Bad Girl by Night (37 page)

When he met her gaze again she was simply gaping at him, clearly thunderstruck. “And just who on earth is it you think I should be with?”

He answered honestly. “Somebody normal. Somebody without all the baggage I have. Some nice, normal guy from Turnbridge, somebody like Tommy or your old boyfriend, Chuck.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you serious? You think that’s what I want? Now, after all this? You think some typical guy like that could ever really make me happy? Or satisfied? Or understand me, for God’s sake?”

Did she mean after all the wild sex they’d shared? Or all the deep, abiding passion? In ways, they were two different things. He’d just let the passion lead them into the boundary-crossing sex.

But the answer wasn’t important because no matter how he sliced it, the result remained the same. He hadn’t come here planning to break up—this was ripping his heart out every fucking second—but he couldn’t help speaking the ugly truth. “Two people who’ve been abused . . . are just never gonna be able to help each other heal. I’ll always want to be in control of you. I’ll always be a selfish lover, pushing you too far. And you’ll always be . . . letting me, I’m afraid. And you deserve more than that. You deserve a guy who won’t be so damn demanding. You deserve a guy who’ll, I don’t know, let you put him in handcuffs if you want.”

“I don’t care about handcuffs.”

“I know you don’t—that was just an example. You deserve a guy who’ll let you be an equal partner in the bedroom. And I’m beginning to see that I’m probably never gonna be that guy. And I don’t want you to be that girl—that girl who lets me get away with whatever I want. Because back when you weren’t so crazy about giving up control—that’s when I fell in love with you. Because
you
pushed
me
. Because you took what you wanted. The same way I do. But that didn’t completely work, either,” he said gloomily, thinking it through, “because we
both
wanted control.”

An odd, sad smile took shape on her face. “I can’t win, can I? You won’t let me have control, but you don’t want me to give it up, either. No matter what I do, you’ll say it doesn’t work between us. When . . . I actually thought it was working pretty damn well.” A solitary tear rolled down her cheek and tore his heart to pieces.

“I love you, Carly. But . . . shit, this is about sex but so much more. By pushing you to be with Shane and Rogan—”

“I wanted it!”
she screamed, leaning forward, fists clenched in the afghan.
“I wanted it just as much as you did! I wanted their cocks in my mouth! Between my tits! I wanted to feel that again, more than one cock! So there! It’s not all on you! I wanted it! I fucking
craved
it! What do you think of that?”

He swallowed, hard. Because tears streamed wildly down her face now and it was killing him. And it was as if she were confessing her sins to him or something, because
now
, under all the new circumstances, it clearly pained her to admit that—yet he sensed she somehow thought absolving
him
would fix everything. And it didn’t even begin to.

He spoke quietly. “But you never would have done it if I hadn’t asked you to. I know that about you.”

“I did with you and Colt. That and more. I was even the one who suggested it then.”

“That was different. You know that.” He stopped, sighed, tried to clear his head, tried to make his point again—because it was important. “By pushing you to be with Shane and Rogan, I . . . I feel like I abused you all over again. Just in a different way.”

“That’s crap!” she snapped.

But it wasn’t. So he just looked her in the eye and said, “I love you too much to keep hurting you in ways you can’t even see right now.”

And when she didn’t answer—looking as exhausted and wrung out as he felt—he began putting on his clothes, even though his movements felt wooden, heavy, rushed. And as he stood up to go, he wanted desperately to pull the woman into his arms for one last, soul-stealing kiss—but he couldn’t let himself do that, because if he did, they’d end up fucking like animals again, and he had to end this before he damaged her beyond repair.

So instead, he stopped next to the chair where she still sat, cupped her pretty face in one palm, and bent to lower a kiss to her forehead.

And shit—even
that
he felt in his groin.

And the even colder, harder truth?
She’s not really good for you, either.

In this case, neither one of them won.

 

 

J
ake sat at his computer the next day, playing that amped-up version of Tetris again. Because he needed a distraction. From everything.

Not that it was working. His unpremeditated breakup with Carly kept repeating in his mind. If he’d planned any of it, maybe he could have somehow said it all better. But then, no matter
how
he’d said it, it wouldn’t have been any easier for either of them.

And he didn’t like recognizing the fact that she was, in a way, just as dangerous to his well-being as he was to hers, but it was undeniable now that he was finally forcing himself to face the truth. Because before her, even if he hadn’t had much grand passion in his life—the deep, wild thing he felt with her—he’d been on a good even keel. He’d enjoyed sex; he’d been content with the romances that had come and gone in his life. But being with Carly had indeed dredged up his past, stirred up all those old feelings and issues—and he knew inherently that as long as she was in his life, those issues would remain front and center.

And yet . . .
she’s the only woman you’ve ever loved this way.
Even after just a short time, he’d known the love was more intense, purer, deeper, than anything he’d experienced.

So maybe you’ll never love anybody this much unless she challenges you, brings up those ugly old issues. Unless she breaks you out of that comfort zone.
Hell, maybe he’d somehow loved her more because she was the only woman he’d been with who had a real understanding of where he’d been.

But either way . . . talk about your no-win situation. He’d rather be alone in life than be in a destructive relationship, hurting her, being selfish with her, over and over again. And it had indeed been escalating. At first, he’d been so careful—wanting her but also walking on eggshells with her. But the more she gave him, the more he took. And if he took much more, let his baser instincts drive him much further, that was when the real harm would occur—that was when it would all spiral out of control.

So he hated hurting her—fucking
hated
it—but better to hurt her like this, now, than to let a harmful relationship progress further. No matter how many times he turned it over in his head, that was how he saw it.

Just then, the Tetris blocks began piling up too rapidly, toward the top of the screen, and that quick, the game was over. But a glance down revealed he’d gotten far better at this game than when he’d started. And he realized that it wasn’t much of a distraction, after all—as the puzzle pieces dropped into place on the screen, the thoughts seemed to drop into place in his head.

Rising from his desk, he walked into his kitchen, glanced out the back window. Between his house and the one behind him sat a small grove of young saplings and brush that he supposed would thin to nothing but gangly brown vines and branches when winter came. In fact, he’d thought about venturing in among the trees to plant some winterberry, let it naturalize there and provide some color during the more dreary Michigan months.

Only he couldn’t do that now. Because if he did, every time he looked out his window he’d think of Carly.

But . . . hell, every time he patrolled Main Street he’d think of Carly. Every time he walked into Schubert’s for a sandwich. Every time he drove across the railroad tracks on Maple and passed the bench where they’d eaten pie. His whole life here, he realized, was intrinsically tangled up with hers in a way he had no idea how to break free of.

Christ, he felt miserable. His chest ached. His eyes remained tired. Probably because he’d barely slept last night.

And he’d had plenty he’d planned to do today—there were leaves to rake, and his rusty old mailbox needed to be replaced—but dreary autumn skies had combined with his emotions to leave him feeling listless. He soon found himself lying on the couch, hugging a pillow to his stomach.

And wondering . . .
Should I even put the damn mailbox in?

Or would it just make more sense to stick a For Sale sign back in the yard?

Because was he really going to stay here, make his life here, if Carly wasn’t in it? The reality was that he felt useless here as a cop, and if he was honest with himself, Carly had probably been the only thing holding him here this long. He liked Turnbridge—but without her, and without a job he found satisfying, why stay?

He’d spent his whole career trying to save people, but there was no one here to save. And besides—how could he really save anyone after realizing that maybe he needed saving, too. Hell—maybe all of it, his entire life as a cop, had just been another way of . . . trying to save
himself
.

Maybe all his work in Detroit had only been a distraction—a
real
distraction, much better than any computer game—from what was still injured inside him. Maybe coming to this small town, this quieter place, had—along with meeting Carly—helped shine a light on that, given him time to look at it, think about it.

He thought back to Detroit and the inner-city neighborhood where he’d worked just before he’d left. It wasn’t that he was bringing down bad guys every day, but he’d made a difference there. On a regular basis. He thought of the kids who’d hung out on a particularly bad corner that ran rampant with drug dealers and prostitutes—he’d earned their trust over time and had eventually gotten them to start spending some of their evenings at the rec center a block away. Were they still going to the rec center now? Or were they back with the dealers and pimps? And what about Crazy Manny, the homeless guy whom Jake had managed, more than once, to coerce into a homeless shelter for a few days or weeks at a time? Cold weather was coming, and Manny didn’t quite have the mental capacities to understand he could freeze to death if he chose to sleep outside on the wrong night. Would some other cop know to look out for Manny? And how was old Mr. Bledsoe doing with his convenience store? Was some other officer keeping the thugs away for him, and keeping him safe and in business? Or was he, by now, back to fearing for his life every day when he went to work?

What would Dr. Jim say about that? he wondered. Would he say that such a decision equaled denial, that to go back to Detroit would be nothing but running from the trouble still inside him? Hell. Maybe. But when he thought of those particular mean streets, where the troubles felt a lot bigger than his, it didn’t seem to matter much. Yeah, he’d gotten stressed out there—he’d been called to one too many shootings and assaults the last year or two—but if he was gonna be stressed, it seemed better to have it be because he was helping people who needed him than because he was hurting a woman he loved with his sexual obsession with her.

Then he thought of Carly laughing, looking pretty and bright and cheerful as she’d ridden next to him on the way to Traverse City last weekend. He knew she
was
better off than she’d been when he’d met her. But now it had progressed into something that would be harmful to her in the end.

So . . . maybe this was all meant to be in a way. Maybe he
had
saved her, just a little.

Maybe you
can
save other people, even if you can’t save yourself—maybe that was his lot in life.

But he’d saved her as much as he could. And his instincts were telling him it was time to go. Time to get back to saving
other
people in
other
ways.

Pushing back the pain that seared his chest when he thought about no longer being with her, he gathered himself up off the couch and returned to the desk in the corner of the room. But instead of playing another computer game, he picked up the phone and dialed the number of his old police chief in Detroit.

When the chief answered, Jake kept it simple and got to the point. “I was wondering if there’s still a place for me on the force.”

And ten minutes later, he had his old job back.

 

 

C
arly tried her damnedest to work. Her heart-shaped boxes were flying off the shelves almost faster than she could make them. Yet as she fashioned another heart using her father’s antique squirrel-handle circular plane, concentration was hard to come by.

It had been a week since Jake had broken up with her. A horrible, hideous week. Added to the fact that she feared she’d never be happy again, everyone in her life wanted to know
why
. Which, of course, she couldn’t tell them. So she made up a vanilla version of the truth:
He thought we were getting too serious too fast, or something like that.
Then she’d roll her eyes and shake her head because she thought the whole thing was so stupid, and she’d try not to cry.

She’d been crying a
lot
lately. And she wasn’t a woman who usually shed many tears. After all, until recently, she’d been pretty good at compartmentalizing things, turning off her feelings if she didn’t like them. Her feelings for Jake, though, didn’t seem to have an on/off button. Every time she thought of how happy he’d made her, how much he’d opened her up to living her life in a fuller, more vibrant way—and that she’d lost him now—her entire being simply ached.

And then yesterday, the worst news of all had come. From Dana. Tommy Gwynn had told Hank that Jake resigned from the Turnbridge Police Department and was moving back to Detroit. His last day was next week.