A Pound of Flesh (A Pound of Flesh #1) (29 page)

“You’re an amazing teacher, Peaches.”

“Thank you.” She dipped her head. “Well, it’s what my dad wanted for me.”

Carter couldn’t look away from his girl, peaceful and stunning in the twilight. They’d shared so much together over the past few hours, but Carter knew there was still so much he needed to tell her. He just didn’t have a clue how to broach any of it.

They needed to reconnect somehow, find what they had left in her kitchen when they’d cooked the omelettes. Determined, Carter threw his smoke away, pushed off from the tree, and walked to her. He held out his hand.

“What?” She cocked her head.

“Come here.” He grinned.

Without hesitation, she placed her hand in his. Her touch tingled and buzzed and shot up Carter’s arm like a lightning bolt. He pulled her to her feet and led her until they were standing next to the Alice statue. He pulled her close and held her left hand up in his right, with his other on her waist. Slowly, he began moving from side to side, watching confusion creep across her face.

“What are you doing?”

He lifted his arm and twirled her slowly underneath it. “I’m dancing with you.”

He placed his hand tighter around her waist and leaned her so far back she squealed and clung to his shoulders. They both laughed when he brought her back up, and Carter did an internal happy dance when she pushed her cheek against him.

“Is that—is that Otis Redding you’re humming?”

Embarrassment teased his neck. “Um … yeah, I think so— ‘These Arms of Mine,’ I think. I don’t know. Why?”

She giggled. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as an Otis fan.” She eyed his Zeppelin T-shirt.

“Shut up,” he chided and pushed her face into his chest, smiling at her muffled laughter.

As he continued to hum, they moved together slowly, gracefully, from one foot to the other, in a complete circle, holding each other in the gentle rain.

“My dad loved Redding’s music,” she whispered. “He’d play ‘(Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay’ at full blast all the time. He drove me and my mom freaking crazy.”

“He had good taste.”

“He played it in the car on the way … the night that …”

Carter’s arms tightened around her instinctively.

She cleared her throat. “It’s weird the things you remember, huh?”

His stomach tensed. Was this the moment he asked? Was this the moment he told her who he was, what part he’d played? Was this the moment he put everything they had built together on the fucking cliff edge, and waited for the inevitable tumble?

If he truly wanted her to be his, he knew the answer was yes.

Closing his eyes, he let the words come.

“What do you remember of the night that he—ya know—when he passed away?”

She lifted her face to the evening sky. “I remember everything.”

Carter’s stomach hit his shoes. “You do?”

“Yeah, everything,” she murmured, placing her cheek back against his chest. “I remember the car ride from DC. The hotel, visiting his rehabilitation shelter, the walk to the sandwich shop, the moment they hit him with the baseball bat.”

His lips pressed against her hair. “I’m so sorry.”

He hated that she’d been hurt. He hated that he hadn’t been strong enough to stop the bastards from killing her father. And he hated that he knew, deep down in his soul, that Peaches would hate him for it, too.

“Don’t be,” she said. “No one could have saved him. Not even me, even though I tried like hell.”

“You were nine.” He knew she would have tried, if she’d been able. She would have fought with all of her might to stop them from hurting her father.

“I ran,” she whispered. “I ran away when he needed me.”

Carter’s face collapsed.

“Don’t do that to yourself.” He waited. Breathed. “He told you … to run, Kat.”

She froze in his arms. Carter shut his eyes and clasped his hands at her back, suddenly terrified she would bolt. He couldn’t let her run again. He couldn’t lose her.

“What?”

Carter held his breath. “He told you to run.”

She moved her head back. Her eyes told him the pieces were falling together, slowly but surely, and all he could do was plead with his own for her to wait, listen, and try to understand.

“Carter.” Her voice shook. “How do … how do you know that?”

He stared at her, praying he wouldn’t have to say the words aloud, but knowing with every inch of himself that he had to. He had to tell her. “You told me last night.”

She didn’t look convinced.

She cocked her chin, studying Carter’s face. The cogs of her mind turned behind her emerald-green eyes. They flashed with pain and shock at the same time she gasped loudly, shoving him, breaking his hold on her. She stumbled back.

Carter’s heart shattered.

“I … I want to know what you remember.” His arms dropped to his sides. They were useless without her in them.

“Why?” she pushed, with anger in her voice. “Why do you want to know? Why, Carter?”

He took a step closer and she instinctively took one back. Carter’s teeth clenched.

“Because,” he started, rubbing his hands across his beanie, terrified, “I was— Because … Peaches.”

“Fuck’s sake,” she cried. “WHY?”

Her yell ricocheted around them as the rain clouds broke, and the heavens opened above them. But it didn’t matter. Carter was numb. He stared at her and lifted his arms minutely before letting them fall, defeated. He dropped his chin, gathered himself and the fear pounding in his head.

“Because I was there.”

The look on her face tore Carter wide-open, making his legs unsteady. Christ, she looked sick. She started shaking and gasping for air while mumbling words he couldn’t decipher. She clamped her eyes shut while her mouth continued to move in incoherent ramblings.

“No. No. No,” she repeated. “It wasn’t— I can’t.”

The rain pummeled Carter. “It was me,” he whispered. “It was me, Kat.”

She was instantly mute, staring at him as though he were a stranger. She opened her mouth, but he didn’t let her speak.

“I was in the area near your father’s rehabilitation center. I’d been with Max, but we’d had a fight, and I—I’d left him at a friend’s. I was having a smoke and heard a scream, so I went to see what was going on and … I saw them. I saw you. I saw them hit him with the bat.”

“Stop,” Kat rasped.

“I saw the guy hit you—”

“Stop, Carter.”

“Your father told you to run and you didn’t. Why didn’t you run?”

“Fucking stop!”

“NO!”

He took three strides toward her and yanked her into his arms. She began to fight him. Her skin was slick from the rain, making it hard to get a good grip. She hit his chest and arms as she screamed at him to let her go. But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

“I grabbed you,” he cried above her protests. “I grabbed you and ran with you. I’ve never been so scared, Kat. I had to drag you; you fought me so fucking hard. You fought me like you’re doing now, like you did last night. But I couldn’t let you go. I couldn’t. They would have killed you, just like they killed him.”

Kat sobbed in his arms, buckling at the knees.

“We landed on the floor, and, your hair, Kat. Goddammit. Peach-scented hair. My Peaches.”

Her head snapped up and she screamed in his face. “GET OFF ME!”

At the fury in her voice Carter released her and stepped back, only to receive a white-hot slap across his face.

For a few seconds the only sound around them was the rain pounding the trees. He couldn’t look at her and see the hate in her eyes. He was paralyzed, desolate, but he couldn’t stop telling her. He had to tell her.

“I held you,” he muttered, “for two fucking hours, in a freezing-cold doorway, talking to you.”

“You,” Kat accused. “You stopped me from …” She could barely speak through the wracking gulps of air. “I could have— I could have … He was my father!”

Carter turned back to her, his hurt, angry tears merging silently with the rain running down his face. “He told you to run. I couldn’t watch them kill you.”

“You had no right!”

“No right?” he argued back, his voice rising to match hers. “Your father wanted you safe, Kat. I … I saved you!”

“No, you didn’t, Carter!” she shouted back. “No, you didn’t, because I fucking died that night, too!”

Carter gaped at her. She may as well have punched him in the fucking stomach. How could she think that?

A dangerous calm shrouded her. She glanced about herself. “I … I need … I.” She pushed past him toward her jacket and bag, her feet splashing in the huge puddles that had formed with the rain.

“Kat,” Carter implored. “Don’t … please!” He grabbed for her arm but she yanked it from his grasp and shoved him away.

“Don’t!” she cried with a finger in his face. “You fucking liar! You’re just like the rest of them! Just don’t!”

He blinked at her. Stunned. “I never lied!” he yelled, fury rising through his body. “What are you talking about?”

“You never told me!” She pushed him again. “How long have you known and you never told me? That makes you a dirty. Fucking. Liar!”

Devastation curled Carter’s shoulders.

Kat’s palms found the sides of her forehead. “I … I can’t be—be … no—anywhere near you. I have to …”

She turned from him, grabbed her bag, and set off at a dead run.

Carter exploded after her, calling for her to stop, yelling at her to think about what she was doing in the dark, in the middle of Central Park, but she ignored him. He could have caught her easily. He could have wrestled her to the floor just as he’d done sixteen years before, but what would have been the fucking point?

She hated him and didn’t want to be near him.

She’d called him a liar.

Was he?

Carter stopped dead at that thought, and watched helplessly as she ran from him. Breathless, his whole body felt skinned. He clutched his chest in a futile attempt to stop the searing hurt that twisted there. Unable to breathe, he bent his head back and roared loudly into the sky, releasing the frustration and rage heaving through his bones. He kicked the base of a nearby tree several times, bellowing out words and sounds he’d never heard himself use before while praying to all hell that the hurt would stop.

Exhausted, Carter’s hands dropped to his knees while his eyes followed the path she’d taken.

When he could no longer see her and his voice was hoarse, he staggered back to his jacket and bike helmets and stumbled back to Kala.

Carter wasn’t sure how long he’d ridden his bike around the city. The only things he knew were that he was soaked to the bone, and there was a quarter-empty bottle of Jack in his hand.

He rolled Kala back into the garage and parked, kicking her stand down to take the weight. Carter flopped against her, ghosting his hand across the leather seat where Kat had sat behind him, around him, with him. His hand shook inexplicably, so he took a large gulp of Jack, hissing at the burn. The only comfort Carter took from the whiskey’s heat was it reminded him that he was still capable of feeling something.

He snorted in derision and took another hit.

Dirty fucking liar. Dirty fucking liar.

With lead feet and a body that was disturbingly empty, Carter made his way back up the stairs, climbing the six floors to his apartment. He didn’t care how long it took him or that it would have been easier to take the elevator. All he cared about was getting into bed with his Jack and praying he didn’t wake up for days. He shoved the stair door open with his shoulder, stumbling a little, and stopped dead.

Sitting in a tight ball at his apartment door—soaking wet and shivering—was Kat.

Carter slumped against the wall. A relief that almost crippled him washed down his back like warm water. Despite mascara covering half her face and her hair dripping all over, she’d never been more fucking beautiful.

They stared at each other for an eternity, silent words passing between them: words too big for a hallway as small as the one they found themselves in. Eventually, and with a strength he hadn’t known he possessed, Carter pushed from the wall and began approaching her—slow and cautious—as though moving toward a wild animal.

He was mere inches from her when she struggled to her feet and sagged, wet and heavy, against his door. She looked as tired as he felt.

With his eyes fixed on hers, and no words spoken, Carter pulled his keys from his pocket and leaned around her to unlock the door. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard her take a deep breath of him. He didn’t care, though. He wanted her to. He wanted any part she was still willing to give him.

If he was a dirty fucking liar, then he would be
her
dirty fucking liar.

Kat stepped hesitantly into the apartment. Carter set the bottle of Jack on the counter next to the coffee mugs that remained from that morning, when shit was still unicorns and fucking rainbows, and turned back to her, shaking out of his jacket. She was drenched and shaking with cold.

“Shit,” he muttered. “You need a towel.”

He made to step past her, toward the bathroom, but she stopped him in his tracks with her palms firmly on his waist, and her forehead pressed hard against his chest. Carter’s breath shuddered out at the contact. He couldn’t move. He didn’t know what he was meant to do. Last time he’d tried to touch her, she’d screamed and run away. He couldn’t cope with that shit again.

They stood motionless. Her shoulders shook with the sobs tumbling from her. He wanted to rub her back or touch her hair … but, dammit, he daren’t.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her hands clutched his sides tightly, the water in his T-shirt running down her knuckles.

Carter’s throat constricted.

Gradually, her hands slid up his chest to his neck. She lifted her head.

“I’m sorry.” Her small fingers grasped at his skin and her breath burned hot across his collarbone. “I’m— Oh God, Carter. I’m so sorry.”

Carter tried to clear his throat of the huge lump of emotion blocking it while she continued to whisper her apologies. With each one that left her, another piece of the punk-ass wall Carter had built around himself came tumbling down at her feet.

“I don’t need a towel. I need you.” Her body shook against him. “I need you so much.”