Lance

I’d almost forgotten what soft felt like, and I’d certainly forgotten how to care for soft. The last two times I’d seen Tara, she’d been hard. But that shell had cracked and burned away in the fire. Now all I was left with was her.

I took the back-way home, avoiding the fire trucks and the ambulances because when I suggested we get her checked out, she’d lost her shit again, pleading with me just to get her away.

So I did, I carried her home while she sobbed in my arms and eventually fell asleep, her head slumped on my shoulder. It wasn’t an easy walk. I was in shape, but she was still a hundred-something-pound woman in my arms. I had to adjust her a couple of times, but she didn’t stir. If anyone saw me carrying an unconscious woman, I’d be screwed, which was why I stayed on the outskirts of town where I wouldn’t be seen.

She woke when I was inside of my warehouse, the solid thunk of the door shutting, making her jerk in my arms and blink at me. I tried to set her down in the bed, but she clung to me, muttering about getting clean, needing to be clean.

So I hauled her into the bathroom where she stood with her arms stretched over her head, shivering, her eyes pleading with me to help her take her shirt off. “Tara…”

“You’ve seen it before,” she said. “Please, I just…my limbs aren’t working…”

I pulled her shirt over her head, then helped her shimmy out of her underwear. I remained focused on the job at hand, ignoring her naked body as best as I could. In the shower, I did give her skin a cursory glance, checking for burns, but her pale flesh was only pink from the heat of the water, and she wasn’t sensitive to the touch anywhere. I helped her wash her hair, her face. The soot from her body swirled around her pink-painted toenails, and she began crying again when she looked down to see the gray-colored water circling the drain.

I cursed under my breath and grabbed my other towel—hell, I only had two. After rinsing her off, she wouldn’t stop shivering, so I found a button-down flannel shirt and slipped it over her head, then helped her step into a pair of my boxer briefs. She was in shock, her pupils blown, lips quivering. Soft, so damn soft, and all I wanted to do was be her shield.

She clung to me as I forced her to gulp down some water and a couple of ibuprofen. When I led her to the bed, and helped her down into it, I tried to walk away then. I wanted to google smoke inhalation, shock symptoms, anything that could help me help her, but she lashed out, hooking her fingers into my arms so tightly that I winced from the sharp pain of her fingernails. “Baby—”

“Please,” she said, her voice trembling. “I l-lost ev-everything. My clothes, my furniture, m-my mom’s jewelry.” Tears fell down her cheeks in big, fat rivers.

I chucked off my boots, and slid into the bed with her, fully clothed, pulling her to my chest where she sobbed into my T-shirt. “I didn’t come with much. I didn’t bother with insurance. I thought I didn’t have anything that mattered.” She tilted her head to look at me, devastation dripping out of her eyes along with her tears. “Funny how you think you have nothing to lose until you lose it all.”

Those words pierced me. Bullseye. Right into the fucking heart with a poison-tipped dart. I knew what that felt like. Did I fucking ever.

I smoothed her damp hair off her forehead, and looked into her eyes that were pleading with me to make it better. I’d never in my life wanted to be able to do something more. “I know how that feels, in a way that I can explain another time. But baby, trust me when I say that you’ll be okay. You’ll start over.”

“I’m tired of starting over,” she whispered. She let her head fall forward, until it thunked against my breastbone. “So fucking bone tired.”

She inhaled a shuddering breath, then she fell silent. I thought she was asleep until she said. “Thank you. I don’t know why you were there, or how, but thank you.”

I squeezed her tighter, unsure of when I started caring again about something other than revenge. All I knew was that I did care, so fucking much, and I planned to keep my promise to her.

I woke up to the feel of something smooth on my stomach, brushing over my belly button and across my hipbones. I raised my hands and pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes, still not fully awake as something tugged on my jeans. Oh right, I was still dressed. I’d fallen asleep with Tara tucked against me.

The sound of my zipper made my eyes pop open just as lips closed on the hinge of my jaw.

Tara. Yeah, she was still here, in my bed, except she was no longer crying and shuddering, clinging to me like I was her white fucking knight. Her warm body was on top of mine, her hand slipping down into my briefs, her mouth making its way across my jawline to nip at my lips.

I tried to sit up, but her weight kept me in place. “Tara? What?”

She raised her head enough for me to see her long brown hair in a mass of waves around her face, eyes half-lidded and cheeks flushed, before she descended and placed her lips on mine.

Oh fuck. She was probably still in shock. Vulnerable. I shouldn’t kiss her back. I shouldn’t… oh damn there was her tongue, slipping into my mouth. Oh, and her hand? That was wrapped around my dick and with a firm grip, she tugged. I answered with a moan. I was only fucking human and muscle memory was vivid. I knew what she felt like, I knew how fucking great she was in bed and my body was ready and willing to go, to take her up on what she was offering on a goddamn silver breakfast platter.

I slid my hands up her sides, under the flannel shirt. Oh fuck, she’d taken off the underwear. All she was wearing was this flannel, and it was gapping at the top, exposing her amazing tits… Wait. Vulnerable. I jerked my mouth away, but she was right there, her forehead touching mine, her hand stroking my dick as she slowly rolled her hips into me.

“Tara,” I said, my voice a rasp. “Stop.”

She stopped, but she didn’t move. “Why?”

“Because you’re…” See, now I couldn’t remember. Why was I supposed to make her stop? Why, when this felt so good? Oh yeah, I remembered. “Because baby, last night you broke in my arms, and I need to make sure you’re put together again. This feels like I’m taking advantage of you.”

At that, she pulled back slightly. Her face hadn’t lost the aroused flush. She studied my face for a good thirty seconds, silently. Then her lips tilted up. She still didn’t talk, only reached over me to my nightstand where she pulled open the drawer. The drawer where I kept the condoms. My brain stopped working again when I heard the crinkle of the foil packet.

She came back into view with one clenched in her teeth, and then she sat up, straddling me, my bare dick poking out of my jeans and nestled against her bare pussy. Fuck, I could smell her, and when she moved her hips just a bit, her wet, hot flesh rubbed against my dick. My eyes nearly crossed. I placed my hands on her thighs as she slowly unbuttoned the flannel shirt. My flannel shirt.

I had to say something. Right? “You don’t have to do this to pay me back or anything—”

She ripped the packet open and smacked her hand over my mouth. “This has nothing to do with me repaying you. This has everything to do with me losing my shit last night. Then I wake up in bed. Safe. With a man who kept his promise to me, and who also knows how to fuck me better than I’ve ever been fucked. I want to forget for a minute that my life is a disaster. I want to have sex. With you.” She rolled her hips again, and the lips of her pussy were squeezing my dick. I could see precome beading at the tip. She finished unbuttoning her shirt, then pushed it to the side to reveal those tits I’d dream about until the day I died. Then she brandished the condom. “Is that okay? If you want to say no, that’s okay.”

I’d put up a good fight, but I was fucking done. White flag. I wasn’t a saint. “Like fuck I’m going to say no.”

She grinned just as I pulled my shirt over my head. Then I wiggled out of my jeans with her somehow still straddling me, and reached up to suck one of her nipples into my mouth. She gasped as I lapped at the stiff peak, and she continued to ride my dick where it was trapped between my stomach and her pussy. I wasn’t sure what she’d been doing while I asleep, but she was goddamn primed, so fucking wet that we were both already a mess, and her eyes started to glaze as the orgasm built. She fell onto her hands on either side of my head and rubbed her clit right against the head of my dick. I urged her on, loving how she looked, woke-up-and-got-fucked hair in a mass of waves around us, damp lips parted. I thumbed her nipples and her body shook, her moans turning high pitched as she came just from riding me.

I took the condom from her before she was even finished, tossed her on her back onto the bed and slid right into her. She was fucking drenched, the walls of her pussy still clenching from her orgasm, and it didn’t take me long once she wrapped all her limbs around my body to release inside of her.

I collapsed onto the bed and rolled us onto our sides. We both panted, trying to catch our breaths. She pulled her head back, gazing up at me with the widest grin on her face. And then she laughed. And laughed. Her entire body shook, and I slipped from inside of her, throwing the condom into a nearby trashcan as she pounded my chest in laughter. Even I started laughing. Because goddamn this was so much better than her crying.

Finally she calmed, and wiped her face with her hands and propped her head up on my chest with a fist. I tried to tame her hair with the palm of my hand, but it was untamable. I liked it wild.

“I know you said my coffee is shit.” I tapped her lips. “But I can make you some.”

She smiled at me. “It actually wasn’t that bad.”

“Ah now the truth comes out.”

“I was mad at you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I piss you off.”

“You think there’ll be a next time?”

“I’m pretty good at pissing people off.”

She grinned. “I’d love some coffee.”

As I made it, she redressed, buttoning up the flannel (I was sad about that) and pulling my boxers back on. I scrounged up some toast and yogurt, and we ate at my small table. It was so…domestic.

“Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

“I’m sorry it happened. There might be something salvageable. You mentioned your mother’s jewelry last night.”

Her shoulders went tight. “It’s fine. I’m not sure why I even mentioned that. We weren’t close. It was just that was all I had of hers.”

“Is she—?”

“No. Never knew my dad, and my mom led a lifestyle that didn’t take her past forty-five.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “You?”

I’d never been good at talking about myself, even less so now. “My parents both passed away too.”

“Wow, we’re pathetic.”

That made me laugh, the way she said it with a twinkle in her eye and a lift of her lips. “Yeah, guess so.”

“So, how did you know about the fire?” she asked, licking her spoon.

“I heard the sirens and I just… knew.”

She gave me a quizzical look.

Yeah, so this was where I needed to explain some things. “I need to tell you something.”

She had a spoonful of yogurt halfway to her mouth. She stilled, then placed the spoon back in the container and pushed it away. Her expression was wary now, and I hated that. After last night and this morning, I didn’t want to talk about this shit. But we had to now that I knew for sure she was in danger. “Remember when I said I followed you home?”

“After the morning you kicked me out, yup.”

I ignored that. “So I watched you get into your apartment and then I overheard a man talking on a cell phone. He confirmed that ‘she’ was back in her apartment. I looked around, Tara, and there was no other woman around. And you’d just walked inside. I confronted him, and he ran. I, uh, got him. Tackled him. And he pulled a gun on me.”

She didn’t gasp. She didn’t make a sound, but her entire body was a tight coil, her eyes big and round.

“And then he told me to stay away from you. I let him run away after that because of the whole gun in my face thing.”

She looked away then, blinking her eyes rapidly as they watered. “Fuck,” she whispered and pulled the ends of the flannel over her hands. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Who’s after you, Tara?”

She jerked her head to me then. “I don’t know. I…he said—"

“Who’s he?”

She rolled her lips between her teeth. “My ex-boyfriend.”

I told myself not to react. “Okay.”

“He said that they were after me, but I didn’t believe him. They aren’t supposed to be. I’m supposed to be safe.”

“Who Tara? Who is after you?”

She shook her head. “I can’t…I don’t want to tell you a lot. I don’t want you involved. I’ll just… I’ll leave town. Again.” She bit her lip as the tears began to roll. “Fuck.”

Panic lit my blood. “Tara, you understand that fire might not have been accidental right? Where it was placed…” She just stared at me. She knew, and that made me sick. I tried another tactic. “Can you go to the police?”

“No,” she barked out quickly. “Absolutely not. The best thing to do is leave.”

“How are you going to leave? You don’t even have clothes.”

“I have a car,” she said. “I keep the spare key taped in a combo lock in the tire well. I have essentials in the trunk. Money, clothes, ID. I’ll be okay.”

That did not bode well that she had a getaway plan. “Tara, please let me—”

“You did so much already,” she said softly. “I can’t ask you to do more.”

“Where are you going to go?” She shrugged, and she looked so small in my shirt that in the moment I would have done anything to keep her with me. “You can stay here as long as you want.”

“I’ll leave today,” she said. “If they’re in town, I don’t want them to come here and involve you.”

What could I do? She’d made a decision. I felt so fucking helpless. “I can—"

“Lance, loss lurks behind you like a shadow.” She reached out a hand and cupped my face, her fingers brushing the stubble on my jaw. My breath left my lungs. For years I’d been invisible. I wanted it that way. And in two days, this woman could see right through me. She withdrew her hand, and I nearly grabbed it to keep her with me. “Am I wrong?”

I couldn’t say anything, so I just shook my head.

Her expression looked resigned, like maybe she wanted me to deny it. “So no, I don’t want to involve you.” She stood up but then paused and looked back at me. “Can I ask a question?”

“Sure.” My voice was a rasp.

“Did you come find me that night just to make sure I was safe? That night at the bar?”

“When I fucked you in the alley?”

She nodded.

“I came to make sure you were safe. I stayed because that asshole had his hands on you and I wanted them to be mine.”

She smiled at that, so I guessed I told her the right answer.

Getting her ready to leave was ridiculous. While she called her work to tell them she wouldn’t be in for a while due to a personal emergency, I dug around for something for her to wear. I found an old shirt that’d been washed so many times it had shrunk, so it didn’t look completely comical on her. We also found an old pair of sweatpants of mine that still needed to be rolled at the waist and the legs. She also had no shoes, so I gave her a pair of thick socks. She was so fucking unprepared to leave town, but I had no choice short of tying her to my bed. I considered it, not going to lie.

I insisted on walking her to her car, which she allowed. The only ride I had was an old Harley, which she refused get on with me, saying it made too much noise. As we walked, I checked the streets for broken glass, anything that would puncture the socks I gave her. She didn’t even fucking have shoes. Every time I saw her feet, my rage grew and grew.

“I have some sneakers in my car,” she said after several minutes, like she knew I was stewing. “It’ll be okay.”

It would not be okay. It would decidedly not be okay. This morning I’d been ready to tell her to just stay. For days, weeks, however long. I didn’t give a fuck. And now she’d had some toast, yogurt and coffee and was out the door without any fucking shoes.

We took the back way to reach her apartment parking lot, where she said her car was parked. Even so, as we breached the trees surrounding the complex, it was a shock to see the burned-out husk that had once housed a good number of Waterstone citizens.

She looked at it with blurry eyes, then turned away with a sniff. She knelt down by the right rear tire of an old maroon Toyota sedan. She pulled out a little black box, which had a panel to type in a combination. She clicked some numbers and the box opened to reveal a key. She worked so efficiently, like she’d done this before, and it killed me to see how fast she’d put herself together again. I wondered how many times she’d done this in the past. And how many times she’d have to do it again.

I was suspicious about this ex-boyfriend. If he was the only one who knew where she was, then he ratted her out. And that made her unsafe.

“Hey,” I said as she pulled a couple of bags from the trunk and placed them in the passenger seat.

She glanced up at me just as she slipped into the backseat to pull on a pair of jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers. “I’m keeping this flannel,” she muttered as she tugged it on over her T-shirt. “And what?”

“This ex of yours have a way to get a hold of you?”

“He calls.”

I narrowed my eyes.

She pursed her lips. “He wouldn’t betray me. Well actually, he might betray me, but he wouldn’t betray my brother. And trying to kill me would betray my brother.” She had a brother? This sounded complicated. She turned on the car and after a couple pumps of the gas, it started. She sighed in relief. “Oh, thank God.”

“Tara—”

I wasn’t able to speak another word before my voice was drowned out by an approaching SUV—gunmetal gray with tinted windows, and it was heading right for us. Tara craned her neck, then stepped out of her car and shaded her eyes against the glare of the rising sun. I watched her body language, and when her spine locked, I stepped closer to her.

The SUV stopped about fifteen feet away and all four car doors opened. The driver was big, with a round belly and thick neck like a linebacker. The two guys in the back were weaselly, and I immediately recognized the fucker that had pulled a gun on me. He stared back at me with no expression.

The man who emerged from the passenger seat walked out in front. Sunglasses covered his eyes, so it was hard to read his expression. “Babe, heard about the fire. Called the police and the hospital, even the morgue, worried out of my mind for you.”

She waited a beat before speaking. “Well, I’m okay.”

He pushed his sunglasses up on top of his blond head and blue eyes seared through the car, her and then me. Something in my memory reared its head. “I see that.” His gaze shifted back to her and the running car. “Where you going?”

“I’m leaving.”

He shook his head before she even got out her second syllable. “No, no more of this. I’m bringing you back under my protection.”

“No, Reb,” she said. “No way in hell. I know what that life is like and I don’t want it.”

Reb. Why was that name familiar? I began to wrack my brain.

“It’s the only life you’re gonna get,” Reb snarled at her. “Don’t be fucking stupid, Tara. They’re after you.”

“And why’s that?” she snapped. “How did they find out where I was?”

“Not having this fucking discussion in a parking lot next to this asshole. Who the fuck are you?” He puffed up his shoulders, clearly trying to out-man me, but I wasn’t interested. I was fitting puzzle pieces together in my mind that began to form a fucked-up picture.

Reb “Ghost” Rebert. I knew who he was. Dread pooled in my stomach, sour and nauseating. I said the name in my head, but I didn’t dare say it out loud. I slowly lifted my hand and rested it on Tara’s back just as she jolted and glanced back at me in confusion. I didn’t trust Reb. I didn’t trust any of his crew. He was a criminal, and a fucking killer, and no way, not on my watch, would Tara be going anywhere with him. She was his ex-girlfriend? That meant…I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. Yeah, the puzzle was together now, and the picture it showed changed everything.

“I’m just a guy she’s been seeing since she’s been here, man. No big deal.” I looked to Tara, and talked in a normal volume I knew they could hear. “I can take care of your car. Just go head and reach into the passenger side and grab your bags and go with him.”

She turned around slowly and stared at me. I stared back, but there was no way to communicate what I planned to do next. All I could hope was that they weren’t into kidnapping or shooting us in broad daylight. She bent down to reach inside, and I bent over her. “Here, I’ll help you.”

Reb’s head was turned, saying something to linebacker guy, and that was my cue. I shoved Tara into the car, hard. She crashed into the passenger seat and door with a holler, but I was already inside, shutting the driver’s side door and putting the car in gear.

Shouts came from outside, but I was already backing up, hoping this little fucking Toyota had decent horsepower.

Reb ran toward us, shouting, which was a stupid move. He should be in his car now, trying to follow us. I backed out into the street with a screech of tires, threw the car into drive, and roared away.

“What the fuck, Lance!” Tara shouted at me, holding her arm. I was sure it was hurt from when I shoved her in the car, but it was better than whatever Reb had planned for her. If she got into that car with Reb, she was fucked. She’d be dragged back into the life that Reb lived, and according to her, she wanted out. That was enough to get her the hell away from him.

I knew every alley, every road in this town and it was easy to lose the giant SUV. In fifteen minutes, I was on a back road leading to a deserted highway that would take us away from this shithole town.

Tara had fallen silent, as if she knew the score too.

The problem was, at this moment, I wasn’t so sure she was much safer with me. Because now I knew who she was. All the puzzle pieces clicked. This was Tara Drayer. Bryan Drayer’s sister.

And Bryan Drayer killed my brother.