Grappling for Position (Against the Cage Book 4) Read online

  She was still laughing when she entered the kitchen. He snagged her around the waist and roughly pulled her into his arms. “You want me to show you? Or do you want me to show you?”

  “Hmm . . . maybe you could show me?”

  He dipped his head, and her lips parted in eager anticipation, but he stopped a moment before they touched. He was so close she could feel the warm moisture of his breath teasing her mouth.

  “I’m going to tell him, Willow.”

  So, he wasn’t going to be distracted by the promise of hot sex. By the stubborn set of his jaw and the challenging warning in his vibrant green eyes, she knew he wouldn’t be deterred.

  “This has gone on long enough. We’re either going to be together or we’re not. No more lying, no more sneaking around.”

  She knew this day was coming. And with the acceptance of it came a surprising amount of relief. Willow nodded and slipped her arms around his neck, tugging him closer as she rose to her tiptoes and bridged the scant distance. “We’re going to be together,” she whispered against his mouth. “I won’t try to stop you.” Her palm slid to his chest, laying it over his heart. The beat against her hand was sure and steady, just as strong and determined as the man who possessed it. “I love you, Regan.”

  “I love you too, Willow. I know you’re worried, but whatever happens, we’re going to get through it.” Regan tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and kissed her. It was soft and gentle. “Was he too hard on you?”

  Her heart tugged at the concern in his voice. She shrugged, not wanting to talk about it when there were far better things for them to be doing during this rare moment of time together. “He yelled a lot. The only way I could get him to quit was to cry. He felt bad and apologized.”

  “You think it’ll work for me?” He gave her a teasing grin.

  She laughed. “Not a chance.”

  Regan snuggled her up tighter and took her mouth in a soul-searing kiss. Now that was more like it. She returned it with equal abandon and was about to suggest they take this to the bedroom when Regan’s phone began vibrating in his pocket.

  “You want to get that?” she whispered when his mouth began blazing a trail down her neck.

  “Do I look like I want to get that?” The deep rumble of his voice sent a shiver of goose bumps over her flesh.

  “It could be important. At least see who it is.”

  Regan sighed and rested his forehead against hers, taking a moment before retrieving his cell from his pocket. He glanced at the caller ID and scowled. “It’s the hospital.” His eyes locked on hers, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. There was only one reason the hospital would call him—Arthur Matthews was dead.

  He knew this moment was coming. So then why wasn’t he better prepared for it? The last thing he expected to feel at this moment was a profound sense of regret. Where was the relief he’d been expecting—hoping for? The phone rang in his hand again, and he stared down at it, unable to bring himself to swipe this thumb across the screen.

  “Regan . . .”

  He could barely hear his name over the thundering of his heartbeat.

  “Do you want me to answer it?”

  No. He had to do this, had to hear the news himself. Then on the seventh and final ring, he accepted the call before it rolled over to voice mail. “Hello?”

  “Hello, this is Jane from University Hospital. I’m calling for Regan Matthews.”

  “This is he.”

  “Mr. Matthews, I’m calling on behalf of your father.”

  Regan braced himself for the words he thought he was prepared to hear, but the knot in his gut and shaking of his hands proved him wrong.

  “He’s . . . Mr. Matthews, your father is requesting to see you.”

  What the fuck? “So, he’s not dead? I thought you were calling to tell me he died.”

  “Your father is still alive, Mr. Matthews, but it’s only a matter of time now, I’m afraid. He’s very ill and has signed the papers refusing further treatment. Right now is the best he’s going to be—the most lucid. He wishes to speak with you. I told him I would call and give you the message.”

  Fuck, he wasn’t ready for this—to talk to his father after all these years. Then again, apparently, he wasn’t ready for him to die, either, so what the fuck was he going to do? Perhaps a chance to say his piece would give him the closure he needed to let go of all the anger and hatred. “I’ll be down shortly.”

  “I’ll let him know. He’s been moved out of the ICU to station 6A room 203. Thank you for coming down, Mr. Matthews.”

  Regan disconnected the call and pocketed the phone. He could feel Willow’s eyes on him, but he avoided her gaze. The last thing he needed right now was to see the pity that would most assuredly wreck him. Numbly, he told her, “I have to go. My father is asking to see me.”

  Willow took a step closer, slipping her hand in his, and gave it a comforting squeeze. “Not alone you’re not. I’m coming with you.”

  Chapter 26

  Regan forced one foot in front of the other as they walked down the hall, Willow’s hand tightly clenched in his. The whole thing was so surreal, and each step he took brought him closer to facing his own personal hell. The demon of his past was now nothing more than a pitiful, shriveled imp, and yet the power his father seemed to hold over him shook the core of his foundation. How had he managed to lie to himself for so many years—convincing himself he was past this shit, the abuse and suffering he’d endured at the hands of this man? The boy in him didn’t want to face the monster, but the man in him demanded retribution, if for nothing more than to look his father in the eye so he could see he never broke him—and he never would.

  They stopped outside his father’s room, yet he couldn’t bring himself to knock. His pulse hammered with that familiar cadence he hadn’t felt in years but recognized as fear.

  “Are you all right?” Willow placed her palm on his shoulder, her delicate brows tightening with concern.

  “It’s funny. All the countless men I’ve faced in the cage and I’ve never felt a flicker of fear. Yet here I am, standing outside a dying man’s room, and my heart is about to pound out of my chest.”

  “That’s because it isn’t the same. In the cage, you’re the one in control. You hold all the power. But this is different—it’s personal.”

  Damn, he loved this woman. She got him. No one else in the world understood him the way Willow Scott did—not even Kyle. With her, he could be one-hundred percent himself, flawed and broken, and it didn’t even fucking matter. She loved him anyway.

  The door before them suddenly opened, and the nurse coming out gave a startled gasp. “I didn’t realize anyone was out here. You must be Regan.”

  He nodded.

  “I can tell by the eyes. Just like your father’s. My name is Jane. We spoke on the phone earlier.”

  Perhaps she thought he’d count it as a compliment, her remark about his eyes. They were unusual in color. That was true. Many women commented on them, and he was used to it. This woman couldn’t know how much he hated the reminder—that every time he looked in the mirror he saw his father’s eyes staring back at him. She couldn’t know the loathing that filled him with. It was those eyes that had drawn his mother in like an unsuspecting fly, getting caught in the spider’s web, allured by the shimmers of light radiating from the gossamer strands.

  “We’ve just gotten your father cleaned up for the evening and into bed. You may go in if you’d like. I told him you were coming, so he’s expecting you.”

  “Thank you,” Willow said when he didn’t respond, filling the gap of awkward silence when the words failed to come.

  This was a mistake. It wasn’t too late to turn back around. He should just go.

  The nurse cracked the door open and poked her head back inside the room. “Arthur, Regan is here to see you.”

  Fuck.

  “Please let him in.”

  Please. Regan was pretty sure that was the first time he’
d heard that word out of his father’s mouth. He almost didn’t recognize his voice without the drunken slur. The nurse opened the door and held it, waiting expectantly for Regan to pass through.

  Willow gave his hand a gentle squeeze, nudging him forward. Forcing back the barrage of childhood memories racing to the surface, Regan shut it all down, locking that shit away, just as he’d done so many times over so many years, and took one wooden step closer—then another and then another. The orange glow of his father’s wrinkled skin was slightly improved, though he was still as frail and thin as before. But it was his eyes that gave Regan a start. They held the clarity of sobriety, something he hadn’t witnessed as far back as he could remember.

  “Regan, you came.”

  His father’s gaze briefly met his before anxiously darting away. He indicated the chair beside the bed for Regan to take a seat, but he didn’t move. His feet weren’t following commands at the moment. His father glanced back up and saw Willow standing beside him, his brows arching in surprise.

  “Willow . . . it’s nice to see you again.”

  Something hedged in his tone that undermined his sincerity. Disappointment? Embarrassment? Regret? Regan couldn’t know.

  “It’s nice to see you too, Mr. Matthews,” Willow politely replied. Regan finally got his feet moving and escorted her to the chair closest to the wall before taking the one beside the bed as his father had requested.

  “I didn’t think you’d come,” he told Regan.

  “Neither did I.” He met and held his father’s gaze, determined to see this through. Then maybe he could finally bury all this shit he’d been carrying around for the past twenty-six years.

  “Are you and Willow . . . ?”

  His father let the question hang in the air. Regan nodded. How fucked up was it that his father would know the truth about him and Willow before his own best friend?

  “Good.” His father nodded his approval. “That’s good. You need someone constant in your life.”

  “What the fuck would you know about what I need?”

  Willow let out a small gasp at the venom in his voice. In truth, he hadn’t meant to say it at all, let alone with the sharpness of a cracking whip. He didn’t want Willow to see this side of him, to witness the darkness he feared lay deep in his soul from the poison of his father’s seed.

  But his old man had balls, and he held Regan’s stare—bold and unwavering, unfazed by this malice. His expression was masked, his thoughts unreadable, but Regan could see the gears of his mind turning.

  “I’m over thirty days sober.”

  “That’s because you’ve been in here.”

  “True. But even so, lying in this bed, a man’s got nothing to do but think. I didn’t ask you to come here so I could seek your forgiveness, Regan. I know it’s too late for that.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “I’m dying.”

  “I know that.”

  “I don’t expect you to care, Regan. God knows I don’t deserve your pity or your compassion. But there is something you need to know—something I cannot take to my grave.”

  This was a mistake. The longer he stayed here, the tighter the band around his chest got. It was getting hard to breathe. The things Regan had to say would only drive a wedge further between them, and nothing his father said could repair the damage that had been done from years of abuse. “Whatever it is, you can save it for a priest. I’m not interested in hearing it.”

  Regan stood to leave, and his father grabbed his arm with a surprising amount of strength for a dying man. His touch unleashed a torrent of memories flooding through Regan’s mind, and he jerked his arm back, severing the connection.

  “Come on, Willow. Let’s go.” He headed toward the door and was about to cross the threshold when his father’s words reached into Regan’s chest and took hold of his heart.

  “It’s about your mother.”

  Regan froze. Dread entered his veins on a rush of adrenaline that spread through his system, turning him to ice. Goose bumps prickled his flesh as he bit out the words, “What about her?”

  “I didn’t mean to do it, Regan. I never meant to hurt her. It was an accident.”

  Oh, my God. The truth detonated in his mind like an atomic bomb. Bile rose in his throat, and his gaze darted to the corner of the room, searching for a trashcan to puke in. A wave of dizziness slammed into him, and he grabbed the door frame to keep himself upright.

  “You killed my mother.” The words left his lips in a disbelieving murmur as Willow’s sharp gasp fractured the air.

  “I was drunk.”

  “Of course you were. You were always drunk,” Regan snapped.

  “She was going to leave me—to take you away. I became angry when I found out what she was planning. We fought and I hit her. She fell,” he continued, but God help him, Regan wished he would stop. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t stand here and listen to his father confess to killing his mother. “She struck her head on the coffee table. I thought she was just knocked out, but she never woke up. I didn’t know what to do. I told you she left. I told everyone she’d left, and since that’s what she was planning to do, no one questioned it. It wasn’t the first time she’d tried to leave, but I wouldn’t let her take you, so she stayed.”

  His gaze cut to Willow. Her hands were covering her mouth, eyes wide with horror as tears silently spilled down her cheeks.

  Fury ripped through Regan like holy fire. If this man hadn’t been at death’s door, he’d have killed him with his own bare hands.

  “Why? Why are you telling me this now?” he demanded.

  “Because I couldn’t leave this world, knowing that you blamed her for abandoning you. I can’t change the past, Regan. I can’t undo my mistakes or ever earn your forgiveness, I know that. But if I can keep you from hating her . . . I thought . . . I don’t know . . .”

  His knees felt weak. Each breath he dragged into his lungs was like inhaling fire—it was pure agony. All these years he’d hated his mother for abandoning him to this hell, and now to learn that she was dead because she’d stayed . . . because of him. The guilt was unbearable.

  “I have to get out of here.”

  “Regan, I’m sorry.”

  Sorry? Sorry was something you said to someone when you accidently door-dinged their fucking car. It was not what you said when you killed someone’s mother. Nausea rolled through his gut, sending a surge of bile up his throat. His mouth salivated with the warning he was going to be sick, but he refused to give his father the satisfaction of seeing him break, even if that was what he’d finally done. After all these years, Arthur Matthews had finally broken him.

  Chapter 27

  Regan bolted from the room and charged down the hall. He needed to move before the fury rising inside him exploded and he murdered a dying man. Willow called after him, but his steps didn’t slow as he spotted the stairwell. He slammed his palms against the door release, and the thing swung open so hard it ricocheted off the wall.

  Bang! The pounding of his footsteps echoed through the hallway as he beat feet toward the exit. Once outside, he stopped to catch his breath. His mind wouldn’t stop reeling, replaying on an endless loop the day he’d come home from school to discover his mother had abandoned him. Only she hadn’t abandoned him at all. She was dead, and it was Regan’s fault. She’d wanted to leave but had stayed because of him—because she loved him. And all these years he’d hated her, believing the worst of a woman who’d ultimately paid the greatest price for her love.

  Fuck, he couldn’t breathe! His chest was heaving air, but his lungs felt starved of oxygen, like an invisible hand was squeezing his throat. His heart rioted inside his chest, banging against his ribs.

  Oh, my God, I’m having a panic attack. The thought resonated somewhere in his mind. Seriously? This couldn’t be fucking happening. He bent over, planting his palms above his knees, trying like hell to stave off the wave of vertigo threatening to put him on his ass. His arms were going nu
mb, his hands all tingly.

  “Regan?”

  Willow’s voice was a distant echo breaking through his haze of grief. She sounded a million miles away. Her hand was on his back, rubbing slow circles as she tried in vain to comfort him.

  “It’s all right,” she soothed, her voice thick with emotion, betraying her words for the lie they were.

  It wasn’t all right. Nothing about this was all right.

  “Breathe, Regan. Just breathe.”

  Willow continued rubbing his back. “I’m so sorry. God, I’m so sorry.” Her voice broke, hitching as she attempted to hold back a sob. “I don’t know what to do. I tried to call Kyle, but he isn’t answering. Tell me what to do, Regan. Tell me how I can help you.”

  “There isn’t anything anyone can do,” he answered flatly.

  “What about the police?”

  “What’s the point in sending a dying man to prison? He’ll be dead before he can even stand trial. My mother’s justice will be delivered by the hand of God and no one else. Soon he’ll answer for his crimes, while I’m sentenced to live with the guilt and regret of hating a woman who lost her life for loving me. She stayed because of me, Willow. And she died for it. She’s gone. Just . . . gone, and I can’t even give her the dignity of a fucking grave.

  “I didn’t think it was possible to hate that man more than I already did, and yet here I am. Do you have any idea what it’s like to despise the man who’s responsible for giving you life? What it feels like to have that kind of poison running through your veins?”

  Willow knelt to look into his eyes. His grief was so raw it was hard to hold her stare and allow her to see the darkest part of him, but what he found in her was understanding, compassion, and love.

  “I know what it feels like to hate,” she whispered softly. “And I imagine the darkness is much the same. It feels like a black hole in your heart, a never-ending vacuum trying to consume your soul. But you can’t give into it, Regan. And it’s going to be a fight every day to rise above the tragedy of your past. Believe me. I know. You can’t let this break you. Your mother wouldn’t want that. She loved you, and the best way to honor that love is in how you live your life now.”