When he raised his head, he was breathing hard. She tasted every bit as good as she felt. This fifteen year old girl had his heart pumping a mile a minute. And he wondered if he hadn’t been expecting this. Why else would he have spent so much time around a girl still in high school who was neck deep in more problems than he had ever encountered in his somewhat charmed life?
She stared up at him, eyes hazy and somewhat bewildered. He started to let her go, to move away. Then her tongue darted out, tracing the curve of her lower lip, eyes fluttering closed as though to hold on to the kiss a moment longer.
With a groan, he lowered his head again, shoving the matter of her age out of his mind.
Wade knew, if he was completely honest, he had fallen for her practically from the first. It had probably started when he had seen her huddled in an uncomfortable vinyl chair in the darkened hospital room, her eyes closed, her face sad.
But he kept it buried. For two years, he squashed it down inside him, until her seventeenth birthday, then he lost control of the needs she awoke within him.
Wade hadn’t meant for anything to happen even then, but he had downed one beer too many and Nikki had ended up driving him home from the restaurant.
She had all but carried a happily grinning drunk into the living room, laughing as he all but poured onto the couch. He had tumbled her down on top of him, easily, for she was more than eager.
Hot kisses, fast hands, and low whispers replaced the laughter and silliness. It had always been Wade to stop things before and he was drunk enough, needy enough to ignore the quiet voice of conscious.
Her plans to call Lori for a ride fell to pieces and she woke up in his bed the next morning.
And after that night, there was no going back, not for him.
Now…
“Daddy?”
He started, looking up into dark eyes so like his own. Abby. “Yeah, darling?” he asked, amazed his voice could sound so calm after spending heaven only knew how much time lost in memories.
“I’m hungry.” She flashed him an engaging grin and held up her stuffed cocker spaniel puppy and added, “Skip’s hungry, too.” So was Tigger, the real life cocker spaniel that sat at Abby’s heels, staring up at him with soulful brown eyes.
“So is Joe,” his older brother said, mounting the steps.
He nodded, ran his hand over the picture, feeling a familiar ache in his chest. And then, he tucked the picture back in the box. She was no longer a part of his life.
That was that.
Chapter Three
Morning found Nikki at a tiny hillside cemetery, the old-fashioned kind that had a little white chapel in front of it. A white picket fence surrounded the cemetery and a tiny stream ran through it.
It was one of the loveliest sites she had ever seen. Peaceful and quiet. That was why she had chosen this site.
Her entire world lay six feet below in a tiny coffin, clad in his Easter Sunday suit, his precious Mouse tucked under his arm.
JASON CHRISTIAN KLINE
BORN MAY 11, 1995 DIED SEPTEMBER 2, 1996
Beloved Son
‘I Am With You Always, Until The End of Time.’
Closing her eyes, Nikki’s mind drifted back to that time of brief consciousness in the ER when she had awakened after the accident.
“Jase…”
She didn’t know where that weak whisper had come from. Licking her lips, she tried to call out louder so he would hear her better. When he was playing, it damn near took an earthquake to get his attention. “Jason…” the second pathetic whisper was only minutely louder than the first.
She tried to open her eyes, but couldn’t. Reaching up, she encountered gauze. Searching fingers roamed her face. The gauze bandages covered the top half of her head. What in the hell…
“Ms. Kline? Are you awake?”
She turned her head in the direction of the voice. “Where am I? What’s happened?”
“I’m Dr. Lawrence, Ms. Kline. You’re in Wayne County Hospital. Do you know where that is?”
“Yes. It’s in Monticello. What am I doing here, Doctor?” she asked, telling herself not to worry. Jason was fine. He had to be. She reached up to shove the bandages off her head and another voice intruded.
“You need to leave those bandages be, now,” the soft cool female voice said. “You had some trauma to your face and we have to careful.”
“Who are you?”
“Leanne Winslow. I’m a nurse. How are you feeling?”
“I hurt. Will you please tell me what happened?” she asked, reaching out, encountering a soft gentle hand. Another hand rested comfortingly on her shoulder.
Above her head, she didn’t see the glances exchanged between nurse and doctor or how the doctor compressed his lips and nodded.
“Honey, you were in a car accident. Remember?” Leanne said. The bed dipped beneath added weight and the soft voice was closer.
“The storm…”
“A tornado passed through two neighboring counties. It was a pretty bad storm. You were in a car accident. Remember?”
The prodding made her try to remember. The sluggish black curtain that obscured her mind wouldn’t let her think too clearly. “Not much. My son?”
The hand on hers tightened. “I am so sorry,” the nurse said, her voice sounding odd. “Ms. Kline, your son is gone…”
She heard those last words and the black curtain suddenly cleared and she remembered. Jason’s tiny little body gone cold, his eyes sightless. Pain roared up through her, biting, slashing, and clawing until she wanted to scream with it.
She couldn’t, though. Her throat was tight. Whimpering noises came to her from far off as she drew her knees into her chest, shrugging off restraining hands.
He couldn’t be gone. He was all she had left…
Again, darkness clouded her mind and she remembered nothing else.
In a cool hospital room that hummed with machinery, the young woman lay on a hospital bed. She had been comatose for a week and five days, ever since awakening in the ER to hear her son was dead. During that time, she hadn’t so much as flickered an eyelid. The doctors were unsure whether or not she would snap out of it. They had found no physical reason for the coma, certain it had been caused by the trauma of losing her son.
They couldn’t say whether she would wake. It could happen any minute. It could happen never.
The room was dark and quiet, save for the steady beep of machinery in the corner
She gained awareness slowly. First of the sheets beneath and above her, then of the faint itchy feel of her skin. She shifted her hips and noticed another oddity, a tube strapped to her thigh. A catheter.
She swallowed, her mouth dry, her throat tight. Her nose, the area behind it felt strange. Slowly, she lifted a hand and with tentative fingers, she probed her nose. Another tube. They had put a feeding tube down her nose, inserted through her left nostril.
When her eyes opened, she squinted automatically, prepared to not be able to see clearly. Instead, she saw a gauzy white light. Bandages. Her searching fingers found the end of the bandage, peeled back the tape and unwound it Clarity. She could see everything clearly, from the clock on the wall, to the drab painting, to the room number on her open door. Outside her door, one nurse was bent diligently over paperwork while two others stood at a all desk, speaking quietly.
Nikki plucked the little rubber probes from her body, dropping each one over the rail before seeking out another. As the machine attached to those little probes began to beep steadily, she plucked the third one from her breast.
The nurses were rushing in as she reached up for the tape that secured the feeding tube. Before they could reach her, she had already pulled it out and dropped it on the sheet next to her. She barely blinked at the sharp pain it caused
A familiar voice stayed her hand as she was reaching beneath the sheets. “Easy, Ms. Kline. That won’t be quite so easy to remove,” one of the nurses said. This one was clad in baggy blue scrubs. A nametag
at her breast read Leanne Winslow.
Nikki recognized that name.
Her hand fell from her thigh, catheter forgotten as she leaned back. Reaching out, her hand was caught in a soft strong grip. She squeezed it, closed her eyes, and whispered, “My son’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I’m afraid so, Ms Kline.” Her soft pretty blue eyes were filled with distress and she sat on the bed next to Nikki for the second time.
Biting her lip, she turned her head away. “What about Shawn? My brother?” Her voice was calm, abnormally so.
“He’s fine. Just a concussion and some bruises. He went home the next day,” another nurse said softly, glad she hadn’t been the one to break the news.
“But Jason didn’t make it,” she whispered quietly. “He’s gone.”
This time, Nikki turned her face into the offered shoulder and started to cry silently.
She came back to awareness at the sound of gravel crunching several hundred feet away.
Just like that, he had been gone. One minute he had been playing happily with his plastic keys and Mouse, and now he was buried under six feet of cold earth, all alone.
Nikki had spent nearly two weeks in a coma. The very day she woke, she had walked out of the hospital, against medical advice. Her eyesight was suddenly perfectly normal, the intense pressure that had caused her nearsightedness relieved when glass had cut her retinas.
She had left the hospital in better shape than she had entered it.
Jason had left it in a body bag.
Thankfully, Nikki didn’t remember him being taken away. The time after the wreck was a blissful blank.
Now, she sat quietly in the cemetery by her son’s grave, reflecting on the things they would never do. Not exactly therapeutic thoughts, but Nikki wasn’t in the mood for therapy today. Her depression weighed down on her shoulders and she knew realistically, that this wasn’t normal; that she needed to be talking to somebody about this.
But even after three years, she wasn’t ready to let go of her grief. It seemed it was all she had left of him, and once she stopped grieving, he’d truly be gone from her.
A gentle breeze drifted past, ruffling her hair and bringing with it the scent of wildflowers. The scent of honeysuckle teased her senses and she remembered taking Jason for a walk on the hillside very close to where he rested.
It had been only two months before the accident They had had a picnic and he’d toddled after butterflies and come back with a fistful of honeysuckle, which he had shared with her before trying to eat it.
They had waded in the stream, the very same stream that ran through the cemetery. Jason had laughed in delight as tiny fish no bigger than her little finger had darted around their feet.
“You’re going to be old before your time if you keep this up, sis,” a voice said softly, jerking her out of her reverie.
She turned her head and squinted up at Shawn. “G’morning,” was all she said, not responding to his words.
“I saw your truck on my way to work,” he said, kneeling beside her. His left eyebrow was neatly bisected by a thin scar. That, and the scars he bore inside, were the only reminders of the accident.
There were scars inside, though. She sensed it, wished she could help him…but she couldn’t even help herself.
Jason had been like a little brother to Shawn, she knew. He’d adored the baby from the first and talked about how he’d teach him to wrestle, to go fish…all the cool boy stuff.
“Y’know, you’re going to be late for work,” she told him, turning back to study the headstone.
Shawn shrugged. “I doubt they’ll mind.” And even if they did, he didn’t care. How could work be that important when he looked at her and all but saw the dark cloud she had wrapped around herself? He settled on the grass next to her, uncertain of what to say to her. When he had been little, he had always run to her when he had been hurt. Nikki had always made the pain go away. And even when he had been nothing more than a street punk, causing trouble and raising hell, when he was in trouble, it had been her he had gone to. She had always fixed it, in some way.
It didn’t seem fair that after so many years of patching him up and kissing away his tears that he not be able to take away any of her pain.
“Jason is probably the sweetest angel in heaven, sis,” he said, looking at his feet as he spoke. He could feel himself turning red to the roots of his hair and he had no idea where those words had come from.
“I bet he is,” came her soft whisper.
And looking over, he saw the beginning of a smile on her face.
The words, wherever they had come from, had been the right ones.
* * *
Before Nikki got out of her truck, she donned a dark pair of sunglasses and forced her unruly hair into a stubby ponytail. She hadn’t really thought she would be recognized when she had decided to use her own name on her books. She really hadn’t thought that far ahead. She had only wanted them to sell.
When they had sold, it was right after she had just seen Wade for the last time and her grief had kept her somewhat distant from the kind suggestions and advice her newly gained editor had offered.
And if she lived in a larger town, she’d have more anonymity than she had in Monticello. But in the past few years, it had come to where she couldn’t go much anywhere without somebody hailing her down to talk about books
…my little girl wrote this…isn’t that something…
I got a book…can you help me…
And lately, total strangers who were just in town to fish were recognizing her. Nikki wasn’t ever going to let another picture be taken of her, and her website master had taken down the one they’d conned her into putting up. Now if she could just get it off the back of the books…
For a while, she hadn’t minded the attention, but as time passed, the more she craved solitude. People and questions were coming to grate on her nerves something bad. So she avoided the attention when she could, did her shopping in the nearest half way large town simply for the anonymity it gave her.
Today, though, she hadn’t the energy to drive the extra forty minutes trip, so she simply hoped for the best as she headed into Monticello’s lone supermarket. Halfway across the parking lot, she wished she had made the effort when the local Romeo accosted her.
David Ellis, son of the mayor, fancied himself a reporter. He mailed off resumes by the dozen on a weekly basis, hoping to get out of the ‘one horse hick town’ but until his big break came, he lowered himself to write for the local weekly paper, just to keep his skills up to par.
He stood just at six feet, not overly tall, but the way he hovered over her made Nikki feel claustrophobic. He had a decent enough body, Nikki would admit, if held at gunpoint. He kept it that way by working out religiously in the personal gym he had set up in his basement. All paid for by his doting papa. Thick carefully styled blond hair glinted under the sun. Even though the day was windy, not a strand of hair moved, held in place by mousse and gel.
His smile, which he practiced regularly at his home in the mirror, could be sly, kind, sympathetic or cold. The one thing it couldn’t be was real. His teeth, straight as a ruler, were blindingly white, and kept that way by regular trips to the cosmetic dentist in Louisville.
He fancied silk ties and shirts, linen suits in the summer, wool suits in the winter. He wore polished loafers for three months, and then tossed out. He worked out in designer sportswear and used only products bought at a salon for men in Lexington.
If other people thought half as much of David Ellis as David Ellis did, he would already have secured a lifelong spot on prime time TV.
All in all, he was fake as a cubic zirconia masquerading as a diamond. He had the depth of a rain puddle and as much substance as cotton candy.
And he irritated the hell out of Nikki, just simply by breathing the same air she did. His favorite thing to do, it seemed, was follow Nikki and pester her like mad.
Her regular refusals to his dinner invitations
, no doubt followed by bedroom sessions, had earned his enmity. So he had tried to repay her by spreading nasty little rumors, only to have his aquiline nose broken by a coldly furious Dylan Kline. Then one Shawn Kline had threatened him within an inch of his life.
So for about six months, she had peace. But lately, he seemed to have regained his courage and was once more dogging her every step.
“I was thinking of trying a new Thai restaurant in Louisville,” he was saying. “It’s a bit of a long drive, but we could get hotel rooms and maybe see a play.”
She shrugged off his hand, cold and dry, and refused.
“Now, I know that you must be missing some culture in your life,” David said, dogging her footsteps. “Living in this one horse town is hard on people like us.”
“Your idea of culture, Ellis, is using the Holiday Inn in Somerset instead of that pile of bricks on the highway that some people call a motel,” she said coolly, moving away a second time from his snake like hand. “And don’t consider us the same kind of ‘people,’ Ellis. I moved here remember? I stay here because I like it. You were born here and stay here simply because you can’t hack it anywhere else.”
Ignoring the glint in his eyes, she slung her cavernous bag over her shoulder and snagged a cart from the corral. Tipping her glasses down her nose, Nikki aimed a chilly stare at him. “I’m not interested, not now, not tomorrow, not in this life,” she informed him, probably for the fiftieth time. “Now, if you will excuse me. My brothers are expecting me at my dad’s soon. We’re having a cook out…of course, you can come to that if you…”
And Nikki made good her escape, smiling at the way he had paled.
Some twenty minutes later, she was still smiling. Insulting that jackass just seemed to do it for her. She tossed frozen orange juice concentrate into her basket before heading to the dairy aisle, humming absently under her breath. She added a carton of yogurt and some cream cheese to her cart then promptly ran into somebody else’s cart. “Damn it,” she muttered, but her voice was lost under the sound of baskets crashing together and groceries tumbling to the floor.
NO LONGER MINE Page 3