Chapter Five – Diamond #2
“Who are you talking to? Who’s with you?” Parker demanded, and I heard a car door slam on his end of the line. He’d be here soon. More relief rolled through me. He’d be here. Parker had promised I’d never face danger without him again. And Parker always kept his promises.
Always.
“Celia,” I answered, trying to keep my voice from betraying just how afraid I was. “Ace’s wife.”
“Hang up, call 9-1-1, and then call me back,” Parker instructed.
With shaky hands, I hung up and went to call 9-1-1, but Celia grabbed my phone.
“No!” she said. “You can’t call the cops.”
“What? Why not?”
“You don’t understand!” she shrieked.
I battled her for my phone and had barely grabbed onto it before the hammering started again. Ace furiously indented the door with each strike, the ring harsh and foreboding.
“Celia. Get your ass out here.”
The sound of sirens drifted through the air, and my entire being convulsed with hope. Someone else had heard the fight. Someone had called for help.
Panic spread across Celia’s face at the sound.
“You called the fucking cops!” Ace bellowed, and his battering grew even more frenzied.
My breath got caught in my lungs. What if the cops didn’t make it before he broke it in? Would he use whatever he was hitting against the door on me? On Celia?
Blood and bruises flashed before my eyes. Sadie and I had been covered in them after the attack at the bar.
“Let me out!” Celia shoved me, and I collided with the wall, my head smashing into it with the same ugly crack hers had against the brick outside.
“What are you doing?” I asked, grabbing her biceps and trying to stop her. “He’ll kill you. ”
“You have no right! No right to interfere!” she screamed at me.
Red-and-blue lights drifted in through the coke-bottle windows at the top of the brick.
When I heard the squawk of a police radio, I sagged against the wall.
“Sir, put down the shovel and step away from the door.”
“She’s got my wife in there. She’s holding my wife.”
Tension flooded back through me. What the actual fuck?
I heard a clang as the shovel hit the concrete sidewalk, and then Ace’s voice got quieter as he and the officer moved away. A rap on the door was followed by a woman demanding we come out with our hands up.
My body quaked as I unlocked the door. I’d barely started to swing it open when Celia pushed past me, almost colliding with the female officer on the other side.
“She had no right to interfere! No right!” Celia shouted, her eyes wild.
The officer raised her gun. “Hands up.”
Celia started toward the officer as if she hadn’t heard the command. Her eyes were locked on the scene taking place farther away, where a cop had Ace handcuffed and was leading him to a police car. She was going to get herself shot.
I flinched as if in expectation. Expecting the jerk of her body just as I’d seen once before. Expecting the nauseating smell of gunpowder and blood. The horror of watching life disappear from someone’s eyes.
I stepped out of the restroom with my palms raised and said shakily, “Celia, raise your hands and stop moving.”
Finally, Celia seemed to register the situation, and her feet froze as she lifted her arms.
Another cop car squealed to a stop in the parking lot, and two more officers emerged, hands on the guns in their holsters as they took in the scene.
Time blurred. My vision turned spotty as the adrenaline began to leave my body.
They placed Ace in the back of a squad car, and Celia and I were separated to give our statements .
Memories and reality blended.
I vaguely heard JJ’s voice calling my name from a distance, worry coating it. The drama of the police cars had drawn the crowd from the bonfire, but an officer was keeping everyone at bay.
A truck squealed into the lot behind the police cars.
A man jumped out. A man I hadn’t seen in months. His black hair gleamed in the streetlights, and his steel-gray eyes looked dark as night. He moved with a grace and ease that seemed contradictory to the deeply honed muscles he’d earned as a SEAL.
His eyes locked with mine across the distance. The fury in them turned to relief as he searched my body for wounds and came back empty.
My entire being shook. I needed his arms around me.
I needed to feel safe.
I needed Parker.
Celia was screaming at the officer interviewing her about how I’d interfered, how there’d been nothing going on.
How they needed to let Ace go. He hadn’t hurt her.
She’d fallen. She’d tripped down the cement steps leading to the beach.
And no, those weren’t hand marks on her throat.
She got so agitated that the cop put her in cuffs and sat her down on a bench.
When the officer who’d gotten us out of the bathroom asked me what had happened, I explained what I’d seen and what I’d done to try and save Celia.
“I won’t testify against him! He didn’t do anything wrong!” Celia cried. “Don’t listen to that bitch!”
The officer questioning me met my gaze with a frustrated one. Resignation crossed her face as her jaw tightened.
“I’ll testify,” I said quietly. “I know what I saw. He would have killed her.”
A tremor ran through me as Ace’s angry eyes came into focus again. I’d seen that look before too. Wild. Inhuman. I’d seen it in the eyes of our attacker in the bar.
My body was a mass of horrible memories. My knees were shaking so badly I wasn’t sure I’d be able to remain standing for much longer .
The officer left me to consult with the other cops, and Parker flashed his military ID at them. They nodded, and he pushed past them. In five long strides, he reached me and pulled me to him.
The scent of him washed over me. Earth and pine. Security. I buried my face in his chest, and one strong arm banded my waist. The trembling stopped. The fear stopped. I was where I belonged.
Except, I wasn’t. I was so messed up.
Parker stroked my hair, and a sharp pain zipped through me, making me gasp. He jerked back.
“You’re hurt?” The words were gravelly, laced with concern and barely leashed anger.
I felt the back of my head for the bump and winced when I found it. “Got knocked into the wall.”
“What the fuck happened, Ducky?”
I swallowed hard and was about to explain just as JJ reached us. His eyes narrowed as they drifted between me and Parker.
“Fallon, are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded. But I wasn’t. I was a mess of old memories and new ones. Of fear and relief.
“Where were you when she was in danger?” Parker barked.
JJ’s shoulders went back, and he widened his stance. “What? I’m supposed to tag along with her whenever she goes to the bathroom? At least I’m here. Where have you been for months?”
I stepped between them. “This isn’t JJ’s fault, Parker. This is on me. I should have called the cops instead of getting in the middle of their argument.”
JJ’s gaze settled on me before darting to Celia, still cuffed on the bench, and Ace in the back of the squad car. “They were fighting? Big deal. Shit, Ace and Celia go at it all the time. You know that, Fallon.”
JJ worked with Ace at the beach hut, and JJ insisted he was a good guy.
But ever since my first interaction with Ace, my instincts had always screamed Stay away .
Parker had liked Ace even less. They’d even gone toe to toe several times when Ace had been passing around drugs to the college crowd that he was far too old to be hanging out with.
As JJ watched Ace yelling at the cops from the back of the police car, something passed over his face. Concern. Worry. He looked back at me and said, “You should have left it alone. Why would you call the cops?”
“I didn’t. Someone must have heard him slamming the shovel into the bathroom door…
” A tremor ran through me again, and both men reached out, as if they were going to pull me to them, until their hands collided, and they retreated.
JJ tucked his into the pockets of his sweats.
Parker crossed his arms over that wide expanse of his chest.
The female officer came back and handed me a card.
“We’re holding Ace overnight. He has another drug charge pending trial, so I’m not sure if he’ll make bail or not.
Celia won’t testify, but the prosecutor will want to talk to you.
If we can make anything from tonight stick on top of his previous arrest, it might keep him away long enough for her to come to her senses. ”
“Don’t get involved, Fallon,” JJ said softly, and it drew the officer’s gaze to his.
Her eyes narrowed before they shifted to Parker and then back to me. “You have someone to take you home?”
“Yes,” JJ replied just as I nodded.
She hesitated as if reading the tension in the air but then walked away. I turned in the direction of the bonfire. “I need to grab my things.”
“I already put them in my car,” JJ said. “Let’s get the hell out of here and try to forget this whole night.”
He shot Parker an angry look, grabbed my hand, and tugged me toward the parking lot. I pulled away from him. “Let me talk to Parker for a minute, and then I’ll be ready to go.”
JJ scowled, muttered something under his breath, and strode toward his car.
Nerves rattled through me, and I was tempted to give in to the bad habit I’d broken years ago of chewing on my nails. Instead, I bit my cheek and rubbed my fingers over my thumb.
“I don’t even know where to start with my questions,” Parker said. He shot JJ an annoyed look before glancing at the squad cars and finally settling those steely gray eyes on me. “But all I really care about is if you’re okay.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds. The air seemed to warm. Electricity zapping as if lightning was blooming when the sky was clear. I’d missed him. Missed us. Missed our friendship .
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I wasn’t sure if it was for calling him in the middle of the night, asking him to rescue me, or for the months I’d gone without talking to him.
How could I have let so much time go by simply because I’d been embarrassed?
His brow furrowed in concern. “I’ll always be here for you. Always.”
That hurt almost as much as it soothed. Knowing he’d be at my side in every way except the one I’d wanted most was what had led me to react so dramatically.
It was time for me to face the hard truth.
Parker would never want me the way JJ did.
And I wanted—no, needed—to be loved completely.
I needed to be the center of someone’s world at least once in my life.
I swallowed. “I’m sorry I called you. I should have just dialed 9-1-1.”
“I’m not sorry.” Parker glanced toward JJ’s old sedan. “Are you really back together with that douche?”
I prickled. “Don’t call him that.”
He raised his hands as if in truce and then reached out to tug on one of my braids.
The friendly move hurt my heart in that way memories from my childhood always did, reminding me of holidays spent with Parker, his family, and my dad that had ended in my being sent home to a family and an estate that my birth had broken.
My family may have started to mend itself in the last few years, but it wasn’t ever going to be completely whole. Just like I’d never be whole. I had too many scars left from my childhood.
Parker was just one more of them.
I stepped away, heading for JJ and away from the memories threatening to pull me under, but Parker’s words halted me. “Ducky…” I looked back. “Don’t let it go months before we talk again. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”
It shouldn’t have thrilled me, the promise in his voice of what he’d do if I ghosted him again. It frustrated me that he still had this much power over me.
I’ll never say yes to you…
I swallowed and nodded, because the simple truth was, I couldn’t do another six months without him either. As much as it hurt, I still needed him in my life, because we weren’t just friends. We were family.
I arched a brow and asked, “Still listening to that heavy-metal crap?”
He smiled, and it changed Parker’s face from stern and growly into the eighth wonder of the world. A miracle. A sight you couldn’t compare to anything else on this earth. “Metal is the god of music. Don’t you forget it.”
“I swear I’ll have you loving country music before the end of the decade.”
“Not likely.”
We shared a grin, and then I turned and walked away. I felt his eyes on me the entire way to JJ. When I reached my boyfriend, he opened the car door, and I slid inside. After he climbed into the driver’s seat, he glanced out the windshield to where Parker was still watching us.
“You haven’t seen him in months, and yet he shows up tonight out of the blue? Seems suspicious.”
“It wasn’t out of the blue. I called him,” I said.
JJ’s mouth tightened. “I was right here, Fallon. Right on the beach. Why didn’t you call me if you needed someone?”
Why hadn’t I? “I figured the Navy SEAL would know how to defuse the situation.”
“Ace and I are friends. I could have calmed him down.”
I didn’t have a response. I simply turned to look out at the ocean as JJ drove out of the parking lot. My emotions were all over the place. Memories clawing at me from when I was fourteen and thought I was going to die, old wishes and buried dreams reemerging after seeing Parker again.
I didn’t want any of it. I didn’t want to be the Fallon whose stepdad had been murdered and who’d almost been killed herself. Or the girl who’d destroyed a family. I didn’t even want to be the heiress who had a ranch and a five-star resort waiting for her after graduate school.
For a few more years, I wanted the easy life I’d built here. I wanted to be the center of someone’s world. I wanted JJ and my friends to see only the college girl with no responsibilities. The equestrian champ. The future veterinarian .
Once I had my license, I’d go back to the ranch and take on the legacy my stepdad had left for me. I wanted that future. But for now, I needed this—classes and parties and surfing. I needed to be a simple college girl and nothing more.