Page 121 of A Dark Fall
He gives me a long look before his mouth curls up into a smile that makes my legs feel weak. “Yeah, you are. It’s one of the things about you that drives me fucking insane.”
“I drive you insane?”
“Fucking mental.” He smiles wide before scrunching his nose up adorably. “Come on. Think it’s high time we had that bath we always talk about, because you, baby, need to be cleaned. You’re fucking filthy.” He glances back over his shoulder and winks, and I let him lead me up the stairs.
“I remember a day when you wouldn’t even entertain the idea of having a shower while I watched. Now, look at us.” He pulls me closer, my back resting against his chest, and places a kiss to the back of my head. I feel him brush away a few loose strands of hair that have escaped before he peppers the back of my neck with warm, wet kisses, sucking at the perspiration that’s begun to settle there.
“Can I ask you something?” My voice is quiet and small. Maybe because I don’t want to scare him with the question.
There’s a pause before he answers. “Okay.”
“What happened the night we met? Why did someone try to kill you?” I ask in an even tone.
He has one arm stretched along the bath, and he lowers it into the water to find mine, linking our fingers together. He lets out a deep sigh.
“I don’t think they wanted to kill me.”
I frown. “Why else would someone stick a kitchen knife into your neck?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and though I can’t see his face, I can imagine his jaw is tense as he chews on the inside of his lip. When he speaks again, his voice is even and businesslike.
“I went to collect some money for someone. For a friend. Someone I used to work for. Money he was owed that had been stolen from him. When I got there, the guy decided that instead of returning it, he’d threaten me instead. Or, rather, someone close to me,” he says.
Close to him? Who’s close to him?
Oh my god.
I sit up and turn to face him. “Caleb? He didn’t threaten Caleb.”
He doesn’t have to answer me because the confirmation is clear on his face. His eyes are hard and dark, nostrils slightly flared.
“So, he stole from your friend, threatened Caleb, and then pulled a knife on you?” I feel my fingers curling into fists at the thought of this man. As I picture him threatening a child and then plunging a knife into Jake’s neck. My mind goes back to the night downstairs when I asked why he never went to the police. Why he let them get away with it.
What makes you think I let them get away with it?
I’m glad he didn’t let them get away with it. I’m glad the man who threatened his son never got away with it. So, I condone violence in certain circumstances then? Where Jake and his son are concerned?
“No, not him,” Jake says with a small shake of his head. “He wasn’t the one who stabbed me.”
I frown.
He drops his eyes for an instant. “His wife. She panicked, I guess. Thought I was going to kill her husband. Did what she had to do.”
What shehadto do? In what kind of world is that something someone has to do? Would I do it if I thought someone was going to kill Jake? A horrible chill sweeps down my spine. I push the thought out of my mind and shake my head.
“You wouldn’t have killed hi—” I start, but he cuts me off.
“Alex, he’s a piece of shit who threatened my son. He crossed the fucking line. If she hadn’t stopped me, he’d be dead.” He doesn’t sound in the slightest bit sorry about it, I don’t think, just uncomfortable with telling me.
“But he’s not. And you didn’t, so ...”
He shakes his head, but when he speaks again, there’s still more than a tremor of anger in his voice. He fixes me with a look, intensely direct.
“But I could have, easily. And I’d have felt justified. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I understand the words—it’s the implication that feels lodged in my throat. Thick and suffocating.
“There isn’t a lot that I care about, Alex. But what I do care about, the things that are important to me, I protect. No one gets to threaten or hurt them and walk away from that. I need you to understand that.”