He shook his head. “Never.”
“And what about when you want to have children?”
That had him letting go of my hand and rubbing at his forehead. “I want children in the future. Helen wanted them right away after getting married. I wasn’t prepared to give them to her when we were twenty-five and just married. I was in the beginning of my career at the FBI and needed to put the time in to solidify my position. Something I’ve since done.”
“How long were you married?”
He groaned and cracked his neck. “Seven years. I’m thirty-three now.”
I curled my hand around his thigh appreciating the muscles flexing under my palm. “I can understand that. I’m twenty-seven. You’re the same age as my sister Sonia. And she doesn’t have kids or a husband yet. It’s okay to want to be settled in your life and career before bringing children into it.”
Jonah let out a long, weighted breath, then sipped more of his drink.
“What happened with Helen?”
He let his head fall back and sucked in a breath.
“Never mind. You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business. I’m being nosy.”
He turned his head and looked at me intensely, then kissed me, hard. He used his hand to hold my head in place. He didn’t take the kiss farther, or deeper, just a hard press of his lips as though he were trying to say something without using his words.
I sighed dreamily when he pulled back. “It absolutely is your business. If we’re starting something here, which it feels a hell of a lot like we are, you deserve to know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Okay.” I pulled up my legs and turned sideways so I could sit cross-legged and focus on him and him alone. “Lay it on me, I can take it.” I sucked back a huge swallow of whiskey and let it out. “Ahhhhhh. Ready.”
Jonah shook his head and laughed. “You amuse me. A breath of fresh air from what I’ve experienced in the past with women.”
I held up a finger. “First and foremost, you need to stop comparing me to other women. You already said it yourself. I’m not like other women. Part of that is because I’m me. The other is probably because I was raised in a house with eight other women including my foster mom. I have a super overbearing blood-related sister in Sonia, and I don’t remember much about my real parents, but I lived at Kerrighan House since I was six. All of those personalities in the same place, you learn to adapt and form your own path. Mine seems to be tolerance. I can handle just about anything people throw my way, unless it’s about my family. Then I turn into a raving lunatic. Oh, and when I’m confronted with a bitch-face ex that cheated on my new hot guy in the worst way possible.”
He snickered and tried to cover his response by sipping more whiskey. “Noted.”
“Since we got that out of the way, what happened with Helen?” I pressed my free hand back to his thigh to keep our connection close.
“You really aren’t bothered by the fact that I was married before?” His tone was one of awe.
“Nope. It’s in your past not your present. Can’t dwell on it now.”
He nodded but took his time before speaking. When he did it was a low, tired sound that made me wish we were lying in his big bed in the dark while he told me. Though sitting outside, drinking in the beautiful backyard and quiet of night wasn’t too shabby.
“Helen and I fell madly in love in college. I met her and Ryan around the same time. When I transferred to DC, she followed me and finished up her schooling there. We were married three years later after I’d completed my training and became a special agent. Ryan and I were both eager to get back to Chicago, as was Helen, so when positions opened up in Chicago, we applied and were lucky to both be accepted.”
“That is really cool that you get to work with your best friend.”
“It is. Ryan’s a great guy. Always been there for me. Especially after Helen cheated. Offering me a place to live with no end on that condition. If he doesn’t bring a woman into his life, I think he’d happily share a place with me forever.”
I grinned and ran my finger in squiggly designs down and around his thigh. “How did the Helen thing go down?”
His nostrils flared and his body went rigid once again. I unfolded my legs and got close, pressing my chin to his pec. He curved his free arm around my back and held me to his side.
“I’d been on an extra long case. Gone three weeks. It was brutal. The time away, the endless nights, sleeping on cots half the time in an FBI branch conference room. Remember the headlines about the couple who kidnapped two little kids, a brother and sister, and then killed them by pushing them over high cliffs in national parks?”
I lifted my head. “You worked that? My goodness, that’s horrible. Wasn’t it six pairs of children?”
“Yeah, though ten ended up dying. Two of the children, one boy and one girl from different families, survived the fall. They were able to tell us a little bit about the couple. After we were able to piece together a few sightings of the couple with the children, we were able to nail them down. They already had two more kidnapped kids in their RV when we found them.”
“Jesus, that had to be awful.”
“It was. It lasted what felt like forever. I didn’t get to call home often, but Helen knew the score. This was nothing new. The night we found the kids, I was desperate to get home. Hold onto my wife even though we’d been fighting nonstop for the six months prior to that. My heart was shredded, my mind filled with images of dead children and mourning families, and I wanted nothing more than to fill my mental tank with the goodness of home. So, I took the red-eye home. Didn’t call. She had no idea.”
“Honey…” I squeezed my arm around his middle and pressed my face into his chest, already expecting what was to come.
“I walked into the house and noticed the clothes all over the living room floor first. My wife’s. And a man’s. Like a dead man walking, I went straight to my bedroom. I’ll never forget the sound of hearing my wife in the throes of pleasure, screaming the name Luca as she orgasmed. I knew that sound. Had been hearing it for eight years when I made love to her.”
My eyes filled with tears, but I didn’t interrupt. I couldn’t. Something inside me knew he’d never told this story in detail to another soul. As much as I hated everything he was saying and what it cost him to say it, I knew I needed to listen. To be there for him in this moment so he could fully move on to the beauty that the two of us could have without this past transgression in the way of his happiness.
“I pushed open the door, watched as if I were outside of my body as she rode my brother. He then turned her over and fucked her sloppily and very hard. And I watched the entire thing as she came again screaming out like she only ever did with me when she was drunk and randy as fuck. Which is another thing. The room was pungent with the smell of liquor and sex. They’d been at it a while. It was my job to know these things. Take in a scene. Scents. Sounds. The little things you are trained to notice at a crime scene. Which is probably why I stood there until they finished. Then when my brother got off and fell on top of my wife, sated, I pounded on the door.”
“Jesus,” I whispered, still holding him tight around the waist, the tears tracking down my cheeks and wetting his shirt.