AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nope, not at all. ‘Of course I care. I care for you. I care for your daughter. She’s spoken five words to me in two hours, John.’ I almost added in the part about her driving the car to the clubhouse, but I bit my tongue. The last thing I wanted to do was get the girl in trouble.
He looked over his shoulder. I shifted slightly to the right so I could see the front door. Dornan was talking in hushed tones to Juliette, and she was smiling.
I don’t know what it was about seeing them like that, but something stabbed painfully inside my chest. He was a good man, underneath all the bravado and the leather. He had made Juliette smile in moments, whereas I couldn’t even elicit a single one from her in two hours, not since she’d handed me the car keys back at the clubhouse. But with Dornan she beamed. Under that gruff exterior, he had the capacity to put you at ease . . . but only if he wanted to. It was clear he loved Juliette, and I remembered him telling me stories about how he’d been there when she was born, how he’d brought her home from the hospital afterwards and he and his wife had looked after her as their own, since John was in prison and Caroline went MIA soon after the cord had been cut.
‘You know she drove the car to the clubhouse,’ I said quietly, changing my mind. He needed to know this shit. I wished he’d just leave his wife, or that she’d finally get it right and take enough heroin to die and release him from their hellish marriage. Yeah. I wasn’t a very nice person, wishing people dead, but she didn’t give me any reason to wish differently.
John turned back to me, his mouth set in a hard line. He raked his hand through his hair, staring at the floor.
‘Caroline . . .’ John shook his head, meeting my gaze again with his magnetic blue eyes. Intense, like Murphy’s, but nothing alike. John’s were clear and bright, and trusting. Compassionate. Kind. They were like windows to his soul, turned down ever so slightly at the edges, the stress making them look older than his forty-odd years.
I liked his eyes. They reassured me.
‘Caroline used to be well,’ John continued. ‘She was never like this.’
You’ve been saying that for nine years, I wanted to say to him. But instead I said nothing.
‘Where is she?’ I asked.
John’s face twisted into a grimace. ‘Rehab.’
I knew the mounting costs of his wife’s continual cycle – overdose, emergency room, rehab centre – were killing John. I did his finances. I knew he was fighting to keep his house and pay the bills. It always struck me as odd that he had no money, because he was always in possession of so much of the stuff. But he was stone broke.
I nodded, chewing on my lower lip. ‘You think it’ll stick this time?’
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. His expression told me everything.
‘Thanks for watching Julz,’ he said, patting me on the arm. It was meant as a casual gesture, but it almost made me jump it was so unexpected. A thrill coursed down my spine as I turned around and collected the cups of coffee, offering John one.
‘Do I smell coffee?’ Dornan asked, interrupting our . . . I don’t even know what it was. It wasn’t small talk. It wasn’t awkward, exactly, but it was something. John was always asking me questions, innocuous enough – things like how was your weekend and did you get out to see the fireworks at the pier and are you going home for the holidays? I managed to answer vaguely enough, but I knew there would come a day when he got sick of those non-answers and would demand to know the entire truth about me. It was written all over his face every time I was with Dornan. John knew that Dornan and I had a relationship, but he liked to pretend we didn’t. Despite his terrible choice of life partner, John Portland still, at least then, believed in the sanctity of marriage, and strongly disapproved of Dornan having both a wife and a mistress. I’d heard them arguing about me once. John had been demanding to know why I wasn’t allowed out of the apartment, and that was when Dornan had installed Guillermo as my housemate. Nobody outside of Emilio and Murphy knew the full truth about me, about us, even after all this time. But I knew John wanted to know about me, in the way he phrased his questions, always seeking more information. Where did I come from? Why was I still under lock and key and 24-hour guard after almost a decade? I saw the question in his eyes, the bewilderment, and the resentment that, even as president of the Gypsy Brothers, he was powerless to extract the information he so clearly craved from anyone.
‘Coffee,’ I said, handing Dornan the second cup after he drained his whiskey and set the empty tumbler on the counter. John, who hadn’t touched his own cup of coffee, handed it back to me.
‘I should take Juliette home,’ he said, looking between Dornan and me. ‘It’s been a long one.’
Dornan nodded in response, not moving from his spot, leaning against the counter and tipping coffee down his throat. He finished the cup in one go and dropped it in the sink.
I opened my mouth to say something, to offer some kind of help or reassurance, but then I closed it again. What was I going to say that could ease the pain of a man with a burden like Caroline Portland?
After they’d left, and the door was securely shut, I shifted my attention to Dornan. ‘Somebody should just put her out of her misery,’ I said.
Nine years in this life and I was starting to talk like him.
‘You’re saying what I’m thinking,’ Dornan said, passing me as he opened the freezer and dropped a handful of ice cubes into the tumbler he was holding. The coffee had been merely a formality, something to keep us awake after a trying day.
I took the opportunity to drink him in: dark jeans, tight black T-shirt that hugged his hard chest in all the right places, his tattoos peeking out from the sleeves and neckline. The Ross family crest on his neck always bothered me for some reason, maybe because it was inked proof that he belonged to Emilio. The revolver down his left forearm was better. And the Gypsy Brothers tattoo that adorned his back curled up enough in the middle that it edged up above his collar. Dark hair that he’d let grow a little longer recently, peppered with grey, like his permanent three-day stubble.
I’d been waiting for him. I had missed him terribly.
I hungered for his touch.
But with everything that had happened with Caroline, what I really needed right now was a stiff drink. I sipped at John’s untouched cup, always loath to let good coffee go to waste, and watched Dornan pour whiskey over the ice cubes and take several gulps.
‘That bad, huh?’ I asked.
‘That woman is a fucking train wreck,’ he mused, cracking ice cubes between his teeth. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, setting his whiskey down and stepping over to me. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he stood over me, his hips pressing me into the counter as his dark eyes gleamed. The edge of the counter bit painfully into my back, but it didn’t matter. I was wholly focused on him.
‘You have no idea,’ he said, threading a hand into my hair and pulling me into him. His stubble was rough but his lips soft, sweet and tangy with the remnants of the whiskey. As his tongue found mine, I melted into his grip, relishing the cold of his mouth from the ice cubes.
