The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix)

by Kristie Cook

  I smiled. “Yeah, I love it. But not really ballet so much. I mean, taking all those classes gave me a strong foundation, but the classes I really loved were the jazz, tap, and modern dance. When I got older, Mama compromised, letting me take the other classes as long as I stayed in ballet. She made sure I was in the best schools with the best teachers. That I had every opportunity to perform. She put the worst stage moms to shame. But there was one thing she had no control over—that I’d inherited my daddy’s family’s measly height with her mama’s side’s hourglass shape. She tried to control it, always putting me on diets until I . . .”

  My hands dropped, and I cleared my throat, although I hadn’t been speaking aloud. Jeric leaned forward, concern in his eyes. I swallowed and went on.

  “I fought bulimia for a while,” I admitted, staring at the table as I signed. “I wasn’t really fat. Just round in certain places. But Mama tried to starve me, even with all the dance workouts I did. So I ate behind her back, thinking I was showing her, but as soon as I’d see her, I’d feel guilty, so I purged it.”

  I peered up at Jeric through my lashes, wondering what went through his mind. What he thought about me now. His expression was unreadable.

  “Yeah, I was quite the head case,” I said with a sigh. “It had been my attempt to control something in my life, but how screwed up is that?” I shook my head. “She always told me I couldn’t be trusted to make decisions for myself, and I’d proven her right. So she kept control all the way from Alaska and pushed for the audition for New York. When I didn’t get in, she finally gave up, after telling me—with a smile on her face, of course—that I was useless and worthless.” I paused to swipe at a tickle on my cheeks, surprised to find them wet.

  Jeric’s eyes had grown wide. “Your mother told you that?”

  I nodded. “Along with what a huge disappointment I was and she hoped I didn’t pursue the idea of opening my own studio ‘because no girl deserved to be taught by such inadequacy.’ Somewhere in there she called me talentless and lazier than a dog on a summer day.” I shrugged. “Her usual rant when I screwed up.”

  “What a bitch!” Jeric said. “How could you let her bully you like that? How could you say she’s taken care of you when she abused you?”

  My hackles raised. “She didn’t abuse me.”

  Jeric lifted a brow. “Like hell she didn’t! Don’t tell me you’re not emotionally scarred after living with that. I know better.”

  I chuckled. “You? How would you know anything? How do you even know the term ‘emotionally scarred’?”

  He leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “Lots of therapy. And I know you. The way you hide yourself and the pain. I can feel it as if it were my own. Right here.” He thumped his fist over his heart in the same way as the sign for “love.” “And the bulimia? Don’t tell me she didn’t mess with your head and your heart. That’s bullshit. She abused you, and you give her credit for taking care of you. Where was your dad throughout all this?”

  “Working,” I said. “Always working. And Mama did take care of me. She took care of everything I needed.”

  He gave me a look of wide-eyed bewilderment. “Why are you defending her?”

  “She’s my mama.” My hands trembled as I signed the words, then they fell in my lap as I stared at the table with more tears in my eyes. “Or . . . she was. Maybe she did disown me, after all. Maybe New York was too much of a disappointment for her to handle, and now that she can’t live vicariously through me, she tossed me out like a sack of garbage.”

  The revelation rocked through me, and I wasn’t sure how I even felt about it. I missed Uncle Theo and really wanted to find him, and I was used to not seeing my daddy very often. But I really didn’t miss my mama so much. I’d been so hurt at first, when she first denied knowing me, but I’d also felt so liberated over the past few days, especially after yesterday. Jeric had been right—I’d really needed that release to purge myself of everything I felt for her. To free myself.

  But . . . she was still my mama. And he was my daddy. As dysfunctional as they were, I still loved them. And now they didn’t even know me.

  The waitress arrived with our food and started sliding plates onto our table.

  “What about you?” Jeric asked after she left. “Did you really want to go to New York?”

  Starving—and needing a few moments to center my mind—I took several bites of biscuits and gravy before answering.

  “Only because I thought by being in New York, I could achieve my real dream. But I did feel bad about leaving Uncle Theo, so I was torn. He’d let me stay with him when my parents left for Alaska, saying he needed some help and I should be able to finish my senior year at my school. But really, I think he was trying to get me out from underneath Mama’s thumb. Little did he know distance didn’t matter to her.”

  Jeric shoveled in a few bites of his own, then asked, “So what was your real dream?”

  I gave him a half-smile. “Promise not to laugh?”

  “No,” he answered honestly with a gleam in his eye.

  “I wanted to be a back-up dancer. Like for Beyoncé or Christina Aguilera.” I watched him for a reaction, but he didn’t respond. “I’m kind of good at that kind of dance.”

  Now he nodded. “Damn right you are.”

  “But Mama would never hear of it, and Uncle Theo needed me, and I didn’t make it to New York anyway.” I sighed. “I resigned myself to caring for Uncle Theo and going to a normal college and leading a boring, normal life. He used to send me to the lake almost every weekend to give us both a break.”

  “So he’s a bully, too.”

  I frowned. “No . . .”

  “He made you leave your own home?” Although Jeric didn’t speak, I could practically hear the accusation.

  “It was his home; I just stayed there, rent-free. And we both needed the time away,” I said, defending Uncle Theo, whether I believed it or not. I’d never considered the situation from Jeric’s perspective, but I couldn’t think of Uncle Theo as anything like my mother. “Anyway, one weekend I found out about this bar about halfway between Uncle Theo’s and the lake. You know that movie ‘Coyote Ugly’? It was like that. All female bartenders and servers dressed in barely nothing and doing dance routines on the bar throughout the night. It was connected to a strip club the same guy owned, but there were weird Bible Belt laws about liquor and strippers and whatever, so both places drew a crowd. Anyway, I wasn’t old enough to serve, but he liked how I danced. He had this mechanical bull that had come with the place, but hadn’t really used it. Someone had mentioned seeing dancers do the bull in Texas, so I agreed to give it a try.”

  Jeric stopped chewing and looked up at me. “So you never stripped?”

  He looked especially happy about this. I picked up my fork to stall, but pushed my eggs around the plate, suddenly not hungry anymore. I put the fork back down.

  Chapter 32

  Please say no.

  Leni didn’t answer me, and the thought of her taking her clothes off so publicly turned my stomach into a rock. I’d been to enough clubs myself to know what that meant—sick fucks man-handling her, douche-canoes trying to stick their dollar bills where they had no right to touch. Not on Leni. Not on my Leni. I had a sudden desire to punch one of them now.

  Neither of us was hungry anymore, so Leni hailed the waitress for the check, but I grabbed it before she could pay. She strode outside, across the highway and all the way to the camper, still without answering my question. Which meant . . .

  “No,” she said. We’d just entered the Airstream, and she turned to face me as I closed the door. “I didn’t strip.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d been so tensed up until my whole body deflated with relief.

  “I was supposed to,” she continued. “The show had been such a hit on the one side, the
owner had the bull moved to the other side—the naked side. I’d practiced my routine like crazy, built myself up for it, but when it came time . . . I couldn’t do it.”

  She gave me an apologetic smile. I didn’t know what she would be apologizing for. Next to forgiving me, this was the best thing she’d told me all day.

  “I was up there, doing my thing, stripped down to a bikini. But when I was supposed to pull the string to the top, I . . . I froze. Total stage fright came over me for the first time in my life. And I realized I didn’t want to do it. The show had always been so sexy, especially when I pulled others on with me. It made me feel good. Hot. Wanted. But taking my top off in front of all those slobbering men, some of them old enough to be my daddy?” She shook her head and made a face. “That didn’t make me feel good. Some girls can get over it, but I couldn’t. The guys began heckling me. Then one jumped on the stage, saying he’d take it off if I didn’t, and grabbed at the string. My top fell and I threw my arms across my chest. Customers got angry. Bouncers jumped up on the stage. Somehow, I got pushed off the bull and hit my chin on the way down before I ran for the dressing room. I guess things got worse from there. Bad enough for Uncle Theo to hear about it.”

  “You have no idea how happy that makes me,” I told her.

  She gave me a look. “You’re not disappointed? In me, I mean?”

  “Hell no. Why would I be?”

  “Everybody else was. I am in myself. I really can’t be trusted to make decisions for myself.”

  “Bullshit. You trusted yourself with me. Think if you hadn’t. If you’d taken off and never found my car going up in smoke. If you hadn’t taken me to the lake.”

  “If I hadn’t agreed to let you buy me coffee in Italy,” she added.

  I chuckled. “So this is the real reason you were there? Why your uncle sent you?”

  She nodded. “He was so disappointed. I felt horrible. But then he gave me the trip. He said, ‘I know what you really want to do, and that club was not it. I have no one in New York, but maybe this will help.’ He told me to follow my heart, my instinct, to find the real me.”

  “And you found me.” I dared to take a step closer to her. I’d been wanting to close the space between us I’d created the other night, what had felt like a wide chasm only hours ago, but now seemed crossable. I just didn’t want to push her too soon.

  She reached out with a finger and barely touched the cut on my lip. “What happened? The cowboy? I hope you slaughtered him. He reminded me of that night, and I almost freaked.”

  I cocked my head. “You don’t remember?”

  She shrugged. “I’d barely eaten anything since the day before, went through some really intense emotions, had been drinking, and dancing the bull is a workout. I was a little low on blood sugar, I think.”

  “But you’re okay? No headache?”

  She shook her head. “Did something happen to me?”

  “The Shadowmen.” I told her about the attack and her near death by semi.

  “You saved my life,” she said, her head tilting to the side. “Thank you.”

  “It’s what I do,” I said. “I can’t lose you, Leni. I know I don’t deserve you. God, do I know it. But I need you. You’re the Coke to my Jack.”

  A smile played on her lips, and her head pulled back. “What?”

  “For eight years, life’s been one bitter bottle of whiskey after another. One burning shot after shot. But then you come along. Life’s still harsh, but you make it sweeter. Easier to swallow.”

  She grinned, then fisted her hand in my shirt and pulled me to her. I wanted her to tug me down, to lean up on her toes and give me a taste. A long, deep taste of that sweetness. My mouth watered for her. But she didn’t. Instead, she traced her finger up my arm and around the tattoos, and pushed my sleeve up, revealing the script on the curve of my shoulder: “No hero in this story.”

  “Each of these mean something, don’t they?” she asked. I nodded. She hopped up to sit on the counter. “Your turn to tell me a story, then. And why there’s no hero.”

  I fingered my brow ring, not wanting to go there yet. But after what she’d spilled to me, how could I not? She deserved my full story.

  She trailed her finger over the next tat—a smatter of musical notes. “That’s for your music.” She moved to the next one of three blue flowers. “Forget-me-nots?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “For your parents and . . . ?” She looked up at me.

  The memories slaughtered me, as they always did. I stared down at my hands for a few beats before signing, “My sister.”

  She touched her throat, and her lips parted. “You never said anything about a sister.”

  “The only other girl I loved. She died in the accident, too.”

  “What happened? You never told me.”

  No, I hadn’t. I’d always tried to keep the past in the past. Both anger and sadness welled, and I hated the feelings. Hated how they always pushed me to the verge of losing control.

  I pressed on. “She was beautiful. Sweet. The band’s biggest fan. She could have had any guy she wanted, but she chose the biggest asshole in the school. I knew something was wrong from the beginning. She started to change. Became quieter. Always smiling still, but her smile wasn’t real anymore. She stopped coming to our shows, and then bruises started showing up on her arms.”

  “How old was she?”

  “My age. We weren’t far apart. My mom was several months pregnant with her before my adoption was final.”

  “And her boyfriend?”

  “A couple of years older. A senior. Star football player.”

  “Wow. He abused her?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. A-1 asshole. She came home one night covered in bruises and crying. My parents were out for the night, but I was livid when I saw her. I didn’t know what to do, and she begged me to take her away. She was so scared. Scared he would come to the house. I was a wimpy musician and couldn’t do anything if he did.

  “We were only fourteen, and I didn’t have a driver’s license yet, but I stole my mom’s car and took off. I would have done anything for her. We were on the highway near home still and the tire blew out. Just so happened my parents were on their way home and saw us. They came around to help, angrier than hell, of course, but glad we were okay. Then a drunk driver came swerving down the highway. Plowed her SUV into my parents’ car and all of us. The three of them had been smashed between my dad’s car and my mom’s. I was thrown into the grass. I woke up three weeks later with no hearing and no family.”

  Stupid tears filled my eyes and Leni’s, too. God, I didn’t want to cry in front of her, but I couldn’t help it when I spoke of that night.

  “You don’t blame yourself, do you?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “My grandfather blamed me, but the drunk bitch was who killed them. Still, I can’t help but feel guilty about running in the first place. About being too much of a coward to stay home and face that dickhead. Maybe they’d still be here today, or maybe not. I don’t know.”

  Her eyes squinted as she studied my face for a moment. Then her gaze dropped down to my arm again, and her finger moved to the tattoo below the flowers. An angel on her knees, doubled over, her hands covering her face.

  “This is for your sister?”

  I swiped at my eyes and nodded. “She was an angel. He’d broken her.”

  Not wanting her to see my pain and weakness, I turned my back to her and drew in a few breaths. Her hands clamped on my shoulders and pulled me backwards to the counter she sat on, then slid down my arms. Her finger traced the next tattoo—a broken shackle around my wrist—and she must have known what it meant. She ignored the last one and moved to the other arm, but they were all self-explanatory, too—a sunrise with “No Guarantees” written underneath it, a cross with
a quote from 23 Psalm written across it, and the flame that matched her own. She returned to the last one on the inner part of my other forearm. A puzzle piece showing a heart with a lock clasped over it.

  I turned and smiled. “I have the piece that fits into it stashed away, in case I ever did meet the right someone.”

  She lifted a brow. “What’s the other piece show?”

  I went over to my bags and squatted down to dig for my journal. I pulled it out and flipped to the page where I’d sketched the other half of the tattoo—another puzzle piece shaped to fit into mine, showing the key.

  I didn’t outright ask her if she’d get the tattoo. She did hold the key to my heart, and I didn’t want it to remain locked forever. I just didn’t know how to tell her.

  So I moved closer to her again, to show her the best way I knew how—physically. As I leaned in for a kiss, though, she pushed me away.

  “I need a shower,” she said.

  “I kind of like you dirty,” I replied.

  She smiled and shook her head. “I’m gross. Seriously. So are you.”

  Well, if that wasn’t a blow to the ego. I could tell by the gleam in her eye, though, it was only an excuse. In fact, I was pretty sure she was trying hard not to cry. So I wrapped my arms around her and held her to my chest, relieved when her arms encircled my waist. That was progress. Short-lived, though, when she pushed away and headed to the back of the camper for her shower.

  Chapter 33

  All of the talk about family, especially of Uncle Theo, made my heart ache. I truly did miss him, and I was scared to know what his long absence meant. The desire to go to Tampa still remained as a slight pull in the pit of my stomach, but I felt a stronger instinct to remain still for a bit longer. Something needed to be done before we moved on, and I had a feeling what that “something” was. Jeric and I needed to re-Bond.

  But I was stalling. Putting off the inevitable. Knowing what I wanted to do, what Jeric wanted—not only our bodies, but what our souls needed—part of me still refused to give in yet. We’d only known each other for a week, at least in these bodies, in this life cycle. Our past lives, our existence as one soul, were only vague memories, although the connection felt very real and present. But before I could give him my gift, as Jaceycalled it, I felt the need to know I loved him for him right now, not because of something we had together before, as other people.