If You Fall (Brimstone 1)

Jeanne took the letters and the FedEx envelope. “There’s no return address. This wasn’t mailed.”

I nodded.

Then she saw the blood on the letters. “Oh, God…”

She put them down on the island and stepped back, her eyes widening when she realized what they were

“I’ll call his CO and see what he knows,” Scott said. “This is strange…”

I took the package and letters and went to my room, closing the door behind me.

“Are you all right, sweetheart?” Jeanne asked from the other side of the door.

“Yes,” I said, my voice breaking. I wasn’t all right. I felt numb. I felt on the verge of crying my eyes out.

I looked inside the FedEx envelope and found a thin slip of paper adhering to the inside wall. I removed it and saw that it had an image of an old schooner on it. It was from The Yacht Club, the hotel where Beckett was staying.

Beneath the logo was a handwritten message.

I’m so sorry I had to be the one to bring this to you. I know you’ll have questions about how these came to be in my possession. Just know that I received them by mistake. I wish we could have met under different circumstances. Please don’t contact me. You’ve been the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time but for you, I’m nothing but bad news.

That was it.

Beckett brought these. He must have dropped them off at the house this morning. It looked like he was going to send them to me via FedEx, but changed his mind. Maybe he decided to give them to me in person. But he didn’t do that either.

He seduced me instead.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Beckett

The drive home up the coast back to Manhattan seemed to take forever.

I almost turned back several times. When I stopped to gas up, I checked my phone, hoping beyond hope that Miranda had texted me, forgiving me for being such a dick, asking me to come back.

She didn’t and I couldn’t blame her.

How could I explain?

I tried to convince myself that my reasons for not telling Miranda the truth right away were sound but I knew they rang hollow. So my drive back to Manhattan was a long hot and thankless one and I arrived home feeling nothing but regret.

On top of that, the first few days back in Hell’s Kitchen were just that – hell.

My business schedule was so busy with meetings and conferences for the next week that I hoped I’d be able to blot Miranda completely out of my mind, but I failed. A deep sense of regret filled me that I couldn’t shake – not with exercise, not with bourbon – not with anything.

I met up with Casey for dinner after work on Wednesday. She wanted to meet at the gym but I was too busy catching up with work to take time off. I was planning on working late that night but agreed to go to our favorite restaurant for dinner before returning to the office to catch up on some paperwork. We met in the bar for a drink while we waited for a table.

“So fill me in,” she said as she sipped her bourbon. “Tell me what you’re going to do to make it right.”

“I can’t do anything,” I said and downed my shot of bourbon. I sighed as the bourbon burned down my throat, needing the heat. “I fucked it up so totally, nothing can fix things.”

“Nonsense,” she said and punched me lightly on the shoulder. “Everything can be fixed, if you try hard enough.”

I shook my head in doubt. “Not this. What am I going to do – go to Miranda and tell her that I’m the reason her husband died? That he was killed in a horrible accident saving my life? That I went to t

he bar and decided to flirt with her instead of telling her who I was and why I was there? That I kept on deceiving her while I pursued her, and finally succeeded in seducing her, fucking her brains out in my hotel room for ten days, then leaving without a word?”

“Wow,” Casey said and pulled back, giving me the evil eye. “You really did fuck it up.”