Uncommon Passion (30 page)

her and . . .

Moments slipped by, hot, elastic, saturated with lust. The world shrank to her hair in her face, his hard

body pressed against hers. She gasped and spread her legs. He took his time working all the way inside,

making her feel each and every inch as it stretched her swollen channel. He paused deep inside, then slowly

withdrew.

When he shoved back inside her it was like the Iron Shark drop. No more anticipation, no more dread,

just a nerve-screaming, pulse-pounding thrill ride that flung her off the cliff and into the red-hot void faster

than she’d ever thought possible. His mouth slammed over hers, trapping her helpless cries, as her sheath

convulsed around him.

He stepped back and pulled out in the same move. “What?” Rachel gasped just as he tossed her over his

shoulder again and stalked down the hall to his bedroom. He dumped her on his bed.

“No condom,” he said shortly.

Her eyes widened. “I forgot.”

“We both forgot, or at least I did until I was inside you,” he said as he sheathed himself. He came down

hard on top of her. “Then it felt too fucking good.”

Her reply was cut off by his take-no-prisoners thrust inside her. She clung to him, fingers digging into

his shoulders, heels clamped to the backs of his thighs as he sought his own release. His entire body went

rigid, from his jaw to his toes, as he ground himself inside her and shuddered in her arms.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

She wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, the rough sex, the forgotten condom, the world in

general, so she stayed soft and pliable, hoping he’d relax into her for just a little while. “I’m not worried

about it,” she said.

Her relaxed response seemed to ease something within him, because as the tension ebbed from his

muscles, he didn’t pull away. Shadows cast his face in planes and shadows as he loomed over her. Sweat

dropped from his jaw to her collarbone.

An uncomfortable awareness grew inside her. It would look like he was feeling so much. Big games as

a football player, big chases, death, accidents, daily banal sordidness. It was the perfect cover. He was doing

good, difficult, selfless work. Nothing wrong here. Move along. Nothing to see. At first glance all you saw

was a good-looking, hard-drinking, harder-partying Texas hell-raiser.

Until you scratched the surface, or slipped under his defenses. Then you got a second look at a dark

emptiness, a shallowness that drove women away. Only a third glance revealed the pain in the darkness, the

sure certainty, just as surely avoided, that sex and drinking didn’t work to defuse the pain. He was strung

tight, and he couldn’t take much more.

“Ben,” she said softly.

He looked at her, emotion shifting behind his eyes, under his skin. For a long moment she waited,

breathless. Then his whole demeanor changed, brow furrowing as he shook his head once, then again. He

buckled his belt, then felt in the pocket, then cursed and went to his knees on the floor.

“Ben?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

Nothing. Then the phone rang, under the bed by the muffled sound, and Ben lunged for it. “What

happened?”

Indistinct babble resonated from the phone. Ben turned away from her, and her body chilled.

“Chris,” Ben barked. “Hang up and call 911. Now.”

More babble, this time at a higher panicked pitch. She caught the name Jonathan, then Ben glanced back

at her. For a brief moment the light from the parking lot fell across his eyes. Her heart froze. They held an

adult’s agony and an old, old bewildered terror, the emotion that lurked at the back of Ben Harris’s eyes.

Sirens wailed faintly through the open connection, and Rachel struggled to piece the fragments together. An

accident. Someone named Chris had called 911, then Ben, a trained first responder.

Whoever was hurt meant so much to Ben that emotion actually showed in his eyes.

“I’m on my way.”

Rachel pushed her skirt down and hurried after Ben, into the living room, where she snatched her

blouse and bra from the floor. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he waited for her to get decent before

opening the door and taking the stairs two at a time. Rachel clattered after him, reaching for the door handle

as the lock clicked open. She tossed the teddy bear into the back seat and clambered up. “What happened?”

“I’ll drive over,” Ben said tersely. He jerked the truck through the parking lot, hitting the horn when a

car backed up. Brake lights went on and Ben shot through the gap. “Take my truck back to the farm.”

“Ben, what—”

“My brother.”

He flagrantly ignored the speed limit on the main drags, slowing down only when he entered the

residential neighborhood, turning hard on the heels of a patrol car. Flashing lights from an ambulance, a

fire truck, and two other police vehicles marked off one house. All the lights in the garage and along the

driveway were lit. Ben braked to a halt angled into the street and hurled himself out of the truck, leaving the

keys in the ignition. Rachel turned off the engine, palmed the keys, and followed more slowly, taking in the

scene as she crossed the lawn.

The EMTs had a body on a gurney and were wheeling it down the driveway at a good clip. A man

wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out and paint-stained khakis ran alongside, a gangly, crying, dark-

skinned boy jouncing on his hip, the other hand gripping the shoulder of the man on the gurney. When they

passed Rachel, her heart lurched sickeningly in her chest.

Ben’s mirror image lay on the gurney, blood staining his face and shoulder.

Brother . . . twin brother . . . ?

“Chris,” Ben said.

When the man holding the child saw Ben, he turned to him, his face crumpled with agony, as if he

could finally let go. “Oh my God, Ben. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t breathing for so long.” He drew a

deep breath and added in a rising voice, “The sound his head made when it hit the cement—”

“UTMB?” Ben demanded.

“Yeah,” one of the EMTs said. “Move.”

Ben visibly restrained Chris as the EMTs loaded the gurney into the back of the ambulance. “Shh, Jon,”

Chris said to the weeping child, but the tears streaming down his own face didn’t help. “Shh, baby. It’s

okay. Sam’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

Twin brother . . . and . . . ?

Oh.

Both arms wrapped around her torso, Rachel edged along the sidewalk. Her mental image of Ben’s

family shattered and reassembled itself to form a completely different picture. The unconscious man on the

gurney and child wheezing as he sobbed
Sam . . . Sam . . . Sam
.

The crying echoes glinted like shards in Ben’s eyes. He saw her and stepped protectively between her

and the ambulance. The set of his jaw and shoulders managed to be defensive, protective, and challenging

all at once. Before she could say anything, the man turned to Ben as he pried the boy’s arms from around

his neck. “I have to go with him. I have to. We have power of attorney for each other, but I better call your

parents just in case—”

Ben cut him off. “What about Katy?”

“Disney World, remember? I love you, Jonathan. Ben’s here. Take him,” he said to Ben. Between the

two of them they pried the screaming child from the man’s arms. Then he kissed Jonathan on the top of his

head and sprinted for a car parked in the street.

Chapter Eighteen

Jonathan’s heartbreaking wails were the soundtrack to Ben’s voiceless dreams. The year they were

five. The year they were sixteen.

The driver hit the siren as the bus bumped over the curb, startling him into the now. It wasn’t supposed

to be Sam who got hurt. It was supposed to be Ben. Stupid, adrenaline-junkie Ben, walking into robberies

in progress, tackling a tweaking dealer. Not Sam, gentle, loving Sam who’d been through so much.

Ben couldn’t hear himself think over the crying, let alone figure out how to stop it. Sam was gone.

Chris was gone. As the first responders packed up, going through the routine they all used to distance

themselves from the job, the EMTs, firefighters, and cops were watching with a mixture of sympathy and

that oddly blank look he recognized. The only way to deal with what they faced was to block it out. Newer

first responders still showed some expression, those and the truly empathetic.

Rachel’s face showed neither. She stood in the middle of his brother’s front lawn, his car keys in her

hand, and he couldn’t read her eyes. Dark hair, golden eyes, pale skin, a body he knew as well as he knew

his own, but she was absolutely opaque to him.

For a moment neither of them moved, then he felt a warm wetness spread down his hip. Rachel figured

it out before he did, hurrying past him and up the stairs to the front door. When Jonathan’s cries shifted

from anguish to shame, he got it.

“Christ,” he muttered, and took the steps two at a time, Jonathan still wailing away. Rachel had the door

open. Most of the interior lights were on. He brushed past her and headed upstairs, into the white tiled

bathroom. Jonathan was sobbing brokenly now, tears wetting his shirt as he clung to him so tightly Ben

couldn’t break the hold to get his wet shorts and underpants off. He also couldn’t find the distance that

came so easily on the job.

Because this wasn’t the job. He shut the toilet lid and sat down on it, shifting Jonathan on his lap.

“How can I help?” Rachel asked quietly from the doorway.

At the sound of her voice, Jonathan hid his face in the crook of Ben’s neck. He warmed up to strangers

slowly at best, often navigating the crowd in the house wearing a superhero cape and mask on his way to

the tree house to deflect attention or comments. Sam and Chris prepped visitors by telling them Jonathan

was invisible, but pretending didn’t make it so, and deep down, Jonathan knew that.

“You can’t help,” Ben said. “Take my truck and go home. I’ll have someone drive me out tomorrow to

get it.”

She gave him a level look, then turned and disappeared. Ben heard drawers opening in Jonathan’s

room, then she reappeared with a dry pair of Superman underpants and cotton sleep shorts. She set them

on the sink. Then her flat shoes clapped down the stairs, and the front door closed.

“Come on, buddy,” Ben said. “Let’s get you changed.”

Jonathan kept on sobbing. The kid’s shoulder blades stuck out like bird wings from his skinny back.

Ben could count every vertebra in his spine, see the knobs of his hips through the soft shorts and his ankle

bones where his long legs dangled on either side of Ben’s. He was basically skin and bones, his breaths

wracking his body from shoulders to toes. Urine trickled down his leg and Ben’s, and he showed no sign of

moving, let alone wanting to get cleaned up and into dry clothes.

“I want Sam,” he sobbed. “I want Sam.”

“Sam will be back soon,” Ben said, lying through his teeth.

“When?” Jonathan sobbed, his tone escalating. “When will he come back?”

Based on Chris’s admittedly hysterical description of Sam’s tumble from the top rung of the ladder to

the cement garage floor, it was entirely possible Sam wouldn’t come back at all. Hemorrhage, swelling on

the brain, concussion, blot clots, the shock to his heart and nervous system—all the possibilities danced in

Ben’s mind. Not to mention the possibility that he lived, but in some vastly reduced mental capacity. All of

that assumed no damage to his spine in the fall.

Ben’s eyes burned. His throat tightened, and for a long moment his heart seemed to halt midbeat.

He’d waited too long to answer Jonathan. Crying, the kid shoved off Ben’s lap and huddled in against

the wall, emptying his soul into a void Ben knew didn’t answer back, didn’t give a damn that your world

was coming apart around you. He was sweating, Jonathan was sweating, the room stank of urine, and the

screams slashed like razors at Ben’s eardrums. In the early days when Jonathan had come to live with them,

Sam told Ben about the night terrors, the seemingly random screaming fits that happened anywhere from

the backyard to the supermarket to the park, about how the only thing to do was to sit with him until he

settled down.

It sounded easier than it was. He sat down next to the kid, but by the time Jonathan went limp against

him they were both sweat-soaked, their clothes damp with urine, tears, and snot. “You ready to take a

shower?” Ben said.

A sniff, then Jonathan nodded. “Don’t leave.”

“I won’t,” Ben promised. That he could promise. He wouldn’t leave. He didn’t leave.

To give Jonathan some privacy, he busied himself shaking out the fresh clothes while the boy shoved

his wet shorts into the laundry hamper. Then he stepped into the shower, but the curtain slid open thirty

seconds later.

“Use soap everywhere,” Ben said without thinking, echoing what his mother used to say.

The curtain closed again. This time when it opened suds were dripping from the kid’s ear, so Ben