Always Box Set

by Ward, Susan

  But it wasn’t happening. It just kept building on its own. More kids doused the bank with gasoline and lit it on fire.

  Someone grabbed my arm.

  I swung without thinking.

  And the next thing I knew, I was on the ground in cuffs.

  “Goddammit, you’re not arresting him,” Georgie screamed, hovering over the uniforms holding me to the pavement. “You think things are out of control now? Wait until those kids see Jackson Parker in the back of a patrol car. Are you fucking crazy?”

  They all started to argue, Georgie was one hell of an attorney and intimidating as fuck when he was passionate about something, and whether he could have talked down this situation on his own, I would never know because kids encircled the cops who were arresting me.

  I was jerked to my feet.

  One of the cops looked at Georgie as another undid the restraints on my wrist. “You get him the fuck out of here. Make sure he’s sober by the time we pick him up tomorrow. You don’t hit a cop in my town and walk. I don’t care who the hell you are.”

  It took some work to get through the crowd back to Georgie’s car, and another hour to get home.

  “What the fuck is the matter with you, Jack?” he said for about the hundredth time since we’d left campus.

  “I didn’t know it was a cop.”

  “Well, you’re fucking in it this time.” He stared at me, shaking his head, and then relented. “I’ll call the district attorney in the morning and see what we can do about making this go away. Tossing you in jail—they can’t be stupid enough to want that. Not after tonight. They’re not in control. We are. They must know that.”

  I opened the car door, looked back at George, and said, “No one is in control, man.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  I watched him leave my driveway and make the fast loop into his. Fuck, he hadn’t gone into the house to collect Patty.

  She was sitting on the couch, watching the TV, when I entered.

  “Oh, Jackie,” she said, giving me a fast hug. “We’ve been getting calls from the press all night. Thank God they didn’t arrest you.”

  “They wanted to, but Georgie is a fucking brilliant attorney. Tell him that when you go home. And tell him thank you. I forgot to in the car.”

  She nodded and kissed me on the cheek.

  The house was quiet.

  I looked around.

  “Where’s Lena?”

  “She’s been sitting on the beach, staring at the ocean for hours. I can’t get her to come in.”

  “Go home, Patty. I’ll go talk to her.”

  “Are you sure you want me to leave?”

  “Go home,” I said, widening my eyes at her.

  I waited until the front door closed behind her, then went through the kitchen into the backyard. At the top of the stairs built into the cliffs, I stared down at the beach. There was just enough light from the moon and the safety lamps that lined our property along the cliffs for me to see Lena sitting in the sand.

  Not good, Jackie. Not good.

  Her posture said everything.

  Square shoulders and lifted chin, even sitting by surf watching the waves.

  I crossed the sand and sank down next to her. It wasn’t lost on me that she didn’t look at me. I took a moment to try to read her mood, but it was impossible, like always.

  I put an arm around her. “It’s OK, doll. I’m home. Nothing bad happened, not really. Everything is going to be fine.”

  She jerked away from me. “No it isn’t, Jack. It’s never going to be fine, and it’s time for me to stop pretending I can change that. God, you were so out of your mind you hit a cop tonight. They could have shot you right there for that.”

  I looked up at her. “It was the heat of the moment, Lena. That’s how these things can get. Jesus Christ, I didn’t plan on punching anyone.”

  Her enormous brown eyes flooded with sadness. “Every moment is the heat of the moment with you.”

  “That’s not fair. We have lived exactly how you’ve wanted since we moved here.”

  “You think I want this?” she screamed. “I love you, Jack. With all my heart. But it doesn’t matter. I’d rather divorce you than to be here when you hit bottom. I can’t survive being here and watching that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  She gnawed on her quivering lower lip, brushed at her tears, and then lifted her chin. “That I have to do what’s right for our son. I’m going back to New York with Sammy. Like I should have a year ago.”

  I heard movement, the sound fading back from me, and I knew she was leaving again.

  Like that.

  Just walking out on me.

  Like always.

  Goddamn her.

  I sprang to my feet and raced across the sand, catching her before she reached the stairs built into the cliffs. Her petite body startled when I crushed her up against me.

  “No, you’re not leaving,” I murmured against her lips, my hands firm on her face as I willed her to look into my eyes. “The last time you tried to walk out, you told me not to chase after you. That you wouldn’t come back. But you never left, Lena. I don’t know why you always want to leave or even why you stay. I only know why I’m with you.”

  “Jack, please. There’s no point to this now. It doesn’t matter. That fight we had in New York the night before Gloria called about your father’s stroke stopped mattering to me a long time ago.”

  “Well, it matters to me, Lena. And for once you’re going to listen.” I flatten her into me, my head tilting back from the agony of my flesh savoring the ecstasy of her. “This is why I married you. I love you, Lena. I always have. Not because of Sammy. And not because of whatever brought you to me. I don’t care what your reasons were, why you wanted me, because I know you feel this, too, when we touch.”

  I started kissing her, but I felt her resistance.

  “Please, this isn’t going to change anything,” she pleaded between the hungry demands of my lips.

  “This is everything, Lena. It’s us. Why you hold on to me and I hold on to you. And it’s why neither of us will ever walk away.”

  I lowered her to the sand, my mouth devouring hers as my hands anxiously assaulted the pleasure centers on her sumptuous body. I deepened my kiss and my touch, even though she didn’t respond at first. Then—very slowly—she melted beneath me and we were both ripping at our clothes.

  I entered her hard, fast and rough even though I knew that wasn’t how she liked it, and she shuddered against me. Even the light dance of her fingertips on my cheek couldn’t prompt me to gentle this. I was starving for her, and fuck, either she didn’t know it or she didn’t care.

  Either way, it wouldn’t have mattered, not then and there in the sand.

  I’d had tons of girls in my life, women, and Lena. I won’t lie to you. It felt fantastic. Pulling her from that ivory tower she’d looked down on me from for months, to fuck in the sand with me, heated and crazy like we used to be.

  But, of course, it changed nothing between us.

  Lena left the next morning.

  We often miss the meaning of words when they’re first spoken. I sure as hell did many times with Lena. But I was never so wrong as I was the next morning in how I took her final words to me: That fight we had stopped mattering to me a long time ago.

  I took it that she was through and finally done with me. Not that I blamed her. It was what I deserved.

  I stared out the window and watched her leave with our son—yet again—when it was the last thing I wanted. But it made me realize a couple of harsh truths about myself. Partial truths, but I wasn’t ready for more than that yet.

  Lena walked out because I was a careless man. I just said or sang whatever words clustered in my head, in the moment—I lived completely and blindly in the moment—and people listened and loved me. But it didn’t work, living in the now, not with a woman you loved. It certain
ly didn’t work with Lena.

  Men lived in the moment. Women were like time, with no beginning or end, every moment overlapping the ones before and the ones yet to come, part of every moment shared with a man and how they love him.

  All I wanted was for her to see me as who I was in that moment of us in the sand: I was the man who loved Lena.

  What she saw was who I really was.

  Thirty-Four

  Full reality set in later that day when I was being booked at the county jail. They made me take off my wedding ring, to be catalogued with my property, and it felt like dying pulling my gold band off my finger where Lena had put it eight years ago.

  I don’t know why, at that moment, there was total clarity and the missing pieces locked into place in my head. And it was definitely a fucking humiliating place to have it happen, surrounded by officers as they processed me and I choked back long overdue sobs of regret for what I’d put Lena through being married to me, now that I finally understood her and everything.

  Georgie promised he’d have me out in hours. I don’t know how long it was until I saw him again. I woke up on the floor of a padded confinement cell, naked and vomiting.

  Worst blast of reality. Not the drunk tank for Jackie boy, but the padded cell where they put the inmates for whom they worried detoxing would be so rough that they might try to off themselves before they got to court.

  Hours later, I was pulled out, ordered to shower and dress in their navy blue county jail gear. I was shaking and half out of my mind when I met up with Georgie in court.

  “Oh fuck, man, are you OK?” he asked.

  I couldn’t quiet the painful jerks of my muscles. “What are they going to do?”

  He patted me. “It’s OK, Jackie. They’ve offered six months, but I told them to fuck that. No way are we taking a plea. Patty’s posting bail. I’ll get you out of here in no time.”

  I stared at him.

  I had nothing outside.

  No one to go home to.

  “No, George. Don’t bail me out. I’ll take the six months. Whatever I do, whatever I say. Be a good friend. Leave me here.”

  I passed the next six months in a jail cell located next to the county dump. Appropriate location, but it felt like the fucking Hyatt to me. Sobriety for the first time in a decade was like breathing clean air and seeing sunny days, when everything had been covered by haze. Even there, in my eight by eight cell.

  As soon as the DTs stopped and I could hold the four-inch pencil they let me have, I started my letter to Lena. It wasn’t to get her back. It was to tell her I understood and to let her go.

  I loved her, but there was no way I would demean her or myself by asking for another chance in among the apologies on the sheets. She deserved more than me; she always had.

  Without a guitar, I also finished Reggie’s song. Fuck, I was finally seeing that one clearly. Why he’d urge Lena to leave me. It wasn’t to be with him. How wrong I’d been to think he would have had an affair with her. The truth I’d missed was that he had loved us both, in a way none of our friends had, by telling her to leave me and him leaving me as well.

  Fuck, I wished it hadn’t been to the army, but parked in a cell I understood that one as well. Any other way, he would have stayed with me through the years like Lena. I just wished breaking free of me hadn’t killed Reggie.

  Yep, the regrets stacked up daily.

  Ten years of being an alcoholic has a way of doing that to a man.

  I gave the letter to the guard to mail to Lena two months before another officer told me to roll up because I was going home. I hadn’t heard word one from her since I went in, and I didn’t in the weeks after I sent the letter.

  That she didn’t write back didn’t surprise me. It hurt, though. Fuck, I was hopeful Jack even when reality warned that I shouldn’t be. And whatever Lena needed to do to be OK, it was past time that I stopped interfering with her finding happiness.

  Georgie came to pick me up when I was released. I would have preferred Lena, but that anyone was there for me after all the shit I’d done, well, I was grateful.

  “Hey, brother, you look good,” he said, giving me a firm hug.

  “It’s amazing what three squares and a cot will do for a guy,” I joked, but hell, I felt all kinds of awful even with the good.

  “Let’s get you home.”

  As we drove toward Hope Ranch, I leaned out the open window and let the wind and sun hit my face.

  “Do you want to stop anywhere before the house?” Georgie asked. “Grab a drink or something.”

  I had to fight not to laugh, and it wasn’t even funny. “Nah, George. No bar. I just want to get home and walk the beach for a little while and start figuring out what do with my life now.”

  He patted me on the shoulder. “It’s all good, Jackie. I think your future is going to start looking a lot brighter real soon.”

  “It’s looking pretty fucking bright right now, Georgie. It’s eleven in the morning and I haven’t had a drink and it feels fantastic.”

  He nodded, and I could tell he was choked up and, yes, worried underneath it. But it was time for everyone to stop worrying about Jack.

  Once he parked in my driveway, I opened my door. “Hey, thanks for taking care of everything for me, Georgie.”

  “No problem, Jack. You’re like my kid brother. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”

  I nodded. “I know, George. You’ve always been a great friend to me.” I climbed out of the car and then leaned in to the open window. “You’re not coming in?”

  “No. You can call me later if you want to.” He smiled in an overly pleased kind of way that made me frown. “It’s good to have you home, Jack.”

  “It’s good to be home,” I answered, stepping back so he could drive away.

  The house was quiet when I entered it, and I went to the kitchen and just stared out Lena’s wall of glass—as I thought of it—at the bright sunny day and the ocean.

  Being alone here wasn’t what I wanted, but it was how it was, and there were no excuses, not anymore. I went to the kitchen cabinet, grabbed the bottles of booze, and poured them down the drain one by one before tossing them into the trash.

  It took a while. There were a fucking lot of bottles in there. I’d never noticed how stocked I kept that cabinet, when, hell, I hardly ever remembered anything.

  I headed toward my bedroom to pull on shorts before I hit the beach. I wanted to walk as far as I could for as long as I could now that I was able. Even small things held very different meaning to me after having every right stripped from me.

  I stepped into my room and my heart stopped.

  Lena was sitting in a chair, before the wall of glass, on the far side of the bedroom. I stared at her, the explosion of emotion inside me nearly knocking me off my feet.

  “I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know why you are. I didn’t expect it, and Georgie didn’t warn me.”

  My gaze shifted from her beautiful face to her very round middle. I almost couldn’t take in air. After all these years of trying, she was pregnant. Very pregnant. Oh fuck, I almost passed out right then.

  “George and Patty didn’t tell me a lot of things.”

  “I told them not to. I didn’t want you to get yourself out of there before you were done doing what you needed to do.”

  I nodded, overwhelmed, though I shouldn’t have been that she understood me.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” I whispered.

  Her gorgeous eyes filled with tears.

  “I never left, Jack. I didn’t get any farther than the Biltmore. I checked in to think, to figure out what I should do. I decided to come back to tell you I was late on my period and we might be pregnant, that you had to get sober or we couldn’t do this together. But by then you were locked up and Georgie told me about you telling him to leave you in there. I figured it was as good a chance at working to get you off the booze as anything was. How cou
ld I leave you after you’d done that? I’ve been in love with you for ten years, Jack, and nothing will ever change that. I will always love you. I got your letter—it took a while to find me. It went to the New York apartment, but I was here.”

  I started to move to take her in my arms, a typical Jack response on the tip of my tongue, and then I held back. She couldn’t see that I’d changed unless I showed her.

  “I meant every word, Lena. The apologies. For everything I caused in our marriage. There’s no excuse for how I was and I don’t expect you to ever forgive me. I’ve been sober six months. I did it for me. Not to get you back. I wrote you that letter because I wanted you to know that I love you and it was OK for you to leave.”

  Her gaze lowered. “I know. I knew the second I saw the phrase ‘Take Back the Dawn.’ I’m happy for you, Jack. Happy to see you looking so good.”

  I had to struggle not to drop my eyes in shame. “I love you, but there’ll be no more excuses and no more hurting you. I’ll be the man I should have always been if you’re willing to try again.”

  “I need to take this slowly,” she murmured gently.

  “I take everything one day at a time now.”

  “You can stay with me here until the baby is born, Jack,” she whispered faintly. “Would that be a good enough start for you?”

  Christ, how could she think she had to ask me that?

  Tears burned my eyes.

  I crossed the room, sank to my knees by her chair, and slipped my arms around her, a mime of ignominy and contriteness.

  “I’d stay forever, Lena, if you’ll let me.”

  She leaned forward, into me, running her hands down my back. “I know, my frustrating boy.”

  As much as my heart hurt, I made a small laugh.

  I lifted my face and drank in the beauty of her eyes.

  “Interesting woman.”

  Her fingers moved in my hair.

  “Love of my life.”

  My heart jumped into my throat.

  “Girl of my dreams.”

  She pressed my palm to her stomach.