Tag: mystery

A decade worth of hurt and confusion and anger melted away the second her lips touched his.

Tayla had thought she’d hated Dean for what he had done to her up until the second he had told her that devastating story.

Did she still wish he had played things differently, told her what had happened, or even have someone else tell her? Yes she did. But it was what it was and she understood why he had run and why he hadn’t come back to explain.

The kiss ended and he looked down at her, confusion in those pretty blue eyes of his. She pressed her hand to his heart, found a pounding rhythm overwhelming him, like he thought his heart was in her tiny hands.

“Its okay, Dean,” she told him, resting her forehead against his chest. “Its okay.”

“You forgive me?” He sounded like he couldn’t dare to let himself believe it.

“Of course.”

“But …”

“Shh,” she touched her fingertips to his lips. “No buts. Does my brother know? My parents? How did I never hear about this?”

“I didn’t want you to know, I asked your brother not to tell you. I was-am-so guilt-ridden about it, I couldn’t function for a long time afterwards. Your husband,” Dean’s fingertips ran through her hair as his other arm wrapped around her waist and held her snug against his body, “He was good to you?”

“He was perfect.”

“You loved him.”

“I still do, I’ll always love him. But,” she added when she felt him stiffen, “that doesn’t mean I ever stopped loving you. You hurt me, deeply, but my love for you never disappeared.” Tayla drew in a deep breath, just hours ago she had been telling her best friend that it was too soon to move on, fulling intending to spend the rest of her life alone, but now things had changed, now that she knew the truth. “Were you serious? When you said you wanted to get me back?”

A sad smile lit his face. “Yes. I tried to let you go, thinking if I gave up the person I loved most in the world it would make up for what I did, but it didn’t, it couldn’t. I want you back, I just don’t know if I stand a chance of getting you back. Do I?”

Tayla didn’t even need to think about it. She wouldn’t change what had happened because if she did she would never have met Max and she loved him so much. But she loved Dean too, and losing Max had taught her that tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed. She could continue to be angry and hurt about what Dean had done or she could accept he had done it out of fear, and pain, and guilt and grab this second chance life had gifted her.

“Yes,” she said, dragging him down to kiss him again.

For a few minutes she had forgotten that someone tried to kill her, she had forgotten everything except having Dean back. Desperate to make up for lost time her fingers fumbled with his belt buckle, his hands tugging on the hem of her sweater, and then the night erupted into gunfire.

He was in trouble.

Dean hadn’t meant to declare that he intended to win Tayla back but as soon as the words were out of his mouth he realised that they were true. He wanted to explain to her why he’d left, why he hadn’t come back, make her understand that it had nothing to do with her or what they had shared.

But before he could do that he had to find the person who wanted Tayla dead.

No.

Not just dead. He wanted her to suffer first.

As he parked the car in his driveway and walked around to open her door for her Tayla fidgeted nervously. On their way to his apartment they hadn’t spoken a word. In fact they’d hardly said anything to each other since his unplanned declaration.

Dean led her up the path to his ground floor apartment, and tentatively reached for her hand. As soon as his fingers curled around hers she quickly snatched it back. He had to tell her. He had to explain, if he didn’t he wasn’t going to be able to concentrate and if he was distracted then Tayla could die.

“Its not what you’re thinking,” he told her as he locked the door behind him and gestured to the couch, he may as well get this over with as quickly as he could.

“What isn’t?” Tayla eyed him suspiciously as she took a seat. She hadn’t been happy with the idea of coming here, and he’d kind of strong armed her into it.

“The night that we made love, the reason I left, its not what you’re thinking.”

Her eyes went shuttered, and she tried to act nonchalant. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”

He could do this the easy way or the hard way, prolong it or just jump in and rip off the band aid. “That night I was supposed to pick up my cousin from the airport. She was only sixteen, but you were so beautiful, swimming in the lake, and all night all I could think about was that you were a woman now, no longer just Brad’s little sister. I took you home and we spent the best night of my life together, but while we were making love my cousin accepted a ride from a man who’d been on her flight. He raped her and dumped her body at the side of the road. She was found quickly, and when I got the call I …” he trailed off aware that Tayla knew what he’d done.

He’d run.

He’d left her without an explanation because he was consumed with guilt.

That familiar shaft of pain sliced through him. While he’d been making love to the woman he loved his little cousin had been raped and strangled.

How did you get over something like that?

She was dead because of him.

He didn’t deserve Tayla then and he didn’t deserve her now.

“Look, Tayla, I know that I hurt you, and I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, or a second chance, I know I said I want to win you back and I do, but if you can’t forgive me then I understand. I’ll find who wants to hurt you and I’ll let you go. I just wanted you to know.” He stared at Tayla who was sitting on the couch staring back at him, an inscrutable expression on her face.

He got it. She couldn’t forgive him she just didn’t want to say the words out loud.

Dean turned around, he couldn’t look at her face any longer, couldn’t look at what he had lost when guilt had made him run. He was almost to the kitchen when small hands clamped around his arms, stilling him.

Tayla turned him around, then she reached up and gently took his face between her hands, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed him.

This couldn’t be happening.

Tayla would almost rather that Dean thought she was a killer than to know that someone had killed four of her patients and then tried to come after her.

Someone wanted her dead.

Or worse.

Maybe they just wanted her.

Dean was pacing up and down the room and he had that ‘he didn’t know how he would convince her, but she had no choice but to go home with him’ look on his face.

Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, and she had no idea of falling for Dean’s charms a second time.

“Tayla, this guy is dangerous, and he’s made it clear that he’s spent enough time playing around and now he’s ready to come for you.” Dean stalked over to the bed and dropped down into a chair, “I won’t let him hurt you.”

He said it so forcefully that she actually believed him.

“As soon as you get out of here you’re coming home with me,” Dean said it like it was a foregone conclusion.

A small smile crept up her face despite the gravity of the situation she was facing, she had always been able to read exactly what he was thinking. Until he’d left her anyway.

“Something funny about this?” he demanded.

“No, its just that, all of this, its so much, and it just doesn’t feel real, and I feel like I got hit by a truck, and this is all just overwhelming.” Tears began to flow down her cheeks, and she tried to hold back a sob.

Dean watched her for a long moment and then he folded her into his arms.

Just like that everything felt better.

How did he still possess the ability to make her feel safe after everything he had done.

His lips touched the top of her head, and his hands stroked the length of her spine, soothing her, and the steady beating of his heart reassured her that he would find a way to fix this.

He would, wouldn’t he?

Dean would fix this, it was who he was, and then her life could go back to normal. Only now her heart wanted Dean to be part of that life. Her head knew it was a bad idea, that it was just setting herself up for heartbreak, but being around him again it stirred up all those feelings that she had buried so deeply.

She’d only ever loved two men, one was dead, and one was cradling her against his chest, if not even knowing that she was the target of a serial killer was enough to distract her from the unresolved feelings she had for Dean then nothing was.

“I don’t think me staying with you is a good idea,” she whispered against Dean’s chest, unwilling to leave the safety of his arms just yet.

“Its not up for discussion, honey, you’re coming home with me, I’m going to find the man who wants to hurt you and then I’m going to win you back.” With that he sat her up, let those ice blue eyes of his bore into her, letting his words sink in, and then he stalked out of the room, leaving her staring after him more confused than ever.

“You’re sure she’s okay?” Dean asked. Demanded really. And the young doctor quivered in her shoes. He should ease up on her but seeing Tayla lying unconscious in his arms, blood trickling from her nose, her whole body contorting in pain even as she passed out had shaken him.

Seeing Tayla like that had stirred hidden feelings.

Feelings he’d thought he’d buried deep enough to be gone forever.

“She’s okay,” the doctor assured him.

“When will she wake up?”

“She’s awake now,” Tayla’s weak voice floated from the bed behind them.

Dean whirled around and stalked over to her, she’d just about given him a heart attack, collapsing like that, and terrified as he was he didn’t know what to do with those feelings so he fell back on terse.

“You feeling okay?” he demanded.

Tayla shrunk back into the mattress. “Are you going to take me back to jail?”

He sighed and scrubbed his hands over his tired face. He had to calm down, he was scaring her and that was the last thing he should be doing, when she learned what he and his partner suspected was really going on she was going to have plenty to be afraid about. “No, we’re not taking you back to jail.”

She relaxed a little but her face was still drawn and tense, and the tight lines around her mouth said she was still in pain. “What’s going on? What happened to me?”

“Can you give us a minute,” he said to the doctor who hurried out of the room. Pulling over a chair to Tayla’s bedside he sat and prepared himself to explain. He hated the fear in Tayla’s gorgeous eyes, hated that he was partially responsible for putting it there.

“Dean?” she prompted when he didn’t speak.

“Mara Mason wasn’t the first of your patients to be murdered. She was the fourth. There were three deaths that had been deemed suicides, we didn’t put it together until Mara. All four of them had reported being ill the day of their deaths, we think that whoever killed them poisoned them then when they were weakened he killed them. He must have gotten frustrated that we hadn’t noticed the deaths so he stopped making it look like suicide and stabbed Mara.”

“D-do you think I k-killed them?” Tayla stammered.

“No, I don’t think that you killed them, I think …” he trailed off, not wanting to verbalise his theory because it felt like once he did it would become real.

Tayla gasped, her honey coloured eyes growing wide. “You think that its me he’s really after? If you hadn’t taken me down to the station I would have gone home alone and he would have gotten me too.”

As much as he wanted to allay her fears and deny her theory he couldn’t.

Because that was exactly what he believed.

So they hadn’t put her in handcuffs, but they had put her in the back of their police car, driven her down to the station, put her in an interview room and left her in here to stew.

Tayla was sitting at the table, trying to look calm and nonchalant but knowing she was failing.

They were watching her.

She couldn’t see them through the one way glass but she knew that Dean and his partner were out there. They wanted to see if she was going to give anything away, and from the nervous way she was twitching and fidgeting she knew they must think she was guilty.

How long were they going to make her wait?

Just how bad was this?

How much trouble was she in?

If they really thought that she had done this was she going to be able to convince them that she was innocent?

The door open and her gaze snapped up to meet Dean’s ice blue eyes. They were so cold. What had become of the funny, sexy, borderline arrogant teenager she remembered?

He didn’t say a word, just walked over to the table and threw some photos down on it.

Although she didn’t want to know what they were her hands moved of their own accord and picked one up.

It was a photo of Mara Mason. A beautiful and vibrant woman in her mid-twenties who had been horribly scarred in a vicious assault. In this picture the woman had been stabbed what looked like dozens of times.

“I’m going to be sick,” she stammered as an icy wave of nausea washed over her. Tayla staggered to her feet and over into a corner of the room where she violently vomited.

The nausea didn’t stop.

Someone had killed one of her patients and Dean and his partner thought it was her.

Mara had been horrible murdered, just when she’d been starting to make progress.

“Tayla?” Dean knelt beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder.

“Someone killed Mara,” she said, knowing it was obvious, but she couldn’t quite accept this was happening.

“Are you alright?” His blue eyes were no longer ice cold now they were filled with concern.

“C-cold,” she said, teeth chattering. She was feeling worse, her stomach churned, and her head was pounding with a headache.

Dean touched the back of his hand to her forehead. “She has a fever,” he called over his shoulder to his partner.

“She has a fever still,” she corrected as her whole body began to tremble.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been sick all day,” she murmured, drowsy now. She wanted to close her eyes, go to sleep, and then wake up to find all of this had just been a bad dream. Tayla felt something wet on her face and when she touched a hand under her nose and it came away bright red with her blood. she turned terrified eyes to Dean. What was happening to her?

Dean picked up her wrist to take her pulse, then shrugged out of his jacket, draping it around her and then gathering her into his arms. “We have to get her to the hospital,” he said, a hint of panic in his voice.

“What’s going on?” she asked, as her tremors increased, and the pain in her head became crippling.

“I think you’ve been poisoned.”

Poisoned?

A murdered patient and now someone had tried to kill her?

Tayla wanted to ask more questions but the world around her grayed and then faded to nothing as she passed out.