Unforgiven (10 page)

Trinity tired of trying to get his attention, and eventually she started pulling on his elbow to leave. She was done trying to interest him, and seeing as there was no chance she could, he didn’t blame her in the least. He was tired of tormenting himself too, but when he walked to the table Bailey and Jess were sitting at, Jess was none too happy to see him.

“No way, Dare! It’s only eleven. We’re not ready to leave yet.” Bailey was offering no help either.

“We’ll just take a cab. They’re lined up outside. It won’t be a problem.” Bailey could barely look at him as she spoke, but she was obviously siding with Jess. He didn’t trust the two of them to behave. Not that either was stupid or would intentionally do anything to get themselves into trouble, but Bailey already managed to show just how quickly she could get into trouble whether she intended to or not, and with Jess beside her, who was quite obviously doing her best to party it up on their next-to-last night in Galveston, he didn’t know what to expect.

“Can I talk to you?” He was pinning Bailey to her seat, and her fingers trembled as she placed them on the table top and pushed herself up to stand.

“I’ll be back, Jess.”

When Trinity started to move with them, he stopped her quickly. “I won’t be long, Trinity, but I need to speak to Bailey alone.” Trinity was gnawing on the inside of her lip, her arms crossed on her chest. She wasn’t happy.

He walked with Bailey out the front door, and she was right. There was a line of waiting taxis at the curb to ferry the drunken spring-break crowd at the end of the night. He gently pushed her toward a darkened area at the side of the bar with his hand on her lower back. There was landscaping that tiered the lush flowerbeds around the side of the bar and acted as a retaining wall for the bluff the bar was built into. He sat on the lowest tier, and she pulled herself up to sit on the rather high ledge as well.

“Are you okay?” She nodded but said nothing. “I can’t seem to behave this week, can I?” He tried to smirk at her, but he was too nervous, and she was too. “I cheated you out of an answer last night.”

“Yes, you did.” Her head was cocked as she spoke to him, and his body was pulsing.

He watched her for a moment. He didn’t have a clue what to say, and yet he wanted to say so much. He wanted to finish the damn game and tell her everything she deserved to know. She deserved to know he didn’t simply want to take advantage of her and indulge in her body. At least that was wasn’t all he wanted. She deserved to know just how incredible he thought she was, and how much he cared about her. But when he took a deep breath and opened his mouth, he couldn’t get the words out. He didn’t know how to move what they were out of their safe friendship to something unknown. He had a girlfriend, for fuck sake! She couldn’t become another notch on the bedpost. She was his Bailey, and she simply meant too much to him.

He finally gave up on saying something profound and important. “I’m sorry, Bailey. I had no business touching you.”

Her breath left her in a rush, but it wasn’t nerves. It was irritation or hurt or indignation. Perhaps something that fell in the middle. Basically, she looked pissed. “I see.” She stood, but he grabbed her arm as she moved to walk away.

“Don’t do that. Don’t walk away.” He sounded frustrated, when in truth, he was scared to death.

“No, you’re right, Dare.” She nodded her head. “It shouldn’t have happened.”

They stared at one another. Neither had a clue what to say, and he was guessing it was because neither of them actually agreed with that statement. It should too have fucking well happened, and it shouldn’t have taken this long or this situation for them to figure it out. That’s what he wanted to say, and he knew, even if she was glaring angrily at him, that it’s what she needed to hear. But they just stared.

“Darren, what the hell is taking so long?” His suspicious girlfriend, who was absolutely right to be suspicious, was haunting him, and as her annoyed voice interrupted his thoughts and the quietness between him and Bailey, he turned toward her.

“Okay, Trinity, let’s go.” He stood and turned back to Bailey. “We’ll talk later.” He didn’t mean to sigh in frustration, and she bit her lip in nervousness. His cock instantly flexed at the sight of her small, white teeth clamping down on her lower lip. He wanted that mouth on him so much. He could have it. He knew he could, but he wasn’t sure what that meant for them.

“Can we go now?”

“Yes.” He started moving toward Trinity, but then stopped as he took in the sight of two of the cab drivers joking around and gawking at Bailey and Trinity. They obviously wanted to fuck one or both of them, and Darren’s hackles were instantly on end. He was leaving Jess and Bailey to their own devices, and the idea that they might have to deal with the likes of the lustful cabbies was a fist to the gut. One nudged the other, and they started sniggering like assholes. It really didn’t matter what they found so amusing. He turned back to Bailey again, pulling his keys from his pocket. “You sober?”

“Yes,” she muttered. She was really pissed at him.

“Catch.” He tossed the keys, and she caught them in one hand. “We’ll take the cab. You and Jess behave, or you’ll have to answer to me. Got it?”

She kept glaring. She was still angry. Of course she was. He’d finger-fucked the hell out of her and then walked away to his girlfriend moments later without another word. There was too much that was going unsaid, and he wasn’t doing a damn thing to clear the air. She walked back in the bar as he fought to keep his eyes off her.

He spent the next hour breaking up with Trinity. It wasn’t his intention to have that conversation until they’d returned home from vacation, but she was pissed, and she was pushing him for an explanation. She didn’t want to accept it when he said they were through, and so there was plenty of arguing to go along with the breakup. But his focus was singular, and it was all on Bailey. He didn’t have a fucking clue what it meant, or what he should or would do about it, but he just couldn’t stay away from her anymore. Perhaps it was their week together and his inability to avoid her in this place, or perhaps it was just so long overdue that he couldn’t ignore it any longer, and he just plain didn’t want to. Maybe he was just horny as fuck and couldn’t think about anything but getting his hands on her again.

What he didn’t realize was that while he was breaking up with his girlfriend for her, she was busy killing his sister and destroying his world and everything in it.

Now

She was standing in her shower, letting the hot water beat the top of her head and trickle down her shoulders. She’d been home a couple hours, and she’d spent the better portion of that time on the phone. First it was Michelle wanting to know that she was okay. Of course, she also wanted every last detail of her time with Darren. To hear her talk, you’d think Darren was a monster, and she was worried Bailey wouldn’t make it home alive at all. It was absurd to anyone who knew him, and Michelle knew him as well as any, but their interaction wasn’t something Michelle quite knew how to wrap her head around. Bailey didn’t either for that matter, and she was still shivering with the electric pulse of adrenaline while she stood under the hot shower.

She didn’t even have a bathtub, and so she stood until the water started slowly cooling, eventually climbing from her small shower to stare at herself in the small, old mirror that hung above her bathroom sink counter. Her hair was long, and it would dry with a natural, beach-curl wave, which was fortunate, given she had no intention of doing it. She combed through the long layers and then flipped it over and scrunched it lightly to revive the natural curl before righting herself.

The second call that had eaten the better portion of thirty minutes had been her mom. Celia was the epitome of a country bumpkin, and Bailey’s father had humored her by returning to Celia’s roots in the Ozarks. Her father, Daniel, had been a fairly successful author. He was no New York Times bestseller, but he didn’t much care to be, either. He did what he loved, hiding away in his office for days on end at times, occasionally sneaking a cigarette from the window when he was particularly blocked on a scene he was writing. He’d come out smelling faintly of cigarette smoke, and Celia would glare with an understanding smirk playing on her lips. She’d clap a gentle hand on his shoulder and speak quietly while Bailey watched from the table. “Whatever gets you through your madness, dear.”

That was not the woman Celia was today. Celia had once been vibrant and just a bit loony in that absolutely perfect sorta way. She had the same naturally wavy, auburn hair that Bailey had, and she was slim and athletic. She was an artist and had spent years teaching pottery classes out of her workshop. After Bailey was arrested, her always waiting-list pool of students seemed to dry up, so now she turned to her own work, selling to small boutique shops around the region. The region grew significantly after word spread that Celia Trent’s own daughter was a killer. She had to travel hours and hours to pimp her artistry to shops who didn’t know who her most-hated daughter was.

Her health wasn’t what it once was, though there was nothing wrong with her. Her spirit was just broken, and she was just a shell of the once quirky and always laughing woman she used to be. She was barely better off than Bailey at this point too. Her parents had cashed out her father’s life insurance policy in a last-ditch effort to extend his life via alternative means. Those alternative means didn’t extend anything except her father’s posthumous debt, and he’d been dead now for over a year and a half. Her mother now rented a little cottage about as small as Bailey’s, and her workshop now consisted of nothing more than a tiny, dingy shed on the property.

When the phone rang only minutes after she hung up with Michelle, she assumed it would be her mother. Michelle and her mom were literally the only people in the world who spoke to her, and her mother’s now incessant worrying meant they spoke often.

“Hi, Mom.”

“So? How was the parade? How’s Michelle?”

“Well, didn’t stay for much of the parade. Darren showed up and scared me away. Of course, then we ran into him again at Palmer’s Pub, so shame on me for being such a scaredy-cat.”

“I’d say you’re on a roll with that boy. Can’t be easy. You and Darren have got one heck of a history.”

“Well, he seems intent on reminding me of just how ugly that history is.”

“You pay that no mind. He’s hurtin’ is all.”

“His hurtin’ translates as out-an’-out hatred.”

“Darren could never hate you. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t think he does. Hell, doesn’t mean he doesn’t wanna hate you.” There was silence then, and it lasted as Bailey stripped out of her T-shirt and jeans and headed toward the bathroom. “You know, Bailey, you didn’t have to come back here. Didn’t you ever think some other place, a new place, a new start might be a good idea? Not like I haven’t had the thought myself plenty.”

Bailey sank down to sit on the toilet seat, pulling her heels up to rest on the front edge. “No, Mom, I never considered it for a moment. You’re here, so until you’re ready to move on, I’m stickin’ too.”

“Oh, Bailey. Always concerning yourself so much with me. I don’t want to be the thing that keeps you anchored to your unhappiness.”

“You’re one to talk, Mom. You’re happy? Tell me you’re happy here now.”

“You know I can’t. But I’m not the one torturing myself with a man who causes me more pain than happiness. He’s not the same Darren anymore, Bailey. Sometimes I think it’s part of the reason you came home, though.” She was silent for a moment. “Is it? Is that why you came home, because of him?”

“Of course not.” She knew she was lying the instant the words came out. It was at least partly because of him. To some degree or another, she knew it was. Even if he hadn’t lived here anymore, he’d be home someday. She wasn’t ready to say good-bye again—even if he hated . . . wanted to hate her. “He drove me home today. Stopped by his home to remove my sutures before he dropped me off.”

“Huh . . . well, that’s something idn’t it. . .” It wasn’t a question. Her mother was riddling it out in her mind. Trying just like Michelle to figure out what the hell it all meant. By the sound of her overlong silence, she was just as stumped as Michelle—just as stumped as Bailey for that matter.

Now, though, she was soaking wet and alone after her shower, still trying to whittle it out in her mind. She was startled out of her reverie as she stood staring in the fogged mirror at her loose, wet curls that cascaded down her back. The knock at her door scared her to the point of causing a yelp to escape her lips. She wrapped the thin robe tight, tying the sash at her waist and plodding out to the front door that opened onto her screened front porch.

She gasped when she opened the door and saw him standing there. It had started sprinkling, and he was wet. His dark hair glistened with droplets of rain water. It wasn’t pouring, and he had to have been standing outside for some time to get so wet, but his T-shirt was soaked through, and he stood, barely looking higher than her mouth. She didn’t have any idea what to say, and so she stood there as still as he was, waiting. She waited until she was certain he intended to say nothing, and then she opened her mouth to speak.

“Dar—”

“Shut up.” His eyes finally flashed to hers, and the expression made her gasp again. “I’ve thought endlessly . . . years. . .” His pauses were overly long, and his voice was hoarse. “I have relived that night so many times. So many mistakes. So many things. . .” He was nearly stuttering over his words. He was emotional, and her own eyes were tearing at nothing more than the choked, husky sound of his voice. “Could I go back . . . God, could I have just gone back and changed it all. All I wanted was you. I wanted to have you, throw everything else out the window for you. Maybe if I had. Maybe if I’d given in sooner, the fight would have been over. There’d have been no girlfriend keeping me from you, chasing me away from you. Maybe if I’d have had backbone enough, I’d have stayed for you.” He started pacing then, speaking in a flurry, but none of that explosive emotion compared to the moment he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her to the wall beside her. He reached for her cheeks, cupped them with his hands as his expression moved from fury to pain over and over again. “You did this! You did it! And I’m the one who feels guilty for it. Fuck!” He pulled his hands from her cheeks just to rake them harshly through his hair as he stepped back from her. “I want . . . I want so much to hate you. Do you know what that’s like? Do you have any idea what it’s like to see you, smell you, be near you again, feel your skin? Can you imagine what it is to hate someone so much, and yet . . . You destroyed everything.” He staggered back farther from her in defeat, his back sinking against the doorframe, bracing himself as she stayed rigidly planted against the wall, afraid to move, afraid to speak but wanting so much to do something.