“Will they tell you where she is? Or where your kids are? Anything but give me fifty thousand dollars based on trust?”
“Obie says he’s been working to get my ex-wife to allow him to speak to my sons. To tell them they’re old enough to have contact with me and that I want to have contact with them.”
Cora leaned against the wall at her back. Aching for Beau to have to face the potential death of a mother who’d actually rejected him when he was still a damned kid and the distant hope that maybe this time would be the one that finally brought his children into his life.
He hadn’t told her any of this. Not since the letter on her door and she’d asked about it more than once. That hurt. But it wasn’t about her at that moment. She was in someone else’s home. He was clearly still reeling from it and she wasn’t going to make a scene.
But it hurt.
She made some noise and heard Ian shush his grandfather.
* * *
BEAU HEARD THE rustle as Cora finished up in the bathroom and made the shut up motion at them. He needed to talk to her once he knew anything concrete. He certainly didn’t want her to find out what was going on by overhearing it.
Just a few scant minutes later, she came into the room with her coat in her hand as she headed to Pops. “Thank you so much for having me today. The best spaghetti and meatballs I’ve had probably ever.”
Pops hugged Cora. “You’re welcome up here any old time, darlin’.”
“Don’t tease me now,” she said.
Beau turned to Ian and whispered, “She doesn’t know so keep it quiet.”
Anger flashed over Ian’s face. “You haven’t told her yet?”
“No, and I have my reasons. She doesn’t need the stress or the drama. When I know something concrete I’ll tell her,” Beau whispered before he ended the conversation by grabbing his stuff and moving to join her in saying goodbye to Pops.
When she left the kitchen, he turned back to hug Pops hard.
“I like her. You best tell her about this. Let her share this burden,” Pops told Beau. “You can’t move forward when you carry secrets and if you blow this thing with her, you’ll be doing yourself some harm. That girl loves you.”
“I know. Every day when she looks at me and I see it in her eyes I just hope to deserve it.”
“Keep it up, boy,” Pops said. “Both of you.” He pointed at Ian.
He was surprised to see Cora in the backseat with Jezzy, but she was on her phone and pointed to Ian to take her place so they rode back to Seattle that way with her getting some work done and he and Ian fleshing out some ideas about Ian’s midwinter menu.
At home, she took Jezzy outside and when he went to look for her half an hour later, he found her wrapped in a blanket out on the back deck.
“Hey. I’ve been looking for you,” he said, sitting on the chair next to hers.
“I’m right here. What is it you want?” she asked. But her voice was flatter than usual. Enough that he swung his legs out to angle himself to face her. “Is everything all right?”
“You tell me. Is everything all right, Beau?”
Uh-oh.
“You obviously have something to say so just spit it out.”
Her head whipped and he knew those words were ill chosen.
“Are you actually kidding me? Or did you have some sort of health issue that destroyed your ability to tell when you’ve pissed your woman off so much she’s about to tell you what’s what?” She pressed two fingers over his mouth before he could respond. “I want to be really clear right now that if you fucking lie to me or blow me off this has to be over. Be honest or fuck off.”
He had nothing to hide but one thing and he damn sure wasn’t going to push her into breaking up with him over it.
“The cult has been back in contact with me,” he said at last.
She just looked at him. Waiting.
“I didn’t tell you because at first I didn’t know what they were going to ask for and it wasn’t worth it to get you upset until I knew more.”
“You heard from them twice more that you never told me about. You told Ian. And you told Pops but you didn’t tell me. Even though I asked you more than once.”
He saw it then, the hurt in her eyes.
“I didn’t know anything more than to have my phone with me at all times. My uncle called on New Year’s Eve. When I popped out to get the car to pick you up. You were already upset because of that scene with your mother. I didn’t want to make it worse,” he tried to explain.
“Tell me why you get the satisfaction of defending me to my family but I don’t get the same opportunity,” she said. “I never hid my crap, even though it can be off-putting. I never hid Walda. But you, after you told me you’d share, you hid this from me. And I found it out because you were discussing it with people you had told. And I get that you’ve known both of them longer but it’s some major bullshit and you seriously hurt my feelings.”
“At the party, right before the phone call. Your mom, she said I’d get bored with a calm life, that I’d walk off and leave you for something exciting,” he said.
Cora nodded that she remembered.
“And then you wanted to leave and the call from my uncle came not two minutes after I left the gallery. I didn’t.” He stopped, scrubbing his hands over his face. “I didn’t want to make her right. I didn’t want to bring my damned drama into your life and I didn’t want to give your mother any more ammunition against me.” He blew out a breath. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t hiding it from you because I didn’t trust you. I just didn’t want her to be right.”
Cora sighed and Jezzy poked her head out of the blanket she’d been snuggling under to yip her hello at Beau.
“I’m sorry she made you feel that way. But I don’t feel that way. This stuff with the cult isn’t about you or your character. You’re a parent who had his children stolen. A child whose parents abused him. You’re a victim and you’re trying your best to deal with that. I can help you. Or not. Maybe I don’t know shit. But I am your person. Right? Even if all I do is listen I’m always on your side,” Cora told him quietly. “If you let my mother control that and keep you from doing what you know I’d want you to, you might as well be with her. What I tell you is what’s important. What she thinks isn’t.”
“You’re right. Do you want to hear all of it? Inside where it’s warm?” Beau held a hand out her way.
She took it and let him pull her to her feet. “Yes, I’d like that a lot.”
After he’d given her the whole rundown, he said, “So essentially my mother is dying and my father won’t let her get treatment. Treatment that will cost at least fifty thousand dollars if my uncle is to be believed. And if I help, he’ll do all he can to get me in contact with my kids.”
“Do you believe him?” she asked.
“Does it really matter?” he asked. “Being wrong could truly be a life-or-death type situation.”
“Obviously it doesn’t matter on that level. But I think the question does. I’m trying to understand the situation as well as I can. Can you believe your uncle? Be honest with yourself at least, so you can keep your expectations where they should be. You’re a lot of things, Beau, but you’re not a liar. At least you haven’t been with me.” Cora shrugged from her place in the chair by the fireplace.
A chair big enough for her and Jezzy, but not for him. She was keeping him back and he figured he deserved most of her wariness.
But she hadn’t left. Hadn’t run off or thrown things. Hadn’t broken up with him. She wanted to know all she could to help as best as she could.
“My uncle, though he’s my father’s right-hand man, has never lied to me. He doesn’t usually promise much, says he’ll try and from all I’ve been able to tell, he has tried. But really, it’s fifty thousand dollars. I have it. If my mother can be saved because of
it, great. Even if she won’t speak to me. If not, I’ve lost some money but not my soul. Maybe it’ll make its way to his flock so they can eat better.”
“All I want to do is make this happen for you so you can get the outcome you deserve. I want you to find your kids. I want your mother to be all right and I want you to tell me when something like this happens without fear that my mother will use it or that you’ll bring me drama. Fuck that and fuck her for making you feel that way. I want you, no I need you to tell me or I’ll eventually start to feel like you’re holding parts of yourself back. I love you and I don’t want to resent you.”
Beau got off the couch and moved to kneel in front of her. He took her hands and gave the dog a look when she kept sticking her face into his and her nose into his ear. “Back it up, weirdo.”
Cora’s laugh seemed to shatter the brittle film of fear and anxiety slowly suffocating him. He sucked in a deep breath and laid his head in her lap.
And she made everything okay once again when her fingers slid into his hair and held him there.
No matter what happened with his uncle and his mother, he had Cora, who loved him to the core.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I THINK YOU should write each one of your kids and your mother letters,” Cora told him later. “I know you wrote them before when you dealt with a different person, but this is your uncle. Perhaps he can be trusted at least to deliver the notes.”
Beau paced the yard, tossing the ball for Jezzy to run after over and over. Like meditation.
Cora didn’t say anything else. She merely watched him pace as she drank her tea. He liked that about her as much as he loved her vibrant energy. When she needed to be quiet, she was.
“That’s a good idea.” He’d been hoping his uncle would give him a phone number or an address, but he realized that was very unlikely. His uncle had to sneak away from whatever business his father had Obie on to contact Beau, so it might be easier to have the letters with him. So if his uncle took the money and dashed, he’d be able to convince him to at least take a few envelopes. Less risk than exposing the group to Beau’s presence.
He’d begun spinning out all the possibilities from the most unlikely to far more realistic. Would Obie bring the twins? Or his mother? Would Beau be able to go and sit at his mother’s bedside when she was in treatment? Would Obie be able to convince Beau’s dad to even let her get the help she needed? Would his sons even want to have contact after what he knew they must have grown up hearing about him?
“You’re going to ‘what if’ yourself into a heart attack if you don’t stop,” Cora told him. Of course she knew when to speak up too. Knew when to snap him out of whatever he’d gotten himself tangled up in.
“I know. I’m trying not to. When I spoke to him on New Year’s Eve, Obie said he’d call back within two weeks. It’s been two weeks today.”
“Wanna have sex to distract yourself?” she asked with the same casual tone she’d use offering him coffee or waffles.
Only this was sex, which was far better than coffee or waffles. He turned to her. “You’re offering yourself up?”
“I’m sure as hell not offering anyone else up to sex you into distraction,” she told him with a mock frown.
Okay then. Sex would most definitely be preferable to pacing back and forth, and Jezzy had been taking longer and longer to bring the ball back so even their fetch-loving dog was getting sick of it.
But instead of going inside, she got up to turn off all the outdoor lights. The standing heater was on because she liked being on the deck even in the cold weather. The glow from within was the only illumination as she tossed her pants on a nearby chair.
“I’m leaving the sweater on because it’s too chilly to be out here sexing totally naked,” she told him.
“It’s okay. I know your tits from memory. I’ll just imagine them,” he assured her.
With an imperious point of her finger at him, she said, “You should get yourself similarly available.”
Amused and definitely interested in making himself similarly available to have sex with his woman, he unzipped his jeans and went where she indicated—the chaise she’d been on before.
“I have honestly fantasized about having sex in this chair at least a dozen times,” she said, directing him to sit so she could be on his lap facing him.
“Wish fulfillment is something I’m happy to provide.”
She took his face in her hands and kissed him before letting go to get a condom on him. Cora knew he wasn’t about long and slow. Not when he was worked up the way he’d been.
Instead she sank down onto his cock so fast they both got a little surprised and breathless at the end as body met body.
“So far so good,” she murmured into his ear, and began to rock and grind herself against him. Deep and relentless. She was going to take him straight to climax.
No one else had ever read him so well. Knew him the way she did.
That was nearly as sexy as the way she felt, hot and wet while all around them the late afternoon was settling into a brisk night.
“I love you so fucking much,” she told him, taking him deep again and again. Her angle meant she was totally in control, which she used to break him down until all there was was sensation. Hot and wet. Tight. Over and over, as her breath caressed the side of his face.
He found her clit, not wanting to go alone. Climax screamed toward him, barreling down, and he wasn’t going to be able to resist much longer.
Her moan caught then, shifted into a snarl, the sound so dirty he ended up panting to keep from coming.
“Let go, my beautiful Cora. Come all over me,” he urged and her head fell forward to rest on his shoulder as her body obeyed. Groaning as his body followed, his climax swallowed by hers in a feedback loop of sensation until he managed to get them both in the house and onto the couch.
“I’ll get your pants in a few minutes,” he wheezed as she snuggled against him. He needed to get rid of the condom. Should close the door leading out to the back deck. Should do lots of things and probably would again once he got his breath.
The plus was that he’d forgotten entirely about the phone call he’d been expecting. Until she came barreling into the bathroom an hour later holding his phone up as it rang in her hand. The shower had been pounding down on him hard enough he hadn’t even heard.
She shoved it his way along with a towel. “I’ll get the water handled. Answer it.”
It was Obie.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING DAY she stood in front of where he’d been loading things into a messenger bag at the dining room table.
He’d already taken two surprisingly heavy duffel bags with the money to the truck and now he was gathering the letters he’d written and some other stuff like antibiotics that might be helpful to the rest of the group. He and a group of other survivors of religious cults had connections for certain kinds of medication to get to people still inside those groups. Beau had no real idea if they ever reached the people left behind, but he could only control so much. He just had to hope.
Beau knew she wanted to come with him. Wanted to be there to help in any way she could. But though he’d never worried about physical danger in the past toward him, he wasn’t going to put her in harm’s way if he didn’t have to.
“Obie said to come alone and that’s what I’m doing,” he reassured her, kissing her before she followed him out to the front driveway. Not knowing what he might have to drive over or through, he’d borrowed one of the trucks from her dad’s landscaping business. A bonus was the lockbox in the truck’s bed where he’d been able to secure the money.
It was a lot of cash to just be rolling around with so he wanted to keep it as low-key as possible.
“Call me when you’re done. I mean it, Beau. I’m going to be worried sick until I know you’re okay. Don’t go off a
nd do something stupid. Please. I know you want to see your kids and your mom but use your head. I know you can do this and I’m hoping and praying this is that final step to finally getting reunited with the twins.”
Cora hugged him. He knew she was trying not to cry but she failed. In some weird way it actually helped him stay calm. He kissed her, and then set her back. “I’ll be in touch. I promise. And I’ll be careful. You and Jez be careful today too.”
She lifted a hand. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” he said before driving away.
Two hours later, he pulled down a dirt road and at the end of it was a small house perched on a river. His uncle sat on the front porch when Beau arrived.
He’d forgotten how alike his father and uncle looked and it brought him to a momentary pause as he thought about the last time he’d seen them both. Remembered his father looking right through Beau, the son he’d beaten and had kept locked up on near starvation rations for asking questions. For wanting the truth. Remembered too, Obie standing next to his brother. His gaze had settled on Beau briefly and he saw pity there before it hardened and Obie had looked right through him.
That had been the last time Beau had seen his father in person. In the intervening years he’d only seen grainy surveillance photographs.
Beau sure couldn’t miss how his uncle had aged. He’d lost weight and most of his fiery red hair—same as Beau’s and his dad’s—had joined the pounds. Life on the run wasn’t glamorous.
Beau didn’t know what his uncle had planned for their meeting, but Obie came off that porch and pulled him into a hug and the child he’d been a long time ago remembered the connection he’d had to his uncle. “Hey there, boy. How you been?”
“Missing my children grow up. How about you?” he responded. Whatever that nostalgia, they’d stolen his fucking children and he wasn’t about to let it go.
“I surely do feel bad about that. God’s honest truth. You made your choice though. You left us and in doing so, you lost your grace.”