Page 29 of View from Above
He framed her face with one hand and kissed her again. “Or I’ll die happy trying.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Can you pass the soy sauce?” Her question warped around a cheek full of eel, rice, seaweed, and avocado. Mallory pointed to the pile of packets on the other side of the bed with her chopsticks. Her hair frizzed around the sides. She wore nothing but his jersey and supported her ribs with one of his pillows, and damn, if that wasn’t the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. Although, he could do without the jersey again.
Payton handed off a single packet, more than willing to fulfill any request that left those kiss-stung lips after the marathon they’d run together. The starting line had been in the bathroom, but the race had taken so many twists and turns by the time they were depleted—from the floor, to the reading chair in the corner of his bedroom, to the kitchen at one point, then to the bed—he wasn’t sure which way was up. She’d been right before. He’d found creative solutions to avoid upsetting their injuries, and the shove out of his comfort zone had paid off. Multiple times.
The difference between the rushed, casual sex he’d known and loved all his life and the slow, intentional lovemaking they’d discovered had upset everything he believed about intimacy. It hadn’t been about pleasure. Not entirely. The time they’d taken to memorize each other’s bodies inside and out had been about connection, comfort, even equality. Things he’d never had a mind to consider between the sheets.
“I should’ve ordered more.” Styrofoam containers shifted on the bed as he hauled himself upright. He hadn’t been sure which rolls she’d want when he’d placed the order a few hours ago. So he’d ordered all of them. Much to her appreciation. Payton studied the flex of her jaw as she sank back onto the wall of pillows they’d built against the headboard and closed her eyes. Shit, she was beautiful. Not to mention stubborn as hell and stronger than any victim or witness he’d met before. He’d had plenty of hookups over the years. Nothing too serious, and no one important enough to share an unhealthy amount of sushi in bed afterward, but none of them had him wanting more. Not like her. It hadn’t just been about the sex though. He’d tried to warn her when she’d kissed him. There was something about her that left him stronger, more confident, and out of his damn mind. Now that they’d brought each other to that cliff, he wasn’t sure he could let go. Or if he wanted to. He tossed his half-eaten bite into one of the containers. “Or maybe I’m full. I can’t decide.”
“That’s a hard line to tow.” She set her chopsticks against her bare knee. The bruises along her face had lightened in the past forty-eight hours, but the cuts from the incident with her car and her office and the fractures to her ribs would take more time to heal. “But I think I’m right there with you.”
Payton swept empty containers to the end of the bed, crawling straight up the middle. The mattress dipped under his weight, and she cracked one eye.
“If you think you’re getting anything else from me after I just ate four rolls by myself, you’re about to be sorely disappointed, Detective Nichols,” she said.
“You have some spicy mayonnaise on your mouth.” A lie. In fact, the truth was so much harder to get rid of than a condiment. In the span of mere days, he’d fallen for her. A lifelong pursuit of cold justice and detachment hadn’t been enough to keep her from upending his routine, his life, and his view of the future. Somehow, she’d overturned everything he’d believed about himself and twisted him inside out. Maybe he wasn’t insensitive as his former partners and captain had led him to believe. He could play nice with others. Hell, he might even have a shot at making a relationship work. With her. Payton swiped his thumb across her bottom lip, careful of the laceration there. “Got it.”
“There wasn’t anything on my face, was there?” Her smile said it all. She was everything he wasn’t and everything he’d been searching for all these years. Patient, opinionated, strong. Three days. That was all it’d taken for her to fill the holes that’d been punched through his heart when his father had left. Until he wasn’t sure where he began and she ended. There was a certain comfort in that, not having to shoulder the weight of the world on his own. To know she believed in him.
“Guess you’ll never know.” Payton craned his head back and swept his mouth across hers. Salt and sweetness combined on his tongue, a frenzy he hadn’t realized he’d been living without all these years. “Don’t move a muscle. I’ll clean this up.”
“No argument there.” She laid back against the white wall of pillows. So at home in this place. The house itself, the decor, the feeling he’d wanted—she belonged here. With him. A yawn contorted her features and exaggerated the bruises along her face and neck. “I’m exhausted.”
“You sure as hell put me through my paces.” He dragged the empty containers toward him and slid off the bed. Without her body heat, the skin across his chest and down his legs contracted tighter.
She rolled onto her uninjured side, her palm against her temple as she propped herself up to watch him. “Wait until I can breathe fully. You haven’t seen anything yet.”
“Damn, woman, I can barely stay awake now.” He tossed their takeout containers in the garbage inside the bathroom door. “Not sure I can survive the next time.”
Her laugh reached into the deepest parts of him, past the abandonment he’d yet to let go of, and released the vice around his lungs. “We’ll see.” Mallory tipped forward, that beautiful chest pressed against his comforter. “This place is amazing. I keep wracking my brain to figure out how you’ve been able to afford it on a detective’s salary.”
Payton slowed his clean up. Pressure replaced the freeing feeling he’d lost himself in these past few hours, but he’d known, sooner or later, the bubble they’d created between themselves and reality would burst. “You’re asking about my finances, Doc? Moving a little fast, don’t you think?”
“You’re right.” Mallory carefully sat up, her upper body swinging slightly to match the exhaustion under her eyes. “It’s none of my business. However you do it, I’m grateful. Your house… It feels like a home. It feels safe.” She scanned the room with those unreadable brown eyes. “Mine kind of feels like a roach motel. But to be fair, it is a roach motel.”
He tossed the last of the containers into the trash and set the bin next to the bed. “It’s not something I like to talk about to people I don’t…”
“People you don’t trust.” Understanding shut down the humor and brightness he’d reveled in the past few hours, and his ribs felt as though they were breaking all over again. Mallory dipped her legs beneath the sheets. She searched the bedroom floor, presumably for the scrub outfit the hospital had lent her, but he was fairly certain they’d tossed that in the bathtub within the first few seconds he’d kissed her. “Well, that puts an awkward spin on the past few hours. Kind of wish you would’ve told me that before we got down and dirty.”
“That’s not… That’s not what I meant.” He moved to stop her from leaving the bed, sliding his hand over her knee. “This house, the money I used to pay for it, everything here—it comes from my dad.”
“I don’t understand.” The lines between her brows deepened. “You said he left and went missing, that you haven’t been able to find him or figure out what happened.”
“My father supported us so my mom could stay home with me. When he left… She had nothing but our savings account. No additional income. No family to rely on. No education past high school that could help. It was just the two of us, and I was six at the time. I couldn’t do a damn thing but make sure she was taking care of herself.” He kept himself from squeezing her leg to counter the shame coiling through his gut. “Even if that meant giving up some meals so she didn’t have to.”
“Oh, Payton, I had no idea,” she said.
His jaw clicked under the pressure of his back teeth. “I had to watch his absence tear her apart from the inside for years. Every day, she smiled a little less. She tried a little less. Until, finally, she just gave up, right along with the detectives assigned his case. I honestly don’t know how we survived on what little they’d saved, but I didn’t care. She was enough for me. As soon as I turned sixteen, I got a job. From then on, I was the one who put food on the table for our family. I paid the mortgage, I replaced all our clothes, I made sure she was taken care of, and I thought I was enough for her.”
Understanding melted her expression. “She still missed him.”
“One night I snapped. I tore through the house with a dozen garbage bags. Their closet, his office, the garage. He wasn’t coming back. He obviously didn’t need his stuff wherever he was, or he would’ve come back to get it. I shoved it all in bags.” The scene played out in his head as though he were right back there. “My mom is begging me not to destroy all his clothes and papers, telling me he’s coming back. She’s pulling on my arm as I take it all to the backyard to burn in the fire pit, but I’m too strong for her.” Payton pinched his fingers together. “I’m this close to lighting the match when a piece of paper escapes one of the bags, and we both stopped cold. Just stared at it there on the ground.”
“What was it?” Mallory’s voice barely registered over the fast-paced beat of his heart.
“A life insurance policy. With both of us listed as beneficiaries.” He shook his head just as he did then—in disbelief. “Turned out the bastard had been paying the premium right up until he walked out the door. The next day, I called the company. Was told since my father hadn’t made an attempt to contact us in seven years and the police’s investigation had stalled, we were entitled to a full payout.”