“Where are you? I need you here.”
“What’s wrong?” Colin’s brows knit tight.
“I don’t like being here alone.” Click.
With urgency in his grip, Colin guided me to the curb, his scan searching for a cab.
“Is Mother okay?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” His jaw knotted. “We should get back.”
What if Mother was manipulating him—us, to get us back to the townhouse. How wrong that would be, how twisted. How could Colin stand one more day of her behavior?
A very real fear rooted deep inside of me. I was falling for him.
I’d opened my heart and was leaving it open—hoping that by some miracle he’d see me as more than a job someday.
A cab finally pulled to the curb. Once inside, I stared at him, watching the way his leg jittered. His gaze aimed pensively out the window. After a few minutes, he looked over. The moment his eyes met mine, his leg went still.
At home, the front door echoed at our backs when Colin shut it and the bolt slid in place. We remained in the entry. Seconds flashed by.
“Mother?” I started up the stairs.
Colin headed toward the kitchen. “Fiona?”
A crashing of glass rang through the main floor. I took the stairs down. Colin jogged out from the hall and stopped, listened. Mother’s sobs seeped beneath the closed doors of Daddy’s office.
My pulse sped through my veins.
Reaching for a gun that wasn’t on him, a look of frustration flashed over Colin’s face. He muttered a curse and cautiously opened the doors, peering inside.
His eyes widened and he darted through the open doors. I crept closer, fear lancing my heart.
Mother stood at Daddy’s gun case, her arm mangled in one of the glass doors. Splattered blood, like red wine spewed from a broken bottle, drenched her. My heart plummeted to my feet.
“Get me a sheet,” Colin said. “Fast.”
I ran upstairs to the linen closet, grabbed a sheet and tore back down the stairs. Colin was finishing up a call to 911. I shoved the sheet at him and he ripped it into smaller scarves, tossing excess to the floor. He moved behind Mother, wrapped his arms around her and her howls scorched the air. “Careful,” he said.
He wrapped a tourniquet around her arm, just above the elbow.
Mother tried to rip her arm out of the glass’ jagged teeth.
“Keep still,” Colin commanded. “The EMTs will be here any second.”
Shaking, I stood with my hands covering my mouth. Every inch of her skin was the color of cement, dead and flat. Her eyes were glazed over. Head bobbling, her heavy-lidded gaze swooped from me to Colin. In the distance, the far off wail of emergency sirens spun in the outside air.
“I can’t feel my fingers,” Mother mumbled, her head falling forward.
“Easy now.” Colin held her perfectly still against his frame.
Mother moaned. “You’re hurting me.”
“I’m sorry,” Colin whispered. “But you’ve got to stay still.”
“You always hurt me,” she muttered. “You don’t care anymore.”
Colin’s eyes shifted to mine.
I rode in the ambulance with Mother. I remained pressed against the singular passenger seat, strapped in, watching two EMTs monitor Mother’s blood pressure. They replaced Colin’s makeshift tourniquet with a heavy duty one. Blood covered Mother like an abstract painting of gore. I stared at her with my insides scraped by the recurring question: why? My mind remained an empty cavern—no logical answer fit the raw, skewed edge of the puzzle.
Colin rode behind us in a police car. Had he called Daddy? I hadn’t thought about it until now. I dug out my cell phone. My hands shook so violently, I couldn’t read the words on my screen. I had messages but couldn’t decipher who they were from.
Mother moaned and whimpered. I bit my lip. Another round of why sprang through my head.
At the hospital, Mother was ushered inside and I was led with her to a curtained slot in the emergency room. Colin appeared seconds later, his face drawn with concern. His gaze latched briefly on Mother, surrounded by a team of doctors and nurses dressed in pale green and other pastel-colored scrubs. Then he looked at me. A sob rose up in my throat.
In two fast strides he was by my side and wrapped around me.
The gentle stroke of his hand against my head sent comfort oozing into every fearful place inside me.
“Daddy?” I asked.
I felt him nod. “I called him.”
Relieved, I closed my eyes. Voices blurred around me. I wasn’t sure if I lost consciousness temporarily or what, but the next thing I knew, the powerful timbre of Daddy’s commanding voice rolled into the area.
Colin’s arms fell away, leaving the cool air to chase my skin.
Daddy’s presence filled the curtained area with absolute authority.
His eyes were glued to Mother, but he conversed with the doctor.
Finally, my own head sharpened enough that I was able to hear Daddy’s exchanges with the doctor.
“That’s good news, then.” Daddy’s tone was artificial, prematurely upbeat.
“I’ll speak with you after surgery.” With that, the surgeon left.
Daddy’s controlled demeanor shifted like a black curtain, closing the stage after a performance. His blue eyes remained on Mother in an unblinking stare that sent a strange shiver down my spine. Did he still love Mother—at all?
Mother was now hooked up to an IV and unconscious. Nurses scuttled around her, preparing to wheel her away.
Dad’s stony gaze followed Mother until she was out of sight, and then he slid a look at Colin. A few nurses still lingered in earshot, so he stepped closer, hands fisted. “What the hell happened?”
“I found her in your office. She’d put her fist through the glass of your gun cabinet.”
Dad’s composure remained even, so controlled, the only visible difference was that his chest rose and fell with more exigency beneath his casual shirt, sweater, and jacket. He ticked his head to the right, indicating to Colin he wanted to speak with him away from me, which hurt my feelings. She was my mother, after all.
Colin followed Dad a dozen steps to a private corner of the curtained area, and I trailed them until Dad caught me behind him and turned.
“Princess, I need to speak with Colin alone.” He placed his hands on my shoulders and I shrugged them off.
“She’s my mother. I was there, Dad.”
White shock blanched his skin. At first, I didn’t register his reaction as anything significant, but later I would realize that my calling him Dad had measured a momentous change in the way I saw our relationship.
He seemed cornered by the reality of my statement and directed his now steely gaze at Colin. “What provoked the incident?”
he demanded.
“I think it’s obvious,” I said.
A gleam of warning shone in his eyes. “Ashlyn, I can see this unfortunate incident has upset you. You should rest in the waiting room.”
Anger sizzled beneath the surface of my skin. Out the corner of my eye, I noticed a couple of nurses glancing over. Dad’s practiced demeanor tightened. He stepped closer to me.
“I’m not tired,” I snapped. “Mother wants your attention. That’s why she—”
“Enough.” He took my elbow in his strong grip and turned me so that my voice and my face were off limits to anyone nearby.
I tried to break free, but his fingers dug into my arm. Colin moved closer, standing next to me, his hard gaze fixing on Dad’s, his hands up ready to restrain Daddy. “Charles.”
Dad released my arm. “I will not discuss this here,” Dad finally whispered. “Take Ashlyn home.”
“I want to know what’s going on with Mother,” I protested.
“She’s going to be fine, but the doctors have to repair the damage,” he said.
As if the damage could be ‘fixed’ with one surgery. “I want to stay until I know she’s okay.”
“That’s not an option.”
“Why?” I hissed. “It’s too late for this to be anonymous.”
“Take Ashlyn back to the townhouse,” he said to Colin. Then he turned and crossed out of the ER.
“Did he really just leave?” I muttered, disbelief rode the rising tone of my voice. Colin turned me to face him. “He left. Left!” I nearly shouted.
Colin’s hands cupped my shoulders in tight assurance. “Let him deal with this, Ashlyn. He’s in shock.”
“He’s a lawyer. He’s never in shock.” I paced. “Always in control.
He’s afraid this will get out, that his friends will find out his wife did something desperate just for his attention. That’s what he’s afraid of.”
Or maybe it was all an act.
Colin leaned down so he was at my eye level. His warm palms framed my cheeks. “Maybe that’s true, but she’s his wife first, your mother second.”
He was right. Still, how could Dad ask me to leave?
Colin and I took a cab back to the townhouse. Neither of us spoke. He’d seen so much of our family now, each layer peeled back exposed an uglier, more rotted heart of the fruit. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back.
When the cab stopped, I opened my eyes. Colin watched me from across the seat.
Inside, I shivered at the tomb-like silence within the townhouse.
Gavin wasn’t here. Colin and I were alone. He stood next to me—and I became acutely aware of his humanness against the cold marble on the floor, up the stairs, all around us—Mother’s décor pristine and frozen as a museum.
Mother. I would not have guessed she would resort to such a desperate act.
The cold look in Dad’s eye assaulted my sense of family decency. Who was that man? Questions clogged my head in a black, indecipherable muck. My shoulders buckled under a sob. I covered my face and wept into the protection my hands provided. Colin’s strong embrace encircled me instantly and then I was against his chest, his utterance of hush softly whispering over my hair.
What was happening to my family? How had things gotten so distant? So fragile?
My hands fisted around his back, clinging to his shirt. I wept until my head ached. My eyes numbed. My body weakened. Slumping further against him, I felt his strength hold me upright until the next thing I knew, I was cradled in his arms.
I pressed tears into the crook of his neck, infused with the smell of his skin, the gentle sway of his body as he carried me so carefully, the movement coaxing the mourning from my soul.
He didn’t walk very far, and I figured we were in the living room.
He laid me on the couch and sat next to me, one arm poised on the back of the furniture, while the other continued to stroke my hair.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “I don’t mean to be so out of control.”
“It’s okay.”
I wiped the tears away. The weakness tiring my body after the emotional purge created a torn opening in my soul I couldn’t close.
I was vulnerable, unable to hide truth. “Mother and her… problems.
Dad and his issues. Why would you stay?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
A dense silence fell. Cocooned. I wanted him to hold me. Hurt vanished in the feel of him. I wanted that addicting anesthetic. His expression shifted from soft kindness to something unidentifiable to my inexperienced heart, but not unnatural. In fact, curious invitation spread through my soul in beckoning fingers.
My heart patted against my ribs. I inched toward Colin. He seemed unable to move. I intended to simply wrap my arms around him, but my mouth was drawn to his. The tips of my mouth fluttered against his. My eyes closed. His fingers poised at my cheek, gripped my chin and jaw, and he stopped my advance.
I opened my eyes. His were unmoving. Black. His heart pounded against mine. He licked his lips. “Ash…”
“Please.”
He closed his eyes, as if in pain, and shook his head.
“Why?”
He swallowed, and his eyes looked into mine as if what I asked of him was too much to bear. “Your mother’s in the hospital. You’re in shock.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t kiss me.”
“I work for your father,” came his hoarse reply. His countenance was taut as a paper kite in a hurricane.
His fingers traced my cheek, and his gaze followed their path, lingering on my mouth, so close to his I breathed in his breath.
He placed his hand on the side of my brow and pressed my head against his chest, his arms wrapping around me.
My dreams scattered through reality and fantasy: Blood.
Dad’s cold eyes.
Shattering glass.
Colin pressing me against my bedroom door, kissing me.
I woke on the living room couch. Colin sat near the room entrance in one of Mother’s Louis XV brocade chairs. Elbows on his knees, fingers clasped at his pensive mouth, dark eyes on me. At first I thought I was dreaming.
I glanced around, sat upright. “Is Dad home yet?” My voice grated from rough sleep.
“Not yet. He called, said the surgery went well.”
Relief poured over my nerves like water over parched grass. “Oh.
Good. Did he say anything else?”
Colin blinked heavily, and sat back, for the first time I noticed dark slashes of exhaustion beneath his eyes. “No.”
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, but it was dead, so I slid it back. “What time is it?”
“Six a.m.”
“Did you sleep at all?”
Had he spent the night watching over me? I brought my legs up to my chest—he’d taken off my shoes—they were next to the couch, and my stocking feet sunk into the softness of the cushion.
“No,” he said. He rubbed his face.
“You should have slept,” I protested.
“I couldn’t.” He leveled me with a look that ended the conversation. I touched my cheeks, felt the heat rush to my cheeks.
I stood, stretched, and when my gaze swung back to his, his eyes hadn’t left me. “I’m going to get some breakfast.” I crossed to him, his shadowed gaze tracking me like a hawk. “Want some?”
He nodded.
I left the living room with his gaze tickling my back. Would he follow me? I was too embarrassed to check over my shoulder. I didn’t need to, his presence now familiar to me and close as my shadow.
“Gavin will freak,” I said upon entering the kitchen. “He and Mother are like Regis and Kelly.”
“Charles asked me to call him last night. He was pretty flustered.
How long has he worked for you?”
“Since we moved here.” I opened the refrigerator. Every stainless steel surface shined. Items were lined up, stacked and organized in alphabetical perfection. I brought out milk.
“You cook?” Colin pulled out a bar stool and plopped onto it, obvious weariness spreading through his limbs.
“I do cereal.” I smiled. Inexpressible relief resided in my system that Mother’s arm was going to heal. “Mine or yours?” I brought out two boxes: Kashi and Capn’ Crunch. I bit my lower lip, thinking about Mother making sure he had his favorite items stocked in our pantry.
He yawned. “No question. The Capn’ gets it hands down.”
I grabbed two bowls, soy milk and dairy milk, and set everything on the counter. All the while Colin’s attention never left me.
Pleasure scrambled beneath my skin. Why was he so intently following my every move?
“Did I tell you I caught Charles eating a bowl of Capn’ the other day?” he grinned.
“Seriously?” It had been years since I’d seen Dad eat anything but something healthy before walking out the door in the morning.
Colin nodded. “He swore me to secrecy.”
I smiled. “Who knew? Dad and junk food. I guess it’s not all that surprising, considering how he loves his Cuban cigars.” I asked. Being domestic for Colin felt amazingly good. I had a ridiculous f
antasy of myself, donned in a flirty apron, making him meals—as his wife.
“So.” I dismissed the image from my head. “The Brennens eat everything? That’s cool. It’s hard living with picky parents.”
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