Page 73 of Inconsolable (Love Triumphs 2)

Foley pressed her hand on her stomach, swallowed bile. Drum was an unstable man who’d been her job, who’d been her challenge, who’d became her friend.

And she was in insanely, irrevocably in love with him.

22: Accused

When Foley left, Drum dragged the mattress he stored in the garage out to the foyer and lay down. He’d not slept overnight, preferring to watch Foley, from the bed, then when her breathing deepened, from the floor, and as morning came, he moved back to the staircase before going to collect her car and bartering some odd jobs with the local supermarket for food.

Now his head was spinning from tiredness and with a decent breakfast in his gut he was sated. It was raining again, thumping down. There was also no need to go anywhere, there was bread and eggs for lunch, there was coffee and milk. He was warm and undercover, breaking all the rules, not giving a fuck, king for the day.

That was Foley’s fault. She did that to him. Made him want things, made him look for loopholes. He lay on the mattress with his coat over his legs and his now dry jeans rolled up for a pillow. He’d been worried her car would be damaged. It was covered in debris but intact, a couple of dents in the bonnet that might be new. He’d break another rule for her if he could find a way not to trigger attention. He wanted her driving something modern, safer.

He lay there thinking about Foley, smiling like an idiot at the dome ceiling. It’d been a risk to bring her here, but he’d been out of smart options and she’d accepted his vague answers, too ill to be bothered fighting with him. That wouldn’t last. She was restored this morning so there’d be a fight tonight. She wasn’t going to let him get away with evasions and half-truths much longer. Their friendship needed new terms negotiated. Terms that included sweet, hot kisses that made him forget to be cautious, forget what he wasn’t allowed to have.

; Thinking about her was harmless. It was being in the same room with her that was the problem, because whatever the room, the space, there was too much of it unless she was in his arms and once she was, that power packed body, those hungry lips of hers, made him feel so many things he wasn’t entitled to any more.

Turned on, yeah. Dear God, so hard it was difficult to think straight, to remember he wasn’t allowed to have her because he’d make her unclean. But different too. Like before almost, as if his internal clock had been wound back and he was still an honest man, trustworthy and reliable, instead of one who used his brain, his skill to manufacture pain and suffering on a global scale.

He was hard now. He rolled over, curled up, the urge to use his hands compelling, but that would be another rule broken and the sickness in him enjoyed the denial. He was a bastard and he knew it and he should get up and leave now before she came back, before he entirely contaminated her with his foulness.

But he was weak and shiftless, incapable of being stoic around her, worse, incapable of sending her away to safety. He thought about her mouth, about the noises she made when they kissed and it was nearly enough without his hand. He was damned and damned again. The opportunity to ruin something pure and good finding him even in his seclusion. The intention to stay and allow it to happen, proof of his depravity.

He slept and didn’t dream, no ghosts, no meaningless shocks that would sit him upright with chest pain from his heart trying to carve a way out of his body, and no better solution when he woke to where he found himself; in a different kind of prison, where he had to decide to stay and take the compromise of Foley’s corrupting caresses, her killing kisses, or break out and disappear again, find a new cliff, a new place he could scour himself clean.

She came long before he expected her, in the middle of the afternoon, before he’d decided; pressing the intercom on the front gate. He used the system to open the gate and met her at the front door, self-recrimination, notions of abandoning her, blown all to hell by the first sight of her coming up the path.

He would find a way to have her and not make her dirty. He believed that until she lifted her head and he saw the expression on her face. She was burning up like an angry meteor.

“Foley, what’s wrong?”

She went past him into the foyer, careful to shy away from touching him, deliberately keeping her distance but emitting such trembling fury he was immediately on guard. She went to the stairs and held onto the banister as if she needed it for support. “Leave the door open and stay where you are.”

He faced her, cosmic forces he wasn’t ready for about to pelt down on him, but whatever wrath she was bringing he deserved it tenfold.

“What did you do?” Her voice shook and she couldn’t look at him.

Finally the right question.

“I hurt a lot of people.”

“You told me you weren’t a murderer, a rapist.”

He closed his eyes. Not directly, but the result was the same. She’d found him out.

She put her other hand over her forehead as if her head pained. “You spun me lies. You painted the air with insinuations of some great wrongdoing I couldn’t possibly understand.” She dropped her hand and glared at him. “You talk about penance as if you know you’ve done something terrible, and you cling to that cave because you’re scared you’ll do it again.”

Most of that true. He’d lied by omission, but what hit hardest was her expression. She finally understood him and feared him because of it.

She let go the banister and wrapped her arms around her middle. “Right now you tell me what you did and who you hurt.”

He’d played at being God and become the devil. “It’s not that simple.” There was a rollcall of names, families. “There’s no—”

“It is exactly that simple. You lied about everything and it stops now.” She looked away, but when he said nothing she faced him again and her eyes were frozen amber, prehistoric in their hatred. “I can help you if you tell me what you did.”

Now she lied. “No one can help me.”

“It’s over, Drum. All of this, the cave, your freedom, it’s finished. You can’t hide anymore. I know what you’ve done.”