Fatal Deception (Bent County Protectors), page 10
“My ex-wife was pregnant when we got divorced.”
That shut her up right quick, with a sharp ache of pain for him. No wonder kids and family were a sore spot. Because however this story turned out, he’d said he didn’t have a child. And she could see the pain in his eyes even if he didn’t want it there.
“The kid wasn’t mine. She let me think it was though, for a while anyway. So, yeah, the whole my-friend-is-a-new-dad thing is a little weird and reminiscent of a terrible thing that happened a long time ago. The end.”
She didn’t breathe. It was…terrible. She knew he didn’t want sympathy or thought he didn’t. But she also knew, whether he realized it or not, he was saying this because he needed to. Because it was weighing on him, eating at him.
He’d stepped into a hospital room where he once thought he’d be in Thomas’s spot, but instead he was just this…solitary outsider.
Even though she wasn’t sure he’d welcome it, she moved over to him. Put her hand on his shoulder, rubbed her palm up and down in a hopefully comforting move. “Copeland, that’s awful.”
He didn’t jerk away like she expected him to. He stood there, glaring at some point on the wall behind her. His breathing wasn’t quite steady, and the anger and grief pumped off him. He’d no doubt bottled it up all evening, and now it needed to come out.
But when he spoke again, most of his anger had fizzled into a sad kind of bitterness. “You know what the worst part is? I would have stayed. I offered to stay. Be a dad, because the father was dead, and I’d loved him too. And after all that—cheating on me with my best friend, mourning him with me when he was killed, telling me she was pregnant with my kid—she still said no.”
“That’s…”
“It was a long time ago.” He stepped away from her hand. “I don’t know why I…” He shook his head. “We need to eat something, get some sleep.”
“We’ll do scrambled eggs and toast. Not exactly gourmet, but it’s all I got.” She limped over to the counter, tears burning in her eyes. He would not appreciate them, so she blinked them back as best she could as she scrambled the eggs, sliced some bread and tossed it in the toaster.
He got out plates. She was out of juice, and it was too late for coffee, so he filled glasses with ice water. They worked in easy silence as they got the meal ready and then sat at the table and ate it.
She managed two bites before she couldn’t take it anymore. “Tell me the whole story, Copeland. I think you’ll feel better.”
He shook his head, merely pushing the eggs around on his plate. “There’s no feeling better.”
“Maybe. But bottling it up… Believe it or not, I get it. I’d rather never talk about a lot of things, but Rosalie always makes me. And it’s usually better. It’s like…you know, getting the toxins out. Have you ever talked to anyone about it?”
“My parents know everything.”
“But have you ever…laid it all out? Told the whole story. Got it out of your system? The grief doesn’t just disappear—how could it? But everything’s magnified when you just hold it in. Until one day, it explodes.” She mimed the explosion with her hands.
“You mean like dumping that all out on a near stranger.”
“I think cohabitating has moved us up from stranger to at least some form of acquaintance. Maybe even friend. The kind of friend that lends an ear when someone needs it.” She refused to look away, instead held his hurting gaze. “Like it or not, admit it or not, you need it.”
* * *
THERE WAS JUST something about her. Against all his normal excuses and certainties, Audra dug under something. She weakened that wall he’d built between himself and the past. He didn’t want to go back there, but she made it sound like he had to.
Like he might actually survive if he did.
Copeland wanted to resist that pull. Resist this…connection. But she was just sitting there, looking at him, pretending like she knew how to make all this pain go away, and he was desperate enough to listen to her.
“We grew up together, Ethan and I. Became cops together. I went into the detective bureau. He went into SWAT. He liked the immediate danger. I liked the puzzle. I met Danielle while we were out one night, started dating her, got married. He gave me a hard time about tying myself down, but when we bought a house, he bought the one next door. I figured someday he’d settle down too, we’d raise our families next to each other. Our wives could be friends. It’s hard being a cop’s wife. Good to have community.”
It still hurt, a deep, pounding pain that he thought he’d never escape. Those dreams he’d had for a future, and just how almost everyone he’d loved and trusted had made it impossible.
But he wasn’t one of those guys who blamed everyone else. He’d had to look at himself clearly and honestly to make the decisions he had. And one of the honest truths he’d uncovered was that he maybe kind of deserved it.
“I loved being a detective once I made my way up the chain. I threw myself into cases. I wasn’t home. The job became my life, and Danielle became someone…at home to handle everything. Ethan worked different hours than I did, so he helped her out. I can’t be shocked she cheated. I can’t begrudge her that.” He’d worked very hard to believe it.
But Audra’s words were hard, surprisingly hard from such a soft woman. “You can. You should. You got married. You made vows. The least she could have done if she wanted to break them was tell you that. Up front. And what about him? Your friend? He owed you more. Better.”
Copeland shook his head. Maybe that wasn’t altogether untrue, but… “It’s complicated.”
“I don’t doubt it, Copeland. And no one’s a mustache-twirling villain here, but the truth is pretty simple. Hard, but simple. They wanted the easy way out, and you don’t get to blame that on yourself.”
He let out a long breath. Wondering if he’d ever feel more like a stab-wound victim, always just barely surviving bleeding out.
It was easier to blame himself, because then he could live with it. If it was his fault, his mistakes, then he deserved it. And he handled that a lot better than thinking he didn’t.
“So your wife and your best friend betrayed you. And they were wrong,” Audra said, so firmly, like she knew, even though she’d never met Ethan or Danielle. Never known him as he’d been back then.
It was disorienting.
“She was pregnant. Was it his?” She asked it so matter-of-factly, but it didn’t make him feel matter-of-fact. Nothing could.
“Before I knew she was pregnant, maybe even before she knew, Ethan was shot and killed in a hostage situation. It was rough. I thought it was odd how hard Danielle took it, but then I decided it was about…me. She was worried it could happen to me. It changed my perspective. I realized all the ways I’d been failing at being everything outside of a detective. Then she told me she was pregnant and I… I wanted that. A shot at that. The kind of family I’d had growing up. My parents are great. My childhood was great. I just thought, hey, I can make that happen. I could learn something from losing Ethan. It wouldn’t have been in vain.”
Sometimes, he wondered if that had been the worst part. That he’d wanted to make something good out of the bad and just gotten more and more bad in return.
“It lasted a few months. I went to appointments. We started planning a nursery. I thought…things were going to be okay. I was going to make up everything I’d screwed up. Then one night we got in a fight. I don’t even remember about what. Something small, I’m sure, and she said she wished it was me that had died instead, at least then the baby’s real father would be around.”
Audra touched him then. Her hand over his fist. He hadn’t realized he’d curled it on the table, but he could still see it in clear, perfect color. The anger, the bitterness, the hate on Danielle’s face.
And then, the ensuing miserable guilt.
She’d apologized, but it had broken something. For both of them. And even when he’d offered to stay out of some kind of misplaced duty, she’d refused.
“She apologized, and after we’d calmed down, I offered to stay. Start over. But… She just wanted me out of her life. A fresh start. Her and her baby. The end.”
And that had been that. She’d walked away, and there’d been no way to make her stay. No way to repair what she’d broken. Except to pretend like they’d broken it together. Pretend like the kid he never met didn’t mean anything to him. Just…pretend, and pretend his way into being someone else.
“I tried to… I don’t know. Keep working. Keep living. But I was someone else. I’d lost everything, even that…core of who I was. I couldn’t stay there. I wasn’t me anymore. So that’s why I came here. To be someone else.”
It sounded ridiculous when he said it out loud. So why had he? Why had he let Audra drag this out of him? It was so…
“I know how that feels,” she said very quietly. So quietly, he had to lift his head, to make sure he wasn’t dreaming she’d said those words.
She wasn’t looking at him. She was frowning at the kitchen sink, but her hand was still over his. “To feel like two different people. Before and after, even if I didn’t leave. Everything in my life is before my dad died, and after my dad died. And not in that sort of…grief way. In an angry way. That loss of something that wasn’t right, wasn’t fair. It’s…sharp, so it just sits there. Bitterness. I don’t like to be bitter. I don’t like the way it…infects everything, and the people I love. So I liked it like that. Before. After. I could be someone else after.”
Why should she understand? Why should she be the one to hold them accountable? Why should this unplanned forced proximity have led him here, talking about things he’d wanted to bury and leave behind?
Except he hadn’t left anything behind. The past always clung to him. A layer of something he’d never been able to wash off. Weights that had stayed right there, his whole time here.
Until now. Somehow, she’d been right. Laying it all out—from start to finish—was a weird kind of exorcism. He’d always hate it. That betrayal would always be a part of him. The loss of a child that wasn’t even his.
But…there was something about laying it all out to someone who hadn’t been there, didn’t know anyone, so stoutly saying what he’d always felt deep down, always tried to talk himself out of.
No matter what he’d done wrong, they had been wrong to hide it from him. Danielle had been wrong to let him think he was going to be a father. They had been cowards, and he wasn’t perfect, God knew, but he’d always been honest.
“You know, I kept this secret from Rosalie for years. I mean, years. And I finally told her last year. I didn’t want to tell her. I hated telling her, but I had to. And then, I felt better. To not have it anymore. To be able to tell her everything I felt. You just have to be able to let it go sometimes.”
“What was the secret?”
She pulled her hand away from his, looked down at her plate, poked at what was left of her eggs. “Oh, I’d just sort of… Our parents sucked. Always. I was pretty aware of it, but Rosalie was younger. So I just…did a lot while we were growing up so she didn’t know how little they cared about us. I made sure my parents paid attention to her, wished her happy birthday, got her presents—that kind of thing. I did things for her and gave credit to my parents. So, in a weird way, when we found out about my dad’s second family, it hit her harder. Because she’d idolized him, but what she really idolized was the version of him that I’d created.”
He could only stare at her. It was completely and utterly selfless. She hadn’t done it for herself. Just for her sister, and even if it had backfired a little, she’d had the best of intentions. She even felt guilt over those best of intentions, like it was somehow her fault.
He had never met someone so bound and determined to hoard every responsibility for themselves, and he imagined she’d just been soldiering that weight her whole life. The weight of this ranch and her sister.
She wrinkled her nose. “I guess that doesn’t do anything to deny the martyr claims.” She got up, took their plates and crossed to the sink.
He grabbed the glasses and followed. He could say something nice. He actually found that he wanted to, but it was dangerous ground here. He recognized that enough to agree with her. “No, it sure doesn’t.”
She started rinsing off the plates. “I guess I am.” She shrugged. “It is what it is. And now we’ve gone down those little memory-lane trips, gotten to know each other a bit, we can call each other friends now,” she said, forcing some cheer into her voice. Then she looked at him and smiled.
Copeland didn’t get involved. He didn’t get wrapped up. He didn’t vomit out his past at the drop of the hat. Whatever she turned him into, it wasn’t him.
This wasn’t exorcising anything. It was dragging it all up and tying her to it.
And he wanted her more than he could ever remember wanting anything. Especially when she laughed. Especially when she looked at him like she was just as irritated she wanted him as he was that he wanted her.
When she looked at him and smiled and said they were friends. When she’d done something he’d stopped everyone else in his life from doing.
She stood up for him. Pointed out the flawed thinking that he’d had a role in what two people he’d loved and trusted had done fully behind his back.
Oh, he knew his parents blamed Danielle, and even poor dead Ethan, for what they’d done. But he hadn’t let them act on that, or say it to him. It had been easy to brush off any of their commentary as a parents’ blind eye to their only child’s flaws.
But Audra wasn’t blind. He hadn’t been exactly nice to her, even if he’d helped her. He didn’t think she had any pie-in-the-sky ideas about who he was. And still, she’d seen everything he’d laid out for what it was.
Wrong.
He’d never had that. Hadn’t let himself have it, and he wouldn’t have even all these years later, but it had just…happened. She had just happened. And he didn’t know anyone like her. Never had. She was damn confusing, was what she was. One minute all soft and self-sacrificing, the next hard and demanding and always…always carrying too many weights on her shoulders like she was the only one who could.
Her smile faded. She probably saw what was in his expression, but she stood her ground. He could walk away. He could—
But she stepped forward. She didn’t shy away from meeting his gaze. She had to see the conflict there, between the things he shouldn’t want and the things he did. And maybe he thought he saw the same things in her gaze. That was what gave him the permission.
Because if anyone deserved the things she wanted—even if she shouldn’t—it was this woman right here.
So he kissed her. Just swooped down and pressed his mouth to hers, settled his hands on her hips and drew her in.
He kissed her until he forgot there was anything else in this world except the feel of her mouth against his.
She kissed him back. That impossible mix of sturdy and soft. Demanding and giving. And when she leaned against him, of her own volition, he felt like he’d won a war.
It wasn’t wild so much as rooted. Tangled. It felt like being pulled under and into something he didn’t understand, or maybe was afraid to. But the honeyed pleasure of the taste of her in his mouth coated any fear.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, leaned into him fully. He would have leaned right back, but something flickered in his peripheral vision. For a second, he thought maybe he was seeing stars, but it penetrated. How wrong it was. The flicker against the dark. He managed to get his mouth off hers, turned his head and…
“Audra. Out the window. Fire.”
Chapter Twelve
Audra didn’t understand the words at first. Her body was a riot of sensations and…fire.
Fire. Actual fire. All that heat, sizzle, fascinating intensity, drained out of her into a cold, icy fear as her eyes finally accepted what she was looking at.
Copeland had already started moving for the back door. His phone was to his ear and he was barking out orders to whomever he’d called.
She took a stumbling step forward, her twisted ankle forgotten until pain shot up her leg. She swore at herself, then limped another step toward the back door.
Copeland wrenched it open, but he turned to face her. His expression was all sharp lines, his words stern. The kind of order meant to be obeyed without question.
“Stay put.”
She looked beyond him, to where the tool shed was engulfed in flames, shooting light and smoke up into the dark sky above. The shed was the closest outbuilding to the house. Luckily, it housed no animals, but it contained a lot of her yard tools and very little that could have just…spontaneously combusted.
He nudged her back. “Fire department is on their way. I need you to stay inside. I’m just going to look around the perimeter. You stay inside and lock the door.”
She wasn’t trying to be a pain. She wasn’t trying to cause a problem. She was trying to understand, and she couldn’t do it if she stayed inside. She couldn’t comprehend… “Copeland. It’s my place.”
“I know it.”
The conviction in his tone was strong enough, out-of-character enough, she moved her gaze from the fire to him. His dark eyes were intense, but it wasn’t that impatience she was so used to. There was something more understanding there.
“You can’t go limping around when someone was out there starting a fire on your property. You are the center of this Audra, like it or not. You have to protect yourself.”
“What about you?”
He patted his hip, where he still had his gun from earlier. “It’s my job, Audra. I’m damn good at it. I need you to let me do it, okay?”
She supposed it was that he was almost asking this time around that allowed her to nod.
He looked around the flames, the backyard. Cursed. “Look, stay off the foot if you can, but if you’re looking for something to do, get yourself a gun. The front door is locked but I need you to lock this one behind me.”
