by Sharon Sala
“Did you hear what I said?”
Shocked, she looked up, staring into a face that was becoming more and more familiar.
“I know I make you uncomfortable. I’m sorry. I wish whatever happened to you in your past hadn’t happened. I wish to God that your mother hadn’t taken you with her when she left. I wish a whole lot of things. But know this. I like you, Jade Cochrane. I think you’re beautiful, and strong, and I’m sorry as I can be that this is happening.”
Raphael clenched his jaw. It was just as he’d hoped. Luke Kelly was smitten by Jade, and while it was in Jade’s best interests, he was surprised by the jealousy he felt. From the first, Jade had been his friend, then his only love. The fact that she looked upon him as something between a brother and a best friend was beside the point. Even after they’d gotten away from Solomon and Jade’s battered body had healed—even when he’d watched her mature into the stunning woman she was today—he’d known that she would never be his.
“Okay, honey, Luke told me what I wanted to know. Now it’s your turn.”
“Anything…I’ll do anything,” she said.
“Talk to a shrink?”
If he’d slapped her, she wouldn’t have been any more surprised. She glanced at Luke, wishing he would disappear. Damn Raphael for starting all this in front of someone else.
“Why? They can’t change what happened to me,” she said.
“No, but they can help you learn how to deal with it.”
“I already deal with it.”
Raphael’s fingers curled into fists. “How? By cringing from the touch of every man still walking the face of the earth? By running away to a different city every time you feel threatened? When are you going to stop? Tell me that, baby. When?”
Jade’s vision blurred. She took a slow, shuddering breath and then covered her face with her hands.
“Stop, Rafie…don’t be mad at me anymore.”
Raphael groaned. “I’m not mad at you, baby. I’m worried. You won’t let anyone near you but me. You won’t let anyone help you but me. You refuse to admit there’s anything wrong, and yet we’ve been on the run for so damned long I’ve lost count. But we both know there’s a horrible flaw in that scenario, don’t we?”
She choked on a sob.
“Stop crying and answer me,” Raphael said.
“I’ll talk to the shrink,” she said.
Raphael turned to Luke. “You heard her say it. As her friend, it’s going to be up to you to make sure she keeps her promise.”
“If I have to drag her kicking and screaming,” Luke said.
Suddenly exhausted, Raphael sighed and then closed his eyes.
“Good. Now will you both go somewhere and make peace? I’m tired. I need to sleep.”
“What you need is a shave and a haircut,” Jade mumbled, and then pulled a handful of tissues from a box on the table and blew her nose soundly.
Raphael smiled gently. “What? Are you telling me that I’m starting to look like Jesus again?”
She blew again, then leaned back and let her gaze rest on his face. A few years back, when they’d been down on their luck more than usual, Raphael had let both his hair and beard grow rather than spend money on a package of disposable razors. An old man who’d been begging on a street corner in Oklahoma City had taken one look at him, thought it was the second coming of Christ and dropped to his knees.
They’d been startled by his behavior until the old man had reached up and touched the hem of Raphael’s shirt and asked to be healed from the wages of sin and drink. It had taken them a couple of minutes to decipher the man’s rambling words, but they’d finally figured out that he believed he was looking into the face of Jesus.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, and then tossed the tissues into the wastebasket and gave Raphael a quick kiss. “See you later.”
He grabbed her hand. “Where are you going?”
“Out, so you can rest.”
“That’s not the right answer,” Raphael said.
She wanted to be angry with him but couldn’t bring herself to argue anymore.
“I am going to play with my new friend?”
He grinned. “That’s what I thought you said.”
“So are you, Jade? Are you my new friend?” Luke asked.
Raphael held his breath as Jade turned around.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
He held out his hand. “I’ll take that as a yes. Want to go see if we have anything else in common beside wishing for a miracle for Raphael?”
“Yes,” she said, and then realized that she meant it. She patted Raphael’s leg. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t start the party without me.”
Raphael smiled and waved them away. But the moment the door closed behind them, he stifled a groan. God, but he hurt. Before, he’d been afraid to die. Now he was starting to think of it as an upcoming blessing. As he was struggling with the decision of whether to breathe or scream, the door opened again. Thinking it was Jade, he was ready to give her grief for coming back so soon; then he realized it was the nurse.
She smiled and held up the syringe of painkiller.
“Still holding out?”
The pain in his belly was ballooning. “I think maybe I could handle just a little. But don’t give me so much that it knocks me out.”
“Dr. Tessler changed the medication orders. He said to tell you that this one isn’t quite so strong.”
“Tell him I said thank you,” Raphael said.
He closed his eyes as the nurse began to put the medicine into his IV, anticipating the moment when it would begin to work its magic.
But there was another kind of magic working as Luke and Jade walked toward the elevator.
“How about some lunch?” he asked. “We survived the noodle soup the other day. I’m game for more.”
She shrugged and then nodded. “I don’t mind as long as it’s here in the cafeteria. I don’t want to get too far from Raphael.”
“Sure, no problem,” Luke said.
Once they reached the elevator, the silence between them lengthened again. Finally Luke realized that if anything was going to change between them for the better, it was going to be up to him.
“Jade, I’m not going to pretend this is easy for you, but you’ve got to understand that in the short time I’ve known you, I have come to feel great admiration for you.”
Jade didn’t bother to hide her shock. “Admiration? There is nothing in my life worth admiring.”
“I beg to differ with you,” he said. “Without having been told any details, I gather your childhood was terrible, and yet you not only survived it, you managed to escape.”
“Because of Raphael,” she said.
Luke wanted to brush a stray strand of hair from near her eye but restrained himself.
“Yes, honey,” he said gently. “Because of Raphael. But somehow you managed to stay away from what happens on the streets.”
Then the elevator car arrived. Everyone inside got out, leaving them alone as they started down. Luke Kelly didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, and Jade wasn’t sure she had the guts to tell him different. But if this new phase of her life was ever going to work, it would be because of the truth, not the secrets. She glanced up at Luke and caught him watching her.
“Back there…you told Raphael that you would be anything I needed you to be.”
Luke’s heart skipped a beat. “Yes, and I meant it.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But you don’t know everything about us…about what we did…what Solomon made us do.”
Suddenly Luke knew he was about to learn why she screamed in her sleep. The knot in his stomach grew harder.
The elevator stopped on the first floor. Two people got on and rode the rest of the way down with them, forcing Jade to delay what she viewed as a confession of sins. The longer she had to wait, the more difficult it became to regain her courage.
In the cafeteria, she went through the fo
od line, picking and choosing without appetite, knowing that the food was simply a means to survival. Then she chose a table in the back of the room in the hopes that she could finish what needed to be said without interruption.
As they sat, Luke’s phone began to ring. He glanced at the caller ID, then turned it off.
“I’ll call them back later,” he said.
Jade felt guilty. The man had a business to run, and here she was, taking up his time.
“It’s okay,” she said. “If you need to leave, please don’t let me stop you.”
“I don’t need to leave. If I did, I would tell you. Besides, doing what I want, when I want, is one of the perks of being the boss.”
“Oh.” She picked up her fork and shoved a green bean around on the plate, then remembered her napkin, laid down her fork and spread her napkin in her lap. “Sorry. I haven’t had all that many opportunities to practice my manners.”
Luke grinned wryly. “Jade…honey…in the grand scheme of things, how much do you think napkin etiquette matters?”
She paused, sighed. “I’m being defensive again, aren’t I?”
She stared down at her plate, absently watching the green bean juice spilling off the edge. Then she looked up. “Damn it, Luke, don’t you see?”
He frowned. “See what?”
“How flawed I am.”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that no one’s perfect?”
“Don’t be flip. I’m serious.”
“Then explain it to me,” Luke said.
Her voice shook. “It’s ugly. Sam will be ashamed of me. You will no longer want to be my friend.”
“No, Jade. That will never happen.”
“You don’t know.”
“Then tell me,” he said softly.
He laid his hand over hers, expecting resistance. To his surprise, there was none.
She glanced over her shoulder, making sure they were still alone. Then she took a deep breath.
“My mother died when I was six. I can barely remember her.”
“That’s tough. I can’t even imagine what that must be like.”
She looked down. Her fingers were trembling. She curled them into fists so that he might not see.
“You slept in the same room with Raphael and me.”
“Yes?”
“You heard me…you never talked about it…but you heard just the same, didn’t you?”
He didn’t know how to answer.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. But it’s part of what I’m trying to say. I don’t remember my mother or my father, but it’s what I do remember that has made me the way I am.”
“Look, if this is making you that uncomfortable, you don’t have to tell me,” Luke said.
She sighed, then looked at him, studying the solidity of his jaw and the steady gaze in his eyes.
“Unfortunately, I do.”
“Then I’m listening.”
“Right after my mother died, Solomon…the man who was the leader of the People of Joy…sold me to a man.”
Luke flinched. “Sold you how?”
“For the night.”
Shock hit Luke like a fist to the gut.
“Sold you. For the night.”
She nodded.
“For sex?”
She laughed, but it sounded more like a sob.
“Yes.”
Now it was Luke who looked away. The colors of a painting on the wall behind Jade ran together in a kaleidoscope of hues, but it wasn’t until he felt the moisture on his cheeks that he knew he was crying.
The emotion startled, then frightened, Jade. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly.
He looked up, his voice deep and angry.
“Don’t!”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t ever apologize again. Not for that. Never for that. God in heaven, Jade, you were a child. Someone was supposed to be taking care of you, not selling you to perverts.”
“Someone tried,” she said.
Luke knew instantly who she meant. “Raphael.”
“Yes, Raphael, but he was only three years older than me, so there wasn’t a lot he could do. Solomon did it to all the kids. It has to be how Raphael got sick…. We never did drugs. And once we’d gotten away from Solomon, we never…we couldn’t…” She shuddered. “It was easier to be hungry than to take money for sex.”
Luke was trying to focus, to ask the right questions so that she would feel safe enough to confide in him, but all he wanted to do was break something—preferably the sorry son-of-a-bitch’s neck who’d done this to them.
“How did you get away?” he asked.
“I’m not real sure. Raphael only talked about it once. After that, we never spoke of it again.”
“Again, if you’d rather not, it’s okay,” Luke said.
“No, you may as well hear it all. It was late in July, I think. At least, I remember how hot it was. The kids slept in rooms sort of like dormitories. I had a couple of bed partners…girls who were about my age or younger. The boys had a larger room down the hall. When Solomon woke me up and started dragging me down the hall to the purple room, I knew one of the uncles had come.”
“Uncles?”
“It’s what he called the men who paid him money to have sex with the kids.”
Luke watched the expression on her face disappear. There was an absence of emotion in her voice as she laid her hands in her lap and leaned back against the chair. He had a moment’s impression of someone taking a stance in front of a firing squad, and then she began to talk.
“I knew the man. He’d been there before. He always called me his pretty baby and made me call him Uncle Frank. But it had been a long time since I’d seen him…maybe six months. Solomon always marked the passing years with a group celebration, so I remember someone telling me it was my eighth year with the People, which meant I was probably around twelve. Anyway, my body was changing. I didn’t look like a little girl anymore, and when the uncle took off my clothes, he got angry. When I told him it wasn’t my fault, he slapped me and told me to shut up. So I did.”
Jade didn’t realize it, but she had started to rock back and forth, weaving the upper half of her body between the back of the chair and the front of the table. Luke had seen similar trancelike behavior in people who’d suffered emotional traumas.
Then she looked at Luke again, trying to see if she could tell what he was thinking by the look on his face. It didn’t work. Except for the tears on his cheeks, he was motionless.
“As I said, I shut up. But he couldn’t…uh, I no longer turned him on. He took his humiliation and anger out on me. I remember the pain from being cut, then I don’t remember anything much after that. Raphael said they heard me screaming all over the house. And at fifteen, Raphael was big for his age. He got to me first and nearly killed the man with his fists. Solomon came next. Told Raphael to get me out of the room. Raphael went him one better and got me out of the house. We stole one of the People’s vans, and we’ve been running ever since.”
Jade stopped, her body suddenly motionless, and looked at Luke, trying to judge his reaction.
“So, now that you know…do you still want to be my friend?”
The tremor in her voice only added to the poignancy of her question. Luke leaned forward, wanting to touch her to add strength to his answer. Instead, he extended his hand toward her, palm up.
“I told you before,” he said softly. “I will be what you need me to be.”
Jade stared at him for a long, silent moment, then looked down at his hand. It was broad across the palm, with a faint scar near his thumb. If he’d made a fist, it would have been large—very large. She should have been terrified to even touch him, and yet there was something within her that kept telling her it would be okay.
Finally she extended her fingers, feeling the warmth and the strength of him against her flesh, and when his fingers curled around her hand, she barely flinched. When she spoke, her voice was so low that Luke ha
d to lean forward to hear.
“What I need is someone I can trust.”
“Trust me.”
Finally she nodded, then asked, “Will you tell Sam?”
“Do you want me to?”
“I don’t know. Let me think about it, okay?”
“It’s your call,” Luke said. “But remember what I told you before. Your father is overjoyed to have found you. He doesn’t give a damn about anything else.”
She nodded. “If I ask you something, will you promise to tell me the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Now that you know…what do you think?”
“I think that if I ever get my hands on the son-of-a-bitch who calls himself Solomon, I will kill him.”
Oddly, the violence in his answer satisfied something within Jade that she hadn’t known was there. A yearning of her own, she’d stifled through the years, to enact some form of revenge. That Luke Kelly echoed the same feelings connected them in a way she hadn’t expected.
“Okay, then,” she said, and glanced at her plate. “The food is getting cold.”
She needed to change the subject. Luke was willing to go along. He looked at his own food, congealing in its separate servings, and picked up his fork.
“Looks okay to me,” he said, then forced a bite of his salad into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, then gave her a wink. “It’s not so bad—if you’re into warm lettuce and cold chicken.”
Jade made a face.
Impulsively Luke stuck his fork into the blob of whipped cream in the center of his pie and dobbed it on the end of her nose.
Jade was so stunned by what he’d done that for a moment she couldn’t think what to do. Then she took the napkin from her lap and wiped off the whipped cream before looking around to see if anyone noticed.
“Why did you do that?”
He grinned. “Just sharing my food with my friend.”
It was the smile that did it. If Jade could have put words to what she was feeling inside, she would have sworn that the old wall around her emotions had started to crack.
Twelve
Johnny Newton’s rental car was a gray four-door sedan. It blended well with the neighborhood as he cruised past the Cochrane estate and then turned up the driveway of the house across the street.