CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Will
Southpaw’s medicine is missing. Like a greedy motherfucker, I wanted to get back to Teresa, so we jogged around the hotel grounds two quick times, before Southpaw took care of business. Now, I’m riffling through my suitcase and every jacket I own, looking for the little orange pill bottle so I can crush it up and put it in his breakfast. He’s sitting on his hind legs, looking up at me with a classic head tilt on the kitchen floor and my throat is starting to tighten with panic. He’s never missed a dose before and I don’t know what happens if he does.
“Teresa.” Her name is out of my mouth before I realize it. “Baby.”
“Yeah?”
I look up to find her walking into the kitchen, looking concerned, hair wet from her shower. She’s in a T-shirt and panties, like I interrupted her in the middle of getting ready. Not even my worry can keep me from formulating a plan to fuck her up against the counter as soon as I get Southpaw his meds, but I’m struck more by how much less alone I feel as soon as she gets close. Like I’m on a team. I’ve always been solo, whether while boxing or running a company from my cold, quiet office. Not right now, though. Christ, I want to drag her up against me and breathe her scent until I’m back on solid ground.
“Can’t find his medicine,” I say instead. “Any ideas?”
Obvious worry sends her hand fluttering to her throat, and guilt pinches me in the sternum, but I still can’t regret calling for her. Not when she makes my load feel so much damn lighter. “I saw you put it in your pocket yesterday. In the morning.”
“Right.” Mentally, I retrace my steps. “Before we went to the park.”
“Oh God.” Her eyes widen. “You don’t think it fell out in the water, do you?”
“Shit. It’s possible.” I scrub a hand over my face. “If it did, it’s long gone.”
She gets on her knees and scratches Southpaw behind the ear. He edges closer, propping his jaw on her shoulder. “Well, maybe we shouldn’t waste too much time looking for it. There has to be a vet nearby that can fill the prescription.”
“Okay. Yeah. We’ll have to push back the flight, but this can’t wait.”
“No. Don’t chance it.”
I’m man enough to admit my hands aren’t completely steady as I find my phone on the counter and pull up a search engine. Teresa drops into a cross-legged position and stays there while I dial the closest vet and make an emergency appointment, filling them in on the details of our New York vet to save time when we get there. When I hang up, Teresa smiles at me and I’m back in control. “I thought I’d figured out how to take care of him. Looks like there are a couple holes in that theory.” I shake my head, wishing she was closer. Unable to keep myself from telling her everything. “Maybe this road trip wasn’t a good thing for him. Maybe it’s making things worse.”
“No, Will. You’re doing great. He’s loving every second.” I start to correct her—that we’re doing great now, the three of us—but she stands, looking…troubled. Worse. Like she did back in the bedroom. My body seems to brace itself, head to toe. “Sometimes you throw a solution a dartboard when you’re trying to do the right thing for someone you love. I’ve done that for my brother, thinking I was acting out of love. I thought love meant the randomness didn’t matter.” Her hands meet at her waist, twisting in her shirt. “Turns out, it matters a lot.”
“Talk to me, Teresa.”
“I’m trying.”
When her voice cracks, something inside me does, too. I don’t know exactly what’s coming, but I know it’s bad. Bad enough that her teeth are chattering and she’s swaying on her feet. “Come here,” I rasp, compelled to wrap my arms around her, no matter what she’s about to tell me. “Come here.” I step forward, holding out my hand. “You look like you’re freezing.”
My cell phone goes off and she jumps, backing away. “Will…”
I glance down and find the name of my associate in New York flashing on the screen. With a hollow chest, I slide my finger across the screen and hold it to my ear. “What is it?”
“Mr. Caruso. Can you talk?”
He’s asking if I’m alone. Meaning the information he has is sensitive. Enough that he’s pretty positive I don’t want anyone around when he relates it. My heart wakes up with a vengeance, firing around my ribcage in every direction. “Yeah.”
“I’ve obtained the travel records for Miss Valentini.” It’s made clear by Teresa’s sudden wheeze that she can hear every word being spoken. My instinct to comfort her is resounding inside me, but I’m cemented to the ground, waiting for the axe to drop. What the fuck is this? “She was in New York as recently as last week. I still couldn’t connect her with any of your competitors, but…on a hunch, I ran a cross check against another, older report I compiled for you.” My stomach plummets, because I know from his tone which report he’s speaking about. Disbelief plows into me like a semi truck. “The one—”
“Jesus. Don’t say it.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” He pauses. “I called in a favor with my contact at the NYPD. Teresa Valentini’s father is a past associate of your father. Quite well known, in fact, for leaving their ranks roughly a decade ago. He’s since passed away, but I have a hard time believing Miss Valentini arriving in New York, then appearing in Texas with you, is a coincidence.”
So did I. In the beginning, I was suspicious as hell, questioning every move she made, every word out of her mouth. Until I stopped. Until I couldn’t hear my own common sense over the volume of my stupid heard pounding for her.
I hang up, refusing to listen to any more damning information. Jesus Christ, I’m an idiot. A crashing sound starts in my ears, the white noise accompanied by a stab of broken glass in my chest…but when I look down, there’s nothing there. Only my numb hands that don’t look familiar. Betrayal tightens them until my knuckles are white and it’s so familiar. So fucking familiar. Wanting to make someone happy and only getting played in return.
“Will. Listen to me.”
Her tearful voice tries to intrude on my rage, but I refuse to hear the suffering in it. No, I only want to increase that suffering until it amounts to even a fraction of mine. Nothing. This woman felt nothing for me and all the while I was falling in love with her. “What did my father offer you, Miss Valentini?” She flinches at my use of such a formal address. “Why would you make a deal with the devil?”
When she walked into the kitchen, she was so comfortable in her panties and T-shirt, but now she tries to shield herself with useless hands and I shouldn’t ache watching it. I shouldn’t want to wrap her in a blanket. Goddammit. “I-I was going to tell you everything this morning—”
“Well, here’s your big chance.”
She squeezes her eyes closed, seemingly against the chill in my voice. “My job was to bring you back to New York. Back to the business, before it fell apart without you. That was all. There was no money involved. Will, please listen. He has my br—”
My chest is being crushed between two spiked walls and they close in tighter with each new confession. All her phony hesitation over us returning to New York together was a sham. None of what happened between us was real. None of it. “Back to the business. Before it fell apart.” Confusion pierces the edges of my misery. “Why would he give a shit about my company?”
“He…” She swipes at her damp cheeks, confusion beginning to dawn in her eyes. “In some backwards way, he wants you to succeed. Doesn’t want you to throw it all away. That’s what he told me.” A shudder catches her. “That’s the only way I could justify this to myself.”
“That’s bullshit, Teresa. There has to be another reason. Didn’t you stop to think that this man who makes a living off the backs of honest people—this man who lied to me for thirty-two years—could be lying to you, too?”
“Yes. I did. I did.”
“Well, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you’d hate me. Because he sent someone to follow us.” She sniffs. “He was back in Dallas and I saw him again on the highway. If I told you the truth and you freaked out or left me behind, he could have reported it—”
“There was someone watching us?” She nods slowly and a buzzing starts in my head, the sharp tip of violence spearing me. “Of all things, you should have told me we were being followed, Teresa. You knew what your safety meant to me, but you’d already taken away the privilege of ensuring it.”
Her shoulders sag. “No. Please don’t think of it like that.”
I barrel straight through her plea. I don’t want to hear it. She could have been hurt and I would have been in the goddamn dark. “Is he here now? In this fucking place?”
“No,” she rushes to say. “No, I think he’s gone. It was probably just to scare me into…”
“Into screwing me over faster.” The lifeblood in my veins freezes over and I’m just fucking numb. “Into screwing me, period. Christ. That’s how you planned to get me back to New York, isn’t it?”
Nothing moves. This time and place is frozen, along with my blood. Except for Teresa, who shrinks in on herself, cupping her elbows. “I wasn’t going to sleep with you. I was just going to…go far enough that you followed me east. But you’re you. And I couldn’t…I-I couldn’t…I didn’t know you’d get to me this way. Every time you touched me it was real. We were real.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She sinks down to her knees slowly, knuckles crammed to her mouth and I lurch forward to catch her. Old habits I need to kill hard. She doesn’t want this thing between us—it was just a job to her. I’m a job. She conned me—and she is still trying to dupe me with this wounded act. Still lying about how she feels. I’m not going to make myself more of a fool by letting her know my feelings haven’t faded by one fucking degree. That they never will.
That truth only serves to strengthen my anger. None of it was real for her, but it was for me. She knew that. She knew how I felt and used it against me to do my father’s dirty work.
“I’m sorry about everything,” she whispers. “Can we please find out what Silas really wants together? Can we…fix this together?”
“No.” The need to lash out rises up and swims in my head, turning my stomach. “You knew how I felt about him. You had to know that when I found out—because I was always going to find out—that I’d shut your game down fast enough to make your head spin.”
She reacts like she’s been slapped, but sobers fast, putting her hands out in an imploring way, inching forward on her knees. God, I hate her down there. I hate it and love it at the same time. “He has my brother.” Her sob is anguished. “You…I haven’t told you everything about my family, but if you knew what my parents did to get away from Silas, you would understand why I was scared enough to-to risk hurting you.”
Light tries to pierce the fog around me—maybe even hope—but it’s too late. I’m enshrouded in thick blackness. Back in that nauseated state I was in before leaving New York. How did this happen so soon? How did I let it happen? “If I haven’t convinced you by now that I would have moved mountains to help you, Teresa, this was nothing but a waste of time.”
“Don’t say that. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“A little late for that, baby.” Despite my harsh words, optimism dances across her face at me calling her baby. Seeing her optimism sparks my own and I need to douse it. Need to. Before it grows and I forgive her. Before I open myself up for being burned a third time. No more. I’m done. And I need her to be done, too, so the avenue back to her is closed for good. Ignoring the buzz of warning in the back of my head, I pick my wallet up off the counter and take out all the money inside, tossing it on the ground in front of her. “Guess it wasn’t such a fantasy after all.”
I turn away from her shock and pain before it can force me down to my knees to apologize. I almost do, though. I come so fucking close because she’s dug herself a home inside me and her suffering is unacceptable.
“Will, please. Please don’t call him. If he knows I told you, he could hurt my brother. Promise me.”
The fact that she’s asking for promises now—after everything—makes it possible to force my armor into place and command myself to register nothing. Nothing as I snap on Southpaw’s leash and walk out the door, focusing on one task at a time. Keep moving. Get the medicine. Keep breathing. It’s all I can do when I’ve had the heart ripped out of my chest.