Those chocolate eyes swam with moisture, and she hiked her little girl up who was sliding down her body, running her hand over the back of her head.
I wasn’t entirely sure which of them she was comforting, the two of them clinging to the other, each the other’s support.
“You can’t say those things to me.”
I stepped onto the bottom step, hand clenching the railing to keep myself from getting any closer. From rushing the rest of the way onto the porch and pulling her against me.
Was surprised the rickety wood didn’t bust in two from the force.
Because my muscles flexed and contracted and tightened.
Body roaring. Demanding I make a claim.
Mine.
She’d always been mine.
“I’m only speaking the truth.”
The little girl popped her thumb from her mouth, grinning up at her mom. “The truth is good, Mommy. Always, always tell the truth.”
Her tiny voice nearly bowled me over, the little thing dropping all her L’s. It sent her voice into this sweet, innocent drawl.
Guilt blazed a path through my insides. Hurt lining the middle of it. My head trying to shut the little girl out, ignore her, hate her like the bastard I was while my spirit threatened something I couldn’t allow it to feel.
“We’re barely making it, Jace. Barely surviving. I can’t have you here making things harder on us.” Somehow there was an apology in her voice, as if she were the one who should feel ashamed.
“And the only thing I’m here for is to lighten some of that load.”
Stupidly, I took another step up, getting closer to her and that little girl who sent a tumble of fear sliding beneath the surface of my skin. “Please, Faith. Let me help you. Let me be here until Mack figures out who is doing this.”
She blinked, turning her head away. It was almost like she couldn’t keep looking at me and hold her ground. “It feels too complicated. Everything’s twisted and mixed in a way it never should have been.”
Knives.
I felt them slicing right through the center of my chest.
She’d always been so honest. So damned, brutally honest.
Wearing that beautiful heart on her sleeve.
And I’d been the asshole who’d reached out and plucked it free.
Smashed it in the palm of my hand.
I’d known it then.
I knew it still.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but coming here, helping you . . . helping her?” I gestured with my chin toward her child. “It’s not one of them.”
What was I doing? Saying?
But I couldn’t stop it. The worry that bound up inside me.
“Jace.” Faith blinked a bunch of times, bouncing the little girl like she was an infant, like she was trying with all her might to keep her emotions at bay. But tears streaked from her eyes and raced down her cheeks.
Fuck.
I was a fool.
Because I reached out and caught one. Remembering the way it’d felt when I’d had that same soft skin of her cheek pressed to my bare chest, the girl running her fingers over my abdomen as she’d dreamed her dreams, her voice a whisper in the darkness.
“Let me help you,” I murmured, my thumb lingering on her skin for a beat too long. “Please.”
Helping her with the house was an easy excuse to get close to her. A way to be around to look out for her.
But there was something about the thought of fixing this place up that felt like I was making amends. Atoning for a sin.
She flinched under the touch, backing away a step to put some space between us.
She looked away again.
But I could feel it.
Her wavering. Giving.
She’d returned to bouncing and squeezing the chubby thing in her arms when she swung those eyes back to me. “All this hurts, Jace.”
“I’m not here to hurt you.”
She’d been hurt enough.
“You have your own life. Your career. You don’t need to be wasting time here.”
I have nothing.
I didn’t say it. I just sent her a grin. The one that had always gotten me what I’d wanted from her.
So maybe I’d resorted to playing dirty.
“It’s my company, Faith. I get to say when I come and when I go. When I work and when I don’t.”
And I was staying. No one was going to get close to her. Hurt her. I’d die before that happened, just as gladly as I’d put the asshole in the ground.
“Jace . . . this is insane.”
“No, it’s not. It’s logical.”
She frowned at me, some of the strain draining from her tone, and for the first time, lightness made its way in. “Logical?”
“Yup.”
She arched a brow, almost playful in her reasoning. “Like showing up here at the break of dawn with a bunch of construction supplies strapped to the roof of a brand-new Porsche? That kind of logical?”
I roughed a hand over the top of my head, chuckling under my breath. “Uh . . . yeah . . . just like that.”
“Sounds reckless to me.” All the playfulness had vanished.
“I’ll try to be careful.”
Those words climbed to the space between us as if they were alive. A promise and a threat.
I hesitated and then I dealt the lowest blow I could go. “You’ve always dreamed of getting this house into working order so you could turn it into a business. I can do that for you. And if you don’t want me to do it for you, at least let me do it for her. This place isn’t safe in the state it is in right now.”
It wasn’t safe all around.
Not the place or the people or the threats that remained.
I pushed my foot against the loose board beneath me to prove my point. “I’m willing to bet the entire place is falling down around you. And you know it would be good to have an extra set of eyes around here.”
No doubt, I wouldn’t be her first choice for the job. That didn’t mean I wasn’t the one who was meant for it.
Her little girl grinned like my helping repair the house was the best idea she’d ever heard. “Every’fing’s broke, Mommy.”
Faith looked at me like I’d punched her in the gut, her attention sweeping to the child who was blinking up at her like she was trying to talk her into the same thing.
Faith pushed out a frustrated sigh, her voice going hard. “Fine. You can fix this porch. That’s it. Then you need to be on your way.”
Six
Faith
He’d try to be careful?
Good Lord, what had I gotten myself into? I pressed both palms to my face, scrubbing hard before I dragged my fingers back through my hair as I peered out the big window to the porch he was working on.
The man was bent over the portable table saw, dragging a pencil down a plank as if he’d spent the last ten years putting things back together rather than sending them crashing to the ground in a heap of rubble.
That was the way he’d left me.
Rubble.
It was Joseph who’d picked up those shattered pieces. Dusted me off.
Held me up when I didn’t know how to stand. Maybe at the beginning it’d felt wrong to fall for Jace’s cousin, and God knew, it wasn’t something that happened overnight.
I wasn’t struck by the brush of his hand.
Jace had been a thunderbolt.
Joseph had been my comfort after the storm. A friend who’d been there for me until he’d grown into something more.
My gaze moved to the living room floor where Bailey was on the rug, attempting to stack a big blue block on a small red one and rambling to herself as if she could verbally coax it into balancing.
My ribs squeezed against the swell of love that engulfed me.
So powerful.
The child was the center of my heart. Given to me right smack dab in the middle of two tragedies.
A reminder that there was a bigger purpose to my life.
More than the two brittle, battered pieces of my heart that had been shredded and scattered between two men.
I thanked God that she could sit there as if it were any other day. As if three months ago, we hadn’t lost Joseph. As if two nights ago, someone hadn’t been in our house, filling me with a fear unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
My cell rumbled on the end table next to the couch.