Liberty Begins (The Liberty Series) (18 page)

‘Mommy, I love you. I’m so sorry,’ I said, sobbing. I laid down with her then, and I held her until the sun came up.

I heard Ray a few hours later. I went out with my baseball bat. ‘She’s dead,’ I said to him flatly. He was standing there, naked in the middle of my living room, and it just seemed so ridiculous to me. Here was this man, with ugly, cloudy eyes, a skinny body and small, saggy dick. And he’d ruined us. He’d taken everything. ‘Get out,’ I’d said, but before he did, I stole a bunch of cash from him. I hadn’t made a plan yet but I knew I had to get away.

And that was the last time I saw Ray.”

I sat, looking at them, and I felt nothing but relief. Yes, this is what happened to me. I was lucky, I knew. I was so lucky that it hadn’t been worse.

John just sat there, rocking back and forth, his head in his hands.

“Okay,” said Matthew, clapping his hands together, trying to break the tension, “quitting time.” He and Ethan got up and quickly left the room.

I poured the rest of the wine into my glass and John’s. We both stood in silence and drank them.
See?
I thought.
Now you know. Now you know why I’m broken.

“Liberty, you are an incredibly brave woman,” John said, sounding awed. “I don’t know how you had the strength to do what you did, after all you’ve been through…. You are an incredible person. And you’ve done it all on your own.” He looked up at me, worshipfully.

“Thank you,” I said, drinking more wine.
But
I wish I was a clean slate for you, John.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I said, when we’d both emptied our glasses. I needed some air.

On our way out I stuck my head into the living room. John’s dad was curled up on the couch, snoring lightly. I grabbed the throw on the couch and gently covered him up.

“Should we move him?”

“No,” John said softly, looking at his father and shaking his head. “He sleeps down here sometimes since my mother died.” He turned off the television, grabbed my hand and led me outside.

It was dusk. We walked, hand in hand, down past the pool and onto the rocky beach. The cornflower blue sky stretched overhead, darker blue to the east, with streaks of cotton candy pink clouds to the west. There was a sprinkling of stars visible, brilliant and unobstructed by light pollution. It was so beautiful, I might never go back inside.

I had liked living in Eugene even though it rained a lot. I’d liked Vegas for a different reason; the desert was stark and exotic, and I felt like the dry heat had finally sucked all the dampness of Oregon from me. But even though I’d only been here for over a week, New England now had my heart. It smelled clean, like you could sense the fresh oxygen being produced by the leaves on the trees. The lush green grass, the tall pine trees, the freezing ocean; it was as if an artist had created it for you to enjoy. You could stand and stare, mouth agape, at all the color contrasts and different textures, all of them amazingly and painfully beautiful.

John squeezed my hand and broke my reverie. I looked at his handsome face and I had a sudden flash of him being alone, sleeping on his couch, like his father.
Not on my watch,
I thought. I reached out and brushed his shaggy hair out of his face.

“Is your dad lonely?” I asked. He’d seemed very alone just now, curled up on the couch.

“He misses Mom, of course. We both do. She passed away about five years ago — cancer.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and stopped to hug him. He held me tightly.

“
I’m
so sorry. About what we had you talk about tonight. That it happened to you, and to your mother,” John said. We found a big rock to sit on and John pulled me onto his lap.

“I told you not to be sorry for me,” I said, shrugging. “He didn’t hurt me as bad as he could have. I’m lucky. There are so many people out there who have it so much worse.”

“I’m still going to kill him,” John said, and smiled at me without a trace of humor in his eyes. I heard some iron in his voice that I’d never heard before.
Of course,
I reasoned,
there has to be this part of him. In order to do what he does.

So I knew how I was broken; and I think I knew how to fix it...by being with John, and letting myself trust in the love I had for him. But this side of John was what worried me...this lethalness, this ability to crush others...this was how
he
was broken. And I was worried that he was broken in a way I couldn’t fix.

I sat there a moment, gathering the courage to ask him something I’d been wanting to know since we met. I hesitated, not sure I really wanted to hear the answer. But I had told him about Ray, about my mother, and I was almost out of secrets. I needed to know his.

“Have you?” I asked, looking out at the darkening waves. “Killed someone?” It came out like a whisper.

He stroked my face and sighed. “I hope this doesn’t change things between us, but yes, I have. I’ve killed people.”

I didn’t say anything. Deep down, I’d known. “And Darius?” I asked, still staring out at the water.

“Darius is alive, but he’s refusing to cooperate. So we’re moving on to the next stage of asset management.” He grimaced and looked away from me.

“...And that means?”

“It means we are attempting to extricate information from him by means of force,” he said, turning back and looking at me levelly. “It means we're torturing him. Water-boarding him, if you want to know the specifics.”

I shuddered. I didn’t know what water-boarding was, but it sounded horrible.
Oh, John.
I just couldn’t reconcile the man in front of me, who was filled with so much warmth and humor, with a man who could torture someone else.
He had to be so messed up from what happened with Catherine. Maybe he thought about whoever had taken her every time he hurt someone
.

“How can you do it?” I asked. I hated Ray. I knew he was bad, through and through. But could I let someone torture him, with my knowledge? Would I approve? I couldn’t picture it.
Then again, I had tried to bash his brains in with a baseball bat.
I shuddered again.

“Liberty, there is a reason for what I’m doing. Darius has connections to some bad people, brutal people, and he has information about what they’re going to do next. It affects Cruz’s family and business in Brazil. If we don’t stop them, there will be serious consequences for innocent people.” He looked at me imploringly. “He was at your club to kill Cruz. I’m not harming an innocent person, Liberty.”

“Oh, John. I know. I could never think that about you,” I said, and I looked at him fully, so he could see I wasn’t hiding anything from him. “It’s just a lot to take in, to put together. You’re so kind and generous, it’s just hard for me to imagine you like that.”

I traced his lips with my fingers. Then he kissed me, a deep, lingering kiss that left me breathless.

“I don’t like to think about it,” John said, “but I’ve made peace with my decisions. I know I’ve helped more people than I’ve hurt. I don’t forgive myself for what I’ve done, but I can accept it for what it is.” He paused for a second. “Do you think that you’d be able to do that?”

“What?” I asked. “Accept you for the bounty hunter you are?”

He laughed a little and pulled me closer to him, so that my head was nestled against his broad shoulder. “Can you accept me for who I am, and what I’ve done?” He held me tightly as he waited on the answer; he didn’t seem to be breathing.

“I think so,” I said in a rush, looking up and kissing him, holding him to me. “I want to.” It was true. It didn’t matter what I learned from now on; I knew who he was, and that he’d done some questionable things, but I felt — in my very bones I felt it, I was so sure — that he was a good man. I knew his heart was good. But he
was
broken, and his pain drove him to lengths I couldn’t understand.

I wasn’t sure that I could handle being a part of that. I couldn’t see my life, my future, being around violence and torture. Being afraid for him. Worrying about what he was doing, if he was hurting anyone — and if anyone was hurting him.
But that’s a discussion for another day,
I reasoned.
Today’s been filled with enough revelation.

He exhaled in relief, kissing me again, forcefully, crushing his lips to mine. I ran my hands down his chest and shivered deliciously.
Mmmm
, I thought,
this was more like it
. I brought my body up so I could straddle him, and I could feel him, suddenly enormous and erect, springing to life underneath me.

He pulled back from me. “Are you okay with this?” he asked. “Being close to me? After everything we talked about tonight?”

I looked up at him and nodded. “I’ve been waiting for you,” I said, softly. “For a long, long time. You make it okay. You make
everything
okay.”

A huge smile broke out over his face, brilliant like the sun. He kissed me then, tenderly, and I felt a tear stream down my face. I wiped it away.
I was safe now, finally. Nothing was going to hurt me anymore, unless I let it.

He kept kissing me, and my body went wild in response. I pressed against him, riding him, trying to get as close as humanly possible to him through our clothes. The need to have him inside me was so intense, I really felt like something in me might burst.

I stopped rubbing up against him.
“Don’t don’t don’t,”
he whispered out, all in a rush, rubbing his face against mine, licking the outline of my lips with his delicious tongue.

I put my hands on his chest and pushed back from him, just a little, but enough to elicit a frustrated moan from him.
I know, I know,
my inner voice lamented.

“Speaking of acceptance,” I said, looking down at my hands and trying not to look at his broad, heaving chest, “I have one more skeleton I need to let out of the closet.”

“Are we doing a backlist? Because this could take a while,” John said, running his fingers up my side. He cupped my left breast through my tee shirt and a wave of electricity
split through me like lightning. “And I don’t have a while,” he said, beginning to methodically knead it.

My breath was coming out ragged and sharp. “John, please,” I said, and I forced his hand down to my lap. “What I have to tell you is relevant to now.”

He looked at me expectantly. “When I was younger, my mother was so sick...I was always taking care of her. I never had time to make my own friends. I never ... I never had a
boyfriend.
” I looked at him meaningfully; his face remained impassive. “After Ray, I just couldn’t let myself get close to anyone. I never wanted to. Until now.”

John was looking at me, smiling, with what appeared to be an extremely pleased look on his face.

“Well,
you
should know, that after Catherine’s mother and I parted ways, I never really had another girlfriend,” John said.

“For, like, twenty years?” I asked, incredulous. He was way too hot to have been alone for that long.

“Well, there were a few models in between,” he said, shrugging, “but no one special. Until now.”

He looked at me, beaming, but I just shook my head. “
Models?
Like, six-foot tall poreless freaks with immaculate hair?
For real?
I’m about to lose my virginity to you and you tell me the last people you slept with were a couple of
models?
” I stopped and clapped my hand over my mouth. I hadn’t meant to let my skeleton out quite like that.

John was shaking his head, laughing. “I can’t believe that you, who are so young and beautiful and completely perfect, could be upset about two models from a decade ago. Trust me, what I had with them was nothing,
nothing
compared to how I feel about you. In fact,” he said, wrapping his arms around me, and still beaming at me with what appeared to be perfect happiness, “I’ve never felt this way about
anyone
before. I’m happy every time I see you. All I do is think about you when you’re away from me.

“What is it,” he said taking my face in his hands, “about you that makes this so easy? Even though there’s trouble all around us,
I can’t wait to wake up every morning, to see your face.”

I felt like my heart was going to burst.
I felt exactly the same way. Was that possible? Was this for real?

“Did you catch the part where I said I was still a virgin?” I asked meekly, utterly humbled by what he’d just said.

“I’d guessed as much,” John said, kissing my face tenderly. “I’ll be very gentle.”