AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Garrett, please.”
He closed his eyes. It was as if that word on my lips turned him inside out.
I snugged my legs under the cover, ignoring the stings rippling beneath the gauze. “I need to know.”
He met my eyes and reached up to my face. I didn’t flinch as he brushed a few strands of hair away and smoothed them into the rest of my locks. A faint smile played along his lips, as if he were pleased I let him touch me.
I should have been afraid. I had been when we were alone in the woods, but the more he’d explained, the more everything seemed to click into place. His kink had cost him his career and who knew what else, but he’d shared it with me. I didn’t know how big of a concession it was for him to open up to me, but—given his hermit ways—I could guess.
He ran his thumb down my cheek, then dropped his hand to the bed next to me. “A few years ago, he came to the house. Lillian brought him. She’d been back from California for a while, and I’d come home for the weekend to visit. This was when I was still teaching. I walked into the house and found him and Lillian making out on the couch in the sitting room.” He took my hand and squeezed it. “No offense to your mom.”
I snorted. “Don’t worry. They were on the outs before I was born. Never married.”
“Sorry.” He rubbed the skin along the back of my hand with his thumb.
I shrugged. “Mom had me when she was nineteen, and she raised me almost singlehandedly. Dad always paid child support, sent birthday cards, visited for Christmas, stuff like that. He wasn’t a bad guy, and I loved him.” My eyes began to water, but I willed the tears away. “He was never meant to settle down. My dad was a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of guy, at least that’s what Mom always said. She loved him, but she wasn’t in love with him, you know?”
“I found your mom’s obituary. I’m sorry.” How could the man who’d just been a feral beast in the woods be such a gentle soul? I peered into his eyes, still trying to get a bead on which one of him was the true Garrett.
“Thanks. My mom was my best friend and number one cheerleader.” Everyone in our hometown said I looked just like her—long dark hair and bright hazel eyes. I’d always thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I still told her so, even after the cancer had taken everything from her. “I miss her.” I cleared my throat. “Please go on about my dad.”
“All right. After I interrupted, he introduced himself and headed out. Lillian told me he was her newest victim.”
My eyes opened wide. “Victim?”
He coughed into his hand. “Let’s just say I’m not the only one in the family with kinks. Lillian’s were different, but she still had a strong dominant streak. Hart does too; he just hasn’t realized it yet. I don’t know why. We all had good childhoods as far as I know. It’s just in our DNA or something.”
I tried to distance myself from any thoughts of Lillian tying my dad up. “So they were an item?”
“Right.” He pulled his hand away from mine and loosened the blanket around my bad leg.
“Then what happened?”
Once satisfied with the bed, he shrugged. “I don’t know. I never saw him again. I went back to Alabama, taught the rest of the semester. That’s when Joan and I began our affair, so I spent most of my free time sneaking around with her.” His tone darkened. “Until it all ended, and she didn’t say a word to defend me.”
My thoughts were on fire, each flash sending off sparks that set another idea ablaze. I needed information, all I could get. But first, I needed to know if I could trust Garrett. “What happened that night when you got caught with Joan?”
His jaw tightened, and bitterness creased his brow. “I’d rigged her, tied her to the bed and”—He glanced at me—“caned her legs and stomach. She was bruised and nearly bloody when her husband walked in.” He glowered. “Of course she failed to mention how she’d begged for the cane.”
“Caned?” I conjured images of corporal punishment in other countries. “Like with a stick?”
“Just a yew rod. Thin, flexible. Leaves some vicious marks if you use it right.”
“Sounds painful.”
“Yes, but it also releases endorphins. The pain heightens the pleasure.”
It was the wrong time for a rush of blood to parts south, for anything remotely like attraction, but I couldn’t stop it. “Your pleasure, too?”
He licked his lips. “Yes.”
“You’d hit her and then…” I let my words trail away as that flicker of jealousy ignited in my heart.
“Yes. Then we’d fuck.”
I flinched at his directness. “So it was all consensual?”
“Yes.”
I chewed my lip as I searched his face for any sign of dishonesty. I found none.
He squeezed my hand. “I swear it was, Elise.”
My eyes widened. “Wow.”
“What?”
“That was the first time you’ve ever said my real name. Not Red.”
“Don’t get used to it, Red.” His familiar smirk reappeared.
“What happened next?”
“How did this turn from me asking your real reasons for being here into you interrogating me?”
A smile crept across my lips. “Just answer the question.”
“You sure you’re into archaeology and not law?” The smirk widened.
I wrinkled my nose. “I dig in the dirt. I don’t cover it up. Definitely not the traits of an attorney.”
“Noted. Tell me something first, and then I’ll tell you the rest of my sordid tale.”
I swallowed hard. “Okay.”
“Do you think your father is still alive?”
I dropped my gaze. “No. He’s not. I know it.”
“I’m sorry.” He shook his head.
“Me too.” I swallowed my tears. “Now tell me the rest.”
He looked away. “After the scandal, I left in disgrace and thought I could come home and lick my wounds. Lillian was always good at smoothing over trouble. I talked to her on the phone the day it all went down. She told me to come home and we’d sort it all out. I left school and drove straight here.” He closed his eyes, memory coating his voice. “It was near the end of spring session. Everything was in bloom on the road home—yellow honeysuckle and purple wisteria hanging from the trees. Despite what had happened, I began to feel hopeful. Lillian would know how to fix it. She’d charmed her way out of tons of trouble. I didn’t have half her ability, but with her help, I don’t know…I thought maybe I had a chance, you know? Maybe she could talk to Dean Farraway or Joan.”
He shrugged and stared at the corner of the room, his eyes roving the wooden planks as if he could see to the bottom floor. To Lillian’s room. “I got home right at sunset. The house was lit up, welcoming. It wasn’t like it is now.” He waved a hand at the walls. “Dying.” He paused, as if trying to wrestle the unhappy words out. “When I got here, everything was quiet. I called for Lillian. She didn’t answer. I went to her room, and that’s where I found her. She’d hung—” He stopped, emotion welling up and drowning out his voice like a flash flood.
“I’m so sorry.” I pressed his hand between mine. I knew she’d committed suicide, but other than her brief obituary, there was no information on it. The then-sheriff of Millbrook covered up the details. I always assumed he’d swept it under the rug so as not to tarnish the family. Suicide was an unbreakable taboo, especially in this notch of the Bible Belt.
“It was unbelievable. When I saw her, it was like I couldn’t process, like it wasn’t real. But then I touched her, and she was…” He wiped at his eyes, the lashes wet.
Seeing him in pain broke a part of me. I wanted to take it away, to pluck the thorn from his paw, but some things—like some people—were beyond saving. “Did she leave a note?”
“No. I demanded Sheriff Pennington investigate it as a homicide. Lillian wouldn’t have done that. I refused to believe it.”
“You think she was killed?”
&nbs
p; “I did back then. Sheriff Pennington performed the investigation like he did everything else—half-assed. He told me that because her prints were on the chair, the electrical cord, and the light fixture, he had no evidence of any assailant or explanation besides the obvious. I raised hell, and”—He shifted his gaze away from mine—“I made your father my number one suspect. I knew it was him. It had to be, and I wanted to make him pay.”
Motive. I tensed and glanced to the knife on the bedside table. Was Garrett confessing to killing my father?
He followed the direction of my gaze. “Take it if it makes you feel better.” The sadness in his tone made me feel like shit. He’d just opened up some wounds, ones that clearly cut him deep, and here I was still refusing to trust him.
“I’m sorry.” I ignored the blade and focused on him. “It’s all so…new, I guess. Please go on.”
“Not much more to tell. I always suspected your father of killing Lil, but he disappeared right after her death. The coincidence wasn’t lost on me. I paid a private investigator to find him. But your dad covered his tracks so well that all traces led right back here, to Blackwood. A dead end.”
He seemed to deflate as he relived his failure to find the man he suspected of killing his sister. I wanted to reassure him that Dad would never have harmed Lillian, but my words wouldn’t do anything to ease his pain. His sister was gone, and there was no reason for it.
More than that, my gut told me he had no idea my dad’s car was rusting on his property. He was just as in the dark as I was. Relief washed through me like the first hit of anesthesia. He had nothing to do with my dad’s disappearance. I knew it in my bones.
I took a chance. “What if I told you that I think all trails lead back here because my father never left Millbrook County—never left Blackwood—alive?”
He let his head loll back and stared at the ceiling. “Nothing would surprise me anymore. Remember when you first knocked on the door, and I told you this place was full of ghosts?”
“Yes.”
“The longer I stay here, the truer it becomes. Ghosts, secrets, lies. All here, all just beyond my sight.” Despair laced his words.
