Daniel laughed loudly. A look of pure joy passed over Kendalee at the sound. Her face brightened, the faint lines showing him that the smile reached her eyes. When she looked in Elliott’s direction, he realized two things. She was beautiful, and he liked making her happy. A lot.
“Thank you. I appreciate the sentiment, even if you almost fell afoul of your own rules.”
Elliott attempted to look appropriately contrite, even if he did flash a glance over to Daniel to wink at him.
She took a seat on the edge of Daniel’s bed. “Shannon told me you had a great session today.”
Daniel’s face turned dour. “It wasn’t that great, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Ah. This must be the normal Daniel. No wonder why Kendalee had looked happy earlier.
“Well, I am very proud of you for working hard,” she said.
“Wait, no. I want to hear about it,” Elliott said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Shannon said she was an occupational therapist. I don’t even know what that means. Would you tell me?”
Daniel turned his body away from his mom to face Elliott. It was hard to miss the hurt that crossed Kendalee’s face at the snub. The fire, the hospital, and the cause of Daniel’s pain were all red flags to his own issues. To the things that made him want to fall back on old habits to cope, things he had worked hard to manage. Yet despite all that, he felt a real need to help them both.
“It’s to ensure I don’t lose strength while my legs are like crispy fried chicken.”
In answers filled with attitude that Elliott could see straight through, Daniel continued to respond to his questions. Each answer brought Elliott closer and closer to his own triggers, ones he’d kept a handle on for nearly a decade, ones that became a constant dialogue in his head until they ignited into uncontrollable action. He tried to suppress the wave of anxiety that began to creep over him like an insidious ground weed. All gnarly roots and thorns. He tried to focus, to pay attention, while dealing with the urge to get the fuck out of there as quickly as he could.
Instead, he looked at Kendalee who was in turn studying her son. Focused on the way her hair was spun with reds and golds, he managed to keep his urges at bay. She soothed him.
For all his teasing to keep the mood light, Elliott could feel Daniel’s pain, both emotional and physical, as if it were his own. He knew firsthand how those scars would continue to hurt for years to come, even as the scar tissue became old and lost its rawness. It would become tight and inflexible, no matter how much therapy Daniel had, a constant reminder about this period in his life. It was a period Elliott had physically escaped but was still mentally stuck in.
These people weren’t his problem. It wasn’t his job to save them. He knew better than to stick around things that could set him back.
Yet one look at the hope on Kendalee’s face and the sadness in Daniel’s eyes kept him trapped in his seat.
The urge to help, to do something . . . anything that would help became imperative.
Which made a burn unit with the two of them the most dangerous place on earth to him.
* * *
“What happens next?” Elliott asked Daniel. “Do you need more surgeries?”
Daniel sighed. “That’s a given,” he said. “Right, Mom?”
Kendalee swallowed hard. Watching Elliott slowly and carefully work around Daniel’s dark frame of mind with so much care, had a lump stuck in her throat. And Daniel’s question had her chest tightening at the thought of another operation. “It is, sweetheart. Another skin graft in a week, and then possibly more surgeries in the future as he starts to heal. But we’ll face it like we did all the others.”
Daniel was already fading away before her eyes, mentally and physically, despite everybody’s best efforts. The doctor encouraged them to bolster Daniel’s morale, and the staff was fighting tirelessly to find ways to engage and motivate him, but he was no longer a ten-year-old who could be distracted by a pack of Topps cards and a trip to Medieval Times. At fourteen, he was on the cusp of maturing into an adult, with baggage that could hold him back forever.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll nail the surgeries like the champ you are,” Elliott said.
Daniel eyed him cautiously. “Yeah, because having skin from your back stitched onto your leg is a fucking party.”
“Daniel,” Kendalee said, her voice tight.
“What, Mom? It’s bullshit.”
Elliott reached across the bed and placed a hand on Kendalee’s arm. She jumped at the contact, yet it soothed her. His calloused fingers were warm against her chilled skin. For the briefest moment, she allowed herself to daydream that it was more than just a friendly gesture. “Hey,” he said. “Your mom asked you not to swear, dude. I get that you’re angry and all, but you can’t do that in front of her, okay?”
Daniel’s mouth was a thin line, his lips almost invisible. Kendalee knew that inside he was likely fuming, but he nodded his head tightly.
“I’ve been burned too. And I’d have given my right arm to have a mom like yours there to look out for me. Respect her for it. She could be anywhere else but at this hospital with you, but she isn’t.”
Kendalee held her breath as Daniel let out a short huff and dropped his shoulders. “Okay,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
She sighed and placed her hand gently on the bandages covering Daniel’s thigh. “Thank you, Daniel. We’ll get through this together, I promise.”
With Elliott’s help, she steered the conversation to his band, and before she realized it, dinner was fast approaching. She didn’t want Elliott to leave. It was nice to have adult company, someone to share the burden of brightening Daniel’s day with. And she would be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that it was nice to have an attractive man glance her way every now and then. Heck, unless she was completely out of touch with reading the signs, he’d done more than glance . . . a thought that made her thighs squeeze together. But it was time for Elliott to leave, and for her life to resume its usual mundane normal.
“Sorry to break this up, but I think we should start to get ready for food arriving any minute,” Kendalee said.
Elliott eased himself out of the chair. “And I should probably get out of your hair. Thanks for letting me hang out with you today, Daniel.” He squeezed Daniel’s hand. “I’ll give your mom my details so we can keep in touch. Maybe I’ll even be able to swing by again.”
“That’d be cool,” Daniel said. “Is it okay, Mom?”
Kendalee looked toward him. “I’d love that.” I’d love that. What the hell? “I mean, yes, that would be wonderful.”
“Will you walk out with me, Kendalee?” Elliott asked. “Just for a moment.”
She looked toward Daniel. “Get your book out and start to read, Daniel, until dinner comes. Then you can watch TV, okay?”
Kendalee led the way out of Daniel’s room. This was the time of night when she usually remembered she still hadn’t eaten and had to dash to the lobby or outside to the twenty-four-hour Denny’s over on Dundas Street to get something. But now the only thing on her mind was the ridiculously good-looking man following her away from the ward. Damn. She couldn’t imagine they had much else to say.
Strong hands gripped her shoulders and pulled her to one side, saving her from the bedding cart being wheeled in her direction from a corridor to her left. “Steady,” he said, his lips too near her ear. His breath fluttered the strands of hair that had escaped from her ponytail, making her shiver.
She placed her hands over her heart, which raced furiously. Some serious self-talking was in order. He was moral support for Daniel. That’s all. Her days of picking up hot young men had been over long before they started—she’d married Adrian at nineteen—and they sure as heck weren’t going to begin again now.
“Where can we get a quick coffee?” Elliott said, stepping to her side as the cart passed.
“I need to get back to Daniel. I can’t—”
“
Yeah, you can. He’s fine. Have a coffee with me, Kendalee. Hell, have some food even. I want to know what happened. I want to help.”
God, when she looked up into Elliott’s eyes, she wanted to. The idea of sitting down, having food, and pretending none of the last year had happened was so tempting, but—
“He’s fine, Kendalee. Ten minutes. That’s all I need.”
His hand pressed against her back as she let him guide her around the visitors beginning to leave the hospital for the night. It was large, and warm, and . . . safe. Secure even. Something she hadn’t felt in a long time. She tried not to think about the way she could feel the heat from his torso as it brushed alongside hers. As they walked toward Starbucks, she glanced down at the wedding ring she hadn’t had the courage to remove. “Masculine” wasn’t a word she’d often used to describe her husband. He had been nice, once. Courteous. Hard working. But he’d never filled the space around her like Elliott did with a single touch. The air practically vibrated around him.
She didn’t want to share everything that had happened in their ridiculous lives with a stranger, especially one as attractive as Elliott, but she didn’t have a whole heap of people to count on. Her parents had moved north a decade ago, and her mom was battling severe arthritis that left her housebound and dependent on Kendalee’s dad. As a couple, they’d spent most of their time with his friends, not hers, and she was only just beginning to realize how isolated that had left her.
Elliott led her into the line, and they ordered their coffees. A straight-up black for him, a decaf latte for her because hospital lights-out came sooner than her body was used to. Sometimes she felt like Tom Hanks in that movie where he got stuck in the airport, perpetually on somebody else’s schedule and whim. They found a seat in the colorful atrium in an area private enough that no one could overhear them.
“How are you doing, Kendalee?” Elliott popped the lid of his cup and added way more sugar than was necessary.
“I’ve had better months,” she answered with as much humor as she could muster—which was clearly not very much.
Elliott pinned her with those gray eyes of his. His long hair framed his face, and that angular jaw of his likely had its own Tumblr account, or whatever it was the cool kids were using these days. “I meant that question. Really, how are you doing? What happened?”
Kendalee took a sip of her latte. It burned her lips, but the pain was good. It kept her in the present moment. “You don’t want to hear all the details.” She laughed bitterly as she looked around the coffee shop. “Believe me, it’s depressing.”
“Try me,” he said as he placed his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his hands.
There was a long silence as she debated pouring her heart out to a man she’d known for only a few hours. The mom in her felt it was disloyal to Daniel for her to share his story, but the woman in her craved someone to lean on. As Elliott waited patiently, those soft understanding eyes had said he wanted to help. To be there.
She looked back at him, and he raised an eyebrow, a gesture she interpreted as “Whenever you are ready.”
Kendalee shook her head and sighed. “I guess the headline is that my brother-in-law was sexually abusing Daniel.” Might as well scare him off with the big news first.
“Daniel told me that,” Elliott said.
“He did?” Treatment in the hospital hadn’t been going well. Daniel’s therapist constantly mentioned how his . . . what did she call it? Oh, yes. His “lack of nonaggressive communication” was holding him back. Which is why it had been such a wonder to hear him talk with Elliott . . . really talk. Full sentences that bled into paragraphs as Elliott had asked questions and then sat back to listen—though clearly the rocker hadn’t been totally comfortable. He’d fidgeted in his seat too much and had tried too hard to avoid looking at her poor boy’s legs.
But Daniel hadn’t seemed to notice, and when he’d talked to Elliott he’d sounded like himself . . . well, like he’d been before. There was no pain in his tone, and, momentarily, no anger. Elliott had been a godsend, just what Daniel had needed. Out of reflex, she said a quick prayer of thanks before remembering that she and God were taking a break.
“He did.” Elliott didn’t elaborate. Just picked up his coffee and took a sip.
Kendalee ran her thumb along the edge of the lid on her cup. They’d written her name wrong. They always did. This time she sounded like a stripper. Candy-Lee. Sometimes, just to keep things simple, she told baristas her name was Lisa. “It had been going on for a couple of years. The police are impatient for Daniel’s statement, but he isn’t ready to tell us all the details yet, and his psychologist said pushing wouldn’t help.” Tears of frustration pricked at her eyes. Again. How could she have failed her child so badly? How could she have not seen what was happening? She would never be able to forgive herself for such a huge failing as a parent.
“It rarely does,” Elliott muttered, and for a moment, she wondered if he’d realized he’d said that out loud.
“We’d seen changes in his behavior. He’d become sullen. Less communicative, especially with Adrian. Then he started a couple of fires. One was on his grandparents’—my in-laws’—property out in Georgetown, and the other was a Dumpster behind the school gym. We were losing our mind with worry.”
“When did you figure out what was going on?”
“My husband left me six months ago.” Fucking Erin. Their business had grown quickly since they’d flipped their first property not long after they’d married, back when he was a twenty-three-year-old college grad with property development dreams. He’d seemed so . . . complete to her then. Their life had been an adventure, buying and flipping a three-story triplex in the Annex purchased before the area became gentrified, while living in the borderline uninhabitable basement. They’d sold one house to fund the next until they had enough for a permanent home of their own in the Upper Beaches. The properties became bigger as Adrian excelled at predicting which neighborhoods of Toronto were up and coming until they had multiple properties on the go. Eventually she was busy staying home with Daniel. The business had an office, and she was no longer required. As much as she’d missed doing the accounts and helping paint walls, Adrian had said that no wife of his was going to work if she didn’t need to. And the truth was, she hadn’t needed to.
“Ouch.” Elliott reached across the table and gripped her forearm for a moment. It was sweet, in a slightly awkward way.
“Yeah, well, I found out after he left that all the business documents are in his name and his alone. For years, I’d thought it was our company.” She remembered the way the bottom had fallen out of both her stomach and world as she realized she had nothing to fall back on, how she’d cried, then hurried to wash her face before Daniel had come home from school.
“Asshole,” Elliott muttered, and something in her chest loosened.
“Successful fortysomething man leaves wife and son for twentysomething assistant-slash-mistress with a large chest who drives a little red sports coupe. The cliché is alive and well.” Oh, shit. She hadn’t meant to blurt that out. Her eyes met his, and she saw nothing but . . . what? Sympathy? Empathy? “Anyway,” she said as she shook her head to clear it, “he moved out into the new place that was supposed to be our dream home, and I got the old house—and Daniel, which was non-negotiable.”
“The old house is the one he burned down?” Elliott asked.
“Yeah. Adrian’s twin brother, Simon, had come over every Sunday for as long as I’d known him. I never questioned why he went to Daniel’s room to hang out with him. He’d been doing it for as long as Daniel had been old enough to play Legos with him. He was like a big kid, and I just assumed he was being a good uncle. I wish I’d paid attention to a lot of things now.” Mindlessly, she sipped her coffee. It tasted bitter.
“How did you find out?” Elliott flipped his hair over his shoulder and drank his coffee, the move innocuous, except that it revealed a heavily tattooed bicep that temporarily di
stracted her.
Kendalee fiddled with the lid on her cup to compose herself. “After Adrian moved out, Simon continued to come around. I thought he was just being supportive. Offering Daniel some stability, showing him that even though Adrian and I were divorcing, his uncle would still be there for him. Then one day I decided to pop out on an errand while Simon was over, and half way to the store, I realized I’d forgotten my wallet, left it in a different purse. I popped home to get it. And I . . .” Tears formed, and a lump secured itself firmly in her throat. She pursed her lips and took a deep breath, urging the feelings she kept locked up to return to the box in which she mentally stored them. But they wouldn’t. Her stomach clenched tightly, partly from hunger and partly from the anxiety of sharing her story with a stranger.
Elliott reached across the table and gripped her hand. “It’s okay, Kendalee. Take your time,” he said gruffly. He looked her in the eye. “You don’t know shit about me, but I promise you, I know what you’re going through. Different circumstances, for sure. But I understand you.”
Kendalee nodded, afraid of saying something that might cause him to let go of her hand. It was crazy the way the feel of his fingers linked with hers kept her anchored. Leaving her hand in his, she took another deep breath. “I just knew something was off. I can’t even tell you now why I decided to go upstairs. As I reached the landing, Simon was walking out of the bedroom, running a hand through his hair. Daniel was sitting on the floor, his face ashen. I demanded to know what had happened. Simon blew it off, telling me that Daniel was in a bad mood and he’d had to ‘set him straight.’” She ran a hand over her lips, unsure of how much to say. “Anyway, that wasn’t unusual. It wasn’t a secret that Daniel had become withdrawn. But there was something very wrong with my son, I knew it. I knew it when Simon said a breezy good-bye. I knew it when I heard the front door slam. Call it mother’s instinct or what you will, but I knew someone had hurt my child. I sat on that damn floor with him for an hour until he finally cracked and told me.”
Elliott Redeemed Page 3