Chapter 19 #2
“I overheard my mom talking to Helena. The first time I went to Helena’s house, she stared at me.
And I mean really stared at me.” I remember the day, how she’d opened the door and clearly knew who I was.
Helena would have taken any kid in and cleaned them up, but she made a point of driving me home.
My mom had paled when she’d opened the door to us, but Helena stayed, and they talked for hours.
I heard them crying at one point, and then Helena said it.
Don’t you think enough time has passed? Let Finn be in his life.
I tell Denver this. “And Finn loves all of us, but he pays particular attention to me. Worries about me. And Wilder looks like our dad, but I don’t. ”
She turns her body to face me. “Do you think your dad knew?”
“I think he found out a few years after Wilder was born, and that’s why he left,” I say. “Ronan has no idea. Or, if he does, he’s never said anything.”
Denver chews her lip. “I can’t imagine Finn ever cheating, though. He adores Helena.”
“I don’t think he did cheat,” I say. “I think they were all together and the pregnancy was a total surprise. There’s a chance my mom wasn’t even sure who my father was for a long time.”
She shifts closer and lowers her voice. “That means the McEwan legacy is yours. Not Ronan’s. You could be the head of the two most—”
“I don’t want it.”
She releases a breath of a laugh. “You don’t want it?”
“No. Would you?” I ask, and she relaxes her shoulders. “A few years ago, I’d have lunged at it with both hands. To be a McEwan? Fuck. It was all I wanted. But …”
“Time and context,” she says, echoing our conversation about Wilder in the lift all those weeks ago. I nod. “And no one knows you suspect? Not even Finn?”
“No. It’s a conversation I’ll have one day, but not now. So, there’s my dirty family secret. Now you know something about me, you’re safe to talk about you. You don’t have to, but—”
“Ranger manipulated me into killing my husband.”
I’m fairly sure my facial expressions go through something similar to Denver’s when I told her my secret, so she allows me a moment.
“Continue.”
She swallows. “Wyatt was cheating, with numerous women, but Ranger hired them. All of them. On my birthday, he took me into the basement, and Wyatt was on his knees. Ranger showed me the tapes of Wyatt fucking other women, and then also told me Wyatt was going to kill me. He’d upped the life insurance, even asked Cal to do it one night. ”
“Fucker,” I whisper. “I don’t blame you for doing it, then.”
“It wasn’t true,” she says. “Wyatt wasn’t going to kill me, but Ranger knew I would’ve either let him live or at the very least forgive the cheating.
Ranger didn’t want that. He wanted Wyatt out of the picture, so he orchestrated the whole thing.
And I was angry. I was so angry, Colt. I was humiliated, hurt …
and it was him or me, right?” She’s talking fast, maybe more to herself.
“So, I took the gun and did it. I hated him for embarrassing me, lying to me, being everything he promised he’d never be.
And then I fucked Ranger before my husband’s body was even cold. ”
I make a strange humming sound. “A lot to unpack.”
But it isn’t over.
“And I ran. Who wouldn’t run? Ranger thought he had me.
I didn’t have Wyatt as an excuse to keep my distance.
I bolted. Ran for my fucking life. But then I came back, and people died, and there was all this mess!
” She shakes her hands above her head, but the words keep coming.
“Then I was being interrogated by the police, offered deals to get out, but I’m not a rat.
I wasn’t going to do that to Ranger. And bit by bit, day by day, I wore myself down because I love him.
He’d sunk his teeth into me.” She curls her fingers as if she’s squeezing an imaginary pillow.
“And then I found out the will was a lie. My dad didn’t want me with Ranger, that was his worst fucking nightmare, and Ranger admitted he’d been using me, but that he’d fallen in love with me. ”
I wonder if I should be making notes.
“So … I stayed. I married him. Because right or wrong, I thought I belonged with him. He said I could be great. I could be Deluxe. Powerful. Feared. And then the moment I got even a taste of it? He fucks my casino deal.”
“Ranger did that?”
She nods rapidly. “Fucked the sale for me. Almost cost me my relationship with the Laus. And when I told him I couldn’t come home, that I needed space, that he kept breaking me, he said that’s what love is.
” Her quick-fire anger and words fizzle out quickly, like she’s deflating in front of me.
“So, you see what I mean when I say it isn’t only love? It’s obsession.”
“It sounds more like possession.”
She meets my eyes, but whatever she was going to say doesn’t materialize. She leans her shoulder into the cushion.
“Do you want my opinion?”
She sighs. “No, but yes.”
“Your marriage is a nightmare.”
Denver’s laugh is loud, and she leans forward, her forehead pressing into my shoulder as she chuckles. “You think? And now I have to call him and say I almost died, but please don’t come and get me.”
“Get you?”
She sits up again. “He said I either go home or he’ll come out here and get me.”
“If he can make it through me.”
A smile twitches her lips. “How very heroic.”
“I’m fucking serious. In fact, let me call him. I’ll tell him about what happened tonight.”
She laughs. “Yes, I’m sure that’ll go down really well. A man calling him in the middle of the night to say his wife almost died, but you’ve got me covered.”
“Maybe it’ll do him good to realize he might lose you.”
“To you?”
Now I laugh. “Is that so unbelievable?”
She’s fighting a bigger smile, her teeth in her bottom lip. “I’m not in the habit of fucking my enemies.”
“Is that what I am to you still? Your enemy?”
Her eyes sparkle in the dimly lit room. I’m suddenly hyperaware that we’re alone, and it’s quiet. The television isn’t even on. The only light is from the lamp in the far corner, and there’s very little space between us.
All things I shouldn’t be noticing.
Even in the darkness, I spot the flush climbing her cheeks. “No, you’re not my enemy. I actually think you might be my friend.” Her swallow has my gaze dropping to the slender movement in her neck. “Isn’t that strange?”
“What?” I ask, suddenly desperate to keep this conversation going. But how long have I been sitting here?
Not long enough.
My heart begins a slow and steady climb in rhythm, and my fingers ache to reach out to her, to brush my knuckles softly against her cheek, to see what she’d do if I did.
“That we’re not enemies anymore,” she says, just as quietly. “I quite like it, though. Being your friend.”
Friend. Right.
Friendship.
Not … whatever I’m thinking about. Not wondering what her skin would feel like against my lips. Not wanting to kiss the pulse in her throat. Not wondering how breathless she would sound if I whispered what I wanted to do to her.
“I should get some sleep.” She sighs, and I blink back into the now. “And I need to call Ranger. I’ll get you some sheets.”
She goes into the bedroom and I run my hand down my face. What the fuck am I doing, thinking about her like that? She’s telling me about her mess of a marriage, and I’m thinking about kissing her goddamn neck. I’m supposed to be protecting her. Supporting her. Being a fucking friend.
Denver reappears with two pillows and covers. She places them on the couch beside me. “Need anything else?”
Do not answer that question honestly, Colt.
“No, but do you want to do something tomorrow night?”
She tilts her head. “Like what?”
I shrug. “I’ll think of something. A friend thing.”
Friend. That word is getting cut out of my fucking vocabulary.
“Sure.” She smiles. “Night, Ghost.”
“Night, Deluxe.”
She closes her bedroom door, and I rub my face again, my beard scratching against my palms. “Fucking get it together, Colt.”
I keep the lamp on as I lie on the couch, covers over me, my gun on the coffee table.
Nothing happened. Nothing even almost happened. Denver is totally unaware of the almost-thing I’m currently obsessing over.
I’m almost asleep when I hear Denver talking on the phone.
Talking and laughing quietly.
Talking to her husband.