Burn for Me (10 page)

Jensen had grown up to be a cop. Out of all of them, she was the most solid, something that had baffled Tate for only a very short while. She’d lost her mother but that hadn’t sent her down a spiral. It might have done that to Tate and Chris, but it had centered Jensen.

She’d lost her mother and she’d do everything she could to keep another child from suffering the same, another family from going through the misery the Bell family had suffered all these years.

As Leslie Mayer was led out of there by two uniformed cops, still screeching at Jensen, his sister headed over to her desk, pausing only a second when she saw him waiting there.

“You had way too much fun with that,” he said.

“Hey, a girl’s gotta get her kicks somehow, right?” She knocked his feet off her desk and dropped into the seat. “Why are you here? It’s awful early for you. You usually skulk in your den until the day is half done.”

“I don’t skulk.”

“Brood. Whatever.” She shrugged. “You made up with Ali yet?”

He felt the hot, red crawl of blood creeping up his neck.
Half the damn town,
he mused. From the corner of his eye, he saw the grin on her face and the way trouble glinted in her gaze.

“People sure are interested in my love life.” He turned back to face her. Leaning in, he studied her closely, more closely than he usually let himself.

If Chris was a gothic Tinker Bell—attitude and chaos in one tiny little package—then Jensen was her polar opposite. Every bit as slim and slight as the youngest Bell sibling, yes, and there were physical similarities, but while Chris was all clashing colors and short temperament, Jensen was order. She wore her dark hair in a neat, chin-length cut and she probably spent five minutes on it a day—including washing. Her makeup bordered on the nonexistent and her clothes were just like her, efficient and simple.

She looked like a cop.

That was all she’d wanted to be.

She cocked her head and studied him, her green eyes narrowed to slits. Lips pursed, she continued the study until Tate had to fight the urge to squirm.

“Something’s different with you,” she finally said.

“Yeah? I went and had my nails done. Sweet of you to notice.”

She snorted. “Yeah. That’s it. Let me guess, you used one of Chrissie’s favorite colors she’s always pushing on me … Razzle Dazzle Red or something?”

“Nope. I went with Fru Fru Pink.” He smiled, relaxing a little as she jabbed at him. He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and rubbing his face. Man, he was tired. He felt like he’d aged a year in the span of a day. “Listen … I, uh, I’ve been thinking about things. Mom. Dad.”

She was quiet for a long time. So quiet, he finally lifted his head and saw her eyeing him, a sad smile on her face. “Finally figured it out, Tate?”

He blew out a breath. “So you aren’t going to throw roses or something at me?”

“Roses?” She grinned. “Let me guess. You’ve already told Chrissie?”

“Yeah. Know the bucket of flowers she keeps up on her table when she works?”

Jensen arched her brows.

“She pelted me with them.” He rubbed a finger over the scratch on his cheek. “Fortunately, most of them didn’t have thorns.”

“Yeah? Then what?”

He shrugged. “We talked. Wanted to come over and see you.” He blew out a breath and straightened back up in the chair, staring up at the ceiling without seeing it. “I’m going to hunt him down later and talk to him. He’s probably going to tell me to get the hell out, but I’ll try.”

“He won’t tell you to get out.”

“Why not?” he bit out. Shoving upright, he moved to the minuscule window she had by her desk. Jensen didn’t have an office but as one of the two lieutenants, her work area was a little bigger. By maybe two inches. She also had a window. He focused on it while temper sparked and brewed inside him. “Why not, huh? I did my damnedest to turn you all against him. I spent fifteen years hating him. I hassled every cop who’d listen to me to reopen the case and dig deeper into his story. Why shouldn’t he tell me to get out?”

“Because he understands.” Jensen didn’t bother getting up. She stretched her legs out and rested her elbow on the desk, glancing around the room, but most of the other cops had headed out to lunch or were out on patrol. The few left were too far away to hear them, although the siblings knew they’d
try
. “Tate, you needed a target. He let himself be that target. The same way you were the target when I found out my boyfriend was cheating on me senior year. Instead of going after him, you made me mad at you instead.”

Tate glared at her. “I just wanted to handle the punk myself. He shouldn’t have been messing around on you anyway.”

“You still let me take my mad out on you … it was safer.”

He looked away. “Nah. That jackass wouldn’t have lifted a hand to you—he couldn’t handle a woman who stood up to him. Probably why he kept fucking around on you.”

She sighed. “Fine. You want to play that way, go ahead. He did the same thing you do. Now
I
am going to do what Mom would have done—give more unsolicited advice. Stop standing there worrying and just talk to him.”

Chapter Six

The old man was sitting behind the shop where he’d been working all these years.

Ever since he’d closed his place down. Hard to keep it open, when half the people who used to bring him business started giving him the side-eye, wondering if he had indeed killed his wife.

Gut in knots, Tate moved across the busted pavement slowly, wondering how much of that was his fault. He’d never been quiet about what he’d thought. Was he to blame for that, too?

A busted bit of glass crunched under his boot and his dad tensed, slowly lifted his head.

He turned and looked and across the parking lot, their gazes locked.

Then Doug went back to eating his lunch. His actions were slow and mechanical, like he did it only out of necessity.
I’m human. I gotta eat. So I will.

Tate understood that. That was how he approached almost everything in life.
I’m human. I gotta eat, gotta sleep, but I don’t much care if I do it or not. I’m only doing it because I have to.

The only things in life that he took pleasure in were his art—and that was a release more than a pleasure—and Ali, her kids.

Fuck, he needed to get a better grip on life. Ali was everything, her kids were an added blessing he felt he had no right to.

But shouldn’t there be
more
?

The wooden bench gave under his weight as he settled across from his father, but a foot or so down so he could look at the crumbling cinder block of the garage, rather than Doug. It was easier that way. Simpler.

He opened his mouth, then snapped it closed after five seconds passed with no words coming.

Clearing his throat, he tried again, but the words evaded him.

A quiet sigh drifted under the hot summer sun. Doug said softly, “Boy, whatever it is that’s eating you, just let it go.”

“I can’t.” He slanted a look at his father. They didn’t look much alike—the artist in him could pick up the similarities—the shape of their hands, the set of their mouth, their eyes. But mostly, Tate took after his mom’s father. Physically, at least. Everything else, though, that was his dad and that was why this was so hard. He clasped his hands together and pressed his forehead to them, staring at the table while words circled through his head.

They were
there
. If he could
think
them, he could
say
them.

Right?

His hands felt painfully empty and because he was having the hardest time concentrating, he tugged a little leather journal from his pocket and flipped it open. It was full of a thousand sketches, it seemed—he’d fill a page and then move on to the next, and the next until he had no room left. He’d then buy another one. This journal was about half full. He started to sketch and once his hands were moving, he could almost imagine the block in his head moving.

He sketched a wall. He’d add a ginormous wrecking ball smashing through it—he’d do the damn ball in the shape of his head. “I messed up. I was wrong.” He managed to get those words out as he finished the outline of the wall. He wished he could stop there.

“Tate, you had a rough life. You don’t need to—”

“The hell I don’t.” He lifted his head slowly and met his father’s eyes. His own eyes, he realized with a jolt. Not just the color, or the shape or the size. But everything about them. He realized Doug would do this, too. He’d force himself to own up to the hard shit. Maybe he wouldn’t expect it of others, but he damn well expected it of himself.

The knot lodged in his throat and he threw the pencil he held down. “Fuck, Dad.”

“You’re too much like me, you know.”

He sucked in a breath and went to say something, but before he could, Doug just continued to talk, his voice low and easy. “And … too much like your mom. Too much like yourself, even. If that makes sense. I don’t think you could be any more contradictory if you had to.” A hint of temper finally showed in the older man’s voice as he tossed his sandwich down and dragged his hands over his face. “You don’t want to expect anything from anybody, and at the same time, you seem to set the highest fucking expectations. How is that even possible?”

Tate ran his tongue across his teeth. Then he shrugged. “I’m an asshole?”

Doug’s eyes shot to his face and then a slow, reluctant smile lit his face. “No.” He shook his head. “No, you can be, and too often, you are. But that’s because of the kick in the face life gave all of us. I think…” His voice trailed off and then he sighed. “I think if your mom hadn’t gone and disappeared the way she did, you would have been a different man. You’re a good man now, but you’re harder. Sadder. I hate it.”

Tate didn’t know how to respond to that. Uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going, he sighed and shook his head. “Dad, there’s no point in talking about any of that. I just … look. I’m sorry. I was wrong, and I’m sorry. I can’t make any of it up to you.”

He would have said more, but his father reached out and covered his hand with his.

It was the first time they’d touched in more than a decade. Tate recalled, vividly, the last time his father had touched him—high school graduation. He’d tried, yet again, to bridge the gap between them. Tate had told him if he laid hands on him again, he’d bury him.

Shame rose up in him, thick and dirty and black. He couldn’t take this back, not any of it.

“You don’t need to make a damn thing up to me,” Doug said. . “You’re my son. The one thing I wanted to have again … other than to tell your mom how sorry I am … well, you called me Dad again. I don’t need anything else.”

His dad’s image blurred. Looking away, he focused hard on the cinder block wall of the garage, staring at it until his vision cleared.

An awkward silence fell and he had no idea how to fill it, no idea what to say to this man who was all but a stranger to him now.

After a moment, Doug cleared his throat. “I hear you have something going with Ali.”

Tate flicked him a look. Half the damn town. Probably closer to the
all
the damn town. Shrugging, he reached for his pencil again and started to sketch. “Yeah. We’re … ah. Well, we’re working on it.”

“She loves you.”

Hands still over his sketch pad, Tate looked up.

Doug smiled. “I see how she looks at you. If you love her, boy, don’t let that slip away. You have no idea how precious that is. Sometimes, you don’t realize it until it’s over and gone and you have no chance of ever getting it back.”

I almost lost it
. But he couldn’t talk about it with his dad. This … thing was too awkward, too strange. He just met his dad’s eyes and nodded. “I’m not going to let it go.”

Chapter Seven

He’d stood here.

Just here, a hundred times.

Maybe even more.

At the foot of his mother’s empty grave, waiting, wondering, hoping for answers that just weren’t going to come.

For the first time, he stood there without feeling the weight of all those questions, all that anger.

“I don’t think you’d want me to keep carrying all that around,” he said, while a breeze kicked up, blowing his hair back from his face.

He sighed and then looked away. “Screw that. You wouldn’t want it. I was wrong. You’d probably kick my ass if you could see how I’ve been acting all this time.”

He couldn’t undo it, though. All he could do was go forward.

“I’m going after Ali.” He paused as the words hung there, tentative and soft. Then he nodded. “Yeah. That is something you would like. I love her.”

Closing his eyes, he let himself smile. “I don’t know how I’m going to handle any of that, but I love her and we’re going to make it work.”

He waited a few more minutes, might have said something else, but a fat, heavy drop of rain came down, fell on his nose. He shot a look up at the leaden sky and blew out a breath. “Good-bye, Mom.”

He turned his back on the grave and strode out of the cemetery, but instead of heading straight to Ali’s, he cut down by the river as the rain started to come down harder.

Miles down the river, far, far outside of sight, something, buried for years, shifted.

The car, pushed out of place after a year of heavy rains, started to drift.

*   *   *

Tate stood on Ali’s porch. Although he had a key, he didn’t go to the back door. He lifted a fist, knocked.

He had the words he wanted to say, and he was going to get them out. No matter what.

She opened the door, giving him a puzzled smile.

“I thought maybe I could take you out on a date,” he said, while rain dripped down his face.

“Ah … well, the boys are here.” She looked past his shoulder to stare out at the pounding rain. “It’s raining kinda hard.”

“I wanted to take you out. The boys. All of us.” He swiped the rain from his face as Joey and Nolan appeared in the doorway, one on either side of her. They grinned up at him.

“Take us where?”