My Kind Of Crazy

by Nadene Seiters

  “Get back, and sit on the couch. I think we need to have a discussion, Ana.” When I get a good look at the gun, I realize why it looks funny. He has a silencer on the end of it. I idly wonder if it’s registered and they’ll be able to tell that he shot Jonah and me after this discussion. But that’s not much use to me now. My cellphone is sitting on the end table by the sofa, and Jonah’s is on the kitchen counter. His is too far away, but if I could just get my hands on my own, I could call the police.

  As I sit down, Jonah sits down next to me. Mr. Taylor has closed the door behind us, and as he’s doing so I try to grab my phone. It slides off the table, onto the sofa, and between the cushions. With an inward curse fest, I try to fish it out before Mark gets to us. Just as he starts back towards the sofa, I manage to slip the phone under my thigh with my hand. I put my other hand under the other thigh to make it look like I’m sitting this way because I’m nervous.

  Mark turns away from us for an instant, and I realize I have my chance. I position the phone between my legs and click the emergency call button, dial nine-one-one and turn the volume all the way down. My hand covers the phone as Mark settles onto the table in front of us. The look of contempt on his face frightens me, and I pull my hands out from under my thighs in case I have to use them.

  “What do you want?” My voice comes out a lot steadier than I had imagined it.

  “Oh, the same thing everyone’s been nagging you for, Ana!” He sounds as if he’s talking to a five year old, and I don’t have a chance to look bewildered before he moves on. “I want the tape, Anastasia! Don’t give me that look. I know there’s a brain in that pretty little head of yours somewhere!” Jonah’s breathing heavily beside me and I reach a hand across the couch to take his. “Oh, how sweet! The mentally fucked up man and the emotionally ravaged woman! You two will make a great couple in Hell.” He laughs, but the gun remains steadily pointed at me.

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” I try to remain calm and reasonable. It’s hard to do with a maniac pointing the second gun at you in the past twenty four hours.

  “Which part? The part where you’re emotionally fucked up from being raped as a child or the part where you’re hiding your father’s security camera tape?” My face flushes, but not because of the fact that he knows. If the cellphone is working, the dispatcher, and hopefully the police are listening, now know something happened to me when I was under the age of eighteen.

  “The security camera tape? He didn’t have one. I thought-” He shoves the gun in my face, and suddenly his eyes are bulging from his head as he forces me back into the cushions. My fingers tighten around Jonah’s, and I feel him about to spring into action.

  “You thought what? That Henry and Benjamin Cooper were working alone?” He sounds disbelieving. “Those two fools could do nothing alone! Henry came back because he lost his chance at the championship in the underground fight club, and Benjamin never went anywhere! They needed money, and I hired those fools to do what they did to you before. I hired them to beat the living shit out of you so that you would talk! Do I have to shoot Jonah for you to talk? Hm?” Now he’s pointing the gun in Jonah’s face. The vein on his neck is bulging and pumping radically as purple splotches start to show up on his cheeks. The man is piping mad, and I have no idea what he’s talking about!

  “Jesus! I don’t know what you’re talking about! What’s on the damn tape anyway?” And as I ask the question, it dawns on me. Before he even opens his mouth to answer me, I understand what is on the security tape. I had no idea my father had a security camera, and apparently neither did the police. He would never install one of those for the protection of personal belongings, but for the protection of his life.

  “You!” My heartbeat is pounding in my chest. “You killed my father, and you stole the security camera! But you couldn’t find the tape.” I start to laugh. It’s a maniacal sound that makes Jonah look worried for my sanity, but he doesn’t have to worry. If I don’t laugh right now, I’ll either cry or wrap my fingers around Mark Taylor’s neck myself.

  “Yes, I killed your pathetic father because he was going to embarrass me! ME! Mr. Mark Taylor, the famous entrepreneur real estate agent and developer that could buy and sell anything! He knew I would not be able to procure a loan for the amount I signed the papers for, but he signed anyway so that he could make a point! Well, I made a point! Boy oh boy I made one! With a stolen shot gun from the Cooper farm. Now I’m going to shoot you with this gun I bought off a thug in the city if you don’t tell me where that tape is!” His body swivels as he points the weapon in my face, and I hear the telltale sirens in the distance. For a millisecond, his face turns towards the door, and Jonah takes his chance.

  The gun doesn’t make a sound as it goes off, but I do. My scream ricochets off the wall as the bullet slices through my flesh. I can’t tell where it enters because the burning, searing pain is overtaking me as I fall back to the cushions. Jonah doesn’t stop his assault on Mark Taylor until the man is lying bloodied, beaten, and almost dead on the floor of the suite room. The only thought I can procure is that the woman who owns this place is going to be pissed when she realizes she’ll need to hire a professional cleaner. She might even have to buy a new sofa.

  My hand is covering the wound by the time Jonah climbs off Mark’s limp body. He has a bruise developing on his cheek, and his nose is bloodied. I can’t stop the panicked, ragged breathing erupting from me in short gasps. Blood, my blood, is seeping through my fingers and trailing down my arm. The smell of it makes me want to vomit, but I’m too weak to move.

  “Anastasia? Hey, it’s a flesh wound, alright? HEY!” The last word is not aimed at me, but someone barreling through the suite door. Two paramedics push Jonah aside, and one has to struggle with him to keep him away as the other starts to ask me questions. I’m too dazed to answer.

  My eyes flutter to Mark’s limp body as they lift him onto a stretcher, and then I watch as Chief Robertson cuffs Jonah and pulls him from the room. I open my mouth to say his name, but nothing comes out. As they’re lifting me onto the stretcher, the pain is too much and my vision fades. I vaguely remember waking up in the ambulance twice as they inserted the IV, and the second time as they were opening up the doors.

  After that, things get pretty blurry. It might be the painkillers they’ve spiked the fluids bag with, or the fact that I don’t want to open my eyes and not see Jonah again. Unsure of how much time goes by, I open my eyes for the final time to see a familiar face by my side. Chief Robertson immediately takes my hand when I inhale deeply, and he rubs back and forth as if he’s comforting a child.

  “Finally! It’s been five hours! We thought you were never going to wake up.” I scrunch up my eyebrows at the word ‘we’, and glance around the room for whoever else he’s talking about. Jonah is sitting on the other side of my hospital bed with one hand cuffed to the armrest. He doesn’t smile until I do, and then he’s crushing down on my lips with his. I part them when he asks permission with his tongue grazing across the seam, and then I hear the sound of someone clearing their throat.

  Jonah ignores it, but I use my good arm to gently push him back. We’ll have plenty of time for that later, but right now I need to know what happened while I was out. So I turn my attention in the direction of the Chief, but it’s the doctor standing in the doorway with a clipboard who cleared his throat. My heart monitor must have been going off the charts. Oops.

  “I see that you’re awake and feeling better, Ms. D’Salvatore.” I nod, and then I turn my attention to the Chief quickly.

  “Why is he cuffed?” I ask the man accusingly. He throws up his hands as if to say that he surrenders, and leans away from my bedside.

  “Don’t look at me! I told him that if he didn’t behave himself, we’d cuff him. So we did.” I throw a glare in Jonah’s direction, and he responds with an impish grin. My heart flutters at that wry twist of his lips.

  “I’m not even going to ask what you did.” The
doctor clears his throat again, interrupting my verbal reunion with Quinton.

  “Ms. D’Salvatore, if you would be kind enough to allow me to go over your charts with you? Then I’ll be out of your hair.” I currently have two fingers twining in it that are not my own, and if Jonah doesn’t stop touching me this way I’m going to embarrass myself further.

  “Okay, so how long am I out of commission?” My shoulder only aches mildly, but I’m so high on morphine I’m starting not to care. The doctor flips up a piece of paper and glances at the machines before he actually speaks.

  “You need to stay here for at least four days while we monitor your healing.” I sit up in the bed rather abruptly, and the doctor hurries to push me back down as slowly as he can without injuring my arm further.

  “Why on Earth do I need to stay here for four days?” My voice is shrill and high, and I attract the attention of a few nurses walking past my room door.

  “You’re lucky the bullet didn’t hit bone, and it was a clean wound. We found no shrapnel of any kind because the bullet went all the way through. If not, you’d be here for weeks. You will need to discontinue the use of your arm for a few more days after that, and then we’ll see about physical therapy.” He drones on about how many months it will take for the wound to sufficiently heal, but all I can think about is the fact that I won’t be able to return home for four days. I barely even know where home is anymore.

  Jonah takes my good hand in his across the bed, and smiles at me reassuringly as the doctor explains about the sling that I am and will be wearing for a few weeks. He goes on about muscle tissue healing rates and drones about how I’m a healthy, young patient. So I should heal quickly. Great, but what am I going to do in a hospital bed for four days?

  “Great, thanks, I appreciate the update.” With those words from my mouth halfway through his spiel, the doctor seems to catch my drift and leaves me with a final warning that I only have one more shot of morphine today. I’d better use it wisely. Just to be a smart ass, I push the button.

  “You’re kind of a grump when you’re hurt.” Jonah sounds as if he’s pointing out that the sky is blue. If my right arm weren’t injured, I’d give him a good punch in the shoulder to get my point across.

  “Well, I’m going to un-cuff Jonah and go find myself some coffee. Promise to stay in the room, and don’t try to pummel anymore male nurses. They have to look at the arm, and that requires removing the top half of the hospital gown.” My face goes pale, and Chief Robertson retreats from the room after he lives up to his promise of un-cuffing Jonah.

  “The Hell they do!” I screech, using my good arm to wrap the gown tighter around myself.

  “Don’t worry. I made sure it was a female nurse who did it. It took some persuasion, and I might be sued in the future, but for now everything is fine.” I chuckle and lean into his hand when it comes to my face. His earlier insult about being a grump has been forgotten, and I just want him to kiss me again. Instead, he looks a little worried.

  “There’s something we need to talk about.” His hand moves down from my face and takes up the good one. I have to maneuver my arm across my body so that it’s comfortable, and then I wait for him to spill whatever it is that makes him look like he might die on the spot. “Mark Taylor is dead.”

  Those four words turn my world upside down and right-side up again in the span of a few seconds. It’s turned upside down because I’m worried that Jonah will go to jail for killing someone, and then it’s righted when I realize he was just exercising self-defense. Besides, if he were going to be in jail, he would already be there.

  Jonah’s fingers start to slip from mine as he sees the shock on my face, and at the last second I squeeze mine tight around his hand so that he cannot get away. Our eyes meet, and I don’t need to smile to let him know that what he did doesn’t bother me. If I had the chance to do it, then I would have killed the man with my bare hands myself.

  “I did it for you, for your father, and for me. The only scumbag left is Henry Cooper, but I’ll take care of that when he gets out of jail.” I pull his bruised knuckles up to my lips and kiss them one by one, making his entire body shudder.

  “You won’t. Because then you’ll be in with him. If you do, I’ll be out here all alone and poor, defenseless, little me will be vulnerable to all the bad people in this world.” He chuckles and leans forward until his lips are brushing against my forehead.

  “No, you’re not defenseless. Not with your blue eyes and blonde hair. I thought you would have been married by now, Anastasia D’Salvatore.” I roll my eyes at his girly tone and realize that he’s mocking Mrs. Evans.

  “You heard that?”

  “Oh yes, I heard that and much more. But Anastasia?” I look up at his deadly serious expression. “I’m crazy, you know. Bat shit crazy. Mrs. Evans and the entire town are going to wonder what someone like you is doing with someone like me. They’ll talk. It could get ugly. They’ll say things like, ‘I don’t understand how you can live in that house when-‘, and it’ll be about me this time.” A smile plays across my face as I lean back into my pillows and tug his face down to mine. He has to stand and twist at an odd angle, but it’s worth it.

  “Haven’t you heard?” I ask him quietly, and he looks down at me quizzically. “I’m bat shit crazy, too. Why, I live in a house where someone was murdered! And now I’ll be living in a house with some crazy bastard who hears voices!” I snicker into a kiss until it gets serious. Chief Robertson returns with his coffee, but I hear his boots squeak as he turns on his heel and walks right back out of the room.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jonah

  She’s the worst kind of patient.

  Anastasia D’Salvatore is worse than her father when he almost broke his foot and had to stay in bed for three days. It’s only been twenty four hours since she returned from the hospital, and she’s attempting to lift her laptop so that she can get to work. I don’t know how she intends to type, but I suppose she hasn’t thought that far along.

  I step into the room and grab the laptop before she drops it and starts crying like she did when she dropped the pickle jar yesterday, and it splattered all over her. She didn’t cry when I helped her in the shower, at least, not the kind of crying with tears. I smile at the memory, and she takes it the wrong way. I was wrong. She’s not grumpy when she’s injured. She’s downright almost insufferable!

  “Don’t you dare laugh at me Jonah Quinton! I’ll pummel you with my good fist in your sleep. You’ll see!” An eye roll would only get me into more trouble, so I keep it to myself and flip open the lid for her. She sits down ungracefully into the kitchen table chair and starts clicking away like a madwoman.

  I don’t know what she’s worried about. Between the two of us, we have enough to rebuild the barn much larger, and enough money to build a rancher. She doesn’t want a house with stairs. And she wants another dog. I just want to be able to make her happy for a very long time.

  I’m not the type of guy to pop the question right away, but in a few months I think I’ll have my feet wet enough in the water of the relationship to feel comfortable doing it. Besides, a guy needs a few months to get his life in order before he can go ring shopping. I hear the clanging of tools outside and sigh as I look down at her.

  “Are you going to behave yourself while I help out the guys?” If she could spit like a cat, she might. Her blue eyes are stormy as they narrow, and her lips form a thin line as she stares at me.

  “I’m perfectly fine. Go outside and muck around with your tools and wood, Jonah. Or I’ll be forced to play the ‘Jonah’s gone crazy’ card.” My own eyes narrow as I quirk my lip up into a crooked grin. I’ve found this one makes her shiver and melt in ways that makes me want to ignore the fact that her arm is in a sling.

  “Oh, I’ll play with my wood alright, D’Salvatore. You want to watch?” She picks up a pen as if she’s going to throw it at me, and I duck as I make it to the entrance to the bedroom on the first floor. This week
is the barn project, next week the house will be started. I’ll help out on that as much as I can, too. Then I’ll start planning for next year’s crops.

  I head back outside and pick up a hammer to start where I left off. This barn will have twelve stalls, a conveyor belt to help with cleaning, and a loft for storage. I’m planning on having a horse just for shits and giggles, and maybe a few sheep. I’ll need something that will produce some of my fertilizer for the organic corn crops I’ll be growing. I’ve heard organic is in demand now.

  * * *

  Later that evening, I help Anastasia out of her button up blouse. She figured out at the hospital that button ups are a lot easier than a shirt that has to be slipped over the head. Then I slide it off her shoulders and can’t help my admiration for her flawless body. To me it’s flawless. Someone else might see the scars, but I see the beauty of a woman’s strength and passion when I look at Anastasia standing before me.

  Her cheeks flush at my obvious inspection of her breasts and her flat stomach. I help her out of the sling and the shirt sleeve before I do something irrational, and then I put her arm back up into the sling. She still has stitches underneath a thin layer of bandaging. They won’t be removed for another seven days. The ones they had to use on the inside will dissolve on their own.

  “You’re staring,” she whispers self-consciously, and I run the flat of my palm up from her lower abdomen all the way to her breasts. I love how they feel soft and heavy in my hands as I tease her into submission.

  “I am.” I admit to her, nuzzling her nose until she tilts her head up so that her lips meet mine. Our breaths mingle, and I try to breathe through my nose so that I can make the kiss last forever, but we both have to come up for air.

  My right hand moves down as I continue to tease her left breast with my free hand, and I unsnap the jeans with one flick of my fingers. Just that movement makes her knees weak, and I have to move away from her breasts to pull her pants down, along with the pink, lace panties that I helped her put on after her shower.