Elizabeth Finn - Unforgiven

Stay strong. Be brave. Don’t let the world tell you what you’re worth based on the last few years of your life. A life is a long thing. Perhaps mine wasn’t quite as long as we’d have liked, and many can say the same, but you understand my point. Five years in comparison to the whole of what you’ll accomplish. You can surely appreciate that it shouldn’t take over your life when it spanned such a short period of it. Perspective is a hard thing to keep sometimes, and you’re going to need to hold onto yours tightly. The world will want to take it away.

I love you more than this life that is slipping away. I’m not afraid of dying, child, but I am afraid for you. A parent wants the world for their child, and I want to leave this life knowing you’re going to be okay. You are going to be okay. But you may not believe that for some time. Just hang on, cut yourself some slack, and be patient. You’ll find happiness again. I promise.

All my love from this world and the next,

Dad

Now

He came home a week after their jog to a house smelling of smoke, and not only smelling of it but filled with it as well. He yelled for her, worried at first, until he realized the smoke had a decidedly Italian smell to it. At just that moment, she emerged from the cloud with an oven mitt on one hand and her other hand waving smoke away from her face. The grimace on her face was priceless, and he almost started chuckling before he could stop himself. Here he’d thought he might ask her to take a run. Apparently she had burning his house down in mind.

“Sorry. Your oven is . . . complicated.”

“Is it?” He studied her for a moment, deciding if he wanted to smile or not. He settled on a smirk, and she bit her lower lip. “So, what’s on fire in my kitchen?”

“It was supposed to be lasagna. But it’s . . . black.”

He nodded slowly. Now he was just toying with her. Of course she was nervous. It wasn’t her house or her kitchen that she’d filled with smoke, and she didn’t realize at all that he didn’t give a shit.

“How ’bout you help me open the windows.” He brushed past her and headed into the smoke. When the windows were open and the smoke had cleared, he met her back in the kitchen. “Let’s go.”

“Go?”

“Well, since you destroyed dinner, you’re going to have to feed me.” The blush on her cheeks left his cock hard. He turned from her before she could notice just what the simplest of things could do to him when it came to her. “Don’t worry, I’m paying.”

She followed him outside, and when she grabbed her bike and started to climb on, he paused a moment before grabbing the bike from her and putting it in the back of his SUV. Of course it made sense to take her bike seeing as she didn’t live with him and had no reason to return with him after dinner, but it was a letdown nevertheless.

He pulled into Harry and Sally’s a few minutes later. His brain was running on autopilot at the moment. He wasn’t letting it go anywhere near the emotions that usually cropped up when he was around her. He’d done the same on their jog a few nights before. Hell, he was starting to do it anytime he was around her. He just didn’t want to feel any of it anymore. All he wanted to feel was how good she could make him feel. And she could.

The electricity that coursed through him when he spent time with her was intense. The arousal that grabbed his dick and didn’t let up until he’d come, moaning her name when he was alone in his shower, was a distraction if nothing else. The fact he didn’t want to run away from any of it was a mystery he’d failed to solve. He was keeping this particular mystery to himself at the moment. He wasn’t ready to acknowledge just what he was doing with the girl he was supposed to hate. Of course, eating with her at Harry and Sally’s, the busiest little restaurant in their town, wasn’t going to go unnoticed. How could it? There was no such thing as none of your business in this town. People felt they deserved to know anything and everything they wanted to know about their neighbors in this place, and there was little doubt their interaction would raise a few eyebrows.

He opened the door for her, and as the bell attached to the door rang out their arrival, a few heads peered up from their tables. Within moments, the few pairs of eyes turned into every eye in the small dining room. Some people just blatantly stared, others whispered to one another, and you could see recognition passing people’s faces as it sank in just what they were looking at. They were a damn spectacle.

“Dr. Cory. Good to see you, and . . . um. . .” Sally’s eyes took in Bailey beside him, and Sally was suddenly speechless—a rarity. “Well, then . . . table for two?” He nodded, and they followed her to a booth along the back wall. It hardly offered any privacy, but the booth was at least tall, so they could pretend they were alone without the eyes of the entire town watching them.

Sally took their drink order, and they were finally alone. “So, what possessed you to try to cook for me?”

Her cheeks were pink again as she tried to figure out how to respond. She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. ’Spose I just thought it would be nice.”

“I see.” He looked at her for a moment, saying nothing. “Tell me about prison.”

She knocked over the ketchup bottle she was moving from between them, and she looked like she’d choked on her tongue. “Oh . . . uh.” She shook her head, a bit dumbfounded, while he watched her steadily. “You know, lots of cinder block walls and bars. Not much to say.”

“Bullshit. There’s plenty to say. You just don’t want to talk about it.”

She sighed. “Can’t we talk about something else?”

“Okay.” He leaned forward, resting his clasped hands on the table between them. He wasn’t going to make this easy on her. “How long’s it been since you’ve been fucked?” He refused to look away from her eyes as hers bulged in mortification.

“That’s personal.”

“I’m aware of that. Answer the question.”

Her mouth was still gaping, and the second Sally set her ice tea in front of her, she started sucking it down. Darren cocked his head, refusing to let her off without an answer. He was trying to make her uncomfortable, but he also wanted to know. “Since before the accident. A few months before, I suppose. Hard to date when no one likes you. I’m not very popular in this town anymore.”

“Huh, imagine that.” He was being sarcastic, but in truth, he was relieved to know she wasn’t fucking about with anyone—not that he expected she was. He just found it as painful to imagine now as he always had in the past.

“And you?” Now she was trying to play his game.

“Well, it hasn’t been five years. Nowhere near.”

“That’s not an answer.” She was challenging him.

“Fine. A couple weeks.” Her focus dropped to his hands, her cheeks paled as he watched, and she swallowed over a lump in her throat. He knew exactly how she felt. It had always been painful imagining Bailey with other men, and he was guessing she struggled with it too. Odd they should still struggle with it. But he knew he would too were the situation reversed.

“I didn’t know you were seeing someone.”

“Seeing someone.” He repeated her words, suddenly feeling ashamed, and he was the one who looked away this time. Of course she would think fucking and being in a relationship were synonymous. “Not seeing someone. Just fucking.”

She looked hurt, and she tried to force a casual smile to her lips, but it was an utter failure, and she ended up looking out the window, her brow flinching. He couldn’t have hurt her more with words, and that same painful need to cause her emotional pain boiled under his skin. It was painful because he desired it so much, but it brought him just as much gut-wrenching heartache as her. He could feel the rejection she felt right now. He could feel it like it was happening to himself, but it was still satisfying. It was like scratching poison ivy. It hurt and burned like hell when you scratched, but it was still relief. God, he was a fucking asshole.

“I don’t want to talk about this.” Her voice was whisper quiet.

“So, prison is off limits; fucking is too. What’s left? Wanna talk about the day you killed my sister?”

She stared at him with her wide blue eyes that he’d always loved looking at. Her eyes glossed, but no tears fell. She was completely restrained, and he got goose bumps just looking at the cool control she was exhibiting. He’d hit a limit of hers he didn’t know existed, and he waited for her response.

She grabbed her clutch off the table, but she didn’t stand. “You think I hate myself enough to let you torture me. I can’t for a moment imagine what this is like for you, but if you think I’m so self-destructive that I’d let you destroy me, keep this in mind. I made a promise to my father too, and unlike you, I intend to keep mine.” She stood then, still holding his eyes harshly, and when she finally turned from the table, it was right into his parents, who had magically appeared at the side of their table. “Oh! Oh. . .”

“Bailey.” His mom’s voice was shocked and shaky.

“Mrs. Cory.” He’d never in his life heard her call his mom Mrs. Cory. “I . . . I have to go. I’m sorry. I just. . .” She turned and bolted quickly for the door as they watched her leave. He also watched as she opened the back of his SUV and grabbed her bike, flashing one last look toward the restaurant before she pedaled off.

When his parents’ attention shifted back to Darren, they were glaring. They scooted into the side of the booth Bailey had just vacated, and the glare was held on him. “What was that all about?” His father’s brow was flinched in a harsh line.

“Well, it was supposed to be dinner, but things got . . . strained.”

“And you’re having dinner with Bailey why?”

“And here I thought you’d be happy I was trying to cope with her.”

“If I thought you were doing it for the right reasons—”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Mom?” She was passing judgment she had every right to pass. She’d witnessed his spiral into anger over the past years, and she didn’t trust his intentions with Bailey.

“You didn’t tell us you were spending time with her.”

“I also didn’t tell you I was employing her just so I could get her to stay in Savoy rather than following her mom to Memphis, because I thought I was going to lose my mind when I found out she was planning to move there.” The admission came out in an emotional and angry rush, and his mom gasped. “I didn’t want her to leave.” He looked at his parents, whose expressions were now completely concerned, not to mention confused. “I’m also not sure I can deal with her here.”

His mom put her hand on top of his, and they said nothing. He said nothing, either, and he stared at the tabletop. Sally showed up to take their orders, and they sent her away empty-handed, him still just staring at the tabletop.

“Darren, how do you feel about her?” His mother again.

He sat silently for a long time, trying to figure that one out. “Six years ago. . .” He looked out the window, not sure this was a conversation he wanted to have with his parents. He finally shook his head and looked back to them, deciding to hold his tongue. He wasn’t willing to lay his heart on the table in front of them right now. He shrugged. “We were friends once. And now. . .” He shrugged again. What he wasn’t saying was how in love with her he’d been six years ago—how obsessed. Of course, he’d never told anyone that.

“We know that. But why do you want her here—”

“I don’t know.” He was lying, or at the very least he wasn’t being completely honest.

It was silent for a while, and when Sally arrived again, they managed to order their dinner that time.

“What are your intentions with Bailey?” His mother was all business now.

He shrugged.

“You need to figure it out.” He was a child being chastised again, but they were right. “And if you can’t treat her with respect and move past this thing, really move past this, then you need to let her move on with her life.” Her words hit like a fist to his gut, and his breath left him in a rush at nothing more than the thought alone. Panic was welling up inside him again, and he could barely take a breath. All he could do was nod.

Their dinner was utterly silent. The dinner crowd hadn’t stopped looking at him, but he ignored it. He was used to the attention, and he was too busy thinking about Bailey to care if the fine folks of Savoy wanted to study him. He said good-bye to his parents after dinner and drove home. His house still smelled of smoke, and she’d completely destroyed a casserole dish with her disastrous dinner. He smiled as he gave up and chucked the whole dish into the garbage.