Chapter Twenty-seven

Two weeks later, it was a Friday, and Quinten was taking Lacie home after she finished her paperwork and had cleaned her classroom to shut it up for the rest of the summer.

Last night was the presentation. It had been a success, and Simon had been there, but only for the kids. He hadn’t spoken to her, although he’d watched her. That was Simon, always watching. He’d shown up for the lessons after circle time, but he left afterward and had kept his contact with her minimal.

It was his modus operandi, and it broke her heart.

He’d made sure she was taken care of and provided escorts for her, even though she didn’t need anything. After the final meeting with her father, who had spent God knows how much money hiring him, he was a ghost. And it fracking hurt.

But it seemed the more intense the experience, the harder he retreated. And a life-or-death thing would make sure he never spoke to her again.

So Quinten was driving her home, and they sat in totally awkward silenced until he finally broke it. “You know, he’s doing this wrong, but he does care for you. If he didn’t care, he would do the right thing.” A soft chuckle followed his murmured voice.

She couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped. “I know. How can I get him to start talking to me again? Is he just going to write me off?” That thought hurt more than she’d imagined. She didn’t want to write him off. She didn’t want him to write her off.

She wanted to be with him, in whatever capacity he would allow. She understood he had pain in his past and it kept him from opening up to her. She’d seen the picture of the woman—the picture he kept even though every time he looked at it, he sneered, showing his total lack of affection. She also knew that was Tanya since she’d eavesdropped on him and Bonnie at the gym. Tanya was history, and he kept that history locked up as tightly as she did hers.

“I can take you to his house instead of yours.” Quinten made the offer, almost as if he didn’t think she would take him up on it.

“Would you?” Just the thought of being amongst his things again was heartwarming. Maybe they could talk. They needed to.

“Yeah. I don’t know when he’ll be home though. He’s been with the FBI wrapping things up with Jonas for a while. It doesn’t look like that’s ever going to end.”

Her foot started bouncing. For the first time since all this had started, Lacie felt a surge of hope.

Of happiness.

Quinten let her in, kissed her cheek, and left, and Lacie was alone in Simon’s house. With the things that weren’t his things.

She decided to make herself useful and see what his housekeeper had prepared for dinner.

It was a pasta dish with a cream sauce, garlic bread ready to put in the oven, and a salad that was already tossed. Lacie couldn’t imagine Simon ate like this all the time. She speculated about what happened to the leftovers but decided not to worry about that.

As she heated the food and the bread, not having a clue when Simon would come home, she couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to do this every day. She remembered the comfort when she had lived here—preparing food together, eating, and then cuddling on the couch to watch the news.

So domestic.

She needed that right now. She still hadn’t gotten back to not looking over her shoulder and questioned if she ever would. Or would she continue to fear them until the day she died?

The FBI agent closed the file box and hefted it to walk out the door. Finally.

“Thanks for your help with this. I think we’ve got it from here.” Days and weeks had been spent explaining his credentials, his history, and his involvement with Jonas to the FBI and task force assigned to Jonas. They’d used all Simon’s notes, which he’d freely given—as if he’d had a choice. He’d had to do some trickery to make everything look legal and aboveboard, even though he’d done some less-than-legal things to get the man who’d terrorized his sister and Lacie.

V had been working with the FBI for two years. Simon should have known that. He would have done things a little differently, but the hindsight thing would make him crazy if he went there.

But now it was finally over. Jonas was in jail, had admitted to his crimes, and would probably get an insanity plea, but he would still be locked away for a long time. A certain satisfaction had been crawling over Simon that he’d helped with it, but he still wanted the asshole to suffer for everything he’d done to his family and Lacie.

But thank God they’d shut it down before he’d ended his beta stages on the StrongArm mod scam. If this had been nationwide, or international, it would be a clusterfuck. As it was, they’d managed to get the word to women already targeted and let them know what had happened and that the men in the database were in the process of being apprehended. All the mods sold had been disabled.

He had thrown himself into the task of making sure the law enforcement officers had what they needed to convict the bastard because he couldn’t stomach the thought of him coming back for Lacie. He knew Bonnie was shaken but had a support network in place to make sure she was safe. Bonnie and Zack had holed up in Zack’s apartment for two weeks, healing.

Lacie didn’t have anybody.

And that hurt him. Simon had missed her in a horrifying way that kept him awake at night. He hadn’t slept in the two weeks since he’d seen her, but he knew she was better off. He had brought this scumbag into her life by not catching him sooner. She would do her compartmentalization thing and get over it all so much faster if he weren’t around.

Yeah. That felt as wrong as it sounded.

As he drove his new Jeep home, the winding hillside roads leading up to his house seemed to soothe him a little bit. He knew he should go to her. Last night had been the assembly, and it had gone better than he’d hoped. But every time Simon looked at Lacie, she looked like she’d just lost her puppy.

But still, his chest ached.

He missed the hell out of her. It wasn’t just her lush curves and sexy smile. He missed her openness with her kids, watching her with her friends, her laughter, her understanding, her sensitivity. He missed everything about her, from her long hair that fell in waves around her face when she wore it down, to the wide, trusting eyes that saw everything inside him. She saw through his bullshit, and he needed someone like that.

Sure, he saw her every day at school, where he’d managed to get away from the FBI for an hour to go teach the kids, and he’d relished the opportunity to be around her, touch her occasionally, and even once, dance with her to demonstrate something. But it hadn’t been enough. It would never be enough. And it was over anyway.

Simon indulged himself in the memory of her singing with her guitar, her voice light and lilting over the heads of the children, straight into his heart. He saw her wide smile, too big for her face, toothy and contagious. He felt her smooth skin sliding along his. He felt the closeness of her sitting next to him on the sofa, his arm curled around her while they watched something mundane. He smelled her, here, in his new Jeep she’d never been inside of—floral and sweet and all woman.

He even liked her dad, fiercely protective of her, doing whatever it took to maintain her safety. Simon had cut Mr. Hill a deal, knowing the cost of the rental house for a month in addition to twenty-four-seven security was well beyond the pay scale of a single father in the public education system, even for the Austin Superintendent.

Simon knew he had to talk to her, to explain himself and tell her why he hadn’t come to see her or even call her these last few weeks. But by this point, it was shame that kept him away.

He’d been the chickenshit, throwing Quinten and Dex at her to make sure she was safe, instead of himself. Even though they’d assured him she wasn’t in any danger with Jonas gone, Simon knew as much as they did that danger lurked everywhere. Especially when she wasn’t watching.

He pulled into his garage and trudged inside the house, feeling heavy and not looking forward to another sleepless night alone.

When he first walked inside, he smelled the food Miss Irene had cooked for him, but it smelled fresher, hotter than normal. He looked around the kitchen and his gaze fell on a vision. He blinked slowly, willing his mind to stop playing tricks on him, but Lacie stood there, and he decided to look his fill.

He started at her toes, painted silver, in open-toed sandals with a small heel. His eyes moved up the long, straight skirt in some sort of stretchy fabric designed for comfort and professionalism but hugging her curves in all the right places. She wore a silky, gray blouse that fell off one shoulder, and bright-red beads hung around her neck, cleaving her breasts. Her long, smooth neck supported her heart-shaped face and all that damn hair hung over her shoulder in the braid he wanted to wrap around his fist.

But her smile took his breath away. It was unsure, wavering at the corners, and he hated himself for putting it there. Simon longed to take her in his arms and profess his love, tell her everything she needed him to say, and most of all, apologize. He needed to prostrate himself and beg forgiveness.

But he was frozen.

Her voice was strained in the silence. “You’ve been ignoring me.”

“How did you get in?” Her face fell at his question, but he was still too scared to move, as if she were a mirage.

“Quinten brought me.” Lacie lifted her chin in defiance.

Clearly, his brother had given her what she needed to get through this conversation. Of course he had. Quinten, the hopeless romantic, would certainly want to give Simon the kick in the ass he clearly needed right now. His thoughts on the way home tonight were a testament to that. I will see her, someday. I need to talk to her, someday.

Quinten was just ensuring someday was today.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Simon heard the words and how shitty they sounded. Scrubbing his face with his hands, he tried to wipe away the last thirty seconds.

“What wasn’t supposed to?” Her eyebrow quirked in question as she put a salad on the table and motioned him to sit.

He sat but couldn’t answer her. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but it wouldn’t form them. Simon couldn’t bring forth the breath to push them out. His voice was gone. His mouth snapped open and shut, like a stupid fish out of water, and he knew he looked ridiculous when she smiled at him. It was an indulgent smile, like she knew exactly what was happening to him.

“Okay. I’ll go first,” she said.

Relieved to be off the hook, he sat there numbly and let her pile food on his plate while she talked.

“My parents were both teachers. Dad always taught summer school, and Mom stayed home with me during the summer. When I was eight, we had just gotten home from the park one morning, and Mom said she was going to lie down for a minute before she made my lunch. She wasn’t feeling well.” Lacie had loaded Simon’s plate enough to feed four people before she took a step to the side to start dishing her own. She sniffed, and he looked up at her face. She was wholly focused on her task, watching the pasta dish but not actually seeing it.

“She never woke up. I laid next to her until Dad got home, and she’d been dead for four hours. I was bereft. My eight-year-old mind knew there was something I should have done besides lie down with her, but at the time, I thought it would make her feel better.” She sat in her chair, in front of a mound of food on her own plate, and picked up her fork. Simon’s heart broke as she sat there, staring at her food as if she wondered how it had gotten there. With a soft sigh, she speared a tomato and spun her fork around as she continued.

“A few weeks later, after the funeral and everything, I was still crying. There were times when I got hysterical because I was obsessed with what she looked like under the ground. In the dirt. I would ask Dad if she got cold at night, or if she looked like a zombie yet. I’m sure that was all hurting him as much as it hurt me, but I was having such a difficult time processing things, so Dad sat me down and taught me a trick. He told me to imagine a giant metal box, so I did. He had a footlocker at the foot of the bed in the guest room that held a bunch of old trophies and stuff from when he was in high school. So I imagined that, only metal and with a big padlock on it, like he told me to.”

Her voice had gotten sort of high pitched, almost like a child, far away. “Dad told me to take that memory of Mama sleeping next to me and put it in that box and lock it up. He said to put all my bad memories in there and she would take care of them for me.”

She put the tomato in her mouth and chewed while Simon watched her. Her jaw muscles worked, and she chewed for a long time. Simon figured the tomato tasted like a bad memory, and she worked to get it down her throat. He wanted her to stop eating, to focus on telling her story, but knew she was telling it the only way she knew how. For all he knew, she’d never actually told it before, and the entire experience was new to her.

“I put them all in there. When I got stood up on a date, I shoved in the box. The teacher who accused me of plagiarizing an essay went into the box. The girls who made fun of me in the cafeteria went into the box. Later, the boss who ogled me and made me feel like dirt because Daddy was his boss went into the box.” Finally, she looked at Simon, and the pain in her eyes ripped him to shreds. He wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms and make everything better. He wanted to give her that. “These men who attacked me went in the box. Sometime in college, I started imagining Mama in there, with her favorite cast-iron pan taking care of all these people who had hurt me. It was only appropriate for me to put the attackers in there, so she could beat the snot out of them.” She smiled softly, and it was so incongruous with her words, Simon caught himself smiling in response. And then her next words cut him to the bone.

“You were in there too.”

Simon reached for his glass of ice water, suddenly needing something to do, something to cool the parched throat that wasn’t working. He couldn’t blame her. He’d been more than an ass to her, but he hated he was in the same league as her attackers. That cast a dark pall over everything. Made him less … redeemable.

“I’m sorry.” It was all he could think of to say, even though it felt useless. He tugged on his hair with one hand, even as he pushed his plate away with the other, no longer hungry. “None of this should have happened.”

“You keep saying that, Simon.” Her voice rose as she pushed her plate away. “But I don’t know what you mean. What shouldn’t have happened?” Her voice sounded choked, clogged with tears.

With a sudden clarity, he shoved his chair back and stood, stalking toward her. “I shouldn’t have fallen in love with you.” She cringed at his fierce tone of voice, so he softened it, hoping like hell he hadn’t screwed everything up. “You’re excellent at your compartmentalization, and so am I, but you refuse to get shoved into some box in my brain.” He grasped her shoulders and hauled her out of her chair. The surprise on her face probably matched his. He heard the words as they fell from his mouth, but he didn’t plan them. He didn’t plan any of this. “You are front and center during the most inappropriate of times, Lacie. I can’t get you out of there.” Now that she was standing, he took a step back and poked himself in the forehead with his index finger. “Every single interaction we’ve ever had is on a never-ending loop in here, and it won’t stop. I smell you everywhere. I see your smile. I hear your laugh. I want you. All. The. Time.”

Her hands went to her chest, as if holding something there, and he let out a grunt of frustration. He desperately wanted to clear off the dining table with his forearm and lay her out across it, feast on her, claim her, show her how badly he wanted her.

But he didn’t just want her that way. He also wanted to make her coffee in the morning, draw her baths in the evening, and do everything for her. He wanted all of her, not just her body.

Grateful she’d finally opened up to him had Simon taking the step back toward her. He forced himself to not kiss the hell out of her as he wrapped her in his arms.

“Thank you for telling me about your mom.” His voice was hoarse, gruffer than he intended. But dammit, his intentions were all wrong right now.

“You’re welcome. That means it’s time to tell me about Tanya.”

Of course it was.