Redstone, Incorporated: The Best Revenge Part 21

"Tyler will be fine," Josh a.s.sured her. "Redstone will see to that."

Jessa nodded; she'd only known Josh Redstone a few hours, but she already knew he meant what he said and would get it done.

"I've got good people with the Westin Foundation who have a lot of experience dealing with traumatized kids."

Jessa nodded again. "I wish something like that had been around for him," she said quietly.

She didn't have to explain who she meant-she knew Josh knew all too well. "It's a wonder he functions as incredibly well as he does," Josh said. "And I'm thinking we may need to expand the foundation, a program to deal with the aftermath of things like this."

Then, looking at her steadily, he went on. "You know he's already at the plane."

"He's going to run, isn't he?"

Josh nodded. "For now. And probably, occasionally, forever. Can you deal with that?"

"I know he'll never be the same as a man who had a normal childhood. But I also know how strong he is, what it took for him to get to where he is from where he started."

"Don't give up on him, Jessa."

"I won't. Ever. He won't let it rule him. Not once he gets through all this, and the pain of confronting it all when he'd thought he left it behind forever."

Josh smiled at her, a warm, welcoming sort of smile.

"That you know tells me you are indeed what I'd hoped. You'll be his final salvation, Jessa."

She shook her head. "I'm just me. I can't save him. I couldn't before, either. But he can save himself. He's that strong."

"Yes, he is. Not many could see that, with his leaving you like this. But it's there, Jessa. He's running from possibilities he's afraid to believe in, because he once had to run from a reality too ugly to be borne."

"I know."

"Give it some time. Then call me. Or I'll call you when he's in a better place than he is right now."

The idea of calling the great Josh Redstone made her smile. "Sure. I'll just pick up the phone and demand to talk to one of the most important men in the world."

"I'm just me." Josh repeated her words with obvious full intent. "And I'll always take a call from you."

Jessa looked into his smoky-gray eyes, seeing what so many others had seen. "I understand now why Redstone is what it is. Because you are what you are."

"Redstone is its people. Always has been." He reached out and put a warm, gentle hand on her shoulder as he looked at her intently. "Always will be."

When he was gone, she wondered if there had been some extra meaning, directed at her, in those last words.

St. John shivered as he shook off the icy water, but he made himself focus on every aspect of his being. The cold from the lake, the further chill of the slight breeze on his wet body, the contrasting warmth of the sun that managed to penetrate through the canopy of the trees, the sensation of being clean again, physically at least, and the rough feel of his beard as he rubbed a hand over the jaw he hadn't shaved in nearly a week.

He knew if he stepped just a few yards to his right, he would be in a patch of full sun, and the shivering would ease. He pondered for a moment if he should allow himself that. He wasn't certain. Wasn't certain he had rebuilt the cage strongly enough to keep the old memories at bay.

He hadn't expected that vanquishing the fiend who had contributed half his DNA would erase it all. Nothing could. So he hadn't even hung around to follow the sensational stories of his spectacular downfall. He knew there would likely be a day in court-he couldn't picture the man who had haunted him going down that easily-when he would have to publicly tell the story.

He dreaded that day, but he could hardly leave Tyler to carry that load alone. And he was alone; his mother, incredibly, had sided with her bread and b.u.t.ter, and was vowing to stand beside her husband to the end. The boy was with a foster family vetted by the Westin Foundation, and St. John knew from his own experience that the relief would be nothing short of life-altering. Life-altering.

And there it was again. The realization that his time in Cedar, his time with Jessa, had been just that. Life-altering.

And yet he'd left her. Without a word of explanation why. And no contact in the month since. She'd probably given up on him, and would eventually find some sane, normal man who could give her the kind of life she deserved-decent, sane and happy.

The thought made his gut twist worse than remembering his father's abuse had.

He had to get a grip, he told himself. It's what he was here for. Josh had sent him to this remote cabin in the woods of Washington State, a place Josh himself went to often, for exactly that quality; the setting and the opportunity not to see another soul for weeks on end. The only sign of civilization he'd seen or heard in the last month was the occasional distant sound of a vehicle on the rural gravel road, and as he'd started his walk to the lake this morning, the sound of the Forest Service helicopter that went over now and then.

"You deserve time and s.p.a.ce to regroup," Josh had said. "It's a good place for that." And then, with that piercing insight that had helped him build Redstone into the amazing thing it was, he'd added, "But don't kid yourself, Dam. Don't keep running from the one thing that might actually balance out what was done to you."

Jess....

He made no sound, but his mind screamed it, the name he couldn't bear to say. He shivered again, but this time it wasn't so much from the cold. Abruptly he decided he was dry enough, and besides, he'd welcome the battle of trying to drag clothes over damp skin.

He paused in the act of dressing when a strange tickle crept up his spine to the back of his neck. His head came up sharply. While these woods were relatively safe, the biggest predator generally seen being the ubiquitous coyote, the occasional bear wasn't unheard of.

He glanced around, looking for anything big enough to be threatening.

What he found was pet.i.te, blond and a bigger threat than any creature who made its home in these woods. "Jess...."

It escaped him this time, that name he'd never expected to speak again.

For a moment he thought he might be hallucinating, some aftereffect of the shockingly cold water, or the fact that he'd been isolated here for so long. And then she stepped out of the shadows into that patch of sunlight. It turned her tousled crop of hair impossibly golden, she looked like some delicate forest elf caught for a moment in the human realm. But he knew she was real. His fingers curled with the knowledge, the memory of that slender body, of that sleek, satin skin, of the fiery, slick heat of her in those moments when he'd found a joy he'd never thought to know.

His body roused to the memory, so swiftly that for a moment he couldn't catch his breath, and his half-zipped jeans threatened to retreat. He walked toward her, unable to stop himself. But the moment he stepped into the sunlight, he stopped, as unable to go on as he'd been unable to stop.

"What are you doing here?"

"Looking for-and at-you," she said, almost teasingly.

Remembering what he'd just been doing, standing here naked and wet, lost in his ridiculous ponderings, he couldn't help asking, "How long...?"

"Long enough," she said with a look in her eyes that echoed the hunger he was sure was glowing in his own. "Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are?"

She said it with such simple wonder that he knew she believed it, even if he couldn't even begin to. Still a little stunned at her sudden, unexpected presence, and realizing he was far from regrouped if just her appearance could rattle him like this, he groped for a diversion.

"How did you...?"

He didn't finish this question, either, as the obvious answer dawned on him. It hadn't been a Forest Service helicopter at all.

"Tess is remarkable," Jess said, as casually as if they were discussing what trees grew here. "I never would have thought you could land a helicopter in that tiny clearing, but she did it without turning a hair."

"Josh," he muttered.

"Yes. Sweet of him to loan me his personal pilot, wasn't it?" "Interfering."

"Depends on your point of view, I guess," she said, not rising to the bait.

"Go."

"No."

"Your own sake."

"The last person I voluntarily took that kind of order from was my father. He wouldn't want me to take it now." Unexpectedly, she grinned. "You know, I've kind of missed your shorthand. It makes for...exhilarating conversation."

He was digging too deep to really appreciate the humor. "Not safe."

"I've never been safer."

"Not worth it."

"With most, perhaps. But with you there's a difference, Dam. Most people build walls to keep people out. Yours are built to keep the part of you you're afraid is too damaged away from people. To keep them safe, not yourself. Don't you see that's...n.o.ble?"

He couldn't even answer that a.s.sessment, it seemed so ridiculous. n.o.ble? Hardly.

He was shivering again, although his clothes had absorbed the last of the water, and he wasn't that chilled anymore, standing here in the sun. With her.

"That's a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with it, you know. Walling it off, I mean."

"Not whole."

"Sure you are," she said briskly.

How, he wondered, had she known that gentleness, softness, would cripple him just now?

She went on in the same tone. "There's just a part of you that you need to guard more than most. But it's like having a dent in a car that runs perfectly, or a drafty spot in a house you love, that you only notice when the wind blows a certain way. Do you junk the car, tear down the house?"

He shook his head, not in negation but to try and clear it, to try and make sense of the chaotic thoughts that were careening around in his head.

"It was him," he murmured, barely aware of speaking it aloud.

"I know you know it was all his fault, not yours, that's not news," Jessa said. "So what is it that was him?"

"My drive. Ambition. All him. He really did make me what I am. Hating him did. Without it, I'm..."

His voice trailed away. Without it, he thought, I'm nothing. Hating him made me what I am. And now I feel...nothing.

"Without it," Jessa said, "you're still you. Don't you see, Dam? You took what he did to you, what he forced you to learn just to survive, and you used it, turned it back on him. He tried to convince you you were useless, stupid, bad and G.o.d knows what else. And you didn't just prove him wrong, you proved him useless, stupid and bad. And pure evil into the bargain."

Again he was shivering, and he couldn't seem to stop. Jessa never let up. She wouldn't, he thought almost numbly. There was no quit, no give up in her.

"Think about it," she urged. "You surpa.s.sed him long ago. You're so far above his treasured 'status' he'll choke on it. Rub it in. Make him look as small as he is in comparison. I mean, what's a small-town country lawyer next to the Vice President of Operations for Redstone Incorporated?"

Somehow he had never thought of it like that.

"He doesn't deserve your hate, Dam. Not that he isn't evil, he just doesn't deserve one more ounce of your energy." She took a deep breath before adding, "But we do."

He shook his head again, in pain this time.

"You deserve-"

"I think I told you once that's a decision you don't get to make."

"Jess-"

"The only decision you have to make is if you're going to let him win, after all."

She was, in her way, as merciless as he'd ever thought of being. And as determined. He could feel it, coming off her in waves. She was her own kind of warrior, and she would leave this battlefield with victory, or not at all.

"If you let what he did to you run your life," she said fiercely, "for the rest of your life, then he wins, Dam. Then that evil monster has done what he wanted all along. He's broken you."

His shivers turned to a violent shudder. A sudden weakness sent him to his knees. And in an instant Jessa was there, on her own knees beside him, holding him.

"Don't let him," she said, her voice taut. "Don't let him win, please."

He leaned into her soft warmth, needing her gentleness now as he couldn't have taken it before, and beyond wondering how she'd sensed the change.

He couldn't speak, and she thankfully didn't press him, just held him, tightly, and he had the odd sensation that she was literally holding him together while the emotions ripping at him were trying to tear him apart. Destroy him.

Because he realized now, probably had the instant he'd seen her step into that shaft of golden sunlight, that he could no longer exist the way he'd been for the last twenty years. So his choice was even more basic than Jessa realized...he either did as she asked, or he died. It was that simple.

Her arm tightened around him, fiercely, almost as if she'd followed his thoughts, as if she knew what choice he'd arrived at.

"I want you to think of something," she said softly. "I want you to think of your father, sitting in that cell he's in, finally where he belongs, knowing he's been beaten at last. And then think of him smiling that evil, vicious, depraved smile when he learns that he's won after all, that he's destroyed you."

He shuddered again, violently, because the image she painted was too clear, the memory of that very smile too vivid. He would smile like that, with twisted, perverted pleasure, if he heard that the son he'd abused had, even now, given up the battle.

And there, in that forest, in the dappled sunlight that sparkled off a gla.s.sy lake, he knew he didn't want to die. She was right. He knew she was right. If he let this rule him, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d won. And he might as well end it right here and now rather than let this cripple him.

Let it cripple them.

He just doesn't deserve one more ounce of your energy. But we do.

He shuddered once more. Was he a fool, daring to want more than the walled-off life he'd allowed himself? And a bigger fool for thinking that maybe, just maybe, the Redstone magic that had brought so many others together might actually apply to him?

It wasn't that he didn't know what he wanted-he did. What he wanted was right here, holding him, giving him a kind of support he'd never had-except from the child she'd been. He wanted everything she could give him, her love, her warmth, her tenderness, her courage....

And he realized that was what he lacked. Her courage. The courage to refuse to give a twisted, perverted man power over him. The courage to truly leave behind the past. Or at the least, to wall it up securely enough that it withered and died from lack of attention and feeding.

It was a long time later that Jessa spoke. "I take it back."

For an instant his gut knotted in the old way as he wondered automatically if she'd finally seen the light and changed her mind, decided to walk away from a man too damaged for her sunny goodness. But a newfound knowledge and faith quashed the thought before he spoke; this was Jessa, steadfast, unwavering. She wouldn't. She just wouldn't. And her next words proved him right.