Page 22 of A Shot in the Dark (Fated Mates Collection | Triple Threat #1)
H is head rocks back like he’s been punched, and the sensation tears through me, taking everything I have to keep from reacting. I want this… Oh, shit . I don’t want this…
FUCK.
He steps back, nods slowly. Once, twice, three times as he begins to walk away.
His brow pinches, relaxes, furrows. His fingers trace the roof of the car and I watch silently as he climbs into the Town Car, sets his hands at ten and two and rests his head on the steering wheel for one heartbreaking moment.
I slip into the seat beside him, aghast. I nearly relent, not wanting to bear witness to this moment—I’ve never stayed to watch the hurt—I’ve always run before witnessing the pain.
This…this is what I deserve: to know what I’ve fucking done to someone I?—
No .
This is what I deserve: to have to face it. To feel it carve into me.
And it does.
“Fuck me…” He exhales, hard. “You’re gonna need me, princess… You don’t see it yet, your eyes are only starting to open… But, sweetheart… Oh, holy shit … You’re gonna need me. And I’m not gonna be around.” He says it like he—or someone else—is going to make certain that’s the case.
“I’m releasing you from your obligation to me. From your bond.”
“You can’t release me… You don’t have that power—certainly not now.” He cocks his head. “Maybe not ever…”
I reach out to him; I can’t help myself—my hand comes to rest lightly on his shoulder.
He stills—everything about him stopping. His chest ceases its normal rise and fall. It’s like, if he could, he would turn to stone. Or disappear entirely.
And then, faster than a striking snake he’s pinned my hand to the seat’s back, a snarl ripping through him. “NO.” The word rockets out of him with a raw rage I’ve seldom seen. “Do NOT touch me. Never again.”
And the small sweet something still existing between us—connecting us—curls up.
Gives up.
And dies a painful and violent death at my hand. The ache is instantaneous. I see the echo of my pain in the twitching of his jaw.
“Boots…”
One black-gloved hand snaps up, signaling me to silence, and Boots rolls up to his full height in his seat, tips up his chin, presses his shoulders back, and puts the car into drive as the light fades from the sky. “The lady always gets what she wants,” he recites, biting off each word.
We drive straight through the night, no other words passing between us.
I sit and peer out the window at the lights flashing by; Boots turns up the radio and pushes forward.
Dozing, I wake to find his hand on my leg, shimmering golden with the dawn, warm and sweet, but the moment he realizes I’m awake, it’s gone so fast I’m left wondering if it was only my imagination.
There are a couple times when he starts to turn down the radio, to make a comment to me, but he catches himself, inhales deeply and turns the music back up.
I hate every song I hear as night turns into day, but not nearly as much as I hate myself. Soon enough he’s paused, changed by the roadside and is back in his uniform. Although his clothes are slightly rumpled he’s almost back to being the Boots I first met back in the city.
He’ll be fine.
Better without me.
After too many days and nights in motels and far too many long hours on the road, and with only one more stop at a rest area, it is late the next evening when we are on our final approach to what I nostalgically think of as my beginning: the humble town of Greenbriar.
“Stop that.”
I quit chewing my nails and turn in my seat to face him.
“Don’t look at me that way,” he fumes without ever glancing in my direction.
“Fuck your pity. I made my choice. And it was a mistake. All this time I’ve been telling you to not question my judgment—and I’m the one who should’ve been questioning it all along.
” He puffs out a breath. “You fucking broke my heart. But it was my mistake to make and I’ll fucking own it because at least I didn’t turn tail when I felt something.
You…” his voice cracks and he pounds the steering wheel with his fists.
“You were standing right. fucking. there. and you still somehow ran from me without your feet ever moving. How the fuck does anyone do that…?”
I can’t stop the sudden flood of tears or the ache in my side where it feels like I’ve torn something loose in me. Boots winces, his hand going to his side, too—the same spot where a deepening chasm grows in me, threatening to swallow me whole.
“I gave you seven fucking days… Shit .” He pounds the wheel again. “ That’s gonna leave a mark… And the sad thing? I’d do it all over again. How fucking stupid am I?”
“You’re not?—”
“Shut. up. Please . For. fuck’s. sake.” He cranes his neck, looking out the windshield, unwilling to look at me.
“I fucking killed a man for you…And I would’ve killed a dozen more…
” His knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.
“Still would…” he murmurs. “How fucking cunt-struck does a man have to be…?”
Along the next stretch of road I witness him rebuilding himself.
He rumbles and curses, smacks the steering wheel or the dash, but he never stops driving as he works through things—or at least triages them—so he can deal with them in his own time.
I begin to recognize the landscape and sit up higher in my seat, peering around.
His tone brittle and laced with ice, he asks, “Where am I dropping you?”
It was considering my options that had me chewing on my nails.
I want to go home, straight to the house that still technically belongs to me.
Or the me on the legal documents. After my parents died when I was still a teen, the house and farm property they owned were placed in a trust by the only lawyer in town.
Sampson Khail still runs the property on my behalf, funneling the modest proceeds in my direction.
It provided enough money to get me through college with the addition of working two part-time jobs and scoring scholarships for good grades.
Over the years Khail’s checked in on me multiple times, asking, “Aren’t you ready to come back home?
Doesn’t the old homestead call to you? Doesn’t some part of you feel like Greenbriar’s where you belong?
” Each time I was able to respond with all earnestness, “No. I don’t feel a tie to it—not like you seem to think I should.
” He would update me on the property and the bank accounts, and let it drop again.
For a while.
Now, eight years after the accident, my graduation, and move to the city, it there is no safer place to be.
From what I understand, the property remains mostly the main farmhouse that stands vacant the majority of the time—being too large for most people to want to rent, and too small for corporate retreats—a barn where some horses are stabled and trail rides begin and end, and a few well-appointed tiny houses erected as a result of me re-investing dribs and drabs of money back into the property once I had my job.
I could have Boots drop me off at my family home, but it doesn’t feel right to make him come to a place he’ll never be able to return to with me again. It’s too much like rubbing his nose in it.
A little space between us is probably smart. He’s having an even harder time with this than I am.
“My lawyer’s office in town. You can drop me there.”
“Of course you have a lawyer.” He snorts.
“It’s like I said, princess, we’re from two different fucking worlds.
” He groans, stretches. “Not sure I like the idea of dropping you off at some lawyer’s office.
I’d rather take you to where you’re staying.
Have a look around. Make certain you’re safe. You still have a stalker.”
“A: Not your decision to make, and B: I’ll be perfectly safe. Mr. Khail has been looking out for me for a while and I trust his intentions and ability to protect me. Besides, you yourself said this wasn’t where you were supposed to drop me…”
“True,” he mutters like he regrets having ever mentioned that.
“And you’ve made your role clear from the beginning, Boots, and I actually really appreciate the clarity now that the fog of whatever my—” I wave my hand in the air between us, trying to dispel the memories and find the words “—madness was. You’re my driver.
You said it yourself—that I don’t want anything more than a good fuck—which you provided amply and more than adequately?—”
“Not quite the compliment I want to put in a frame…” he grumbles.
I ignore his comment and move on. “You said that I’m not ready for anything serious. No ‘boyfriend’ or anything like that. And you were right. You were right from the start.”
He hangs his head; it’s no consolation to him.
“Boots, you have a job—a life. I’m sure you’re needed elsewhere.
Talk to Petey and leadership. Smooth things out.
And it’s not like you’re some home security inspector…
” I glance down at my feet. My heels—not my fuck-me-heels but a vaguely more reasonable set of pumps.
“I think… considering everything… there needs to be some space. Some things you don’t need to know about me.
Like there are plenty of things you kept from me.
You work in a world that functions on a need to know basis, right?
So maybe some stuff you don’t need to know. ”
“Ah,” he says as if in epiphany. “That’s it then. The secrecy. You couldn’t handle the secrecy.”
“Sure. I couldn’t handle it.” Damn him for being right.
He clears his throat. “Hazard of the job, I guess.”
“Then go back to the job. Be where you belong. Be who you really are.” I fold my arms over my chest. “I think my home address is something I need to keep to myself.”
“I really fucked this up…”
I want to assure, “There was nothing to fuck up,” but even now I find I can’t lie to him. It’s just not in me. Instead I say: “It’s all over now.”