Pieces of My Heart (21 page)

“Then what is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Jade . . .” He reached for me again and again I avoided his touch. 

“Stop it.”

“Stop what? How am I supposed to know what I'm doing wrong if you won't talk to me?”

“Please. Just don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Touch me.”

He paused. “So you
don't
want me to touch you.”

“No.” His fingers eased away from my wrist, slowly and I immediately missed their soothing warmth. “I don't want you to
have
to touch me. I’m a stain.
You
shouldn't want to touch 
me
.”

“Why? Where is this coming from?”

“Because . . .”

“Because
why
, Angel?”

“Because I'm not one of
them,
okay? I'm not some upper class, rich girl who can wear thousand dollar dresses and three inch heels . . .” I’d spent the evening plodding around in granny flats thanks to my weak ankle. “. . . and talk about things I don't even know about.
That’s
who you should be with, Cal. One of
those
girls. Like Beth. Someone you can take to parties and show off and not be ashamed of.” My voice dropped to barely a whisper, emotion clogging my throat. “I’m not one of those girls.”

Shutting his eyes, he pressed his forehead to mine and took a deep calming breath. When he opened them again, they burned with a conviction so bright it branded my heart.

“Jade . . . Beth is not the girl I go to sleep thinking about every night. She’s not the girl who follows me into my dreams. And she’s not the girl whose name is on my lips the moment I wake up every morning.
She
is not the person I draw strength from when I feel weak. She’s not the one who holds me up when I can’t stand on my own. She’s not the one who went through hell with me and came out stronger on the other side.

“Only one person on this godforsaken planet has been all of that to me since the moment I laid eyes on her. Only one person has the power to break my heart or heal it, because she holds it in the palm of her hand. Only one person is my light in the darkness. My peace in the chaos. My greatest strength
and
my greatest weakness . . . My Angel.”

I was stunned. Staring up at him in awe and wonder, I was literally speechless. But that was okay because Caulder wasn’t finished yet.

“I love you, Jade. I’ve loved you since . . . before I ever met you. I tried not to. I tried to pretend these feeling I have for you didn’t exist. That they weren’t real. And when that didn’t work, I ran like hell. But I couldn’t stay away from you, so I pushed you away instead. I did all of that because . . . because it feels like I’m stealing the most precious thing my brother had when he’s not here to defend it.”

That rubbed away a little of the wonder. “I’m not an object to be stolen, Cal.”

“I know that.” He shook his head. “I do. I just . . . It doesn’t matter. What matters is the truth. That I love you so much that when you leave it feels like I hold my breath and don’t draw another until we’re together again. When we’re apart, I’m suffocating.”

I was terrified of waking from this moment to find it all a dream. There was no way anyone could be lucky enough to find this kind of love not once, but twice in their life. Certainly not me.

“Say something, Angel. I kinda just laid it all out there. Don’t leave me hanging.”

“I . . .” I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. After his grand declaration, everything that sprang to mind sounded lame and not nearly good enough.

“I get it if you don’t—” He started to backpedal and I panicked, afraid he’d talk himself right out of loving me.

Practically lunging across the space that divided us, I crashed into him, sealing my lips to his before he could utter another word.

Caulder’s groan vibrated down my throat as his arms closed around me. My hands found their way to the solid wall of muscle supporting me and began, tentatively, to explore. Abs, chest, neck. All deep cut lines and hard, flat surfaces. Sometimes I became so blinded by the man he was underneath that I forgot how incredibly sexy he was on the surface, too.

His lips parted over mine and I felt the hot, wet brush of his tongue. I opened my mouth to him and felt the intoxicating scrape of his stubble against my cheek and chin as he delved deeper.

I couldn’t get enough. Pressing up onto my tiptoes, I fisted my hands in the thick material of his suit jacket and tugged him down to me. Caulder growled, backing me up a step and then another until my back collided with the wall. Something clattered to the floor, but both of us were too far gone to care.

The wood molding felt cold against the backs of my legs, but everywhere else felt hot. My heart kept time with his, slamming up against one another’s. His hands moved slowly up my back, caressing the bare skin of my shoulders and throat.

My head swam with his scent, his taste, his touch. It was all too much and not enough. Never enough.

When we broke apart, a wide smile made Caulder’s face even more handsome.

It took me a moment to catch my breath before I could tell him what I hoped he’d already figured out. “I love you, too.”

A wicked gleam lit in his eyes. “I’m not sure I got that, yet. I think you may need to show me again.”

And I did.

Twenty One

“Cal, are you still sleeping?” Mrs. Parks’ voice drew me lazily back into the land of the living.

My eyes blinked against the afternoon light pouring through the window. I hadn’t slept that good in . . . ever. I twisted my neck to spy the clock. And froze.

Oh, god.
Oh, god!

“Cal.” Shoving his shoulder did nothing, he barely budged. “Wake up!” I hissed directly into his ear and he groaned at me.
Groaned.
I did not have time for this.

Resorting to brutal tactics, I slipped my hand under the blankets and jabbed him in the ribs. He shot straight up like a jack-in-the-box. “What the hell?”

“Your mother’s home.”

“So you tickled me?”

“You wouldn’t wake up. Oh, man.” Tumbling out of the bed like it had suddenly caught fire, I righted myself and began patting down my hair.

Caulder propped himself up against the headboard, watching my antics with an amused grin. “What are you doing?”

“We were sleeping in your bed, Cal.
Together
!”

“Yeah, we were
sleeping
, Angel. It’s not a punishable offense.”

“But your mom . . .”

“What about her?”

“
Cal?
” Mrs. Parks tried again and Caulder rolled his eyes at her persistence.

“I’m coming! Give me a minute, would ya?” His gaze moved from the door, back to me and held with a steadiness that let me know he wasn’t going anywhere—and neither was I—until we finished what I’d started.

“What will she say?” Cal had to shout to be heard, so whispering really wasn’t necessary, but I did it anyway.

“About what?”

“About me. About
us
.”

“About
us
?” He considered it for a moment and then smiled. “I like the sound of that.”

“Cal,” I groaned and he laughed at me.

“Relax. She’ll probably do cartwheels.”

“She—” Wait. “What?”

“She loves you, Jade. Any chance she gets at keeping you in the family, she’s going to jump all over it. She’ll probably be trying to plan our wedding before the end of the month.”

“But . . .” I stared at him completely confounded.

“Kiernan?”

A nod was the best I could manage, choking down the lump in my throat before the words would come. “She’s going to think I’m a slut. Jumping from one son to the other . . . she’ll hate me.”

“Whoa.” The blanket pooled around Caulder’s waist as he sat up, smile dropping just as quickly. “Is that what
you
think?”

“No . . . Yes . . . Maybe. I don’t know.” But I did. I just hadn’t realized it until right that second. “I can’t help how I feel about you, Cal. Like I can’t help how I feel about myself.”

“That you’re a slut. For being with me?”

“No. Not you. This has nothing to do with you.” There I went again, ruining anything good in my life. I was the most self-destructive human being on the planet Earth. “Please, Cal, I didn’t mean—”

“I know. Breathe, Angel. Come here.” He threw back the blanket and scooted to the edge of the bed, patting the space beside him.

I sat, the fear of what he thought far outweighing what his mother might think if she found us like that. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Stop talking and listen for a minute.” He twisted to face me, pulling one knee up on the mattress between us, and ducked his head to my height. “First of all, you have to stop worrying about what other people think. Especially me. I love you, Jade. That isn’t something that’s going to disappear because of a few misinterpreted words. Okay?” His fingers felt warm against the cold skin of my forehead as he brushed some errant strands of hair from my eyes. “Don’t censor yourself around me. I want to hear everything you’re thinking, even the absolute crap that you just spewed.
Especially
the crap. Because that’s the stuff that will eat you up inside if you don’t let it out.

“And secondly, you are
not
a slut. The fact that you could even think that word could possibly apply to you only proves that you don’t even know the meaning of it.”

The intensity in his gaze was too much for me to handle. Examining the fingers I was tightly wringing together, I fought the urge to tell him all the reasons he was wrong about me. And lost. “I went straight from dating Doug for years, to being with Kiernan, and now—”

“I heard about Doug.” His eyes darkened along with his voice. “That wasn’t a relationship, Jade. That was an asshole taking advantage of you.”

I couldn’t entirely disagree, even if that wasn’t the way everyone else saw it. “But Kiernan . . .”

“You loved him. I know you did. He knew you did.” Caulder paused and I felt the significance of the seemingly benign moment along with him. It was the first time Caulder had referred to his brother in the past tense. The first sign that he was learning to let go. To move on. He shared it with me in silent recognition and then moved on as though nothing had happened. “Mom knows you did. But you’re allowed to have feelings for more than one person in your life. My mom loved my dad, but don’t you think she’ll feel that way about someone else again, someday? I hope she does. She deserves to. But that won’t lessen how much she loved my father in his time. Jade, if anyone will understand this, it’s her.”

“You think so?” Why was it
so
easy to believe the bad stuff and
so
freaking hard to believe the good? Beautiful? Smart? Sweet? Everything in me repelled those words. Insisted they were just polite nonsense. The harsh truth cemented itself in words like slut, leech, sewer rat.

“Stop, Angel.” A warm hand settled on my cheek, thumb cupping my ear while his fingers threaded deep into my hair. “Get out of that head. Come back to me.”

I blinked up at him and he smiled, but there was a sadness to it. “There you are. You’re still hearing her, aren’t you?”

Loud and clear. Drowning out everyone else. And Caulder had already made it clear he couldn’t live with that. But I couldn’t live without him. “I’m trying, Cal. I swear I am. It’s just hard to—”

“It’s okay.” His thumb stroked idly over my temple. “You’ve got a lifetime of crap packed away in there. It wasn’t fair of me to think you could just . . . shut it out. It doesn’t work that way. This isn’t something that you’re going to overcome overnight. But it is something we’re going to work on. Together. For as long as it takes.”

I turned my face to kiss his palm and nuzzled against the soothing warmth of his touch. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” My eyes were drawn to the way his abs crunched as he bent forward to press a kiss to my hair. “And nothing’s going to change that.”

“I made breakfast if anyone’s ready!” Mrs. Parks’ voice drifted up the stairs and Caulder chuckled.

“Maybe I should put on a shirt, though.”

He shoved off the bed and traipsed toward his closet while I contemplated what to do next. I
should
have gone back to my own room, gotten changed, fixed the wild mess my hair surely was. I just didn’t have any desire whatsoever to leave Caulder’s bed. So I stayed.

In less than a minute Cal reemerged, pulling a plain white tee over his gray sweats and he was ready to go. Sometimes being a girl really wasn’t fair. He had his cell in his hand. He put it to his ear and as he listened a dark cloud seemed to brew in the room. Caulder’s face went rock hard and his teeth ground together so loudly I could hear them across the room. His eyes were centered on the window, but his gaze was entirely inward. That didn’t stop the storm of emotion from showing in them, though. His chest rose and fell as though he’d just sprinted a marathon.

He didn’t speak a word. Just listened. When the message was over, he let the phone drop to his side where it dangled from his fingers for a moment before slipping free and falling to the floor.

“What is it?” A million terrible possibilities rushed through my mind. “Cal, what’s wrong?”

“My dad.”

“What about him?” I eased off the mattress and approached slowly.

“He called. This morning, I guess. Left a message.”

Cal still wasn’t seeing anything, so I inched toward him and slid my hand gently up his arm to his shoulder. “What did he say?”

My touch seemed to draw Caulder back to me. He stared at my face and then down at the phone lying harmlessly on the carpet. “He called to say he forgives me.”

“Forgives you? For what?” How could he possibly think he was in any position to offer forgiveness for anything? Especially to his son.

“I saw him. While I was in California. I only meant to give him a piece of my mind, but . . .” Whatever had happened out there, Caulder was ashamed of it. I could see it in his eyes. The way his shoulders drew up defensively. “I lost my temper. I punched him. I know I shouldn’t have, but—”

“Cal. You do not need that man’s forgiveness.
He’s . . .” I didn’t have words for what that man was.

“A sick, twisted son of a bitch.” But Caulder had plenty, only they lacked the conviction I knew he wanted them to have. Instead of anger, they only seemed to draw out hurt in him. “Did you know he had the nerve to say he wants to be a family again?”

Knowing I was venturing into explosive territory, I did so cautiously. “What do
you
want?”

“I kinda want to hit him again.” It wasn’t true. He may have wanted to want to hit him, but he didn’t. Not really.

“But?”

“But nothing.” He was desperately clinging to the fragments of anger. Using them to bury how he really felt.

“But . . . he’s your dad.” I offered the words quietly not knowing how they’d be received. “You still love him. You can’t help it.” I knew a thing or two about the harsh realities of unconditional love.

“I
hate
him, Jade. I hate him so much it hurts. But . . .” His eyes squeezed tight and he shook his head. “I miss him like hell, too.” Confusion and pain swirled in his eyes when they reconnected with mine. “How can that be?”

I huffed a laugh that had zero humor behind it. “I wish I knew. Family can screw with our heads and our hearts better than anyone else in the world.”

“I hate it because he was a good father. Loving. Supportive. Everything a father’s supposed to be. He was my goddamn hero. I wanted to be just like him. For almost twenty years my entire identity was dependent on him. I was Caulder Parks, son of Sam Parks. I don’t . . .” He shrugged, his eyes searching my face as though it held the answers to his unasked questions. “I don’t know who I am without him.”

We were standing so close that I had to tip my head all the way back to see him as my hand made its way up his neck, joined by the other to cup his face. “That’s okay. Because I do. I’ve never met your father, but I know exactly who
you
are. You’re Caulder Parks. Son of the incredibly giving, loving, talented Claire Parks.” He smiled at my description of his mother and his scruff, longer than usual before his morning shave, prickled against my palms. “Brother of Kiernan Parks. Protector of those he cares about. Strength to those who need it. Caring. Gifted. Generous to a fault. Dangerously charming. And maybe a tiny bit handsome, too.”

He laughed, but the warmth radiating from his eyes was clouded by the tears beginning to pool there.

“You’re Caulder Parks. You’re the man I love.”

One tear slipped free before his eyes slammed shut, locking the rest away and his lips found mine. When we broke apart, his eyes remained shut, his arms around me, locking me in his embrace. My hands cradled his face as his forehead rested against mine.

We stayed like that for a long time, until it began to feel like it would never end. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but . . . “We should probably go eat.”

“Just a minute.” Caulder’s chest expanded, pressing against mine, “I’m breathing.”

I let him. Until he was ready and gradually drew back. Scooping up his phone, he fiddled with it for a minute before tucking it away in his pocket.

“What does your mom think? About your dad wanting to come back?”

“She doesn’t answer his calls.” Caulder shook his head. “She doesn’t think I’ve noticed, but she hasn’t spoken to him since he skipped out on the funeral. I told him to leave her alone, to stop calling her. But if he called me, I’m sure he left her a message, too. I should go talk to her. Make sure she’s alright.”

There he went again. Struggling under the weight of his own pain and only thinking about taking away that of others.

“Why don’t you let me?”

“Really?” I was only mildly insulted by the fact that he looked stunned by my offer. “You’d do that?”

“Of course I’d do that.”

“Angel, you don’t have to—”

“I
want
to do this, Cal. Please?”

“Okay.” He nodded slowly. “She might talk to you since he’s not . . .”