by Davis, Lia;
She was light, and he was tired of living in the dark with his head down.
Chapter Four
Zin saw the bag on the counter when she walked in from her swing shift. She was working another shift that started at ten PM, so she had a couple of hours before heading back in.
She bit her bottom lip to keep from grinning. During the last week, she’d spent every moment of down-time scouring the internet for some clue about who the homeless guy was.
‘Valdus’ wasn’t a common name. There had to be some clue to who he once was. She’d finally found something.
It was just a tiny post on Facebook, from a relative saying they were glad he was home and out of combat. From that post she was able to view his profile. There wasn’t much, just some pictures of family and a dog. Everyone in his family was tall and blond, so she had some trouble picking him out of the group shots. All the pictures were old, obviously either scanned or someone had taken a picture of the picture with a cellphone. It seemed like he’d always been on the thin, pale side. He was handsome, though, with an easy smile. Every picture of him had him hugging somebody.
The few that appeared after his military discharge showed a man with a slower smile, and far more space around him. In the last few pictures, he was either alone, or separated by a good twelve inches of space from anyone around him.
“Poor guy,” she whispered.
Seven years, she thought. She didn’t actually believe he’d made a deal with the Devil. This was real life, not an episode of Supernatural. He’d obviously had a mental break at some point, and the only way to hang on to himself was to construct a new reality for himself. He seemed stable, so maybe when his self-imposed seven-year term ended, he’d be ready for the real world again.
She bit her bottom lip as she opened the zipper and pulled out the plastic storage bowl and ice blocks. She dumped them in the sink. Wait. Something was in the dish. Cautiously, she pried open the lid.
Her heart thumped and she went a little light-headed from shock. Dry-mouthed, fingers shaking, she reached in and lifted up a single hundred-dollar bill.
It felt real.
Holy shit, there had to be thousands in there.
Upstairs, Jasmine thumped around in her room. Startled, Zin clamped the lid back on the bowl and ran into her own bedroom behind the kitchen as fast as she could. She shut the door and locked it. Hands still shaking, she dumped the contents out on the bed.
She sifted through, counting the fried-chicken-scented bills twice. Eight grand.
Eight. Grand. Why was he homeless if he had that kind of money, and the wherewithal to hold on to it?
She stuffed the money into her backpack and dashed out of her room, out of the house, and down the road the short distance to the park.
There he was, the last rays of the setting sun glinting off the wild mass of matted hair as he sat on the swings. Her heart skipped a beat and she wasn’t sure what she was going to say to him.
The gate squealed when she opened it, but he didn’t look up until she sat down next to him. She dropped the backpack at her feet and pulled the zipper open.
“I’m really confused,” she said.
“About?”
She twisted her swing to face him, pointing at the backpack. “That. Why are you like this if you’ve got so much money you can just give away eight-fricking-grand?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out another wad of cash. Then another. Then another. “I told you why.”
“Deal with the Devil,” she breathed. The wind gusted, catching a few of the bills and whipping them away. Zin gasped and started to dive after them. She froze when she realized he hadn’t moved, other than to tighten his grip on the money in his lap. “You’re not going to—you just lost like three hundred bucks.”
“It doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said quietly. He sorted the money into a stack quickly and held it out to her. “It won’t solve my problems.”
She stared at the two-inch stack of bills. “Valdus…”
“This will solve your problems, Zinnia. Please, take this.”
When he said her name, her heart stuttered again. Slowly, she accepted the stack of cash from him. “Thank you.”
“Save your dad from your sisters. He’s a good man.”
They sat in silence for a long moment. “So you really did make a deal with the real Devil?”
“Yeah.”
“How does that happen? Do you go to a crossroads and do some ritual or something?”
He chuckled. “No. He’s opportunistic. I was about to end up self-destructing. My uncle and brothers took me on a hunting trip and I left them and went off on my own. I was going to shoot myself in the head once I got far enough away from them.”
Zin thought back to the pictures she’d found online, the ones where his smile was small, his eyes sad, and there was so much space around him that had once been filled with laughing loved ones.
“I was probably a mile from everyone else. I sat down on a stump beside a lake and I was ready to do it. He walked out of the woods in a cheap suit. Looked like a furniture salesman or something. Middle-aged guy, bald, glasses. He had the jacket on.” He took a breath and leaned against the left-hand chain. “Zinnia, I was done. I’d been forced to leave the one thing that had become my identity. I wasn’t anybody anymore. I wasn’t the same person I’d been before I left, so my family didn’t know how to be around me. I didn’t know how to be around them. We were strangers. Even my dog didn’t like me anymore. I’d been a soldier. I went from being this strong, brave, capable entity to…an unemployed guy who sat on a couch and walked with a limp.”
He fell silent. Zin glanced over and saw how pained his expression was. “I had nothing left. My mom…she tried so hard to pull me off the ledge, but I just couldn’t see past my own misery. She was hurting for me as bad I was hurting.” He reached up and rubbed his eyes with his hands.
Zinnia’s own heart ached for him, for his mom. She missed her own mom like crazy. “Val,” she murmured. Fur always made her want to shudder and cringe, so she slipped her hand beneath the edge of the cured bearskin to touch his arm.
Val twitched at her touch and stared at her with wide eyes still glittering with tears he couldn’t completely hide. Their gazes met and held for a long time. Zinnia had no desire to pull away. “You’re not alone anymore.”
“I’m always going to be alone. Even when this is over, I will be. It’s been so long since I’ve been around another person, I don’t even know how to do it anymore.”
“You’re with me right now, Valdus.”
His stared at her, searching her face for any trace of deception or insincerity. He was so transparent she could almost read his thoughts. She grinned and jumped up from her swing. Before he could move, she wrapped her arms around his neck.
Like he was scared touching her would scare her away, he was slow to return the hug. His hands fluttered at the small of her back, uncertain, and then settled on her waist. She gave him an extra squeeze and drew back so she could look him in the eye. The moonlight made his light blue eyes seem even lighter.
“You’re not alone anymore, Val. You’re worth something. I’m not just talking about that pocket full of money. You’re my friend, and that means the world to me. Okay? No more of this ‘forever alone’ crap, okay?”
His bottom lip trembled before he steeled his jaw and nodded.
She barely saw the dirt when she hugged him again. She backed up and sat down on her swing again. “Okay, so finish your story.”
Val cleared his throat and had to wait a second. When he started to speak, his voice cracked a couple of times.
“He offered me money, love, value. He painted this amazing picture of what I could be. He introduced himself and I didn’t believe him. Then again, it didn’t make sense why a man in dress slacks and loafers was ten miles out into a forest, either.
“He told me all I had to do to earn all he promised was prove my bravery and strength. Before h
e finished speaking, this huge bear came running out of the woods, roaring and coming straight for me. I shot it, but it only slowed it down and made it angrier.” He laughed and glanced over at Zinnia. “I got into a fucking fist-fight with a bear that was taller than me, and probably weight six hundred pounds.”
“Was it real? I mean, like a real bear and not some devil-trick?”
“Devil-trick?” He laughed again. “No, Zinnia. It was a real, flesh-and-blood bear. It got me in a bear hug and was crushing me, but I managed to get my knife up and I slit its throat. After it died, I was laying there nearly dead myself. The Devil leaned over me and told me to cut the skin off its back. It took me a solid day to do it. I’d been bitten a few times and it had managed to get me across my back with its claws.”
“What did you do?”
He shrugged and looked down. “I don’t really remember. My uncle found me at some point and I woke up in the hospital. The Devil showed up late one night with the bearskin and told me the details of his deal.”
Zinnie scuffed her feet in the dirt, her mind reeling. Common sense said the guy was a total crackpot, but she’d seen him pull thousands of dollars out of his pocket—a pocket that wasn’t anywhere near big enough to hold that much money. “This is really hard to believe, Val.”
“I know.” He glanced over at her. “Want some more money?”
She stared at him, startled and a little horrified, until he winked and she made out the hint of smile on what little bit of his lips showed through his facial hair.
She laughed and held up the cash he’d already given her. “I’m good.”
Chapter Five
Val seemed more human every night he showed up at the little park with Zinnia. She caught him up on TV shows, movies, books, and whatever celebrity gossip she deemed important, even though it was obvious he had no idea who half the people she talked about were. She told him about her friends, her job, and her struggle to put herself through nursing school without having to take out student loans or ask her dad for help.
Every night, she fell a little more in love with him. She tried to talk herself out of it. He was homeless. He had the insane idea that he couldn’t change his situation—despite his apparently magic money jacket—until seven years were up. This was a guy who would have another breakdown as the date approached and find a new curse, a new excuse to remain as he was. She’d seen enough patients do the same thing when deadlines approached.
On her nights off, they spent hours on the playground, shuffling back and forth in the swings or sitting on the waist-high platform under the big wooden play structure.
“What are you going to do when the seven years are up?” she asked. They were stretched out on the grass near the back of the playground, staring up at the stars. The neighborhood was far enough from the main part of town that the streetlights didn’t obscure the sky.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve got more money saved up than I know what to do with. Maybe I’ll buy a house out in the country somewhere. Write a book about my experiences.” He chuckled softly. “I’ll have to market it as fiction, I think.”
“I’d buy it,” Zinnia said. You should make it a romance, she thought. And at the end, you shed this skin and we run into each other’s arms and live happily ever after.
“Honestly, the first thing I’m going to do is get a hotel room and spend a week in the shower.”
Zinnia laughed and tugged one of his dreadlocks. “And hire somebody to deal with this jungle.”
“I don’t know…I kinda like the hair. And didn’t you say beards were a thing right now?”
“I didn’t say they were a good thing.”
“It took me a solid five years to grow this beard.”
Zinnia laughed and rolled on to her stomach, holding herself up on her elbows. “Seriously?”
“Never in my life been able to grow facial hair without looking like a thirteen year old just hitting puberty.”
“Maybe with some serious shaping and trimming,” Zinnia conceded. Despite the dirt caked on his face, she could see him now, thanks to the pictures she’d found.
And the ones his mother had sent her.
She sobered up and pushed herself into a sitting position. “Val, I did something. I hope you won’t be mad at me.”
He sat up. “Should I be worried?”
“No. No. I think…I think it was the right thing to do.” She dragged her bag over and pulled a thick envelope out. “A few weeks back, you told me how lonely you had been and how far away from everyone you felt. I told you the day we met I’m nosy. I Googled you and found your old Facebook profile, and then a bunch of missing-person posts from the last six years. I thought about it for a long time and I emailed your mom.”
“You did…you did what?”
She put the envelope down on the moonlit grass between them. “I didn’t tell them anything other than I knew you. They thought you were dead, Val. I didn’t tell them anything, other than you were alive and had been through some really difficult stuff.”
Val didn’t say anything. Zinnia wrapped her arms around herself and held her breath, every muscle in her body tense and tight. She barely dared to breath. “They wrote you letters. Your mom emailed them all to me to print out for you. I told them you weren’t ready to come home yet.”
The envelope between his fingers, he stood up. “I need to go.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first,” Zinnia called after him. He moved fast, disappearing into the shadows beyond the gate. “Please don’t be mad at me,” she whispered.
Chapter Six
Six letters. Two from his mom. One from his aunt. One from his brother. An angry one from his sister. The last one was just a sheet of paper with a handful of photos printed on it.
The first letter from his mother was pleading, begging him to come home. She wanted to know why he’d disappeared. Was it her fault? Had she failed him?
“God, Mom, no,” he whispered to the sheet of paper. Call me please, she asked. The phone number was the same one she’d had his entire life.
The letters from his aunt and his brother were about the same. He rolled his eyes at his sister’s letter. He folded the letters and stuck them into his backpack. He didn’t carry much; a few changes of clothes, socks, and underwear. The Devil never said he couldn’t change clothes—just that he couldn’t wash his body. He might be a filthy bum, but his mom’s harping about clean underwear remained a lesson he lived by. Gus’s washer and dryer were in a shed off the back porch, so for a few extra bucks, Val could wash his clothes as needed. It was a struggle to get shirts on and off without taking the jacket off, but he figured the Devil could respect a manipulation of the deal. He never took it all the way off, but if he pulled his arms in the sleeves, he could get a shirt off without the jacket coming completely off his shoulders.
Girls in high school locker rooms would be jealous of his ability to change clothes without completely stripping down, he thought.
It had been a week since he’d seen Zinnia. He waited for her twice, but she never showed. Maybe she was working doubles again. He missed her so much it hurt. He shouldn’t have left so abruptly. He didn’t even know why he did that.
The shock of her revelation, the nearness of the letters from his mom cut him deep. It wasn’t anger. There wasn’t really a word to describe what had consumed him to the point that he operated on autopilot for a day or so.
Mom. For years, he’d managed to stuff down all thoughts and feelings for his family. He didn’t want them to know what he’d done to himself. Didn’t want to reveal how far he’d sunk. They had all tried so hard to be there for him after he got back from the VA hospital, but nothing cut through his self-pitying funk.
They hadn’t left him. He left them.
He whispered his mom’s phone number and started for Zinnia’s neighborhood. She would forgive him for leaving her. He hoped she hadn’t felt bad or thought he was mad at her. Once he begged forgiveness, maybe she would let
him use her cellphone to call his mom.
Of course she would think that. He’d stormed off without a word to her. He couldn’t fathom how she wouldn’t think he was pissed at her.
By the time he made it across town, night was falling. He didn’t have the lunch bag, but most of the times, he hadn’t. She seemed to know when he was there. He found a spot in the shadows of the play structure to wait. He’d give her a few hours. It wasn’t like he had any place to be. He hoped she’d show. Third time’s a charm.
An hour passed. He leaned back against the support post, facing the woods the encircled the playground beyond the fence on three sides. The neighborhood was still being developed, so the entire left hand side of the street was just uncleared lots.
He took out his mom’s letter. It was too dark to read it, but holding it made him feel better. He smiled to himself. If Zinnia wasn’t the one he was supposed to be with, he would rather wear the bearskin forever. He couldn’t imagine not coming for her once his deal was done. He’d be free and clear—
A scream cut through the night.
Zinnia!
He raced from the playground and down the short stretch of road. Several cars were parked haphazardly in the front yard, one so close to the porch it touched the steps. The front door hung open. From within, glass shattered and Hugh yelled something in a high, panicked voice. Zinnia screamed again.
Her voice cut short.
Rage burned through Val’s entire body, coupled with icy-cold adrenaline. He thundered into the house, every sense awakened for the fight. The house was trashed. Every piece of furniture was sliced open. Cotton and upholstery foam littered the thin carpet like snow. The old TV was tipped over on its face and the dining room table was upended, with a couple of the chairs shattered. He grabbed one of the solid wood chair legs and marched toward the sounds coming from the room beyond the kitchen. He paused just outside the door, out of sight.
“Where’s the rest of the money, bitch?” a male voice demanded. “Jazzy said you’ve got thousands stashed away in here.”