Chapter Nineteen
Slow Motion
Amy
Amy could see where the interaction between Seth and Kyle was sliding, and she didn’t like it, but tied to the bed—even if only by the rope wound around one ankle—there was frustratingly little she could do to physically halt the rising testosterone levels. Sure, she could make it to her feet, but she’d still have the bind to contend with while she wrestled with the bedsheets to protect her modesty.
“Have you always been so intolerably rude?” Kyle hissed, jabbing one of his slender fingers in her son’s direction.
“Yes.” Seth employed his most infuriating smirk. “Don’t you remember? We met once before, old man.”
“Seth!” Exasperated, she inched closer to the knot, tugging to release it as she beseeched her son. “Please, don’t!”
“What?” Seth snapped. “It’s the truth, Mum. Me and your new guy met once at Aspen Way.”
“What?” Working at the knot, she finally liberated the bind and shook the rope from her skin. “When did this happen?”
“Remind me, son .” Kyle’s smile grew as he turned Seth’s own tactics on him. “I don’t recall.”
She cringed at the way he’d taken the bait. Seth was a young man and just out of prison—he still had growing up to do—but Kyle should have known better than to lower to her son’s level.
“An inevitable product of your age, I guess?” Seth’s chuckle was dark, revealing a facet of her son she hadn’t witnessed since he’d played the unruly teen and provoked Graham. “But I’ll remind you.” He paused, ensuring he had everyone’s attention. “You came to the house and spoke to my dad. I was the one who let you in.”
“At Aspen Way.” Kyle’s lips curled. “Yes, I do remember. You were the sullen little boy dressed all in black. Moody, mouthy, and in need of a firm hand.”
“Hey!” Seth countered, standing almost as tall as Kyle. “Fuck you!”
“Please.” Tugging the blankets around her, she edged away from the bed. “Don’t talk to each other that way.”
“That’s how I know who you are.” Seth’s chin rose as he ignored her input. “And it makes me wonder why you’d want my mum after all this time.”
“Seth!” She raised her voice that time, irked by the way he’d described her. She was getting older, but she wasn’t a washed-up old rag Kyle had found on the path outside.
“I want your mother because I love her.” Kyle’s stare bored into Seth. “Is that too difficult a concept for a Neandertal like you to understand?”
“William, please!” It was strange using his first name, especially in a moment of high emotion, and the narrowed gaze he shot her suggested he hardly approved. “Seth was wrong to break in, but he’s done nothing to hurt anyone. Can we hear him out?”
“You love her?” Seth’s snide tone captured Kyle’s attention. “Yeah, right. That’s why you kept her handcuffed over there.” Her son gestured to the bed behind her. “I saw you earlier…” Seth’s focus traveled between them. “I saw the way she begged you to release her, and I know an abuser when I see one.”
She gasped, recalling the moments her son was referring to and dying inside that he’d witnessed any of them.
“You were here then?”
“I was here.”
Seth turned to her, his face solemn. Her little boy had aged beyond recognition in the years he’d been in custody. The strapping man standing before her was far more physically impressive than she remembered.
“What were you doing hiding in the shadows?” Kyle scoffed. “Not that this has anything to do with someone who broke into my house, but if you were so sure I was acting against your mum’s will, why didn’t you do something?”
“You know how fucked up this is, right?” Once more, Seth’s gaze scanned them both. “Not only the things you two were doing, but me… having to encounter them.”
“You should never have been here,” Kyle reminded him.
For the first time since things had heated up, she was inclined to agree. If Seth was so desperate to get into Brock Hall, he should have made his presence known, not lurked in doorways.
“What did you do between then and now?” Kyle’s eyebrow cocked, her pulse elevating at the loaded gesture. “Where have you been?”
“Here and there.” Seth’s smug undertone was doing him no favors. “Nice place you’ve got here, by the way, old man.”
Kyle’s glare landed on her, exasperation etched onto his handsome face. “Are you hearing this, little girl? He’s been loitering around my house all night… doing God knows what! Am I supposed to just stand here and take this?”
She heaved in a breath, despondent to be caught between two men she loved and increasingly unable to defend Seth’s actions. She’d guessed at his desire to gain entry to the property by illegal means but couldn’t understand why he’d have hung around for so long without making himself known. It looked suspicious—making it even harder for Kyle to ever trust Seth—and begged the question about what he’d been doing in the time she and Kyle had been having their heart-to-heart.
“Maybe it is better you wait for us downstairs, Seth?”
He’d managed to dodge that request, but if all the two men were going to do was wind the other up, there was no point in prolonging the exchange. Perhaps talking downstairs with a cup of tea would help inspire more gentlemanly behavior.
“So, now you want me to go?” Seth snorted, shaking his head as he went on. “I can’t believe this, Mum. I came here for you… to protect you !”
Kyle scowled. “Protect her from what?”
“From you, you moron.” Seth poked a finger at Kyle. “Jonah told me he’d spoken to you, and he didn’t believe a word you’d said about Mum.”
“Jonah said that?” Memories of the call Kyle had shared with Jonah returned to her in a rush. She’d been in a rather compromising position at the time and unable to speak to him, but she’d hoped Kyle’s deflections might have persuaded her son.
Obviously not.
“Yeah.” Seth’s brown eyes burned into her. “He was worried about you, and, frankly, so am I.”
“I’m okay.” She glanced at Kyle as though she needed him to validate the point. Maybe, after the months of sexy surrender, she did.
“Why are you looking at him?” Irritation flared in Seth’s tone. “Do you need him to tell you if you’re okay?”
“No,” she countered, fed up being lectured by her son. “I said I’m fine, and I am.”
“So, you’re okay with him cuffing you, then?” Seth spun in her direction, every ounce of his fury focused on her. “You want him to do that?”
The air seemed to vanish from the room under the intensity of Seth’s stare, her lungs fighting for oxygen with each breath.
“Relationships are complex, love.” Suddenly, it was as though it was only her and Seth in the entire world, and Kyle—the man who’d held the reins for so long—had faded to gray.
“Yeah.” Seth’s tone was wry. “I’m not twelve anymore, Mum. I get that, but you haven’t answered my question.”
“And you’re not listening to either of us,” Kyle spoke up, vaguely penetrating the monochrome bubble erected around her and Seth. “We’ve asked you to go downstairs and wait for us there, but you’re still fucking here!”
“Is this how he treats you?” Seth’s attention was insistent. “Does he order you around?”
“No, I…” She faltered, aware that in so many ways it was how Kyle treated her, but unable to explain how his commands affected her—not to her son. “It’s not like that.”
“Now, you’re lying.” Disdain oozed from Seth. “Jonah was right to be concerned, wasn’t he? We’re losing you to this idiot.”
“I said you need to leave.” Her lover lurched for Seth, grabbing his wrist in a vain attempt to steer her son from the room, but Kyle had underestimated him. Seth was no longer the scrawny boy Kyle might have remembered from Aspen Way. Months of training in the prison gym had apparently built muscle that made it easy to resist Kyle.
“Get the fuck off me, asshole.” Seth shifted to face him in slow motion, his face twisted with anger. “Maybe Mum has let you push her around, but you won’t terrorize me.”
“Oh, you’re quite the big, strong man, now, aren’t you?” Kyle’s goading tone was almost unrecognizable as Seth pushed his hand away.
“You’re damn fucking right I am.” Seth snarled, squaring off against her beau. “Strong enough to deal with you.”
“Please!” she panted, though she wasn’t sure she’d actually said the word out loud. “Don’t!”
Amy wished she could intervene, could say something— any thing—to dissuade them from the ego-driven antagonism they seemed hellbent on, but watching them, she felt as though she was in one of those nightmares where her feet sank into the stairwell as she tried to race away from the monster. Everything around her protracted, slowing down until each thought became an unbearable effort, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to arbitrate.
“You’re just a little boy trapped inside that body, aren’t you?” Kyle’s conceited tone flashed before them. “A little boy in need of a daddy.”
“You’re not my dad!” Seth spat the words at Kyle, his tone more vicious than she could ever remember from either of her children. “You’re not even half the man he was.”
“Imagine how hard it will be for you when you realize who your dad was.” Kyle snorted. “He was nothing but a miserly nobody who couldn’t even afford to look after your mum.”
She couldn’t believe the things Kyle was saying. He looked like the same guy who’d swept her off her feet, but the cruelty on his tongue contorted him into something else—something baser that needed to pulverize. She lifted her hand to protest, but her limb seemed to be made from lead, her digits impossible to control, no matter how hard she tried.
“A nobody, eh?” Time lengthened as Seth reached into his back pocket, and somehow—even though she hadn’t seen what he was carrying—she knew, acknowledging on a primal level that her son moved with ill intent. “We’ll see who’s a fucking nobody.”
Seth’s fist swung around his body, and there, captured between his thumb and fingers, was the same type of knife Kyle had brought with the omelets. In that split second, it all made sense to her—where her cutlery had gone when Kyle had dropped it and what Seth’s plan was. She watched in painful, suspended animation as Seth thrust the blade toward Kyle.
“Seth, no!”
Staggering forward, she threw herself between the two of them, and as though someone had pressed fast-forward on a movie, time sped up, enabling her to push Kyle backward as she turned to face Seth.
She didn’t realize what had happened at first, never felt the blade tear at her skin or sensed the warmth racing from her side. All she registered was the way Seth’s eyes widened and his flawless brow creased. She thought she heard him cry out—a strangled sob that escaped his throat—but she couldn’t be certain because her swelling maternal concern was swamped all at once by the sharp pain erupting from her middle.