by Brea Brown
She laughs. “Let’s get out of here. It’s cold. And depressing. Let’s grab some lunch at that tavern in town. I’m jonesing for some clam chowder.”
He smiles and squints over at her. “I’m not ready to go yet.”
“I can wait for you in the car, then, while you have a few minutes alone,” she offers.
Shaking his head, he says, “Nah. You know what? You go on back to the city. Tom can come get me.”
They argue back and forth for a while, but he eventually wins when he loses his temper and yells, “I’m trying to tell you nicely that I want to be alone, okay? Do I need to take out a fucking billboard?”
With her usual irreverence, she backs away, “Message received, Lukey-pookie. I’ll see you back at the office.”
“Not today,” he corrects her. “I have other things I need to do. Thanks for bringing me out here, though.”
She waves and hikes back to the road, where she gets into her SUV and drives off with one last horn honk in Luke’s direction. He lifts a hand in a half-hearted wave, turns, and hops toward me. It’s immediately apparent that the gazebo is his destination. I brace myself to be discovered.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
He almost doesn’t look surprised to see me. Of course, after the past couple of days he’s had, maybe nothing does surprise him anymore.
“Hi,” I say simply.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, lowering himself onto the bench closest to the gazebo steps and propping his crutches next to him. He rests his casted foot and leg against the floor and coughs like someone who’s smoked two packs a day for the past ten years. Before I can even think of a decent answer, he asks, “Are you really here?”
I shoot him an alarmed look. “Yes…”
He shrugs. “I’m on a lot of drugs right now, so… it’s possible I’m hallucinating. How’d you get past the cop?”
That’s easier to answer than why I’m here, so I say, “I parked at the public access beach and walked.”
He smiles weakly.
To save him the effort of the tough guy act I can tell he’s going to try to put on, I walk over to him, sit right next to him, and take his hand. “I’ve missed you,” I say bluntly. “And when I heard about this, I… I was so worried. But nobody could tell me anything, and I couldn’t get in touch with you, so in order to not go crazy in my stupid hotel room while I waited for you to get your messages from Sally, I drove out here. It’s the only thing I could think to do.”
He stares down at our hands. Mine still look halfway decent from the paraffin treatment I got at the hotel before the Thornfield party. His are scratched and rougher than I remember them. They also look like they’re sunburned, as does his neck, face, and any other skin I can see. I’m guessing first-degree burns.
After he doesn’t say anything in response to my emotional monologue, I ask, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” He looks up and smiles bravely, but the broken blood vessel in his right eye, the cut above his eyebrow, and the various scratches on the rest of his face tell a different story. “I’m alive, anyway. And, like I said, I’m on a lot of pain medication, so everything seems okay for now.” He pulls his hand away from mine and rests it on my knee. “Are you okay? Seeing this,” he points over his shoulder with his thumb toward the house, “can’t be easy.”
“I’m trying not to think too much about it,” I admit. “The smell is bothering me, but as long as I don’t stare too long at it or let myself imagine what it was like when the fire was at its strongest, I’m okay.” I gulp. “And seeing you makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“Seeing you has vastly improved my day, too,” he states matter-of-factly.
“Good.”
I want to kiss him. Or at the very least hug him or put my head on his shoulder or… something. But he looks like it hurts him to breathe, so I content myself with taking hold of his hand again and squeezing it.
“Is Paulette okay?” I inquire, realizing that as long as I keep asking questions and dealing with facts, the less I feel like I’m about to fly apart.
He nods. “She’s fine, physically. She got out right away… and was smart enough to stay out, unlike yours truly.” He grins self-deprecatingly.
“Why’d you go back inside?” I wonder, unable to think of a single thing that would be worth returning to a burning building for. Oh. Except for my laptop. I’d totally go back inside a burning house for that, I think with a stab of embarrassment.
Ducking his head, he answers. “Well… for one thing, Caroline was still in there.”
“So what?!” My heart races, and my elevated blood pressure makes my eyes bulge. “You should have let her burn.”
“That’s exactly what she wanted, though. And I’d be damned before I gave her the satisfaction of killing herself in the process of trying to kill me. And then for me to live and her to die? No way was she going to be a fucking martyr.” He shakes his head firmly.
“But she’s the one who started the fire!”
“I know. And the authorities know. And she’s going to be put away for it. She’s already been charged. I’m glad it’s out of my hands. I don’t have a choice about whether to press charges, so her family can’t try to pressure me not to, like all the other times.” He sighs. “But that’s not the only reason I went back inside.” Wincing, he flattens himself so he can reach into his pocket. He pulls something out that he holds in his closed fist. “You’re going to be mad at me when I show you this, but… well...”
He opens his hand. On his upturned palm is a flash drive. While I’m puzzled as to why the tiny plastic device is so important, I’m not sure why he thinks it would make me angry.
“I don’t get it,” I admit. “What is that?”
“A bunch of your writing files. Copied—actually, moved—from your laptop onto this.” The guilty look on his face tells me he’s confessing to something major, but I still don’t understand the depth of his revelation.
“Okay….”
Holding it up between our faces, he says, “I, uh…” and then stops. He sets his jaw, takes a deep breath, and restarts. “The day I came out here to try to get Caroline to leave you alone, I opened your computer and read your manuscript after I got back from my walk on the beach.”
I nod. “Yes. I remember. It pissed me off, hardcore.”
He smiles at the memory. “Yes, it did. And I told you to password protect it, and, as usual, you thoroughly ignored me—”
“No, I didn’t! I password protected both the document and the computer after that incident.”
“Not immediately after,” he points out and then declares, “I checked. While you were down at the beach.”
Instead of saying anything, I simply clench my teeth together and stare him down.
“You left your laptop unattended quite often,” he defends himself. “And with Caroline lurking around… well, it made me sick to my stomach to think what kind of hell she could unleash on you with one keystroke. I also wouldn’t put it past her to plagiarize something and have it published under her own name. Or… well, like I said, I thought of a thousand horrifying scenarios, so while you were on your walk, I went to the gazebo with this,” He flicks the thumb drive with his forefinger, “planning to simply copy your writing files onto it, but I got ultra-paranoid, so… I completely moved the bulk of them, when I saw you hadn’t accessed some of the files in years. I figured you wouldn’t miss them. And I was going to put the drive in a safe deposit box and tell you what I’d done—after Caroline left, and there was no chance of her overhearing me—but I… I… realized the next day that you’d be understandably pissed off at my interference, so... I tried to put the files back on your computer the day you stayed in bed all day, but by then, you’d password protected it.” He looks miserably at me. “I should have confessed everything right then, but… I felt like you were finally starting to trust and—maybe even like—me.”
“So you’ve had these files all these months? Wh
at are they? I don’t even know what they could be…”
He swallows audibly. “I wish I could say I don’t know, that I didn’t look at them, but… I did. Of course, I did. Not until after you’d gone, though, and I realized I still had it. I looked at them to see if I needed to send them to you and tell you what I’d done. I was trying to figure out how I could get away with not ever telling you.”
Even though he’s the one completely in the wrong, I feel bad for him. He looks so remorseful. About a bunch of stupid documents I don’t even remember writing. I never would have missed them. But he went back into a burning house for them.
Pressing the plastic rectangle into my hand, he says, “There’s some good stuff on there. Obviously. Really, really, really good.”
“There is?!”
He laughs. “Yes! Stuff you must have written in college, before you started writing your book.”
“Wow. I-I don’t remember any of it.”
He scratches his chin. “There’s a short story about a man having to put his dog to sleep that made me cry.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Sounds like a knock-off of Old Yeller.”
“No! It’s excellent and original. Anyway, it was worth saving.”
I gently tap his cast. “And how did this happen to your leg? Obviously, it was after you rescued Caroline and the thumb drive?”
He nods. “Yeah. The stairs collapsed under me when I was on my way back down. Caroline was already out; she went down the terrace stairs and around from the backyard into the front. I found out later that she watched me run back inside. I should have known better than to think she’d still be inside. She never did have the guts to kill herself the easy way, much less in a painful way like burning and suffocating to death.” He winces when he sees my reaction to his statement. “Oh, fuck. I’m sorry, Jayne.” He pulls me closer to him and hugs me to his side. “That was such an insensitive thing to say!”
Hugging me obviously hurts, because he takes a sharp breath, which then brings on a coughing jag. I pull away from him but offer my arm for him to hold while he bends at the waist and sputters. Finally, he stops and straightens. Eyes watering, he blinks and smiles wanly. “Sorry. Oh, hell, that hurts. Cracked rib.”
“Come on.” I stand and hold out my hand to him. “Let’s get you home. You can wait in the cruiser while I go get my rental car. It’s a good thing I’m here; I don’t know how you expected to call Tom to come get you, if your phone burned up in the fire.”
He flinches and tilts his head at me. “How…?”
I hold up the thumb drive to remind him of his own transgressions while admitting, “Yeah, I was eavesdropping on you and Blanche. So sue me.”
For the sake of his ribs, he stifles his laughter but grins widely while grabbing his crutches and hoisting himself to a standing position. “No thanks. I think I’ll be getting my fill of legal action in the upcoming months, what with testifying against my ex-wife at her trial, which will be sure to be a media circus, considering who she is. No need to add petty litigious issues, such as eavesdropping, to the docket.”
His reference to Caroline sobers me. “I’m sorry life’s been so… difficult… lately. And I’m sorry if I’ve added to it in any way.”
“Bah! Fearing for your life on a daily basis adds some excitement. And…” now he looks away from me when he continues, “…heartbreak reminds you you’re alive.”
“In that case, I’ve been extremely aware of being alive,” I say to let him know how I’ve felt without him.
He smiles sadly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I step in front of him and look up into his face.
“I’ve spent a lot of time lately wishing I wasn’t.”
“All you had to do was stop moving out of the way of speeding cars, stabbing knives, and blazing blowtorches,” I point out.
His lips inches from mine, he says thickly, “The will to survive is oddly subconscious. And extremely difficult to fight.”
Our lips are nearly touching when I say, “I’m very glad about that. And don’t ever risk your life again for something like a thumb drive with a bunch of my forgotten ramblings on it. Understand?”
“But the guy… and the dog… and… Tears streamed down my face when I read it, Jayne.”
“I don’t care. Promise me you’ll never do something stupid like that again.”
He rolls his eyes. “I promise the next time my insane ex-wife tries to burn me in my bed that I’ll only worry about saving my own ass. And yours. Since I fully expect you to be in that bed with me.”
Finally, our lips touch, first softly and tentatively and then firmly and hungrily.
There’s that tummy-jolting, heart-jerking feeling I’ve been missing so much!
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“It’s coming along quite nicely,” I say, getting into the car after our latest look at the beach house’s construction. “How much longer are they saying it’ll take?”
Luke buckles his seat belt and turns the key in the ignition. “A few more weeks. It’ll go quickly from here on out. Mostly cosmetic stuff. And Malcolm O’Shea’s money gets things done more quickly than normal people’s money.”
In settlement talks (out of court, of course) nine months ago, Malcolm had tried to appeal to the Luke he’d been dealing with all the years he’d been married to Caroline, demanding, “Isn’t it enough that my only daughter lives in a loony bin and will forever be looked upon as a criminal?”
But that Luke doesn’t exist anymore. He got lost somewhere in the smoke and ashes overlooking the beach. Instead, Malcolm’s ex-son-in-law had matter-of-factly replied, “No. I want my house back, and since your only daughter—who tried to kill me on more than one occasion—was responsible for its burning down, I think it’s reasonable for you to pay to rebuild it. Maybe you should have locked her up sooner—perhaps the first time she tried to kill me?—and saved yourself some money… and face. Not to mention, you would have been doing me a huge favor.”
Malcolm had forked over the dough, however grudgingly.
“I’m dying to get back into that gazebo,” I half-joke. Actually, I’m not joking at all. I’m praying it’ll work its magic, and I’ll be inspired to start—and eventually, finish—the book that Thornfield is seriously pressuring me about. I have enough money to pay them back the advance I received so that I can get out of my contract with them, but Tullah says that won’t work in my favor if I ever want to publish another book sometime in the future (ha!). I’m not going to have a choice for much longer, though. I’m going to have to put out or pay up. I’ve never been great at putting out on demand.
Turning from the driveway onto the road, Luke sighs. “You don’t need the magic gazebo. You have the thumb drive. Why won’t you look at the stuff on it? I’m begging you.”
Yes, he’s been begging me for months, to no avail. I want nothing to do with that thing.
“When we get home, I’m loading those documents onto your laptop,” he says in a tone that leaves no room for argument.
“Why?!”
“Because. This is ridiculous. You have two dozen good starts right under your nose, but you’re too stubborn to look at them. You’d rather be a one-hit wonder.”
“That’s not true! I’ve been busy, that’s all. Too busy to be bothered. Too busy to be inspired. Now that we’ve finished the screenplay and cast the movie, and they’re scouting filming locations, they don’t need my input for a while. I’ll have some time to relax and think and—”
He reaches over and grabs my hand. “I’m not Arthur Thornfield, so stop trying to blow smoke up my ass.”
I know better than to continue lying to him. He knows I have nothing. He knows I feel like a fraud. He knows I’m worried I’ll never have another idea.
Letting my head fall back against the headrest, I stare out my window. “You’ll see. There’s nothing on that flash drive that can help me.”
He lets go of my hand and says hotly, “I’m sick of you ignoring
my instincts on this! Would I have gone to the trouble to run back into a burning house if there were nothing on it?”
Ironically, that’s part of why I can’t bear to look at it. It freaks me out to think he could have died retrieving a bunch of my crappy college writing assignments. I would have never forgiven myself. Not that I would have known. Anyway! I hate thinking about it; I don’t even want to look at that flash drive (that’s why it’s shoved into a desk drawer in our apartment). And I definitely don’t want to touch it long enough to plug it into my computer and retrieve the files from it.
I hate making him mad, though, so I relent. “Fine. But I’m not touching it. And I’m still pissed off at you for taking such a risk to get it.”
“So damn stubborn,” he mutters, rubbing his chin and staring straight ahead through the windshield. “I told you; I’ll copy the files to your laptop. Promise me you’ll read them.”
“Is that an order?” I listlessly turn my head to look at him.
“Yes. I’m pulling rank and ordering you to read them, if that’s what it takes.”
“‘Pulling rank’? What the hell is that supposed to mean? You don’t out-rank me!” Outraged, I stare at his profile.
He stifles a sudden grin. “I broke my leg and almost died for those files. The least you can do is read them.”
“I never would have asked you to do that. Ever.”
“And I did it anyway. More reason for you to do as I say.”
“I already said I would.”
“Just making sure you understand how important it is to me.”
I clench my teeth when I feel the tears of frustration threatening. “I get it. Can we please change the subject?”
He glances over at me and does a double-take when he sees that I’m becoming emotional. “Hey,” he says gently, offering me his hand again.
I take it and squeeze his fingers. “I’m fine,” I claim. And I am, but I get easily upset when I think too much about what could have happened. And I hate when he makes light of it. I know too well how it could have turned out. It’s far from funny.