Out Of Her League (36 page)

Later Rayne and Luke went onto the screen porch and stretched out in the Adirondack chairs, crickets chirruping as the stars punctured the evening sky.

His dad handed him a beer. “So, how are things with Christa? Your mother said she's had a rough go of it lately. Called me again probably the second you pulled out of her driveway to tell me you're planning to shack up together, and mentioned Christa had been through a lot of trouble.”

Rayne huffed out a breath and settled back. “Yeah, it was bad. This guy had been following her around, leaving threatening notes, you know the drill. Nate and I were hoping he might go away, but she wasn't that lucky. He almost raped her, put her in the hospital.”

A spark ignited in the depths of his eyes. “The guy in jail?”

“That's the worst part. Nate's got a team on it, but he's still out there somewhere.”

“Nate's on the case now, then?” That seemed to satisfy him. “How's she handling it?”

“She's a trooper.” Rayne fidgeted with his beer bottle.

“And you? How are you handling it?”

His fist clenched. “Sometimes I think it would be worth the jail time just to get my hands on the son of a bitch.”

“I'd feel the same way.”

“Just so long as he's nowhere near Christa when it happens, they can blow him to kingdom come with an RPG for all I care.”

“Nah. Shotgun. Hurts more.”

“Even better, I could send my old man after him. You could make him shit his pants first.”

His mouth quirked. “You getting bloodthirsty in your old age?”

“Whatever works.” Rayne scratched his chin. “They'll get him eventually, I know that. But it won't be soon enough for either of us.”

“She's something else.”

“No kidding. Good thing I've brainwashed her into thinking I'm awesome.”

He cleared his throat. “I hear you asked for Grandma Boo's ring.”

Rayne whipped his head around. “Mom told you?”

Amusement twinkled in his dad's eyes.

Rayne sighed, smothered a chagrined laugh. “Yeah. I told Mom I figured I'd be needing it for Christa some day, asked her if it would be all right.”

“Actually, Christa kinda reminds me of your mother.”

“Yeah?” He was sure Freud would have something disgusting to say about that and he didn't want to go there.

“How is she, anyway?”

“Fine.”

“She still dating that Andy guy?”

Rayne shot him a glare. “It's Alex, Dad, and she's been dating him for almost eight years.”

“Yeah, right.”

Rayne barely refrained from rolling his eyes. As if the guy's name wasn't burned into his father's memory for all time. Wasn't it too late to be jealous?

“He still treating her right?”

Rayne set his beer on the arm of the chair, tamping down his irritation. The way he saw it, it was none of his dad's damn business. If he cared about her so much, he wouldn't have up and left her all those years ago, wouldn't have stayed away. “Yeah, she seems happy. From what I know of him, he's a good guy.”

His old man grunted. “She called me the day after you were shot, you know. She was really torn up about it.”

“It was a close call all right.”

“For what it's worth, son, from someone who's been there and done that, don't play the ‘what if’ game. I figure you're beating yourself up about it, but the bottom line is that little boy died because his old man was a messed-up piece of shit. Period. Not because you screwed up— ”

“But that's exactly it. I did screw up,” he insisted. “I fell through the goddamn floor. Bam, hit the ground and then the guy was holding my own weapon on me.” His palms dampened and he felt again the chill of his pistol pressed against his head. He didn't mention the guy sneering at the trident, didn't want his dear old dad to know he carried it around in his fatigues like some pathetic kid with a hero-worship complex. One of his teammates had given it back to him in the hospital.

“Accidents happen. You're better trained than anyone else on that squad, so if it happened to you it coulda happened to anyone. You did everything you could to save that little boy, and that's something you can be proud of. You can't always save the day. Believe me, I know.”

The guilt, the grief, seared him. “It's his eyes, dad,” he said finally. “I can still see his eyes staring up at me.” That was the image he had to banish, more than the bullets slamming into him. Those wide, scared eyes begging him for a miracle.

“The nightmares will fade. I'm more worried about what's going on in your head.”

“There's a lot going on, that's for sure.” He gathered his courage. “With me getting shot, everything became real clear all of a sudden.” Ah, the hell with it. Why not just say it? “I'm moving in with Christa,” he began, “and maybe someday we'll get married and have a family. Before all that happens, I need to know— ” he paused to meet the dark eyes, “— why did you ditch us like that?”

His father stiffened, eyes closing. Here was a man who'd known he would eventually have to answer for his sins, and now the day of reckoning was here. He let out a deep breath. “I had to, Rayne. It was the only thing I could do.”

Uh-uh. Not good enough
. Rayne leaned toward him. “Why, for God's sake? That's all I want to know. Why did you do it?”

“You know what happened that day— ”

“No, I
don't
know. That's the whole damn point. For twenty-three years I've wondered what happened, and nobody would tell me anything except that you two couldn't live together anymore.”

His father stared back at him. “Your mother didn't ever tell you about the day I left?”

“Not a thing. So did you screw around on her and she found out?”

His dad sat ramrod straight, eyes flashing. “I would never have done that to your mother.”

“Then what?” He rubbed his eyes. All this time his dad had assumed he had known, but his mother had kept the truth from him. Why? She must have had her reasons, but what could they be? His father's chiseled face, the sad and weary eyes, stirred dread in his gut.

“You've seen the scar on her neck, right?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

He swallowed. “How do you think it got there?”

Rayne couldn't believe it. Didn't want to believe it.
No
way. “You
cut
her?” He'd never even seen his parents fight, so for his dad to take a knife to her...

His dad's head dropped back, his fists clenched. “She came up behind me while I was sharpening my hunting knife to take on our fishing trip, and by sheer reflex I slammed her up against the fridge with the point of the blade against her jugular. I came this close to taking her head off.” He held his thumb and forefinger a hair's breadth apart.

Rayne's skin chilled as he imagined it. The shock and fear in his mom's green eyes staring up at the man she'd married, the man she loved. Like a rabbit caught in the jaws of a wolf. His father frozen there, then dropping his hand and stepping back from her, full of horror at his own deed.

“She started shaking, the aftereffect of adrenaline, and slid down the fridge to the floor. She never took her eyes off me. And the look on her face... something inside me crumpled and died. I'd almost slit her throat before I realized what I was doing.”

Anguish crashed over him.

“I threw the knife across the room, buried the blade into the wall. She'd pressed her hand to the wound, blood dripping through her fingers. I can still smell it.”

Rayne scrubbed his hands over his face.

“So I peeled off my shirt and pressed it against her throat, held her as if she might disappear on me. I'd told her to never, ever surprise me like that, and she said it was her fault, that she forgot. But the next time, she might be dead.”

All this time, he hadn't known, would never have guessed what had triggered the abandonment.

“I yanked the knife out of the wall and she went real still, as if I might march over and finish the job. I'd finally done it. Snapped, exactly like I'd always been afraid of, and your mother was huddled there on the floor, looking as if she'd run screaming into the street if I so much as flinched.”

“And then you just left?”

“Hell yes, I left. I had to. I went upstairs and packed my bags. It was too damn dangerous for me to stay. If there'd been something I coulda done about it I would have, but... ”

He didn't need to explain the terrible reality of a Special Forces soldier, fresh from a deadly covert operation where a second's hesitation would cost you your life, thrown back into suburbia to be a husband and a father. He simply hadn't been able to make the adjustment.

“You know the score. During my training and missions I'd been transformed into a killing machine, and no amount of counseling was going to change that. I was so afraid I'd do something worse than nick her throat the next time. What if it had been you that day instead of your mother? You'd never have come near me again.” His eyes brimmed with self-hatred. “I knew you both deserved better than pussyfooting around me, having to treat me like a ticking time bomb. But I'll never forget the sight of your mother crumpled on the driveway, sobbing. Ripped my fucking guts out.”

Pain twisted deep in Rayne's chest. “All this time I assumed you left because you didn't want us.”

His father set a firm hand on his shoulder. “I left you because I loved you both so much. I wanted you to have a better life than I could give you. Would you have wanted an old man who lost it on the fourth of July when the fireworks popped? Who hit the deck like a mortar attack was going down every time a car backfired? I refused to do that to you. I was like a high-voltage line with the insulation stripped off. Believe me, you were better off without me around.”

“I'm sorry,” he said simply.

“No, son, I'm the one who's sorry. I'm sorry you thought I walked out on you, and I'm sorry I wasn't there for you as much as I should have been.”

Rayne opened his mouth to say something, closed it again just as fast. He swallowed tightly and stared up at the night sky, blinking hard to rid the moisture from his eyes. “You were still my hero, you goddamned idiot,” he said, meeting his father's too-bright gaze. “All those years you were gone, blaming yourself, I still worshipped the ground you walked on.”

“You trying to make me cry like a girl, or what?”

Rayne grinned, the band around his chest loosening as he took the first deep breath he'd drawn since the conversation started. “Do you? Cry like a girl?”

“Only when the Braves win the World Series.” His old man gave him a mock glare. “And that information is classified. You tell anyone and I'll cut your heart out.”

The frustration was driving him crazy, making him desperate and careless. Careless would get him killed.

Following Christa down south had been too risky. He'd been at the airport, ready to go, then talked himself out of it. The odds of getting caught had been too great, even with his false passport and appearance. He'd dyed his short hair black and grown a goatee, tucked rolls of cotton into his cheeks to alter the shape of his jaw. Sunglasses concealed the unusual gray of his eyes. He didn't want to wear colored contacts— he had them of course, but he wanted her to know it was him the second she saw him.

The craving was an insatiable hunger, gnawing at him. He desired her, despised her, ached for her. He wanted to be inside her before he killed her, might even be kind in his method of ending her life, if she treated him right. Unlike Henry. He'd deserved an agonizing, lingering death and Seth had been sure to give it to him, pressing the point of a knife against his flabby throat, Henry's eyes bulging, mouth opening and closing like a gasping fish.

She was coming home tonight, due in at seven p.m. They'd head straight for the cop's place. He could go after her there, if he chose. Simple enough to access the condo building and bypass the alarm. He didn't care for taking on her lover, however. He might be desperate, but he wasn't stupid.

Sooner or later he'd have his chance. If nothing else, Christa had taught him a lesson in patience. Something that didn't come easily to him, and he was grateful to her for that.

One slip, that's all he needed. He'd wait for that one mistake, that one instant of bad judgment, then wham. It would be over.

Christa awoke early in Rayne's bed, to his hands moving over her skin. So this was how it was going to be from now on, waking up next to him, enveloped in his love. Although she didn't care where she was as long as she was with him, she missed her house and hated that the stalker was keeping her away from it. The time away with Rayne had kick-started her long process of healing, but she still balked at the prospect of sleeping in her own bedroom, in her own bed. The room was tainted, her whole life had been tainted.

Realizing her body had tensed beneath his loving hands, she shut off her mind. Pale gray light streamed through the wooden slats, the squawk of gulls muted by the double-glazing. She sighed and snuggled deeper into her cocoon. Rayne pressed against her back, his warmth and strength surrounding her. Though his arm still bothered him he'd been pronounced fit enough to return to work, and today would be her first day without him.

“Don't wake up,” he whispered against the curve of her shoulder, granting her the gift of lying there while he traced her sensitized skin as though he couldn't get enough of her, lingering over the places that raised goose bumps on her flesh. She purred and stretched, letting his fingers skim her back and waist and hips, sliding lower between her thighs until she murmured dreamily, opening to his touch. Rayne stroked her, his lips brushing the hair at the nape of her neck. He was hard against her and she pressed toward him, languorous.

He kissed her neck, fingertips sliding over her aroused flesh. She moaned as the pleasure bloomed brightly, squirming against his erection. He pushed against her without trying to slide inside, content to drive her half crazy with frustration, bringing her close to the peak before slowing. His murmurs faded beneath the thump of her heart, her trust in him the only thing keeping her from screaming at the excruciating pleasure.