Chapter 18
EDDIE
“Are you okay? Where are we going?”
Guilt swamped me at the note of apprehension in Tyler’s tone.
He’d been amused as we’d left the house of horrors, but he hadn’t said anything about my impromptu word vomit.
Did he hate me? Was he secretly planning to pack his things and leave?
I wasn’t the man he thought I was and I shouldn’t have let this drag out.
Fuck.
I did my best to gather my thoughts while I drove on the icy road with the headlights catching snowflakes, so it took me a few minutes longer than usual.
The car’s right tire hit a pothole that must’ve been a gateway to the center of the earth, and my teeth rattled as I waited to see if that was going to be the end of a tire, but nothing happened, so I let out a sigh of relief.
“We’re almost there. I just need to think for a minute.”
“Okay.” He laid a comforting hand on my forearm as I turned into the old decision-making spot I used to come to when I was younger.
The lookout was a parking lot behind a defunct glass plant, but it had a dazzling view of the lake.
Ice had formed craggy peaks and valleys as pieces had broken and refrozen near the shore, and about one hundred feet out the gray water churned, glittering dark diamonds.
The clouds overhead hung low, reflecting the city lights.
Everything was brighter than usual with the snow glow as big flakes drifted down.
“Wow.” Tyler shifted forward in his seat, then glanced with a huff at the boarded-up glass factory. “What a weird place for such a good view.”
“Yeah. Life is that way sometimes.” I parked the car at the edge of the lot.
For some reason, even though the plant was no longer in use, someone was still clearing the snow.
I turned and tapped the underside of his chin with my pointer finger, getting his attention.
“Sometimes you find the most beautiful things in unexpected places.”
He rolled his eyes but gave me a shy smile. The heat from the vents warmed our faces, and Tyler let out a happy sigh as I cranked it up another notch.
“What’s going on in your head?” Tyler held out his hand, and I gratefully took it, using him as an anchor in the fucked-up storm this evening had become.
“I’m trying to decide if I have really good luck or absolute shit luck.”
“Oh, it’s good. Mario was going to stab you in the back, but that seems to be his thing.” Tyler slid a hand over to rub between my shoulder blades, and I thought perhaps that was the place where I’d almost taken a knife. “It was poetic that the dumb fuck stabbed himself.”
“We didn’t call an ambulance. It’s still our fault if he’s dead.”
He shrugged, bottom lip jutting. “There’s no law saying you have to help someone.”
I rolled my eyes. “That isn’t true. Is it?”
He chuckled, and some of the tension bled from my body; although, the adrenaline remained. Every brush of his fingers against mine was magnified times one hundred.
“Tyler, I love you. The idea that you had anything to do with a man who apparently had no problem killing me really freaks me out.” I dropped kisses along the peaks of his knuckles.
He rested his cheek on my hand. “Mario wasn’t a great guy. He wasn’t even a mediocre one. He ripped out my heart and stomped on it. Made it hard to trust people when I most needed to do it. I’m getting that part of myself back again.”
He stared into my eyes, and my breath caught. “I’m sorry.”
Tyler shrugged. “There are a lot of predators in the world. I learned that lesson.”
“After I left.” A gaping pit replaced my stomach.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
A gust of wind from the lake hit the car so hard it rocked. We smiled at each other as we turned to watch an impressive spray kick up. In the amount of time we’d sat here, it had started freezing that way and a shiny arch was forming at the edge of the ice.
Tyler chuckled.
“What?”
“So, all the others, they were really like Mario?” He raised his eyebrows at me.
Groaning, I nodded, then spilled all the gory details. He was laughing and wiping his eyes by the time I was done. I didn’t think he would be this entertained by random death, but these were all men who had personally hurt him.
“I’m sorry I didn’t kill anyone for you.” I brushed my fingers through his soft blond hair and over the apple of his left cheek. “I’m so sorry. I would’ve! I mean, Andrews came close, I guess. But I let you believe it, and I’m sorry I lied to you.”
He bit his lip and stared out the windshield. “I was worried about you, honestly. I thought you were all torn up because you’d killed people, but I actually think it’s sweeter that you were worried I’d be mad at you for not killing people.”
“Really?” I held my breath.
“I won’t lie. It was pretty incredible thinking you were willing to kill for me, but you’ve done so much for me. And, more importantly, you’re planning to stick around for the long haul, right?”
I kissed his soft cheek. “Yeah.”
“And I think, after all this, I can finally let go of the fact that you left me here in New Gothenburg.”
My heart twisted. “I’m sorry. I was selfish. I couldn’t stand things with my dad.”
“Yeah, and now that I love you the way I do, I wouldn’t have wanted you to stick around and take more abuse. There were no good solutions. You got out. Then, I got out.”
My stomach wobbled. “I wish it had been before you got hurt.”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Me too.”
Our lips brushed softly, and I felt the pool of acidic guilt that had been eating at me drain away.
There was still a small puddle sloshing around in my gut that might never vanish when I thought about how Tyler had gotten hurt, but if he could forgive me, then what good would it do to continue beating myself up over it?
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.” His smile finished healing a few cracks in my heart I hadn’t realized he’d made better until just now, when I’d been afraid he might leave after all.
Conversation drifted to Tyler’s day from there. He grinned and bounced in his seat as he told me about the offer from Red, the owner of Grounds and Gears. “She was really great. And I have to say, I never would’ve considered her offer before you came back.”
My cheeks heated. “You’re the one doing this, making stuff happen for yourself.
You’re just using my laptop. You had this in you all along.
” His grin was too tempting. I leaned in and kissed him.
Then, my lips didn’t want to leave his alone.
Some time passed before he sat back a bit, and I dropped a kiss on his nose.
“One thing that worries me about you working at Grounds and Gears—” I gathered both of his hands in mine. “—is that it’s pretty popular.”
He frowned. “And you think that means I shouldn’t work there?”
The hurt in his tone churned the acid in my stomach back to life. “You should! I’m worried that eventually you’ll run into my dad if you’re working with the public.”
His eyes widened as if he hadn’t considered the possibility. “Don’t worry. I’ll—”
“No.” The sensation that crawled through me was so horrific I considered going out and jumping in the freezing lake to wash it off, hypothermia be damned. “I don’t want us to have to deal with him.”
“You still love him?” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I guess I understand that,” he said flatly.
“No! I’m screwing this all up. I love you.
He already hurt you. He’s a scary prick.
I want you to just avoid him, and I think—I think as long as he doesn’t stop at the house, we should just leave it alone.
He’s a cop. Perhaps we should just . . .
. I hate this, but perhaps we should just let it go. ”
“You’re scared.” At least he sounded surprised. My pride wasn’t too wounded, though, because you’re damned right I was scared of a man who slept with two guns beside his bed—a Glock and a Remington shotgun.
“Yeah, I am. He’s always been a monster. He isn’t a good guy. He’s probably the only person in the whole world who scares the shit out of me, especially after—” I brushed my fingers over the scarred half of his face.
“Okay,” he said, chin firming up. “We will avoid him.”
“Exactly.” I smiled at him. “And from now on, we’re a real team. We tell each other everything.”
He dragged me close with a hand on the back of my neck and rested his forehead against mine. For a few seconds, we closed our eyes and breathed each other’s air. A faint whiff of coffee, rich and earthy, clung to him, and I loved it.
“You’re really asking me to let the guy who did this go?”
When I fluttered my eyes open, he was touching his right eye.
Guilt ignited in me again, squeezing my heart. “It’s not that I don’t think he deserves it or that I don’t want someone to do it,” I whispered. “But my luck has never been good with him.”
He pressed his lips to mine and drove off some of my anxiety. “Let’s go eat something. I’m starving.”
“Yeah?”
“And then, take me home. I want to try out the rest of the toys from the advent calendar.”
Laughing, I put the car in Reverse.
I couldn’t stop smiling during the drive. Tyler hadn’t said take me to your house. No, he’d said, take me home. My house was home to him and that was perfect.