Chapter 18
Mace
My back is aching as I sit against the cedar headboard, but I can’t move without disturbing Lily.
She’s sitting between my legs, her back against my chest, my arm roped around her naked body.
Her unruly hair tickles my nose as I swipe through the notifications on my phone that I had no interest in checking last night.
I haven’t missed anything important, just a series of messages from my brothers and sister-in-law.
I’d told them I was going to the Moncriefs’ lodge for the weekend, and let them assume it was with Calder.
I should have guessed Reid would bump into our friend at the club, and now my entire family are pissing me off by asking for more information about who’s keeping me company.
Maddie is leading the charge, and has threatened to take a trip up here.
They can all fuck off. I’m not sure I’d introduce Lily to my family, even if we were married.
Shit. Where did that thought come from?
I rest my chin on Lily’s shoulder and read the email she’s just opened from her boss.
Connor has handed in his resignation, and Walter Royston is assuming Lily will simply pick up her old clients as if he hadn’t tried to fuck her over.
Lily closes the email without replying and switches to bad mouthing her boss to her friend, and giving her the fuller version of what happened with Connor.
“You’re telling Kaitlyn it was me who broke that creep’s arms?” I ask, more curious than alarmed.
“Knowing her, she’ll come up with her own list of people she wants you to take out,” she says. There’s a whooshing sound to confirm the message has been sent. “And it’s rude to read other people’s messages.”
“Is it?” I ask with mock innocence. I’m so used to reading Lily’s messages that it hadn’t even crossed my mind that she’d object to me looking over her shoulder.
“We’re going to have a serious talk about boundaries before the end of this weekend,” she warns.
“And what else will we do?” I ask, nibbling her ear.
We didn’t get much sleep last night, and after I’d gotten over the shock of waking up with another human being in my arms, I’d stared at her until she woke up. And then I’d fucked her brains out.
Lily tilts her head, giving me more access to her neck. “We could build up an appetite before breakfast.”
I trail my hand up her stomach to the curve of her breasts. “Damn, woman. You’re insatiable.”
Her laugh reverberates through my chest. “I was thinking more of a leisurely hike. I can’t remember the last time I went for a walk in the forest.”
“The snow’s pretty deep,” I remind her, tipping my head to the floor to ceiling windows.
“It’s a few inches,” she counters. “Trust a man to exaggerate.”
My hand moves to one of her nipples and I pinch. “I think you’ll find I don’t need to exaggerate.”
“Ow!” She wriggles back against me in complaint. “Look, if you’re too much of a geek to face a bit of snow, fine, I’ll go for a walk on my own,” she says. In a lower voice, she adds, “Or you could give me a head start and track me down.”
My fingers soothe and stroke the nipple I pinched. “Do you want me to chase you through the forest?” I ask. I don’t know how she does it, but my overworked cock is thickening again.
Lily gives a loud huff. “On second thoughts, it’s not going to be much of a challenge. Even I could track someone down in this snow,” she says. “A walk will do. We can pretend to be a normal couple. You know, like people who actually know each other’s names.”
Guilt seeps under my skin. I’m not sure how much longer I can get away with playing this game, but every time I picture what the next step might be, my mind shuts down.
I don’t know if I have what it takes to give Lily a normal version of us, but I can’t face letting her go either.
Which leaves us exactly where we are. There’s only one way to end this game.
Either Lily resigns from it, or she wins.
A message comes through on Lily’s cell. “See, I told you,” she says with a giggle. “I have a list from Kaitlyn marked for the attention of my hitman.”
“I promise to give it due consideration. But first, my girl wants me to take her on a hike.”
She moves her body against mine, and I’m pretty sure this is what snuggling feels like. “I like it when you call me that.”
Hooking a finger under her chin, I turn her head so I can ghost a kiss across her lips. “I’m only stating facts.”
Lily drags me out of bed before we can get too distracted, and it doesn’t take us long to get dressed.
I’d bought her all the clothes she could possibly need for the weekend, and was confident everything would meet with her approval, including the bright pink outdoor gear.
Lily is an avid online shopper, and her order history across multiple retailers was quite an epic read.
“I can’t believe how everything you picked for me fits perfectly.
I wouldn’t even know your shoe size,” she says as she stomps through the snow.
The lodge is nestled into a ridge, and we opt to take the high ground, her gloved hand gripped in mine as we cut a path through the forest. “Are you sure you didn’t sneak into my apartment and measure me in my sleep? ”
“I think you’d know about it if I’d crept into your bedroom again.”
“Fair point. Your nightly visit is ingrained in my memory.” She’s quiet for a few steps, and I assume she’s replaying that night just as I am, but then she says, “Tell me something about you.”
I don’t even hesitate. “I’m a size thirteen shoe.”
She glances up at me through her eyelashes. “Well done, Shade. Thank you for sharing. That must have been hard,” she says, mocking me.
Before she can shame me into sharing something more intimate, I get there first. “Your turn. Tell me about your family.”
Lily tugs on a low spindly branch as we pass a tall pine. When she lets go, a shower of snowflakes float to the ground. “I think you already know the important bits. My brother died and I ignore calls from my mom.”
“Why can’t you speak to her?”
She stares straight ahead, but her hand tightens in mine.
“Luke was twenty-one, fresh out of college, and not keen on settling back into small town life after three years in a city. I was twenty-four, still living at home, and putting my accounting degree to zero use by working in a local realtor’s office.
I was just as frustrated with the limited opportunities available, but our parents ran a hardware store and there was an expectation that at least one of us would continue the family business.
Neither Luke, nor I had the courage to put them straight. ”
“It’s hard growing up with the weight of your family’s expectations,” I agree.
“You too?”
“Different circumstances, but yeah, there was never any question of whether or not I’d join the family business. Luckily for me, it was exactly what I wanted and needed.”
Lily gives me a furtive look. She chews her lip. “By family business, it’s not the mafia or something crazy, is it?”
Thankfully, I’m good at masking my reaction.
I don’t have a clue what she’d make of the life we lead.
It might be ninety five percent legit, but it’s most definitely grey around the edges.
“Something crazy,” I tell her because I won’t lie to her.
“But we were talking about you. What happened to your brother?”
“He went a little off the rails. We’d been close growing up, but he came home from college with a suitcase full of ambitions and a fair amount of resentment too.
He knew if he left, I’d be trapped at home, and he wanted better for both of us,” she says, running out of breath at the last. Her chest rises.
“And it wasn’t as if our parents were the type to apply pressure.
They told us we should make our own decisions, but when the people you love are that understanding, it’s hard to kick them in the teeth.
” She churns up the snow with her boots.
“We were all too damn nice for our own good.”
I could compare and contrast her family to mine, but I don’t, and not because of the veil of secrecy I’ve placed over my life. She doesn’t need that from me right now. She needs to be heard.
“Instead of looking for a job that would shackle him to our home town, Luke got up to no good with a group of guys who were better at it than he was. They got drunk one Saturday night and persuaded Luke he was fit enough to be their designated driver. He usually asked me to pick him up so our parents wouldn’t see what state he was getting himself into, but I’d said no, even though I was out that night too.
In our last ever conversation, I’d told him he wouldn’t make it to twenty-two, let alone the city, if he didn’t clean up his act.
” She sniffs then clears her throat. “I was right on both counts. He took a bend too fast, hit a tree and two of the guys in the car didn’t walk away from the accident. One of them was Luke.”
“Shit,” I say, tugging on Lily’s arm to bring her to a halt. I cup her face in my gloved hands and swipe away her tears. “I hope you know that it wasn’t on you.”
Her laugh holds no mirth. “Try telling that to my mom.”
I only just manage to hide my shock, and not because I couldn’t imagine a mother being so cruel. I’d listened to the voicemail Lily’s mom had left. She’d said something about it not being Lily’s fault. This is what she was talking about.
Lily puts her hands over mine. “She wouldn’t look at me after the accident,” she says, her eyes glistening.
“I stuck it out for a year, but even my parents were at each other’s throats.
Someone had to take the blame, and one day, my mom finally broke and told me exactly what she thought of me.
She said it wouldn’t have happened if I’d picked Luke up. She’s not wrong.”
I press my forehead to Lily’s as if I can drain the destructive thoughts from her mind. “Luke was an adult, Lily. He would have known he was being self-destructive, even if you hadn’t pointed it out to him. Driving that car was a conscious decision, no matter how drunk he was.”
“It’s OK,” she soothes, like she’s the one comforting me.
“I’ve moved on, and now my mom doesn’t have to look at me every day and be reminded of what I did.
” Before I can respond, she steps back and blinks away her tears.
“It worked out for the best for all of us. Our argument gave me the push to escape.”
She takes my hand, and has to pull me to get us moving again.
“I hate that your mom made you feel like that,” I say as we continue walking. “But grief can take you to dark places where you can’t see other people’s pain. Your mom’s only human. Or am I missing something? Is she a really awful person?”
Lily’s shoulders rise then drop as she sighs. “No, she was a good mom, and dad was a good dad.”
“Do you miss them?”
She manages a nod.
“Your parents are still alive, Lily,” I say. “You lost your brother, but you haven’t lost them. You’re just carrying around an extra crack in your heart that could be healed. If it was me, I’d jump at the chance.”
She doesn’t argue, but after a long silence, she says, “If it was you?” she says, repeating it as a question.
It looks like it’s my turn to share. I’m guessing that giving her my shoe size wasn’t enough.
“The closest I had to a mom was my dad’s second wife. Except I never called her mom,” I say. “I don’t know why… Or maybe I do.”
“I’m waiting,” Lily says when the silence stretches. She squeezes my hand. “I need to hear this, Shade. I need to feel like we’re in an equal partnership. If only for this weekend.”
My jaw ticks. She deserves someone less fucked up than me. If I had a shred of decency, I’d let her go, but since I can’t, I can at least give her this.
“Lisa raised me from a baby,” I begin. “My older brothers called her Lisa, so when I learned to talk, I copied them. She died never hearing me call her mom, even though I know she would have loved me to, and that’s a regret I’ll take to the grave.”
“Did she ever mention it?”
“Sure, when I was little,” I say. “But I was a stubborn shit. I hadn’t got over the arrival of my little brother when I was four.
That was when I found out that Lisa wasn’t my birth mother.
” I roll my shoulders to loosen the tension in my neck and stop my throat from closing up.
“When she’d come home from the hospital, I overheard a conversation between her and her sister.
I can remember exactly what was said. She’d told Lisa how different it would be this time because Reid was her baby, not someone else’s. ”
“Oh, Shade. I can’t imagine how a child would process that.”
“This child internalized it,” I confess. “I took note when Reid was taught how to say mamma, and how he became the child the rest of us were ruled by. His feeding times. His sleep patterns. How he got carried while I trailed behind.”
“OK, I get how traumatizing it would be to find out your mom was your stepmom, but the rest?” Lily challenges gently. “I’m pretty sure I carried the same kind of resentment when Luke was born.”
I tug her arm so she stumbles against me.
“Four-year-old logic is definitely flawed,” I agree.
I rest an arm around her shoulder. It’s weird how I feel suddenly closer to her than ever before.
“I hated Reid for a long time, but I never let it show because everyone else loved him, and I mean loved him. He’s a fucking ray of sunshine.
He’s the one I share an apartment with now, so I did get over myself, but for a while there, I felt like a freak for not loving him the way the others did. ”
Lily presses her hand to my chest. I don’t know if it’s deliberate, but her palm is covering my latest tattoo. “You’re not a freak.”
I place a hand over hers. “Are you sure about that?” I ask, my tone deliberately low and menacing.
All this soul-searching is making my skin itch, and I need to recalibrate.
“I hunted you down, dragged you to a secluded lodge and now we’re in the middle of a forest where no one can hear you scream. ”
Lily’s steps falter, but when she looks at me, it’s not fear in her eyes. It’s a challenge. “Shade. Don’t you dare…”
As my pupils dilate, I lean in so I only need to whisper. “Run, Lily.”