Cold Dark Heart by Julie Kriss

Twenty-Nine

Andie

Saturday was a mess.I spent a long time at the Wild with the police, looking carefully through everything to identify if anything outside the storeroom had been moved or stolen. I had to call the staff and tell them we were closed for now, because we couldn’t open with our back door smashed in. There was insurance paperwork to fill out.

Damon and I texted. Aldous had sprung him from the police station, and he went home to shower and change. I wanted to see him so badly, but when he was finally on his way to the bar, the police asked me to come to the station to sign an official statement. So I did that while Damon and Jimmy picked up plywood and did a quick-and-dirty patchup job on the Wild’s back door, enough to keep the riffraff out until the door could be replaced.

The whole thing was exhausting, I didn’t eat, and by the time I headed home at last it was near dark and I was shaking. I wanted my home and my pajamas. I wanted food. I wanted Damon. I also wished, selfishly, that Miles was home—though I knew it was best that he wasn’t here. I knew exactly who was behind all of this, and besides being stressed out, I was furious. It wasn’t good for Miles to know exactly how much I hated his father right now.

I had just walked in my front door and taken off my shoes when my phone pinged with a text. It was Damon. You home?

Yes,I replied.

His next message was brief, but it lifted my spirits: Five minutes.

It was even less than that when I heard his car park behind mine in the driveway. I didn’t even wait for him to come to the door. I walked out to the front porch to greet him.

He came up the walk in the twilight and my chest tightened. He was wearing worn jeans and a dark gray hoodie, zipped up. His dark blond hair was clean and mussed, his beard dark on his jaw. When he was on the front step below me, we melted into each other without a word. I slid my arms around his neck and buried my face against his skin and the clean fabric of his hoodie. I felt his arms come around my waist, holding me so tightly he lifted me a little off my feet. We stood like that for a long moment while I soaked him in, the scent and the warmth of him, his solid body against mine, the beat of his heart. I felt the tension inside me begin to loosen.

His hand stroked my hair and he bent to kiss my temple. “You got this, Andie,” he said.

I made a strangled sound in my throat. Not because I didn’t believe him, but because I did. Because Damon knew it. Because he didn’t feel the need to take over and push me aside, but instead he was here to actually support me. He was my rock, and he had been from the minute he’d first walked through the door of the Wild. Whether he wanted to be or not.

Eventually, though I was clinging to him hard, he pulled back enough to cup my jaw and gently kiss me. “You okay?” he asked.

“I have a headache and I’m hungry.”

“We can fix that.” His gorgeous gray eyes were fixed on mine, their expression serious. “We need to talk.”

“I know.”

“About how someone put a lot of drugs in your bar. Someone who wasn’t me, by the way.”

“I know it wasn’t you,” I said.

“That’s good.” His hands rubbed down my back, and I felt warmth start to move through me, familiar and exciting. It was crazy, but I wanted Damon naked. I wanted the reassurance of his skin against mine, his weight on me.

But he was right—we needed to talk first.

“Come inside,” I said to him. “We can—”

“Andie!”

I froze. I knew that voice, and so did Damon. His body went tense under my hands.

We turned. A car was parked at the curb—a shiny silver rental car. Terry had gotten out and was walking toward us across the grass.

He was tanned. He’d had a haircut, and his dark hair was cut close to his scalp. He was wearing chinos and a long-sleeved baby blue shirt. The color was weird on him, the shirt had a breast pocket that was probably supposed to be stylish, and the fabric stretched awkwardly. I realized it was because Terry was thicker around the middle than he had been when he left. His expression was nasty.

“Well, don’t you two look cozy?” he said. “Blake. I see you’re fucking my wife.”

Damon moved fast. He didn’t say a word and he didn’t give a warning. Like quicksilver, he was out of my arms. He grabbed Terry by the lapels of his ugly shirt and maneuvered him backward with perfect control while Terry windmilled his arms. He shoved my ex-husband back against his car with a smack that could be heard two doors away.

“Say that again,” Damon said.

“Get your hands off me, man!” Terry yelled.

“Say it again.”

There was that ice-cold reserve I’d seen before. Damon wasn’t yelling; his face wasn’t even red. His gaze had gone blank and he held Terry easily while Terry, who had been pretty fit for as long as I’d known him, tried to wrench away.

“This is fucking assault!” Terry yelled.

“Damon,” I said. I wasn’t worried about Terry’s well-being, but if the neighbors saw this and called the police, Damon would be in trouble again. I didn’t want him to spend another day at the Salt Springs police station.

Damon paused for a brief second at the sound of my voice, and then he let go of Terry. Terry smoothed down his ugly baby blue shirt. “You always were fucking nuts,” he said.

“What are you doing here, Terry?” I asked.

Damon pulled his phone from his back pocket. “He’s trespassing,” he said, tapping his phone to life with his thumb. “I think we should call the cops.”

“I’m not trespassing,” Terry barked at him. “This is my house.”

“It’s my house,” I corrected him.

“Yeah, because I gave it to you.”

“Correction. You gave it to me and your son.”

Terry’s face went red. He wasn’t here to see Miles, of course. He hadn’t even asked about him.

Damon still held his phone in his hand. “Do you want me to call the police, Andie?”

I shook my head. He put his phone away.

Terry held up his hands. “Look we got off on the wrong foot here. I’m not here to start a fight. I heard there was a break-in at the Wild, and I came to see if I could find out what’s going on. Maybe help catch the guys.”

I didn’t need to look at Damon to know what he was thinking. Since the break-in was just over twelve hours ago, Terry had gotten on a plane from Florida pretty fast. “How did you know there was a break-in?” I asked.

“I heard it from a cop I know.”

I stared at him, my stomach sinking. He was lying. He was lying, and I knew it because I recognized that tone of voice, that facial expression, the way he tilted his chin up. It was the same way Terry had talked all those times he’d told me he’d worked late or spent Saturday night with drinking buddies. All those times that he’d been with someone else, and he’d been lying to me.

Why did that still hurt? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t because I was still in love with Terry, if I had ever been. Maybe it hurt because of the humiliation of knowing just how often I’d been fooled.

Or maybe it was because I knew now that the Andie I had been then deserved better, and she’d never known it herself.

Damon, as always, read my reaction, though he showed no emotion in his gray eyes. “Get the fuck out of here, man,” he said to Terry, his voice harsh.

“No,” Terry said. “I need to talk to you.”

Damon’s eyebrows went up. “To me?”

“Yeah, to you.” He turned to me. “Andie, go in the house. This is between Damon and me.”

Oh, now I was pissed. “Absolutely fucking not.”

“Go in the house,” Terry said again. “We’re going to talk.”

“On the driveway?” Damon asked.

“Yeah, on the driveway. That way you can’t beat the shit out of me without the whole neighborhood witnessing it. Don’t lay a hand on me, Blake. I’m warning you.”

“So talk,” I said.

There was a moment of standoff between Damon and Terry. Then Damon shot a glance at me. “Andie, please go into the house while we discuss this.”

I swallowed. So that was how it was going to be. There was another long moment of silence.

Then I turned, walked into the house, and closed the door behind me.