He released a sigh and settled into his heels, shoving his hands into his pockets. “I’m sorry. I went too fast. I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s not that.” Slowly she took another step away from him. “Levi…I can’t—” She pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment and then looked up at him.
Hands still firmly shoved into his pockets, he studied her with a world of pain reflected in his face.
Unable to handle the hurt for a moment longer, she looked down and took another small step back from him. “My Gran used to say, ‘Trust is like a window. Once it’s cracked, you never see or trust the person on the other side the same way again.’ Things are”—she waved a hand between them—“too far gone for us, Levi.” She pointed him toward the broken window. “Too many fissures to be repaired.”
With that she turned on her heel and left him standing there in the African night beneath one of the most beautiful skies she’d ever seen.
Havyn set down her paintbrush and wiped her hands on her already paint-splattered shirt with a sigh. She felt dead inside. She hadn’t slept well for the past several days, but this was their last day of work, and then she could get back home and try to return to a semblance of normality. Early tomorrow morning they would leave all this behind and head for the airport. She released another breath and looked up from the splotches on her hands.
Chelsea, who was sitting on a bench across the room doing her best to look like she was painting, was just about as mopey as Havyn, and that was saying a fair piece. Chelsea never moped. But something had happened between her and Cannon that Chelsea hadn’t told Havyn about yet. That also wasn’t like Chelsea, who normally blabbed her feelings quite freely.
Everyone else was working on finalizing projects outside while she and Chelsea finished up in here.
Havyn walked over and plopped down next to her on the bench. Chelsea almost had more paint on herself than on the wall. The creamy tan color blended in like highlights to her red hair.
Havyn slung an arm around her friend’s shoulders and leaned their heads together. “Want to tell me about it?”
Chelsea released a huff and set the paint roller back into her tray, wiping a smear from one finger onto her jeans. “I don’t know where to start. I knew he was too good to be true.”
“What happened?”
Chelsea shrugged. “Everything was going fine. He told me he was really attracted to me, like he hadn’t been with any other woman ever.”
Chelsea shifted on the bench, and Havyn leaned back to study her friend. Her face heated a bright red at the scrutiny, and Havyn leaned in again and squeezed her shoulders.
“And then because we knew our time was short, he brought up the future…and everything just fizzled.” Chelsea heaved a shuddery little sigh. “His job keeps him away from the States for months at a time, and I can’t leave Aunt Flo to run the coffeeshop all on her own. Heavens! The place would go out of business inside two weeks.”
Havyn murmured a sound of understanding and squeezed her friend again. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, well…if it was meant to be, it would have worked out. He said he might look me up the next time he’s in the States, but I’ll be surprised if I ever see him again.” Chelsea clenched her eyes and pressed the heels of her hands to them. Then, visibly giving herself a little shake, she blinked rapidly, turned, and pierced Havyn with a knowing look. “But enough about me. What’s going on between you and Levi? You’ve been just as down in the dumps as me the last couple days…”
Havyn clenched her eyes shut for a moment, still trying to deal with her traitorous emotions at thoughts of Levi Carter. “I just…I can’t, Chels.” She rubbed at a splotch of paint on one hand. “What if he decided he wanted to leave me again? Maybe after a few years of marriage and a couple kids?”
Chelsea bent her head until Havyn was forced to meet her gaze. “Levi is not like your father!”
“I know…”
“Do you? I don’t think you really do. You’ve told me yourself your father never helped around your house, always had a at least a case of beer cans scattered around his chair in your living room, and hardly ever even spoke to you, much less came to any of your Little League games! You know that’s not the type of father or man Levi is going to be. He loves the Lord, and besides”—Chelsea elbowed her with a sly grin—“he’s a hunk! A hot hunk! What’s not to love?”
Havyn couldn’t help a little chuckle at Chelsea’s injected humor. She turned and studied the patch of sunlit dirt she could see just out the propped-open door. “I know, it’s just…once a relationship has been shattered so completely…I don’t know if it can ever be fixed again.” She threw up a hand to stop Chelsea’s launch into deprecation. “And I’m not saying it’s all his fault. I carry my share of the blame.”
Chelsea stood, picked up her paint roller, and swiped it across a section of the wall that needed another coat. “This morning, these walls were nothing but ugly gray Sheetrock and plaster, Havyn Jessup, and now look at them. Pristine and creamy and inviting. Don’t you think, if we can take ugly walls and make them look appealing, that God could take a broken, messed-up, ugly relationship and repair it?”
Silence hung thick in the room. Havyn turned to study her friend. But Chelsea didn’t look over at Havyn, even though she had to be feeling Havyn’s sharp scrutiny.
Havyn rubbed at another blotch of paint on the back of her hand. Maybe she wasn’t giving God enough credit. Maybe she wasn’t giving Levi enough credit. With God’s help could they make a relationship work?
From what she could remember of her father, he certainly wasn’t anything like Levi Carter. Her father had hollered at her to come in from the yard on more than one occasion to fetch him a beer from the fridge that stood just a few feet away in the kitchen. That man wouldn’t have gone out of his way to come to Africa to build an orphan school, much less made sure he had a piece of candy for each child every day even if he did have to use a dangerous road to get it. Her father wouldn’t have taken time to play soccer with a group of kids, especially not during the hottest part of the day, because he hadn’t even made the choice to come sit in the shade of the bleachers at her softball games.
Chelsea pooched out her lips and angled Havyn a calculated look with a hint of mischief in her blue gaze.
Finally Havyn eased out a breath. “Okay, point taken…but if that’s the case, don’t you think that God could take a relationship where two people would need to spend some time apart for a while at the beginning and make it work?”
Chelsea sighed and plopped back down beside her. “Maybe. But it’s different with Cannon and me. We’ve only known each other for a couple days.”
Havyn hugged her again. “I’ll pray for you that you get it figured out in the next little bit. Don’t walk away without some resolution, or you will hate yourself and be second-guessing for the rest of your life.”
Chelsea’s hands trembled. “Okay.”
Havyn eyed the door again. She had a sudden urge to seek out Levi. A little bit of bubbly joy was gushing to life in her tummy and sloshing out through her arms and into her fingers and toes and making them jittery. What would he say? Would he tell her she’d rejected him for the last time? That she’d blown her last chance?
Just then Rayne stepped through the doorway and skirted the fan they had blowing circulation through the fume-enveloped room. “Uh…Havyn?”
Havyn lifted her brows. “Yeah?”
“Could I talk to you for a minute?” The blonde twisted her fingers together in front of her and nibbled on her lower lip.
A tug of consternation pulled at Havyn. What could she want? But all she said was “Sure.” She turned back to Chelsea and lowered her voice for her ears alone. “You hang in there, and I want a full report after you talk to him.”
Chelsea sighed, but nodded her acquiescence. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
Rayne stepped back out onto the hard-packed dirt in front of the doorway, obviously wanting
their conversation to be a little private.
Havyn stood and strode across the room and stepped around the fan in the doorway and started outside.
The gunshots took a moment to register.
Havyn had already taken several steps forward onto the hard-packed dirt as her mind catalogued the three gunmen entering the village square. They wore huge masks made with carved wooden faceplates with black holes for the eyes and mouth surrounded by a huge splay of feathers and yarn. Their bodies were encased in large, baggy costumes cinched at the waists with lengths of rope. Were it not for the long black guns glinting sunlight as they strode forward, Havyn might have mistaken them for some sort of African clowns.
With a feral yell, the men sprayed another round of bullets into the air.
Emitting a squeak of shock, Rayne dove for cover behind a wheelbarrow full of cement.
No sound came out of Havyn’s mouth as she launched herself after Rayne and cowered with her behind the totally inadequate shelter of the wheelbarrow. In the split second that she was in midair, she caught sight of several other members of the team diving for cover themselves.
What about Levi? Where had he been? Her teeth clenched together, and she pressed a hand to her belly in an attempt to still her trembling as she balanced on the balls of her feet. Beside her, Rayne wrapped her arms around her knees and pressed her forehead to her legs with a muffled whimper. Havyn laid a hand on her shoulder, but couldn’t deny that plenty of whimpers wanted to escape her as well. Still, they needed to be silent and try not to attract attention.
She peered around the end of the wheelbarrow. The three men stood together in the center of the village now, their backs pressed together and their mean-looking black guns pointed out before them.
One man, who had a red stripe painted across his wooden forehead, seemed to be the leader. He said something quietly over his shoulder to his companions, and then he started speaking loudly. “You foreigners think you need to come here to help us take care of our own people? You think we need your help?” His English was remarkably clear, though it was touched with a British accent. “And the way you look down on us as though we can’t do for ourselves? Well, we are here to make a statement to the rest of your countrymen. We don’t need your kind coming here! Africa for Africa. Americans not needed. Not welcome. Let the chief of this village show himself! We are here to bring about change. To put a stop to the degradation of our countrymen by you azungu!”
Beside her, Rayne trembled visibly, and Havyn noticed her lips moving, her eyes clamped shut in all earnestness.
The man continued to call out. “If you step forward now, perhaps we will let you live. It is our understanding that you azungu are scheduled to leave our country tomorrow morning. This is good. You will leave, but first you will watch us destroy what you have built here. We do not need schools. We do not need churches. The mosque at the next village is close enough to this one. All is well.”
He stopped talking, and all fell silent. Not even a yip from the constantly yapping village dogs penetrated the silence. The leader scanned the village, his eyes wide and white with hate. “Where is Chieftain Mbewe?!”
From her vantage point Havyn could see spittle catch the light of the sun as it shot from the hole in the mask where his mouth would be.
Still no one moved, and the silence stretched.
Havyn’s heart pounded. Would they hunt the chieftain down and kill him in front of them all? Simply because their group had come to help build a school?
“So you will not come out, eh, old man? Well, for today your cowardice has saved your life. Tomorrow remains to be seen. For now, let us show you what we think of your new school.”
All three men turned to the school and let loose with their machine guns. Above her and Rayne’s heads, glass shattered and tinkled down around them.
Havyn cowered under the cover of her curled arms.
Bullets thwaped into the bricks of the building, sending rock chips and lead ricocheting off in all directions. Havyn could hear particles pinging off the metal sides of the wheelbarrow she’d pressed her cheek to and felt a distinct puff of air as a ricocheting bullet whiffed past her arm and buried itself in the dust. She suddenly realized the wheelbarrow was tipped over on its side. She and Rayne must have done that at some point, though she couldn’t have said when.
Then silence descended, but her ears undulated with the echo of high-pitched ringing. How long she sat there she wasn’t sure, but she suddenly had only one thought racing through her mind. Chelsea had been in that school!
“Chelsea!” She stood and lurched for the door.
A zing of knife-sharp pain cut across her skull, her foot missed the threshold, and then all went black.
Levi and Cannon had lunged behind the toolshed when the shooting started, and now Levi watched the backs of the three men stroll jauntily over the hill and out of sight. One of them turned back and gave the school one last strafing of bullets.
Levi glanced at Cannon, who was also still hunkered down watching the men leave. “That some kind of cult group or something?” Their costumes gave him shivers.
Cannon never took his eyes off the hill the men had disappeared over. He pressed one fist to his mouth. “They are called Nyau. They are a gang-like group that only allows approved members to join and operates under total anonymity, sort of like the KKK was back in US history. Though if the truth be known, everyone in this village could probably tell you exactly who those men are. But they won’t, and the police won’t be able to do anything because of it.”
As if on cue, both men turned to look at the school they’d worked so hard to build over the last several weeks. All the windows were totally shattered, and shafts of sunlight slanted down from the tin roof where bullets had pierced.
Cannon groaned and scrubbed his hands through his hair, but Levi’s attention had been caught by something in the doorway. His heart dropped into the pit of his stomach, and he felt a wave of panic. “Is that—”
“Havyn!” Chelsea’s screech came from inside the schoolhouse before he saw her throw herself to her knees beside the limp form in the doorway.
And then he was running. No matter that the men might come back and shoot him. He sprinted across the village square and slid to a stop by Havyn’s side. No, no, no, NO. Dear God, please… A puddle of blood pooled around Havyn’s head, and she lay with one arm cocked under her at an unlikely angle.
She didn’t move or open her eyes.
Chelsea already had her fingers pressed to Havyn’s throat.
Levi clasped his trembling hands behind his head and kept his gaze on Chelsea’s face. “Is she…?”
A light of relief lit Chelsea’s expression. “She has a pulse! What do we do? Do we move her? She needs to get to a hospital, but what if she has neck injuries?”
Behind them in the village a shrill luluing cry arose from the women, and many of them began to throw dust over their heads.
It was as though someone else took over Levi’s body as he started barking orders at the people standing around. “Cannon, get the pickup! Grady and Jeremy, bring the long one-by-twelve that we didn’t use for the benches. Chelsea, I need you to focus. When they bring the board, we are going to roll her onto it as carefully as we can, then I need you to press this to the cut on her head.” He whipped his T-shirt off over his head. “And Rayne, you tie her to the board with my belt and Pastor Chad’s.”
Pastor stood nearby wringing his hands and praying.
Levi snapped his fingers to get the man’s attention as he snatched off his own belt and handed it to Rayne. It only took a moment for the older man to follow suit.
Levi’s whole body shook. And he worried they might hurt Havyn worse by moving her. But they had to get her to a hospital. They were as careful as possible. And by the time Cannon pulled the pickup, which thankfully had been parked nearby since they’d planned to put all their tools into it at the end of the day, as close as he could, they had Havyn ready for transport.
They slid the board into the back of the pickup, and Levi and Chelsea crawled in after it. Chelsea sat at Havyn’s head and held it as still as she could.
“How many miles to the nearest hospital?” Levi called to Cannon through the open windows at the back of the cab.
“Ten miles. Just in Dedza. But I bet they’ll want to transport her to Lilongwe!”
Cannon had eased into motion, but now that they had pulled onto the road, Levi was thankful to see the man picking up speed. The wind whipped about them.
Havyn moaned and opened her eyes, then tried to sit up, and a little panic registered on her face when she couldn’t move.
Levi leaned quickly into her line of vision. “Hey, beautiful.” Relief washed through him to see her looking at least somewhat coherent.
She frowned. “I feel…funny. What happened?”
He glanced up at Chelsea, who was biting her lip and holding back tears. “You got kissed by a bullet, I think. Do you remember anything?”
Her frown deepened. “The shooting. Worrying about Chels…” Her eyes widened rapidly, and he rushed to assure her that Chelsea was fine.
“She’s right here with you, see?”
Chelsea leaned forward until Havyn could see her. “I’m right here, hon. And just fine.”
Havyn sighed and relaxed. “Thank God.”
He smoothed his fingers over her brow. “Just relax and rest. We’ve got you, but we don’t want you to move in case there’s a spine injury. We’re on the way to the hospital.”
He could almost see the energy draining out of her.
“Levi?” She flexed her fingers, indicating she wanted his hand.
He wasted no time in complying. Her fingers felt cool against his palm and raised his concern up another couple notches.
“I’m glad you’re here with me.”
When he tried to speak he could barely get the words past his throat. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else, Blue.” Her eyes dropped closed, and another wave of panic clutched at him. They needed to keep her awake now. “Havyn, look at me. I need you to stay with me.” He jostled her hand gently.
My Blue Havyn (Hearts of Hollywood - Christian Romance Novellas) Page 9