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My cellphone rings on the table next to my cup. I glance down to find Adam’s number. Rick grimaces and grabs it, answering for me. “You’re calling to tell on me?” he snaps. “Really? Are we twelve now?” He listens a few beats and then grumbles, “Fucktard,” before he hangs up.
The doorbell rings. He sets my phone down and I grab his arm again. “Rick.”
His hands come down on my shoulders and he pulls me close. “I’m not a young man anymore. He can’t push my buttons the way he once did. And I have never, ever, killed from an emotional place.”
“But you’re human, Rick. And you two have a bad history.”
His palm settles on my neck under my hair and he pulls me close. “I love you. You know that, right?”
“I love you, too.”
The doorbell rings again. “That’s not an answer,” he says, kissing me. “You don’t know. That sucks, baby, but I’ll fix it. I’ll make sure you know. For now, stay here.” He sets me away from him and starts walking.
I take a step to pursue, only to have my cellphone ring again. I glance down to find Gabriel on caller ID. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. I ignore the call, silencing it, but not declining it. I don’t want Gabriel to know that I intentionally didn’t take his call, but I’m not dealing with that bastard right now. I hurry after Rick, for good reason. No matter how removed from his hate for his father he might insist he is, he isn’t. He isn’t at all. And this could turn nasty fast. And nasty feels one step from deadly right about now.
Rushing through the kitchen, I find Rick standing at the doorway, waiting for me. He catches my waist and leans in, lips near my ear. “Do not, no matter what happens, come outside. If he sees you, if he sees how protective I am of you, that gives him power. Understand?”
“I’m not promising you that.”
“Candace—”
There’s a knock on the door. “Rick!” his father shouts. “I know you’re there.”
Rick grimaces. “I swear to you, woman, if you come outside, I will spank you and not for pleasure.”
“And I’ll punch you in the balls.” I tilt my chin and give him a defiant look. “That would be fun.”
He pulls me hard and fast against him. “I swear, you complete me, baby. I love when you talk dirty.”
“That was a warning. I wasn’t talking dirty.”
“Close enough. Stay here.” He steps me away from him and opens the door, exiting to greet his father.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Savage
I step onto the porch and into a mild seventy-something November day, the only ice in sight, the ice in my veins at the sight of my father. He stands tall and straight, dressed in scrubs for his day at the hospital despite the hollows beneath his eyes suggesting a sleepless night. “What do you want?”
“You promised me coffee,” he says, his voice etched with exhaustion but the hard lines of his face never rest. He’s forever dominant, eternally arrogant.
“What do you want?” I repeat.
“You promised me coffee.”
“What the fuck do you want?”
“Son—”
I step toward him and he backs away. “You should run,” I warn. “I know where you were last night.”
He doesn’t miss a beat, but then, I learned the hard way that he saves his hesitation for the operating room. “He wants you to know. He told me to tell you.”
“Of course, he did. You two are alike, too damn alike. That’s why I was foolish enough to see him as a fucking father figure.”
“I went there because he told me you’d die if I didn’t help him.”
“Like you give a fuck about me.” I turn away from him, running my hand over my head because if I don’t, I’ll punch him.
“Son—”
I rotate to face him. “How much and what did he offer you to work for him?”
“Your life. That’s all. A couple of men showed up at my door and told me that if I didn’t help, we’d both be dead by morning.”
“Ah,” I say. “So, you thought you were going to die. They offered you your own life, not mine.”
“They told me you were bleeding out,” he snaps. “I believed them.”
To his credit, he delivers that argument with dogmatic intensity, despite being full of shit. They offered him something and it wasn’t my life. “Why are you here?”
His lips press together a moment. It’s a familiar expression that stirs about a hundred memories of my childhood, and his nastiness to my mother, that he really doesn’t want to stir. “Tag sent me with a message,” he finally confesses.
“Now we’re getting to the real story.” I motion with my fingers. “Spit that shit out.”
“He said to tell you: a father is easily here today and gone tomorrow.”
He delivers that statement without so much of a blink of apprehension. He knows that Tag isn’t threatening him, but rather the general. Tag simply used my father as a prop to deliver a threat, and my father is a willing participant. He doesn’t feel fear. I want him to feel fear. I’m across the porch and slamming him against the banister in seconds. He hits so damn hard it rocks the porch. “Son,” he gasps.
