Lone Wolfe (26 page)

 
          
‘That
hardly shocks me, Jacob.’

 
          
‘That’s
nothing,’ he dismissed. ‘It’s what happened when I came home.’

 
          
‘I
know William was whipping Annabelle with a riding crop,’ Mollie told him. ‘She
spoke of it once to me. And Nathaniel and Sebastian were trying to stop him.’

 
          
‘They
couldn’t,’ Jacob confirmed. ‘They were too young. They were crying, although
Annabelle was silent. She was curled up on the floor, covered in blood. I
thought she was dead.’

 
          
Mollie
closed her eyes. She could hardly bear to imagine the scene, and yet Jacob had
lived it … and still lived with it, nearly twenty years later.

 
          
‘In
that moment,’ Jacob told her in a cold, detached voice, ‘I felt anger like I’d
never known before. It was a red mist before my eyes, in my heart. It covered
me. It
controlled
me, and I raised my
hand to my father.’

 
          
‘To
save your sister,’ Mollie finished swiftly.
‘To save her.
It was the right thing to do, Jacob. It was self-defence.’

 
          
‘Was
it?’ he asked quietly. ‘Don’t you think there could have been another way? I
could have grabbed the riding crop, or wrestled him to the ground, or taken
Annabelle away from him.’

 
          
‘Perhaps,
but you could hardly consider all your choices right then,’ Mollie argued. ‘It
was the heat of the moment.’

 
          
‘Exactly.
The heat of the moment.
And in that heat, I wanted to hit him. So that’s what I did.’ He spoke with
such self-loathing that Mollie felt helpless in the face of it. ‘I was so
angry, as angry as he’d ever been with me.’

 
          
‘It’s
different, Jacob,’ Mollie insisted. Tears crowded in her eyes and thickened her
throat.

 
          
‘How
is it different?’ His gaze suddenly swung back to her, pinning her mercilessly
with its bleak truth. ‘How, Mollie? I saw myself just as I really am in that
moment. Someone controlled by anger, who acted on the
most
base
instinct—’

 
          
‘The instinct to protect your sister?’

 
          
‘I
hit him as hard as I could, Mollie.
As hard as
I could
.
I punched him with all the anger I’d ever felt, all the abuse I’d ever taken,
and—’ he drew in a shuddering breath ‘—in that moment, before he fell, it felt
good.’

 
          
‘Of
course it did,’ Mollie returned. ‘He’d been abusing you and your brothers and
sister for years, and you never fought back.’ Her voice rose in an anger of her
own. ‘Why are you defining yourself by that one moment, instead of all the
other moments when you protected your family, when you did what was right and
good?’

 
          
‘I
have a dream,’ Jacob said in a low voice. ‘I dream of the moment when I hit my
father—over and over again. I can’t escape it. And in the dream—you heard me,
didn’t you? The night we were together. I laugh.’ His voice shook. ‘I
laugh.’

 
          
‘It’s
a dream, Jacob,’ Mollie said steadily. ‘Not the truth. Dreams distort reality,
they make it worse.’

 
          
‘I
scared you, didn’t I?’ Jacob said, gazing at her bleakly.
‘That
night.
I scare myself. I can’t let go of the anger—I feel it every
night, when I have that dream. And that’s the truth of who I am.’

 
          
Mollie
stared at him. He might laugh in a distorted dream, but now tears were running
down his face, unchecked. Mollie didn’t think Jacob even realised he was
weeping. And without considering what she was doing, simply
needing
to, she closed the space between
them and reached up to put her hands on Jacob’s face, forcing him to look at
her, her thumbs wiping away his tears. ‘Do you know what I see when I look at
you, Jacob? I see a man who sacrificed everything—even his own happiness—to
protect his sister. I see a man who, time and time again, showed how much he
loved his family. I see a man who has so much compassion and concern inside of
him that he would do anything
—anything
—to
keep from hurting the people he loves.’ Jacob stared at her, unresisting,
taking in every word. Mollie leaned forward, on her tiptoes, so her lips were a
breath away from his. ‘I see the man I love.’ And then she kissed him; she
could feel his shoulders shaking as she drew him towards her.

 
          
The
kiss, which had started as a healing balm, turned into something hungry and
urgent. Jacob’s hands cupped her face and desire leapt low in Mollie’s belly,
scattering all the sorrow and regret.

 
          
Jacob
softened his kiss, deepening it as his hands stripped away her clothes, buttons
popping and scattering. Mollie fumbled with his tie, his blazer, his belt,
kicking off shoes and socks and underwear until they were both naked, both
breathless and desperate with longing.

 
          
Jacob
drove into her in one deep stroke, filling her to completion as she pulled him
even closer to her, wanting their bodies to be joined, fused from shoulder to
ankle, the final healing.

 
          
‘I
love you,’ she whispered, and he let out a choked sob. Mollie placed her hands
on either side of his face, forcing him to look at her. His eyes were still
full of torment, an agony she longed to wipe clean away. ‘I
love
you,’ she said again, forcefully,
and then there were no more words as the desire became too great, spiralling
dizzily inside her, higher and higher, until with a cry she found her release,
and Jacob collapsed against her, his face buried in her shoulder.

 
          
He
rolled away from her almost instantly, his arm thrown over his face. Mollie’s
heart hammered and her breath tore. She was naked and sweaty and sticky. She
reached for him.

 
          
‘Jacob—’

 
          
He
shook his head. ‘No. Don’t.’ He took a few ragged breaths, his chest heaving.
‘You should leave me,’ he said at last.

 
          
‘No.’
She
pulled at his arm. ‘I’m not leaving you, Jacob.
Not now, not ever. I love you, and you love me. We’re working through this.’
Her voice shook and tears started in her eyes. ‘We are.’ He shook his head, a
tiny movement, but Mollie felt it all the way through her. She pulled at his
arm again. ‘Look at me, Jacob.
Look at
me.’
Finally he lowered his arm and gazed at her. In the darkness Mollie
couldn’t see his expression. ‘I love you,’ she said, her voice choked. ‘I love
you and I need you. Don’t walk away from me. Don’t think you’re doing me a
favour, or the right or noble thing, by leaving, because you aren’t.
Stay with me.
Show me you love me by staying.’

 
          
Ever
so gently Jacob brushed a tendril of damp hair away from her cheek. ‘I’m so
afraid of hurting you,’ he whispered.
‘More afraid of that
than of anything in my life.’

 
          
A
tear slipped down Mollie’s cheek. ‘You’re a better man than you think you are,
Jacob,’ she whispered.
‘So much better.
You’re a
good
man.’

 
          
Jacob
gave her the faintest of smiles, yet the sight of it made Mollie want to sing
or perhaps weep with relief.
‘As long as you think so.’

 
          
‘I
do,’ Mollie whispered. ‘I do. You’re worth saving, Jacob.
Worth
loving.
And I love you.’

 
          
‘I
love you,’ Jacob told her, his voice hoarse as he pulled her to him. They lay
together for a long moment, neither speaking, a new peace settling over them.
Yet even so, despite the relief flooding her heart that they had got this far,
Mollie knew they hadn’t yet made it to the other side.

 
          
The
memories were still there.
The sorrow and heartache and
bone-deep guilt.

 
          
As long as you think so
.

 
          
Yet
Jacob needed to think so too. He needed to believe—in himself.

 
          
As
the darkness deepened around them, Jacob stirred and finally rose from the
study floor. He scooped Mollie up in his arms, smiling as she curled into him,
as contented as a cat.

 
          
‘I
think we need a bed,’ he said, and she nodded against his shoulder.

 
          
The
house was swathed in darkness as he strode down the hallways to the foyer,
paused at the foot of the great staircase. He’d always hated this place, hated
the mental image the stairs alone conjured.
Annabelle bloody.
His brothers weeping.
His father
dead.
Yet now, as he stood there for a moment, the images didn’t rise up
the way they usually did, and their absence gave Jacob a little flicker of
hope. Perhaps the past could be forgiven. Perhaps Mollie was right.

 
          
Mollie
looked up at him, her face open and so very trusting. ‘Jacob?’

 
          
He
smiled down at her before mounting the stairs, and she curled into him once
again.

 
          
Up
in his bedroom he peeled back the duvet and laid her on the bed gently, as if
she might break, though he already knew how strong she was. She looked up at
him, still and waiting. Jacob slid in next to her and pulled her close.

 
          
The
only time he’d spent the night with a woman in the past twenty years had been
the night with Mollie in the London hotel. He didn’t let women close enough to
see him vulnerable, to witness his sleep—or his dreams.

 
          
That
night he’d been so buoyed with hope he’d risked it, with disastrous
consequences. Yet now he knew there was no risk. Mollie had already seen him at
his worst, at his most appalling and abject, and she loved him anyway.

 
          
She
loved
him. It felt like a miracle.

 
          
He
rested his head on the softness of her hair and closed his eyes. He slept.

 
          
The
dream came. Even as it attacked the fringes of his mind, Jacob felt resignation
settle in his soul. He’d known this would happen. He was so agonisingly
familiar with this dream; it had played in a relentless loop in his mind for
too long.

 
          
Yet
this time it was different. This time he wasn’t in the dream; he wasn’t even
himself. He was a silent, invisible spectator, watching that terrible moment
unfold like a scene in a play. He saw Annabelle huddled on the floor, his
brothers begging their father to stop, tears in their eyes. He saw William, the
riding crop raised over his head, and he saw himself.

 
          
It
was strange, to look upon himself like another person, yet it also felt right.
This was the truth, untainted by fear or uncertainty. He watched as his hands
curled into fists; he waited, his own heart pounding, as he raised those fists.
He saw his father raise the riding crop again. And then he watched himself hit
his father. He heard that awful laughter.

 
          
Except
it wasn’t a laugh, not the laugh of his dreams, that shout of manic glee that
had tormented him for so long. This was halfway to a sob, a groan of despair
and anguish over what he’d just done … what he’d had to do.

 
          
And
in that moment he understood himself in a way he had never had before. He
understood the anger and sorrow and even that brief second of satisfaction he’d
felt when he’d hit his father, and he accepted it.

 
          
He
let it go.

 
          
Jacob
opened his eyes, coming awake with ease and peace. Mollie was still curled
close to him, asleep. His own heart rate had slowed, and he wasn’t drenched in
sweat as he usually was after the dream. He hadn’t laughed aloud. He hadn’t
laughed at all.