Belonged to You
Coert
Present day . . .
PAT MORELAND LOOKED SURPRISED WHEN Coert nonverbally invited him in.
And then he walked right in.
Coert closed the door behind him, passed him to guide him into the living room and stopped. He turned and stood there, crossing his arms on his chest, studying a good-looking man who he now saw had a lot of his father in him.
A man who looked worried out of his brain.
This kept Coert quiet.
Because this man being there was enough of a surprise.
This man worried out of his brain for Cady gnawed at his gut so much, he had to keep his mouth shut or he’d vomit.
“Thank you for letting me in,” Moreland said.
Coert nodded.
“I know that you probably don’t want to be disturbed with this at all, much less this close to the holiday,” he declared.
Coert’s voice was not his own when he spoke, brusque, harsh and deeper than normal as he pushed out, “No offense, but you don’t know anything about me.”
There was a tightening of his mouth and the shift of a little worry to let annoyance in when Moreland muttered a curt, “Right.”
Coert stared at him, feeling hot and cold and sick with his palms itching and his heart thundering in his chest.
He was about to expend the effort to tell him to get on with it when the man got on with it.
“Mom died when I was twelve.”
Already braced, with that opening, from head to toe Coert grew solid.
This was not where he thought this would start.
“She and Dad, they liked kids. Best parents you could have. Loved us. I remember her. I remember everything about her. Her smell. The way she did her hair. How she’d pull it up in a ponytail when she cleaned the house, but she usually wore it down all other times because Dad liked it like that. Probably kids do that when they lose a parent. Or at least they do if they have enough time with them. I’m glad I was old enough to have that. Daly was eight. He doesn’t remember as much as I do. And I hate that for him. I hate that for Mom. I wish he had more. But I remember. I remember how much she loved being with her family. Being with her boys. What I didn’t know until a lot later, when I was old enough to know it, when Dad felt he could share it, was how much she wanted a girl.”
No, this was not starting as he’d expected at all.
Coert forced himself to continue staring into the man’s eyes.
“Dad wanted one too,” Moreland said quietly. “But he was her husband and he had to look after her. She wanted kids, a lot of them. They both did. And with three boys they were really wanting a girl. Mom liked the idea of a girl being the last. Of her having three big brothers to look out for her. And Dad having a daughter to walk down the aisle. I could see that. Mom wanting it. Dad wanting the same. He still had to stop her having more, because as much as she loved kids her body wasn’t good at making it easy for her to have them.”
Shit, shit, shit.
“She had three boys and two miscarriages in between,” Moreland told him. “She nearly . . . things went bad with my baby brother, Daly. So after Daly, Dad put an end to it.”
Coert remained silent.
But he knew where this was leading.
He knew.
Shit, shit, fuck.
The man’s voice was thicker when he said, “It took her years. But he loved her. He was like that. Dad was. He was like that with everyone he loved. He gave in. Gave them what they wanted. It might take time, but if they didn’t give up, they’d always get there eventually. So she talked him into it in the end.”
He needed to give the guy something but with the way this was going he knew he had to hold what little he had in reserve so Coert just jerked up his chin.
“She was six months in when it happened. Died giving birth to my baby sister.”
Shit, shit, fuck.
“The baby lived but just for three hours.”
Coert felt his jaw flex.
“Her name was Katy.”
And there it was.
Coert looked to his boots.
“Yeah,” Moreland whispered.
Coert forced his eyes back to Cady’s “brother.”
“Dad told me about her,” Moreland shared. “Cady. Months before it all happened. We were at the office. We were having trouble with one of our employees. We had a lot of those and Dad had all the patience in the world but he must have been having a bad day. He said he wished all of our employees were like the girl who worked at the convenience store where he got his coffee in the morning. Where he always stopped to get gas. Not a great job. Not a job where every day you acted chipper and like you didn’t want to be anywhere but there. He said every time he saw her she smiled and was friendly, and she learned his name and called him Mr. Moreland when he came in and asked about his day and she just gave a shit.” Moreland swallowed before he repeated, “She gave a shit.”
She did.
Cady gave a shit about everything.
Even that job and that job sucked. Her schedule all over the place. The other employees not caring, so she was doing overtime all the time, doing their jobs along with hers half the time.
But she’d had plan.
She’d had a path.
She’d had a direction.
And she was going to get where she was going no matter what it took.
And then she met Coert.
“So, obviously, when he went to the store one day and found her hysterically crying on the sidewalk, he was a little shocked, not to mention alarmed and upset.”
Coert felt his jaw flex and dropped his eyes to his boots again.
“He went in. That was Dad,” Moreland told him. “It wouldn’t matter, pretty girl, young kid, old lady, if someone was hurting, he’d wade in.” He paused. “He waded in.”
He did that for certain.
“We were not good to her.”
Coert lifted his eyes back to Moreland.
“We hated her,” Moreland admitted. “We saw her play. We were sure of it. Dad told us her story and he saw it a different way from us. But, I mean, her best friend had just got arrested by her supposed undercover cop boyfriend and was going on trial for murder and drug dealing? And she didn’t know her boyfriend was a cop, thought he was a drug dealer and that was okay with her? What else would we think?”
Nothing.
Nothing else.
Just like Coert thought what he thought to protect himself and nothing else was going to get through.
His mouth filled with saliva.
“We were . . . it was . . .” Moreland cleared his throat. “It was bad. We should have known. Dad told us. But we loved him so we were protective of him and she took it. Boy did she take it. Christ,” he suddenly spat. “We hid it from Dad but we laid it on her, all us boys. Kath and I were married already, Shannon and Daly engaged, so the women did it too. We piled it on her. And she took it. She didn’t breathe a word to Dad. She just took it.”
Coert focused on breathing.
“Her parents were, God, her parents were . . .” Another pause then, “Did you meet them?”
Coert jerked up his chin.
“So you know,” Moreland whispered.
Coert jerked up his chin.
He knew.
Fuck him.
He fucking knew.
“Dad wanted to adopt her.” Moreland gave a sharp chuckle at that that was genuinely amused. “That was Dad. She was twenty-three and he wanted to adopt her. Suggested that to her first. Knew her first name and her story and was in her life in a real way for about a day and he’s all up for adopting her. It was about Katy. It was losin’ Mom and Katy. But it wasn’t just Mom and Katy. He knew Cady and what she was about and he wanted a daughter. He wanted his sons to have a sister. But mostly, he listened to all that was happening to Cady and wanted Cady to have a family that’d look out for her.”
Coert felt something foreign hit the back of his throat and he swallowed it down, a strange feeling at the backs of his eyes, but he beat it back.
“She wouldn’t have it. Even if you can actually adopt an adult, and I don’t know if you can, she wouldn’t give up on them. Flatly refused. And she never did give up on them. After I met them I didn’t get that. But then I realized that was just Cady.”
That was.
It was just Cady.
Obviously they’d turned their backs on her when she’d needed them the most and just months ago she was up in Waldo County trying to build a bridge to her brother.
Yeah.
That was Cady.
“So he talked her into becoming a part of the family by marrying him.”
When Moreland waited for a response, Coert just nodded.
“It wasn’t that,” Moreland said quietly.
Coert said nothing.
“They didn’t even sleep in the same room together. It was never that.”
He was getting that from all the rest.
But still.
Shit.
Shit.
Fuck.
“We boys thought that was even more indication she was playing him.” He shook his head and ended that looking to the wall. “We learned.”
It took some time for Moreland to pull himself together. He did that and looked back at Coert.
“It was crazy and maybe it was wrong but it was Dad. Half the people who worked for us were ex-cons or ex-junkies or stuff like that. He just . . . he, and Mom too when she was alive, they just took care of people.”
Private investigators.
Cady dropping a load on renovating a lighthouse, a load she’d inherited from Patrick Moreland.
This was not lost on Coert.
It was just not Patrick Moreland’s job to take care of Cady.
It was his.
“He tried to divorce her.”
Coert’s legs locked.
“By then, well, we boys got it and she’d become part of the family, but she still wasn’t and she felt that. And by this time he’d also told us. He couldn’t hide it anymore like he’d been doing. It got bad, and Cady lost her mind on him and made him come out with it because she saw it, she didn’t know what was happening either and she was worried sick. So when Cady finally forced it, he told us about the cancer.”
Christ, it just got worse.
“And then she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t divorce him. She wasn’t a member of the family and if she wasn’t, she couldn’t have access to him at times or couldn’t help us make decisions at times. I got it sorted for her to do that legally, even if they were divorced, but she wouldn’t have it. She got it in her head and I know what it was with Cady. She was all about payback. You didn’t get something and give nothing. So she gave everything to him, the prime of her life, when she should have been meeting a man and having babies. It tore Dad up. It tore all of us up. But she wouldn’t disconnect from him. She absolutely refused. No matter how often we all talked to her about it, Dad tried to push her on it, how often we told her she was one of us, that wouldn’t change no matter what, she held on. She wouldn’t let go.”
Coert understood that.
She’d let go once.
And lost everything.
“He had a nurse for the medical stuff but the rest, Cady wouldn’t allow anyone but her to do it. He’d get better and we’d have hope. Then he’d get worse. And each time that worse was worse. I don’t know how she did it. Sometimes, and it doesn’t say a lot about me, but it’s the truth, sometimes it’d take me days to get myself together to go see him. But Cady acted like nothing was different. Like he didn’t look like he looked, didn’t get weak like he got weak. No biggie for her she had to help him walk or get to the bathroom or up his morphine because he was in so much pain. Just another day for Cady. Just another day, one after another, up and down, good and so bad it broke our hearts, for twelve freaking years.”
Coert looked to his boots again.
“But he beat it back, my old man. Lived past eighty, Dad did. But Cady helped with that. Cady gave him a reason to wake up every day. Cady was always there to babysit our kids in order to keep his family around him and because she loved those kids like they were her own. For every one of us, she did the birthday parties and did them up huge. Threw slumber parties Kath, Pam and Shannon were invited to, all the girls. Slumber parties. Adult women invited. God, she made every opportunity to keep that house full and alive so Dad was surrounded by that. By us. By his family. Her family.”
Coert looked at him again.
The second he did, Moreland stated fiercely, “Best little sister a man could have. Best daughter a father could have.”
Coert felt his Adam’s apple jump.
“But she calls us the family. The family. Sometimes Patrick’s family,” he stated.
Maybe it was all Coert was giving to dealing with all this.
So he didn’t have it in him to get that.
And his “What?” came out choked.
“The family. Not my family,” Moreland explained.
Shit, shit, fuck.
“All her life, she never belonged anywhere. Not anywhere. Not with her family, who didn’t allow her to belong. Not her real family, my family, who wants her to belong. The only time she ever belonged to anything, to anyone, was when she belonged to you.”
Coert forced himself to stand strong after that blow landed because if he didn’t, it would have rocked him back and taken him to his goddamned knees.
“She’s always been sad,” Moreland whispered. “It’s always under the surface. But now, something’s wrong. She’s trying to hide it but she’s failing. She talked to Kath and we know something happened with you. So I’m here, not to be a jerk, not to get in your face, not to drag you into it. But because I’m worried as all hell and I gotta know what happened with you and her so I can fix my little sister.”
“You need to get your family out of that lighthouse.”
Coert’s words made Moreland blink.
“Sorry?” Moreland asked.
“Take them to dinner. If they’ve had dinner, take them out for dessert. A drive down the coast. I don’t give a crap. But I need a few hours. And during that time I need you to get them out of that lighthouse.”
“I . . . sorry . . . what?” he asked again.
“You lead the way, I’ll follow. You get them out. I’ll take it from there.”
The two men stood staring at each other in the glow of a gorgeous, mismatched Christmas tree a little girl started to put together when she was two years old.
Then Moreland asked, “Are you gonna fix her?”
“I’m gonna try.”
Moreland’s face went hard. “You need to fix her.”
“I broke her,” Coert said low. “I did this. All of it. From the beginning. And I’ve known it. From the beginning. When she stops doing what her mother taught her to do, blaming herself for everything that happens, and she realizes that this isn’t on her, I don’t know how that’s gonna go. It’s something I’ve been avoiding since she showed here in Maine and it doesn’t have to be said it’s something I avoided for eighteen years. But it’s gotta stop. And I’m gonna stop it. What goes from there . . .” It took him a beat to be able to finish. “Goes from there.”
“You can’t make more of a mess,” Moreland warned.
“I’m in love with her.”
Moreland blinked again, this time with his chin jerking back in his throat.
Coert kept talking.
“I’ve been in love with her since she poured beer all over the yard the first time she looked in my eyes. She’s my world. She’s been my world for eighteen years even when she wasn’t close to being part of that world. And it was me. It was all on me. I kept her in something that was wrong and dangerous and made her think she was falling in love with a criminal. She was on the right path and it was me who jerked her off. I loved her but I lied to her with practically every word out of my mouth, and I played her to get what I needed. Then I got my pride stung and I was too fuckin’ young and too fuckin’ destroyed by all I’d done to do anything but lay that square on her shoulders. So this is my mess, Moreland, and I’ve lived with that for eighteen years, and I’ve lived with knowin’ I made a mess of Cady for all that time too. Now I gotta go in there facing the very real possibility that just seein’ me is gonna make more of a mess. But you and your family have spent all that time pickin’ up the pieces so no matter what happens from here, the only way I’ll go is knowin’ you got this if it turns even more to shit.”
“She’s never stopped loving you,” Moreland told him quietly.
“You say that thinkin’ it makes it better, but I fucked up her entire life,” Coert clipped, leaning forward but then pulling back, pulling himself together, taking everything he had to do it, because he was close to flying apart and right now he could not fall apart. “She told me she still loved me days ago and it only made it worse.”
“You can salvage this.”
“Maybe, but should I?” Coert fired back.
“Yes.”
He said it instantly and he said it straight, and when he did, that was when Coert took a step back like he’d suffered a blow.
“She’s my little sister and I want her to have what she wants and what she wants is you,” Moreland declared.
“Then get your family outta that lighthouse,” Coert growled.
Moreland stared at him.
Then he smiled.
Then he said, “I’m in a black rental Denali SUV. Think you know the way, but you’re right. It’s best I lead.”
Coert walked right to the door and opened it.
Moreland followed him but stopped and looked him again in the eyes.
“My wife Kath said if you two quit squabbling, you’d jump each other’s bones. Dad said the second you got your head out of your ass and came back, Cady would be gone in a flash so we’d have to gird our loins to hold on so we didn’t lose her. But just to say, the whole family’s here for Christmas so do us a favor. Cady cooks a mean bird and the kids are looking forward to it. She won’t be able to lift it if she’s exhausted by a reunion sex-a-thon.”
So that explained the “sister” Kath, and the other wives were the other two “sisters” and the entire Moreland clan “the family” coming out for Christmas.
He loved Cady had that.
Still.
“How about I salvage this and we joke about it in, I don’t know, say fifteen years?” Coert suggested.
“Maybe a good call,” Pat muttered, lips curling up, and then he walked out the opened door.
Coert closed it, locked it, went into the living room, turned out the Christmas tree lights and hustled to the garage, not even grabbing his jacket.
He got in his truck, hit the garage door opener, pulled out and got behind the black Denali that was idling in his road.
In all his years to come, looking back at that ride from his house to the lighthouse, he’d never remember a second of it. He gave Cady shit for driving emotional but he was lucky he had those Denali taillights to focus on, because Lord knew with all the shit infesting his head if he’d have made it.
But he made it and Moreland must have had a remote to the gate because he coasted right through.
Coert followed him.
He’d been right, the Christmas lights were amazing.
And it was clear the “whole family” was a big one because there were two more Denali SUVs crowding the space around her two-car garage, both doors open but only Cady’s Jag was parked inside one bay.
Coert parked and Moreland swung out as Coert did the same.
He followed him to the covered walk that led to the door to the lighthouse on that side.
Moreland stopped and Coert stopped with him.
“Ready?” Moreland asked.
“No,” Coert answered.
“Dad liked you for her.”
Coert suffered that blow too with a miracle of no movement.
“He lived long, the last years of his life not the greatest. I hope we made them not as bad as they could have been. I know Cady did. But I’d put money on the fact that he left this world with only two regrets. Giving in to his wife, planting Katy in my mother and then losing them both, and that he didn’t live to see this.”
And with nothing further, Moreland opened the door and moved through.
Coert heard Midnight bark, not a warning, a welcome.
He also heard someone shout, “Hey, Dad! Where you been?”
But as he moved in, all he saw was Cady in the kitchen with two other women and a kid. She was doing something at the island, and the minute she turned her head and saw him, she froze.
So he froze two steps in from the door.
“Who’s that?” A child.
“Everyone, jackets on, we’re going into town for dinner.” Moreland.
“But Auntie Cady’s making spaghetti pie!” Another child.
“What’s goin’ on, Pat?” A man.
“Right! Dinner in town! Everybody get suited up!” A woman.
“What’ve you done, Pat?” Another man.
“Let’s go. Now.” Moreland.
“I think—” Another woman.
“Now.” Moreland.
“Holy cow.” And another woman.
“Who’s that guy?” A young woman in a loud whisper.
“Jackets. Now!” Moreland’s voice was rising. “Let’s go.”
“Yeesh, Uncle Pat’s freaking out.” A young man.
Midnight woofed.
“Come on. Come on. Let’s go. Mike, Daly, got your keys?” The first woman.
“This goes bad, bud, we’re having a family meeting.” A man, growling.
Coert heard it, felt the movement, commotion, footfalls running upstairs and voices encouraging others to get jackets and move out, footfalls down the stairs.
It seemed it took years for it all to quiet down, for the brushes of people to stop moving past him to get out the door, for the door to close.
And all that time he and Cady just stared at each other.
When the door closed he said gently, “Is the stove on, baby?”
Woodenly, she nodded.
“Turn it off, Cady,” he ordered.
Her body jolted but she forced it to move stiffly to the stove.
She turned knobs.
Then she turned to him.
“Come here,” he urged quietly.
Slowly, one foot in front of the other, her eyes to his, she moved his way.
Midnight moved to her and crowded her but Cady didn’t stop until she was two feet away.
Coert looked into emerald eyes.
Christ, how did he start?
Christ, how did he fix something that he broke before he’d even started it?
“I should have let you explain. I should have explained myself what—”
He didn’t say any more.
She threw herself at him.
Grabbing his head on either side, burrowing into him, fucking climbing him, she did everything she could to wrap her arms around his head and pull it down to hers.
Their mouths collided and hers was already open, her tongue darting out.
And he tasted her.
Cinnamon and toffee and moonlight and warmth and Cady.
And for the first time in eighteen years, he hit home.
She shuffled him back, her movements jerky, desperate.
He didn’t make her work for it and shifted when she turned him.
He also fell when she pushed into him. The backs of his legs hitting the arm of the couch, they went down, Coert on his back, Cady on top of him.
She was hungry for him, fucking starving, kissing him, her hands moving on him, shoving up his sweater to dive under and get to the skin of his stomach, his chest.
Midnight woofed and snuffled them with her nose.
They both ignored her, because Coert was right there with Cady, hands to her ass, up her sweater, along the skin at her sides, her ribs.
She sat up abruptly, straddling him, tore her sweater over her head. Her hair flying, she threw it aside, her hands going immediately to his sweater and yanking it up.
He did a half-curl to lift his back off the couch, his arms over his head. She tugged his sweater to his forearms and he pulled it off from there, tossing it away.
Hands back to her, she was hands and mouth back to him, fingers trailing, nails scratching, biting, licking, feeding from him.
God, it was beautiful.
It was Cady.
Coert drove a hand in her hair, pulled back, arm around her waist hauling her up his body. He kept his fingers in her hair as he took his arm from around her, ripped down a cup of her bra, lifted his head and sucked her nipple hard in his mouth.
God, her taste, her moan, the way she was grinding herself into his stomach.
All Cady.
His cock was hard and chafing against his fly, and that and Cady and getting more of her were all that filled his thoughts when she suddenly tore away, took her feet at the side of the couch but only to put her hands to her belt to undo it.
He watched her, her face flushed, her eyes dilated, locked to him, so fucking beautiful in her want, and he slid a hand under him, in his back pocket, pulling out his wallet.
A growl surged from his throat when she bent to yank her jeans and panties down her legs, exposing herself to him. She kicked them off and leaned over him, frenzied as she worked his belt.
He slid the condom out of his wallet then tossed the wallet aside.
She unbuttoned his jeans then slid down the zipper.
He dug his heels in to lift his hips off the couch as she wrenched his jeans and shorts down his hips, thrilled beyond reason when she’d freed his hard, aching cock from its confines.
She swung over him, her eyes again glued to Coert’s.
His eyes to hers, he’d barely rolled the condom on before she was grabbing hold of his dick. She positioned it with one hand, leaned over him, the fingers of her other hand curling around his neck.
He put both hands to her hips when she found his head.
And then he had her.
She pulsed down, her head flying back, filling herself with him.
Giving him her, buried inside her, Cady all he could see, all he could feel, his entire focus, finally again his world.
“Cady,” he grunted.
She looked to him and moved, hard, slamming down on him, her hand at his neck spasming, her pussy spasming, harsh breaths escaping parted lips.
He raced both his hands up her back to her head, holding it at the sides, holding her steady, holding her eyes, not about to lose those eyes, not about to lose her.
She rode him fast, frantic, reckless.
He yanked her face closer to his and saw it race up in her.
“Cady,” he whispered.
Her head shot back as she let out a soft cry.
He pulled it forward, resting her forehead on his and holding her close as she panted and whimpered her orgasm against his lips, her hips still slamming into his.
When she started to lose it, the beauty drifting away, he rolled her to her back and took over.
Too far gone for her—the feel of her, having her under him again—to go gentle, he rode her rough and she held on. Both her arms circling his head again, she shoved his face in her neck. Her legs rounding his back, cinching tight, lifting her hips to give him more, he thrust into her, feeling each one push her breath out into his neck until he groaned into hers as he bucked into her body and came really fucking hard for his Cady.
He let it happen, it was fantastic, but it was so enormous he feared he’d hurt her. So he pushed back at it so he could gentle his movements and glide inside her as his orgasm slipped through him until he could settle in deep.
Finally again buried inside the only place he was ever supposed to be.
After he was done coming, the room didn’t come back, the lighthouse, her dog, Magdalene, anything.
It was just Cady and him and that couch. That was all Coert could take. That was all he wanted. That was all he’d wanted for years.
And there they were.
They had it.
He brushed her neck with his nose, smelling hints of her perfume that were clean and earthy but also mellow and floral and it was so totally her, different than the scent she wore back in the day, it felt like a gift. Having it be so her, this her, after having her and feeling her soft body under him, his fingers in her hair, her pussy sleek and tight around his cock.
That was it felt like a gift until suddenly she made a strange noise, forced her hands between them and shoved up hard.
Not prepared for that, Coert lifted up farther, thinking his weight was too much, and still unprepared, she slithered out from under him, his cock lost her, and he was losing the rest of her.
He made a grab to hook her at the waist but was too late and she was too fraught. Practically falling over the side of the couch, she escaped him and he’d just gotten up on a forearm to turn to her, follow her out of the couch, find out what the fuck was going on, but he froze when he saw her awkwardly snatching up the clothes on the floor, holding them to her body.
And his heart felt like it exploded when her tortured eyes hit his.
“I’m sorry.” The words were dripping shame and embarrassment. “I’m so sorry.”
She then took off running to the stairs and up them.
Midnight followed to the foot of the steps, ran back to Coert, then changed directions and raced cumbersomely up the stairs after her momma.
“Fuck,” Coert bit out, pushed up from the couch, saw a door under the stairs and hoped it led to a toilet.
He went there and entered the smallest half bath he’d ever been in, but it was still freaking nice.
He didn’t take the time to admire it.
He pulled off the condom, flushed it, rinsed his hands and didn’t bother drying them, closing the door to the bathroom or even doing up his jeans as he ran out and took the steps two at a time, holding his pants together at the fly.
He hit a room that had a big circular couch in it, some side tables with a curved TV that was still on, affixed to the wall.
But no Cady.
So he sprinted up the next winding set of stairs and came right into the smallest bedroom he’d ever seen that was dominated by a bed, but it was amazing the economy of space and the magic brought to it with fairy lights under sheers draped over the bed on the ceiling, and compact furniture that was all gorgeous but all useful.
He did not admire that either because Cady was at the foot of the bed and had her panties up, the other clothes in a pile in the minimal floor space at her feet, but she was holding his sweater.
Slowly her eyes came to him.
“I took your sweater,” she whispered like she’d just admitted committing murder.
“Cady,” he said carefully.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” she kept whispering.
“What?” he asked softly.
“Done that. That. To you. Touched you. Made you . . . made you . . . I shouldn’t have touched you like that.”
Was she insane?
“Cady, honey, think. I was right there with you all the way.”
Her eyes were on him but he could tell she wasn’t looking at him but was somewhere else, somewhere very not good, when she murmured, “I shouldn’t have done that to you.”
“Look at me, honey,” he urged.
She didn’t look at him.
“Cady,” he said, taking a step toward her.
Her eyes focused on him.
And her words broke when she said, “I’m so sorry.”
Okay.
Done.
He had to go all of two feet but he went there, scooped her up, turned and planted his ass on the end of her bed with her held in a tight ball in his lap against his chest.
“Stop that,” he growled into her hair. “I was right there with you every step of the way.”
“You . . . you’re . . . the investigator. His reports. Patrick’s reports. I read them. I know how you got your daughter.”
A surprise but not a surprise.
“This was not that,” he said firmly. “That wasn’t even what you’re thinking.”
“You . . . you . . . women haven’t done right by you.”
He put hands to either side of her head and forced her to look at him.
“Stop it,” he bit out.
“Coert—”
“It was me.”
She stared into his eyes.
“Me, Cady. I did it. I broke us. It was me.”
“You didn’t—”
Shit.
Fuck.
Shit!
Fuck!
He felt it and he could no longer stop it.
His body bucked and his voice cracked when it forced itself out.
“It was all on me.”
Gone was his Cady who was twisting shit in her head.
Suddenly in his lap was Cady who was all about him.
He could see it in her face.
And he couldn’t handle it.
“Coert—” she said urgently.
“I fucked us up. I fucked you up. From the beginning. Used you. Knew it was wrong. Knew it would break us. Knew it. Did it anyway.”
“Coert, honey, look at me—”
He was looking at her but she wasn’t there.
She was in his lap, as close as she could be, but he was in hell.
“After, after you knew, after you knew every time you said the name Tony it was a lie, I was a lie, we were a lie, I was a piece of shit, I wanted to go to you. I knew you. I knew what you’d do. Malc and Tom, they said dig right back in. Don’t give you time. Get right back in there. But Cap, my captain, said to give you time. He said if I gave you time, you’d see it was my job. You’d understand. It’d be all right. You’d be open to me fixing us, starting again. If I went too early, I’d go in when you were pissed and hurt and fuck shit up even more. Malc and Tom were right. I should have listened to them. Cap was wrong. You needed me and I knew it, and I listened to him and it was fuckin’ stupid.”
She adjusted in his lap, straddling him. His hands still on the sides of her head, she reciprocated that and put her face right in his.
“Coert, honey, see me,” she begged.
He didn’t see her.
“Christ, every time, every time I moved inside you and you called me Tony, I died a little.”
“God, Coert,” her voice broke, her thumbs moved over the wet on his cheeks, “please, look at me.”
He was looking right at her but he wasn’t seeing anything but a black pall of blame and shame.
“I blamed you because I couldn’t take it. I laid that shit on you because I couldn’t live with the fact I’d done that to you. She fuckin’ murdered her boyfriend. You wanted out, I made you stay in. I made you a part of that. I made you live that right there. In it. Covering you in filth. In shit.”
“Stop it, please stop it,” she pleaded, her fingers frantic on his face, her body burrowing close to his.
“I’d come home and you’d smile at me and throw yourself in my arms and call me Tony. You’d look at me with Lars, and when I caught you, you’d look away. God, so fuckin’ sad. Every day hoping that I’d give you reason to believe and every day I gave you reason to walk away, and you stuck by me and I was using you.”
She shook his head. “Stop it!”
He finally looked into her eyes. “I loved you and I made you live a hell.”
“I loved you and I was happy to be in that hell if you were there with me.”
Coert shut up.
“I shouldn’t have married Patrick,” she declared.
He slid his hands to her jaw and shared, “Your brother explained it to me.”
Her head jerked in his hands when he said the word “brother” but he kept talking.
“And back then, I didn’t let you explain because I wanted an excuse to let you go, let you live your life, not have the shit I did to you that infested every second we’d had together go on to infest every second we would have. I wanted to set you free.”
“I didn’t want to be free,” she whispered.
“I thought you’d be better off without me.”
“And I thought the same, so after I hurt you with Patrick I didn’t go back to you and make you listen to me because I was young and stupid. We were both young and stupid and scared and that was insanely crazy and messed up, and we fucked up and now we’re here.”
He stared in her eyes.
“We’re here, Coert. So what are we going to do about it?”
It wasn’t that easy.
With them it had never been easy.
“I hurt you again just days ago, Cady. It wasn’t about talking to you. It was about facing you after what I’d done to you. After what I’d put you through. Facing myself and admitting I’d acted like a piece of shit. Seeing Lars, having it all brought back, he said it straight to me. He gave it to me straight. I did what I did to him and that didn’t matter. He’s trash. He did what he did and deserved what he got. But not you. And I had to face that again. And face what I thought I drove you to with Moreland.”
“He wasn’t my husband, Coert, not really.”
“His son shared that but you didn’t because I didn’t let you, and you tried back then and when you came back to me, and I didn’t let you give it to me then either.”
“Can you see how all this is intense?” she demanded. “It isn’t like we were too young and hadn’t learned how to communicate yet, how to compromise, how to be in a relationship. There was murder and felonies and my family didn’t help, and Patrick was suddenly there and dealing with his own grief so he was being overprotective, and all this was just crazy insane. So maybe we need to both understand that and realize it happened. It went wrong. Okay so it went horribly wrong, devastatingly wrong. But now we have a choice. Keep letting it go wrong or make it right.”
“What’s right, Cady?”
“I think what’s right happened on my couch.”
Coert went still.
“And Lars can go fuck himself,” she carried on. “I don’t know what he said to you but I mean, God. He was firing a swath of vengeance across the country because he was a nimrod. I mean, really?” She settled back on her ass on his thighs and slid her hands down to either side of his neck. “Don’t think another second about whatever Lars said. He’s always been a jerk.”
Firing a swath of vengeance.
Nimrod.
She was being funny and sweet.
But Coert was not near to a place he could laugh.
“Cady, honey, can you honestly say you can move on from here and every time you look at me not see how I threw your life right in the garbage and did it willfully?”
“Coert, can you honest to God move forward from here and every time you look at me not see I didn’t believe in you when I knew. I knew. You were right. I knew who you were.”
She moved in, burrowing closer, and kept talking.
“You knew me too, and I did the exact thing I always did. Rash. Reckless. Whatever I could do to make the hurt go away. Better yet, find someone else to make the hurt go away and I did that the very day it all went down. That morning you left, Maria called me, screaming at me, ‘What did you do! What did you and that pig do?’ I had no idea what she was talking about and I was so freaked I went to her before I went to work, and I saw you there with your badge on your jeans, talking to cops, Lars and Maria and Sharon on their knees with their arms cuffed behind their backs in that dirty yard and I got more freaked. Then I barely got through the doors, trembling, not even knowing why I went in to work, and Jaime came into the Sip and Save right behind me, getting in my face, saying he’d cut me. I’d go down. My cop boyfriend would go down. And he took off and I lost it and went out to the side of the shop. I couldn’t even stand. I was sitting on the cement sobbing so hard and Patrick found me there. And what did I do?”
“Cady,” he whispered.
“I betrayed you. Right then and there. I didn’t go home to Casey’s that night and wait for you. Patrick took me to my parents’ and they kicked me out, ‘For good this time, Cady, and never come back,’” she mimicked her mother and kept doing it. “‘Not ever. If you love us at all, don’t bring this kind of thing in our lives. Not ever.’ So I went home with Patrick and that was it. I didn’t even go back to the Sip and Save. He took care of everything. He was there when I finally went back to Casey’s to get my stuff and you showed, and you saw him and the ring and rightfully lost it on me and that was it.” She shook her head. “That was it.”
“Honey,” Coert murmured, gathering her closer.
But she wasn’t done.
“So you know, it’s a lot easier for me to see you were doing your job, as filled with landmines as that was to negotiate, I understood. It took some time but I completely understood. It was your job and it wasn’t an easy job and you told me as best as you could tell me I needed not to let go, not to give up on us, to stick by you, and I didn’t. You were doing your job. I was just being . . .” she huffed out a breath and finished, “me. So where does that leave us when you look at me?”
“Do you wanna find out?”
“With everything I have even though it’s completely terrifying.”
Coert relaxed but did it still holding her close.
“Then let’s find out.”
She shook her head. “I say that but I can’t . . . I can’t . . . if it doesn’t . . .”
“Cady, I love you. I never stopped loving you. You said you read the reports now read between the lines. I was never able to commit to another woman because I was still in love with you.”
She jerked then went solid in his arms.
“And that happened even when I convinced myself you married a man three times your age for his money,” he told her.
She stared in his eyes.
And Coert looked into them and made a decision.
“Now, this is what’s going to happen,” he declared. “I’m gonna go down and get my wallet because I have one condom left and this time when I make love to you, it’s not gonna go that fast. That was fuckin’ fantastic, but it went way too fast.”
She stayed solid in his arms but her hands at his neck convulsed.
He kept going.
“Then you’re gonna text your family to tell them to come back and I’m gonna go home and leave you with them. You’re also gonna tell them that even though they’re here for a visit, you’re gonna have dinner with them tomorrow but then you’re gonna come to my place and spend the night with me. And we’re gonna spend Christmas Eve together until I gotta go to Kim’s to be with my kid in the evening. When I go to Janie, you can come home and be with your family. And I want time with you on Christmas so you need to figure that out, because I’m doing presents with Janie at Kim’s and then I got a couple of hours where she has her before she brings her to me in the afternoon. And those hours I’m gonna spend with you. And I want you to meet my daughter and do that soon. But we’ll plan that after Christmas. So your family can have you and Janie needs me but any time we have in between, it’s ours, and when they’re gone, it’s you and me and when I have her, we’ll have Janie.”
He stopped talking, and when she said nothing, just stared at him, her pretty face stunned, he felt his own face get soft.
“And soon as I can,” he said quietly, “I want you to make me spaghetti pie, whatever that is.”
He barely got the word “pie” out before he was on his back in her bed because she’d attacked him straight from his lap and she was kissing him.
She was all over him.
And Coert might have wanted to slow it down that time but he didn’t get that chance (and again had to sprint on her stairs, taking them two at a time, this time to grab his wallet) because it had been a long time, too long, way too long and they might have had a taste, but Cady was still very hungry.
And Coert . . .
Coert was still starving.
Again only in his jeans, done up this time, Coert moved up the stairs to Cady’s bedroom and this time found her where he left her in bed.
He got in it with her, stretching out beside her, but she was under the covers he’d pulled over her.
He laid on top, handing her phone to her.
“Thanks, Coert,” she said.
It came out shy, she didn’t meet his eyes and he sighed.
They’d had fantastic sex twice and they’d have more fantastic sex, a lot of it, but that didn’t erase the fact that they’d both jumped from their opposite sides of the shore into the raging waters of everything that came in between and neither of them had life vests.
They just had to have the determination, since they’d made it through the rapids to each other, to hold the fuck on.
“Kath,” she said softly, and Coert focused on her. She moved her eyes from her phone that had been beeping, he’d heard it go when he’d run to get his wallet, to him. “I think considering she’s sent eleven texts, she’s worried.”
“I bet,” he muttered, pulling her and the covers over her closer to his body.
“And I think Pat’s in some big trouble with Mike and Daly, and maybe Pam.”
“You need to text her.”
She nodded.
Turning her attention back to her phone, he watched her text with her thumbs.
“You can text with your thumbs?” he asked, and her eyes tilted back to his.
“I have seven nieces and nephews. They all have phones, except Melanie and Ellie, but they’re getting one when they turn ten, like their brother Riley did. And I’m cool Auntie Cady. I spoil them, to their parents’ chagrin. Thus they text me a lot. And even Melanie and Ellie do it, when they steal Riley’s, Pam’s or Mike’s phone to do it.”
“So you have lots of practice.”
She nodded, went back to her phone. He heard the whoosh, and then without her phone to take her attention, she looked like she didn’t know where to put her gaze.
“Cady,” he whispered.
It slid to his.
“If we do this, we have to learn something from what came before.”
“What’s that?” she asked quietly.
“We have to learn, even when it gets hard, we can’t give up and we can’t let go.”
She got it and he knew it when her eyes widened and her body relaxed against his.
“I spent so long not even thinking that this was a possibility, it’s hard to wrap my head around it being a reality,” she admitted.
He touched his mouth to hers before he said, “I understand that feeling.”
He watched her swallow and it looked painful.
“You get freaked, worried, anything starts twisting the wrong way in your head, use your thumbs and text me,” he urged.
“I think that might mean you’ll get a text every ten minutes.”
“After not having you for eighteen years, do you honestly think I’ll mind hearing from you every ten minutes? Christ, Cady, you lived in the lighthouse in my town, and I’d convinced myself I was pissed at you and I made every excuse I could find to come here just to see you.”
He didn’t mean to do it, but he got it when his words made her eyes fill with tears. It looked like she’d try to beat them back but she gave in and shoved her face in his throat, her body wracking in his arms.
He rolled to his back, pulled her over him and held her.
After he gave her some time to get it out, he pushed up so his shoulders were to her headboard and he took her with him, pulling her even deeper into him, holding tight.
“I never once considered the thought you’d forgive me,” he told her.
She pulled her head back and looked at him through watery, brilliant green eyes. “I thought the same. I thought you hated me.”
“Two sides of the same coin, they say, love and hate. Let’s move to the other side, yeah?”
She nodded.
He needed to get her where she felt safe and solid enough for him to leave her to her family but also so she could look past the part that was scary as shit and precarious as hell and keep on going.
“I’m committed to this, Cady,” he said gentle but firm. “I’m committed to working on this. Getting us through the whitewater and finding us somewhere safe. I would not have come here with your brother if I wasn’t all in. I’m looking you right in the eye and I’m saying that to you. It’s been a long time but I know what I feel. How I’ve felt since you came back. How I couldn’t get you out of my head, stop thinking about you. I know where I’m at even if I understand we have to get to know each other again, we have history to share and some of it might not be easy. Though,” he grinned at her and teased, “since you had an investigator, that might not be as tough on you.”
She ducked her head and tucked her face in the side of his neck.
“Teasing,” he whispered, lifting a hand to stroke the side of her neck.
“I know,” she whispered back.
“Too soon?” he asked.
“No, just that I missed you teasing me.”
He stopped stroking and wrapped his arm around her.
That was something he’d missed too.
He cleared his throat.
“To finish what I was saying, I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t have put you through all this, if I wasn’t all in, if I didn’t still love you. You said you still loved me too. So we have that. We hold on to it. And we ride these rapids until I can get us to safety. You with me?”
“I’m with you.”
“Good,” he muttered.
“I’m with you,” she repeated.
“Heard you, Cady.”
She lifted up and looked him in the eye, raising a hand to catch him hard on the head behind his ear.
And he thought he was alert.
But at her hold he became more alert.
“I mean that,” she said again.
Shit.
She was back there. Back where she’d promised she’d stick with him.
And then didn’t.
“I know,” he said gently.
“Seriously.”
“Stop it,” he urged softly. “You hear me? That’s twisting shit. That’s staying where we were. Apart. Separate. With too much in between. We’re coming together. We’re moving on. You with me?”
It took a second but she nodded.
“Did you tell Kath that they could come back?”
“I said I was good, they shouldn’t worry and I’d text soon when they could come back.”
“Text them,” he ordered. “They wanna see you’re okay. You text. Get dressed. Walk me to my truck. And I’ll get outta here so they can have you to themselves to see you’re okay.”
She nodded again.
He gave her a squeeze.
Then he gave her a kiss.
That kiss led to another one and a few more, all soft, quick, sweet.
But it eventually led to them making out before he unfortunately needed to pull away and say, “Your family needs to see you’re good, Cady.”
She thought it was unfortunate too, gave him that, it made him smile so he touched his mouth to hers one more time before he found her phone she’d dropped in the bed and gave it to her.
He got out of bed, put on his sweater, socks, boots and gave her privacy after she texted, doing this stroking Midnight while she dressed.
She put on the thick socks she’d been wearing that he hadn’t noticed until the second time when he’d taken them off and when they got downstairs draped a shawl around her shoulders before she started to walk outside in her socks with him to his truck.
He stopped her before he even opened the door.
“Cady, shoes,” he said.
She looked to her feet then to him. “I’m okay.”
“It’s not even twenty degrees out there.”
“Am I hanging out there for an hour?”
“No.”
“I’m good.”
“Cady, there’s snow out there. Put on some boots.”
“Coert, they’re at the Lobster Market loitering over whoopee pies. They probably stopped loitering two seconds after I gave them the go ahead to come home. They’ll be back any minute.”
“Boots,” he ordered.
“These socks are thicker than my boots.
“What’d I say?”
“Coert!” she snapped.
“Cady.”
Her frame went still.
Then she bowed her head.
He grew instantly alarmed.
Shit, he shouldn’t have pushed the boots.
When she lifted her head, she was on him again. Hands in his hair, yanking his mouth to hers and kissing him wet and heavy and deep.
He turned her, pushed her against the door and participated avidly.
He eventually tore his mouth from hers saying what he had to say, not for him or them.
For her.
“I gotta go.”
“Love you,” she whispered.
That was when Coert stilled.
“Love you, Coert,” she whispered again.
“Love you too, Cady,” he whispered back, went in for another touch of the lips and said, “Just stay in. Stay warm. And I’ll call tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
Another lip touch like he couldn’t exist unless he had that connection and finally he pulled her from the door, set her aside and gave himself one last moment to give Midnight a quick rubdown. He moved his eyes to her, shot her a smile, waited and watched her face get soft.
And then he turned to the door, opened it and walked right out.
He was halfway to his truck when he heard the door open behind him.
He turned and started walking backward seeing Cady in the door.
“Get inside!” he called.
“Text me when you get home,” she called back.
“Right.”
“Talk to you tomorrow!” She was yelling now.
“Right!” he yelled back.
“’Bye!”
“Later, baby!”
He nearly ran into his truck so he turned to watch where he was going, got in, started her right up to get her warmed up, because it was freaking cold, and he looked to Cady’s door.
She stood illuminated by the light behind her, the Christmas swags, the spiral pines, Midnight sitting at her side.
She waved.
Coert waved back.
It looked like Midnight woofed.
And he was smiling when he reversed out and drove away.
He was still smiling when he got into his house, turned on Janie’s tree and pulled out his phone.
Home safe. Sleep tight. Love you, he texted.
He was in his kitchen pouring a needed two fingers of bourbon when he got back, Family’s back. Impromptu meeting. Although they see me breathing, Pat’s in trouble.
He strikes me as a guy who can take it, Coert returned.
He is, thank God, she replied.
After taking a sip of bourbon he told her, We’ll scratch a meeting with your family on the agenda before they leave.
I’m feeling a good deal of happy right now and Mike can be more overprotective than his dad. So maybe you can meet them over Skype when they’re a gazillion states away.
Coert grinned. Fortitude, honey. We can do this.
Yes we can.
Coert kept grinning and sipping as he turned on his TV but sat not watching it, rather smelling Cady on him, his phone in his hand, Cady on the other end.
And just to say, he texted, I’m liking that good deal of happy.
She didn’t text for a while and Coert didn’t like it until she did, and it stated, Daly put me on the hot seat. I was just grilled to within an inch of my life and then had to endure Kath shouting, “For God’s sake, Daly, can’t you see you’re ruining her afterglow!” Thank God the kids are at Elijah’s or that would have been bad.
Coert burst out laughing.
And when he was done, he tried to think of the last time he’d laughed that hard with that sense of freedom.
It wasn’t even when he was with Cady, no matter how funny she could be, and she’d always been funny, because all he was doing to her was standing in the way.
Was Elijah there tonight? he asked.
Out on a date but he’s back and I’ll tell you about it, but this date was not good seeing as I think Verity got a huge crush on him the second she laid eyes on him.
Which ones are Verity’s parents?
Kath and Pat.
Was in his presence five minutes and still can say, she catches his eye, they should count themselves lucky.
Yes. I SO agree. He’s SUCH a good guy.
Coert was again smiling. Yeah.
I should let you go. Kath’s opening another bottle of wine and she’s demanded the men go to the studio so I think I’m about to be on a different kind of hot seat.
More smiling Right, Cady. Don’t worry about your afterglow, honey. I’ll give you another one tomorrow.
Her reply didn’t come as quickly, and he got why when he read it and felt it deeply when he saw, Love you, Coert. A lot.
I know, Cady. Love you too. Talk to you tomorrow and see you tomorrow night.
Can’t wait. See you.
Don’t get drunk. Afterglows aren’t as good through a hangover.
It was then she sent him a cartoon picture that looked a lot like her, smiling big, but wearing a dragon outfit with a sword in her chest with the words You Slay Me! hanging over it.
A shock of laughter exploded from his throat and he asked, What the fuck is that?
He got rapid texts.
Bitmoji.
Nieces and nephews.
Learn to cope. I can have entire conversations through Bitmoji.
Coert chuckled and returned, Go get drunk with your girls. But not too drunk.
Okay. Sleep tight.
Oh, he would.
Will do. Night, honey.
Goodnight, Coert.
He didn’t text her back to hold their connection even when he wanted to, letting her go to be with her family.
But he did stare at the cartoon of Cady in a dragon suit and he did it a long time.
Then he couldn’t stop himself from leaning over, elbows to his knees, pressing his bourbon to one temple, his phone to his other, his mouth engaged with sucking huge amounts of oxygen into his lungs.
It happened.
They did it.
They were committed to negotiating the in between and finding each other again.
Which meant rediscovering each other.
Which meant Cady sharing Bitmojis.
He stopped deep breathing and started laughing then he grunted twice to hold a different emotion at bay and folded deeper into himself holding the phone and glass to the back of his neck.
“She forgives me,” he muttered to his knees.
Love you, Coert. A lot.
It was ragged when he repeated, “She forgives me.”
He drew in breath, sat up, sat back, set his phone aside and trained his eyes to his Christmas tree.
Then he flipped off his boots, lifted his stocking feet to the coffee table and turned his attention to his TV.