Deeper Than Need (7 page)

He lifted a brow.

“I’m not in a huge rush to get back to that house. If a lightning bolt struck it tonight, I wouldn’t cry a single tear.”

He ran his tongue across the inside of his teeth, debated a half-dozen responses before settling on one that seemed neutral enough. “Totally understandable.”

“It pisses me
off.
” She watched as Micah and the other boys started to tumble around the yard. Despite the fact that they’d only played together a handful of times, they acted like they’d been born joined at the hip. “That house…”

Her voice trailed off and she stopped, shaking her head. After a minute, she continued. “When I saw that place, read about this town, I knew I had to come here. It was like
home.
Something just pulled me here and I knew I had to be here. But now, part of me wants to take off running and never look back. I hate that.”

“If you weren’t feeling something along those lines, I’d probably be a little concerned.”

She slid him a look and he just shrugged. “Who in the world could be expected to take this in stride?”

“You look like you’re handling it well.”

He lifted a brow. “You obviously aren’t a mind reader. You ever watch
Scooby-Doo
when you were a kid?”

“When I was a kid?” She scoffed and plucked a thread from her shirt. “I watch it
now.
Only the good stuff, though. Forget those stupid remakes.”

“I knew you were a woman of excellent taste.” He grinned at her. Then, tossing his keys up in the air, he caught them, tossing them up again, focusing on that simple task instead of the words that formed in his head. “Maybe I
look
like I’m handling it well. But if you could see inside my head, you’d know that for the past few hours, I’ve felt about like Shaggy. Right when they found a really, really bad house and Fred and Velma want to go inside, and all he can do is stand there and go,
I’m not going in there. You can’t make me.
”

“Not even for a Scooby Snack?” A faint smile curved her lips.

“Not for a hundred of them.” He thought maybe
she
could talk him into it. For a smile. A kiss. Even if she just
needed
him to go in there for some reason, he’d do it. But that was about the only thing that could make him go in there willingly just then. Then he shrugged and opened the door. “Sooner or later, I’m going to have to go inside. I know it and I’m not happy about it, but I’ll deal. Trust me, though. I understand the lightning-strike idea.”

They eyed each other for a second. Trinity’s eyes were solemn, a smile curving her lips as she said, “If lightning hits it tonight, we can’t be blamed. We have no control over acts of God, right?”

“Nope.” Noah shot her a grin. “Absolutely none. But I’m not going to bet on that happening.”

*   *   *

Under most circumstances, Trinity didn’t let herself think about that smile of his for too long. The state of mind it put her in just wasn’t conducive to much of anything, except hot, dirty fantasies.

But hot and dirty were much better than fear and fury. So she let herself think about the smile, until she realized she was staring at his mouth and then she jerked her gaze away.

The weight of the world felt like it rested on her shoulders as she focused on the front yard. Ali stood on the porch, her hands tucked in her back pockets as she rocked back on her heels, keeping some kind of control over the boys while Noah and Trinity stayed by the truck.

“That house will still be standing come morning,” Trinity said, forcing the words out. “Sooner or later, I’m going to have to go back to it. How can I sleep there, knowing there was a body buried under it all these years?”

“I’d say you cross that bridge when you come to it.” He hauled the suitcase out of the back of his truck, shoulder muscles flexing under the faded material of his T-shirt. That soft, liquid feeling rolled through her and she shifted her gaze away, staring down at the ground before he looked back at her.

“Any idea what you’ll do for the next few days?” he asked. “You’ve been putting in a lot of time around the house, I know.”

Trinity’s grey eyes cut to his for just a moment. “I guess I’ll probably start looking for a job,” she said, sighing. “I was waiting until we’d settled things more with the house, but apparently it will be a few days before I can get back to it. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll wait—”

She went still as he reached up, touched her cheek. The warmth of his hand on her skin sent shivers racing through her. “It’s going to be okay, you know,” he said softly. “I promise you, that light at the end of the tunnel is
not
a train.”

“I hope not.” The smile she plastered on her face felt fake and tight. “And if it is, maybe I’ll just stockpile some dynamite. That will derail a train, right?”

“It just might.”

Abruptly she realized it had gotten quiet. She looked up and saw that the yard was empty.

“Ali herded the wild ones inside just a couple of minutes ago. She’s got lots of practice at it.”

“Oh.” The exhaustion slammed into Trinity, and more than anything she wanted to find a horizontal surface and just collapse. For a million years. A gentle hand closed around her arm and she looked down, saw Noah’s fingers curled around the crook of her elbow.

“Come on,” he said softly. “Let’s go sit down.”

Sit down.…

Then she saw the porch swing. He left the suitcase by the door. Part of her wanted to disappear in the house. Being out here alone with him would only make it that much easier to lean against him, and that was exactly what she’d wanted to do ever since he’d pulled away long enough to boost her up out of that awful, dark hole.

His hands had been certain and steady and his voice had been the same way as he told her what he was doing.
You need to get out of here. I’ll lift you up. Then you get my ladder off my truck. If it’s too heavy, just call nine-one-one. I’ll be fine.…

He’d jumped down there so she wouldn’t be alone.

He’d stayed with her, at her side, ever since.

The kindness was about to do her in.

As they sat down on the porch swing, she kept a careful distance between them, her hands knotted in her lap. Staring straight ahead, she let him set the swing into motion. The slow, easy rhythm lulled her and she was slumped back within a few seconds.

“Are you okay?” he asked a few minutes later.

“I’m fine,” she said automatically. The lie felt so false, it was a wonder her nose didn’t start growing.
Fine … how in the hell am I ever going to be
fine
again?
Images of that grotesque, malformed body she’d seen kept flashing in front of her eyes.

How long—

But before her mind could complete the question, she cut it off. She wasn’t going to let herself think about that. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

If she did, she was going to go mad.

Something moved out of the corner of her eye, and she froze, watching as Noah lifted a hand and brushed her hair back from her face, then rubbed his thumb over her cheek. “You’ve got a bruise,” he murmured. “Are you sure you didn’t hit something when you fell?”

“Oh, I hit something,” she said sourly. “My butt.” It had hurt like hell, too, and she still felt stiff and achy when she moved. Then she shrugged. “I ache some, but it’s nothing major, I don’t think.”

He nodded slowly. “If you’re sure. If something starts hurting, let me know. I’ll give you the names of a couple of doctors in town.”

She grimaced. Doctors. They ranked up on her list with dentists and lying ex-lovers—people she didn’t want to see. “I’ll be fine.” If she wasn’t, that was a problem she’d deal with later on. She had enough to think about just then.

Like the
dead body
that had been found …
in her house.

The horror of it slammed into her, then, full force, and she turned away from Noah. Tears burned her eyes and a knot the size of Manhattan settled in her throat. Her hands started to shake and the breakdown that had been just waiting was about to crash down on her. She needed to get inside, get Micah settled down. Get a drink. Find a dark room and hide herself away—

“I’m really tired,” she said, fighting to keep her voice level. “I think I’m going to go—”

“Hey.”

Noah’s hands came over her shoulders and she tried to jerk away, but those strong, beautiful hands were pretty insistent. “Trinity, come on,” he murmured.

The compassion in his voice all but broke her.

A sob rose in her throat and she shoved her fist against her lips to muffle it. Micah could come outside at any moment. She couldn’t cry. Not yet.

“Don’t,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I can’t. Not here, not now—”

“If not here, not now … then when? Hiding from it doesn’t make it better,” he murmured. He hooked an arm around her neck, drawing her close.

Unable to fight it, she sank against him. The solid, warm wall of his chest pressed against her cheek and she tried to swallow the sobs, the screams, as they clawed up her throat. She’d just let him hold her a minute. That would help, right?

He rested his hand on her nape.

“I’m almost positive when I go home,” he said, his voice low and soft, “that I’m going to freak out. I don’t know if us guys are supposed to do that. But I don’t care. That’s what I want to do.”

A hiccup escaped her.

“I keep seeing it and part of my mind is telling me that it wasn’t real—some sort of weird trick. But the rest of me—”

The sobs ripped out of her, and in the next moment Noah had her curled up in his lap.

“That’s it,” he murmured, his lips pressed against her temple. “That’s what you need to do. Get it out now.”

It had been manipulative and he knew it, the way he’d nudged her into crying. Maybe he should feel bad. But Noah suspected she was so used to hiding her emotions from everything and everybody—including herself—if she didn’t get it out now, she’d just keep hiding from it. The horror of what they’d both seen wasn’t the sort of thing that needed to be hid from.

Hiding never helped. He knew that from experience.

He had the worst feeling that she would have gone up to her room, pulled the blankets over her head and refused to let herself cry, even up there, for fear of scaring Micah.

As her body trembled, he brushed her hair back from her face. Every sob was like a hook in his heart, tearing and clawing through the flesh and ripping deep gouges into him. Yet he almost welcomed the pain.

She’d gotten to him, almost from the first, so it wasn’t a surprise that her pain left him gutted. He just wanted to take that horror away, make it all disappear.

Since he couldn’t, he just held her in his arms and kept the swing rocking.

Long moments passed before those deep, wrenching sobs passed.

The night had gone quiet around them before she spoke.

“You did that on purpose.” Her voice was raw and hoarse.

He blew out a breath and then looked down to meet her gaze. She wasn’t looking at him, though. Just staring off into the night. “I did. Should I apologize?”

“I haven’t decided. I planned on crawling into the bed and just trying to block it out.”

He stroked a hand up the slim, graceful line of her back. “That never helps.”

“No. But I can’t let Micah see me fall apart.” Another heavy sigh came from her.

“I’m not Micah.”

“No.”

They lapsed into silence for a few more minutes, her head on his chest. She showed no desire to move and he had no desire to move her.

Softly she asked, “You ever had the feeling you’re living under a bad star? Like you’re cursed or something?”

He looked at her, saw the strain on her pale, tired face. Tears still lingered and he brushed them away. “I’ve had that feeling a few times. Most people probably have.”

Her gaze swung up to his.

“Everybody goes through hard times.” He grimaced and added, “Although I can’t think of anybody who has had anything quite like that … that I know of, at least.”

“I wish I hadn’t had the honor of being the first.”

Using his hand to cup her chin, he studied her face. He’d seen more than his fair share of women after they’d finished a bout of crying. Some were pretty, even after they cried. Some were a mess—faces red, noses swollen—and that didn’t bother him.

Trinity wasn’t a pretty crier, but she still looked beautiful to him. He was starting to think she’d never look anything
but
beautiful to him. So beautiful, just looking at her was like a punch in the stomach. He ran the backs of his knuckles down her cheek and tried not to notice the way her breath caught. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t. “This will pass. Hopefully, once it does, you’ll be done with the rough patches for a good long while.”

She grimaced. “This isn’t even
all
of the bad shit Micah and I’ve had to deal with,” she muttered. “Rough patches? I feel like I’m tearing my way through to Briar Rose’s castle or something.” Then she winced. “Sorry … obscure reference.”

“Not so obscure. I know that one. Castle surrounded by thorns and all, right?”

“You into fairy tales, Noah?”

He shrugged. “I read stories to kids sometimes.” He twined a lock of her hair around his finger, couldn’t help but notice how thick, how soft, her hair was. “I think maybe what you need to focus on is what happens once you find yourself through those thorns. The bad can’t outweigh the good. You can’t see it right now, because this is all just plain horrible, but you’ll get there.”

“I don’t know
what
is going to be good enough to be worth finding somebody dead, hidden below the floor of my house,” she muttered, looking away from him and staring out into the night.

She didn’t see the way his face spasmed, the pain that flashed in his eyes.

“Right now, I don’t see it, either. But there’s going to be something.”

Looking back at him, she asked softly, “How do you know that?”

“Because I refuse to accept that you and I both had to see that, had to find that, for nothing. If nothing else, finding it will mean somebody gets closure,” he said finally. “It will take a while, I imagine, but sooner or later, they’ll figure out who it is. If that person had family, friends…? Nobody should be left to wonder.”