Page 16

Chapter 16

Juliette

Of all the what-ifs I’d imagined over the years, never once had one of them been, What if my son’s father isn’t someone I’d want Colin to know?

But now, Constantine’s parting words before slipping from my bedroom had created a new what-if . What if he had deep, dark secrets that were dangerous to my son? What would I do then? How would I handle that?

My gut, my heart, my everything told me Constantine belonged in Colin’s life no matter what. So, to hell with the deep and dark. If I had to, when the time was right, I’d help bring his secrets into the light and pour love over them and him.

After an hour, I gave up on sleeping, unable to do so even in a bed I wished I could believe had been waiting for me for seventeen years.

I tossed the pretty comforter aside and changed from my pajamas into a loose-fitting tee and black leggings. I’d already taken a quick shower after Constantine left the room. I’d never get into any bed, especially not as perfect as this one, after being at the hospital without showering first.

I started for the door, deciding to see if Colin had fallen asleep, when I remembered I’d left Easton hanging via text after nearly getting run over by a bus.

Grabbing my phone from my purse, I realized it was still on silent from being at work. I opened my messages, and yup, three missed calls and four well-deserved shouty texts.

Easton: Why aren’t you texting back? I’m calling now!

Easton: I keep getting your voicemail. Now I’m really worried!

Easton: Calling Colin now. (Next up: the National Guard.)

Easton: Colin texted me back. He said you’re together and busy, but OK, just can’t talk. He swore on his life you’re not being held at gunpoint. YOU BETTER BE OKAY. CALL ME.

His last message was timestamped around when Constantine drove us from the hospital to my place to pack. Colin must have sent his call to voicemail and texted him back, saving Easton from having a heart attack. Poor guy.

Me: I am soooo sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you. Something came up. A BIG something. Forgive me?

He answered immediately, of course.

Easton: THANK GOD. Now, call me.

Me: Give me a few hours. Please. prayer emoji

Easton: rolling eyes emoji Seriously? You’re going to make me wait?

Yeah, I was being a jerk, but I wasn’t ready to share the news yet. I was still trying to process said news myself. I sent him three more prayer emojis.

Easton: Fine. I have a thing I’m late for anyway.

Me: Thing, huh?

Easton: Yeah, just a quick thing.

Me: Enjoy your “thing.”

Easton: That sounds absolutely fucking horrible even over text.

Me: Then don’t be so cryptic.

Easton: Says the one who left me hanging and is now bailing on me again. emoji with the monocle

Me: Sorry. I know. facepalm emoji Okay, go. Talk soon.

I set the phone on the nightstand and remade the bed before quietly opening my door. I looked left and right down the hallway, like a kid about to sneak out. All doors were shut, and I assumed Constantine was sound asleep.

I crept down the hall and MI6’ed my way upstairs, moving as stealthily as possible, as if this rich home wouldn’t have stellar walls to soundproof noise.

Colin’s door was cracked open, which was surprising. I’d expected it to be bolted locked with a chair against it. It wouldn’t be the first time he barricaded me from trying to lecture him. Like two weeks after his fifteenth birthday, after the first, and thankfully only time, he’d been arrested. Assault charge from a fight with a guy four years older than him at the mall where we last lived. That’d also been the first and last time I’d let him go to the mall without me. And here he is sneaking off to raves, so look at all the good my strict rules did.

I let go of my thoughts the moment I opened the door a bit more to see him passed out on top of the covers, his feet, still in his Converse, hanging off the bed. I watched him for a few minutes, soaking in the sight of him asleep under his father’s roof, trying to digest what this all meant.

After carefully closing the door without entirely shutting it, I wandered into the game room to take a peek before returning downstairs.

I hadn’t been expecting to see Constantine in the kitchen. He had his back to me, and oh, what a back. Since he was shirtless, I was able to make out every hard line and ridge of his perfectly tanned, sinewy skin.

The espresso machine hummed softly, and his hands were planted on the counter in front of it, and his triceps were flexed tight in that position.

The farther I walked into the kitchen, the more I noticed his back had a few scars marking his flesh as well. You poor guy, what happened to you?

“You’re supposed to be in bed,” he murmured, detecting I was behind him.

“So are you.” I perched my hip against the counter and rested my hand on the grayish-looking marble. “Can’t sleep?”

“That a question for me or a statement from you?” He lifted his head and slowly faced me.

“Both?” I smiled at the fact I’d responded with yet another questioning tone, and my insides burst into an explosion of excitement the moment he returned my smile.

“No rest for the wicked.” He lifted his brows.

“Question or an answer?” I smirked.

“Both,” he tossed out, his smile meeting his eyes that time.

I couldn’t help but take a moment to appreciate the man before me. To soak in the sight of such a gorgeous creation by God. Six-pack of perfection, but not in an overdone way. Arms and shoulders that made me want to cry (in a good way).

I visually tracked one vein that ran down his right arm to his strong hand, now planted on the counter next to him the way I’d done. Those hands had once covered every inch of my body, and it was hard not to remember that. To remember everything about that night in Aruba.

I gave myself another moment to check out my son’s father, from the sexy V-lines visible above the waistband of his mesh-looking black workout shorts to his stellar calf muscles. You don’t skip leg day. Good for you.

“Juliette?”

“Mm?” My gaze took a slow and long journey back to his face, my body heating along the way.

His other hand was parked on his jawline. While studying me, he palmed the day-or-two-old scruff. “Would you like me to get a shirt? Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“No.” Not in a bad way, at least. “So, do you just not like shirts?”

“Not when I sleep or work out. I don’t like to be hot.”

“And what about when you make coffee?”

He leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. “Is there another way to make coffee than this?” The tease in his words and tone was both unexpected and refreshing.

“I see I’ve been doing it wrong for years.”

He straightened his posture. “You just weren’t doing it with the right person.”

Chills dusted my skin, and he had to see the ridges on my forearms right along the scattering of freckles there.

His gaze wasn’t on my forearms, though. It was pointed at my very innocent top. As a shiver set in, it dawned on me he wasn’t reading the words on my shirt but rather zeroed in on the fact I was braless. “I forgot,” I whispered, my cheeks going flush from embarrassment as I whipped my arms up to cover my breasts.

He rasped, “You may not care if I have a shirt on, but I’ll for damn sure find it distracting if you’re not wearing a bra.” He looked away from me and up at the ceiling as if I were naked and he was trying to respect me. “Please.”

“Of course.” I nodded even though he wasn’t looking at me, then hurried around him, probably beet red as I went to my room.

I shut the door and set my back to it, trying to catch my breath. Our kitchen exchange had sent my pulse flying, and I was fairly certain the electricity between us may have been even more kinetic than it’d been in Aruba.

How was I supposed to behave around him when I could barely breathe in his presence?

I took a few minutes to pull myself together, to de-fever (was that a word?) my skin. Finally, I snapped on a padded bra, brushed my fingers through my messy hair, and went out to face the only man in my whole life who’d ever made me feel like this.

He’d made the wise choice to put on a shirt in my absence. A gray tee to match the nearly all-gray living room.

“Hi.” I let the small word dangle between us, and the moment he turned around, I realized whatever tension had been between us before I’d left was still very much there. “Why don’t we take this chance to talk while he’s asleep?”

He quietly studied me, his gaze falling to my top as if needing to confirm I’d behaved.

“Seems to me that Colin knows more about you than I do,” I pointed out, my voice soft.

His brows drew together as he said in a low voice, “You could always google me like he did.” He tore a hand through his hair and gruffly added, “I’m sorry, that was rude.”

I let his apology settle between us before raising what felt like the obvious. “Don’t enjoy talking about yourself?”

“I’d prefer a colonoscopy while awake.” He closed one eye, his hand dropping to his side. “Great image, I know,” he grunted. “I’m batting a thousand this morning with what I say to you.”

“Oh, surely there were a few home runs in there somewhere,” I couldn’t help but tease, enjoying living in our banter bubble.

And then he burst it. Poked a hole clean through with his somber tone. “I don’t think I can do this. Not now.”

“Jokes? Or the talking-about-yourself thing?”

His eyes flashed to mine, and the dark, pensive look there had me walking back a cautious step as I waited for an answer, worried his continued silent stewing was one.

I watched in real time as I erected an invisible wall between us, my futile attempt to safeguard myself from getting my heart broken.

“Juliette.” There was a little self-loathing in the way he said my name. And the way his shoulders broke forward hurt me on his behalf.

“Yes?” My heart raced as I took a leap of faith forward, sidestepping my wall and erasing that space between us to set my hand on his forearm.

His eyes cut sharp to my touch, and the muscle in his jaw visibly clenched. “I’m worried you’re dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” I echoed in confusion. “What do you mean?”

He kept his lips a hard line while expelling a deep breath through his nose. The way his chest was rising and falling made me want to check his pulse and blood pressure.

“You have far too much power over me, and I don’t know what to make of that.” There was enough grit in his tone to jumpstart hearts. “The fact I even admitted that to you proves my point.”

I blinked a few times. “Power over you?”

I couldn’t keep parroting everything he said, but it kept happening. And then the truth slammed into me, knocking me backward, and I lifted my hand from his forearm in understanding.

Power over you because of our son?

“As long as you’d never hurt him, I’d never keep him from you.”

“I’d give my life for him,” he said without hesitation, the promise lingering with absolute certainty as he finally met my eyes. “I don’t need to have raised him to feel that way. And I would for you, too. Not just because you’re his mother, but I . . . well, that’s just who I am.”

“Then if that’s the kind of man you are, you won’t lose us.” Shit, I’d slipped and said “us” instead of “him,” but I didn’t have time to autocorrect.

“I want to believe that, but you may change your mind.” He faced away from me, raking his fingers through his thick, dark hair.

Hating to see him in pain and also hating that he was scared I’d take his son from him, I set my hand on his back, hoping to reassure him. “It’s okay to be vulnerable, you know.” I went out on a limb and translated his remarks a bit more than he’d let on. “I get that’s a new feeling for you, but you’re allowed to feel what you’re feeling.”

He kept quiet, so I stroked my palm up and down his back the way he’d done, and he stopped tearing his hand through his hair.

“I’ll do my best to talk.” He sighed. “If that’s what you want. For you, I’ll try.” He kept his voice flat that time, as if he was working hard for it to come across as emotionless. He turned around, forcing me to abandon my soothing efforts. “But don’t press me about the skeletons in my closet. Not yet. Please.” He swallowed, pinning me with a hard look. “Anything but that.”

Skeletons? I assumed he meant that metaphorically and not literally. But what if he was talking about actual bodies? How was I supposed to ask his favorite color when I had only one question coming to mind? Before I could lock the thought down in my brain, I blurted out, “Have you ever killed anyone?”