Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
I waited for Liza to answer me, knowing she wouldn’t.
The silence was infuriating. Her words concerning. But it was her tone and posture that was troubling. I was across the room but the emotions rolling off of her couldn’t be missed. Some were fear, defensiveness, and anger. The first two I didn’t understand, the last wasn’t hers to have. Once again, she’d bailed on me . So, no, she didn’t get to be angry at me for demanding answers.
“Are you talking about me? When have I ever rejected you?” I pushed.
“Are you serious?” she scoffed.
Between the dismissive tone and the way she crossed her arms over her chest had me grinding my teeth.
“Deadly.”
Liza being the intelligent woman she was didn’t miss my temper flaring, not that I attempted to hide it. Whatever it was that she’d twisted in that pretty head of hers was about to be untwisted. But to do that, I had to understand what the hell she was talking about.
“Tucson,” she spat.
“What about it?”
“Don’t play dumb, Tucker. I know you remember.”
Oh, I remembered Tucson. Every fucking minute of it and every day after when she ignored me. I remembered the confusion, the pain of losing her, and the anger that followed.
“I remember sitting at the bar spending time with my girl. I remember feeling relief my case was over and I was with you—someone I trusted, someone who I could share with, the only person I felt safe enough to go to and decompress. I remember listening to you share about Boyer. I remember you telling me your divorce was final and you were getting your life untangled from his. I remember enjoying the evening despite the shit topics we were discussing because my ass was on a stool next to you and I’d missed you. I remember not being pleased you’d hid some aspects of your marriage from me. I remember feeling the burn of knowing I’d lost you to Boyer and there were things you’d held back from me because of that. I remember you getting a call and excusing yourself to take it and when you came back to the bar you didn’t look happy. I remember feeling elated I had you back, all of you, and I didn’t have to share pieces of you with some dickhead who didn’t deserve you. That’s what I remember. Now tell me, Liza, with all of that, what the fuck am I not remembering?”
It was that damn call that had changed my plans for the night. Before that call, I was going to ask her to spend the night with me, despite the shit timing—I was home, she was shot of the asshole, it was time to tell her how we were going to be moving forward. But after that call, she’d pulled into herself and gotten quiet—reflective. I’d assumed it had been Boyer and I didn’t want that fucker anywhere never the start of us.
“Who called you that night?”
She looked confused for a moment then totally closed down.
“No one.”
“Bullshit. You were fine, then after the call you weren’t. Was it Boyer?”
“No. It was my father.”
Father? That didn’t explain why she’d looked gutted.
But when her gaze went to her suitcase, I refocused.
“Look at me and tell me what the fuck am I forgetting?”
She didn’t look at me but she did say, “The end of the night.”
Right. Me walking her to her room.
When the pain of rejection hits…
You turning me down…
Everything clicked, and when it did my composure dissolved.
“Tell me you’re fuckin’ joking.”
I felt the words rumble through my chest and make their way out of my scratchy throat, what I didn’t hear was her response.
“Lizzy, baby, tell me you’re fucking joking.”
“You…” She wisely stopped speaking.
With an ungodly amount of effort I remained parked on the other side of the room, too afraid to move. Too afraid a single step in her direction would shatter the tenuous hold I had on my control. Too afraid any movement at all and my fury would unleash.
“Let me make sure I have this right. I walked you to your door, didn’t accept your invitation in, and you took that as me rejecting you?”
Liza’s shoulders straightened, her chin jutted out, and she held my stare with as much defiance as she could muster.
Confirmation.
“I’d ask if you’re goddamn serious with this shit but I see you are. I’d ask if at any point that night, or maybe one of the seven-hundred plus days since that night, if you’d pulled your head out of your ass long enough to think about why I didn’t go inside with you and went back to my room alone. But I know the answer to that, too.
“So let me clue you the fuck in, Liza. I knew where your mind had turned, I saw it before I walked you up. What I didn’t know after that call, I thought was from your ex-husband, was if there were some feelings for him you hadn’t completely dealt with. I also knew before we went there again, we needed to talk. Which was something I told you we needed to do, and we would’ve if you hadn’t snuck the fuck out. I’d intended to share with you, I was ready to quit the DEA. I was done dancing around our attraction. I was done pretending I wasn’t in love with you.
“As much as it killed me not to follow you into that room, I knew what would happen. I knew where I was at and I knew the moment the door closed behind us I’d have your clothes off and my face buried between your legs. Kinda hard to talk with a mouthful of your pussy, Liza. And before I took you again, I needed to make sure you were where I was. I’d waited ten fucking years to get back inside you. I couldn’t be the man who helped you fuck away your feelings for another man. That was not where I was at. That shit would’ve killed. So I waited, not one more day like I thought, two motherfucking years. And when I finally get my shot, you reject me. But I don’t give up. I keep at you. That was, until you landed a blow I couldn’t swallow. I don’t know what the fuck that shit was about Boyer and how the hell it’s my fault he cheated, but that was some next level bullshit.”
I was so caught up in my anger I missed the already heavy air in the room turning thick. I didn’t see Liza’s face pale, or her stumbling back until it was too late and she hit the corner of the dresser. It was her muted grunt of pain that drew my attention to her. And when she had it, I saw her pale face, saw her chest rapidly rising and falling trying to suck in air, saw the stark devastation. And then I heard that devastation come out of her mouth in a voice I never wanted to hear again.
“You can’t love me,” she croaked.
Her denial landed. A blow she didn’t know struck burned through me.
That’s who I learned to be.
My anger easily shifted to Boyer.
“Lizzy, whatever that cheating prick force fed you was total shit.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your ex. Whatever excuses he gave you for stepping out on you were nothing more than him trying to assuage his guilt for hurting a good woman.”
“Why are we talking about Arnie?”
I resisted the urge to shout my frustration.
“The man cheated on you. He made you not…you.”
“Not me?” She crinkled her nose.
“Baby, before that asshole, you were open, honest, you put yourself out there. Not even five minutes ago you told me you learned to hide from rejection. So, yes, he made you not you with whatever crap excuses he gave you. Bottom line, him cheating wasn’t rejection, it was a character flaw and that’s on him. Not you.”
“Even if I cheated first?”
Her question knocked the wind out of me.
“What?”
“I cheated first,” she admitted, her eyes dropping to the floor. “So how can I blame him for cheating when I’d been doing it before he gave me his ring. And I continued to do it until the day I signed my divorce papers.”
“What the fuck?”
My Liza was a cheater. The one thing she knew I found unforgivable. A deal breaker. The one and only thing that could trigger me cutting someone out of my life. With my history, my father being who he was, knowing how years of his continued cruelty had broken my mother, I had no tolerance for cheaters.
When she didn’t react, I asked another question. The question that she’d never answered.
“Why do you blame me for Boyer cheating on you?”
“I don’t, not really.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“I already admitted I said a lot of things I didn’t mean.”
She was right, she had. But this was different. This wasn’t her speaking out of turn, pushing me away. Deep down she blamed me for her ex stepping out on their marriage.
“Please, for the love of God, woman, stop with the shit and tell me the truth.”
She tipped her eyes up and determination flashed.
The Liza I knew was back.
My Liza.
Cheater.
The pain of that radiated.
“I knew when he asked me to marry him I was in love with you. I knew when I married him I was still in love with you. I knew a month into my marriage I loved you in a way that would never die. I knew it was wrong. I’d never love him but I thought I was justified because he didn’t love me either. That wasn’t what we had, yet I was carrying on a one-sided emotional affair. Arnie knew it. He felt it. He even called me out on it. I can’t say I was totally honest with him about my feelings for you, but I couldn’t hide I felt deeply for you. I actually think that’s why he asked me to marry him. He wouldn’t have to worry about having his wife fall in love with him and he could carry on doing what he wanted, all the while looking like a proper husband for the press.” Liza paused long enough to take a deep breath then quickly rushed out the rest. “I don’t blame you, not in the sense that it’s your fault. I blame my feelings for you and not being able to stop loving you, for my life spiraling out of control.”
That was what she considered cheating?
What the fuck?
If two years ago someone told me I’d be furious to learn Liza loved me, I would’ve laughed—gut-busting, steal-your-breath hilarity. The kind that brought a tear to your eye and to your side a stitch. But right then, hearing Liza admit she loved me, had loved me two years ago, had loved me before she married her ex, had me seeing red.
Furious didn’t fucking touch the emotion coursing through me.
What I was feeling was so far past anger there were no words to describe it.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Her bravado multiplied tenfold.
“Do I look like I’m fucking kidding?”
No, she looked like she was squaring up for a fight.
“Check the attitude, Lizzy.”
That earned me big eyes and another jerk of her chin.
“Now, you’re the one fucking kidding.”
“No, baby, I don’t find a goddamn thing funny about finding out we lost out on a fuckton of time because neither of us could be honest. In an effort to rectify that I’m gonna make it crystal clear—if you think to bolt I’ll track your ass down, and when I find you, you won’t like the consequences.”
Liza’s eyes narrowed then dropped to her mostly unzipped suitcase that looked like a five-year-old had thrown shit in a case with no regard.
When her eyes made the slow trek back to me they were still full of hostility, still narrowed, still full of fire and fight.
“I need to go to Tennessee.”
“No. You need to figure out how you’re gonna zip up that suitcase, then I’m gonna carry it out to my SUV, then we’re headed back to TC. After that we’re talking.”
Her scowl was more of a death glare when she shook her head and rejected my directive.
“I’m going to Tennessee.”
“Yeah, with me , after we talk to Allyson and figure out our in.”
“Tucker—”
“Honest to fuck, woman, you think after I waited…no, wasted near on a decade, I find out you fucking love me, I’m just gonna let you walk away?”
She lost her scowl, but only because she rolled her lips inward. Out of all the reactions she could’ve had, panic wasn’t on the list I would’ve guessed. But it was there—unmistakable panic.
What the fuck?
“Lizzy—”
“No. I’m leaving,” she told the floor as she moved to her purse on the dresser.
I got there before she did and snatched it out of her reach.
“No, baby, we’re talking.”
“We’re not.”
Jesus fuck. Not this shit again .
“We damn well are.”
Without lifting her gaze she continued to speak to the carpet.
“Fine, we’ll talk. I messed up. I know I did. I screwed up with Arnie, I screwed you over, I lied to you then I?—”
“I don’t give the first fuck what you did to your douche bag ex. There’s nothing you could’ve done that would make him touching another woman okay. You’re unhappy in your relationship, in your marriage, you leave. End of story. You don’t fuck other women while you’ve got a wife at home. And we both messed up. We both lied to each other, denying how we felt. The result of that fuck-up we both gotta live with. Neither of us played that right. But we’re gonna talk it out.”
“I lied to you!” she snarled. “You hate liars.”
She wasn’t wrong. Liars were half a step below cheaters. But I didn’t understand the vehemence in her tone.
“Lizzy—”
“I heard you.”
“Heard me?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know who you were talking to but I heard.” Liza took a step back, blew out a breath, and whispered, “It’s all good or it will be when she’s gone . ”
I knew she’d heard some of my conversation with Jason, I just didn’t know how much. Obviously she’d missed Jason reminding me I’d told him Liza was the woman of my dreams. And she missed when I told him, I thought with her being in Georgia, we’d finally have our time. Finally get our chance at a future.
“Yeah, Lizzy, I said that. After a week of you being close, me thinking you were lost to me, and me living in that hell. Me thinking I’d never get my chance after waiting a really long time, so, yeah, I told Jason I was all good. I also told him I’d be good once you left. Part of that was because I wanted the conversation to end. The bigger part of it was it hurt like hell talking about you after seeing you every day, you being distant and cold, knowing you were in the same building as I was and not being able to get to you.”
“I called you?—”
“Baby, you were drunk and slurring your words. It was late. I was pissed, hurt, and acted like a dick. But bottom line, you were drunk. I didn’t want to have an important conversation with you after you’d been drinking. Whatever you had to say to me, I wanted you sober. I didn’t want you to have another excuse. We both know you get chatty when you’re tipsy. I’ve never seen you drunk, but my guess is, you would’ve said more than you intended. And you would’ve used that to pull away.”
Clearly Liza wasn’t listening, or if she was she wasn’t comprehending what I was saying. Her gaze had glued to her purse I was holding just out of her reach. Panic had morphed into…nothing. Her eyes were blank, unfocused. Lost in her head. Something that I didn’t get, and it worried me.
“Liza?”
“This isn’t real,” she whispered.
“It’s real.”
“This isn’t real,” she softly repeated.
“Baby, it is.”
The slow blink concerned me. The horrified expression more so.
“You can’t love me.”
“I can and I do. Fell in love with you the first time we sat at the bar together and you bitched about the stupidity of felons. Went on and on about the state of the world and how it was too bad common sense couldn’t be taught. I wasn’t ready then. I knew you were it for me, perfect for me in every way. I let you go, stayed connected the best I could. But fought the urge to explore what was between us. I lost that fight one night in my hotel room. The next day I knew I was a special kind of fuckwit for telling you we couldn’t go there again when all I wanted was to get lost in you, your body, and what you could give me. But I wasn’t there yet, I wasn’t in a place where I could give it all back to you. It’d be all take, and that wasn’t fair to you. But at no point did I stop loving you. And the only time I stopped believing there was a future for us was when you married Boyer. Which brings us back full circle—Tucson. You were shot of him, your divorce final, and I once again, knew we’d have a future. And I’ll remind you—a future I’d wanted for a decade, so there was no way I was gonna fuck that by spending the night with you before I explained where I’d intended to take us. Before I told you I was ready to quit my job. Before I laid it out and made sure you didn’t get it twisted. I didn’t want another night with you, Lizzy, I wanted a lifetime. No way in hell was I gonna jack that up.”
“Tucker.” My name was no more than a breath. When she didn’t go on, I did.
“So now that we’re here, talking this shit out, instead of both of us acting like we’re dumbasses—hiding from what’s real , what’s been between us for a long time, from what we both want. You’re not running away from me. You’re checking out of this hotel and staying with me. But that’s gonna have to wait until after we get back to work, talk to the team and Allyson, and find you a way into Nu Dawn. But to reiterate, you’re doing that while staying with me.”
“I can’t.”
Jesus fuck .
“Liza, you can and you will.”
“No, Tucker, you don’t understand.”
“You’re right, I don’t. But I will tonight when you talk to me and tell me.”
“Tuck—”
I was done—with the conversation, with her refusing to admit we had something that was worth exploring, for denying me something I’d wanted for so fucking long it felt like I came out of the womb loving her.
If she didn’t want to listen, I’d show her.
I took a step closer, tossed her purse on the bed, hooked her around the back of the neck, and before she could protest, I slammed my mouth over hers.
And that was all it took for her denial to slip away.
I might’ve initiated the kiss, but it was she who kissed me. It was she who rolled up on her toes for more. It was she who pressed her soft tits against my chest. It was she who moaned into my mouth when I deepened the kiss. And it was definitely she who held onto my shoulders and enclosed her legs around my hips when I hefted her up. The maneuver was two-fold; I wanted her closer, I needed to feel her wrapped around me, and I wanted that without her on her toes and me courting a backache to get it.
There might’ve been a third reason why, a consequence of the two. Something I’d forgotten because it had been so long since I’d had her—but now that I had it again, I remembered. The feel of her, phenomenal. The taste of her coupled with the feel of her wrapped tight—electric, the kind of charged excitement that heated your blood, made you feel alive. The kind that once you had it, you were instantly addicted.
Since I hadn’t had it for ten years, I took my fill.
And if I had it my way, I’d have it for the rest of my life.