Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
It was a long time before Cormac’s heartbeat returned to normal. He lay in bed with his arm behind Lucy’s head, enjoying the soft touch of her fingertips against his chest. Her nails rasped against his skin as she stroked him absentmindedly, the soft flesh of her body pressed against his side.
They were naked, lying on top of the covers, enjoying the silence and safety of the apartment. After the chaos of the last few days—the last few hours—the quietness seemed to pulse around him, alive, waiting.
Lucy’s curves molded to his body like they’d been sculpted precisely so they fit against him. Her hair smelled fresh and sweet as he brushed his lips against her forehead in a gentle kiss. Lashes fluttering, she glanced up at him with those big brown eyes of hers.
He touched the curve of her cheek, marveling at the softness of her skin. She had a smattering of very pale freckles spread over the center of her face. He hadn’t noticed them before.
“How are you doing?” Cormac asked, his voice rough.
“Not bad,” she replied, smiling. Her hand stilled, palm pressing flat against his chest. He folded his own palm on top of it, then lifted her fingers to his lips. She snuggled closer, and Cormac stopped fighting what he knew to be true.
This was where he wanted Lucy to be. Right here, in his home. In his bed. He wanted her at his side, always.
He hadn’t seen it before, in the months and years they’d been acquaintances. He hadn’t been interested in having another soul under his protection.
But Lucy wasn’t just anyone. She was a woman who had rebuilt her life with grit and determination. She was talented and hard-working. She was stubborn, thoughtful. She bought him donuts. She saw him, and she wasn’t afraid.
He stroked her cheek and kissed her forehead again. He couldn’t stop touching her.
“Can I ask you something?” she said, shifting so she could meet his gaze again.
“Sure.”
“When my mom talked about the police being useless about Phillips when he let the air out of my tires, you made a noise like you agreed with her. What was going through your mind?”
Cormac’s chest rose and fell with his sigh. Yeah, she saw him, all right. Maybe a little too clearly.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” Lucy added.
“No, it’s okay,” he said. Rolling onto his side, Cormac stroked Lucy’s cheek and let his fingers drift down her shoulder and along her side. He followed the movement of his hand with his gaze, committing the sight of her nude body to memory. She was so beautiful he almost couldn’t believe it.
And she’d asked him a question.
Dredging up the past always hurt, so Cormac did it as infrequently as possible. He drew comfort from the warmth of her skin and the soft stroke of her hand against his chest, his shoulder. Her fingernails moved up his neck and massaged his scalp, pulling a groan from his lips. His wound was against the pillow, so Lucy could run her fingers over the other side of his head without hurting him. Every stroke of her fingernails felt like it tore away a layer of calcification around his heart. Her touch made it easier to speak.
“I was eleven,” he finally managed to say. Gulping past the lump in his throat, Cormac forced the words to keep coming. “It was nighttime. I’m not sure what time, around eleven or midnight. Everyone was asleep—my mom, my sister. At that point, my dad was already gone. He’d taken off when I was seven. Put his hand on my shoulder and told me to take care of the girls. Said I was the man of the house.”
“At seven years old?”
Cormac hummed. “Yeah. That was the last time any of us saw him. Last I heard, he’d moved to Oregon, gotten married, and moved on.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Cormac said, and it was. He’d been angry at his father for a long time, but there had been more important things to worry about in his life. His parents hadn’t been married, and his mother had never had enough money to hire a lawyer to get any kind of child support. His dad had been free to leave her with two young kids to restart somewhere else. “That night, I heard a noise downstairs.”
He paused as Lucy increased the pressure on his scalp, groaning at the feel of her fingernails running through his hair.
“What happened?” Lucy asked, voice quiet.
“Two guys had broken in to rob us,” he said matter-of-factly. “I caught them trying to haul our TV out through the front door. They tried to tell me to be quiet, that if I said nothing, no one would get hurt. I made a noise. I know I did. Because suddenly my mom was there. And then?—”
Cormac stopped speaking, because his throat had constricted and made it impossible to continue. He tried to clear the blockage in his throat once, twice, and finally felt like he could speak again. His voice was raspy as he continued. “And then one of the guys hit her. The other one clocked me in the temple and I was too dazed to fight back. They took our TV, threatened her with a knife, and stole all the money she’d saved for who knows how long. When my head stopped spinning I tried to stop them, and that’s when I got this.”
He lifted his head and gestured to the scar on his temple, just a couple of inches from the fresh split in his hair.
“Oh, Cormac,” Lucy said. Her brows were drawn, her eyes full of pain for him.
He smiled bitterly. “Nicked me with the knife, and you know how head wounds are.”
“They bleed a lot,” she answered, wry.
He huffed out a laugh and let his hand run up and down her arm, drawing comfort from her warmth, her softness, her presence. “I failed. I should have stopped them. I was supposed to protect her, and I know I was a kid, but I could have done something …”
He’d started staring off into the middle distance, remembering the icy feeling in his gut when he’d spotted the two guys carrying the TV. He could still feel the tightness in his chest, the tingling in his limbs at the sight of his mother sprawled on the ground. Closing his eyes, Cormac tried to fight off the dizziness that always accompanied those memories. It was like it had happened a minute ago, and he was dazed and useless all over again.
Lucy shifted, but Cormac was still fighting the memories off. She brought her face closer and pressed a soft kiss to one eyelid, then the other, then moved to kiss his cheeks, his nose, his lips.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she told him, solemn.
He opened his eyes and found his vision blurry. Blinking the moisture away, he shook his head. “I know that. But I’ve always felt like I could have done something more… I don’t know… Maybe…”
“Cormac.” She put her hand on his cheek, stroking softly with her thumb. “Look at me.”
He did, part of him wanting to take all this comfort and care she offered, the rest of him regretting ever letting her in.
But it was too late for that. She was in, and he wasn’t going to let her go.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she repeated. “Whatever thoughts go through your brain—all the guilt and fear and anger—those are just thoughts. They’re not the truth. The truth is that you survived a home invasion and witnessed something really traumatic as a child. You took on responsibility that wasn’t yours to take on. You did everything you could.”
“If I’d just kept my mouth shut, she wouldn’t have come downstairs. She wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
“Having met your mother, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t blame you for what happened,” Lucy said. She grinned. “I’m pretty sure she thinks you’re the best son she could ever ask for, even when she’s mad at you for installing alarms she doesn’t want.”
Cormac let out a sigh.
“Your thoughts aren’t necessarily true, Cormac.” Lucy kissed his temple, smiling softly. “It’s your choice to believe them or not. And don’t you think that twenty-five years later, it might be time to change what you believe?”
His chest ached. Another breath slipped through his lips, and he tried to smile back. “Maybe.”
“So what happened after? The police didn’t help?”
Cormac snorted. “West Oaks wasn’t always full of McMansions, you know. The neighborhood was rough when I was a kid. The police stopped by, made a report, and nothing ever happened. They said exactly what Rick told us yesterday. They’d investigate and let us know. Those guys got away with it.”
“Is that why you went into the private security business?”
Wrapped around a beautiful naked woman, Cormac felt the tightness in his chest ease. “Yes,” he answered. “Very perceptive of you.”
“Well, I’m an introvert. I notice things.”
“How could you be an introvert when you were in sales, and when you killed it at the Wedding Expo?”
“I’m an introvert who fakes it as an extrovert and then needs days and days of alone time to recover.”
“Is that your subtle way of telling me my company is wearing you down?” Cormac asked the question lightly, but he found that he cared very much about her answer.
Her smile was pure sunlight. “Funnily enough,” she said, “your company doesn’t seem to drain me at all. It’s almost as good as being on my own. Maybe even better.”
Cormac laughed and pulled her closer. She tucked her head under Cormac’s chin and wrapped her arms around him, slotting one of her legs between his. She was all softness and warm skin, silky hair and drugging touches. He’d never been this comfortable in his life.
After a pause, Lucy spoke. “I don’t think I would have made it long in sales. I think my downfall was inevitable. The job was grinding me down, and that’s why I cracked. It was always going to happen. It might happen again.”
“The Juniper and Sage pitch?”
She nodded, her cheek rubbing against his chest.
“You won’t crack,” he told her. “You’re stronger than you were before.”
“How do you know that?”
“Now you’ve got me.”
She tilted her head up to meet his gaze, gifting him with another blinding, beautiful smile. “Now I’ve got you,” she repeated softly.
Not long after, they made their way to the kitchen. Cormac fed her as she sat on a barstool wearing one of his T-shirts. He kept his hand on her thigh as they ate, feeling more peace after a day of chaos and fighting than he’d felt in the two decades that had come before.