Redemption and Regrets (Chastity Falls, #4) (14 page)

“Do you know how cold the ocean is? They don’t call it Dead Man’s Cove for nothing,” I joked as Cara slid her arm into mine and clung to me.

It felt good to be close to her like this, even if it was just a short-lived fantasy.

“So where to next? You could wine and dine me somewhere a little more upmarket than Denny’s or we could get takeout and go back to the motel?”

“Or we could stay out here a little longer?” The truth was I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to sit right here and pretend that everything was fine. That I was just a guy out on a date with his girl.

Cara didn’t reply, but the soft sigh that fell from her lips told me all I needed to know. We both wanted this to be real.

Even if it was just a lie.

~

I
t was dark out by the time we returned to the motel. I felt invincible with Cara tucked into my side, holding onto to me like she needed me. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t want it to end. Tomorrow, we had decisions to make. Hard truths to face. But for today, we’d been just two people getting to know each other, letting ourselves fall foolishly deeper into the other.

We entered the room, and the door clicked shut behind us. Cara looped her arms around my waist and pressed her head against my chest. “I don’t want this to end.” She sighed and tension filled the room. The seriousness of what lay ahead weighed us down.

I pressed a kiss to her head feeling a lump form in my throat and choked out, “We knew it couldn’t last.”

She was silent as she pulled back and stood on tiptoes, catching my mouth with hers. This kiss was different to the ones we’d shared all day. I let Cara set the pace, taking from me what she needed. I owed her that much for pulling her into my world when I should have made her walk away. Now, we were bound together even if we had to go our separate ways tomorrow. Because, for as much as I’d considered an alternative, right now, I couldn’t see one. Her father wanted me dead, and I was supposed to be part of the uprising that would end with him in a body bag.

We were doomed.

It was tragic, really, that the one girl I would give it all up for was the one girl I couldn’t have—shouldn’t even want.

Our kisses grew frantic ... desperate, but it wasn’t enough. I lifted her up forcing her legs around my waist and carried Cara to the bed. She shrieked as I threw her down. I tracked Cara as she rose to her knees and slowly pulled her t-shirt off her body. When the material drifted down onto the bed, her hand moved to the button of her jeans. I mirrored her movements, slowly inching down my zipper. She smiled suggestively, and I inched my jeans down my thighs, letting them slip down the rest of the way until they gathered at my ankles. Kicking out of them, I stalked over to the bed and hooked an arm around her delicate waist, memorizing the emotion in her eyes.

Her hands slid down my chest and grabbed the hem of my t-shirt. She inched it up slowly, the feel of her fingers grazing my abs causing me to suck in a sharp breath. This girl would be my demise. Burying my head in her neck, I licked her salty sweet skin, nibbling along her collarbone and eliciting soft moans from her lips.

“I’ll never forget this,” she whispered as I cradled her to me. Never wanting to let go.

The door crashed open, and Jason stormed in. I pulled Cara to me trying to shield her half-naked body from his eyes, but a group of men flooded into the room after him.

“Well, well. What do we have here?”

“Jason ...” Cara started, but I pressed a finger to her lips.

“You led us right to him. What a good little girl.” His eyes narrowed at her, and my blood ignited. I wanted to rain some serious hurt on him. And then his words sunk in, hitting me like a bullet.
You led us right to him.

I gripped Cara’s chin and forced her to look at me. Her eyes widened, panic dancing there. “Braiden, it’s not what you think. I didn’t know, I didn’t-”

No. She wouldn’t.
But, true or not, the seed of doubt was planted, and I didn’t have time to search her eyes for the truth. Two men grabbed me from behind and yanked me away from her. Cara’s screams pierced the air, and I fought against the men’s grip trying to go to her. Anything to stop him from touching her again. Jason scooped up her t-shirt and threw it at her. “Put it on.”

She clutched the material in her hands, not taking her eyes off me. Thoughts of betrayal swirled in my mind. Had she led him here? Had it all been one big setup? I didn’t want to believe it, but the fucker looked so smug, glancing back and forth between the two of us as if things had gone exactly to plan.

“Cara, let’s go.” He held out his hand for her, and I lunged forward, but a solid fist connected with my kidneys. Pain exploded up my side, and I had to bite my tongue to contain the grunt.

My eyes locked onto Cara’s willing her to give me a sign ... anything to let me know this wasn’t what it looked like, but she climbed off the bed and went to him.

“No.” It came out pained, and the guy to my left laughed clearly enjoying the show.

Cara watched me as I struggled between the two guys. Jason stalked forward until he was almost nose-to-nose with me, forcing me to look at him and not Cara, who was now shielded behind his figure.

“I’m going to enjoy every second of this.”

I stood tall, daring him to make a move. Even with the odds stacked against me, I wouldn’t go down without a fight. Surely, he knew that. If he knew anything about me, he was probably banking on it.

His fist flew forward connecting with my stomach, and I lurched forward, fighting the urge to puke. Laughter filled the room, drowning out Cara’s screams. Rage gave me the upper hand, and I managed to break free from one of the guys’ hold and land a left hook to Jason’s face. He stumbled backward and rubbed his jaw, glancing at the guy to my right. The goon released my arm, and I creaked my neck from side to side. We were doing this.

I avoided looking at Cara as we danced around each other, daring the other to make the first move. But I was done waiting. I rolled forward onto my left foot throwing my fist at Jason. He ducked and avoided the full impact of my knuckles.

“You’re heavily outnumbered, Donohue. You might want to rethink this. The boss wants you back alive, but he didn’t say in how many pieces.”

A soft gasp sounded from the corner of the room, but I forced myself to stay focused on Jason and not to search her out. Cara was my weak spot, and he knew that.

I didn’t rise to his bait as we danced some more, circling each other. This time, Jason came at me, forcing me back into the wall, and his fist caught my eye snapping my head back. Pain shot through me, and I lashed out, unwilling to let him get the upper hand. He’d caught me good as stars filled my vision. But he underestimated me, and when he came at me again, I blocked his fist with my arm and sent my forehead into his face. Bone crunched and blood splattered into the air as he cursed. “Sonofabitch.”

A smug grin cracked over my face, but it was soon wiped away when he whipped his arm up, and I was staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Not so funny now, is it.” Jason’s eyes flickered to the other corner of the room where Cara stood pale faced, arms wrapped around her waist.

My eyes connected with hers for just a second, and then everything went black.

~ Cara ~

“S
top with the puppy dog act, it's fucking embarrassing,” Jason growled at me causing my eyes to snap to his as he watched me through the rearview mirror.

“Fuck you, Jason,” I hissed imagining all the ways I could hurt him the way he’d hurt me.

“Oh baby, just say the word and I’m yours.”

Disgust washed over me like tiny spiders crawling underneath my skin. I’d always considered Jason a friend. He was like the annoying big brother I’d never had. We’d grown up together and he’d been around for all the milestones of my life, but I never saw him as anything more. And since the other night, when he’d tried to force himself on me, I was seeing him in a whole new light. But his presence in my life wasn’t
my
decision.

Daddy favored him. The overachieving, all-star sportsman and one of the most popular kids from our high school, Jason was everything he wanted me—his only daughter, once the apple of his eye—to settle down with. Which was exactly why I hadn’t bothered to report Jason’s change in behavior lately. The late-night visits, the following me around like a lost puppy—he was taking his duties far too seriously and overstepping the boundaries, but all Daddy cared about was that no other guy could get to me. In his eyes, Jason was the guy for me.

“You know he almost killed a guy, right?” Jason’s voice pulled me from my thoughts and I turned my head away from the mirror to look out of the window.

I knew the second I’d laid eyes on Braiden at the stadium that he had secrets. He carried them around with him. The dark hoodies, defensive attitude, and his reluctance to open up all screamed baggage, but that was one of the reasons we connected. I felt drawn to him. One look into his electric blue eyes and I wanted to know more about him.

“Sliced some young guy up really good. Almost killed the kid, but he lived. If you can call being paralyzed from the waist down living.”

An involuntary shudder worked its way up my spine. Despite knowing Braiden had secrets, I wasn’t prepared for this—the severity of who he was and what he’d done. Daddy always made sure I stayed far away from anything ‘business’ related, but that didn’t mean I was completely in the dark. I’d heard things, occasionally saw things, and Donohue was a name I’d heard more than once in the past.

But I didn’t care.

When I was a young girl, Mom was forever telling me stories of how she and Daddy met.
‘You can’t help who you fall in love with
’ she would say, and back then, I thought she meant because Daddy was too old for her or because he was a devout Seahawks fan and she preferred the 49ers, thanks to her schoolgirl crush on Joe Montana.

But now, I understood.

Because I was pretty sure I had fallen for Braiden Donohue. And although hearing Jason’s words scared the shit out of me, deep down, I knew it didn’t change the way I felt about him. The lines were blurred, and right and wrong were no longer cut and dry. But, in the end, it didn’t matter because Braiden had been right all along.

We could
never
be together.

~

I
t was the middle of the night when Jason stopped his car outside Pacific. He cut the engine and fumbled around with his cell phone. Texting Daddy, I assumed. We hadn’t spoken for most of the journey. What was there to say? For him, this was more than just following orders—it was personal. He wanted me for himself, something I wasn’t prepared to give him. Seeing me with a regular guy would have fueled the green-eyed monster in him, but seeing me with the enemy? Well, that must have killed him. And part of me hoped it hurt as much as it hurt me watching Braiden at the end of Jason’s gun.

Growing up the daughter of Frankie O’Connor, I wasn’t raised to be afraid of guns; they were to be embraced. I was eleven the first time Daddy let me hold the handgun he kept in his office. Mom almost shit a brick when she found out. I knew his men carried guns, just as I knew Jason kept a pistol in his underwear drawer in his dorm room. It was just part of being an O’Connor—one of the most revered families in Seattle. But I came to Pacific to escape that. To live a life I chose for myself, not one dictated by my father.

“Let’s go.” Jason’s voice cut through my thoughts, and I sighed heavily, forcing myself to climb out of the car. “You’re on lockdown. Daddy’s orders.”

I didn’t reply. This was how it worked since I had moved to Forest Grove, but it hadn’t always been this way. At one time, I was the apple of his eye. The princess to his kingdom. But the older I got, the more jaded I became with my family’s lifestyle. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to go to college and make new friends and study art and fall in love. In Seattle, living with Mom and Dad was rules and boundaries and secrets and lies. It was suffocating.

And now, Pacific—my one escape—was ruined for me.

I didn’t wait for Jason as I headed to my room. No doubt, tomorrow I would get the third degree from my father. But for now, I wanted to curl up on my bed and try and rid my mind of the look of betrayal on Braiden’s face when Jason stormed into the room. The best day of my entire life ripped out from under me in an instant. The hurt in those electric blue eyes was imprinted on me. He thought I was responsible for leading Jason to him—and I suppose, on the face of it, I was. Of course, when I’d left for Chastity Falls, I covered my tracks. Or, at least, I thought I had. It never occurred to me that Jason would do something as crazy as follow me out there. Probably because finding Braiden consumed me. It was all I had thought about since watching him walk out of my dorm room. And I’d known then that I would find a way to reach him. That it couldn’t be the end of something so real between us.

I was a fool.

Because now my father had Braiden, and Jason had leverage over me.

And what did I have?