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“Thanks,” I say, moving to sit beside him, only he has other ideas and shifts me so I’m sitting between his legs, wrapping his arms around me. It’s an intimate and possessive position and knocks away the easy, non-emotional and detached telling of my story, but I flick that shit aside and continue.
“Look, the rest of the details aren’t important. All you need to know is that my wonder-fucking-ful father made sure it never even reached the courts. He waved a shit load of cash at the families of the boys, men really, and forbade me from ever talking about the whole incident again. He also sealed my records, but that’s not news to you.” I feel Rick tense behind me. “I know you checked, Rick. I set up an alert system through a friend at the nick to let me know any time someone searches my name.”
He chuckles. “Very clever. Let me guess, Roxy?”
“Of course.” The light moment, eases some of the tension in Rick’s body but not completely. “I might not have gotten the justice I deserved, Rick, but I did get my own kind of justice.” I turn around to face him, getting to my knees.
“What are you talking about, Jess?” he asks, with a frown and raised brow.
“Let’s just say that me becoming a cop wasn’t a career choice but more of a means to an end,” I tell him with a mischievous wink. Seeing that he’s going to ask the next obvious question, I intervene before he can. “It’s a story for another time. Another of my demons. I made peace with what they did to me. Karma may have had a helping hand, but I don’t let what happened control my life. I won’t give them that kind of power, Rick. Men like them, that’s what they thrive off, what they lived for.”
Rick frowns, and I realise that I should have been more careful with my word choice.
“Lived for?”
“Please leave it. I’m not ready to share that story yet, Rick.”
“Fine, but I won’t forget about it. And your father?”
I turn away from him with a tired sigh. Tired but not defeated. His fingers grip my chin, turning me back to him.
“J—”
“I’ve never been able to get enough evidence to have him taken down. Everything I know is just circumstantial, hearsay, and he has some very high-up, influential friends. But I’m promising you, right here, right now, that if my father had any involvement, no matter how small, in the death of Christian and—” I pause, swallowing thickly and lay a hand on Rick’s chest, just over his heart before continuing, “And what happened to you, then I’m going to fight till my dying breath to bring the rain and make him pay for it.”
Rick’s brow furrows at my words, and I can see that I’ve pissed him off. “I don’t need you to protect me, or fight my battles, Jess. For fuck’s sake.” He tries to move back, and it’s my turn to stop him from running away.
“Hey. That’s not what this is and you fucking know it. Stop being such a macho man, Rick.” I push on his chest and climb up to straddle him. He resists at first, but slowly relents and eases back, elbows propping him up from behind. “This isn’t your fight alone. Having someone in your corner doesn’t make you less of a man. It doesn’t matter who that person is, just as long as they are prepared to fight for you, for what you believe in, for what’s right. You don’t want me to protect you or fight your battles because you think it’s a man’s job to do those things for a woman, but you need to remember that I don’t need you to save me, Rick. I don’t need a man to save me. I need a man who will stand beside me in battle, not in front of me.” I grasp his stubble covered chin, loving the feel of the course bristles on the pads of my fingers, and bring his eyes to mine. “Whatever it is you think you need redeeming for, your wrong. We all walk the line, and we all seek redemption in one way or another for things we’ve done wrong. The need for redemption isn’t an admission of guilt, Rick. It’s an acceptance that sometimes our actions aren’t always right in the eyes of God or the law, but they are made for the right reasons.” I lean down and touch my lips to his, tasting the salt from his tears, and it breaks a little piece of my heart. “You can be the biggest and strongest man in the world, the best of the best, but there’s one thing you can never win against, Rick, and that’s God, fate. When your number is up, there’s no one that can stop Death from collecting his prize.”
This time when my lips touch his, I don’t stop. I kiss him fully and deeply and baring my fucking soul to him. There’s a moment’s hesitation from him before he gives in and kisses me back. It’s a kiss that speaks a thousand words, and each and every one is burned into my flesh. Before we have a chance to get lost completely, Seb interrupts us.
“Sorry, man, but you need to take this call.”
“Fuck,” Rick curses, closing his eyes for a second. “This better be important. Who is it?” he asks. I climb from his lap, allowing him to get to his feet.
“It’s Scott. Jake Danvers is awake and wants to talk… To Jess.”
“Course he fucking does,” Rick mutters as he grabs my hand, pulling me over to the sofa.
Seb and Jamie join us, and Rick is still grumbling under his breath as Seb hands me the phone.
Lifting it to my ear, I’m halted when Rick says, “Speaker phone, Jess.” I throw a dark look his way, and all he does is smirk.
Resting it on my knees, I unmute the call. “Hello,” I say tentatively, unsure if it will be Scott or Jake on the other end.
“Jess, is that you?” Jake’s croaky voice crackles through the phone. It’s a little echoey, which tells me it’s probably on speaker phone his end and Scott is there too.
“It’s me, Jake.” I feel a twinge of anger spark at his betrayal. I know we weren’t close or knew each other very well, but it still hurts to know he befriended me superficially.
“I’m sorry, Jess. I never meant for you to get involved. I just wanted answers to what happened to my sister.” I hear the rustling of fabric as Jake shifts in the bed.
I share a look with Rick, gauging if he knows what Jake is talking about, but from the grim line of his lips and the furrow in his brow, he doesn’t have any more clue than I do.
“I don’t understand what I have to do with your sister, Jake. I don’t understand what I have to do with any of this if I’m honest.” And I truly don’t.
“They wanted me to follow you and see who you were meeting with and talking to. That’s all I agreed to, but then they had me send the roses and plant those pictures of that dead guy. When they asked me to tamper with your car, I told them no. Honestly, Jess, that wasn’t me.”
I suck in a sharp breath at the mention of the pictures of Christian I found on my car the day of the accident. I can feel Rick’s gaze burning a hole the size of the damn moon in the side of my face.
