Bound by the Past by Mari Carr Page B

spoken, she would have begged you to take her. You had no reason to believe he’d kill her after you’d done what he asked.”
    “He knew I’d betrayed him. I should have seen it coming.”
    “To hell with that! You’re not a mind reader. You were a seventeen-year-old boy forced to make a choice no man should ever have to face. It’s time to move on. Call your girlfriend, go see her, fuck her—let her take some of this pain away from you. You keep dwelling on this shit and you’ll explode.”
    Jon laughed, a cold, harsh sound, even to his own ears. “I was moving on. Until you and Reilly showed up and started exorcising all these fucking ghosts.”
    Night was silent for a moment. Then he reached over and placed his hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Jon. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    Night listened as Jon started his car and drove away. Taking his advice, Jon was off to see Carly, to try to find some solace, some forgiveness in her arms.
    Horror over the story Jon had told him left Night feeling unbelievably cold. No amount of whiskey would warm him again. Rex Thomas had been a coldhearted, selfish bastard.
    He tried to remember one moment of fatherly love, one moment of warmth or comfort his father had offered, and came up empty. From the moment Cassandra Walker came to live on the compound, she became the focal point of his father’s life. He remembered his mother crying herself to sleep at night after being moved out of Rex’s suite and back into the women’s dorms, and he had watched helplessly as she slowly withered away. Within a year, she had died. Cassandra, for some inexplicable reason, took him in after his mother’s death and he and Jon had become inseparable, the best of friends, raised as brothers.
    “Fuck!” He stood up and started for the kitchen. There had to be another bottle of whiskey somewhere in the house. He was sick of remembering all this shit. Jon was right. Dragging up all this ancient history wasn’t doing either of them any good.
    Standing by the kitchen sink, he closed his eyes and imagined what Jon was doing right now. He could see his friend getting out of the car and banging on the front door of Carly’s little house.
    Night felt for a moment as if he was there…
     
    It was too damn late to be knocking on someone’s door and Jon knew it, but he wouldn’t be able to make himself turn around and go home. Carly would open the door and he wouldn’t say a word. He’d merely shove his way in, closing and locking the door behind them. Then he’d shove her nightshirt up around her waist and rip off her panties. Her back would be pressed against a wall in the foyer. Jon wouldn’t even take the time to take off his own pants. He’d merely open the front of his jeans and push into her. Into her hot, wet warmth. Into her comforting arms.
    Home. Carly was Jon’s home now.
     
    “Home,” Night pushed the thought away from his mind and staggering up the stairs to his cold, lonely bed. “I always wanted one of those.”
     

 

Chapter Eight
     
    Jon took Night’s advice and began spending all his afternoons and evenings at Carly’s house. Time after time, she welcomed him into her body and her home with open arms, loving away all the aches and pains built up during a lifetime of guilt.
    Night continued to wait, with less and less patience, for an invitation to the compound and Jon was happy to stay at Carly’s place, given his friend’s surly disposition.
    Reilly supported Jon’s belief that if Night made the first move in contacting Cassandra, she would become suspicious and possibly disappear into the woodwork before they could build a case against her.
    According to Night, Reilly was trying to figure out how to get a female agent in place on the compound. He’d attempted twice to get different women in. Both times his agents were turned away at the door. Reilly wasn’t sure what the secret was to getting inside, but Cassandra seemed to