Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Lainey
The headlights pierced the windows, shining right into my eyes, then disappeared. He was here. I stood up on shaky legs and, one foot in front of the other, made my way to the back door.
He always came in the back door. He never knocked. He just came right in because he was part of this family. Part of us.
So when I heard the knock, my stomach sank further into the depths of my gut. I closed my eyes and reached for the door handle, twisting it and preparing to see his face.
We stood there, my blue eyes locked on his brown. No words needed, just the jagged sharp points of our individual pain intersecting, grinding together like gears.
Then his arms opened, and I stepped into them. When they wrapped around me, I realized how warm and strong they were, unlike the cold bat wings of darkness that had held me prisoner for the last week.
A week.
“Do you want something to drink? Or eat?” I croaked out, my Italian mother coming off my tongue without even thinking about it.
“Something strong,” he whispered into my hair.
Neither of us wanted to let go.
So we stood.
I breathed in his scent and let it wrap around me, fill me. His smooth skin slid like satin under my fingers. He felt like coming home when you’ve been away a long time.
Then I stepped back. “Vodka?”
The corners of his full lips turned up almost imperceptibly as he gave a tiny nod and followed me into the kitchen.
Noah’s stash of booze was in the cabinet to the right of the sink.
I pulled down the half-full bottle and poured a few fingers into a crystal tumbler.
He grabbed the cranberry juice from the fridge and topped it off.
He dropped a few ice cubes in and swirled it around before bringing it to his lips. “Where’s yours?”
I shook my head. “Not tonight.” I watched him take one sip, then two—not small ones.
Did he even want to be here? Or was he just trying to numb the pain?
“Let’s go sit in the living room,” I suggested.
“Is it okay that I’m here?” He looked around as if he expected some random family member to pop out from behind the furniture like a Jack-in-the-box.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Is it?”
We both came from big families in a small town.
That was really all you needed to know about it.
“What are we going to do?” I finally broke the silence as we sat next to each other on the loveseat for what felt like hours. His thighs pressed into mine until I turned to face him, pulling my knees up and wrapping my arms around them.
His sepia skin gleamed in the dim light as he tossed back the rest of his drink and set the glass on the coaster.
His fingers laced together behind his head, and he leaned back, propping his feet up on the coffee table.
I studied his socks for a moment—heather-gray athletic socks.
It struck me in that moment how much bigger he was than Noah.
Noah was taller, but Ty was broad, muscular.
He took up space. Coupled with his personality, his presence was massive.
I’d never met anyone with a bigger heart than Tykari Jones.
“Do you find the time slips by without you even noticing it?” He didn’t look at me as he spoke; he just dropped the words into the air and let them float over to me.
His eyes closed, and his tongue darted out to lick his lower lip.
“I sit down and stare into space, and next thing I know, an hour has passed. Where the hell did that time go, Lainey?”
My eyes were swelling with tears, but I tried to choke them down. Just when I thought I had them under control, they proved me a complete failure. “It happens to me too,” I commiserated.
And that was all we could do. Wasn’t it?
“What did you need to talk to me about?” His eyes opened, and though he didn’t turn toward me, they drifted over to me before his lids snapped back into place, concealing them.
I scoffed. “Seriously?” I gestured around the room, my arms flailing in that Italian way my whole family spoke. “Like, everything?”
“Yeah. I guess you’re right.” His voice was soft. His eyes remained closed.
“Ty, look at me.” He turned his head, but not his body. He had walled himself off from me. “Have you heard anything about the investigation?”
“I’m supposed to go talk to the LT and captain next week.” He opened his eyes just long enough to roll them. “I don’t expect anything to come from this. I think they’re just giving me as much time as they can—”
“That’s good,” I said. “You need it.”
“Have you gone back to work yet?”
I shook my head. “The thought of getting up in front of my class—”
He reached out and took my hand into his, squeezing it firmly. But his eyes remained closed.
“Have you ever tried to sing while you’re crying?” A spark of mirth colored my tone. “It’s not pretty.”
I taught elementary kids basic music principles like rhythm and about all different types of instruments. We were getting ready to start our holiday unit—Christmas carols. How could I sing “Here Comes Santa Claus” when I was on the verge of bawling at any given moment?
I couldn’t.
Ty stood up. “I should go.”
“What? You just got here.”
He used to hang out here for hours when Noah was here. Hell, he spent the night all the time. My favorite place to fall asleep was wedged right between them—we called it a Lainey Sandwich.
Besides, he couldn’t go yet. We had to figure things out. A path forward. How things were going to be between us.
Half of my heart was destroyed, and the other half was breaking. I practically begged him to come over. Why was he treating me like this?
“You don’t want to be here,” I blurted out. “If you don’t want to be here, I guess you should just leave.”
I would figure things out. I would figure it out on my own.
He took a deep breath, his chest visibly heaving up and down under the gray V-neck shirt he wore. The shadows under his cheekbones looked more pronounced as he sat back down across from me and took my hands into his.
“Lainey, I had to force myself to stay away. What was I supposed to do? Come over here and sleep in your bed? Make you breakfast like I always did? The only way it worked for me to be here with you was because Noah was here—because you belonged to him.”
“I belonged to you too, Ty.” I gasped when I realized I used the past tense, my hand flying up to my mouth.
“Exactly. ‘Belonged.’”
“So that’s it, then? Noah is gone, so there’s no you and me anymore? There was only you and me because of Noah?”
“That’s not it at all, and you know it. I loved Noah. I love you still.”
The word caught in my throat. “Still?”
He sighed, his gaze lowering to our hands for a moment before lifting to meet mine. “I can’t stop loving you, but I don’t know how we can pick up the pieces.”
I bit my tongue. What did I want him to say? Did I expect him to come in here, sweep me off my feet and say he was going to take care of me now? That he was going to make everything right again?
I knew he couldn’t do that just as well as he did.
“But do you want to pick them up?” a tiny voice squeaked out. “Because there’s a big difference between not knowing how and not wanting to.”
“Oh, Lainey…” His eyes squeezed tight, and one tear dripped out, then two. He took a shuddering breath and pulled me into his arms, his shoulders heaving as more tears seeped out. And then the floodgates opened, and our tears dripped together like they might form a river we could sail away on.
“I want nothing more than to take you upstairs right now and make love to you, Lainey. I need to feel something besides this constant ache, this…”
“All-consuming darkness?” I filled in for him.
What rumbled out of his mouth was something between a laugh and a sob. “I want that, but I don’t think it’s right…”
“Why not?”
His brow quirked as he held my gaze steadily.
The whites of his eyes were cracked with crimson streaks.
“I feel like…like I should have been able to save him. Like I should have been able to stop that bullet.” An anguished wail rose up from deep in his chest. “Like it should have been me instead of him…”
I gripped him tight, pressing him to my body as he shook and sobbed. “Oh, Ty, I know you did everything you could. It’s not your fault, honey.”
“I feel like I will never deserve joy or peace or love…” His head swiveled back and forth, and new tears erupted. “I don’t deserve you.”
As much as I hurt, as much as I’d wallowed in self-pity thinking he abandoned me in my darkest hour, the burden he carried on his shoulders was different from mine.
He was racked with guilt in a way I couldn’t comprehend, I couldn’t relate to.
I pulled him against me, stroking my hands down his back and just whispering that I was here for him. That I loved him.
And then, when he looked up at me with his red-streaked eyes, his nostrils flaring and lips parting, I bent down and pressed my mouth to his.
Something ignited, a switch flipping, and that despair, that anguish turned to hunger.
His eyes, dark as coal, raked over me before he threaded his fingers through my hair and devoured my lips, our tongues tangling together and tasting the salt of our fading tears.