Jaded (26 page)

“Head wounds bleed like a stuck pig, especially when you’re full of alcohol like your drunk mama. Did you bother to check for a pulse?”

Jade shook her head. She hadn’t wasted a minute after her mother had hit her head. She’d grabbed Crystal and run as far and fast as she could. She knew about the fire, she’d seen it erupt while she and Crystal hid in the thick shrubs surrounding the park. She’d read in the paper the next day that they were looking for her.

“Otis was furious when that hag told him you’d done run off. He took the pot of lard sizzling off the stove and threw it in her face. To cover it up, he bashed her head and locked her in the bedroom and set the place on fire.”

“Why would Otis tell you that?”

“When I told him what I did to Townsend and that I had a way to give you to him, he became my best buddy.” Richard chuckled, enjoying his story. “He told me he killed his mama just to hurry getting you up the hill. But his daddy got to you first. That made Otis real mad. His daddy didn’t care. He killed him, too.”

Tina started sobbing uncontrollably. And in a slow, unhurried surreal montage the chaotic pieces of Jade’s life fell into place. And while she felt the burden of the world lifted from her shoulders with Richard’s confession, flashes of Jase’s sexy smile flashed before her face, and she felt a stab of pain so deep and so profound it was unbearable. She smiled then, despite it, thinking how she would have given it a shot. Being part of a couple. A
them
. Something good, something clean, something wholesome…but that would not be. Because for her sister to live, Jade knew she would pay the ultimate price for it, and knowing that, an unexpected calm filled her.

She looked at her sister, Crystal Blue—Tina, as she had been for the last eleven years. Such a sweet girl. A good girl who deserved everything. They had run all of those years because she thought she’d killed their mother. It was time for it all to stop. Here. Now. Jade shook her head and caught Richard’s crazed stare. Slowly she stood, then walked toward him, never once breaking eye contact. “Kill me, Richard. Kill me and let her go.”

“No!” Tina screamed. She twisted in the maniac’s arms, trying in vain to get clear of him. Jade flung the cord from her wrists as she continued to walk toward him. She reached for a nearby chair to throw at Richard, and as she brought it up in front of her, Tina dropped to the floor. A single shot rang out and Jade’s screams mingled with her sister’s.

Richard stood rigid, his hands out at his sides, his palms open, a stunned look freezing his face. Jade caught his shocked stare and felt no pity for him. A dark stain seeped into his white T-shirt, spreading to cover the middle of his chest. He looked down and touched his hand to it, then looked up to Jade in disbelief. He sank to his knees, then fell face-first onto the hard linoleum tile.

In the split second before the room swarmed with cops, she looked up to see Jase standing twenty feet away in the shadowed corner of the room, the gun in his hands still aimed at Richard’s heart. Jade nearly fainted with relief. She dropped the chair. Instinct drove her into the arms of the man she loved more than her own life. As Jase’s strong arms wrapped around her, pressing her into his hard strength, Tina hugged Jade from behind and the three of them stood in the center of the room, one big hugging mass of relief.

As the cops swarmed around them, and time stood still, a hard wave of emotion overcame Jade, and this time, instead of trying to keep it locked up deep inside of her, she let it out. Her body trembled, then racked as great sobs shuttered through her. Tina hugged her tighter. Jase whispered comforting words against her ear, and had she not been sandwiched between the two people on earth that she loved, Jade would not have been able to stand.

Jase led her over to a chair, and when he moved to set her down in it she clung tighter to him. So he sat down and brought her into his lap. Tina sat down beside her on the floor, wrapping her arms around Jade’s legs and resting her head against her thigh, and for several more long moments Jade let her emotions run unchecked. She didn’t feel the pain in her arm or her ribs, or the pain of what she had endured at the colonel’s hand or even Donny’s. All she felt was an incredible sense of relief, and a deep, burgeoning love for the man who held her and the sister who clung to her for dear life.

As she hiccoughed back a sob, Jade looked up into Jase’s ocean blue eyes and to her astonishment found them shiny with tears of his own. She reached a fingertip up to him and caught one on his lash, then brought it to her lips and kissed it.

Jase pulled her up to his lips. In a slow demonstration of love and hope he parted her lips; their tears mingled, the saltiness of them sweet on her tongue. And at that very moment Jade knew her knight in shining armor had not only awoken her emotions from a long, dormant freeze but had cleared the path for her to live as normal a life as humanly possible.

She didn’t ask what he learned in Sykesville or how he found Tina or how he got to her in time. She didn’t care. All that mattered was that he came for her, that he was here, and that he would not leave her.