Finding Justice (7 page)

“Pasta, basil, cherry tomatoes and fresh green salad, washed
down with Templeton’s very best bottled water. How does that sound?”

She grinned. “Perfect.”

“Well, then...” He offered her his elbow. “Shall we?”

She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and let him lead
her outside. Something wasn’t right. Something deep and dangerous ate Jay up
from the inside out. He mentioned guilt with Sarah. She hadn’t turned up when
she was meant to. It didn’t make him the guy who clasped his hands around her
throat.

His intense need to find out who murdered Sarah could be a
smokescreen for something Cat didn’t want to contemplate. His calling her there,
knowing she once loved him, could be his only defense. She was a cop. A
detective. Which meant that to her he was a suspect the same as anyone else. She
didn’t know him anymore. He wasn’t the same carefree boy he was before. While
she was in the Cove, she’d leave no stone unturned...no matter how heavy.

Please, God, give me proof he had nothing
to do with this...and give it to me tonight.

CHAPTER FIVE

J
AY
WATCHED
C
AT
SUCK
the last morsel of raspberry pavlova from her
spoon, her gaze fixed out across the water, her features relaxed and content.
They’d been sitting outside for an hour, yet neither of them had brought up a
subject of any real importance. They skirted around their families, their jobs,
even their damn hobbies. Jay picked up his glass and drank.

His addiction and this whole life Cat knew nothing about hung
between like an invisible barrier. He had to tell her. Damn, he wanted her to
know. How could they progress past this superficial closeness until both of them
filled in the last seven years? Something lingered in her past, too. If there
was one thing he’d learned how to do in rehab, it was recognize pain and shame
in people’s eyes. He saw it deep and scarring in hers.

She turned, her smile bright even in the semidarkness. “You
okay?”

Here goes nothing.
Jay stood.
“Shall we go and sit on the grass? Watch the sun go down?”

Her smile faltered and her brow creased for the briefest of
seconds before she smiled again. “Sounds good to me.”

“Great.” He forced a smile. “I’ll go and grab a couple of
blankets.”

Leaving her sitting but feeling the intensity of her gaze on
his retreating back, Jay hurried inside and whipped two fleece throws from the
living-room couch. His heart hammered and his throat was drier than his liquor
cabinet.

“Come on, Garrett, you can do this,” he said, quietly. “It’s
Cat. She’ll love you no matter what.”

Heading back out, he prayed that sentiment was true. Friends
forever, they had said. He, Cat and Sarah, the summer before he turned eighteen,
had sat on Cowden Beach, all a little drunk on beer and youth, vowing to always
be friends no matter who went away to college, committed a crime or got married.
They’d always be there for each other through thick and thin.

Now one of them was dead and the other was waiting outside to
hear all about his two-and-a-half-year mistake.

He stepped outside and his smile slid into place. “Let’s
go.”

She turned and smiled, flipping his stomach all the way over.
Beautiful, courageous, kind and caring Cat. Pulling up to his full six feet two
inches, Jay took her hand and led her across the veranda and down a narrow set
of steps onto the grass surrounding the cabin.

He walked to a spot that had a fantastic view of the horizon,
day or night, and flicked out one of the fleeces. Spreading it on the grass, he
gestured for her to sit. She did, leaning back on her elbows, which resulted in
her breasts thrusting forward. Jay averted his gaze and let the other blanket
drop from his hand to the ground. His attraction to her was insane after all
this time, but it burned with a passionate yearning he hadn’t felt for anyone
since. He wanted to be close to her.

Swallowing, he refocused and lay down flat on his back on the
blanket beside her. He stared at the salmon-pink and lilac sky. “I suppose this
is the perfect time to tell you all about it.”

The night was quiet and he heard the subtle changes in her
breathing, the soft hitch and exhalation. After a rustle and swish of material
she lay down, too, the heat of her upper arm lingering at the point between his
biceps and elbow.

“I suppose it is.”

Jay closed his eyes. “It’s probably easier if you start with a
question and have me answer it. Knowing where to start when you messed up for
more than two years is hard.”

She exhaled a shaky breath. “Okay, but first I want to
apologize for my reaction when you told me about the drugs. I didn’t know what
to say, think or feel when you threw it out there like that. I wasn’t... I’m not
judging you, okay?”

Jay turned his head, his cheek brushing the fleece. Her eyes
darted over his face, lingered at his lips and slowly raised upward. Her eyes
were the darkest green imaginable, almost black in the fading light and Jay
suddenly wanted to drown in them.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

She turned away and looked back to the sky. “So, let’s start
with a question. How does the man I once knew, Jay Simon Garrett, confident,
masculine, hungry for the taste of whatever he wanted at any given moment, end
up hooked on a class-A drug?”

He followed her gaze toward the sky. Typical Cat. Straight for
the jugular. He’d expected nothing less and it made it so much easier to speak.
“Earlier you asked about my singing. Remember?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I failed.”

The telltale shuffle of clothes again and Jay knew she watched
him. He didn’t look at her, didn’t want to see her eyes. He needed to get
everything out in the open in the shortest time possible.

“I left town after a year of getting no further than gigging in
the local pubs in and around Templeton. Dad told me it was time to give it up,
they’d supported me long enough. I look back now and can’t believe he didn’t say
it sooner. God, if any kid of mine was still living at home without a job and
thinking he was the next big thing at twenty-four, I’d like to think I’d kick
him out on his ass. I was a jerk back then and didn’t realize the opportunities
my family could give me.”

“You weren’t a jerk. You had a dream that used to eat you up.
Your singing was everything to you. Money or no money, when you feel like that
about something, it should be your focus.”

“Yeah, well, like I said, nothing was happening, so Dad said it
was time I grew up and did something worthwhile. To him, that something was
following in his footsteps. At the time it was like asking me to stand in front
of a firing squad.”

“So you left.”

“So I left. Eventually I hooked up with a band. We had the
enthusiasm and talent but never did more than support bigger bands, but still
small-time. We all wanted something bigger, acknowledgment we were good, but not
a single producer gave us the time of day.” He blew out a breath, as the memory
and feeling of his youthful arrogance reeled up inside him like an ugly stain,
seeping into his blood and making him want to sink farther into the grass.

“So then what happened?” Cat’s warm, soft hand stole into his,
and Jay’s breath shuddered out as he closed his fingers around hers.

“Someone in the band convinced me the only way to keep the
momentum going, to keep the belief we’d make it in the industry, was to snort
half a gram of coke up my nose every time I felt myself waning.” He finally
turned to look at her. “For the following two years I thought it was
working.”

She raised her eyebrows and met his eyes. Incredulous disbelief
shone in the darkness of her eyes and her mouth dropped ever so slightly open as
though she wanted to say something but had no idea what. Jay stared back,
disbelief he could handle, but disgust and disappointment like he’d seen from
his family, and Sarah, was a whole lot worse.

“If coke does nothing else, it makes you believe you’re capable
of anything.” He swallowed. “The trouble is, the only thing you’re really
capable of is hurting people.”

She closed her eyes and Jay’s heart sank in his chest like a
lump of lead. Was she shutting him out? Unable to look at him? Both were
justified. Unease rippled through his body. What should he do next? Keep talking
or keep his mouth shut and let her process the gargantuan fact that he wasn’t
the man she thought him to be? Not the man she once trusted enough to sleep
with, to give her most intimate gift to and give it gladly.

Shame seared his face as he opened his mouth, closed it, opened
it again. She brought his hand to her lips and pressed a lingering kiss to his
knuckles. Her strength and forgiveness absorbed silently into his skin.

The rare heat of tears burned his eyes and he squeezed them
shut. “I’ve made some really bad choices, Cat.” His voice came out low and deep,
revealing every emotion battling around inside him, but there was no one else he
trusted his vulnerability with. “One of the biggest is believing that working my
ass off, making more and more money for the family business would somehow fill
the bullet wounds every gram of coke I took made in my parents’ hearts.”

She tightened her fingers around his. “Jay, look at me.”

He turned.

“You’re clean. You have to let go of the past and move on. If
you continue to beat yourself up over what you did or didn’t do, the drugs still
control you. Surely that’s one of the first things they taught you in
rehab.”

He stared deep into her eyes. He wanted nothing more than to
yell, “You’re right, I’m clean!” It wouldn’t be the truth. He wanted to smile
and agree and revel in his success, but he’d never be free of his
addiction—wasn’t sure he wanted to be—because once he claimed he was, then the
narcotic knuckles could quite easily come knocking at his door once again.

“I wish I could say that, but an addict is never clean. If
they’re stupid enough to think differently, that’s the first step back.”

She released his hand to clasp hers together at her abdomen.
Her face seemed to shut down. Her jaw grew rigid. She met his eyes and her
unshed tears glistened beneath the lights on the veranda above them. Her breast
rose and she exhaled. “Tell me what happened after you realized cocaine wasn’t
the road to success.”

A new tension radiated from her and Jay turned his gaze back to
the sky, apricot now bled into orange. She had every right to her anger and
disappointment. Templeton in summer was beauty personified, yet Jay felt as
though nothing but ugliness surrounded him. “I didn’t realize anything about the
cocaine. I just got worse, taking more and more until the other band members
kicked me out.”

“They kicked you out after one of them introduced you to it?
God, I’d like to kick their asses.”

He huffed out a wry laugh. “I’m the only one to blame here. It
was me who lost control, whereas they believed they could handle their use. Some
nights I couldn’t string a sentence together, let alone sing.” Her hand slid
over his and he held on. “I came back to Templeton, high as a kite and
disappeared into the abyss.”

“The abyss would be the drug haunts you know about?”

“That’s where I spent pretty much every second for three weeks
and two days after coming home. Before George rang my father telling him exactly
where to find me. Dad hauled my ass into a rehabilitation center—”

“Wait. George found you? How did he know where you were?”

Jay turned away, as shame encompassed him like a familiar and
debilitating cloak around his shoulders. “I’ll get to that part in a minute.” He
swallowed. “Anyway, Dad hauled me into rehab quicker than I could put up a
fight. Left me there. No visitors. No calls. Nothing.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as it took.”

“Which was?”

“Four months, two weeks and five days.”

“Wow.”

Jay grimaced. “Yeah, wow. I took the stuff for two years and it
took me that long to even start the journey of staying sober. So you asked how
George knew where to find me...” He blew out a breath. “Sarah told him. Sarah
told him because I was with her. I did something really bad, Cat. Something that
severed Sarah’s and my relationship completely.”

He closed his eyes. “She saved my frigging life and I never had
the chance to thank her. She called George, rather than my dad, to come and get
me. She called George rather than the police. I owed her so much but she refused
to see me after what I did. Refused to answer my calls, so after three months of
trying, I left her alone.”

She slowly pulled her hand from his and the hook in his chest
pulled tighter. He opened his eyes and turned. The concern in her gaze had
changed to wary accusation. “Sarah loved you. You were her best friend. What did
you do?”

Guilt and shame twisted in his gut like the spikes of a claw
hammer, scraping and ripping his pride and self-worth to shreds, leaving the
regret to bleed inside of him where it would never escape.

“I went to her work.”

“You went to the primary school?” Her eyes widened and she put
her hand on her forehead. “You were high when you went there? Where there were
kids?”

He clenched his jaw, pursed his lips and nodded.

“Why? Why would you do that? What did you want?”

“God knows. I can’t remember going there or seeing Sarah. When
I tried to contact her once I was sober, she wasn’t having it. So...” He let the
sentence drift off as the helplessness he felt when Sarah hung up on him time
and time again rose like a bitter pill in his throat. A sharp reminder he would
now never be able to atone for putting her through the professional and personal
stress of dealing with a drug addict in front of kids no older than seven or
eight.

He met Cat’s eyes, and her shock and disappointment blazed hard
and hot in the semidarkness. “She must have been terrified, Jay. Terrified what
you were going to do. She might have thought you had a gun, were violent,
capable of hurting her or any one of those kids.”

“I know.”

“I can’t do this.”

He turned. “What?”

She pushed to her feet. “Have you any idea what that sort of
humiliation and fear can do to a person?”

He scrambled from the grass. “I do now, yes, but then—”

“Stop. I can’t listen to it. It’s too much like my... It’s just
too much.” She fisted her hands into her beautiful red hair and turned her back
on him.

Jay trembled with the effort it took to not wrap his arms
around her. Tell her to stay, not to leave. To look at him like she had when
they were having dinner, to touch his sleeve and wink and playfully tease
him.

She turned back around and optimism surged into his heart that
she’d come back to him. Come back and sit and talk and...forgive. She shook her
head.

“I have to go to bed. Have to absorb what you’ve told me. How
could you...” She stopped, held up her hands. “I’m going to bed. I love you.
Always will. It’s just when I think about what that must have done to
Sarah...”