Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
SEAMUS
Text conversation with Emma
I found the collateral
Ten minutes later…
I’m going to bring it to you
I’m about to ring the buzzer on the gate when I see it—the vines on the side of the wall surrounding Smith House look ripped. Someone else climbed the wall.
Maybe it happened a while ago, maybe not, but seeing it stops my hand before it reaches the buzzer. I scale the wall myself, using the same path I took last time. My rib doesn’t like it much, but I couldn’t care less.
Once I’m on the other side, I look through the front windows and don’t see anything. Then I slide along to the side of the house to the kitchen doorway that I’ve seen Emma use a couple of times. I know the code for the pin pad, so it’s an easy thing to get inside.
Something I’ll have to talk to her about.
If she’s okay , a voice in my head whispers, and my pulse goes into overdrive, because if she’s not okay, I won’t be okay, and whoever hurt her will never be okay again.
I hear distant voices, and my skin crawls, because I recognize that asshole’s voice. Her voice responds.
I text Nicole:
Jeffrey’s in Smith House with Emma. Get the police here now. I'm going in.
My phone buzzes with her response, but I’m already pocketing it.
I choose a knife from the block in the kitchen, and then my heart stops, because I hear Emma scream.
I run toward them with the knife in my hand, probably looking like a fucking psychopath. My only thought to get her away from him, whatever it takes.
When I reach the foyer, they’re facing me. He has her in a headlock, and Shadow is hissing at Jeffrey from a distance, hopping up and down. Emma is coughing, sucking for air.
Jeffrey’s arms are covered in welts from the cat’s claws.
There’s nothing left of me but fear and rage.
“Let her go,” I bellow.
His eyes widen with recognition when he sees me, and he loosens his grip. Emma gulps for breath, her cheeks red.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Jeffrey asks.
“I’ll kill you if you don’t let her go.”
I want to call her my woman, my Emma, but she’s not, and I don’t want him to know how precious she is to me. If I play my hand too quickly, or wrong…
He glances down at Emma. “You set all of this up.” He sounds almost pleased by it. “You really are obsessed with me, aren’t you?”
“Go to hell,” she says and spits at him.
Anger ripples across his face, and he tightens his arm again.
“You hurt her, and you’re dead,” I say, prowling closer. “You hear me? Dead .”
He loosens his grip again, and Emma meets my gaze. In her eyes, I can see that she’s ready to try something. She’s silently asking me to give her an opening.
“You look like a vagrant,” Jeffrey says. “If something happens to her, they’ll think you did it. They’ll think you’re the one who hurt us both.”
“Probably,” I agree, my whole body primed to rush him. “But you’d still be fucking dead. There’s no arguing with death, even for a prick like you.”
“Drop the knife,” he says, his face going a milky shade, because he must realize he doesn’t have an easy way out. He’s probably had easy outs his whole life—or he’s made them for himself.
“Drop my girl,” I retort.
“Your girl, huh?” he says.
I messed up, and it probably shows on my face, but my remorse is short lived. Because he made the absolutely idiotic error of underestimating Emma.
With his focus fixed on me, she stomps her foot on his, hard. He drops her in surprise, only for her to turn around and deliver her knee directly into his crotch. Then a second time.
She’s free, and there’s no reason for me to hold back anymore. My blood is hot. I’ve hurt people before, but not because I wanted to. Him, I want to kill . I can only think of a few reasons for why he would have come here tonight, and none of them are innocent.
I throw the knife in the opposite direction, because I know what I’d do if I had it when I get to him.
Then I barrel in and punch him in the face. He falls like a sack of bricks, too easy for my satisfaction. I kick him in the side with my boot, and then again, wanting to make him squirm, but Emma grabs my arm in both of hers, her grip hard and urgent.
“Don’t,” she says, and when I look back I see she’s crying, a sight that nearly breaks me. “Don’t. Please, it’s not worth it. Please, Seamus. Please, just hold me.”
I stop, my rage doused by the look on her face. “ Please ,” she says again. “I need you to hold me, Seamus, and don’t let go.”
I’m not going to say no to something like that, not from her. Not from this woman I’m falling in love with.
But first I rip down the curtains so I can tie him up. The valence goes in his mouth, because I don’t want to hear a damn thing he has to say.
Sorry, Mrs. Rosings.
Once he’s trussed up in the curtains, I take Emma into my arms. She’s shaking slightly, her hair damp against my shirt. Again, I feel the need to destroy Jeffrey, but I tell myself that Emma will take much more satisfaction in watching his lies bite him back than she would in watching the life slip from his eyes. I focus on her, on how good it feels to have her in my arms again, and on the soft inhales and exhales that tell me she’s alive and safe.
“It’s going to be okay, Em,” I whisper into her hair. A siren is approaching from the distance, so hopefully Nicole got my message. The more people who are here, the easier it will be to ignore the part of me that’s still saying Jeffrey isn’t paying enough for what he did. For what he wanted to do.
Maybe she knows I’m struggling, because she whispers, “Hold me tighter.”
I do, giving my strong woman all of my strength, willing myself to focus on her. “I found a thumb drive on Carrot’s tag,” I tell her softly. “That’s where Ellie was hiding the information.”
She glances up at me, her lips parting. “You beautiful genius.”
“I accept my new nickname,” I say, breathing her in. “My God, I was so scared. I’ve never been so scared in my whole life.”
She pushes up on her toes and kisses me, and I soak in the goodness of her as I kiss her back, desperate for her. I’m not going to hold her to the kiss, but right now I need it. I need the reminder that she’s okay. Because Jeffrey is at our mercy, and I’m still desperate to destroy him.
I glance over at him, but she grabs my jawline and turns my face back to her.
“You’re bossy,” I say.
“I’m not going to date you if you’re in jail. So you’ll stand down and let me ruin him by showing everyone exactly who he is.” She pauses, then cups my face. “You don’t like hurting people.”
“I liked hurting him.”
“So did I,” she says in a whisper. “But it’ll be so much more satisfying to ruin him.”
I nod at the words that echo my own thoughts. My throat is tight, though, because I can still see him strangling her in that headlock. I’m guessing I’ll be seeing it for years. I glance down, seeing the red mark across her neck. I place a kiss next to it, the way she did with my head injury, and she smiles and whispers, “My nanny really pulled one over on us.”
I press another kiss to her skin, but Shadow paws at the leg of my pants. I stoop down, ignoring the twinge of my bruise to scoop her up and hold her between us.
I can hear Jeffrey stirring, trying to get up—good luck given the way I tied those knots—but I don’t care if he sees us. I hope he does, and he realizes what he lost. What he will never have again.
The sirens get louder, and I pull back slightly. “We should get outside and wait with our hands up.”
“What about him?” she asks, taking Shadow from me and holding her face to the cat’s soft side.
“Oh, he’s not fucking going anywhere. My uncle taught me how to tie someone up.”
She watches me, her eyes warm, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”
God, it feels good to hear her say that. Her words wash over me and engulf me, and I press my forehead to hers. I don’t want to hold her to it, though. I don’t want her to say anything she’ll regret later, when we’re not both running on the high of taking a bad man down.
“I know I’m falling in love with you,” I murmur. “But that doesn’t change the past.”
“You know what?” she says, holding my gaze as Jeffrey makes another attempt to bellow from behind his makeshift gag. “I’m ready to leave the past behind.”
I look at her in wonder. Could it really be this easy? For years, I’ve tried to do that by seizing onto the present and saying FU to the past and the future. But it didn’t work. Now, though…
I don’t want to fuck over Future Seamus anymore. I’d like to give him a high five. Buy him a beer.
“I am too,” I say, my voice wobbling. “Where’s Shadow’s leash?”
She laugh and nudges me with her arm. “You threw it away.”
“I’m not leaving her in here with that asshole,” I say, and then open my jacket and tuck Shadow into the top of my sweater.
Emma’s eyes melt into me. “God, you’re sexy.”
I wrap an arm around her. “Feel free to remind me of that every day.”
I take a closer look at her, dressed in a Buchanan Brewery sweatshirt, her hair slicked with what’s obviously beer. “You need your coat.”
“Okay, weather police.”
She pulls on the coat herself, since I’ve still got Shadow in my sweater, and we head out onto the stoop together as the sirens come closer and closer.
“I have to unlock the gate for them,” Emma says, and I walk to the gatehouse with her, because there’s no way I’m letting her out of my sight anytime soon.
When we sit down on the stoop, she leans her head against my shoulder. Contentment unfurls inside of me, even though I’m still very much aware of the trussed-up piece of shit inside the house. Harmless now, but he’d come with the intent to harm.
I rest my chin on top of her head, and she says, “Do I smell like beer?”
“Yes, I kind of like it. I’m guessing there’s a story there?”
She laughs softly. “I’ll tell you later. You know…I almost invited you up to my room on New Year’s.”
I shift my head so I can look at her, taking in her clever eyes framed by her dark, beer-scented hair. “Now you tell me,” I say. “I wouldn’t have had to wait two months to get into your pants.”
I get a smile, and I’m glad for it. I’ll take every smile I can get.
“What stopped you?” I ask.
“You said we could make it our little secret. I was his little secret. I didn’t want those kinds of secrets anymore.”
I swear, because I definitely hadn’t meant it like that, and I don’t like thinking I made her feel worse about herself when she was already low.
She pulls away slightly, watching me as the sirens and lights get closer. Jeffrey’s yelling something inside, probably offering us deals we would never take. Because a man who’s used to bargaining his way out of trouble never stops.
“I don’t want you to be my secret,” I told her. “I want to shout from the rooftops that I’m banging you.”
She shakes her head at me but gives me another of those smiles. “Classy.”
“Always. I’d also like to shout from the rooftops that I’m crazy about you, and I think you’re the smartest, sexiest, classiest woman I’ve ever met.” I run my fingers over her cheek. “And the universe must think I’m okay, after all, because that’s the only way I’d get lucky enough for you not to want me to be your dirty little secret.”
“So we’re telling everyone?” she asks as the first police car pulls into the driveway, followed by another, and then by Nicole’s car. We both lift up our hands and rise to our feet. Shadow squirms a little, adding a foot to the top of my sweater for leverage.
“We’re telling everyone,” I confirm to Emma. “ Everyone .”
“The intruder’s inside,” she calls out to the two policemen as they get out of the first car. “We tied him up.”
I glance at her, smiling, and shout for everyone to hear, “This is my beautiful girlfriend, Emma, and I’m the luckiest man alive. She’s way too good for me.”
They give me strained, impatient looks, but someone wolf-whistles in the distance. My money’s on Nicole.
Emma looks at me, her eyes alight, and says, “Really, your girlfriend?”
“Damn, I hope so. Don’t tell me I just lied to those officers.”
Her answer is to lean in and kiss me, our hands still lifted to the air, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my whole existence.