by Lauren Dane
Erin nodded. “But she sleeps in your house. That’s huge. She trusts you and she needs you. She needs you now more than ever.” Erin turned and dug out a piece of paper, sliding it across the counter. “She’s here. Go get her or I’ll hate you forever.”
He stood, draining the cup. “On it. Thank you, Erin.”
“Don’t be mad at her. She does the best she can.”
He shook his head. “I’m not mad at her.” He was frantic to get to her.
He rushed out, making a call to his assistant to get him on the next possible flight and a suite at the hotel Raven was staying at. One with a bedroom that had a lock on the door.
20
She’d finally been able to get permission to visit her mother the following day. It had been harder than she’d thought, getting that permission. One of her doctors wanted to meet with Raven first, so she’d do that first thing. They’d done a check on her as well.
Bonnie and Mike had offered to come back to be with her when she visited. They only lived an hour from the hospital and had invited her to stay awhile when she was ready.
She might do it.
She did decline their offer to be with her when she visited her mother. She needed to do it alone. She had enough baggage with Mike and Bonnie that she wanted all her energy to be on her mother first. Then she’d deal with them.
She picked up her phone and dialed Jonah before she talked herself out of it. He’d left several messages for her. At first she’d been too busy to reply, and then Mike had come in and turned everything on its ear. But Carrie had still been visiting and she’d be damned if she messed up the visit with all this stuff.
But she knew Carrie was due to go back that day. And God help her, she’d become used to him in her life. Needed him.
She got his voice mail this time though.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called you back. I hope you got Carrie to the airport and she’s back in Italy already. I’m away right now. I found out . . . I found out my mother is still alive. I know, right? I can’t . . . I don’t know much more than that right now. I’m in Oklahoma City now. They’re letting me see her tomorrow. I don’t know if I’ll have any more information after I see her. She’s mentally ill. After this, I’m heading to Happy Bend to confront my aunt about everything. About why they lied. I’ll call you when I can. Please don’t worry. I miss you.”
She hung up and watched television aimlessly for a while as she huddled under the covers. Finally, she headed into the shower to warm up.
She was drying her hair when she heard a knock on the door. She needed to eat, but she hadn’t called room service yet.
Pulling her robe on, she headed to the door and looked through the peephole.
Her heart stopped as she yanked the door open and Jonah came into the room, pulling her into a hug, kicking the door closed in his wake.
He smelled good. Familiar. Safe. He held her tight, reminding her she was all right. Everything was fine and she would make it through. He was there for her. Because he loved her.
“I don’t deserve you,” she said as she buried her nose in his neck.
“Says you. I think you deserve me just fine. Why didn’t you tell me, baby? You’ve been alone for two days dealing with this?”
“Not entirely alone. Erin and Brody know some of it. I flew here with Mike Thompson. Anyway, I didn’t want to bug you while Carrie was here. She’s your first priority and that’s how it should be. I left a message for you a few hours ago.”
“I know. I came straight from the airport. Come on. Let’s get you packed up. I have a bigger room for us on a higher floor. It’s got a separate bedroom with a lock on the door. I can sleep on the couch. But there’s no way we’re not being together tonight.”
She swallowed hard. “You don’t have to sleep on the couch. I want to try. I want you with me. I’ve missed you so much.”
“No pressure. We’ll take it slow and if you have a problem, we’ll do what we normally do.”
He helped as she tossed her clothes back into her suitcase. He’d expected her to argue about it, but she didn’t. She looked small and sad and it tore at him. She tossed all her toiletries in the bag as well, which he then took from her.
“Leave the robe on, we’re only going up a few floors.”
She nodded and allowed him to shuffle her out, holding his hand.
He nearly drowned in the emotion of seeing her need him so much. The way she’d held on so tight, his strong, independent Raven. Pride filled him that he made her feel better. Guilt that she’d not come to him, out of her need to protect him and his daughter.
It was he who didn’t deserve her. But he wasn’t giving her back so that was that. On their floor, he opened the door and ushered her in. The room wasn’t bad and he’d turned the heat on, knowing she tended to get cold. Outside it was sleeting. He’d white-knuckled it on the way from the airport, praying it would hold off until he’d arrived. Thankfully it started just as he’d made his way off the highway.
“Get some socks on.” He put her bags in the bedroom and her toiletries in the bathroom. When he came out he saw she’d snuggled up on the couch in the main room.
“How about some hot chocolate? Or tea? Have you been sleeping well? Stupid question.”
She took a deep breath and blurted out, “Do you want to know? The story, I mean?”
He sat with her. Saw the strain on her features. He wanted to know so very much, but he knew it was stressful for her to relive it too. “Yes. But first, have you eaten? You look pale and a little thin.”
“It’s only been two days.”
“Don’t get peevish with me, missy. It’s been four since we connected and two before that since I actually saw you. I’m agitated that you’ve been alone dealing with this as it is. Now, you look pale and if I know you, you’ve been running yourself ragged. Have you eaten?”
She smiled and it made him feel better. “I was getting ready to order food up when you came. You came.” She blinked away tears and he pulled her legs up into his lap.
“I did. I will always be here for you. Get that through your head right now.” He leaned to grab the room service menu and flip through it. She needed taking care of and he was going to do just that.
“Anything good?”
She nodded. “Get the pie. I had the lemon meringue last night.”
He grinned. “All right. What else?”
“I want the chicken and potatoes. They’re real, not that powdered stuff. A bowl of soup, whatever they have is fine. And pie.”
He called it all up, adding the French dip for himself with some extras and a few beers.
“They said about half an hour.”
“Erin said to me, when she dropped me at the airport, that secrets hurt. And that it was time I let go of the stuff that was hurting me. You’ve been patient, letting me tell you on my own terms. You can’t know what that means to me.”
“I love you. There’s nothing else I can do. It means so much that you’d share. I know it’s not easy.” He took her hand.
“It’s not pretty either.”
“It’s not on you. You understand that, right? The stuff that happened to you when you were growing up was not your fault. I don’t think that and I want you to stop it too.”
“I’m trying. So when I was ten or so, my mom came back to town and we made a go of it for a while. She had a job at the grocery store. We had a little one-bedroom apartment over the hardware store. It wasn’t fancy, but she was with me.
“And then she just wasn’t. She didn’t come home. Two days later she hadn’t come home and we were out of food and her boss came over and saw I was on my own and they called child services. Again. They put me in foster care, this time in the next town over, Harperville. A few months later my aunt, my mom’s sister, came to the school and told me my mother had overdosed and died. I didn’t know enough then to ask any real questions. I just knew for sure that I’d never have a home. My great-grandmother was too sick to take
me in and as I said, my other relatives wouldn’t. Later, when I was sixteen or so, I confronted her—my aunt, I mean. I wanted details. It had been a . . . rough time for me. She told me my mother had died after selling herself for a dirty bag of heroin. That they’d found her body in the gutter where she’d belonged.”
He sucked in a breath, trying hard not to let his rage show. She didn’t need that.
“So you know, I came out to L.A. that next year after I’d saved up every cent I could, believing my mother had abandoned me. Believing no one wanted me.” Emotion made her voice thick. He squeezed her hand tight. He wanted her.
“So two days ago one of my foster fathers came into the shop. He’d been looking for me—and I’ll tell you that story after we eat. Anyway, he and his wife had been looking for me. But first, they found my mother. Who wasn’t dead at all, but in a mental institution where she’d been for years.”
Her voice broke.
“I thought I’d cried it all out of my system. God knows I’ve probably gotten dehydrated from it since I found out. Anyway, she’s had a lifetime of trouble. They knew it, Jonah. My family knew she was alive and they told me she was dead and had abandoned me. I don’t understand why. Anyway, Mike and Bonnie visited her a few weeks ago. They had told her I was dead too. Back when I was fifteen. I can’t even tell you. She tried to kill herself then. And several times since. That’s why she’s here. She’s a self-harm risk and I guess the usual treatments don’t work on her. She asked them to find me and tell me she was alive and wanted to see me.”
He blew out a breath. “Wow. That’s some soap opera shit right there.”
“I know. I’ve been reeling. Everything I thought about my childhood, well, it’s not the same. None of it is what I thought and I don’t know how to process it. So I’ve been avoiding processing it. I feel like if I really face it I’m going to fall the fuck apart. What if I’m crazy too? Schizophrenia runs in families. I’ve got a family full of addicts and fuckups. What if it’s in me right now, just waiting?”
“Have you talked with a doctor about it?” He kept his voice calm, knowing she was scared.
“Not yet. I had to go through a background check to see her. I’m meeting with her doctor first, before they let me meet with her. But I don’t know that it’ll be the right time to ask about that. Or even if I’m ready to know yet.”
A knock sounded the arrival of the food, which was set up quickly. He pointed a finger at the table and she rolled her eyes, but got up and moved over, settling as she sipped the tea and began to eat.
“When I was fourteen I’d been placed, temporarily, in a far-removed family member’s home. It was through family court. They really only wanted me for the money and, well, apparently for other things. That’s where . . . well, the place I got the worst of the bad dreams from.”
“Where you were raped.”
She flinched but nodded. “A teacher at school noticed the big change in my behavior and called my case worker. They removed me the next day and put me in a halfway house.”
He knew enough about the system to know quite often halfway houses were the last resort placements for older kids who had been in the system long term and for kids with criminal and severe behavioral issues.
“And then the Thompsons came along. I was sent there and they gave me my own room. They had a daughter who was nearly two years older than I was. They were so good to me. Bonnie—that’s Mrs. Thompson—was a nurse. She had this way about her. They left me alone when I needed it. Let me lock my door when I went to bed. After eight months there, the longest placement I’d ever had, they asked me if I wanted to live with them permanently. I was going to have a family. My god. You have no idea what that felt like. I had a family. People who wanted me. So they started the process. My biological family were pretty much like yeah whatever, take her off our hands. But it’s a long process. My grades improved. I made friends. I had a cat named Ginger. For the first time in my entire life I was happy every single day.”
She ate for a while as dread tore at his insides.
“You don’t have to say anything else.”
“Yes, yes, I do. So Missy, that was their daughter, she was a cheerleader and had convinced them to let her go to cheerleading camp at a nearby private college. It was a summer program, the students slept in the dorms with their teammates. She had classes and stuff on tumbling and that cheerleadery jazz.
“And one day she didn’t come back from dinner. They ate in the residential dining halls but it wasn’t that far from their dorms or practice field.
“For two weeks they combed the area. They waited for a ransom call. They went on television begging for her safe return. They found her body. It was bad. She’d been tortured.” She had to stop, putting her fork down and mopping her face with her napkin. “What had been done to her, well, no one should have to have endured it. The Thompsons just sort of checked out. One day, a month after they found her, Mrs. Thompson picked me up from school, took me to the hospital’s social worker and said the state had to take me back. They weren’t going to adopt me. They weren’t going to keep me as a foster placement. She gave me all the money in her wallet, hugged me and walked away.”
He had to stand, the rage pulsing through him was nearly too much. He clenched and unclenched his fists.
“These people are scum, Raven. They had no right!”
“No, they didn’t. But they lost a child. I heard over the next year that their marriage had broken up and they’d lost their home and had moved away. I’d heard here and there that Mike had developed a problem with alcohol. That next placement was my last. I’d been saving up money since I got my first job at fifteen. I was going to buy a car with it. Such a normal thing and something else that I’d never have in Happy Bend or anywhere else in Arkansas. A few months later I packed up everything I owned, which filled one suitcase. I left my sketchbooks in my great-grandmother’s garage and she sent them to me a year later. I never looked back. Except for when I came back to her funeral. When my aunt told my mother I was dead, she used the story of Missy’s death. She didn’t just tell my mother I was dead, Jonah, she told her I’d been tortured, raped and murdered. I will not rest until that’s been dealt with.”
“Jesus, baby. I’m so sorry.”
She shrugged. “I’ve never told that story to anyone. It’s been like a sore in my belly for so long it’s been what I thought was normal. But Mike Thompson came to me at the shop. He apologized. He and Bonnie have been looking for me for ages. I have closure on that. I needed that. And I have it and it’s been important. He flew out here with me. They live just about an hour away. They invited me to stay with them. But I had to do it without them. But thank God I don’t have to do it without you. That is if you’re still, you know, if you still want to be with me after I told you all that stuff.”
He knelt in front of her chair and hugged her, his face buried in her chest. “I love you so fucking much it should be scary. I wanted to be with you before I knew this. I want to be with you now. I want to make this better for you and I can’t. I want to punch people and sue them and make them sorry they treated you so poorly.”
She hugged him back, her heart pounding against where he laid his head on her chest. “I’m a terrible person, but that makes me feel better. Jonah?”
He pulled back and looked up into her face. “Yes, baby?”
She smiled. “I love it when you use endearments. If you tell anyone, I’ll only deny it. I love you too. I don’t know that you’re getting as good a deal as I am. But there is it. I’m so weary. You make me less so.”
He grinned. “That’s a pretty damned good deal. I’ll take it.”
They talked for a while longer. He watched her while she ate, making sure she cleaned her plate. Though she was nauseated from the telling, she had been letting herself get run down and she needed the energy and calories. It also made her feel better that he was there to frown at her and tip his chin at the next bite to be taken.
“I
’m going to take a shower. Why don’t you get snuggled into bed?”
“Sadly, these showers are of the very small variety or I’d offer to get your back.”
“You’re here. I’m here. That’s what matters. I’ll let you get my back when we get home. I’ll join you for a snuggle when I’m done.”
She went into the bedroom adjoining the smaller common space and pulled the blankets back. Two weeks ago, while staying at his house, she’d stopped locking the door. The first night she’d been awake pretty much the whole time. Dreams intruded when she did get to sleep. But the next night she was there, she tried it again and that time she slept.
She hadn’t told him because she didn’t want to get his hopes up that she’d be able to transition into his room soon. And she was tired of it. Tired of the things that had sort of frozen her life into a ball of anxiety. She wanted to be with him and so she pushed herself bit by bit, and the last time she’d stayed at his house, right before Carrie had come, she’d slept with her door open a crack.
And she’d slept all night long.
So when he came out of the shower, she patted the mattress as she drank in the sight of him. So masculine, even in sleep pants and a T-shirt. He smiled and slid in with her, pulling her close.
“Thank you for coming. I know I said it before, but I want to say it again. It means so much to me.”
“I’m here for you. Carrie would have wanted me to come to you, you know. She likes you. She’d be heartbroken to imagine you were here alone all so I could have taken her out to dinner and a movie or whatever.”
“Family is important, Jonah. Carrie doesn’t need to know about this. All she ever needs to know about me is that I value your commitment to her and that I will always expect you to put her first. That’s your job. And memories are made from dinners and movies. That’s more important and you can’t say a damned thing that would make me disagree.”