Page 32 of Homicide in Water Creek

Those two words held him back from doing all those things, and more. If only they hadn’t been tricked ten years ago. If only he’d been with her and protected her from that animal. If only.

Rubbing her leg as it lay across him, his hand slipped into the valley of her lower leg. His gut clenched. She was stronger than all three men in her life, and she didn’t even realize it. In his opinion, Keene had it all wrong. He didn’t deserve her, not the other way around.

“Let it be,” Jacks whispered, her hand rising to caress his face. “If it’s meant to be, it will be.”

He chuckled, then kissed her forehead. “Now you sound like a country song.”

“You know how much I hate those, but the statement feels true between us. Somehow, no matter what we do, it keeps coming back to you and me holding each other. It keeps coming back to you and me kissing. It keeps coming back to me pretending to hate you to keep you at arm’s length, but you never stay away.”

“I can’t help it.” King kissed her lips in a too-brief kiss. “I’m the moth to your flame. There’s never a time when I can’t find you.” He held her tighter and kept rubbing her leg. “Tell me what happened, Jacks. When you were a kid, you refused to tell me. All you’d say was that you didn’t know.” Her body tensed, and she pushed up off his chest, but he held her gently around the waist. “Don’t leave,” he begged. “You can’t run from me. Not anymore.”

She scooted back on the bed and shook her head. “I’m not running. I just thought it would be easier to show you than to tell you.”

“I’ve seen it before. When we were kids.”

He dipped his fingers into the valley as a shiver ran through her.

“I’ve had surgery on it since then.” Her face was stoic, but he could see her façade crumbling as she prepared to show him.

Turning, King put her legs around his waist so he could hold her face. “Hey, you don’t have to show me. Don’t stress.”

She rested her hands on his wrists and closed her eyes. “It’s just that after Wyatt…”

“Sweetheart, I mean it. Forget I asked.”

When she opened her eyes, they were filled with both curiosity and suspicion. “Why do you want to know?”

King kissed her. Her soft, warm lips were flaccid under his as he teased her. The sigh she let out when he ended it was the sound his heart wanted to hear. It went straight to his groin, but it told him she was still relaxed, and that was all he wanted.

“I always believed you just didn’t want to tell me what really happened.”

She shook her head as she reached down and pulled up her pant leg. To say her right calf was decimated was an understatement. Most of the tissue and muscle on the front and back were missing.

“Baby, what the hell happened? This is worse than it was when we were kids. Did he cut you there, too?”

“No.” Jacks rubbed a spot just below the knee. “See, when we were kids, I didn’t know what happened. All I knew was that the brace was necessary to walk without crutches. I lived with my mom until I was nine, but I never really lived with her, if that makes sense. I spent most of my time on my own, with a neighbor, or at a shelter. She never told me what happened, probably because she didn’t remember. All she would say was that it happened when I was a baby. Since I was a kid, it really didn’t matter to me.”

He nodded and grasped her ankle, rubbing his thumb along the sides of her leg tenderly. It was basically skin and bone. Because of that, her right thigh was bigger than her left. You didn’t notice it when she was wearing the brace, but sitting the way she was made it obvious that her thigh muscles did all the work to keep her upright.

“Then Wyatt happened. They brought me to the ER, and they realized the bleeding from my leg wasn’t just road rash. They had a doctor take a closer look and discovered a tumor.”

King ran his hand through his hair. “It was cancer?” That was the last thing he was expecting.

Resting her hand on his chest instantly calmed him. “It started when I was a baby. It was an infant sarcoma, from what I could understand, and it often recurred. The best they can figure is that the first tumor, from when I was a baby, had affected the soft tissue in my lower leg. It was removed, and they suspect radiation therapy was done. The second time, the tumor came back right here,” she explained, pointing at her knee. “Considering the damage to the leg, I honestly didn’t pay much attention to it other than noticing a lump that wasn’t there before. Eventually, I probably would have realized it wasn’t going away, but the attack happened and revealed its presence. Anyway, once it was removed, I had another round of radiation on that spot and chemotherapy.”

“And now?” he asked, almost inaudibly. He didn’t want to hear her say she wouldn’t be okay.

“Now the leg is destroyed, but the cancer is gone. They said that if it comes back, they’ll have to amputate my leg because there’s no way to perform another surgery.”

He grasped her under the arms and pulled her to him, resting her head on his shoulder and rocking her. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you.” He kissed her cheek and neck again and again to make up for all the times he hadn’t been there to hold her. “I’m so sorry. If I had known, I would have made a nuisance of myself until you let me in.”

Jacks clutched him tightly, as if afraid he’d disappear if she let go. “No one knew, not even Keene. Granddaddy let people think I was still recovering from Wyatt’s attack. I didn’t need cancer pity on top of everything else. I just wanted to get back to normal. I’d always worn a brace. No one was going to notice that it was suddenly longer.”

He held her gaze. “Will the cancer come back, Jacks?”

“No guarantee, but the doctors don’t think so, not at this point. I was barely eighteen at the time, and there has been nothing on the scans in the last ten years.”

“But the first time you were a baby and then again when you were eighteen.”