by Gail Dayton
Marilyn got to go home that afternoon. Fortunately, Joey came too and ran interference for her when Mom and the sisters called. The carjacking and search had been all over the news. Mom was nearly hysterical, blaming it all on Eli. Marilyn hung up when the hysteria turned to abuse.
Detective Jackson came out and sat everyone down at the dining table with legal pads to write down their story. The social worker who came out to check on Pete's living conditions agreed to certify them as emergency foster parents for Stevie. He refused to give the social worker any name but Steven, claiming he didn't have any other. They wound up enrolling him at school as Steven Court for lack of anything better.
The first few nights after their ordeal, Eli held Marilyn while she slept. They didn't make love, but she was pretty sure that was simply because he was so cautious about hurting her head. But then, after she got her stitches out, when she mentioned that her head was feeling just fine, he slept downstairs on the couch. That night and every night following. She wanted to ask why, but couldn't, afraid she already knew the answer. Afraid he was feeling the need to move on.
She needed to release him from his promise, tell him she didn't need him to stay. That wouldn't be a lie. She wanted him to stay, but she didn't need him, she wasn't in love with him. He obviously wasn't in love with her, given the way he had one foot out the door. But she said nothing. Marilyn might not need Eli--she didn't--but those boys did.
Pete had idolized Eli for years. Now, knowing Eli was his father, Pete's adoration knew no bounds. The little boy had blossomed, living in this house. He had become the noisy, grubby, happy boy he always should have been. Uprooting him from this security would do him no good. Even worse if, as Marilyn was beginning to suspect, Eli left Pete with her while he headed out on his journeys again.
Stevie needed Eli even more, in ways Marilyn couldn't begin to understand. The older boy worried Marilyn. He was too quiet, too good. It was more than just an orphan child trying to make himself useful so he'd be wanted. It was almost as if Stevie were trying to erase some terrible sin. As if he thought he needed to do all these things in order to deserve living.
She had hoped Eli would be able to help Stevie come to terms with things, but either Stevie wasn't listening or Eli wasn't saying what he needed to hear.
Several weeks after their ordeal, she'd gone upstairs to make sure Pete had actually turned out the light and found Stevie bent over homework at the desk in Julie's room. He kept his clothes in with Pete's, but slept in the pink-painted room because he stayed up later.
"Getting through it okay?" Marilyn set a hand on his shoulder.
He shrugged, moving away from her touch. "I guess."
"Maybe you should think about doing your homework earlier, when you're not so tired. At the shop after school, maybe."
"Yeah, maybe." Stevie looked up at her, eyes shadowed with something she couldn't read. "If that's what you want."
"I do." She nodded, unable to resist ruffling up his hair, cut short now like Eli's and Pete's, lighter than theirs. "Your job is school. Everything else comes after that." That was the rule Kevin and Julie had lived under.
"Okay." Again he ducked away from her hand.
She would think he simply didn't like to be touched if she hadn't seen him watching her steal hugs and kisses from Pete. The look in his eyes at those moments nearly broke her heart.
"Don't stay up too late." She let her hand rest briefly on his head again before turning toward the door.
"I'm done." Stevie slammed the book shut and stood up.
"Are you? Do you understand it?"
"Sure. Just some English junk." He stood there, as if waiting for something. For her to leave? For...what? His eyes flicked toward her and he fidgeted with his backpack zipper.
"Well, then..." How could she know what he needed, if he wouldn't talk to her? She was groping blind. On impulse, she hooked her hand around the back of his neck and kissed the top of his head. "Sweet dreams."
"Don't." He broke away from her and backed across the room. "Don't be nice to me. I'm not-- I-- I shouldn't be here."
Now, what should she do? She didn't know how to deal with traumatized boys, hadn't been able to deal with her own trauma. Hoping she wasn't making things worse, she walked toward him. "I can't help being nice to you, Stevie. You're a nice boy. I'm glad you're here. You belong here. Not anywhere else."
Marilyn wrapped him in her arms and held him. He stood stiff in her embrace, trembling, refusing to let her in.
"What happened to you wasn't your fault," she whispered. "It was theirs. All theirs. You're a good person, Stevie."
He jerked free, sounding an ugly laugh. "Yeah. Sure."
"Stevie--" She touched his arm and he pulled it away.
"I'm tired," he said. "I want to sleep."
"All right." Marilyn nodded, her heart aching. She wanted to hug him, but she knew he wouldn't accept it. "Sweet dreams."
She found Eli on the sofa in the living room, flipping channels, and dropped down beside him with a sigh.
"I'm worried about Stevie." She wanted to lean her head on Eli's shoulder, draw some comfort from him, but he'd been just as distant as Stevie lately. It hurt more though. A lot more.
"He'll be okay." Eli put the remote through its paces, scarcely glancing at her.
All of her worry, all the sense of loss and despair Marilyn had been feeling spilled into unexpected anger, and came boiling up from inside.
"How do you know?" she demanded, struggling to keep her voice quiet, knowing the boy was still awake. "How can you be so sure? Because you're okay? Then, why in hell haven't you done squat to make Stevie understand he's not a bad person? That what happened to him wasn't his fault?"
Eli sat motionless on the couch, jaw clenched tight the way he did when fighting anger. "What if it was?"
Twenty-Four
***
"Was...?" Marilyn frowned trying to follow Eli's thought process through her outrage. "Was his fault? You think it was Stevie's fault that--?"
He threw the remote across the room as he sprang to his feet to loom over her. "Not Stevie's fault. Mine. What happened to you, what happened to Pete was my fault. None of it, from Teresa's death to your hell would have happened if not for me."
"Bullshit." She shoved him back as she stood, coming nose to nose with him. "Dwayne Gardner did that. It's his fault. Nobody else's. You had nothing to do with it."
"He came after you to get to me. How can you say I had nothing to do with it?"
"Did you make him do any of that? Did you call him up and tell him 'Hey, come kidnap my kid?' Hell, no. Dwayne Gardner is responsible for what he did. Nobody else. Not you. Not society. Not even the devil. The devil can't make a person do anything. Lay it out there in front of you and tempt you, sure, but the doing is all yours. And you didn't do anything but try to protect us and rescue me from Flash. He's the one who did the bad stuff. Not you." She fought her voice back down to quiet.
"God." Eli spun away from her, making fists and holding them tight, facing her again several feet away. "You don't know, Marilyn. You don't know anything."
"What don't I know?" She closed the gap between them.
"What I've done. You don't know--there's stuff inside me I can't even think about. Bad stuff. Black like tar and it sticks to everything I touch. I try to keep it from spreading but--"
Oh dear God in heaven, was that what he thought? "No, Eli." She caught his face between her hands, forced him to look at her. "No. You are a good person. Loyal and honorable and caring all the way through to the bone. Down to your heart and soul."
He laughed, a bitter sound, breaking free of her touch. "You're delusional. You don't know what I've done."
"What is it I don't know? That you killed Fat Fred? Good. He deserved to die."
"I didn't kill him. I wanted to. I should have. Every day I didn't was another day he... You want to know how he died? I stood up to him. Told him to leave one of the kids alone. I don't remember his name
. He was new, barely out of grade school. Scared sick. I said I'd take the job. But Fred wouldn't let me do it, not any more. I was too old. Almost seventeen."
He paused, his eyes shuttered, face expressionless. Marilyn wanted to hold him, but with him lost in the past, she didn't know if he would accept her touch.
"He lit into me," he said, "screaming he was going to kill me. I fought back--for all the good it did. Fat Fred was the size of a small mountain, even bigger than Flash. Everybody ran. Except--somebody came back.
"I don't know who. I was unconscious by then. I came to and he was dead, his skull bashed in, his face worse than Tee's. The two-by-four was on the ground next to him. Somebody had a hell of a lot of hate stored up for that bastard.
"That's when I got out. I ran before I could get blamed for something I didn't do but should have. Tee let me stay with her a couple days, then I hitchhiked. Got as far as Erie and fainted, practically on Fitz's doorstep. He took me in. Taught me all he knew."
"Thank God for Fitz," Marilyn whispered.
Eli's eyes shifted toward her, blinked, and seemed to register her image instead of some past horror.
Marilyn captured his hand and pressed it against her cheek. "Explain how that makes you a bad person."
He turned his hand over, cupped her cheek. The brief moment of yearning sadness in his expression before he pulled away made her want to cry. "It wasn't that, Marilyn. I was on the street four years. Four fucking years. I did things--you have no idea what I did--"
"You think I don't know? My God, Eli, how stupid--how naïve do you think I am? I was in that basement with Stevie for hours. I know Flash forced him to have sex with perverts who get their thrills from abusing children. Did you think I wouldn't realize he was just carrying on the family business?
"But I knew before that. I knew from the second you told me Flash wanted Pete. The look on your face told me exactly what he wanted him for and that you knew firsthand what kind of hell it was. I know, Eli. I know."
She reached for him and he stumbled back, horror in every line of his face and body. Her tears spilling over, Marilyn wrapped her arms around herself, wishing she knew how to get through to him.
"You knew?" he whispered. "Before--? When we--the first time?"
"The first time we made love?" She swiped the back of her hand across her cheek, rubbing away tears. "Yes, I knew. I had a pretty damn good idea, anyway. Eli, you were a child. What happened wasn't your fault."
"You knew," he said again, "and you still--you made love to me even though you knew what I did?" He slumped against the wall as if his legs could no longer hold him.
"Eli--" Again she cupped his face in her hands, leaning forward to kiss him, needing his kiss.
He caught her wrists and pushed her away. "I wasn't forced, Marilyn. At first, yeah, but not later on. Hell, I fucking volunteered. I'm not the victim you make me out to be."
"What would have happened if you didn't?"
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
"If you didn't volunteer. If you didn't go with those men."
"It wasn't always men. Sometimes, once or twice, it was a woman."
"What happened?" She couldn't let him get away from her point. "What would have happened?"
"Shit." He pushed himself off the wall and released her wrists, slipping past her to pace the room. He ran his hands through his hair, making it stick out all directions. "You don't understand. I wasn't--"
"What would have happened if you didn't do what Fat Fred wanted? Is that when he burned you? Is that how you got eighteen fucking cigarette burns?"
Eli jerked his head around to stare at her. "No," he said finally. "The burns were--" He shrugged. "You never knew when he'd do that. It kept you scared, on your toes, afraid to cross him. And if you did cross him, didn't keep the dates he made or didn't bring in enough cash..."
He rubbed one hand slowly over his other arm, gone away inside himself again. Marilyn shivered, a graveyard chill stalking her veins as she watched him remember old pain. Finally he spoke. "Let's just say it would be a couple days before you could move again."
"And you think you weren't forced?" she whispered through the chokehold horror had on her throat. "When you knew if you didn't--?"
"I volunteered. I talked the other kids into giving me their dates."
"Why? Because you liked it?" She didn't believe that. Couldn't.
"No, I--" He fell silent again, still rubbing his arm. His left arm, not the one just out of the cast. "Some of the clients could get rough. I was used to it. So, I'd take those dates sometimes for the new kids, if they were too scared."
Tears streamed down her face, unstoppable. "My God, Eli, how can you possibly think--" She had to stop, wipe her eyes so she could see, clear her throat so she could talk. "Even then, you were a hero. You protected the others the only way you could. Where is the bad in that?"
"I..." He faltered, shaking his head. "...don't know. God, Marilyn--don't cry. Just don't--" His hands lifted, hovered, as if he wanted to offer comfort but didn't dare.
Even now, when he was the one in desperate need of comfort and healing, he was trying to help her.
Marilyn raised one hand, letting it hover near his. "How can you stand for anyone to touch you? How could you--?"
"It's different with you." Eli brought his hand closer, enough to feel his warmth. But he left it up to her to close the gap, lace her fingers through his, and hold on tight.
"It wasn't your fault, Eli." She had to try again to make him understand. "It wasn't something in you that made those things happen, it was something in them. You're not the bad guy."
He swallowed hard. He held her hand so tight, her skin went white under his fingers. "I want to believe you, but--"
"Do you blame Stevie for what happened to him? What about Pete? Is it his fault--?"
"No!" Eli's shout echoed through the living room. Marilyn glanced over her shoulder toward the stairs, hoping it hadn't disturbed the boys. "No," he whispered. "I could never think that. Not about Pete--or Steve."
"Then, why do you want to blame yourself?" She needed to make the first move. Otherwise, he might never believe that she held him blameless, that she truly saw him as a good person, worthy of everything she had to give. Marilyn laid her free hand along the hard-angled tension of his jaw.
Eli shuddered under her caress, his eyes staring into hers.
"What they did to you left scars," she said, moving a step closer. "But that's not the same thing as what is inside them. It's not evil, Eli. It's pain."
She slid her hand higher, caressing his face, daring to smile a little. "Believe me, lover, I know pain. I wish you'd let me help heal yours the way you helped heal mine."
He shifted his eyes, staring over her head, but he didn't pull back, didn't let go of her hand.
"Please?" she whispered. And she kissed him.
A simple touch of her lips to his, soft, damp from her tears. Her eyes drifted shut and she kissed him again, pleading silently with the parting of her lips, the brief touch of her tongue, for him to participate. His free hand came to rest on her hip. She took it as a signal to kiss him a third time.
Again, her tongue slipped out to touch his lower lip, ask for entry. This time he granted it, returning her kiss with one so sweet it made her throat go tight and happy tears gather.
Marilyn drank him in, stroking her tongue along his in an intimate caress, giving before he could ask. She melted against him. The instant she did, his hand lying soft on her hip vanished as his arm whipped tight around her. She rocked into him, needing to feel his erection, to know he could want her. He thrust back hard, his desire all too obvious. She carried the hand she still held to her breast, molded it there, and Eli moaned her name.
He broke away from her mouth to kiss his way down her neck. Marilyn shoved her hands under his T-shirt and stroked the naked skin of his back, lifting her chin to give him the access he wanted. Seconds later, her top and bra were gone, and Eli's shirt followed. He r
ubbed his bare chest against hers, his hands squeezing her bottom as he pulled her in hard.
"Oh, God, Marilyn--" He whispered her name over and over as he dropped kisses over her entire face.
She didn't know how to answer or whether to answer. So she unsnapped his jeans instead. She slid her hand inside to form it to his hot, rigid shape.
Eli swore a strangled oath and attacked her jeans, stripping them away with an expertise she'd come to know and love. She took the opportunity to shove his pants down, but was too impatient to get them all the way off before she dropped onto the couch, pulling him down over her.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and lunged upward, taking him inside. He slid deep with one smooth thrust, then froze. "Marilyn?"
Her legs tightened, holding him in place. "I want you," she whispered. "Nothing between us. Just you and me. But only if you want it too."
"Are you sure? What if--?"
"You're not sick. Anything else we can handle." She caught his head in her hands. "I want this, Eli. I want you. All of you. Everything there is. Everything you can give me, with nothing held back. There's not any part of you I don't want. Do you understand? I want you. Now."
"Oh, God." He tucked his face into the hollow of her neck, forcing her to slide her hands down from his face, over his shoulders and across the sensitive places of his back.
Eli shuddered under her touch, letting her words soak into his brain. Nothing held back. Could she mean it? And yet, here he was, naked inside her, her legs pinning him down. All of you, she said. Everything. Did that mean she wanted the darkness too? Was she right, that it was pain, and not evil?
"Now, Eli." She growled, her arms and legs gripping him tighter.
What about love? Did she want that too?
He rocked his hips into her, nudging just that much deeper, and couldn't help smiling against her neck when she gasped. Her legs relaxed a fraction and he began to pull out slowly. Lights danced behind his eyelids at the delicious feel of only Marilyn wrapped around him.