It’s almost funny, watching as I check in with him on the final day of work, only for him to hem and haw over something else that has to be done. I kind of want to stop him, tell him I’ll still be around, still want to see him, even if he isn’t paying me to work on his mansion. Kind of. That would require a whole other conversation, though … one I think we’re both avoiding.
Because if I’m done working on his home, that means we have to actually say aloud that we want to be with each other even when it’s not convenient. That I’d have to come over as his, what? Girlfriend? That label sounds silly for what we’re doing, but by finishing up my time on the projects, we’d have to have a conversation about what it is that we’re doing.
There is a nail in my mouth, a hammer positioned against a floating shelf I previously built and stained, when I hear the front door open.
“Brennan? I’m back from practice. Brought smoothies. The peanut butter strawberry one you like.” Parker’s voice echoes through the hall.
I crack the hammer against the nail, securing the shelf into place.
“Wow, that looks great,” he says to my back as I make sure the heavy wooden piece is solidly attached to the beam in the wall.
I’m about to turn and thank him for the compliment, while accepting my smoothie, but I stop when I catch the faintest glimpse of Parker.
He’s in his practice uniform, comprised of gray baseball pants and a tight black athletic T-shirt. It’s made of that material that wicks away sweat, but also clings gloriously to the kind of muscles an elite athlete sports, so I’m thanking whoever invented it at this moment. Parker’s cheeks are flushed, probably from all the drills, running, and strength training he did today. That cropped dark brown hair is wet from his exertion, and holy hell he just looks like some sort of extra from the movie 300 and it’s turning me on.
“Do I get some fries with that shake?” I put on my obvious flirt voice.
“Well, it’s a smoothie, but I don’t see why not.” Parker waggles his eyebrows at me.
He just looks fucking edible, and I’m putty in his hands when he looks at me this way. It’s probably why we always end up falling into bed whenever I decide to have a conversation about where things are going with us.
Parker sets down the smoothies, bracing for me to run and jump onto him as is our signature foreplay pose, when my phone rings.
“Dammit.” I sigh, checking the display. “I don’t have this number saved, but it could be a job. Give me a minute.”
He nods, pouting out a lip but taking his smoothie and walking off.
When I pick up, the voice on the other end starts speaking automatically. It’s one of those automated messages, and as it relays its news, dread sinks like a lead stone in my stomach.
“What’s wrong? Why is your face so white? Do you feel sick?” Parker is at my side in a second flat.
I don’t realize I’ve dropped my phone, the clattering sound bringing him running into the room, until he shakes me by the shoulders.
I try to breathe, my nostrils and throat not working in tandem like they’re designed to. I end up sputtering, coughing on my own lungs, as I try to grip the wall for support.
“Come here, sit down.” Parker leads me to the couch and I barely remember moving my body to sit. “Brennan, please, you’re scaring me.”
My eyes connect with those dark pools staring wide at me, and it snaps me out of the haze of terror.
“He’s up for parole. Jacob, my ex, he’s up for parole.” The words taste like poison in my mouth.
“What do you mean? He’s going to get out of prison?” Parker’s voice takes on a hard, vengeful edge.
Gulping, I nod, and I feel the tears sliding down my cheeks. “There is going to be a hearing, one I have to attend if I want to give a statement. I don’t know more than that. He can’t get out. He’ll kill me … he’ll kill me …”
Those words are the chant I hear over and over in my head as Parker pulls me to him, his entire body bristling with protective fierceness.
Jacob is going to get out, and he’s going to kill me. He’ll finish the job this time. That powerless feeling, the sinking crush of defeat that I lived under for so long … it creeps back in and begins to rot me from the inside out. In the three years he’s been away, I’ve found myself again. I’ve become stronger, can fend for myself. But soon, he’ll be out in the world, walking the streets, and there will be nowhere that I’m safe.
“I will never let him near you. You hear me? I will protect you. I will never leave your side. He wants you? He won’t get through me.”
Using two fingers under my chin, Parker tips my face up, his eyes the most serious I’ve ever seen them.
It’s almost enough to make me believe he can keep me safe. But the demons of my past taunt at me, leaving a trail of doubt that will blaze its way through my heart and mind.
13
Parker
“Okay, and then you have to make the cut with the saw, watch your fingers!”
She yelps, and I smirk at her before turning my attention back to the thick piece of wood I’m about to send through the spiraling table saw of death she has set up on my driveway.
Brennan is teaching me how to build an Adirondack chair, so that we can make a set and put them out back to drink whiskey in at night.
“Will you rush me to the hospital if I saw my thumb off?” I tease.
“Don’t even joke about that. Those hands are your moneymakers, and I’m only into you for the big paycheck. So you better be careful,” she taunts.
“I knew you were only here as a gold digger. Did I not tell you? I decided to play baseball for free next year.”
“Stop wasting time and cut the wood. These chairs aren’t going to build themselves. Or wait, I will build them. Really, you’re just here as eye candy.” She giggles.
I focus, not wanting to cut my hand off and end my dream career. The wood goes through, a butter smooth slice of it peeling off just where it should, and Brennan hits the switch to turn the saw off.
“Not bad, Mr. Avery.” Her hazel eyes twinkle with sarcasm.
It’s not a lie to say my cock twitches every time she calls me that. Makes me think of the time when my friends first came for dinner—
“You’re thinking about sex, aren’t you?” she asks sassily.
“And if I am?” I reach down to rub myself, which may be crass but damn, I can’t help myself around her.
Something shifts in the air, I see it the moment her expression changes, and then the playful woman I like best is gone.
“Let’s get back to work.”
And just like that, the parole hearing has stolen our happy moment.
I’m trying to keep her mind off of it. It’s been a week since she was notified of the parole hearing, and she’s been a nervous wreck every other moment. Just when I think I’ve successfully brought her out of the funk, I’ll find her staring at an inanimate object, tears gathering in her eyes. She wakes in the middle of the night, screaming, and oftentimes, I find her in the kitchen at early hours of the morning, just sitting there with a cold cup of tea.
Brennan is retreating back into herself, becoming the woman, if I had to guess, that she was when she was with him. The fucking prick who stole her innocence, twisted the trusting side of her, and left her reduced to almost nothing but air when he was finished. The woman I met all those months ago is not the one I see now. And it scares the living shit out of me.
And not only for Brennan’s sake. With the way she’s acting, it brings me flashbacks of Summer. Her highs and lows, the way she’ll be laughing one minute and then swinging fists and hysterically crying the next. Brennan seems unpredictable these days, and when she’s not at my house, I’m not sure where she goes.
The other day we were supposed to meet at the rec center for our support group, because she needs the meetings now more than ever. She never showed. It took me five hours to get ahold of her, at which time she claimed she was at another job
site.
I feel like I might be losing her, or losing myself in trying to save her. I attempted that once before, with Summer, and look how that turned out.
Even though she’s terrified of the parole hearing, I can’t wait for it to come. In fact, it can’t come soon enough. With the notes Brennan has been making, the ones she thinks I don’t read scribbled in her design notebook, the evil bastard won’t be released. She has enough to convince the parole board that the motherfucker should stay locked up forever.
I just pray to God they listen.
14
Parker
A road game to DC pulls me away from Brennan for a few days.
But in a way, I’m glad for the reprieve. We’ve been hunkered down in my house, when neither of us has to go off to work, for the better part of two weeks. The worry and fear in the air are palpable, and I’m losing my mind trying to keep hers intact.
So the getaway, even if the team in our nation’s capital could possibly end our ten-game win streak, is a welcome one.
“Damn, it feels so strange to be back here,” I muse as Clint walks us through the new athletic facilities at Grover.
They’ve upgraded and rebuilt a few of the buildings since we played here, but the feelings of nostalgia don’t abide, nonetheless.
The smell of the artificial turf and the rubbery scent of the track. The same locker room we used to horse around in. The dorm I lived in my freshman year. The spot where Miles tried to jump a fence drunk and ended up with six stitches in his hip. The dining hall where I almost puked my breakfast up because of the tequila shots Owen insisted we do the night before.
Man, college was fucking fun. I never thought about it much, what with my sulking and perversion for loneliness, but we had some great times here.
“Tell me about it. Right there is where I told Minka I’d marry her for the first time.” Owen points out a spot close to the practice field bleachers.
“And me, I feel like I’ve never left. Oh, wait …” Clint chuckles.
He’s in his element here, and it’s nice to see. The guy had a rough go of it at first, being overweight and shy, but he’s come into his own.
“Glad you guys could make it down. Sometimes it does feel weird being here by myself, and it’s been years,” Clint tells us.
“Remember the time Parker convinced us to steal Coach’s golf cart, and we accidentally drove it into the pond by the chapel?” Owen cracks up, and I snort.
“That was Miles’ idea,” I lie.
“Yeah, sure, blame it on the guy who isn’t here to argue that.” Clint rolls his eyes.
“Man, we got into some shit, didn’t we? What did we have to do?” Owen asks.
“Coach made us run laps at five a.m. and then we had to do that community service house building.” Pushing through a door, Clint shakes his head.
“Shit, I forgot about that. It was actually kind of fun,” I muse.
“Yeah, community service is great. Notice you don’t do a lot of it. At least, I notice you don’t get involved with the projects a lot of the other guys do.” Owen eyes me, almost like a scolding dad.
We won’t get into my issues of how little the idea of values and morals played in my childhood.
“Everyone is always asking something of you in this league,” I huff out.
“That’s the point of charity. Of doing good work, of giving back.” Both Clint and Owen look disappointed.
I wag my finger at them. “I donate to plenty of charities.”
“Yeah, but no one has ever seen you doing good for others. All I’m sayin’. We’re having a toy drive when I get back to Philly. You should come along,” Owen suggests.
I’ve always been a solitary figure, not one for photo ops or flashy house builds in the press. I’ve donated to families in need, and abuse victim’s nonprofits.
“I’ve had some shit to deal with. Believe me.” I sigh.
“We do. We’ve always known that. You just never opened up to us.” When I meet Owen’s eyes, I can see just how much my friends have worried about me over time.
In college, I was an asshole ninety percent of the time. I was still buried in grief and had no idea how to cope with the lack of closure I’d gotten. I never opened up to anyone before I told Brennan, and maybe it’s time I do.
“When I was seventeen, my high school girlfriend committed suicide.” I look down at my hands, picking at the cuticle on my thumb.
“What?” Owen breathes, almost unbelievably.
“Oh, man … I’m so sorry.” Clint’s hand comes to rest on my shoulder.
“Yeah, well, I’m not. Some days. Some days I’m fucking drowning in grief. And the other days I’m glad she’s dead.”
You can hear the collective gasp of surprise from around the table. These guys only have the first half of the story. That’s the easy part to tell, in the grand scheme of things. It’s the next part that will change their image of me forever.
“Her name was Summer, and she used to attack me. Hit me with things, burn me, lash out at the randomest of times. I’m not sure if she was bipolar, or was never diagnosed with another mental illness, but there was something going on. Where I come from, most people don’t even know terms like schizophrenia, much less how to diagnose or treat it. They just thought she was crazy from time to time. I knew the truth, I took the abuse, and I never said anything. To this day, I can’t be sure if I ever would have left her. That’s what confuses me the most. She killed herself before I ever got the chance to find out.”
The guys are silent, both staring open-mouthed at me.
“I never wanted you guys to view me differently. I’m a man, getting beat on by a girl. I should have just walked away from the relationship, but I loved her. The good times were so good. I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t been through it would understand that. It was easier to put walls up, to act like a defensive asshole at all times, than to be vulnerable.”
Owen reaches out, patting my shoulder. “This doesn’t make me view you differently, or in a negative light. Quite the opposite. It makes me understand you far more than I ever have. I never could figure out why you were so angry. Dude, this only makes me realize the depth of your pain, and how far you’ve come that you’re telling us.”
“It takes a strong man to stay and try to love someone through their hardest times. You know what I went through with Kelsey. It’s nowhere near your situation, but you don’t ever have to feel ashamed of your part in your relationship,” Clint tells me.
I shrug, feeling like a child who has just owned up to the biggest secret to his parents.
“Does Brennan know?” Clint asks.
I nod. “We’ve both been through similar traumas. At first, I appreciated that about her. It was easier to open up, because she knows what it’s like. Now, though … let’s just say I’m glad I can get away for a few days.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to end it because she’s been through trauma like you? That sounds … backward,” Owen scolds.
“No, no, that’s not it at all. I … it’s not my place to tell you the whole story. But, Brennan has an ex who was sentenced to prison time because of how much he hurt her.”
“Fucking hell,” Clint mutters.
“Piece of shit,” Owen concurs.
“She found out about two weeks ago that he’s up for parole. If he gets out, I don’t know what it will do to her. How will I protect her? Christ, I can barely protect her now from herself. She’s caving in, collapsing onto the sarcastic, witty, sexy woman who walked into my house and refused to take my shit. She’s going to have to give a statement of why they should keep him locked up, and it’s destroying her.”
“Guys who hurt a woman in any way should be castrated and rot in jail for the rest of time.” Clint looks furious.
“I agree. Believe me, if I get could my hands around this bastard’s neck …”
I think about what he must have done when he had Brennan in that position.
“The on
ly thing you can do for now is reassure and comfort her. I have no idea what that kind of stress and pressure feels like, for either of you, but I know that when Minka is in a tough state, simply being there for her is the best thing I can do.” Owen gives me an earnest look.
“Yeah. I know.” I sigh. “Sorry to bring our visit down. What do you say we throw around a bit. For old time’s sake?”
Clint rubs his hands together. “Thought you’d never ask. Y’all may be in the major leagues, but I’m going to kick your asses in the fundamentals of a good game of catch.”
15
Brennan
My vision swims a bit, and I giggle on the tail end of a hiccup.
The lazy motion of my fingers is almost numb to the touch as I push my button-down over my shoulders.
“Aren’t you going to ravish me?” I try to sound seductive.
Parker sits on the couch in his basement movie theater. Yes, a basement movie theater. I don’t often think about his career, or how much money he makes, because I just know him as the quiet, sarcastic man who lives in a mansion cabin in the woods. I don’t see him on the world stage much, and what’s more, is that he never acts like someone who wants to be known for that.
But when we have movie nights, and get to lay out on the plush sofas in his sound-proofed, thousand-dollar projector boasting room … yeah, then I remember.
“Watch the movie,” he grumbles, shoving a handful of popcorn in his mouth.
I giggle as I attempt to play footsie with him, but my leg slips off the couch. “Whoops. I’m drunk. Take advantage of me.”
Those dark eyes find me in the dark. Not judging, just wary.
Yes, technically, I’m the only one drunk here. Parker didn’t object when I brought an entire bottle of whiskey, because it’s the only liquor he keeps stocked in the house, down to the basement, but he didn’t join me in having a drink either.
Over the Fence Box Set Page 65