Maya Banks - Letting Go

Tate bent over, pulling her into a gentle hug. Joss buried her face in Tate’s neck and gripped Chessy’s hand for dear life.

“Please,” Joss choked out, her voice aching with tears. “Just make him go. I don’t want to see him now. Just make him leave. Please. I can’t bear it any longer.”

The fact she was begging, something Dash had sworn she’d never have to do, flayed him open until he was bleeding on the inside.

Tate carefully let her go and then rounded on Dash, fury glinting in his eyes.

“Get the fuck away from her. You’re only hurting her more. I swear to God, Dash. I don’t know what the fuck your problem is or why you insist on kicking her when she’s down, but that shit is going to stop now.”

“I’m not leaving her,” Dash said emphatically. “If she doesn’t want me in her room, fine. But I’m not leaving this hospital until I know exactly what’s wrong with her and how long it’ll take for her to recover.”

“She’ll recover a hell of a lot quicker without you upsetting her,” Chessy said in a furious voice. “Get out or I swear I’ll make Tate throw you out.”

“Him and what goddamn army?” Dash said frigidly.

“I’ll call security if I have to,” Tate said in a low voice. “You aren’t helping, Dash. Look at her. Take a good look at what you’ve done. She’s in tears and she’s hurting. Stop being such a selfish bastard and for once do the right thing and leave.”

Joss’s face was turned away as though she didn’t want Dash to see her tears. But how could he miss them? Trailing down her cheeks in silent, silver trails. His gut clenched and grief overwhelmed him. Not even Carson’s death had devastated him as much as Joss lying there, hurt, grieving. Because of him.

He’d sworn never to be a source of pain or anguish to her. And yet he’d done just that. He was the reason she was lying in a hospital bed, bloody, with broken bones and bruises. And he didn’t know if he’d ever get over that.

“I’ll go,” he said, barely able to keep his own tears at bay. “But I’m not giving up, Joss. You may have thought I did, but I didn’t. I was an ass. I was a complete bastard to you, but I swear if you’ll give me the chance, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll make it right between us, honey.”

She didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge his heartfelt declaration. She kept her eyes tightly shut as Chessy hugged and soothed her.

“I’ll call Kylie,” Dash murmured. “She’ll want to be here. She loves you. I love you, Joss.”

At that, Joss turned, fire in her eyes. “Never say that again,” she said hoarsely. “It’s not like you to lie, Dash. You’ve always been honest. Painfully so. So don’t change now.”

Dash pushed past a protesting Tate and leaned in so he could look Joss in the eye.

“I have never lied to you, darling. And I don’t intend to start now. I said and did some horrible things. I hurt you and I’ll never forgive myself for that. But I love you. I’ve loved you for fucking ever. That will never change. I’ll go because it’s what you want. And I’ll give you time to recover. But goddamn it, Joss, I’m not giving up on us. And I won’t let you either.”

“You never gave us a chance,” she said in an achingly sad, forlorn voice.

It cut him to the quick and left him without a response. He stepped back from her bed and slowly, painfully turned to walk out the door.

She was wrong. She was right and she was wrong. He may not have given them a chance before, but he wasn’t giving up. He’d move heaven and earth and go to hell and back if that’s what it took to make her his forever.

JOSS stared sightlessly from the window of the guest bedroom where she was staying—and recovering—at Chessy’s house. Kylie was by every day after work, worried about her. Both her friends were concerned, as was Tate. Not about her injuries. They were minor and would mend with time. Her heart was another matter.

The pain was back, throbbing in the background, but she lacked the energy to get up to down one of the painkillers the doctor had prescribed. She’d fractured two ribs and her left arm. Her arm had only suffered a hairline fracture, not a complete break. She’d be out of the cast in four weeks.

Her head had struck something—she still wasn’t sure what—and she had several stitches for a laceration on her scalp. She had facial bruising, and the rest of her body was sore from the impact. Her neck was stiff, a mild case of whiplash, but the doctor had cheerfully informed her she was a very lucky woman.

So why didn’t she feel lucky? Why hadn’t Carson been as fortunate as she? Why was fate such a fickle bitch as Dash had once described it? Why was she alive and Carson dead?

It wasn’t as though she’d wanted to die. No matter what Dash may have originally thought. Yes, it was certainly her fault, and she thanked God on a daily basis that her carelessness hadn’t cost a child her life. But she hadn’t intentionally driven into that tree.

She should have let Chessy come and get her like she’d offered. She should have never been behind the wheel of a car in the emotional state she’d been in. Live and learn. At least she had lived to learn that particular lesson.

“Joss?”

Chessy’s soft voice came from behind her but Joss couldn’t turn. She still hurt too much so she waited for Chessy to enter.

Her friend’s concerned face appeared a moment later and she saw that Chessy was holding a glass of water and the bottle of painkillers. It shamed her that she was relieved she didn’t have to get up to get them.

“Are you hurting?” Chessy asked in concern.

Joss nodded. “I couldn’t muster the energy to get up and get them. Thank you.”

Chessy frowned and shook out two of the pills, dropping them into Joss’s right hand. After giving her the glass of water to swallow them, she sat down on the ottoman at Joss’s feet.

“I’m worried about you, sweetie. Tate and I both are. Hell, so is Kylie. She’s on her way over, by the way. I thought I’d warn you. She sounds . . . determined. I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t plan to kick your ass.”

Joss smiled. “I love you both. Tate too. You’ve been so good to me. I’m being a complete baby. There’s no reason I can’t go back to my own house, but I appreciate you letting me stay here. I just haven’t wanted to be . . . alone.”

“Oh, honey, I understand.” Sympathy shone brightly in Chessy’s eyes. “And you can stay here as long as you like. Tate’s been so busy with work that he hasn’t been home much in the last weeks. Is it horrible of me that I’ve been happy that since your accident he’s been around more? Oh God, don’t answer that. It is horrible of me to think, much less say.”

Joss laughed. “No, not at all. I know you’ve been missing him. Is that the reason you’ve been so unhappy, Chessy? Is it work that’s been keeping him so preoccupied?”

“I hope it’s only work,” Chessy said in a low voice.

She looked as though she regretted the words the moment she spoke them. She looked away, as if avoiding the inevitable question in Joss’s eyes.

“You think he’s cheating?” Joss whispered. “Talk to me, Chessy. You know you’d never let me get away with not telling you something so important. Hell, you pulled every last detail about what happened between me and Dash from me.”

Chessy’s smile was rueful. “No. Yes. I don’t know. And it’s the not knowing that’s eating me alive.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

Chessy slowly shook her head. “What if he’s not? Do you know how hurt he’d be if I questioned him? If I displayed a lack of faith in him?”

“Okay, let’s start with why you think he’d be cheating,” Joss said, glad to have something other than her own failed relationship to discuss. And if she could help her friend, then at least one of them would be happy.

“I don’t have any solid evidence that says he is,” Chessy admitted. “It’s just that he’s been so . . . distant. You know we have a Dominant/submissive relationship, but lately I’m lucky if we manage to have vanilla sex, much less delve into the normal course of our relationship.”

“Is it possible that he’s just under a lot of stress at work? Ever since he struck out on his own and quit working for Manning-Brown Financial, he’s been crazy busy. Even I can see that.”

“It’s more than that,” Chessy muttered. “The guy he partnered with, the one he left Manning-Brown to form a partnership with, decided to retire. This was only a few months after he and Tate started working together.”

Joss’s mouth fell open. “Why didn’t I know about this? When did this happen?”

Chessy squeezed Joss’s uninjured hand. “You were busy with your own stuff. You and Dash. Besides it wasn’t anything worth burdening you over. Nothing has changed really. Tate had always done the bulk of the work anyway, but Mark had brought a lot of affluent clients over to the partnership when they both broke off from their respective firms. So Tate’s been scrambling to keep them all happy because he doesn’t want to lose any of them. So far, only one has left, and he wants to keep it that way. Which means him being at their beck and call all hours of the day, seven days a week.”

Joss’s nose wrinkled. “I wouldn’t have thought a financial planner would be so . . . busy. I mean I know he does a lot, but what could there possibly be for him to do during nonbusiness hours? It’s not as though banks or the stock market are open after hours during the week or on weekends.”

“You’d be surprised,” Chessy said. “They call him at all times of the day, sometimes with legitimate concerns, sometimes with the absurd. But it’s Tate’s job to pacify them and reassure them or arrange their finances. He has to walk a very fine line because as I said, he doesn’t want to lose the clients he’s worked so hard to gain.”

“Is he going to take on another partner to lighten his load?”

Chessy shrugged. “That I don’t know. He doesn’t discuss it much with me. He doesn’t want to worry me. I used to love that about him. How he always sheltered me from anything he thought would hurt or worry me. Now? I’d take any form of communication because I feel this gap opening and widening between us and I hate it. I hate it, Joss,” she said, anguish filling her voice.

“I know I’m probably being silly and I’m overreacting, but I hate this uncertainty. I hate feeling like I don’t matter any longer. And I know that’s not true. I know he loves me. But he doesn’t show me like he used to. I’ve known from the day we met that I was his priority, and it makes me sound self-centered but I love being first and foremost in his mind. I loved that he always made me feel . . . special.”

“And you don’t feel special now,” Joss murmured.

Chessy slowly shook her head. “I’m not unhappy but I’m not happy either. And it’s eating me up on the inside. I keep wondering if this is as good as it gets and if I should be grateful he’s still with me. I don’t like how selfish I feel for wanting more.”

Joss leaned forward, ignoring the discomfort in her ribs. “You aren’t selfish,” she said fiercely. “Sweetie, you are the most unselfish, loving, giving person I know. Why don’t you talk to him about it? Lay it out just like you laid it out to me. I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t listen. That it wouldn’t horrify him to know you feel this way. He loves you so much. I can see it in the way he looks at you.”

“I wish I saw the same as you saw,” Chessy said wistfully. “I just want to go back to the way it was when we first met, and maybe that’s not possible. Maybe when you’re with someone as long as we’ve been together, when the newness wears off, you settle into tolerance.”

Joss shook her head adamantly. “I don’t believe that for a minute. I know Carson and I were only married for three years, but we were as in love at the three-year mark as we were the first year, and you and Tate have only been married a little less than five years.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Chessy said with a sigh. “Maybe I should just talk to him. But I freeze every time I think I’m going to ask. The words just stay locked in my throat because I know it will hurt him if I ask him if there’s someone else. And the thing is, if nothing is wrong except that he’s occupied with work, my doubt will cause a rift in our relationship that I’m not sure will ever mend.”

Joss grimaced, knowing Chessy could very well be right. Tate would be horrified if he knew Chessy thought he was having an affair. He might not forgive her doubting him even for a moment. Tate was rigid that way. He was an extremely honorable man and he was utterly protective of Chessy. If someone else was hurting her, Tate would do whatever was necessary to make it end. But what if he was the one hurting her? What then?