Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale (10 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

“You shouldn’t have done it,” John said. “You implied something you knew wasn’t true.”

Mike studied his fingernails as he leaned against the door of their bedroom, jaw set firm.

“I know no such thing,” he said. “And I only told her what I knew. How she took it was up to her.”

John stood. Got in his face.

“Except it wasn’t really up to her, was it? You made sure she took it exactly how you needed her take it: the worst way possible.”

Mike looked his kid brother over. Clumped, bedraggled, black hair. Rumpled white shirt, same as the day before. Even in his own grief, he had time to defend everyone’s favorite person.

“Is he even talking to you?” Mike said. He dragged over to the window and took a seat on the sill. “Last I’d heard, he’d treated you like a fool for losing your wife. If nothing else, I’d think you’d be glad to show him he’s capable of failing.”

John didn’t answer, so Mike turned to his view of the ocean. Pale blue stretched out to darkness. Rain splattered the surface, falling from a sky near black despite the hour.

“You think I did it because I want her for myself,” he said.

“I know you did.”

Mike looked at his brother with clinical interest.

“You think it’s wrong, how I feel. You think it’s a sign of immorality.”

John sighed with the effort of a man lacking oxygen. “I think you always want what you can’t have.”

Mike stood.

“You should have come to me,” he said. “When you started having problems with your wife. You should have called on me, not him, when you needed someone to talk. And you should be defending me, not him, always.”

“Mike—”

“You always preferred him. Whenever he came to visit, when he called, you forgot me. You forgot plans, promises—”

“Mike,” John shook his head. “Is this really the conversation you want to have?”

“Your problems should be mine,” Mike said. “I’m your brother. Tak has Kenji. Why should he have you, too? Why does he have everything?”

“He doesn’t. No one does.”

Mike cut the distance between them.

“The moment I saw you, I knew something was wrong. I came to you first. I asked you to talk to me. You said there was nothing to talk about. But you talked to him, didn’t you?”

“Of course, I did.”

Mike’s hand flailed, crashing a lamp to the floor.

“Why?”

“Because I know Tak. I trust him. Half the time I don’t know who you’re trying to be.”

“I’m your brother. Isn’t that enough? Come to me when you have a problem.”

“Why? So, you’ll know that my wife was available? So you can make her think I’m not worth fighting for? That’s what you do, isn’t it? Before you slide on in to home base.”

“I wouldn’t—” Mike bit down on his fist.

“I had feelings for her first,” he said.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You never even—”

“She worked in the cafeteria at M.I.T. my senior year. Lunch shift, Monday through Friday. Every day she’d go from there to the Rotch Library, where she studied until 8 sometimes 9.”

“Wait. What?”

“I spoke to her—sometimes. As much as I could really. But I never worked up the nerve to do more.” Mike lowered his gaze, hands in his pockets, and remembered the Deena from school. “I’m not a lunatic, you know. It’s just, she was gorgeous—is gorgeous—and I could never quite find enough courage. Then oli brought her around, giving me the second chance I’d never thought I’d have. I didn’t know she was with Tak even then. But honest to God John, I can’t help myself. I can’t keep myself from wanting her.”

“Mike,” John said, not without kindness. “Nothing can ever come from it.”

“But he’s the worst person she could have ended up with,” Mike said. “And it hurts, even after all this time.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Deena bounded downstairs, fury sucking and mauling and twisting her into its vortex. She pushed past family, snapping and snarling at anyone who dared gape, before bursting into the library and locking the door behind her. She stood there, chest heaving, eyes twice as large, staring at the lock as if it, instead of her, were responsible for bringing her to that moment.

What was happening? What was happening to them?

She dropped into a seat without knowing how she got there, grateful for the shadows in the room, grateful the lack of reflections.

There was sense to make of this, sense to make of their anger, their fighting, this thing with Aubree Daniels.

The woman’s name was but a blade of agony. Bile bit at the back of her throat and Deena gagged, pressing the back of her hand and shoving back nauseating desolation.

She hadn’t cried in years. Not tears of sorrow, at least. But there, in the dark, with her marriage mangled, tears welled as anguish swept in. Head dropped, Deena clutched fistfuls of hair and let the tears unhinge her.

****

“Dad!” Mia called as Tak stormed by. “It’s raining and the satellite isn’t fixed. Everyone in the house is dying.”

“I don’t care.”

“Dad! If you won’t call someone, the least you can do is go outside and have a look yourself. Maybe it’s something simple. Anyway, it’s your responsibility to—”

Tak turned to face his daughter in the hall.

“Mia? Close your friggin mouth.”

She blinked, wide mouthed from the fleeing of words just there.

“Daddy?” she said.

A door at the far end of the hall opened. Mike stepped out and froze.

“Off to your room, baby.”

Tak met Mike’s gaze and held it.

“Daddy—”

“Now.”

The door slammed behind her.

“Tak—”

That was John, squeezing out of their bedroom, hands already in the air.

“Tak, listen to me. You have every right to be angry.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Tak said.

“Still, you can’t let that temper get the best of you,” John said.

“Too late.”

Tak went for Mike and snatched him by the collar, using the fabric for leverage to drag his struggling frame back into their room. John hollered for Kenji just as Tak heaved Mike onto the bed.

“You making a run for my wife? What the hell did you tell her?”

“The truth,” Mike said. “That you’re an old dog with the same tricks.”

Tak punched him, hard enough to snap his head back, even if he had been expecting the hit. Mike’s gaze flared, darkening his eyes as if the pupils consumed the iris. A thin trickle of blood seeped from his nose and his mouth twisted with malice.

“You’re not the only one with secrets about the past,” Mike said. “Did she tell you that she already knew me? That she knew me back in college? Or did she let you think that you were introducing us?” He grinned. “Sorry, cousin, I knew your wife well.”

“He’s lying, Tak. He’s just trying to goad you. It’s the way it’s always been. You know that.”

John pulled on his arm though Tak didn’t budge.

“What do you mean you knew her?” he heard himself say.

Mike grinned, emboldened, challenging as triumph glittered gold in his eyes.

“What do you think it means? She was mine before she was yours.”

Tak swung only to have John stifle the blow with a bear hug and sweep him toward the door. Legs swinging, he lost balance enough for his cousin to shove him out.

“You’re doing what he wants,” John shouted from the hall. “Thinking what he wants. Later, he’ll say you misunderstood his every word.”

“Well, he can say it with my fist in his throat.”

Tak went for the door, only to have John drag him toward his bedroom. Clothes still littered the floor.

“Please, cool off,” John said. “There are kids everywhere.”

As if summoned by the statement, five children burst from an end hall room. Noah led the thunderous charge, only to halt at the top of the stairs.

“Dad?”

A splash of cold water. A dose of sobriety. His child’s voice sliced clear to the bone. Here was the truth of being a parent. They watched, always, eager to absorb. All the habits, all the Tak-isms, caricatured in glorious fashion. He wanted to ram Mike’s head through a wall, but he couldn’t, lest Noah think it fine to do the same to Kenji’s sons.

Tak exhaled.

“I’m cool,” he said, eyes on a boy who had even mastered his facial expressions. “Just, talking to your oli.”

Noah looked from one to the other, brow bent.

“About…?”

“About you getting lost, knucklehead.” John took a swipe at him, earning a peal of laughter, before the boy barreled downstairs.

He turned back to Tak.

“Cool off, OK? Then go find your wife.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Neck stiff, Deena stirred on the couch and shifted, slipping legs out from underneath her. The stillness of night hung heavy, cloaking in silence. Across from her sat her husband. She blinked at him, thoughts sluggish.

“What are you doing here?”

“Watching you sleep,” Tak said.

She looked down at the blanket draped over her. Her last recollections were of crying. Had she cried herself to sleep?

A single stream of moonlight illuminated half his face. In the dark, he was an isolation of beauty: strong, graceful lines, definition, and a hint of enigmatic perfection. In high school, he would have been the boy she’d blushed at but never spoke to, the one with a smile so brilliant, she dropped her books and stared, horrified when he spoke. How had Deena wound up with that boy? Maybe the incredulity of it all, even then, was what made Aubree Daniels so believable.

“I’m sorry,” Tak said. “For not telling you I dated her.”

Melancholy laced his voice, and beneath it, strain.

“Tak?” she said uncertainly.

“I can’t sleep. Will you come to bed?”

He rose and extended a hand. She took it, body thinking without her.

Upstairs, they lay stiff as two planks of wood, eyes on the ceiling until a fragile sleep found them at last. When Deena woke with a suspicious feeling of tranquility, she looked down to find Tak’s arm looped around her waist.

They’d found each other in sleep and knitted so tightly that she could feel every carve of his chest, every thud of his heart, insistent against her back. He shifted, cinching her in tighter, grazing her with his manhood, and her breathing grew shallower by the second. Oblivious lips brushed like butterfly wings at the back of her neck, flooding warmth through her body. Memories of bruising kisses, of him atop and dominating, of her shivering release, had her set to overheat. Deena shifted, as if to slip out from underneath him, only to feel wet lips trail her neck. She whimpered and the hand at her abdomen drifted up, raising her nightgown with it.

He found her breast and caressed before sliding down low, looping a finger through her panties, and pulling.

“Deena,” he said and put a hand on her hip, digging fingers in to the bone. Hardness found her and she pressed against it, whimpering when he buried to the hilt.

Neither moved, content instead with managing their own ragged breathing. Tak pulsed and pressed and strained her walls, burning shivers through her body. She gripped him by the arm. If he slammed into her like before, she could never—

He pulled back, inch by inch, only to slide in.

No. She couldn’t take that either.

“Tak—”

She swallowed hard, swallowed so desperately hard, and stuttered on her thoughts. He filled her at an agonizing pace, far beyond capacity, earning a choke of recognition in return.

“Oh, God. Oh, Tak, I need you.”

And there was no air, only him hovering in silence, breathing labored. So still he sat for so long, that Deena began to wonder what she’d said wrong.

But then he pressed, pressure unrelenting, melting her in a pool of molten need.

Deep, unhurried, insistent strokes followed and she lifted a little more for each one. Sweat-slick fingers imprinted on her hip, as he shoved each time as if resisted. Dimly, Deena registered creaks of the bed, heat, sweat, her own moans. They were close to each other, so close, with his rhythm vibrating right through her. More than the thrill of his body found her as he bathed her in praise. Murmurings about her body, her touch, his love, drifted to her, making her purr like a well-loved kitten.

Long tunneling strokes had them panting, on and on and on, only to burst into bed jarring bucks. Deena babbled and her whole body constricted to a white hot needlepoint. She called Tak something foul and exploded, a shriek of pleasure consuming her.

Tak froze, body rigid and straining. He jerked once and shoved, moaning as he filled her.

They filled the seconds with gasping breaths and hard beating hearts. Eventually, Tak burst out laughing.

“What was that you called me?” he said, voice teasing. “Son of a what?”

Deena’s cheeks engulfed in a fiery inferno that he set about kissing away. His fingertips drifted the length of her thigh, then her stomach, leisurely, exploratory. When he settled, it was with his arm snug at her middle.

“Let’s stay like this,” Tak said. “All day.”

With a frown, she careened enough to face him.

“And the family?”

A small, humorless smile crossed his face, darkening his eyes. She saw a coldness there she didn’t know and couldn’t recognize. All she knew was that she wanted it gone. 

“Let’s do it,” she said without knowing she would. “Let’s lock ourselves in and hide.”

He searched her face, uncertain, seeking out the smoke and mirrors. Deena sat up, took his face in both her hands, and pressed her mouth against his. She felt the corners of his mouth turn up against her and soon they were both smiling.

“Call up breakfast,” Tak said. “I’ll start the shower.”

She followed his nakedness with her gaze, drinking up an assortment of hard lines. She straightened her sweaty nightgown, traveled to the door and hollered for a maid to bring breakfast up. She met Mike’s gaze in the hall, ignored it, and went to join her husband in the shower.

They showered not as husband and wife did back home when always pressed for time, but as they used to back at his bachelor pad, when gasps and splashes were more important than the soap. Afterward, they took their flambéed crepes Suzette in bed, shamelessly licking at bits of caramelized sugar and feeding each other persimmons.

“How long do you think we have?” Deena said.

Tak bit into a sliver of fruit, running a thin stream of juice down his hand.

“Two minutes, maybe three.”

“We could bolt the door.” Deena smiled. “Prop some furniture against it.”

“Three for sure, in that case.”

Footsteps thundered in the hall. Squealing children tornadoed past, close enough to rattle the exit.

“And you wanted six children,” Deena said with a snort.

“Wanted? Past tense?” His brows did a little jig.

“Not from my body,” Deena said. “Not at this age.”

“What? Just a minute ago you had all this need…”

Deena sucked in a mouthful of red-faced horror and swatted him in the chest.

“In case it wasn’t clear enough earlier, you don’t get to quote what I say in bed.”

“How about reenact it? It’s not every day that you need someone.”

Deena drifted in a fog of almost-comprehension, reaching and not quite grasping what he was really trying to say. She decided to go for the obvious.

“Tak,” she said softly. “You can’t possibly be ready again already.”

He took the fruit from her hand and set it to one side.

“In all these years, there’s been no one I’ve felt more awe or admiration for. Everything you have, you got with these hands and this head.” Tak brushed curls from her cheek and ran a thumb along the curve of her face. “It’s been a long time since I felt like you needed me. For anything. So yeah, I could stand hearing that again.”

It occurred to Deena that his words were meant to be a compliment. That this was his interpretation of her was his understanding of her life. But how had her own husband got it so wrong?

“I need you,” Deena said. “Of course, I need you. How could you even say that?”

“Say what?”

“That!” She hit him. “What you just said.”

He withdrew, skepticism knitting his face.

“You love me. It’s not the same.”

“Try losing someone you love and telling me that. Tell me it’s not the same then.”

Her father. Her brother. Him. Which one hadn’t she needed?

Tak gathered her to him absentmindedly and they fell into a time-worn embrace. Caresses found her before kisses, each one gentle, restrained. Years of urgency, stolen moments, and heat had steamrolled into quickies as their norm.

“I think,” Tak said and kissed her, “that you can do without the clothes today, love.”