by Tracy Sharp
And I knew rationally that this mini-breakdown, this heavy grief I felt, really had little to do with Lucas and everything to do with my father. He had stopped seeing me after the abduction of my little sister. She had disappeared, and I vanished before my father. I had effectively ceased to exist in his world, other than to be somebody who could take care of my little brother after my mother left us.
I felt an unquestioning certainty that the abrupt loss of his love so many years ago was why I was unable to bear the gnawing, ragged, unmerciful pain that I felt in the center of me. Which right then, was triggered by Lucas’s sudden, cold indifference.
Water seeks its own level. I’ve heard that expression before and I now knew truly what it meant. I didn’t know Lucas all that well. For all of our sexual passion, we didn’t really know each other. But I sensed the same loneliness in him that I felt myself, an absence of something significant and crucial.
The sex was the drug. The numbing agent we turned to when we needed to ease the pain for a while, when it became agony. But the aftermath felt so much worse for me. For him, I didn’t know. He seemed to be doing just fine, which made me feel even worse still.
I vowed that it was the last time. I wouldn’t ride that rollercoaster again. It was too draining, too soul sucking and too dispiriting. It made me feel a whole fuck of a lot worse than I had before we used each other in a feverish tangle of sweaty need. I’d find a way to dull the cravings when they called. I’d turn away when he looked me in the eye the way he did. When he leaned in close and I could smell his cologne, bringing me back to how it smelled on me during sex. How it lingered on my skin as I drove home, sustaining the euphoria for me.
Alone in that bathroom I realized that I needed to tell somebody. I needed to trust somebody and reach out to them, because if I didn’t, I was going to die. Bit by bit, this addiction would kill me.
I took a deep, ragged breath and straightened up, and thought of the only person in the world I trusted with my life.
Jack.
***
“I’m in the abyss, Jack. I don’t know how to get out.” My voice sounded weak, too high to my own ears. The helplessness and desperation I heard from myself made me cringe. I clutched my cell to my ear as I sat in my car, shivering. Tiny beads of sweat popped up around my hairline and I felt the center of my back grow damp.
Withdrawal.
“I’ll pull you out, Kicks. Where are you?” Jack asked me.
I looked around. I didn’t even remember driving there. I didn’t recognize where I was. “Jesus. I don’t know. ”
“Are there any signs? Landmarks?”
I gazed around me. I was sitting in front of a huge office building, covered in mirrored windows. I didn’t recognize the place. “I’m in a parking lot in front of a building. Hang on. Let me drive around a little bit. I’ll find a sign.”
I backed out and drove around the building. Turns out I had been in the back parking lot Of an office building. A huge, dark sign read Warner’s Place. There were buildings all up and down the street.
“I’ve never been here before, Jack. Warner’s Place? Do you know it?”
There was a long pause. “Yeah. I know it. I’ll be there in a few. Sit tight, Leah.”
I sat tight. Looking around me. Something about the place seemed vaguely familiar. Like I’d been here before, it felt like déjà vu. Why did it seem so familiar to me?
My stomach cramped a little and I leaned over, gagging. Jesus Christ. Why didn’t I just shoot heroine?
I rested my forehead on the wheel, closed my eyes and waited for the cramping to subside. My breaths were coming short and ragged, and I heard myself moaning as if from far away.
I heard a car door slam and looked up. Jack walked toward me, his strides long and purposeful. His brow furrowed with concern for me.
I fumbled with the door handle but my sweat slicked fingers slipped.
He opened my door and placed his hands under my arms, helping me out of the truck.
“Come on, Leah. I’ll drive you home.”
“But my truck. . .”
“We’ll come and get it tomorrow. It’ll be fine.”
“What if it gets towed?”
“Then we’ll go pick it up wherever we need to pick it up from. Why? You think Callahan’s going to tow your truck away?” He was trying for a joke. It wasn’t working.
“Right. He wouldn’t do that. It would mean he’d have to look at me.”
“You think that would be so bad?”
I felt my throat close up and I had trouble getting the words out. “I don’t think he ever wants to look at me again, Jack.”
“Stop, Leah. He loves you.”
“He left me.”
“He left you because he loves you.”
It was too much to think about right now. I felt tears sliding over my cheeks and I didn’t care.
Jack helped me into his truck. Buckled me in and gently wiped my tears from my cheeks. He leaned in, a mere few inches from my face, and looked into my eyes. “Leah, it’s going to be fine. You’re going to be okay. I promise.”
I felt the hole in the center of me, yawning open a little further, and I was crying freely now. Little hitches skipping through each breath I took.
He reached out and cupped my face in both hands. “I’m here and I’m not leaving you. Okay?”
I nodded, unable to talk.
Reluctantly he closed my door and I was only vaguely aware of him climbing into the driver’s side.
I looked around at the office buildings. Cold. Industrial. “Where are we?”
He paused, looking at me for a long moment. He didn’t want to tell me. That was clear.
“What?” I asked him. “Tell me.”
“This is your old street, Leah. That building is where the park used to be. The park you and your sister and Jesse used to play.”
I turned back and looked at the building, shock rippling through me. There used to be a park behind my house.
That meant that the parking lot I had been sitting in, the back parking lot of that building, was where my house used to be.
The house I lived in when Susie was taken from us.
***
Jack got me home and into my house. He opened the door for Pango, who didn’t want to go out and leave me but natured called. So she did her business quickly and trotted back in to sit by the couch and lick my hand as I lay curled up, quivering.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Jack,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “I’m falling apart. I’m losing it. I’m no good at this job anymore.” I swallowed, let out a shaky breath. “I’m no good.”
Jack covered me with a quilt that had been draped over the back of the couch. He crouched down next to me. Pango moved a little further away to make room for Jack, but didn’t go further away than my knees. She rested her head against my legs.
“Stop that shit, Leah. You are good. You’re the best. And you’re a good person. You’re feeling weak right now because you have some unfinished shit to face from your past.” He leaned in close. Took one of my hands in his and kissed the top of it. “It’s just unfinished business, sweetheart. We all have shit from our past we have to face, and you’ve been carrying a heavy load, Leah. It’s amazing you haven’t cracked until now.”
“I’m no good, Jack. Caroline died because I wasn’t at my best. I wasn’t aware enough. She lay bleeding to death in a room right next to mine as I lay sleeping. I shouldn’t have been sleeping, Jack. I should’ve been awake, watching.”
“Now you listen to me.” He pinned me with his green gaze. “You were exhausted. You hadn’t slept in days. Your body shut down. You hear me? It would’ve happened to anyone. That was not your fault.”
“I should’ve stayed in her room with her.”
“But you didn’t. She wanted her privacy and you gave it to her, Leah.” He shook his head slowly. “You might have died too, that night.”
“Maybe I—_”
&nb
sp; “Stop it.” His voice was deadly quiet. “Don’t you ever fucking think that, ever. You hear me? You’re not fucking leaving me. You’re all I’ve got in this shitty goddamned world, Leah. Don’t you ever fucking think of leaving it and abandoning me. You got that?” His eyes grew wet.
I stared at him.
“You got that?” He said again, his words cracking a little.
I nodded.
“Say it.”
“I got that.”
“You promise?”
I hesitated, taken aback by the ferocity of his emotion. “I promise. I won’t leave you.”
“Okay, then.”
I dropped my gaze. Ran my fingers through my hair and scratched my scalp. The skin on my scalp felt as if it were crawling with tiny bugs.
“God. This is so awful.”
“What do you need?” He moved his huge hands over my arms, rubbing them.
“I need to feel something other than what I’m feeling. I need some other kind of sensory stimulation.”
Our eyes met and for a brief moment I knew that we were thinking the same thing. But if we made love, although I knew it would be phenomenal, it would be the end of our relationship as we knew it. Our friendship, which was the only good and pure thing I’d ever really known, would change, and I’d risk losing him. A part of me would close off to him and I didn’t want that to ever happen.
“We can’t,” I whispered.
“I know,” he said.
“I want to.” I took in a ragged breath. “Really, really badly. You don’t know how badly.” I let out a crazy little laugh.
“Oh, I do. Because I feel the same way.” A sexy, lopsided grin lit his face.
“But we can’t because…it would change us, Jack. And…I love you.”
He looked down, face flushed. “I know, Leah. I love you, too.”
“And I don’t want to be addicted to you and have to recover from you. And have to stay away from you. You know?”
“Yeah. That would suck.”
“You can’t be my new supply.”
He nodded once. “Right. So what do you need? Besides sex? How can I make it better?”
I thought for a moment. I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“A hot shower?”
I gave a weak laugh. “I’ll try it.”
“Okay. Come on.”
“Jack.”
“Yeah,” he said as he helped me up.
“You’d better stay down here right now. Okay?”
He looked at me, realization dawning on him.
“I’m going to be naked up there.”
“Right.” He sat on the couch and patted Pango’s head. “I’ll wait down here.”
“Wise choice.”
We gave each other shy grins as I turned and headed up the stairs. We’d broken some kind of barrier that had kept us from sleeping together before. Now it would be more difficult to resist.
But the pain inside of me was subsiding, because I was feeling a little high on the fact that Jack loved me. That I loved him. And we’d said it. Even if it was just as friends.
Yes. Just as friends, I told myself as I shut the bathroom door behind me and turned on the water.
***
I wasn’t in the shower long before a knock jarred me from my thoughts.
“Kicks,” Jack’s voice held that edge. The one that told me that something was very wrong.
“Yeah?” I called, squeezing my eyes shut against the soap that had run down my forehead and into my eyes.
“You need to hurry it up. Bad shit.”
“Is there any other kind?” I rinsed my face and pulled the shower door back a couple of inches. “Just come in here. I can’t hear you that good.”
He hesitated, then opened the door and stepped in, closing the door behind him so that I wouldn’t catch a chill, and leaned against the sink. He kept his head down as he spoke. “Just got a call from Elena. They found out about what became of Jamie’s son. It isn’t good.”
I sighed, rested my forehead against the water beaded glass of the shower door. “Tell me.”
“He’s dead, Leah. He fell out of a fourth story window when he was two.”
The news blew through the center of me and I had trouble catching my breath. “Oh, no.”
“Yeah. Jamie didn’t take the news well. Elena thinks she might try to hurt herself. When they discovered the news, Jamie took off in her car, crying. Elena doesn’t know where she is.”
“She may just need some time to herself,” I said, hoping this was the case, but not quite buying it myself.
“She might, but Elena said she didn’t look good. She wasn’t looking really lucid.”
“Great.” I sighed. “Okay, let me rinse my hair and I’ll be out in a minute.”
Jack nodded. “Alright. I’ll be downstairs.”
“Okay.”
His eyes flicked up to me, and then back down as he moved to leave. I couldn’t help grinning a little. This new thing between us was nice. Even with a new shit storm all around us, it gave me energy. Lifted my spirits.
Yeah. I was getting my groove back.
Good thing, too. Because I was going to need it.
***
“Where did Elena think Jamie might be headed?” I asked Jack as I pulled on my riding boots. It was cold as hell outside, but it would have to be a very bad storm indeed for me to not wear my riding boots. I had four pair of them, two black, one tan, and one brown, and I loved them. I still mourned the pair I’d lost as a result of my scuffle with Gabriel. Those babies had been new.
“As far as she knows, she has a brother, Michael Holland, who lives, oddly enough, in Philly. Older brother.”
“Could she be going to see him?”
Jack shrugged. “It’s worth a try. We could try calling him.”
We found Michael Holland in the white pages online, and Jack dialed the number provided under his name and address.
I took Pango outside because I had a feeling we’d be hitting the road again soon. “I’m sorry, sweety,” I said to her. “I promise I’ll spend more time with you when this craziness is over.”
She smiled at me and licked my hand, then headed off to the bushes to do her thing. I looked up at the sky, clear, midnight blue, stars winking down at the earth. It helped me to think how insignificant I actually was under the enormity of the universe, how all my mistakes meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. How when I was gone, none of it would matter.
Any marks I left would be scuffed over. No longer noticeable, if they ever really had been at all.
***
“Jamie’s on her way to Michael’s place. She’ll be okay.” Jack held the door open for me and helped me take my coat off.
“Thanks,” I said. “So there’s no mad rush to get back to Philly?”
“No. But she does want to talk to Adrian. I think we should be in the vicinity when she does.”
“Just so happens, we want to talk to Adrian too.”
“Right.”
I swayed a little where I stood.
“Whoa. Sit down, Kicks.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just need to get my bearings.”
“You’re bone tired. You need a good night’s sleep.”
“Yeah. I do.”
“So get upstairs and get one. We’ll resume ass kicking tomorrow.”
I ran my hands over my face. My eyes felt so heavy. “Okay. I’m going.”
“I’ll be down here if you need me.”
“Take Jesse’s room. He wouldn’t mind.” My brother had moved out the previous year, but I kept his room for him for when he visited.
Jack shrugged. “I might. I’m going to stay up for a bit.”
That meant he was nervous and was going to keep watch. I don’t know why I ever thought I needed a Rottweiler with Jack around. But I loved them. I had loved Buddy helplessly and I loved Pango the same way.
“Okay, my friend. I’ll see you in the a.m.”
Wit
h that I dragged my tired, aching body up the stairs, Pango close behind, and crawled under the covers with my clothes still on.
I had very little time to ruminate about anything before blessed sleep took me for a precious few hours.
***
The sky was dark as low clouds loomed over us. Still I needed my sunglasses. The glare off the snow, even on this grim day, was too much for my head. I’d slept pretty well, but was still exhausted. I felt like I’d need another full twelve hours of sleep before I was recouped. But even with the full twelve hours, the raw scratchiness in my throat and the pressure in my sinuses was telling me that I was getting really sick. And although my body was telling me that I needed rest, I wasn’t going to get it. So I hunkered down low in the seat and looked, sleepy-eyed, out the window.
“You should’ve stayed home,” Jack said, glancing at me. “You don’t look so hot.”
“Well, thank you, Jack. That makes me feel ever so much better.”
“You know what I mean.”
I pushed out a long breath. “Yeah. But we’re not done yet. I can’t just lie around, blowing my nose and watching the tube.”
He chuckled. “You couldn’t do that unless both your legs were broken and you were forced to. Who are you kidding?”
“I’ll be fine. It’s just the start of a cold.”
“We’ll stop and get you some juice at the next rest area.”
“Like that’s going to make a difference. Quit mothering me, Jack. I’m fine.”
“Yeah, yeah. We’ll see how fine you are when you’re shouting incoherently, delirious fever.”
“Then I’ll just sound like you.”
“Ha. Ha.” He gave me a sideways look.
“So what was your feeling when you met with Dr. Clemmons?”
He pursed his lips. “I don’t think he did it, Kicks. I really don’t.”
“Okay.”
“He’s genuinely distraught over the fact that she’s missing. I think at first he really thought she’d taken off with another man. Now, with the discovery of another body, he’s really shaken.”