The Time in Between by Kristen Ashley
But in my defense he was such a grudge holder!
“You’re right.”
I blinked.
“I’m . . . right?” I asked for confirmation.
“You wanna know the truth . . .”
I wasn’t sure I did but it wasn’t a question because he kept talking.
“It felt nice that you were worried about me. Worried enough to get drunk and then call me and express that worry. That felt good. On top of that, you were being cute and funny. I remembered you could be cute and funny a lot and I also remembered how much I liked it. But at the time I didn’t like any of that, so I was probably lookin’ for shit to fight that feeling and in the end acted like a dick.”
I stared at him and I was afraid I did it with my mouth hanging open.
Coert’s mouth, however, continued moving.
“I been thinkin’ a lot about things lately, with my kid, her mother . . . you, and what I’ve come up with is I gotta get my head straight about a lot of crap that I’ve let stay twisted for a long time. Problem with that is, I got some guy out there who wants at least me dead, probably you too, so that kinda takes precedence.”
He quit speaking and this went on some time before I got myself together enough to say, “Yes, I agree. That probably takes precedence.”
But only probably since the rest was earthshattering and I sort of wanted him to focus on that.
“Unless I’m scared outta my mind something is gonna harm you or my kid or me, taking me away from my kid, we don’t seem to be able to communicate without both of us lashing out, so I decided maybe giving you a wide berth while I sort shit out was a good call.”
“I . . . yes . . . maybe—”
“No maybe, Cady,” he said quietly. “I can imagine I’m not giving you indication of this but it isn’t fun getting up in your face when you haven’t done anything to deserve it.”
Oh my God.
That was very nice.
However.
“I moved here,” I reminded him carefully.
“You did and I get there’s a reason behind that but we’ll have to talk about it when I sort shit out.”
This was probably smart.
But what if his sorting went in a direction that was not good at all?
Or at least not good for me.
I proceeded cautiously and more than a little fearfully when I asked, “You have things happening with your daughter and her mom?”
“If you’re worried I’m getting back together with her, don’t. That’s not gonna happen.”
That was a big relief except the part he jumped to the thought that was what I was worried about.
Even if that was what I was worried about.
“I don’t think that—”
“Don’t,” he whispered, and I stopped speaking instantly. “We got so much between us, Cady, don’t add a stupid lie to it that’ll make all the rest explode in our faces. We don’t seem to need much to ignite that mess, no reason to throw a flaming torch in it.”
I shut my mouth and I felt my blood start going way too fast in my veins, making me feel hot all over.
“You came here for me,” he stated.
Oh God, this was it.
Oh God, no matter how totally obvious it was, out loud, right now, I had to admit this was it.
“Yes,” I said.
“So you want something from me,” he again stated.
Oh God.
This was it!
“Yes,” I repeated.
“And I know what you want.”
I stared up at him, frozen to the spot.
“And I gotta know where I’m at before we have that discussion, because I’ve known where you were at and I wasn’t there and instead of handling it in a way I didn’t cause further harm, I did the opposite.”
“I haven’t been handling things all that well either, Coert,” I shared a truth he knew but he deserved to hear from me.
“So maybe we should be smart about what’s goin’ on for once and wait it out while I hunt down a psychopath bent on revenge with us in his crosshairs, and then maybe we can figure some things out.”
I’d waited seventeen years to pull it together to make this trek to Coert, emotionally and physically. I loathed the idea of waiting another day.
Especially with the way he was being now.
I did not share these thoughts.
I said, “That sounds like a wise plan.”
He stared at me, and he did it so hard it made me uncomfortable and weighed down the budding hope that maybe I was getting somewhere.
To stop him from continuing to do that, I asked, “Is everything okay with your daughter?”
“She’s perfect.”
“Well, that’s good,” I murmured.
“No, that’s the problem.”
“I . . .” I shook my head. “Sorry?”
“She’s perfect. And the stuff that’s been going on between you and me I’ve been seeing I’ve been doing the same to her mom. We’d split before she found out she was pregnant. It wasn’t good news at first because I’d never met Janie and I couldn’t know how beautiful she’d be to have a part of my life.”
And it was oh so beautiful how he said that.
“Of course,” I whispered.
“I just got ticked at her mom for doin’ something that was indisputably whacked, and even though we shared a kid, a good kid, a perfect one, I never let that go.”
I couldn’t believe he was saying this to me.
I couldn’t believe he was sharing this with me.
“I still don’t understand how a perfect child can be a problem,” I prompted hesitantly.
“Because kids absorb everything. Your words. Your facial expressions. Your moods. The way a room feels. Stuff that goes unsaid, especially between two people they care about. They feel the vibes and take that shit inside themselves. So I’m pissed at her mom, what’s Janie doing?”
“I don’t know,” I said softly. “What do you think she’s doing?”
“Being perfect so maybe I won’t be mad at her mom anymore or have any reason to be mad at her, or to prove to me she deserves to be on this earth when the way that started I didn’t take to real great.”
“She’s very young, Coert. Do you really think she’s processing and acting on stuff this advanced?”
“Consciously, no. Unconsciously, absolutely.”
He was sadly probably right.
“I can see where you’d think this.”
“Yeah, so now not only do I need to get with the program of co-parenting my daughter with a woman who broke my trust in a bad way, but I gotta find my way there. I also gotta worry if I did lasting damage to my daughter.”
“If there’s something amiss, which there might not be, kids do bounce back,” I shared.
“You confronted your brother for a reconciliation, and that ass was always an ass to you. He hated you. He was a huge dick to me. Fortunately I only had to be around him a couple of times, but both of those times I wanted to land a fist in his face for the way he behaved toward you. But here you are, forty-one, trying to hold on to him when he never deserved a second of your time. My guess, this is because, from the time I knew you until the time you hit his house this past summer, you never gave up hope you could fix your place in a family that never wanted you.”
He took in my stricken expression and got closer.
Midnight got excited and snuffled him but Coert only had eyes for me.
“I don’t say that to hurt you, Cady. I never got why you held on to those people. Your mom never looked past who she was sure I was simply to see who I was to you. But it wasn’t about me. It was about the fact she didn’t hide she barely tolerated you and the decisions you made in your life, even the good ones, and I say that knowin’ she’d have to dig deep with me, but she didn’t even try not only to see me but to see what you had in me. Your dad was always solid and he was cool with me but he was weak. He let her guide things when he should have looked out
“You’re not weak, Coert,” I said firmly.
“It takes a lot more guts and balls to forgive and move on than it takes to hold on to resentment and nurse it to bitterness, which is just a way to twist the emotion of regret into something you can stomach.”
I had nothing to say to that.
Because I had everything to say to it and my head was filling with words, my heart was filling with hope but my mouth needed to stay quiet and give him time to get where he was going.
Although quiet on that matter, I couldn’t stay quiet altogether.
“There was something missing with my brother and parents, Coert, that your daughter has. I know they loved me, maybe not my brother, but my mom and dad did. They just didn’t love me enough. And just you thinking about all of this, worried about it, taking the time to process through it says you love her more than enough. So it’s just a guess, but I think your daughter will probably be just fine.”
“For a dad, ‘probably’ doesn’t cut it.”
I stared up in his face remembering precisely why I’d fallen so deeply in love with him.
He held my hand.
He was an amazing lover.
He laughed at my jokes.
He got me when no one else did.
And he was the kind of man who would say things like that.
“For a good dad, ‘probably’ doesn’t cut it,” I returned. “So considering that’s the God’s honest truth, in the end, I know she’ll be fine because you’re intent to make it that way.”
He looked over my head.
I stared at his face.
He drew in a deep breath.
I watched.
He seemed to be having some inner battle.
I let him fight it and hoped to God he won and landed on the right side.
He looked down at me.
“Think I’m the only dad on the planet who wants their kid to whine or throw a tantrum when I say no.”
I smiled at him. “Has it occurred to you that she’s just a good kid?”
“What hasn’t occurred to me until recently is that might be true but only because she’s got a dad who loves her and a mom who loves her the same so I need to give Kim credit because she screwed up and then kept doing that. But since all that went down she’s gotten herself together, and through it all, she’s been a great mom.”
Kim.
The ex.
The ex I’d seen pictures of who had brown hair, brown eyes, very large breasts, an envious behind and an exceptionally pretty smile.
I tried not to allow my expression to change.
I knew I failed in this when he said quietly, “Maybe we should stop talkin’ about this.”
“In all I regret,” I whispered, “and it’s not bitterness, Coert, just regret, it would be impossible to cope if I was standing here with you and you hadn’t had people love you along the way. If you hadn’t had your daughter. You’re not the only one sorting through things. And I think I’ve made it plain even if I’ve done it in a convoluted way that I wished things had gone differently. But it’s not in my power to change that. So at least I have those things to hold on to. In the time in between, you were loved and made something beautiful. So it might be difficult, but I know you had those things. So I can cope.”
As I spoke, his handsome face had changed, gone stunned, even staggered, and I decided that was all the risk I was willing to take that night.
Therefore, I murmured, “Goodnight, Coert. I really hope you find Lars soon and not just because I want to introduce Midnight to the coastal path.”
I then pulled on Midnight’s leash, turned and hurried away, careful to look both ways before we crossed the street because it wouldn’t do to be splatted to oblivion in front of Coert, or worse, get my dog hit when she’d finally found a loving home.
Fortune was shining on me that no one was coming.
But I’d used up all my courage and had no reserves so I started out walking briskly.
And ended up running away.
Gave It to Her Good
Coert
Present day . . .
LARS KEPT IN SHAPE IN prison, and when he got out, Coert could tell as they chased him through the forest outside Shepherd.
Coert might be in better shape but it didn’t matter because the Shepherd cops and Coert’s deputies, who were in foot pursuit with him, were younger than both of them, faster, and pissed since Lars had shot at them.
As he ran, all the officers’ flashlights bobbed and weaved through the dark night, keeping Lars in their sights. So they saw when Lars turned and squeezed off two rounds blind.
But in the direction of Coert.
Coert kept running but did it jagging behind a tree as those around him kept shouting for Lars to freeze. Coert kept with the pursuit, gun in hand but only his flashlight in his other hand was raised.
He’d been counting and he might be off a round or two, but since they’d run Lars off the road and he’d taken off on foot, he hadn’t had time to reload. So by Coert’s count, he was either out of ammo, or he only had a round or two left.
This was important but within seconds it wouldn’t matter.
When Lars twisted again to raise his weapon toward Coert, he wasn’t looking where he was going and ran smack into a tree.
He careened around it, losing balance, firing off a shot straight up in the air, probably more reaction than desperation, and with no aim.
Lars hit the dirt and Coert saw the gun fly to the side. He was barely down a second before one of the Shepherd officers was on him, kicking the gun through the leaves.
One of Coert’s deputies got to him next. Rolling him to his stomach, he twisted his arm, knee in his back, other hand going for his cuffs.
Coert and the four others in pursuit stopped, fanned around, guns at the ready, but it was only Coert that was breathing heavily.
Time to carve some of it out to start running regularly again.
“You wanna read him, boss?” Clarke, Coert’s deputy who was cuffing him asked.
“I don’t even wanna look at him,” Coert muttered.
Clarke gave a terse nod, finished cuffing Lars while he read him his rights then got off him and yanked him up to his feet.
Coert had holstered his weapon, and as Clarke turned him around, he caught Lars’s eyes.
“Fuckin’ pig,” Lars spat, literally, aiming saliva Coert’s way after he said it.
Unfortunately for him, at that exact time, Clarke started pushing him and Lars ended up spitting on himself.
Coert didn’t smile.
He just watched Clarke guide Lars back through the forest, the other officers moving in behind.
Then he followed them.
Coert waited until after he’d called Kim to let her know they got him and it was all okay. He waited until he’d called Malcolm and Tom in Denver to let them know it was all good. And he waited until he’d told Monica to call Cady and share that she was again safe.
The last being what Coert did first.
Only after he’d done all that and Lars had long since been processed and was sitting cuffed to a table, ankles in shackles in one of Coert’s interrogation rooms, did Coert go in.
It was a blow, being alone in that room with that man after all these years.
But the blow was not about Lars.
It was about all he brought back in regards to what Coert had done to Cady.
“Man, fuck,” Lars bit out on seeing him. “Just fuckin’ fuck off, you fuckin’ pig.”
Coert moved opposite the table to him but didn’t sit.
He stayed standing, looked into his eyes and spoke.
“We have your notes, receipts and other detritus, the stuff you left at your pad in Blakely. We have the Denver investigator’s travel notes and reports, all of these linking to information we found in Blakely and we’re likely to find in that mess of a car you left
“You like this don’t you, standin’ there, thinkin’ you’re the shit, big man sheriff, shiny badge?” Lars asked snidely. “But you’re a piece of shit.”
“We have very different definitions of that, Lars.”
“Pretty red pussy feels that way, I can tell,” he sneered, and Coert had to fight his body tightening. “You lied your ass off to her, to me, to all of us. Now that defines a piece of shit. You sure must know how to use your dick, she’s still panting after it after all this time. After you totally fuckin’ played her, buddy. My good buddy. Not a word outta your mouth was anything but shit. We all got buried under it but she was fuckin’ it. You were good with that mouth in a lotta ways, I can tell. Bet you talked your shit real pretty to her. Gave it to her good with that mouth. The man she was so fuckin’ addicted to, she couldn’t tear her eyes off you anytime you were anywhere near. Such a great guy. Such a big dick. Tony.”
Coert felt his scalp prickle but he just stared down at Lars.
“Goodbye, Lars,” he muttered, turning to leave.
“You didn’t have to get her a dog,” Lars called, and that prickle got worse at this proof that Lars had been watching Cady. Him and Cady.
But Coert didn’t stop moving to the door.
“I wouldn’t have hurt sweet Cady. No, buddy. The way I’d fuck sweet, stupid Cady right up the ass is makin’ her live a life in a world without you. She’d end herself that happened. And I wouldn’t have to do dick.”
The door closed on the word “dick,” and through Lars’s last Coert didn’t even turn around.