Before That Night: Unfinished Love Series: Caine & Addison, Book 1 (17 page)

He exhaled heavily. “But I’m
furious
with you for putting yourself in harm’s way.”

“But Marco…”

“I know.” He sighed. “You were being Addison and thinking about someone other than yourself, like always.” Holding her tighter, he muttered something that sounded like, “Goodness and light.”

“What?” She smiled at the welcome sight of his eyes softly crinkling at the corners.

“Nothing. You ready to go home, sweetheart?”

Home. She loved the sound of that coming from his lips.

“But don’t you have to finish up here?”

“Yeah, I need to get a statement from you and fill out a shit-ton of paperwork. But I’ll split it up with Marco. My shift ended a half hour ago so I can leave right after I’m done with that. Just let me tie up some loose ends here and then we can go home to the kids, okay?”

Okay?
That sounded absolutely…perfect.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CAINE UNLOCKED THE DOOR
to his apartment and tried not to let the sight of the two kids in there running up to greet them make him smile like a sap.

He failed pretty spectacularly.

After they both thanked Lia for watching the kids, he putting in the DVD he’d picked up earlier for the kids and popped ‘em some popcorn while they got settled under a big blanket on the couch.

Addison came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “How did you know they’d be up?”

“When I picked them up from school today, they both passed out as soon as we got home. Lia said they only woke up a few hours ago. Poor things must be exhausted from the night prior.” He nodded over at the TV. “I figured it’d be okay for them to stay up a bit longer seeing as how tomorrow is Saturday.”

“School’s almost over so their little inner clocks are already starting to adjust to the summer. So this is perfect. Thank you. For thinking of everything. For thinking about them, period.”

“No thanks needed.” He pressed a kiss onto the top of her head. “After they go to sleep, you and I, we need to talk.” His voice turned serious then. “About everything. David’s trial. You, the kids.”

Her expression was unsurprised. “I know.”

“But until then, the only decision you need to make is if you want to put chocolate chips on the buttery popcorn or potato chips on the kettle corn popcorn.”

She chuckled. “You’re worse than the kids.”

He grinned unabashedly. “Both it is. I’ll bring over the popcorn and fixings, you bring over the chocolate and strawberry milk.”

Shaking her head, she reached into the cupboard for his staple milk supplements. “Do the guys at the station know you still drink chocolate and strawberry milk?”

“Are you kidding me? What do you think the most popular vending machine drink is after we’re done with our shifts?”

“I will never look at the guys the same way again.”

“Damn straight.” He tilted her chin up to brush his lips against hers. “Better still if you didn’t look at them at all.”

She paused a beat before asking softly, “What about you?”

A slow smile stretched across her face when he understood her meaning. “I make a conscious effort not to check out the guys I work with.” He rubbed his thumb over her lower lip. “And as far as any women are concerned, I seem to have developed this contagious affliction where women simply become invisible when they get near me.”

She stared at him. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. I think I caught it from you. Used to be, that the only women who would fade out of existence were the ones standing beside you.”

“Movie’s starting!”
called out Tanner. “Quit making out in there, you two.”

At the sound of Kylie asking him what ‘making out’ meant, Caine and Addison rushed out to the living room to stop him from answering.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

SINCE THE KIDS INSISTED
on sleeping outside on the futon mattress again, Caine helped Addison cover them both with the comforter before turning off the lights, leaving on just the two nightlights he’d picked up along with the DVD.

It’d been hard switching to the four-to-midnight shift and leaving Addison’s safety in Marco’s hands, even though, all kidding aside, he’d come to trust Marco even more than some of the guys he’d worked alongside for years at his old precinct.

In fact, the only way he’d been able to stay away from the diner during his first break was to go shopping for the kids.

Judging by the way Addison was gazing at the nightlights, it was time well-spent.

He dropped down onto the bed and settled his back against the headboard as Addison entered the room. She looked good in here. Belonged here. “Ready to talk?”

Her steps faltered just a tiny bit, but she continued her path over to him.

When she sat next to him hesitantly, he pulled her in close, tucked her alongside him. He’d thought about this a lot, how this conversation would go. But nothing about the situation was black and white.

Caine had considered what lengths his parents would go to for any of their kids, what measures he’d take for his own.

What lines he’d cross for Addison.

With a heavy sigh, he started with the positives. “You and the kids aren’t in any danger any more. With David’s priors showing a continued escalation of dangerous behavior, along with all the different charges against him, not to mention that the search of his place tonight produced photos of you, a bed set up with restraints, along with some ketamine—the date rape drug that wipes your memory—we already had a rock solid case. But since he held an officer at knifepoint, our guys at the courthouse are positive his bail will be set at a million dollars. And not just that, but again, because he was holding a cop hostage, he’ll have a tough time getting an affordable bail bond, if at all.”

“But,” he sighed heavily, “when this goes to trial, everything’s going to come out. About your mom, the van, the kids, everything. Whatever lawyer David hires will put you through the wringer. I’ve seen lawyers harass rape victims on the stand to the point of abuse in my opinion, redirecting the blame from the rapist to everything from how much the victims drank to how wet they were.” He shut his eyes to block the images of Addison going through that. “I asked a good attorney friend of mine—off the record, of course—and he said it’ll look better if you take the kids to social services now. Before they hire a private investigator to dig up dirt on you.”

She looked pale, stricken. “That makes sense. But. Trials like this, they take time, don’t they? Months on end?”

He cringed. Honestly, he’d seen some take a year to go to trial. And he told her as much.

“That’s a year in the foster care system, Caine. And who knows if I’ll get them back after. I mean, what judge would grant me full custody after all of this?”

“I’ll testify, we all will, to show the judge how great you’ve been with them. How perfect a mom you’ve been to them this entire time.”

She shook her head. “You can’t testify.”

“Of course I can. There’s no conflict of interest so I sure as hell will be testifying.”

“No, Caine. I mean you can’t testify because…” She paused, clearly reluctant to say what he knew had been bothering her since yesterday. God, he was crazy about this woman.

“Because I denied knowing you and the kids were living in the car when a fellow officer asked, omitted that info completely on a half dozen different reports and paperwork regarding your case, and straight-out lied when my Captain and Joe asked me about it? By the way, Joe told me in confidence today that he’s known almost the entire time, and Bernadette—sharp old bat—apparently figured it out about a year ago, just FYI. Anyway, yeah, are those the reasons why you think I can’t testify?”

A holy-shit look cloaked her expression. “Um…yes.
That.
”

Admittedly this wasn’t going to be easy for him. To not just bend the rules, but flat out break them. For the first time
ever
.

It did help immensely to know that Joe and Bernadette were going to corroborate on the watered down lie they’d come up with about her only staying in her van once in a while with the kids…sort of like camping, whenever she wasn’t staying with one of them. And the part about him not knowing she didn’t have custody of the kids in the first place was absolutely true. He hadn’t asked; she hadn’t come out and said it. Semantics or not, it wasn’t a lie.

The one lie remaining that would have to follow him to the stand, however, was about him personally having no knowledge of her living in the van…in an effort to keep social services from taking the kids from her. Yeah, there wasn’t a semantic way out of that one.

The idea of lying on the stand…truth be told, he was struggling
hard
with. What right did he have to be angry about one of his friends being a dirty cop now? Lying on the stand was the same thing as spitting on the justice system he believed in and faced bullets with little more than his badge because of.

That said, as difficult as the lie itself was to come to terms with, the reasons he had for lying, and the outcome that would result from doing so—those were easy to be on board with.

“I’m testifying, Addison. Period.”

“Caine, I can’t ask you to do that. I know how much it would mess you up on the inside if you got up there and lied on the stand.”

She knew him well.

“But it’ll hurt your custody case if I don’t, honey. You and I both know it’s going to come up when the trial starts. David is crazy. He’ll come at us with all he’s got to discredit you, hurt you. So I’ll lie if I have to.”

It burned his gut to say it out loud. But not as badly as the thought of Addison losing the kids. He’d never, not once, felt there was ever two paths he had to choose from where his badge lay on one path, and not both.

He did now.

By the look on Addison’s face, he wasn’t hiding his moral turmoil well. “There’s still time to change your story to your Captain and Marco. What if you tell them that I lied to you? Or that it was all a part of the plan and—”

“You’re aiming to get yourself pushed up against another wall again, woman.”

That stopped her rambling. And got her breathing going triple time.

Caine tasted his favorite spot on her neck to see if it was as sweet as he remembered. “I love that you’re worried about me. But let someone worry about you for a change, okay? I said it’ll be fine. Whatever crisis of conscience I’m dealing with, I’ll get over.” He sat up. “But that’s actually not what I wanted to talk about.”

She frowned and dragged his now favorite dessert away from his mouth. “It’s not?”

He eyed her neck wistfully before shifting his gaze up to meet her questioning one. “Like I said earlier, you should contact social services now about the kids. It’s far better for your custody case later if you do.”

Her face fell, and it killed him that he was the cause of that heartbreak he could see pouring out of her in pain-filled waves. He just prayed that what he was about to say next would ease some of that. “I promised that you could trust me, remember that?”

She nodded. And thankfully, the trust she had for him was still there, clear as day in her eyes.

“When you’re ready to contact my friend at social services, she’ll get everything started to make me Kylie and Tanner’s foster father until your custody case clears.” At her look of shock, he kept going, wanting to tell her everything he’d been doing to try and protect her as best he could. “I’m getting everything ready to call in every favor I have in my pocket and call in several politicians I’ve done private security for as references if need be. Not that the social worker thinks it’s necessary. She was the same case worker who worked on my foster brother Drew’s case. We can trust her. Since we had an existing relationship with Drew, the judge granted my parents foster parent status straight away. My friend is sure that the same outcome will happen here, especially because they’ve recently started a campaign to encourage more first response folks to become single foster parents.”

Tears flooded her eyes a split second before her face fell to his chest.

“Happy tears or sad tears, baby?” It was driving him crazy not to know for certain.

She slipped her hands behind his neck and pulled him down to a kiss by way of answer.

Best answer ever.

When they finally managed to remember to come up for air, he also remembered he was supposed to do this right.

Heart banging around his chest erratically, he pulled out a small square gift box from his nightstand drawer. He’d given a few trinkets to women he’d dated in the past. But nothing like this. Nothing that exposed him down to the fiber of his being, and uncovered his soul.

Addison’s eyes rounded as she surveyed the small box, and swear to God, she looked about two seconds from running for the door.

“We’re in this together, Addison.”  His voice softened around his usual gruff edges.  “I’m not sure of a lot of things in life.  Occupational hazard.  But my dad has always told me that for the big things in life, I’ll just know when I know.  It won’t have to make sense on paper.  No one else may agree.  But none of that will matter.  Because I’ll just know.”