Crash (Sinners and Saints #1)

by Kathy Lockheart

Whatever had stopped him from reaching for love all these years, it was something that still had power over him, even now. “Will you tell me?” I whispered, my heart in my throat. “Why have you always pushed love away?”

How did this woman know exactly what I needed? Her presence, her warmth, a sedation to my pain.

I laced her fingers with mine, memorizing how they fit together in case this was the last time she’d let me hold her hand.

“That’s the darkness you’ve been carrying?”

“Ryker and the guys know. Told them one night after too many beers. They know what I did, what I’m capable of.”

“Telling someone you deliberately took a life … it changes things. Tests everything. But they didn’t ru...

“That’s what made me bond with them l...

The acceptance in her tone warmed my body. I’d hoped she might understand, like the guys did, but this was different. Here was a woman who’d been attacked herself by a man who overpowered her. Trying to now trust a man twice her size who’d not only admitted to killing a man in the past, but who’d admitted he was capable of doing it again.

“Yeah … I guess if I learned anything from you coding in my ER, it’s to assume tomorrow is no guarantee.”

“By then, I’d built walls so high that I couldn’t see over them anymore. Life had become a series of waiting for the other shoe to drop. But my foster mom, Sarah …” I shook my head, turning slightly toward Tessa. “She was different.”

“Just talking while we worked. She never pushed, never demanded answers, but somehow, I found myself telling her things. About Mom’s chocolate chip cookies. About Dad teaching me to throw a baseball. About wanting to help people the way the ER doctors had tried to help my parents. And the way I used to care for Faith’s wounds after our foster dad …”

But I’d learned my lesson. Hope was just another word for poison.

“What if I didn’t believe her, just like all those doctors who’d dismissed you?” “Maybe you should reach out to her.” “Maybe I should.”

“I can still picture Ryker’s face when he snapped and said, ‘It’s not fair, what’s happening to you, but you’re my best friend, and I need you. So, don’t you dare push me away because of what those bottom-feeding trash pandas have done. I’m like a stubborn piece of gum stuck to your shoe. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.’ ”

“So, I didn’t push him away. But watching him navigate relationships in college, I remember thinking how grateful I was to never have that kind of vulnerability again. Why would anyone willingly give someone else the power to break them?”

“There’s nothing I could say comparable to what you just told me.” “Tessa, I just want to know you. All of you. Every human has moments where they learn something about themselves or the world.”

“I’m scared,”

“Here I am, in my thirties, with a struggling business and …”

“I’m terrified I’ll lose it. Or y...

“You’re not going to lose me, Cupcake,”

“Unless it’s to murder. When your brother finds out about us, he’s going to kill me. Like, cement shoes, sleeping with the fishes, full mob hit.”

“He won’t kill you,” I teased. “He’s a criminal defense attorney.”

“High school Ryker was trying to be badass with his backward baseball caps.” “It wasn’t just high school. Three years ago, at that Fourth of July barbecue? When you wore that red bikini? He caught me looking and threatened to feed my eyeballs to the neighbor’s Chihuahua.”

“He was drunk on Mom’s sangria.” “The Christmas before that, completely sober, he reminded me he knows how to make bodies disappear. While decorating cookies. With tiny candy canes.”

“When he finds out about us, it’ll make the Red Wedding look like a tea party.” “Well then, we’d better think of a way to tell him. Sooner rather than later. Somewhere public. With witnesses and security cameras.”

“You want to tell him soon? I was thinking more along the lines of waiting until we’re eighty....

“He’s called several times when I couldn’t pick up. When I call back, he might question why ...

“I have a plan. It’s called moving to Argentina. How do you feel about mastering Spanish?” “B...

“Though if we’re going to die, we might as well face it head-on. But if Ryker asks, you seduced me. With that li...

“We’ll figure it out,” I promised, tracing his ...

“Teenage me would be squealing right now,”

“Remember how you used to come to our house from your workouts, looking like you’d stepped off of a magazine cover?”

“You used to watch me?” “Like a live-in stalker.”

“I used to have this fantasy that, one day, you’d spend the night with Ryker, and you would wait for him to fall asleep and sneak into my room.” “Your brother would have castrated me.”

“At first, my fantasies were pretty vanilla. You know, missionary, that sort of thing, but the older I got, the more …”

“Sophisticated my fantasies became.” “I’m going to buy you an entire library of romance novels.”

“I used to imagine that I would, like, hide beneath the table, where nobody else could see me, and you’d be sitting there, trying to be all serious and dark and brooding, but beneath the table, I’d have you in my mouth.”

“Everyone else would see you being normal, but they wouldn’t be in on the secret. That beneath the tablecloth, you’d be buried in my throat.”

“Dr. Morrison.”

“Is the patient stable?” Pause. “Good. That means he’s not critical. Walk me through what you’ve done so far.”

“What are you doing?” Blake whispered, covering his phone’s microphone. “Take your call, Dr. Morrison. I’ll find a way to entertain myself.”

Suddenly, he clicked the red button on his cell phone, chucked it aside, and said, “Up. Now.” He tugged my body away from him. “Sit on the sofa.”

“I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about you. If there’s even a chance that what you’re saying is right and you stumble across it, you could get sick. You’re a doctor; you can’t afford to get sick.” “Let me get this straight.”

“Faced with the very real possibility that someone has been poisoning you, your primary concern right now is that I could find it and get sick?”

“If kindness was a disease, yours would be so extreme that it’d be fatal.” “I disagree. Don’t you remember my grade-A bitch phase when I was mad at you?”

“Sounds to me like you’re stumped, Doctor. You thought you were so smart, that after a year of other doctors failing to diagnose Tessa’s symptoms, you’d swoop in and figure it out in no time. And when that didn’t work, you couldn’t admit that you’re not smarter than all those other doctors. So, you had to concoct some other explanation to keep her hooked and relying on you to figure this out for her. How convenient that your explanation drives a wedge between her and everyone else she trusts.” “Eli!” I chided. “No, Tessa, you need to hear this. If you ask me? There’s only one person in your life that’s toxic. This guy.”

“You will not confront anyone else in my life with this accusation, do you hear me?” “And what if I’m right?”

A smile crept across my face, and just like that, my anger toward Blake melted away like morning frost. I wrapped my hands around his neck, reminding myself that Blake was, well, less than seasoned when it came to relationships. He was my pit bull, barking and snapping at the fingers of anyone he perceived as a threat.

“Now,” Jace continued, “as entertaining as this is—and believe me, watching two grown men destroy their careers over testosterone is truly fascinating—perhaps we could continue this discussion inside? Unless you’d prefer to complete your mutual destruction in public.”

“I’m going to sell your organs on the black market!”