bastard out. Maybe it had been because in the end, Jace knew it’d be helping Faith.
Faith who remained his weakness. It didn’t matter how many years passed, he couldn’t shuck the memory of her from his skin.
Couldn’t erase the marks she’d etched into his spirit.
Joseph had always been a master manipulator, anyway. His looks alone gave him the appearance of an innocent, good kid, but he’d never been anything but a slimy cocksucker, always looking out for himself.
Maybe Jace had taught him that way. Raised him to be a fighter.
A survivor.
But he’d always thought his loyalty to the kid would earn him some in return.
Maybe it was Jace who’d been the fool for sacrificing anything for him—for lying and cheating and stealing for his cousin and thinking it would count for something.
He hated the man in front of him.
This fiery loathing that boiled inside him.
He managed to pretend it wasn’t seething inside him as he sat back in his massive executive chair, rocked back as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“And what’s your excuse this time?” Jace asked, so dry they could have been standing in Death Valley.
“I’m breaking out on my own. It’s time that I lived my life right. The way you taught me to do.” Joseph was all eager lies.
Jace almost laughed.
He almost fucking laughed aloud at the line Joseph was feeding him when he knew firsthand that Joseph had gambled every last dollar away.
Jace’s friend Mack kept him appraised of all the bullshit that went down back in Broadshire Rim. The sordid, sleazy mess Joseph had himself entangled in.