Return to Glory (Hqn) (15 page)

“They taste like you.”

“You did say I taste like vanilla.”

“No, Bets. Like
you.
” He savored the way it melted on his tongue. “They taste like your sweetness after I made you scream my name.”

He was torn between wanting to lick his fingers, and finding every single one of the people who bought one and finding some way to erase it from their memory, from all of their senses. This was a flavor to be experienced, savored with sight, scent, touch and taste.

Jack didn’t want to share.

Betsy blushed. “It does not.”

“Oh but it does. Remember when I kissed you after?”

She blushed harder.

“Kiss me now.”

“Jack, you’re... Fine.” She leaned in for a chaste peck, but he wouldn’t allow it. Instead his tongue pressed against the seam of her lips and she opened for him.

He willed her to taste the vanilla, the sugar, the sweet that was more than physical, but almost something on a metaphysical level.

She moaned softly into his mouth.

“Do you taste it?” His words were a ragged whisper.

“All I taste is you.”

“Never make those again for anyone but me.”

“But they were such a hit,” she teased.

“I’ll make it worth your while.” He crashed his mouth into hers. “I’ll do everything you wanted on that table, under it, over it...”

“You’d do it anyway.”

“You’re right. I would.” Because touching her was the only thing that silenced the noise in his head. The whiskey had dulled it, but Betsy could make it go quiet and still.

“Let me lock the door.” Betsy broke away from him, but only long enough to secure the door and draw the blinds before she was back in his arms. “I thought you wanted me to bake naked.”

“It tastes like you already did.”

“What are you favorite tastes now?” She ran her palms over his biceps.

“You. And bacon.”

She laughed, a musical sound. “Then I’ll make these tomorrow again, but with bacon. All your favorite things together.”

“I don’t think your clientele will appreciate bacon donuts.”

“Whoever doesn’t appreciate bacon donuts doesn’t belong in my shop anyway.” She tightened her arms around his neck.

“I’ve noticed as tastes have started to come back to me that memories have a taste. Feelings have a taste. The group last night was cinnamon. It was sharp and spicy. It burned a little, but it was sweet, too.”

“I can show you what
today
tastes like.” She took his hand and led him toward the kitchen.

He wanted that. He wanted to know what today and all the tomorrows could taste like. He wanted to know what he was fighting so hard for.

“Today tastes like pink,” she said as she worked the button on his jeans. “It tastes like cotton candy. It’s all spun sugar and beautiful things. Pink is the color of happiness.”

She was right. Betsy’s dress was pink, with white hearts on it. Her lips were pink, and as he tugged down her panties, he knew pink was the color of all good things.

She bent over the prep table. “Take me hard and fast. Then I’ll bake for you and you’ll know exactly what pink tastes like.”

Jack tangled a fist in her hair and sank into her softness.

He lost himself in her, but not in the pink. Not in the sugar. Not in the good things. He was just lost. Her body clenching around him and pulling him deeper caused him to bite down on his lip so hard his own blood was on his tongue.

And he tasted it. The copper tang burned through cinnamon memory and knocked down the wall he’d built in his head with a wrecking ball.

He continued to thrust inside her, and she cried out, arched against him, but he wasn’t present. He was in Mosul. He drilled into her, looking for that release, that pleasure—but there was no escape from the hell in his own head.

* * *

B
ETSY SENSED THE CHANGE
in Jack, in the way his body moved against hers. There was an underlying ferocity and desperation in his actions, and it wasn’t because he was close to his pinnacle.

His fingers dug into her hips and he drove forward almost mechanically. For as much as she wanted to offer him comfort, though, what he was doing felt too good. Her heart told her to stop, to turn and look into his eyes, but her body wanted just one more moment of bliss. Then another, and still another.

She was so full of him, consumed by him, and if she was honest, she’d been using her body as well as the baked goods to save him. If he couldn’t find solace in pleasure with her, Betsy didn’t know what else to do.

And she wasn’t ready to fail, wasn’t ready for this to be over, and more important, she wasn’t ready to let go and allow the darkness to have him.

So instead she met his intensity and the power of his thrusts. She closed her fingers over the edge of the table and anchored herself to accept whatever he wanted to give her. No matter how hard, how deep, how fast. She wanted more of him, needed it more than her next breath.

“More,” she demanded.

And he obliged her.

This was exactly what she wanted from him. He was unrestrained—wild. He wasn’t treating her like some holy, breakable thing. He took her as if she belonged to him, and as if he belonged to her.

She loved the weight of him against her, the contrast of his brute strength against her softness, the absolute and utter bliss he brought her with every stroke. He hit the core of her again and again, sensation radiating out all the way to her fingertips and the soles of her feet.

His culmination took him quickly, but he didn’t stop. His hips kept moving and grinding against her like some kind of automaton. His grip slackened and she turned, to face him.

Jack’s eyes were glazed over and it was obvious to Betsy that he wasn’t there.

But rather than being afraid, she felt her heart splintering, thinking of the pain he must be in.

“Jack?” They sank to the floor and she wrappened her legs around his hips to lock him against her.

A tormented sound was ripped from him and she watched as the shadows receded and Jack came back to himself.

Horror followed awareness and he tore himself away from her.

“Jack?” she asked again.

“I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

“I could’ve... I have to go.” He got up and started to right his clothing.

“Hey, it’s fine. It’s more than fine, actually.” Betsy offered him a shy smile.

“You don’t understand, Betsy. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t with you.”

“I know,” she whispered. “But you came back to me.”

“I could hurt you.”

“The only thing that hurts right now is that you’re trying to leave again.” She vaulted to her feet and put her hand on his shoulder to comfort him.

He tightened his hands into fists, then splayed them, only to curl his fingers against his palms again.

Betsy could see the evidence of his frustration. “Look, you say I don’t understand, so help me. Explain it to me, because I want to understand.”

“Do you?” he snarled suddenly, and she found herself pressed up against the wall, his face only inches from hers. “Do you want to know that even while I’m looking at your face I know the exact placement of at least ten different items, not including your knives, that I could use to kill? That even with as strong as you are, as tough, I could snap your bones like twigs.”

“But you wouldn’t.” She knew Jack would never hurt her. Betsy freed her hand and cupped his cheek.

His eyes fluttered closed for a moment. “Yes, I would.” He nodded emphatically and exhaled heavily. “If I thought you were someone else. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s worse because it’s you. Do you know what I would do to someone I thought was trying to hurt you?”

Betsy supposed that was meant to frighten her, but it didn’t. She felt safer, dangerously cherished. Maybe even loved. “Jack.” She stroked her thumb over his cheek.

“I’m broken, Bets, and I’m trying like hell to put myself back together, but there are still pieces missing.”

“Maybe you can’t see it, but you’re still the same hero you were when you left. Even more now because you know what it means to sacrifice. There is nothing wrong with you.”

“I can’t—
we
can’t do this. Whatever this was, it was good. But it’s over. It has to be. You’re going to get hurt and I just couldn’t live with that.”

He slammed out the door and Betsy was sure he’d ripped her heart out of her chest as he went.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

J
ACK KNEW WALKING
away from her now was the right thing. It was the only thing.

He kept thinking about O’Neil’s story, how he’d held his weapon on his wife and baby girl. He’d thought he was protecting them, but he could’ve hurt them. Maybe even killed them.

It was a fucked-up thing to take a man and make him a predator, to paint him in honor and glory for his horrible deeds and then expect him to slip back into his place with the expectation that he’d forget what he’d been taught.

Jack knew Betsy still didn’t understand, that she thought maybe he just didn’t want to get better. He did. Betsy had done exactly what she set out to do. She wanted him to remember who he was, wanted him to choose to live his life. He wanted that more than anything, except keeping her safe.

Jack walked the few blocks to his house and all he could think about was her. The way she felt beneath him, the way she wanted him and the way she looked into his eyes with absolute trust.

That’s what had done it.

If she’d shown some fear, or any other reaction besides her unwavering faith, he might have convinced himself everything would be fine. But because she trusted him implicitly, he was determined not to fail her.

He had to keep her safe from all threats. Even herself.

With every step he took away from her, the chasm in his chest split further apart, the wound torn wider until finally, when he stepped onto his porch, it was as if a black hole spawned inside him.

But he wouldn’t let himself drown in it. Not like before.

As he trudged up the steps, he noticed three more covered dishes sitting by his door. Rather than finding them irritating, he was able to see the meaning behind the gesture. These people weren’t just trying to get their look at him. They were trying to show their support in the only way they knew how.

Betsy had taught him that. When other aspects of the needs pyramid weren’t being met, nourishment was the easiest to provide and it was the one most commonly used to fill the gaps.

Jack didn’t want to learn a lesson; he didn’t want this clarity. It was like deconstructing himself and he wasn’t ready for that, because he didn’t know how to reconstruct himself.

He needed to get out of his own head for a while.

“Jack,” a voice called from behind him.

He turned to see Connie. She was holding yet another covered dish.

“Are you here to kill me for blowing your cover?”

She smiled softly. “I brought you homemade mac ’n’ cheese. With bacon. I couldn’t help overhearing part of your conversation with Betsy about the bacon. Oddly enough, it’s what seemed to help Scott after the fire at the Fifth Street Warehouse. It was one of his first real calls and a beam fell on him. We thought we were going to lose him. For the longest time, he couldn’t smell or taste anything but smoke.”

Jack was immediately at war with himself. He knew Scott had always had a thing for Bets. It made Jack think about her, them together, about her feeding another man, bringing him back to life the way she’d helped him. He wanted to lash out. To find a place to spill all the pain that welled inside him.

He wished things could go back to being black-and-white. Good and bad. Right and wrong. Only maybe things had never been so simple.

“Thanks, Connie.” He accepted the dish from her hands.

“Have you started writing that book?”

“No. I don’t have anything to say that people want to read.”

“Betsy would read it. I would read it.” She paused for a moment. “This might be a stupid question, but are you okay, kiddo?”

Leave it to Connie to mother him when he needed it most, but wanted it least. “Yeah.”

He wasn’t, of course, but he didn’t need to spill his venom at her. She was a nice woman who’d brought him bacon.

“Let’s get you inside, then, and settled with a nice plate.” Connie didn’t wait for him to invite her in; she just took charge and shuffled him along.

He’d thought for so long that Glory didn’t have anything to offer him, that the only thing that was here was Betsy and memories of a life he couldn’t have. Part of that was still true, but Connie made him see how much more there really was.

These were the people he’d fought for, killed for and almost died for. How could he ever have thought there was nothing for him here?

It was too much. He didn’t know how to process being so full of darkness, but so full of all of these other emotions, as well.

“It’s kismet that you came home when you did. It’s still warm.” Connie set the dish on the stove and bustled around his kitchen as if it were her own as she made him a plate and handed it to him. Then she frowned. “Jack McConnell, there’s a layer of dust an inch thick in here.” She started flinging windows open and then foraged for cleaning supplies under the sink.

When she opened the cabinet, she was greeted with a stash of empty bottles of Old North Bend. He steeled himself for her recriminations, for her gasp of horror, for anything besides what she did.

“If you get me a box, I can take these to the recycling center on Second Street.” There was no pity on her face, or judgment.

“There’s one on the back porch.”

“Good. Now sit down and eat before it gets cold.”

Jack didn’t see any other option than to do as he was told. So he sat down on the couch while Connie hummed as she dusted. It was with great anticipation that he took the first bite. As he chewed, it was like chewing gum after all the flavor was gone. There was no taste, maybe a hint of salt from the bacon.

It wasn’t what he’d hoped, but it was better than ash.

He realized that’s what his life had become. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it was better than what he’d had before.

“You don’t have to do that,” Jack said after he’d finished his bite.

“Of course I do. You don’t have your mother here to look after you, and the look on your face tells me that Betsy won’t be over to do it. If I was gone, I’d hope that some dear soul would take it on herself to give Scott a little TLC every now and again. We all need it once in a while.”

He wasn’t hungry, but he made himself take another bite of the mac ’n’ cheese anyway.

After she dusted, she swept and then tackled the kitchen. Opening his freezer and seeing all of the covered dishes, she raised an eyebrow. “Is that Francine Kirk’s green bean casserole of doom? Oh my Lord, there’s two. What’s she trying to do, kill you?” Connie clucked and pulled the casserole dishes out and stacked them on the counter. “I’ll dispose of these for you and no one ever has to be the wiser.”

She continued to poke through his freezer. “Alma Bloom’s potato salad. That’s a keeper. Brenda’s broccoli cheese rice casserole, no. If you put that in your microwave, you’ll think there’s a dirty diaper in your kitchen.” She added a container to her stack. “Jemima Flynn’s pineapple upside-down cake, you should definitely eat that.”

He didn’t want any baked goods that weren’t Betsy’s. “I won’t eat it. You can take that, if you like.”

“Are you sure?” Connie’s eyes narrowed in a predatory fashion. She reminded Jack of a cat who’d just caught a particularly plump mouse.

“If it doesn’t come from Sweet Thing...” he confessed with a shrug.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“No.”

“That girl loves you, you know.”

“I know.”

“You love her, too, in case you hadn’t figured that out yet.”

Yeah, he’d figured it out. That was the problem.

She sighed. “Youth is most definitely wasted on the young.”

Connie went back to digging through his freezer. When she was finished, she stacked the dishes, and put the bottles in the box she’d found on the back porch.

“Let me carry that for you,” Jack offered.

“No, I’m stronger than I look. You sit there and enjoy your warm, full tummy and have a nap. Things will look better later. I promise.” She carried the box outside. “If you need anything, I left my number on your fridge.”

Connie closed the door behind her.

Jack thought about the two unopened jugs of Old North Bend he had sitting in the garage. Things would definitely look better when he was too drunk to see them.

He went to the garage and pulled out one of the jugs. He unscrewed the cap, anticipating the burn that took his breath and his pain away.

He stopped halfway to his lips.

And then poured the contents of the jug down the sink in the kitchen.

He didn’t want the whiskey.

He didn’t want to be numb.

But he didn’t want to be in pain, either.

What he did want was to feel normal. That seemed like an easy thing, to acknowledge that in his own head, but after everything, it was much easier to focus on what he didn’t want than what he did. Because that meant dreaming, wanting and hoping.

Jack wasn’t sure he knew how to do those things anymore.