Goodbye to You
Compared to the Southampton mansion and my townhouse, the Seventy-Fifth Street apartment is tiny at only eighteen hundred square feet. But I don’t care. It’s ours—mine and Dallas’s—and despite the shitstorm that has engulfed our personal and public lives, that fact alone makes me positively giddy.
We haven’t said anything more to the press, but they’ve been buzzing around us constantly. And pictures of us holding hands as we came and went from my LA house to the airport and then again in New York are all over social media.
It feels as if the whole world is commenting on our relationship. Some people say we should just be left alone to do what we want. Others say we’re disgusting. Sinful. That even without a blood relationship, the fact of our adoption makes our relationship both illegal and vile. Some say we got what we deserved when Eli disinherited us. Others say our parents are horrible.
As for the two of us, we’ve said nothing.
Reporters have been begging for a statement, an interview, anything. And Dallas and I agree that we should give it to them. We’ll do that, but later. There’s nothing they can print that is more than the truth, and we’re hoping that by letting them run loose with speculation, that by the time we officially speak, our relationship will have been so gossiped about it really won’t even be news.
Probably won’t happen, but we can hope.
And besides, even with all the chatter and gossip, we’re both too happy in our new bubble to think about bringing the press into our world just yet.
Now, I turn in a circle, taking in the obstacle course of boxes and furniture. It’s a huge mess—and I have absolutely no idea how we’re going to make everything fit—but I’m looking forward to the challenge. Craving it, really. My life may have literally exploded, but I’m surprised by how much of a relief it is to have shed the secret that Dallas and I have been carrying. So much of a relief that even doing normal, mundane stuff is making me a little giddy.
And, yeah, I feel a bit guilty about that. I know my mom is in a huge funk—not because she thinks Dallas and me being together is bad, but because my dad is being so damned unreasonable. And, yes, because she hasn’t got the balls to stand up to him and support her kids.
I know that Dallas and I are going to have to deal with that. With him. And with the press. And with sideways looks from strangers.
I know that Dallas is going to have to figure out how to regroup on the Deliverance side of things. He can no longer be the King of Fuck—at least not to anyone but me. Which means that Dallas may have to shift his role within Deliverance, and one of the other guys—I think briefly of Quince with his sexy British accent—will have to dive into the playboy role.
These are all real problems, and we’re going to have to find real answers. But for this week at least, I officially don’t care. For the next seven days, I’m all about this apartment and the man I share it with. The real world is out there—I know it. He knows it. And we also know it’s not going away. But for this bubble in time, we’re going to focus on us.
Right now, in fact, I’m searching the room for the box into which I’d packed all the bar supplies. Because Dallas is going to return from clearing out his office soon, and when he does I intend to greet him at the door with a martini—and absolutely nothing else.
I’m interrupted in my rummaging by the buzz of the intercom. I hurry to the door and punch the button on the speaker. “Yes?”
“Sorry to disturb you, Ms. Martin,” the doorman says. “But I have a man here who wants to see you, and I don’t think he’s a reporter.”
“Who is it?”
“He says he’s your ex-husband.”
I frown, not entirely sure how Bill got this address—probably my father—but absolutely certain I don’t want to talk to him. I’m positive that the press about Dallas and me has both confused and hurt him, but I’m not in the mood to talk about it. Soon, but not yet. “I’m sorry. Tell him it’s not a good time.”
“He says it’s important. That it’s about Colin.”
Colin?
I start to ask what he means, but instead I tell the doorman to just send him up.
“What’s going on?” I ask, the moment I open the door for him.
“You’re not going to like it,” he says. “Not any of it.”
I cross my arms over my chest, feeling suddenly vulnerable. “Just say it.”
“You know how we’ve been investigating your brother’s kidnapping?” He stumbles slightly over the word “brother.”
My throat is so dry I can barely speak. Somehow, I manage to say, “Yes.”
“Well, first of all, we weren’t the only ones investigating.”
I look at him sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Someone else was trying to find Dallas’s kidnapper, too.”
“Who?” I walk to the couch, because my knees are so weak now I’m afraid I’ll fall if I don’t sit. It’s Deliverance of course. It’s Dallas and Liam and Quince and the rest of the team. I know that.
What I’m wondering is if Bill knows it as well. But he, thank goodness, is shaking his head. “No idea. I wish we did because—well, I’ll get to that. The point is, we suspected someone else was poking around. We’re certain now.”
I don’t want to ask. I’m positive the answer will be bad. But I have to know. “Why? Why are you sure now?”
He meets my eyes. “Because when we made the move to bring Colin in for questioning earlier today, someone else had gotten to him first.”
Questioning?
I try to move, but I’m glued to the seat. I try to speak, but my hand is glued to my mouth. Seriously? They think Colin had something to do with the kidnapping?
Oh, god.
The room starts to turn gray, and I realize that I’m not breathing and that Bill is by my side, his hand on my back telling me to just inhale. To take it slow and breathe deep.
“Colin?” I say. “You’re really telling me that Colin was behind the kidnapping? Are you sure?”
“It’s looking bad for him. I’m sorry,” he says. “God, Jane, I’m so sorry.”
I swallow, trying to make sense of what he’s saying.
“And he’s gone?”
Bill nods.
“And—and someone took him.”
“They did.”
I stand. I have to move. I have to—oh, god. Oh, god.
“How long have you suspected him?”
He looks away. “A while.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
He turns back to face me. “Come on, Jane. It was an official investigation—”
“That’s bullshit.”
“—and I didn’t want to hurt you unnecessarily. What if we’d been wrong?”
“You shouldn’t have kept it from me,” I insist.
His expression turns ice cold. “Seems like you’ve kept a lot of things from me.”
I start to lash back at him, but I bite my tongue. Instead, I look straight into his eyes and very calmly ask, “So why are you telling me now?”
He shoves his hands into his pockets. “Christ, Jane. I still love you, you know that. Even with … everything else, do you really think I’d let you hear about this through a news leak? From someone in the FBI coming to investigate? From anyone other than me?”
I cringe, thinking of the way he heard about me and Dallas. Not from me, that’s for sure.
“It’s classified,” he continues, “but no way in hell am I keeping this from you.”
I open my mouth to answer and taste the salt of my tears. “Thank you. Really. But I—I need you to go now. I need to be alone.”
“Jane—please. We need to talk. About this. And—and the rest of it, too.”
I shake my head violently. “No, no, please. I’m sorry about—well, everything. But not now. I can’t—I—” I draw a breath and try again. “Thank you for coming. I mean that. But right now, I need to be alone.”
Right now, I’m falling apart, even more than he realizes.
Because I know something Bill doesn’t. I know who has Colin.
Deliverance.
Deliverance has been investigating my birth father. Dallas has.
And he never once told me.
He lied to me. He shut me out.
And right now, I think that he’s broken my heart.
I’ve reamed Dallas out in my head at least five times before he even walks through the door. Finally he comes home, and I’m so well-practiced that it’s almost anti-climactic when I cross the room in five strides, lash out, and slap his handsome face.
“What the hell?”
“No,” I shout. “That’s my line. What the hell, Dallas? What the fucking hell?”
He shuts the door behind him—probably a good idea since we haven’t even met our neighbors yet—and eases around me into the apartment. He’s moving warily, like someone who’s found himself trapped in a cage with a tiger, and he raises his hands in an effort to either soothe or protect. I’m honestly not sure.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Oh, that’s rich,” I say. “But sure. Yeah. Why not? I’ll tell you what’s going on.” I cross to him and shove him hard in the chest with the heel of my hand. “What’s going on is that you lied to me. What’s going on is that my boyfriend and my best friend and their friends have been investigating my birth father. What’s going on,” I conclude, my voice so hard it’s painful, “is that you think Colin kidnapped us and you didn’t fucking tell me.”
I step back, breathing hard. Dallas has gone completely white, but he moves toward me, his green eyes glowing. “Jane—”
“You grabbed him.” I have to force the words out. “Did you kill him?” I force the question out on a sob. “Oh, god, Dallas. Did you kill Colin?”
“No.” He tilts his head back and draws a long breath, and I watch as he visibly steels himself. As his color returns. “I didn’t want to tell you until we were certain. But today—well, dammit, it doesn’t look good. Liam’s sending me everything we’ve gathered, and I’ll show it all to you, I swear. But right now, we need to interrogate him. He’s locked up. And Quince is going to talk to him.”
“Talk? Is that what they call it?”
“What the hell, Jane? I’m pretty damn certain that the man fucking kidnapped us.” He’s in my face now, and I’m glad. I want him fighting back. I want a battle. “You damn well better believe I’m interrogating the fucker.”
“You promised me no more secrets. Damn you, Dallas, how the hell could you keep this from me?”
He seems to deflate with my words. “Oh, baby. Baby, I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t want you to think—I mean, if it turned out our suspicions were wrong. I just—oh, fuck. I was going to tell you. I swear I was going to tell you as soon as we were absolutely certain.”
“You were certain enough to take him in.”
“Today,” he says. “It all came together today, Jane, and I’ll show you every bit of evidence we have. And you’re right, I didn’t tell you before, but I would have told you soon.” He meets my eyes. “I truly am sorry. Hell, I’m sorry for both of us. He’s my friend, too.”
I nod, feeling numb. But the truth is, I haven’t even started to process all my feelings—rage, confusion, anger, hurt—about the possibility that Colin could have done that. To me. To Dallas.
My hurt is still focused on the deception. On Dallas. “I trusted you. You’re my heart. My lover. My brother. Jesus, Dallas, you’re everything to me and you just—you just—”
I turn away as a sob rips through me. “Everything is public now because of you. And we promised each other we’d be okay. And even in all of that—that mess—you didn’t say anything?” I look back at him. “I can’t believe you did this to me.”
“I’m sorry—I am. I was trying to protect you, not hurt you.”
“No? Well, guess what? You did. All those times we talked about secrets. About finding out who did this to us. Hell, I point blank asked you if Deliverance had any leads, and you didn’t have the balls to tell me the truth.”
“I screwed up, I know that. But it’s because I wanted to keep you safe.”
I wince. Him. Bill. Everyone is trying to coddle me. “You can’t keep me safe, Dallas. Not by lying to me. How can you not see that?”
“Jane, please.”
But I just shake my head. I don’t want to hear any of this. What was it I’d told myself in LA? That I knew that Dallas and I should be together, I just didn’t know how?
Well, maybe there is no how. And maybe a lie this big completely erases should.
“Jane—” His voice is soothingly gentle, but I’m not ready to be soothed.
“No—no.” My breath is coming fast and shallow, and I force it to slow. “I need you to go. Will you please just go?”
I sound so calm and commanding, that I’m almost baffled when he says, “No.”
“No,” I repeat. “No? Okay. Right. Fine.” The calm in my voice is cracking around the edges. “Fine. If you won’t go, then I will.” I grab my purse and head for the door, fueled by a mix of anger and the need for action. Any action. He reaches for my elbow, but I yank my arm away so that his fingers only graze over me, the touch so damn familiar. And right then, so unwelcome.
I skip the elevator and hurry toward the stairs, both relieved and disappointed when he doesn’t follow. I want to go—or I want him to go—but I also want a fight. I want to release all the shit that’s building up in me. I want to explode, and I really don’t know how.
It’s not until I reach the street that I realize I don’t know where I’m going. Obviously not to the townhouse since it’s no longer mine. Honestly, though, it doesn’t matter. Right now I’m so fired up all I want to do is walk, and so that’s what I do.
Maybe when I’m tired I’ll catch a cab to Brody’s. Or maybe I’ll go splurge on a hotel. Hell, maybe I’ll go sleep on a park bench. I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t think. I can’t focus.
I have to move.
I’m not walking with any particular destination, so I’m meandering through a pattern of long and short blocks. Now I’m on a dark residential street, the canopy of trees making odd shadows on the asphalt.
I hear footsteps behind me and move to the side, expecting a resident or dog walker to pass me by. But the footsteps slow, and even through my haze of anger and hurt, my skin begins to tingle with awareness and my heartbeat begins to quicken.
Mentally, I curse myself, because I am never this unaware when I’m outside. I always watch my surroundings. I always pay attention. And yet here I am, wandering blind in an emotional haze.
I’d left with only my small cross body purse and my keys, and now I slide my hand into my pocket and curl my fingers around the keys, letting the metal slip between my fingers so that I can not only punch, but do some damage in the process.
I continue walking forward, listening, and when I hear the footsteps again, I turn.
Mistake.
The word screams in my head as voltage rips through me, stealing thoughts. Stealing the world. Stealing reason.
I don’t remember falling, but suddenly I’m on the ground, terrified and lost as my body writhes in the wake of the Taser assault.
I feel my lips move as I form his name. Dallas.
And above me I see a woman. Tall. Lean.
She’s wearing a red dress and a mask, and is carrying something long and black, like a thin telescope. I’m confused at first, and then realize it’s an extendable billy club.
“You,” I croak.
“He’s mine,” she whispers.
Then she leans over, lets the club fly, and lands it square against my temple as the world fades to black and my heart screams for Dallas.