She righted her head on her shoulders and advised, “Maybe you should talk to someone about, uh… what you’re feeling.”
“You volunteering for that?” Chace asked and his tone was cutting.
She didn’t even blink before she offered, “If you like.”
“No offense, Faye, but the person I pick to lay the fucked up shit in my head on is not gonna be a woman who breathes and eats and works but lives in a fantasy world. You can’t handle your own life, which is a good life, far’s I can see, without escaping. No fuckin’ way you can handle the shit I got in my head.”
It was an asshole remark but it worked. Her shoulders slumped slightly and she took a step back.
“I’m just trying to be nice,” she pointed out the obvious.
“What would be nice is if you’d haul your ass back up the trail and leave me be.”
She didn’t move. Not for long moments.
Then she leaned slightly into him and said gently, “I don’t think you should be left be. I think you’re dealing with something heavy, you’re obviously doing it alone.” She threw a mitten-covered hand out to indicate the area, “You need to unload it, Chace.”
Christ.
Fuck.
Christ.
That voice, quiet, gentle, so fucking sweet saying his name, her eyes soft on him.
Fuck.
Better than he could have imagined.
Better than he ever could have dreamed.
And not his.
Never to be his.
Which meant finally hearing her say his name was torture.
“All right,” he started, “I’ve been trying to be nice –”
Her head jerked and she cut him off, her tone surprised, and again, Christ, fucking cute, “You have?”
“Yeah,” he fired back. “I have and you’ll know I have when I say, Miz Goodknight, I do not want your concern. I don’t want your listening ear. I don’t want your company. What I want is for you to walk your fat ass up the trail and leave me the fuck alone.”
He watched her body lock and her pale face in the moonlight become even paler.
This lasted less than half a second before she turned on her boot and ran from the clearing. She did it so fast, he could see the midnight shadow of her long hair streaming behind her even after she’d left the clearing and hit the trail.
Chace Keaton’s eyes didn’t leave the trail for a long while after she’d disappeared.
Kiss me, Chace.
He heard it in his head and he closed his eyes.
You need to unload it, Chace.
That time he heard Faye and his eyes shot open.
Just what he did not need.
Another demon.
“Fuck,” he growled, his eyes moving through the clearing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing.
Nothing there.
It wasn’t talking.
Fuck.
Like he had, night after night, Chace Keaton strode though the clearing to the trail and went home.
*
Two days later…
“Would it kill you to come to dinner?”
Chace watched over the counter as Shambles made his coffee. He felt the muscle jump in his cheek as he held the phone to his ear thinking, yes. It would kill him to go to dinner at his mother and father’s house.
Or, more to the point, it would drive him to murder if he had to breathe his father’s air.
“Ma,” he said into the phone, “like I told you, I’m busy.”
“But I thought you said they were hiring new officers and things were getting back to normal,” she replied.
“They are but it isn’t normal. Things are busy. Very busy. When they cleaned house, we lost practically everyone. Those new officers have to be trained and after what went down and the time it lasted, the citizens of Carnal aren’t gonna adjust in a few months to a Force they can trust. They got a problem, they still call each other rather than the Police Department. Then, when that goes south, and it usually goes south, we have to clean up the mess. No way I could make dinner this week.”
“How about next week?” she pushed as Shambles poured frothed milk from the little stainless steel pitcher into his drink.
“How about the weekend after next, I come to Aspen and take you out to dinner?” Chace suggested.
Her voice was disappointed when she replied, “But, you know your father always goes to that golf tournament in Florida the third weekend in February.”
He absolutely did.
He also absolutely knew his father was not attending a golf tournament in Florida but doing something else that could, conceivably, require sporting equipment but its usages were not something his mother could comprehend.
Unfortunately, Chace could. He just tried not to.
Shambles turned, smiling at him and shoving the white lid on top of his coffee.
Chace jerked up his chin to Shambles but said into his phone, “Is Dad’s attendance required at our dinner?”
“Chace, you never see your father,” she replied quietly.
“And, Ma, you know that’s by design,” Chace returned just as quietly, pulling out his wallet, flipping it open and yanking out a bill. He handed it to Shambles, Shambles set his coffee on the counter and turned to the cash register as Chace kept talking. “Now, are we on the weekend after next?”