only you

A cautious brush of fingers down the front of his coat, blotting the last vestiges of moisture from his shower from his skin before he even touched the cloth he’d wrapped the piece in last night. Too fragile to risk damp, too precious not to be infinitely cautious. It wasn’t his, hadn’t even legally belonged to the skeevy lawyer whose study wall he’d liberated it from last night, along with a couple of small statues. The legal owners might have long forgotten about it, tales of what their family had once owned not passed along to the next generation. Shame hidden, pain at the loss of what had been stripped from them in the brutality of war not spoken of. It would return to them though.

Will peeled the cloth back, careful not to snag it on the ornate moulding of the frame. Blue eyes fixed on the ethereal portrait of the young woman, the flushed cheeks of youth, the texture on her dress crisp enough that you half thought it was possible to brush your fingers over it and feel the course threads, the warmth of skin beneath. No wonder the man had paid so much for it six months ago from a broker in Berlin, no wonder the call hadn’t gone out about the burglary. Most didn’t want their darkest secrets laid out for the police. They pushed their luck instead, right up to the moment their past caught up to them … and someone strolled into their midst to take back their ill-gotten gains.

Tomorrow morning it would be packaged in a crate, driven twenty miles to the next town to be sent back to the original owner’s great nephew. A return home to Berlin finally. If his luck held and the minute breadcrumbs didn’t lead to his own door.

If.

If there was ever a way to damn himself, Will was sure he’d find it in this town. The place that was supposed to be his escape from a marriage crumbled under the weight of his silence and from a father who had tried to keep reins on a career long moved past his purview mired in deadly undercurrents that threatened to tear him back there. Neighbours and coworkers alike too interested in his business, fingers clutching curtains as they watched every passing stranger, calls flooding in for non-existent infractions and questions, questions bombarding his ears every time his partner graced their office with her presence. Enough to have a man questioning his sanity and the pit of his stomach suddenly sour with more than the Kopi Luwak he’d just poured into it. The buzz of the radio in the front seat, an address given out. All too familiar … and all too damning.

He took the time to carry the cloth wrapped bundle carefully up to his apartment, the statuary stashed carefully with it in the safe in his office. A hand smoothed down his coat again, chin raised, last night put squarely out of mind as he went back downstairs, climbed into the car and headed for the house he’d burgled. He wouldn’t have believed that the lawyer was ballsy enough to report the painting missing but perhaps the statues … maybe not as illegally obtained as he’d thought. Will’s eyes narrowed faintly in thought as he drove towards the house, nestled in its remote little spot in silence, or the lawyer had seen an opportunity in the carefully picked locks and bypassed alarms. Or perhaps his luck had finally run out and this was the time a finger of blame was going to point in his direction as he investigated his own theft.

Knuckles blanching his skin as he grew close, Will tried not to let his feathers ruffle. There was no question in their mind that the pretty boy with family money pushing him up the ladder even after he swaggered his way into town as Forbes’ new blue eyed boy was incapable of such things. This one was no Bruce Wayne, even if all the newspapers in New York had compared the two of them when he’d been young and pap-friendly.

The car coasted to a stop beside one of the patrol cars. Blocking it in but he didn’t care, it was detective’s prerogative, as was swooping on a case not assigned to him. He slid out, hands smoothing down the black trench coat all too redolent of Batman’s cape on a scene filled with cheap polyester uniforms. A hand raised to one of those uniformed officers as he was waved towards the house. A moment’s distraction enough for her to turn into him as he strolled towards the house … from the front this time.

She couldn’t have hit him any harder if it had been a literal sledgehammer between his eyes.

Zoey. His wife. Hands pressed to her thighs, a chill to her voice that had once carved channels deep into his heart that were still nowhere near being healed. A breath hot in his throat, searing until he was left swallowing convulsively. Will covered it, raised dark brows at her as he flashed teeth in a smile just tinged with bitterness as she cursed. ”Says the woman who’s supposed to be in a precinct a few hundred miles from here. What are you doing here, Zoey? In my town.” Like the entire world had been divided up between them in the divorce. Your coast and mine and never the twain shall meet. For if they did … heartache would again tear at him with those bloody and vicious claws. He frowned, eyes dropping down her despite his fight not to look at her and realise she still looked good enough to steal his breath at a glance. What was she doing …

Tagged: ZOEY WASHINGTON * Word Count: 964

A sledgehammer swung with unerring accuracy, wielded by a fate who was determined to shatter what life he’d pulled back together in this town. Creeping out of New York with his tail between his legs, he’d retreated as far as seemed possible, slapping on a poker face while he’d licked at wounds that still weren’t healed. Him on his side of this invisible line, aching deep down inside, the pain of his loss – and it was a loss as surely as if death had rendered their vows null and void – threatening to crush him. Somehow, Will thought, it had seemed easier to believe that he had a chance of moving past it, of letting Zoey do the same, when they weren’t forced to see each other on a daily basis.

He’d lied to himself. The truth that hammer blow now, stealing his breath and threatening to spill him onto his knees in the middle of the ‘crime scene’ he’d been so careful to walk away from cleanly last night.

Will gritted his teeth around the accusation he’d spoken, grinding them harder as he saw the glitter of tears in Zoey’s eyes. Another sucker punch that had him wanting to dip his head and whisper some sort of apology like it would somehow take back what he’d said and slap a band aid over all of this. He forced himself to keep his head up though, mouth pursed to stop the words flying free. ”My town.” he echoed again. ”I moved here. Not that I expected I’d have to end up sharing it. Assigned? By the NYPD?” By Dalton most likely, fully aware of where his son had slunk off to and perfectly happy to try and drive him back to New York, just to bring him back under his thumb again.

The hand that had been holding her skirt down, drawing his eyes in a way that furrowed his dark brows, rose, jabbed in his direction like it was a weapon just as deadly as that razor edge tongue he’d loved to hear once upon a time. A cutting nightingale in the Upper East side, rather than Berkeley Square, so beautifully turned on others. Cutting him to the bone now as he glared at her. ”Is that what you think I did? Ran from New York on a whim to hide from what happened. No. I didn’t run away on the spur of the moment. I had a job lined up, I’d say that gives me a right.” It also gave him that weak kneed feeling again. Invisible fingers closing around his heart, squeezing painfully in one way before the wind blew and the skirt that had been clutched tight in Zoey’s grasp flapped open.

Not a flash of silk or lace, not something worn specially like the things he’d spent nights transfixed by as he’d been unable to believe his luck for ever having convinced her to give him a chance, let alone her loving him. Will felt heat rise into his throat, caught himself staring until that small sound slipped from her, that hand clapping back down and failing miserably as the two sides of the skirt caught the breeze again, blowing back to reveal more skin than when she’d first let go of the wrecked garment to drive her finger towards her. Will’s jaw tightened again, his eyes rolling up until he was steadfastly not looking at the shame that had left those dark eyes glimmering again.

Scrabbling at the coat he wore, Will peeled it off, held it up to her like a shield to prevent any of the assholes in uniform from seeing the woman who still occupied that scarred organ he called a heart brought low by a wardrobe malfunction. ”I think I have your old gym back in the trunk still …” The one he’d found when he was packing up to move here, the one that left him feeling as though someone had reached in and torn that heart from his chest. He’d kept it there, somehow relishing in that pain to keep one small part of her in his life. ”Come over to the car, change … please?” There was a hint of a plea to his voice, more than he’d allowed himself to show in those bitter days when they’d been hashing out the few details they’d actually contested with their lawyers.

Tagged: ZOEY WASHINGTON * Word Count: 732

What was worse? That sudden fist around his heart at the sight of her or the pride that bit deep when he realised that without him she’d gotten what she had always wanted. Assigned by the FBI. Agent Washington, finally making it through the selection process after years of trying, kicking ass in the academy like he’d always known she would. Dark brows drew together slightly, his throat working behind the stiff confines of his shirt and tie. She was proud of herself for it, as she should’ve been, it shone in the way she lifted his chin. Once upon a time he’d been familiar with all of her expressions, had read her like a book right up until the moment she’d knocked him down flat with the news she wanted out.

Will nodded slowly, caught himself before he could let his pride in her slip out in a congratulations. If he started down that road he wouldn’t stop, resolve crumbling under the weight of what hadn’t faded in his heart in the months he’d been away. ”Agent Washington,” he rasped hoarsely. All he could get out without too much slipping through the crack he’d allowed it.

It somehow worse and better than his father pushing her down here all at the same time. Long months of helping her study, of doing everything he could to lift the weight off in their marriage and on the job to ensure she could. The fruition of it all coming with him gone. Some part of him wished he could say the same, to brag about how well he’d done outside of the bond of their marriage, smugness in the jut of his own square jaw, a reminder of the person he’d once pretended to be thrown out there like a shield against his vulnerability with her, his own personal kryptonite. He couldn’t find it in himself to do it, to put that smug bite in his voice. This move was a fresh start, somewhere where he didn’t have to slip into the Bruce Wayne like persona continually. Where he didn’t have to be the asshole because protecting her from breaking her own code made him the asshole.

Oh god he tried to paste it back on now. The bristle in his tone as he glared at her and tossed her comment back in her face. A cold slap of proverbial water while that hand tightened beneath his shirt, nails clawing deep at the thought that she’d imagined he’d gone right back to old ways, running away somewhere because there weren’t consequences for him. There never were in their heads. The water hadn’t rolled off of this duck’s back, it had been a wrench, a tearing out of what had meant something for her, never because of. Will had prepared to argue it, to practically tell her how Forbes had rolled out a red carpet for a detective of his calibre but the universe wasn’t done leaving them both feeling embarrassed and awkward and raw.

Will had gawped at her as her skirt had blown away from those dancer’s legs, lean and graceful, but as strong as the woman herself. What had happened? Mortification, burning in those eyes he had put tears into far too many times, even though Zoey had looked away, not wanting to show him the weakness he’d once have held her through. Thumbs skimming the tears from her cheeks, fingers in the fall of dark hair, slowly soothing that pain. Now he couldn’t even reach for her, the gulf between them he’d put there gaping to the point where she wouldn’t look at him for help. Giving her the room so she wouldn’t have to, Will looked away, skinning out of his coat to hold it up, a shield for that embarrassment that he wouldn’t make a fuss over.

His teeth gritted as she snatched it away, blue eyes not returning to her until he was fairly sure it was safe. When his eyes had met hers there was something there, someone like the Zoey he had known. It hadn’t lasted long though. Will bit down on the tip of his tongue, eyeing the officers at the door like he could intimidate them away with one steely look. ”You’re welcome,” he ground out between his teeth before he admitted some part of him was still soft and nostalgic enough to have kept her bag. His lips pursed for a moment, no explanation that would’ve give him away somehow coming. ”It was out of the way. I figured I’d get around to dealing with it eventually but with the move … who has the time.” A man whose marriage had fallen apart should’ve done. A clean surgical cut to separate himself from his previous life. A wound that would heal, instead of the ragged bloody hole that remained in his heart instead.

That hole wouldn’t close up, the softness that spilled from it leaving him begging instead of walking off and leaving Zoey to deal with her issue alone. Will heard himself beg, his lips pressing together in the wake of the words. A plea, just as likely to result in another snap as acceptance.

The acceptance left him letting out a convulsive breath. Okay. Will turned, his head dipping at her gratitude, his hand hovering a few inches behind her back as he followed her. The embarrassment had to still be there, pushing Zoey forward at a rush while he did his best to shield her back from the view of the officers with his far broader shoulders. ”Any time.” Another promise that didn’t last much longer than the breath it took to say it.

He would’ve guided her towards his car, the one he’d changed when he’d left New York. Another fresh start, so much left behind but not enough. He should’ve known he wouldn’t have to though. Zoey was looking up at him, that shimmer still in her eyes despite her snort. Raising his brows, Will slipped his hands into his pocket and retrieved his keys to snick the locks open. Pressing close, he opened the trunk, bending in to dig the bag out of its spot snugged up against the back seat so she wouldn’t have to. ”There’s not much point in being a detective if you can’t remind the deputies that you’re on that ivory pedestal above them every now and then. You can use the back seat …” Avoiding trying to shimmy something on beneath the cover of his coat, hoping to God another burst of wind didn’t hit.

Will shifted, opened the rear door and then stood in the lee of it, staring back at the house with his arms folded over his chest, a bulky guardian just daring the unworthy and unwary to catch a glimpse. ”How long?” he asked, trying not to fix on the mental images each rustle brought on. One of his shirts dropped to their bedroom floor, starched cotton skimming down willowy curves, the starched clothes of the job shed at home, him watching Detective Washington give way to Zoey, to his wife. Both of their shields blown open because the trust had been there. Safe. Vows a promise forever. One that he had broken for her.

Tagged: ZOEY WASHINGTON * Word Count: 1209