17. Beau

Chapter seventeen

Beau

I t’s raining. Correction: It’s pouring. I’m not trying to sing old rhymes here. Nope. I got soaked to the bone in the time it took for me to go from the car to the porch. I should have parked closer. Or I should have called ahead. Quite possibly, I’m an asshole of epic proportions. Also? It’s September. And I’m starting to learn that September in North Dakota can be kind of wicked.

It’s cold.

It feels more like it should be snowing, not pouring. I guess it’s still too warm for that. Ironic, considering I’m back in the car with the heat cranked, shivering madly in the driver’s seat and trying to thaw out and get warm after waiting on the porch, soaked to the skin, out of said rain. I waited for five minutes. And then another five. Maybe another? I don’t even know how long it was. It might have been ten minutes, or it might have been twenty. I only rang the bell twice.

Ignacia—I still feel like I don’t have permission to call her Sam—had an old station wagon in the yard before, and it’s now parked in front of the barn. If she’s here and doesn’t want to see me, she could have come out to tell me to go away. Then again, she was always the sweetest, and I can’t imagine she’d like to engage in confrontation.

What am I doing now in the car besides trying to dry out and warm up so I don’t die of hypothermia? What’s my next step now that I came all the way out here—and yes, I know this is where she lived and still lives, even after the story about the up-and-coming fashion designer who had to quit her own life after an identity theft by her then-boyfriend broke. She was a sensation for five minutes, like most people are before someone else’s cruder and ruder story of the day took over. Aiden was sentenced to three years in jail. It’s not a lot of time, but he was facing up to sixty. Everyone knew he wouldn’t get that. Either way, I guess the world is going to be a slightly better place for those nine hundred and some odd days when he’s not in it. I hope jail doesn’t make him a better scammer. I hope he can reflect on the people he hurt, stole from, and ruined and then come out and do something else with his life.

Then again, if he doesn’t when he gets out, I’ll make sure he behaves. I’ll have someone from my team running surveillance on him at all times. He doesn’t have to know. No one has to know. It might be extreme, but I’m extremely sure if he ever hurts Ignacia, or rather, Sam, I will lose my shit. On the long list of things I’ve ever wanted to do, going to prison—even rich-person-style prison—isn’t one of them, especially not because I bash a guy up so badly that I nearly kill him.

For the record, even when I was working, I never had to discharge my weapon, and I only ever punched one guy out, and it was because he started swinging at my client, who happened to be his ex-wife, first. Yeah, he wasn’t a class act, and he fully deserved the self-defense-induced black eye he got from me for his efforts.

I put my shaking hands up on the dash and let the heat vents blow warm air on them. I know diabetics don’t have the best circulation, and I do get cold sometimes, but this is ridiculous.

I run through options in my brain even though it feels cold and stunned.

Maybe Ignacia is home, and she doesn’t want to see me. She has every right not to answer the door. I should respect her wishes, shake and shiver my way back to the city, and fly my ass back home.

Or maybe she’s not home, and I should continue to sit here, looking droopy and wet and pathetic for a little while longer. Her truck is here, but it doesn’t mean she hasn’t gone somewhere else. She’s not in hiding anymore, and it’s been two and a half months. She could have made friends, and they could have picked her up.

She could be out anywhere, doing anything with her life.

I haven’t kept tabs on her. I have purposely not invaded her privacy. The only thing I know is she deleted her account on the hot bedding website. I had to make another fake account to find out because I deleted mine before she even learned I betrayed her. I couldn’t think about another man sharing her bed, even platonically, without losing my damn mind.

For the past two and a half months, all I have done is lose my damn mind.

All I have done is think about Ignacia. She haunted me. She haunted me until I cracked and couldn’t take it anymore and had to fly and drive back out here to…to…I don’t even know what.

Nothing, I guess.

If that’s what it takes…

Jesus, how pathetic are we now?

Yeah, I know. I think that’s what happens when a person catches feelings. Alright, I’ve done more than that. I’ll admit it. Right from the start, I knew there was something off with me when it came to Ignacia. I couldn’t keep her out the way I kept everyone else in my world out. I couldn’t keep her from getting under my skin. I couldn’t keep up the cold, hard surface I’ve perfected. I was never emotionless, but I couldn’t tell her because I was also working on a case. It was complicated. But even if it wasn’t, I don’t think I would have confessed. I think I would have run. I would have finished our contract, made some excuse, and gone back to my old life because that was enough to satisfy me before, and I would have made it enough to satisfy me again.

The only problem with that is I fucking can’t.

I can’t make it enough to satisfy me.

No amount of work, working out, sleeping or sleepless nights, reading, being busy, or being quiet—nothing works.

I don’t know why everyone says emotions are good things. Feeling nothing? That’s a nice thing. That’s a thing that’s worked for me for years. It got me through when I needed to get through. It’s kept me here, and it’s made me good at what I do. Having emotions? They make you want to die. They make you believe you’re a curse, and then they tell you that you’re being ridiculous and hurting, and you go on to hurt and hurt and hurt, and it never stops. I know that. Because that’s what happened to me after my parents both died. I know the heaviness in my chest now isn’t something I can undo easily. I know it sucks. I also know losing Ignacia is going to keep haunting me for the unforeseeable future, and there’s nothing I can do about it because it’s too late to go back and undo the fact that she’s inside me, and I feel it. I damn well feel it.

It’s not possible to move past this. It’s how I’ve felt, and it’s how I feel right now. But I know if Ignacia shows up and taps on this window and tells me she never wants to see me again, I’ll respect that. I’ll survive somehow, even if it’s not the way I did it before. Because I can’t go back to that. I wish I could, but it’s not a thing for me anymore. It was a piss-poor survival mechanism.

Zero out of five stars. Do not recommend.

Even her silly sayings have burrowed their way into my head.

An hour later, I’m a little bit warmer and hardly any drier, but at least my teeth have stopped chattering. I think an hour is about tops on the time scale for how long a person can sit in someone else’s driveway and not be considered top of the super suspicious and creepy list. I look toward the house, which is so still. Granted, right now the rain is pelting down so hard that I can barely see through the sheets of it, but I think it’s still. There aren’t any lights on. It’s daytime, but it’s grey as hell out here. I don’t think she’s home.

I haven’t gotten this far in life by being an unobservant asshole—just a regular asshole—so I wait another twenty-three minutes.

I’m rewarded for taking a chance on her being home after all and calling the cops to evict me forcefully when a white car sweeps into her driveway. It’s not a cop car. Just a regular sedan.

When I see her get out of the passenger side, my heart nearly leaps out of my chest and plummets to the floor. I know what her family looks like. I had her file. I know that’s her sister in the driver’s seat. I said I didn’t want to violate her privacy, but now, I feel like not doing enough research ahead of time has me at a disadvantage. I didn’t know her sister was out here. Is she visiting? Living here? Living nearby? That car doesn’t look like a rental. It’s too old and too worn in, with too much missing paint on the front bumper and too many cracks in the windshield.

The windows of the rental I’m in aren’t tinted, and it’s clear Ignacia spotted me before she even got out of the car. Now she’s standing there in the rain and staring at me through the window with her mouth wide open. She’s getting soaked while I just sit here.

No. It’s too cold for her to be out in the rain.

Her sister may be shocked, too, but she recovers quickly. She has good survival instincts. She wraps her hand around Ignacia’s arm and pulls her away from the side of the car, up the stairs, and under the porch. Then, they stand there together, both of them giving me the stink eye.

I get out of the car anyway. I can’t just sit in here with an oh, no, shit, I’ve been spotted expression on my face, and I’m not going to roll down the window and try and shout what I had to say.

I practically throw myself out of the car. I can’t move fast enough. Not to get out of the rain but to get to her , this woman who I have thought of every single minute for every single day and night since the minute I met her.

I stop before the stairs. Before the porch. I stop halfway because I just can’t. I have no right. What if she hates me? What if she doesn’t want me here? What if she’s disgusted and—

“Are you insane?” she yells at me over the roar of the rain. “Get under here! It’s raining assloads out there!”

I officially win the prize for the world’s dorkiest grin. I’m also officially soaked again by the time I get under the overhang.

Her sister scrunches up her nose and studies me like I smell bad. I think I might smell bed after a flight and a long drive, but that’s pretty impossible, given how sopping wet I am. “This is him, isn’t it?”

Oh. I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or not. Her bad-smell expression doesn’t change, so probably not so good, then. My hopes sink further and further, and my heart does something I’m powerless against. I haven’t completely made my peace with that, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to being helpless like this.

All I can do is sink to one knee. My shoes and pants squelch unmercifully.

“Oh my god!” her sister gasps. “He’s proposing!”

“I’m not proposing.”

“He’s not proposing.” Ignacia waves a hand over me. “See? He’s just…ummm, what are you doing?”

I tilt my face up and look into hers. She’s so breathtaking. I thought I’d be prepared for it if I ever saw her again, but even now, she still sucks the oxygen straight out of my lungs. I love that she’s so natural. I adore her sense of fashion, even if I once thought what she calls a prairie dress was quite strange and old-fashioned, trending to granny or a historical play. I now know that’s the point. She beams without so much as cracking a smile, and even though it’s still pouring assloads , just having her sweet blue eyes on me is like a slant of sunlight shot straight through the clouds.

“Apologizing,” I say, bowing my head. “Sincerely.”

“Ooh, can I stay and listen?” her sister gushes.

“No,” Ignacia states dryly. “Please, god, Katie, no.”

“Ugh, alright. I’ll be right inside.” Her volume goes way up. “Hurt my sister, you assling, and I’ll make sure you get what’s coming to you in the form of mega karma that hurts a hundred times as bad. Don’t test me. I know a few bus drivers who are just looking to…well, not run people over, but I’m sure it can be arranged.”

My head jerks up, and I watch Ignacia’s lips twitch.

“Katie, no one is getting run over. Will you make tea for us? Beau happens to have a special thing for chai,” Ignacia says.

I must pull a face because her sister laughs. “We have lots of other kinds. We’ll try something else.”

I gasp, shocked. “You had other kinds? The whole time?”

Ignacia nods and shrugs. “They just aren’t my go-to. I figured any tea would be just as bad.”

“I can make us a London Fog if you’d like. We have an espresso machine, but I can make non-coffee drinks as well. It has a great milk frother steamer wand thing on the side.”

“That would be great. I’d love a London Fog to warm up,” I tell her.

Ignacia is soft with her sister, but as soon as her sister walks inside, she’s iron-hard with me. She stuffs her hands into her rain jacket pockets. Her dress goes down to her ankles, and even with rubber boots sticking out, the hemline is soaked. I like that the jacket is an oversized yellow slicker, the kind you see in old oil paintings with the fishermen.

I get up off my knee since I’m starting to feel absurd. I had this big apology planned out if she’d ever give me a chance to say it, but now all I can do is study her face and feel so much regret that I ever lied to her. I did it knowing it couldn’t be helped, but there was a lot I could help, and I’m a shitbag for the way I left. I let her throw me out when I should have fought for what we had. I should have confessed to feeling something. I was all over the place for the first time ever, and I had no idea how to own that. I had no idea I could make it my truth and live it.

Why the hell am I not saying any of this out loud?

“I thought about you every single second since I left.” Right. That’s a great start. Go straight for the creepy stalker factor because she didn’t get enough of that from her ex. “I’ve thought about your kindness, your talent, how you’re brilliant and forgiving and strong and tough, and how you aren’t afraid to feel anything. All of it made you a far better person than I can ever hope to be. You’re inspirational. Not just for your designs and all you’ve accomplished or because you survived out here on your own—well, that too, of course—but because, despite being the victim of a terrible crime and living with that hanging over your head, you survived, and you didn’t let it break the good parts of you.

“I used to think feelings and emotions and sappy crap were just disgusting, actually. I didn’t want to let them in. I was afraid to let them in. It wasn’t just how badly I was hurt. It was…I don’t know. Everything? All of life? The way people use each other and—okay. You don’t need my life story here.” She’s not tapping her foot, and she doesn’t look bored. “I used to think couples who were real and very obviously in love were the grossest, basest kind of people. I hated that wholesome, forever, we’re so happy, and we get stars in our eyes just from holding hands bullshit.”

“Great talk,” she cuts in. “Very inspirational, Beau.”

“No!” I’m prepared to race to the door and block it like a true arse, so she can’t go in and has to hear me out for another two minutes, but she doesn’t move.

I realize now she was joking. She’s not mad. She gets what I’m trying to say.

“Now I think those people might be smarter than I originally gave them credit for. I think they might have known all along something I needed to learn, and the only way I’ve ever gotten a lesson straight was to have it taught to me the hardest way possible,” I add.

“I don’t believe you. I think you used to be a perfectly nice person,” Ignacia says.

“That might be giving me too much credit. I’m not sure I was ever nice, even as a kid.”

“I think you were. And if you weren’t, it was only because you have a biting sense of humor, but it hadn’t sharpened into bitterness yet.” She sighs, crossing her arms in that huge slicker. “I hate that I’ve missed you. I hate that I couldn’t stay mad. I hate that I wanted to talk to you so badly that I’ve lost sleep over it for so many nights. I tried to go online to send you a message since that’s the only way I knew how to find you, but your account was already gone. I deleted mine as well. I’m not into doing that anymore since I have enough money to fix the place now. You paid me even though the whole thing was a sham.”

“It wasn’t. I—err…” I rake a hand over my hair. It’s sopping wet, and I get a secondary shower of raindrops cascading down my face. “It wasn’t all fake for me. Most of it was the truth. I couldn’t stop telling you things I wasn’t supposed to. I didn’t tell you everything, but I did—I did…I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t control myself. I kept slipping up and making mistakes. I want to regret them because it wasn’t me, but I can’t regret them. And maybe…maybe I want it to be me.”

“Maybe?” A water droplet falls from her hair and lands on her eyebrow right when she raises it at me.

“I want to be the guy you reach for at night. I want to be the guy you reach for, period. I want to be a man worthy of your trust. I want to…I want to tell you that I do feel things. I’m just a person, just a guy who has gotten it wrong for a long time now. Not because of the money or anything like that, but because it sucks having people you love die. It messes you up. It doesn’t matter that I got help for it. I promised myself I wouldn’t go through that again. I guess that’s cowardly as hell, and if I heard someone saying these things, I’d probably laugh at them and tell them to balls up.”

“Does ballsing up work? As a woman, I’m genuinely curious.”

“I have no idea. Any therapist would say it’s macho talk and bad advice. But I have no advice. I have a lot of money and properties, investments, and a company, but that’s about it. I’m just built up on the outside and not much at all on the inside. That’s what I’m offering. If you’re still…if you’d like to have me.”

She stands still for half a second, and then she steps forward, wrapping her fists in my shirt and dragging me to her. “You’re soaking wet,” she chides me before she threads her hands around my neck and pulls my face down. I get water all over her, raining like a second cloud inside the porch. She’s right. I’m a human shower. “I once said you should choose forgiveness and happiness above anything else and that it should be allowed to triumph over bitterness and hate. I want to choose that now. I am choosing that now, Beau. I—”

I can’t stop. I might be a human rainshower, but I have to kiss her anyway. If I don’t have my lips on hers, I’m not going to make it another minute. I’ve made it far too many hours and days and weeks that turned into months, throwing myself into anything and everything I could to banish this woman from my head and life, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t cut out the memories. I couldn’t cut out the want and desire. I couldn’t cut out the fact that once I had something more, I wanted more and more and more of her. I wanted more of her kindness, her goodness, her warmth.

I kiss her cheek, and she tilts her face so I can have her lips. I take them hard, kissing her the way I know she likes to be kissed. My hands grasp her hips over the rain slicker, and her lips open up for me. I thrust my tongue into her mouth, and she whimpers. One leg comes up, and she tries to hook it around me to get closer.

“Jesus. Wow. I’ve had the drinks done forever. I was waiting for you two to wrap it up, but then you both apparently decided you don’t hate each other and want to get it on, and that’s just—not on the porch. Please. My eyes are bleeding.”

We spring apart, but Ignacia takes my hand. “I truly wanted to find you, but I couldn’t. I’ve been hoping that one day you’d show up on my porch, giving me a codeword.”

“What’s that?” I don’t have it. Shit, I don’t…I’m not ready to say I love her. I don’t even know how to love someone. I need a slower introduction. I need her to teach me, break me into it, and guide me to it. I need her gentle and patient instruction. I need…I just need all of her for as long as I draw breath. I know that. Right here, right now. Does that count as love, even small dose love or small little love?

She stands on her tiptoes to brush my cheek with her lips. They’re still too cold. I want to kiss the rain off them all over again, kiss the heat back into her. “It’s Sam,” she whispers in my ear.

“Sam.” I brush back the wet tendrils of hair, cupping her face.

“The drinks are getting coooooolddddd,” her sister sings from the door before slamming it shut.

“You’re a bad influence, you know,” Ig—Sam goads me, taking my frigid fingers in hers. I’ll be warm again in no time if I can just sit and bask in her glow.

“How’s that?” Well, how am I not a bad influence? It’s her goodness that’s rubbed off on me. It’s her goodness that brought to the surface what little humanity I had left and magnified it to the point where I could believe in it again.

“I can’t stop calling my cat an absolute unit. She’s started to answer to that name now,” Sam chides.

Of all the things in the world…

“You’re a bad influence too. I can’t stop thinking of insults in terms of butts,” I retort.

We both throw our heads back, and our laughter spills off the porch and echoes out into the pounding rain.