Jace (13 page)

“No, I do, because I want you
to know what I saw growing up. I want you to understand why I could
never
touch
you that way.”

She trembled and he wanted to
pull her into his arms and make everything better. But he couldn’t do that now.
He had to explain it all to her. So he told her everything.

He told her about the little
beatings. He told her about the big ones, the ones mom had to wear makeup to
cover up and couldn’t walk straight for a week afterward. He told her about the
police coming and then the days when mom stopped calling them. There was no
escape. It was hell on Earth. He would have killed them if they left. Plus, he
made sure she had no means to escape on her own easily. No money, no job, no
friends, and no more family. They were completely isolated in hell with Ray,
his father. Things got better though when Ray was arrested for a series of
break-ins and drug possession. Last Jace had heard, he’d landed his ass back in
jail after violating his parole and trying to skip the state.

His story finished and the room
grew quiet as a crypt. Mara looked away as if lost in his past memories. She
looked sad and it made him want to jump and fix it.

“Do you see why I could never
do that?”

Mara blinked as if coming out
of a daze. She started nodding. Then she pulled away from him and stood up. She
looked down at him with tears flowing freely down her face. Her voice cracked
as she spoke. “I care about you. I care so much, but if I take that chance
again and end up…” she paused to catch her breath, “getting hurt again, then
I’ll never forgive myself for being in that situation.”

“You have to trust me, Mara.”
He grasped for straws, feeling like he was losing her.

She pressed her hand over her
mouth to stifle a cry. “I can’t. I just can’t.”

With that, she left him. He
heard her bedroom door close a moment later. It was the sound of his whole
world coming to a stop.

Chapter
13

The following morning the
temperature seemed to have dropped twenty degrees. Or at least that’s how Mara
felt because she couldn’t get warm. She never would have thought to pack a
sweater. After all it was the middle of July where the average day was eighty-two
degrees.

All that heat had vanished in
an overnight storm. The day was wet and gray. Wind blew at the house like it
was trying to rip the roof off by the seams.

Today was going to be a bad
day. Yep, it was one of those days that you knew were going to be trouble. But
there was nothing Mara could to do escape the inevitable. She had to face Jace
again after last night. She had to explain herself and make him understand why.
If only she were more poetic, smart, or
something,
then maybe she’d know
what to do. Instead, she didn’t have a clue how to go about this. She just had
sex with Jace again last night. She’d wanted to be with him one last time and
so she’d gone to sleep in his bed knowing full well he’d come home and find her
that way.

It’d been beautiful, intense,
and simply wonderful to be with him again. Her body felt worshipped under his
touch.

How did she explain to him that
her trust issues were huge regarding men, because she’d once put all her trust
in the wrong man. He’d broken her trust and then he’d broken her. It took her
so long to put all the pieces together and still there were so many days where
she felt like a Picasso—like she’d put the pieces together incorrectly and
didn’t fit right.

That’s how she felt right now.

Mara wiped the stray tears away
then made herself shower and put clothes on. But she still cried in the shower.
Her hormones were all out of whack because of everything going on.

It was early. Rain pattered at
the house. Otherwise all was quiet. She hadn’t heard him stir from his bedroom.
If he stayed in there all day she wouldn’t be surprised with how she treated
him.

He said he loved her. It was
like a hand squeezing around her heart when he said those words. It wasn’t just
the words either but how he said them so genuinely, with that smile on his face
and his eyes honest.

He loves me.

She shook her head. A part of
her struggled to comprehend that. Yet, at the same time, she knew she felt the
exact same way. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t known each other long,
because she knew. She just knew that they connected; they fit.

What happened to all that talk
about not letting Corey manipulate your life?

That’s something else that’d
been bothering her since she left Jace last night to sleep in her cold, lonely
bed. She was just looking after herself, though. Staying away from Jace when he
might be capable of violence didn’t mean she was letting Corey win. That’s what
she’d been telling herself all night.

Yet the more she thought about
it, the less it seemed true.

Mara forced herself to leave
her bedroom. The house was too quiet. Thunder rumbled and growled outside. It
was going to be a long, rainy day.

Mara started coffee and
breakfast. She’d been around Jace enough to know he was also an early riser. If
he was getting out of bed then it’d probably be soon.

An hour later, Mara had eggs,
bacon, and pancakes made. That’s when she heard Jace moving about. Her stomach
was all twisted up in knots. But they had to face each other at some point.
They couldn’t hide forever. Not while Corey was still running free.

When he came out, she didn’t
know what to do. Her tongue tasted bitter, her stomach queasy, and a headache
pounded around her eyes and temples. At the last second, she spun around and
started plating food. She grabbed the completed plates and set them on the
kitchen table.

Only, when she turned around he
wasn’t there. She heard his bedroom door close a minute later.

Tears welled immediately. She
swiped them away furiously and sat down to eat her breakfast alone. Of course
he didn’t want to eat with her. She broke his heart last night. He said he
loved her and she’d walked away.

Feeling numb, the food
tasteless, she ate like a robot. When she was done she tossed his uneaten food
into the trash bin and did the dishes.

Later she found herself
standing at the sliding glass doors that lead to his deck. The trees were so
pretty with the rain pelting the leaves. The trees loved it; they looked
vibrant and greener than usual.

Mara opened the door and
stepped outside into the rain.

Her breath caught as the first
droplets splattered against her. She thought it’d feel cold but it wasn’t. The
water was warm and drenched her clothes in a matter of seconds.

She stepped out deeper onto the
deck, walking barefoot on wet planks of cedar. The rain soaked through her
shirt and flattened her hair to her shoulders.

Strays tears were swept away by
the rain. Mara didn’t know how long she stood outside, but she didn’t hear the
door open. But she did feel his presence.

Slowly she turned around. A
hard lump was caught in her throat making it hard to breathe or to talk. Jace
looked like hell. Sleepless circles darkened under his eyes. He wore a black
T-shirt that quickly became drenched with rain and a pair of gray sweats. But
his eyes said it all—despair.

“What are you doing out here?”
he asked.

She didn’t know what she opened
her mouth to say, but she just started talking. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry
about everything, Jace. I love you. I do. So much it hurts, but I can’t—I can’t—”
she couldn’t continue on. Anxiety locked her lungs up making it hard to
breathe.

Jace looked away and the pain
she’d put there only twisted the knife deeper. “Don’t,” he said.

Immediately she snapped her
mouth shut.

He took a step forward, rain
covering him from head to foot. They were both soaking wet. Thunder rumbled
through the sky and lightning flashed in the distance with crack of sound.

He cupped her face, sought her
gaze until he found it. “I love you, Mara. Whether or not you love me back or
even can love me back after what that man did to you I understand. I want you
here with me. I want my mom to meet you because I know she’s going to love you
like I do, but I can wait.”

Tears flowed quickly down her
face.

“I’ll wait as long as I have to
for you to trust me.”

“Why?” she asked, her voice a
croak. “I don’t deserve you.”

His eyes widened and a ghost of
a smile crossed his lips. “No, that’s where you got it all wrong, sweetheart. I
don’t deserve you.”

She shook her head in denial
but he only wrapped his arms around her and hugged her. It felt so good to cry
in his arms, to hear he understood, that he didn’t hate her. She held onto him
tight and apologized too many times to count. She apologized for being stupid,
for being messed up, for not being able to trust, for Corey.

“If you apologize for one more
thing, I swear to God, I’m going to strip you naked and lock you out here
alone,” Jace warned.

Mara sputtered, too shocked to
come up with a retort. Jace shook his head at her, laughing softly and then he
pulled her back inside the house.

He’d closed the sliding glass
door and reset the alarm only moments before something slammed against the
house.

Mara screamed, startled. What
looked like a white pipe rolled across the deck. “That looks like PVC pipe,”
she said, distractedly. Her mind was trying to comprehend why there was a PVC
tube rolling toward the sliding glass doors and figure out how it got there.
Then she noticed something else equally odd—the fuse sparkling off one end.

“Fuck. Move!” Jace yelled.

He grabbed her around the waist
and ran away from the door dragging her with him. They made it only a few feet
before an explosion rent through the air. Mara and Jace were thrown through the
air by the force of the blast. Glass shattered at the door with an ear-piercing
explosion. A horrible wooden, cracking sounded, as if the deck was collapsing.
A bunch of dust filled the air.

Jace ushered her deeper into
the house. Her heart raced a mile a minute. She didn’t even have a moment to
ask what was going on. Jace and she ran to his room. He grabbed a shotgun from
beneath his bed and pistol from his nightstand. He put the pistol in the back
front of his pants and tightened the drawstrings of his sweats to cinch it in
place.

Shotgun in hand, Jace grabbed her
hand and took her down a door she’d never been in—his basement. He closed the
door behind them but didn’t turn on a light. It was dark and eerily quiet down
here. Jace moved quickly while she struggled to keep up.

“What’s going on?” she
whispered.

“It looks like he found us.”

He.
Mara
knew exactly who he was talking about. Still, she had to be sure. “Corey?”

Jace nodded then led them deep
into the dark basement. There were two small basement windows but Jace could
never fit through one. He went to one and started unlocking it.

“Wh-what are we going to do?”

Jace didn’t answer. He
struggled with a lock that refused to budge no matter how hard he pushed at it.
“You need to get out of here. It’s no longer safe.”

“Shouldn’t we call the police
and hide somewhere?” She shook down to her toes, kept looking behind them
expecting to see Corey at any moment. Even as she strained to hear anything,
all she could hear was the rain pouring above them.

“No, you need to get out of
here. This place is compromised. Fuck!” He went to the other window and with a
bit more elbow grease, opened it. It made a hideous, metal screech but the rain
was pouring so hard she barely heard it.

He grabbed her waist. “Come
on,” he said. “I’m going to hoist you out of here.”

“You’re coming too, right?” She
didn’t grab the ledge but turned around to look at him.

He looked at her but didn’t
answer. The silence grew and her skin began to crawl. She just knew, without
him having to say a word. He was staying behind to make sure she could run away.

“Jace,” she managed, voice
choking.

From somewhere up above another
explosion shook the house. Jace cupped her face to keep their gazes locked
together. Without any words she knew what he was telling her.

I love you.

“Go now, Mara. When you get to
the security fence go to the front gate that we drive through and type in
eight,
eight, nine
. The gate is set to open no matter what if that code is
entered.”

“I won’t leave without you.
Let’s both go.”

He didn’t bat a lash. “Mara,
it’s my job to guard you. Now you’re going to listen to me and do exactly as I
say. You’re crawling through this window and running for the fence. Be careful
and take this.” He placed the pistol in her palm, showed her the safety and
turned it off. “Aim and shoot.”

There was a sound upstairs.
Both of them froze. It sounded like someone walking over the shattered glass.
Her breaths turned panicky.

“Please don’t leave me.”

Jace cupped her cheeks, his
deep gaze boring into hers and holding her hostage. Her heart leapt for this
man, grew so big it wanted to burst.

“I love you, Mara.”

Then he kissed her with full
tongue and lips. It was a goodbye. He pulled away and started pushing her out
the window. Tears slipping down her cheeks, she went, gun in hand. Grabbing
fistfuls of muddy grass she pulled herself and wiggled out of the window. Rain
pelted her. She turned around the moment she was out but Jace was already
closing the window.

She flattened her hand to the
window, her heart breaking into so many pieces. “Jace.” She didn’t say the words,
only mouthed them. For a moment his hand reflected hers through the window and
then he was gone.

Mara stood, gun in hand, with a
whole new purpose. She ran hard for the front gate. Her bare feet sunk into
warm mud making her slow. The rain soaked her to the bone and the sky looked
like it only grew blacker by the moment. She ran to the forest first to get out
of sight. If only Jace didn’t live so far away from civilization then maybe
someone would have heard the two explosions over the storm.

She made it to the gate. She’d
expected to find it damaged but it stood tall and imposing.

Two huge plumes of black smoke
billowed around his house. Corey was here. He’d found her.

* * * *
*

Mara stared at the house
feeling like she was in a whole other world. Things like this just didn’t
happen, but it was happening. This was real. The man she loved was in danger.
And she couldn’t leave him here alone with that psycho.

Calling on all her bravery,
Mara slowly made her way to the front of the house. She sprinted across the
open area to the front of the house and plastered her back against it. She ran
up the stairs to his front door next with light footsteps. If she did make any
sound then it couldn’t be heard over the storm.