Reparation(6)

She took a deep breath and started stomping forward. She walked up the steps and barreled through the front door, coming to a stop in the hall. There. Like ripping off a band aid. She stood in the entry way, staring at the stairs. Now if she could just get her feet to move forward, she would really be winning.

“Are you alright?” Sanders' soft voice asked again, and she turned her head to find him standing behind her.

“As I'll ever be. I can take that,” she started, reaching for a suitcase that had been packed for her. Sanders breezed past her, heading up the stairs.

“It's fucking freezing in here,” Jameson grumbled, walking up next to her. She glanced at him.

“Only because you're used to it always being so hot – you kept it like a furnace in here,” she snapped.

Like a crematorium.

“Well, you've always insisted that I'm the devil. Wouldn't want to break from character. C'mon, let's get a fire lit, and I'll have Sanders ...,” he rambled on, heading towards his library.

Tate couldn't move. She couldn't go in there. Her ghost was trapped in that room. She and Jameson had easily spent more time in that room than any other room in the house – including his bedroom. When he was at home, he worked out of the library, used it as an office. At night, he stayed in there, close to the fire. Reading. Drinking. Talking with her. Touching her. She could not go in there.

“No,” she said, her voice louder than she'd intended. He stopped just outside the library door, turned towards her.

“Excuse me?” he asked. She licked her lips and closed the front door behind her.

“I don't want to go in there. You have a million rooms here, why don't you actually go see some of them. Have you ever even been in the study upstairs?” she asked, trying to think of any excuse at all, without giving away her fear. Jameson narrowed his eyes.

“I don't give a fuck about my other rooms. I like this room,” he replied.

“That's stupid,” she rolled her eyes.

“You're stupid, but you don't hear me bitching about it every two seconds,” he pointed out.

“Yes, you do.”

“Shut up.”

“Or let's go to the conservatory,” she started to offer. “I wonder if my geraniums are still alive. Did you hire -,”

“Tatum, cut the bullshit. Why don't you want to go in there?” Jameson demanded.

She took a deep breath. Stared him in the eye. Jameson hadn't seemed to have caught onto it yet, but she had a very powerful weapon against him. Sex. He simply couldn't resist it, and he was easily distracted by it. His one weakness, if it could be called that. It was very handy for Tate, because she used it to forget. When she was lost in his heat and his skin and his fire, she could forget she wanted to hurt him, the way he had hurt her. Forget that she wanted to destroy a small piece of his heart, the way he had done to hers.

Tate moved her hands to the buttons on the jacket she was wearing. Popped the top one open. Jameson cocked up an eyebrow. She worked the second one open, then trailed her fingers down to the third button. By the time she got to the bottom button, both his eyebrows were raised, and he had a decidedly mean glint in his eye.

Good, I need something to sting extra hard tonight.

“Because it's boring,” Tate breathed the word as she let his jacket fall to the ground. “Always in the library. You're so vanilla, Kane. A million rooms, and you only ever want to fuck me in one.” She clucked her tongue at him as she kicked the coat away from her feet.

“I get the very distinct impression you're trying to distract me,” he said. She smiled and took slow steps towards the stairs.

“Is it working?” she asked, reaching up to let her hair down.

“So far,” he replied, his eyes following her as she started up the stairs.

“Good.”

They didn't make it to his bedroom. They didn't even make it to a guest bedroom. It would've happened right in the hallway, if Sanders hadn't been somewhere in the house. As it was, Jameson pinned her against the wall in a linen closet, and he was sure to make it sting.



*



Tate sat outside, bundled up in an old sweater that used to belong to Sanders. It was a bright, shiny day out – and totally freezing. She wore a thick pair of wool socks over her knee socks and had tucked herself into a lounge chair. She sat next to the pool, which had been covered, and took out her cell phone.

“I was just thinking about you,” Nick said when he answered.

“Psychic,” she joked, pulling her knees up to her chest.

“How're things?” he asked.

Tate had kept him mostly in the dark about everything that had happened. He just knew that she was back in Boston, and that she and Jameson were “friends”; she never elaborated on what kind of friends, and thankfully he never asked. By the time she got back to Boston, he had already moved into his house in Arizona. Spring training didn't start till mid-February, but he liked settling in first.