Page 51 of Fatal Deception
“Nothing is going to make me feel better, Copeland,” she said, every word bitten off with that ice, but underneath it was all flickering flame. “My sister is canceling her honeymoon over a few silly pranks.”
“No, your sister is ending her month-long honeymoon alittleearly, because you, or this ranch that you won’t leave, is undera credible and dangerous threat. If you want to turn that into some grand sacrifice on her part, that doesn’t make it what’s really happening.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand, and you don’t care that you don’t. It’s just ‘I’m Copeland Beckett and I know everything.’”
If he knew everything, she’d be out of this mess. If he knew everything, he wouldn’t be jumbled up in her life. If he kneweverything, things here would be a lot different. But he didn’t say that.
She whirled away from him. “I’m so angry with you right now. Screw your twenty-four seven. You’ve crossed every line. Pushed every boundary.”
Some of his detachment was starting to fade. He tried to fight back the anger because it wouldn’t get through to her. It would just end up with them fighting, but damn, she pushed at all his buttons. So he stood, in an effort to channel his frustration into his body rather than lash out.
“Someone has to.” Okay, maybe he was going to lash out, anyway. “Your lines and your boundaries suck.” He wasn’t handling this right. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that, but he was pissed too. And she wasn’t walking away from him while she was in danger, whether either of them liked it or not.
She whirled back around, hands curled into fists, eyes flashing with fury. “I beg your—”
“You built those boundaries to keep everyone out, so you couldn’t be disappointed? So you could control everything? Spoiler alert. Both are part of life.”
She fisted those hands on her hips. “Thank you for those wise words and a lesson I wouldn’t have been able to fathom on my own. I’ve certainly never been disappointed or had all my control stripped from me.”
“Get snarky all you want. You know I’m right. Rosalie knows I’m right. Franny and Vi and everyone else would side withme, if they knew, but they’re too indebted to you to raise a stink about it. Me? I don’t owe you a damn thing. You could have kept putting it off, but you know as well as I do, it wouldn’t have gone away. You’d have to have told her all about it anyway, and you’d feel the same.”
“Not if it was handled and over.”
“Okay, how about this? Rosalie would have felt the same sense of betrayal, if not a little worse, if she came home to you having handled all this on your own without telling her. That what you’re going for?”
“No. You’re being a jerk.”
“Kinda my MO.”
Her shoulders slumped, her eyes closed, as if she was in pain. She shook her head. “No, it isn’t. You only wish it was.”
Ouch. Still, she could get her licks in and it didn’t change anything.
She opened her eyes, fixed him with one of those lost gazes that just about scraped his insides raw.
“This is how I get through it, Copeland. All my life. This is how I function. You cannot just sweep in and try to change it. This is who I am.”
She must not have realized how absolutely beat-down she sounded. She must not have realized that herget throughwas sad, and it was makinghersad.“Maybe it’s gotten you through, Audra, but that’s about it. Itisn’twho you are. Take it from someone who has spent the past few years justfunctioning.It’s not the same as living.”
She turned to face him. “Is that what we’re doing?”
“You think a what-are-we conversation is going to send me running?”
She wrinkled her nose, some of her anger and sadness fading into something else. “At least temporarily.”
“Tough. Yeah, we’re living. I’d say we’re both discovering something we haven’t had in a while, or maybe at all.”
She blinked at him once, straightened in that way she had that reminded him of a bird ruffling its feathers. She opened her mouth, but no words came out, so she closed it.
There was something about all this—the ways she thought she could send him running, the ways she clearly didn’t expectanyoneto stick around, stick it out, had him going further than he probably needed to.
“I care about you, Audra. Do I know what to do about it? Hell no. Am I going to run away like some kind of coward because of it while you’re indanger? Double hell no. I’m going to protect you, from whatever’s happening and your own stubborn pride. Deal with it.”
This time when she blinked, he saw the telltale sign of tears in her eyes. But they didn’t stay there, some fell over onto her cheeks. Like little daggers to his heart.
“And stop crying, damn it.” He crossed to her. Brought her into his arms. “I can’t take it,” he muttered into her hair. “It just kills me.”
“I never cry in front of anyone, so it’s all your fault.” She sniffled as she leaned into him. He felt the tension in her shoulders ease a little.