23
Ally couldn’t quite believe it was still the same
day, but here she was sitting down to a very late dinner of pizza
and barbecue wings with Rob and Jackson. She didn’t feel very
hungry, but she forced herself to eat, found it easier when her
stomach remembered she hadn’t had anything for at least twelve
hours. Rob drank beer, but she and Jackson stuck with
soda.
“So how was Jane holding up?” Jackson
asked as he refilled his glass.
Rob glanced at Ally, but she gestured
for him to answer. “She was eerily calm until she realized we
weren’t going to let her go home and feed her dog. Then she started
ranting about Jackson being a murderer, and the county medical
officer authorized her removal to the safe unit at County General
for further evaluation.”
He grimaced. “They can hold her there
for seventy-two hours pending further medical examination. I don’t
think it will take them that long to figure out she’s got a screw
loose somewhere.”
“You don’t think they’ll let her out
for a while, then?” Ally said anxiously.
“Not for a while. She was quite happy
to own up to everything she’d gotten up to—she was quite proud of
herself, actually.” Rob shuddered. “Jane said she followed Susan to
your house later that night, Ally, and that when Susan couldn’t
find you, she was so mad that she confided in Jane that Jackson
wanted me.” He glanced at Jackson. “Apparently Jane had a thing for
me even then, so you can imagine how that went down.”
“Not very well,” Jackson
replied.
“Jane said she and Susan kept arguing
about it, and eventually, Jane got so mad she pushed Susan off the
bridge.”
“Accidentally?”
“Jane says not. She then left Susan and
went back to Ruth’s house to make sure your mother didn’t say
anything to incriminate her.”
Jackson nodded and Ally checked him
out. Apart from a little redness around the eyes, he looked his
normal self. If he felt anywhere near the measure of relief she was
feeling for no longer being solely responsible for Susan’s death,
he was hiding it well.
“Do you think she’ll be back here
eventually?”
Rob sighed. “I don’t know, Ally.
They’ll evaluate her and determine whether she’s a danger to
society, examine her claims to have pushed Susan off that bridge,
and take it from there. We also have your mom’s journal as evidence
of exactly what happened that night. My gut feeling is that she
won’t be getting out for a long while, especially if she still
insists she intends to harm you or Jackson.”
Ally rested her elbows on the table.
“I’m beginning to wonder if my mom engineered that last argument
with me to make sure I left for good.”
“What do you mean?” Rob
asked.
“I think she was trying to protect me
after all. She probably knew that Jane wasn’t going to let it go,
so she made sure I didn’t want to stick around.”
“We’ll never know for sure, but I’d
like to think it was true. Ruth certainly did turn her life
around,” Jackson said quietly.
Ally swallowed hard. “But it sure took
a lot to make that happen. I wonder whether it was worth it.” She
took a deep breath and cradled her glass in her hands. “I’m still
going to sell the house.”
Jackson glanced at Rob, who cleared his
throat. “Yeah? I can’t say I’m surprised. I wouldn’t want to live
there if I’d been through what you have recently.”
“Don’t you care?”
Rob frowned. “Well, it will make things
a bit cramped here, but we do have three bedrooms, so I’m sure
we’ll be able to fit all your stuff in.”
Ally fixed him with her most
intimidating look. “You assume I’m moving in
with you both, then?”
“You know what they say about assuming
anything, don’t you?” Rob shifted in his seat. “You could just see
it as a temporary thing until you find a new property in
town.”
“Again you’re assuming I’m going to stay in Spring
Falls.”
Rob reached for her hand. “You’re
staying, honey. Jackson and I have discussed it, and we just can’t
let you go.”
Ally snatched her hand back. “You’ve
discussed it.” She turned to Jackson. “Didn’t you clue him in on
that discussion we had earlier about it being too soon to make such
decisions when we’re all so emotional?”
“I told him,” Jackson said. “But he’s a
stubborn ass. You know that.” He hesitated and looked at them both.
“Ally, if me getting out of the picture makes your decision easier,
then I’m quite happy to leave.”
Rob frowned. “You’re not going
anywhere. We’re all in this together.”
Ally scowled back at him. “I’m quite
happy for Jackson to stay. We understand each other. I love
him.”
Rob raised his eyebrows. “So you think
I’m the problem?”
Jackson stood and held up his hands.
“Hey, how about you two have a chat and then call me when you’ve
decided, okay?”
Ally waited until Jackson had left and
then turned her gaze onto the empty pizza box. The silence
lengthened until Rob cleared his throat.
“Aren’t you going to talk to
me?”
She shot him another glare. “After all
I’ve been through today, I would think you’d be the one wanting to
talk to me!”
“I’m not sure what you want to hear.
It’s much easier to just keep on blaming me for
everything.”
“I don’t blame you for everything—just the parts where you deliberately abused
my trust and used sex to get around me.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That’s
all?”
“That’s more than enough, don’t you
think?”
He shoved a hand through his short dark
hair and pushed back from the table to pace the kitchen. “Ally, you
drive me fucking crazy. You’re right. I should never have gotten
back into bed with you.”
She marched over to him and jabbed him
in the chest with her index finger. “Well that’s good to know,
because I feel exactly the same.”
His mouth came down and covered hers,
and she didn’t stop him kissing her. She let him force his tongue
into her mouth and possess her with a thoroughness that told its
own story.
He wrenched his mouth away and looked
down at her. “Here’s the thing, Ally. Let’s stop lying. I’ll always
want to get in your pants, and you feel exactly the same, because
at some level we trust each other to make it right.”
She swiped a shaking hand across her
well-kissed lips. “How can you say that and then not admit to using
me?”
“Because it’s never been about
using you. Sure, if I had any sense, I
would’ve kept my pants zipped. But I couldn’t. You think I’m using
you? How about this? I can’t imagine fucking anyone else but you
and Jackson ever again—that’s how dumb I am.”
“And you expect me to believe
that?”
He raised his gaze to the ceiling and
set his jaw. “Believe what you like. I’m trying to be honest here.
At least I’m fucking trying. . . .”
Ally sat back down at the table and
studied his clenched fists and defeated expression. She’d been
quick to judge him, and his tangled attempts to explain weren’t
making her feel any better about what he’d done. But she wasn’t
eighteen anymore, and this time she wasn’t going to walk out until
she’d gotten to the bottom of the mess. At some level she did trust
him; they’d known each other for so long.
She took a deep breath. “When I arrived
here, why didn’t you just come right out and ask me what had
happened at my mom’s that night?”
He grimaced. “Because it wasn’t the
first thing on my mind.”
“You thought you’d try and get in my
pants instead.”
“No!” He took the seat opposite her.
“At first the two things were separate. I’m a guy. Touching you,
fucking you . . . was just too tempting. The rest of it was my job,
something I’d been wondering about ever since I found Susan’s
body.”
“You found Susan’s body?”
“Yeah and when stuff started happening
to you, I couldn’t help but make that connection.”
“And I didn’t exactly make it hard for
you to get what you wanted from me sexually, did I?”
He grimaced. “I fell just as hard,
Ally. All that crap we both spouted about it just being about sex
wasn’t true, was it? I just wanted to get close to you again and
took any chance you offered me.”
Ally looked into his eyes. “Okay, I’ll
buy that. But what about my mom?”
“You and Jackson have been looking at
this the wrong way. I only made a serious connection between you
and Susan’s death after I’d started to worry about what was
happening to you right now. I tried to ask
you about Ruth, but you always changed the subject, or we started
arguing about something else. Hell, you’ve never wanted to talk
about your mom.”
“Okay, I’ll talk about her.” Ally
placed her hands palms down on the table. “That same night, Ruth
and I had an argument, and she threatened to tell everyone in town
I’d been sleeping around and cheating on you. She said she knew all
the kids and that they’d believe anything she said if they wanted
her to sell them some weed.”
Rob reached across the table and took
her hand. “Why didn’t you come and tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want that kind of. .
. filth touching you. My mom could be very convincing when she
wanted to be. That’s why I went to Jackson. I thought I’d tell him
and he could tell you, which was pretty damn immature of me. But
things got a bit more complicated, because I forgot Jackson had his
own issues to deal with.”
“And he ended up persuading you into
his bed.”
“And it seemed right, you know? Because by that point, I thought I
would never be good enough for you and that my mom was just going
to make everything worse.” Her mouth quirked up at the corner. “And
there I was, with Jackson, doing exactly what she’d accused me of.
It seemed easier to break your heart myself than have my mom do it
for me.”
Rob contemplated their joined hands.
“I’m not sure what I would’ve done if you’d tried to tell me this
then, Ally, and that’s being honest. I was already panicking
because I thought I’d scared you about sex. When I found you with
Jackson . . . it seemed easier to get angry and push you away than
admit how I really felt.”
Ally looked up at him. “By the time I’d
had it out with you and got back home, Ruth had already packed most
of my things and was screaming at me to get out. I didn’t know
Susan and Jane had already been by, so I just ran and barely made
the bus.”
She studied his familiar face, saw the
lines of strain etched on his tanned skin. “It felt like my whole
world was crashing down around me.”
Rob brought her hand to his lips and
kissed her fingers. “When I first saw Susan’s body in that creek, I
thought it was you. I thought I’d destroyed you, and I knew I’d
lost the best thing in my life. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over
it.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to
lose you again, honey. I love you. Please fucking stay.” His voice
cracked. “I don’t think I could survive it if you left me
again.”
Ally closed her eyes to savor his
words. She hadn’t believed he would have the courage to ask her.
Could she do it? Could she trust him again after all the hurt, the
lost years, her own struggle to find herself? Ally took a deep
breath.
“I’ll stay, Rob.”
“Here with me and
Jackson?”
“If that’s what you both want. But I’m
still going to college in the fall.”
“Of course you are.” His chair crashed
to the ground and he came around the table and picked her up.
“Honey, that’s the best thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She allowed him to hold her, relished
his strength even more now that she knew she was capable of
standing on her own. “The best thing? Surely ‘please get naked with
me and Jackson right now’ has to be better than that?”
He crushed her against him.
“Okay.”
She raised her head to stare at him. “I
haven’t decided if I’ll live with you yet. I might rent my own
place near the college and just come down and visit.”
“Sure, whatever you want, honey. We’ll
make it work, I promise.”
Ally hid a smile against his chest as
he shouted for Jackson and strode down the hallway toward his
bedroom. She doubted he’d let her leave quite so easily when he
calmed down. He’d always want to be in charge, and she and Jackson
would have a hell of a time stopping him—although that might be
fun. She imagined Rob tied up and gagged while she and Jackson
fucked him. . . .
Sharing a home with two guys was bound
to raise some eyebrows in Spring Falls, but what did she care?
They’d been gossiping about her all her life. At least now what
they whispered and imagined would be true.