Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [42]
“Mercy?”
“Because we’re either fighting or fucking, and there’s a lot I don’t know about you.”
“There’s a lot you haven’t wanted to know about me,” he corrected.
“So here’s your chance, Dawson. Talk to me. Tell me something juicy.”
Dawson toyed with my hair, a sure sign he was deep in thought. “This is a whopper of a secret. You sure you’re ready?”
No. “Yep. Unless it’s something kinky, like you’re into submission games.”
“That’d be an easier confession if it were true.”
Maybe this game of secret swap hadn’t been such a hot idea.
He inhaled. Exhaled. “I have an eleven-year-old son.”
I remained curled into him, listening to the increased tempo of his breathing. Waiting.
“Ain’t much to tell, to be honest. His mother was a cocktail waitress at the bar where I moonlighted as a bouncer in Minnesota. She moved away, and I became a cop. End of story, right? Five years later she informed me via legal summons that I’m a father and demanded child support. I called bullshit, but the paternity test confirmed that I am, indeed, this boy’s father.”
A secret love child was a whopper of a secret. “Do you share custody or anything?”
“No. I see him maybe twice a year, for a day at the most. Mona doesn’t encourage it, and he’s shown little interest in me, no matter how much interest I show in him.”
That made my insides ache. “Where does he live?”
“Denver.”
“Is that why you moved out here?”
“Yeah. I thought if I was closer, maybe we’d connect or something . . . but it hasn’t changed a goddamn thing.”
I thought of Jake. Even though Levi hadn’t known Jake was his father, Jake had gotten to watch Levi grow up. That’s more than Dawson was getting. “What’s his name?”
“Lex. Lex Pullman, not Lex Dawson. Seems pointless to talk about him, when there ain’t anything to talk about, know what I mean?”
I adjusted my position so I faced him.
His eyes searched mine. “You’re taking this well. It doesn’t freak you out that I hadn’t told you before now?”
“No. If you don’t hold it against me that I can’t reproduce, then I figure I can’t hold it against you that you have.” I maneuvered him closer until we were mouth-to-mouth, wanting to end this conversation.
Wasn’t the whole point of this “sharing” exercise so you could come clean about the campaign committee before he heard it from someone else?
Damn conscience. I eased back only far enough to speak. “Dawson, I should tell you—”
“It’ll keep.” He fed me those drugging soft-lipped kisses I craved. “Now can we go inside before I freeze my ass off ?”
I tried one last time. “Don’t you want to talk—”
“No talking, because if we talk, we’ll fight. And I don’t want to fight with you tonight.”
“We do get into less trouble when talking isn’t on our minds at all,” I murmured against his throat.
“See? We can agree on something.” Dawson carried me inside and locked the door.
I rolled out of bed three hours after Dawson left. I’d needed the intimacy of connecting with him, a man whose baser instincts matched mine, yet it’d muddied the waters, regarding my choice to let the campaign committee run me as a replacement candidate.
Phrased that way it seemed less my decision.
But my cynical side suspected Dawson had shown up, acting sweet, loving, spouting the “I don’t want to fight” line, knowing full well I’d been asked to run against him.
Would that bother me if it were true?
Not as much as it’d bother me if Dawson had shown up, acting sweet and loving, spouting the “I don’t want to fight” line because he hadn’t known I’d been asked to run against him.
What if Dawson hadn’t been making a political maneuver by using our sexual relationship to confuse me? What if he’d shown up because he’d . . . missed me? Was it time that I owned up to the fact that we were involved on a deeper level than just casual sex? Probably. I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it.
I ended up at the sheriff’s office, telling myself it was only to pick up my gun. Not to look for a sign. Not to go googly-eyed over the man who’d rocked my world and had finally opened