Raven frowned. “But why would do that when they have free breakfast here?” She seemed genuinely stumped.
I sat up, clearing my throat, realized how much work I had ahead of me. It was like the grocery list in the kitchen. Raven had been writing the items she and Samantha needed on my list, like I’d told her too, but she always only wrote the very basic, bare minimum, nothing past the essentials, stuff. I wasn’t rich by any means, but I wasn’t living pay-check to pay-check here either. Raven didn’t need to be so damn thrifty all the time. Like the vending machine thing last night. She hadn’t stopped for dinner in the five hours she’d been driving—she’d only eaten vending machine crap with the few dollars I’d given her. I needed to step in. Hell, for Samantha’s health I needed to step in.
“Put that in the mini-fridge,” I demanded. “You can save it for a snack later.”
“What?” Raven looked confused. She didn’t listen and instead picked up a piece of bacon, about to take a big bite.
“The fridge, dammit, we’re going out.” I stood up as if I were about to walk on my foot, and glared at Raven.
“Don’t you dare walk on your foot!”
“Don’t you dare eat that bacon!”
Samantha giggled, and I realized how ridiculous we both sounded. I grabbed my crutches and crutched over to Raven and her giant plate. I spoke quietly and gently against her hair since that was as close as I could get to her body between the food and my crutches in the way. “I’m taking you and Samantha out for breakfast—my treat. And I don’t give a fuck about the free breakfast in the lobby. I already promised Samantha and it just occurred to me that I’ve never taken you out for a meal before. So don’t argue, just get ready. I’ll only be a minute in the bathroom.”
Not waiting on her to argue, I disappeared into the bathroom.
* * *
Breakfast with Raven was less eventful than expected. We ate. We talked. We acted surprisingly normal. Like a normal family, actually, but I didn’t dwell on that thought long. Afterward, not knowing what touristy things there were to do in Hartford, I googled it on my phone. “The Mark Twain House is the number one thing to do,” I told Raven.
I waited for her tell me how lame that sounded. I had a thing for old houses. I lived in one that I’d restored myself. Now that I knew this Mark Twain House existed—I was itching to go. But there was no chance in hell Raven would want to. I just knew this was something she would hate.
“Okay. Cool. Let’s go.”
“Really?”
She shrugged. “Why not? Unless your foot hurts.”
My foot was fine. I couldn’t believe she wanted to go. Then I remembered that Civil War battlefield she’d forced me to stop at on the drive from Pecan to Maine. At the time I’d thought she been purposely trying to fuck with me by making me go. Now I wondered if she didn’t have an affinity for history. She also seemed to like the library near my house too—a building dating back to the same time period as my own home.
So we went. It was a fascinating house. But mostly I was excited for something new I had in common with Raven. In the past when I’d dragged Sandra to stuff like this she’d bitch and complain, giving me the hardest time. I didn’t mean to compare Raven to my ex, but they were so night and day it was hard not to. It made me wonder why I’d ever even been with Sandra in the first place, why I’d ever tortured myself like that, and why I’d waited even a single day past eighteen before I got in my car and drove to Pecan.
Three days in Connecticut passed quickly. Then three more in New York crept by at a snail’s pace. I had more away games. Days on the road and days at random hotels—this was just the norm for a baseball player. Raven and Samantha went home instead of coming with me to my next set of games. When Raven told me she was ready to go back to Maine rather than New York, as much as I played it cool, a big part of me nearly demanded she come with. As crazy as it sounded...I just didn’t want to be separated from her.
On the seventh day, I had no games. I arrived back at my house at ten in the morning. “Raven,” I called out, coming in the door. I was eager to see her. I wanted to tell how I felt, how I was falling for her, how I couldn’t think about anything other than her lately, but there was no answer.
Only silence greeted me.
I dropped my stuff on the floor, sighing. It was a random Tuesday—where could she be?
Just then the phone in the kitchen rang. I never used the landline. I wasn’t even sure why I still had it. No one ever called on it. I nearly didn’t answer, but then last second I decided it might be Raven. She’d called me from it before in the past.
“Hello,” I answered.
“Oh thank God.” It was Raven. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. Is your cell phone even on?”
I pulled it from my pocket, looking down at a dead screen. I’d been sleeping on the bus ride home. I didn’t know it was dead. I didn’t know she was trying to reach me. “What’s wrong?” Something was wrong—I could hear the frantic desperation in her voice. “Is Samantha okay?”
“She fine. You need to get to the library right now. It’s your brother.”
“What?” I nearly dropped the phone. It had been a couple weeks since I’d heard from Nick. He’d been absent from my games lately. I hadn’t thought anything of it. He was a teenager, after all. But Nick had had issues in the past, and so immediately my mind went to the worst places. “What’s wrong?”
“Just get over here.”
I hung up the phone and raced out to my car.
CHAPTER 16:
RAVEN
It was my second day of work at the library. The first thing I learned was that this was not easy work. Not by a long shot. I kind of had this fairytale vision going into the job, thinking that I’d be sitting at the check-out counter all day, barely helping people, while reading a book, in this quiet and peaceful atmosphere.
Yeah right.
I was on my feet and constantly busy, checking out a stream of crazies. I mean, obviously, most of the people coming and going were relatively normal, but certainly not everyone. Some people had the strangest requests, wanted to chat my ear off, and others were grumpy and demanding. But it was honest work, and I kept telling myself that. Plus anytime I got disheartened all I had to do was look up. The building was magnificent, the architecture amazing, and the dome in the middle of it all something out of a fantasy.
The children’s section was on the second floor, where Samantha had been spending her time, but above that was the glorious unknown. A spiral staircase went beyond the second floor, and from the very first time I set foot in this library I just wanted to know what was up there.
Today I found out.
All had been going well—well enough—until I noticed Mickey’s little brother Nick. He came in alone, and I tried to get his attention as he passed the counter. He didn’t see me or perhaps he purposely pretended he didn’t see me. That was the extent of our interaction. I’d thought little of him being here until I went up to the second floor to check on Samantha and noticed him sneaking up those spiral stairs.
They were off limits—a rope and sign clearly said. Even employees like me weren’t allowed. He ignored the sign, ducking under the rope, and went up. So naturally, I followed.
“Keep reading your book,” I told Samantha. “There’s something I need to check out.”
I left her. Perfect excuse to check out those mysterious stairs myself, right? Besides, it was my job to stop this trespasser. It didn’t matter that I knew the trespasser—he was still a trespasser.
At the top of the spiral staircase, I discovered what seemed to be the last floor. It was a skinny hallway that hugged the interior of the dome, making one big ring. On my right there were archways that overlooked the rest of the library below. On my left—shelves of books built right into the curve of the wall. The shelves contained much older books, books that looked as if they hadn’t been touched in years. Spaced every couple feet between the bookshelves there were gla
ss windows. I could tell they weren’t modern either by the wavy, warped appearance of the glass.
It was so beautiful up here. After going to the Mark Twain House with Mickey, I knew he would appreciate this, too. And I was stuck admiring the building when my attention snapped to Nick. I spotted him on the opposite side of the ring, prying open one of the windows. Okay…maybe not prying. The window seemed to open with relative ease, swinging open more like a door, and he stepped outside onto the doom.
“Ahhhh!” I screamed, racing around the circle.
If it were any regular person off the street, I’d just assume they were going out onto the doom roof for a picture or a view of the city. With Nick—fuck, I thought the worst. The kid was super depressing, always moping, and always wearing that stupid knit hat as if he needed to hide away from the world. Not to mention the freaky nightmare he’d been having in the motel room on my first night with Mickey. Something wasn’t normal about that. Something wasn’t quite normal about him. So naturally, I thought the kid was going up there to jump. And, dammit, now I had to go save him.
Reaching the open window, wind from the outside slapping my face, I too stepped outside. Big mistake. Highs were not my thing. Instantly the worst case of vertigo hit me. There was a ledge on the outside, fairly wide, but I couldn’t do this. I leaned up against the side of the building, too petrified to take even one step past the window. “Nick!” I screamed with all the voice, anger, and fear I had inside me. “Get your ass back here! Now!”
Miraculously he heard me. He’d already walked several feet down the ledge. But at the sound of my frantic, lunatic voice, he stopped and looked back in my direction.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I swore at him.
“Raven?”
“Don’t jump, okay?” Dammit, I was going to be sick. Bile churned in my stomach. My heart raced. My skin buzzed with the electricity of a thousand eels. I started blurting out whatever words I could— “You have so much to live for. A family that loves you. A brother that would do anything for you. That’s more than I ever had growing up. You have no idea how lucky you are. Just walk back toward me—come back inside with me. Please, Nick—please!”
He rolled his eyes, as if I were annoying him. It occurred to me for the first time that maybe he wasn’t up here to jump. But, really, what the hell else would a person be doing on this roof? There was nothing but open air, cement, steel, glass, paint, and bird poop. The outside of the building wasn’t nearly as glamourous as the inside.
Sighing, he walked back toward me. Relief washed through me. He seemed completely at ease, in no way bothered by heights, coming up to me. He grabbed my hand—my very sweaty, shaky hand—and he led me back inside the building, as if I were the one needing rescuing instead of him.
When we were both safely inside again with our feet on solid ground, I flung my arms around Nick and hugged him. I wasn’t much of a hugger, but I kind of felt like he might need a hug. “You scared the shit out of me.” I breathed in relief. “What were you thinking?”
He said nothing in response.
After a second, before things could get anymore awkward than they already were, I dropped my hands away. “Seriously, Nick,” I said to him, repeating myself because he still wasn’t answering. “What was that about?”
His eyes, pale brown and not at all like Mickey’s, stared at me. For a moment I started to think that I was the idiot in this situation. That I’d misread things and stupidly followed him out onto that ledge, worrying for no reason at all. But then his jaw clenched and a single tear slipped from one of his eyes before he turned his face away from me. Even if he only let it show for a minuscule second, he still looked so haunted, broken, and miserable that I knew something was seriously wrong. “You okay?” I asked as gently as possible.
He surprised me by answering honestly. “Not today.”
That settled it—I was calling his brother first chance I got.
“Come on then. Let’s go back down to the children’s section. Samantha is down there by herself and could use some company. I’m going to call you brother.”
“Mick already worries too much about me. He can be intense sometimes.”
“That’s what big brothers are supposed to do. And Mickey’s a natural born worrier. It’s a good trait. He wouldn’t have protected me as good as he did when we were little had he not been such a worrier.” I kept anxiously talking about Mickey, since it was our only common ground, as I followed him back down the spiral staircase. Really, at this point I was just happy Nick was complying and actually talking to me.
“I wasn’t going to jump,” he said.
“Then why were you out there?”
“I can’t tell you.”
I groaned. I didn’t believe him about the ‘not jumping thing’—not after witnessing that one tear slip down his face. We found Samantha, and I left Nick with her. He’d always been pretty good with her, and I figured he wasn’t about to leave her to go try to jump again. So I hurried as fast as I could to go call Mickey. It took me several tries, calling both his cell phone and the landline, but eventually I got ahold of him.
I basically screamed at him for not answering his cell phone, then I probably scared the crap out of him by telling him to get to the library as fast as possible. I’d barely even hung up the phone, told the other girl working that I needed a few minutes to deal with something, and had just started back up the stairs to the children’s section when Mickey came racing up beside me.
“Where is Nick?” He breathed dramatically, clutching his chest like he’d just sprinted here from his house. “And what the hell happened to my car—again? Was it Nick then both times?”
What? “What the fuck?” I whispered, stopping in the middle of the steps. Mickey stopped, too. “Are you saying something happened to your car again?” I asked. Shit! I bit down hard on my bottom lip, super confused at the moment, and fearful of Mickey’s wrath for a second time.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
My jaw dropped. “Like another dent?”
“Yes. I barely had a chance to get a good look at it, as I ran past it, but there’s another dent.”
Motherfucker. He’d been letting me use his Corvette again. Now he’d probably never trust me again. “Are you thinking Nick dented it both times?”
“Oh…no. I just assumed when you told me to get here quick and then when I saw the dent that’s what this was all about. So it’s not about the dent?”
“No,” I answered slowly. “I don’t think so.”
“What’s it about?” He crossed his arms over his chest, staring up at me from where he stood two steps below me. God—I knew what Nick meant. He was intense when he was worked up and worrying.
“Short version.” I started talking quick, nodding at Mickey to follow me up the stairs. “Nick was out on the ledge of the roof. He says he wasn’t going to jump. I don’t know though. It was weird.”
“That is weird.”
We came into the children’s section. Mickey left me to go talk to Nick. I gestured to Samantha to come over with me so that we could give them some privacy. “Is something wrong?” Samantha asked as she walked up. “Did you get fired?”
“What? No.” God, I hoped I wouldn’t get fired over this and all the time I’d already taken to deal with it. “Nick’s just a little sad. He needed his brother.” I didn’t know what else to say. “Sometimes we all have rough days and need someone.”
“Oh. That happens to me sometimes, too,” she answered.
“Me too.”
I guess Samantha bought my bullshit of an explanation. Which was good because it was a situation I didn’t know how to explain.
After a few minutes, Mickey and Nick walked back over to us. “Everything okay?” I asked.
“Everything’s fine. Let’s go home,” Mickey answered. “We can talk more about the car too when we get home.”
Jeez, as fun as that sounded… “I can’t.”
Mickey’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
I guessed he hadn’t noticed. I pointed to my shirt and the nametag on it. An enormous amount of butterflies suddenly swarmed in my stomach. I hadn’t planned on telling Mickey about my new job—maybe not ever. I felt embarrassed about it somehow. I guess it boiled down to the fact that...Mickey had his life and his career so perfectly in order. I’d barely graduated high school. I barely survived paycheck to paycheck. I wasn’t even sure how’d I’d managed to even get this job. I’d like to have impressed him with some swanky job—like real-estate agent, clothing designer, restaurant owner, or fashion model. Hell, I don’t know. Something less ordinary.
Once again, the moment brought me back to that cold day in New York City. The only time in my life I’d ever been outside of Kansas. I’d been about seven months pregnant with Samantha, so very scared, so very desperate, and I’d found out through a local private detective—aka this nice guy named Frank who lived in the trailer park and called himself a private detective—that Mickey had enrolled for classes as a Freshman at NYU. I didn’t know what else to do. I had no money for a new baby, no boyfriend even, and late one night, I took my mom’s car. I drove the whole way to New York. It was snowing, a detail that will forever define that moment. And when I made it to the campus, I parked and walked across an open snowy field on a mission to find Mickey. But I turned around before I ever even came close to finding him. I turned around because I felt like I wasn’t good enough for him. He didn’t need some pregnant, unemployed, broke stranger intruding on his life.
I’d never felt so stupid in my whole life. Or hopeless.
Similar feelings washed over me now. For me—this was the best job I’d ever been able to get. For him—this was just some minimum paying job anyone with a high school degree could get.
“Oh,” Mickey answered, sounding surprised. “What time do you get off work?”
I swallowed. “One.”
“Want me to watch Samantha until then? I don’t have any games or any practices today.”
Crazy Sexy Notion Page 12