by A. Gorman
“Breakfast is great.” I glance at the fluffy golden-brown biscuits on my kitchen counter. My mouth waters just lookin’ at them. There’s sausage gravy on the stove, and I lick my lips; there ain’t a faster way to my heart than a good biscuit with sausage gravy. As if she hadn’t already paved her own damn road through my chest right to it. “How you doin’ this morning?”
“I’m great.”
I cock an eyebrow, and give her a cut-the-bullshit glare. “How are you really?”
“I’m fine.”
I gently coax her arm from her side and turn her wrists over to inspect the damage I did last night. The faintest purple fingerprint stares back at me. I trace the outline of it so gently I barely even feel the softness of her skin. “I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head, staring up at me in earnest. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“I do actually. I just beat the shit out of your ex-husband and here I am laying my hands on you in the middle of the night.” I bring her forearm to my lips and kiss the bruise. She closes her eyes and tears leak out from the corners.
“I know you would never hurt me intentionally, Jake.”
I pull her to me, cradling the back of her head the way I had last night as I kiss her hair and whisper, “I’d just as soon throw myself on the mercy of the Taliban again before I hurt you.”
And I mean every word. I’d give my life for this woman and her son—I’d give them my last penny if it would help keep them safe. The two of them came careening into my life when I wanted it the least. That car accident of hers wound up being the best thing that ever happened to me.
* * *
When we pull into her drive, it’s apparent immediately that something’s wrong. The door to her salon isn’t just open; the whole glass pane is smashed. Ellie puts her hands over her mouth and gasps. I tell her to wait in the car while I sweep the house, but I know he’s probably long gone. I ease open the door. Glass crunches under my foot as I move farther into the salon. The house is trashed, and it’s apparent that Jimmy’s been here. Across the living room wall, painted in what looks to be Spencer’s craft paint in red, white, and blue is the word WHORE.
From a felon to Frankenstein. Elle sure knows how to pick ’em.
I don’t want her to see something like this. Hell, I didn’t even want to bring her back here because it wasn’t safe. She’d hollered and carried on about missing appointments and money lost, and we’d settled on a compromise. She could go to work, but I would stay with her the whole time, and Spencer too. It weren’t safe for either one of them to be away from me while her husband was out there.
I sweep the house and find it clear, but there isn’t a single piece of furniture he hasn’t ruined or left unturned. The TV is smashed and all her plates, glasses, and knick-knacks too. There are a couple of holes where Jimmy put his fist through the drywall.
A noise from the salon has me doubling back before she can see her home destroyed like this. I block the door. “I told you to wait in the car.”
“Let me by, Jake,” she says, looking up at me with tears in her eyes. I shake my head, and I don’t move one bit. Ellie shouts, beating her fists against my chest. I’m now the target for her anger and frustration, and that’s okay. I’ll take it gladly if it means she don’t have to see her and Spencer’s lives destroyed like this.
“You don’t need to see.”
“It’s my house,” she says, her voice shaking. “I have a right to see—” Her words stop short when she glances around me.
“Don’t look,” I say, but it’s too late. She’s already seen it. She sobs, her hand flinging up to cover her mouth.”
“Angel, come on,” I say, attempting to usher her out, but she cries and I don’t know what else to do but pull her against me and hold her.
A moment later, I lead her back outside. Old man Williams is crossing the road on shaking legs and a walking stick that’s trembling so hard, it looks like it might just snap in two. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the man move off that front porch step. Nuke barks at him through the back windshield of the car, and Spence covers his ears tightly with his hands.
“Quiet, Nuke,” I command. The barking stops. Ellie rushes to the car and attempts to soothe Spence, reminding him of his deep-breathing exercises.
“I been worried sick about the two of you.” Williams wheezes. “That rat bastard took you outta here yesterday and I ain’t seen you since.”
“We’ve been at Jake’s, Mr. Williams,” Ellie says. “I should have called you to let you know we were okay.”
He nods and tips his chin toward the house. “He came back here around two A.M, drunk as Cooter Brown and screamin’ like a bear with its paw caught in a trap. I knew y’all weren’t there, ’cause I’d been watchin’ for ya all evening, so I just let him have at it and called the police, but he left in a hurry when he heard those sirens.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Williams. I’ll pay for all the damages.”
“You ain’t gotta worry about that, Miss Mason.” He waves that suggestion off. “What the hell else do I pay all that money to my insurance company for?”
“I’ll come fix up the property once I get Ellie and Spence safe and settled at my place,” I say, ignoring Ellie’s protests.
“No, this is my mess, and I’ll clean it up.”
“No, you won’t.” I stare down at one seriously pissed off southern woman.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with my hands, Jake. You don’t need to wrap me in cotton wool.”
“Alright then, you fix it up. Buy the supplies you need and I’ll see to it that you’re paid in kind,” Williams says, meeting my gaze over the top of Ellie’s head. I nod, and she throws her hands up in exasperation.
“Jake,” Ellie protests, but I put a hand up to stop her.
“Get in the car, angel,” I say. Ellie glares at me and folds her arms across her chest. Now I know she’s really pissed.
“You alright, boy?” Williams leans into Spencer’s window. Spencer looks up at him with a glum expression.
“You’re not on your porch,” the boy says. “That’s not the same.”
“No, it ain’t.”
“Mamma says change isn’t bad, but Daddy was change, and he was bad.”
Williams nods. “Well, sometimes people do bad things. Ain’t nothing to be done for it now, but you go with Jake; he’ll look out for you. He and your mamma.”
“Yes sir.” The kid nods, and then glances up at me with a curious expression, as if he’s afraid that what Williams said wasn’t the truth.
“You can bank on that, Spencer.” I crouch down by the window so he’ll meet my gaze, even if it is only for a second. The boy needs to know I’m speakin’ from the heart. “I’d lay down my life before I let anything happen to either one of you. Nuke would too.”
He nods, and a half-smile forms on his face. I resist the urge to ruffle his hair, because I know he won’t like that.
When I straighten, his mother’s eyes meet mine. They brim with unshed tears. “Thank you,” she mouths, but I shake my head. She don’t need to thank me. Ellie and her boy have taught me how to be human again. If there’s any thanks to be had, it belongs to them.
Chapter Nineteen
Ellie
After we left my house in tatters, Jake had driven us to Walmart, where we’d fought rather publically about him buying new clothes and toiletries for me and Spence. He won. He’d also won the argument about me staying in the car while he swept the house for danger, and the one where he’d told me I wasn’t coming with him to clean up Jimmy’s mess. It was my damn house.
The second he was gone, I exacted my revenge by cleaning his own house top to bottom and filling every surface of his kitchen with baked goods. I planned on putting the man in a diabetic coma. Not exactly keyin’ the side of his car or breaking windows. Nope, revenge was a sweetly frosted heart-shaped sugar cookie. It might not have sent the best message, but Spencer and I had made enough to keep Jake fat f
or months to come.
Take that, hot Marine.
I packed them up into Tupperware containers that I was surprised he had at all, and then I froze the unfrosted ones so my revenge could just keep on keepin’ on long after Spence and I had returned home. I usually didn’t get the chance to bake this much. The salon kept me busy, and I tried to keep Spencer’s diet as preservative and sugar-free as possible because it tempered the number of meltdowns we experienced on a weekly basis, but I figured these were extenuating circumstances, so a little sugar wouldn’t hurt him just this once.
He’d had fun helping me in the kitchen, and I reminded myself to take time to do this more often. It was a chance to teach him how to be a little more independent, and it was good for him on a sensory level. He hated getting his hands dirty, and working the flour into the butter had been a challenge for him. After our creations were complete, I’d let him choose the most perfect cookie, and he’d actually hugged me for more than three seconds, telling me I was “the best” around a mouthful of cookie. To any other parent that might seem like nothing at all or be something they hear every day, but those two little words and those three seconds were as good as my child telling me he loved me.
I know he does—of course I know. We don’t have it easy, and he might not ever be able to express the way he feels with words or affection, but he expresses it in other ways: smiles when I understand all he can’t put into words, a wide-eyed shriek of happiness when I borrow a war history book from the library for him, or even more rare, when I purchase one he can keep. And sometimes at night he comes and climbs into my bed because he needs the comfort that only a mother can provide. He stays on the opposite side of the mattress, mind, but for an ASD kid like Spence, it’s huge. And those nights make me feel as if I’m bridging the divide he’s put in place between us.
Now, fed and bathed and clothed in his new PJs, he is sound asleep in the spare room, and I’m about tearing my hair out with boredom. I’ve scrubbed every inch of this house; there isn’t anything left to bake; I’ve showered, and done laundry, and flicked through a million different shows on Netflix that couldn’t hold my attention. Even Nuke is starting to get jumpy. Jake said he’d left him here to keep Spence company, but I think he really did it just to ease his nerves about leaving us here alone while Jimmy is still out there.
Nuke gives an excited little yip and bolts to the door. I follow, because what the hell else is there to do? And when I peer through the stained glass on the front door and see Jake coming up the walk, I breathe a sigh of relief. I also tell my heart to quit skipping like a schoolgirl and my stomach to stop flutterin’ at the sight of him.
I open the door. He stands there on the front porch, key in hand, blinking at me as though he’s surprised to see me. I probably look like a mad woman. I’m clothed not in my new pajamas, but in the new jeans and one of the T-shirts he bought. My hair is wet and my face free of makeup, but I wish I’d looked in the bathroom mirror before I left it because I probably have food in my teeth or something on my face.
I lean against the door frame. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He looks exhausted, and a pang of guilt moves through me. “Mind if I come in?”
I laugh nervously and step back from the doorway, allowing him to enter his own house. Nice one, Ellie. Jake closes the door behind him and greets his dog with a nice long ear scratch before heading for the kitchen.
“Boots, mister. I just cleaned those floors.”
He turns and gives me a wry smile. Doubling back to the door, he removes his boots and lines them up neatly by mine and Spencer’s. This may be his house, but my sweat went into that sparkle, and I’ll not have him tracking dirt all over those shiny floors.
“It smells incredible in here,” he says, making his way to the kitchen. I follow close behind.
“I knew you probably hadn’t eaten, so I took the liberty of—”
“Baking so much we could construct a new house out of cookies for you and Spence to live in?” He halts in the entryway to the kitchen and turns to look at me.
I roll my eyes. “You’d need a bigger oven for that.”
Jake strides toward the bench and leans over, breathing in the scent. “I’m not gonna lie, I’ve got half a mind to stall those repairs so I can come home to this again.”
“Sit down. I’ll get you some dinner.”
I clear the last tray of cooling cookies from the table, this time pulling out a few little plastic Ziploc baggies so I can store them inside and still keep them fresh. I’ve used every spare container he had in the house.
“You don’t have to cook for me.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
He snags one of the cookies from the bag I’m about to seal and takes a bite, moaning as he chews. “I take it back; you have to cook for me.”
I swat his hands away before he can grab another and place the bag in the freezer along with the others.
He sits at the kitchen table. “Spence in bed?”
“Yeah. He tried waiting up, but he fell asleep after the third run through of that military book you gave him.”
I take Jake’s plate from the warm oven and set it down in front of him. Fried chicken with southern green beans and taters. He devours the meal in about eight seconds flat, and I serve him up some more without even asking. I may be clueless when it comes to men and all they want, but I know a hungry man when I see one, and though feminists everywhere would all be shakin’ their heads if they could see me waiting on Jake Tucker the way I am, it makes me happy to know that he’s enjoying something I made, and it eases some of my guilt over the endless list of things this man has done for me since we met. The feminists can go jump.
Jake gets up and pours himself a tall glass of milk. He picks up one of the trays of cookies that I haven’t packed away and sets it down on the table. I take the seat opposite his as he sits and he pours me a glass.
I smile. “What, no nightcap?”
“Well, you may have already noticed this, but I’m not me when I drink.” He pins me with a look that has me both wanting to run for the hills and climb on into his lap. “I really need to be me right now.”
I frown, not really knowing what that means. Leaning over, I attempt to wipe away the adorable milk moustache that’s been left on his upper lip. He pulls out of reach. “Sorry.”
“What are you doin’?” he says with hard eyes, his warm voice turned ice-cold.
“You had a milk moustache.” I glance down at my hands to avoid the look he’s giving me. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. I just . . .”
“You can’t touch me like that, Elle.”
I lean back in my chair as if he just slapped me, and the silence stretches out between us until it feels as if it’s sinking into my skin and I can’t sit still with it no longer. I nod calmly and push up from the table, walking to the door. “It won’t happen again.”
“Elle.”
The desperate edge to his tone makes me turn around.
His hands grip his hair in frustration. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” I swallow hard and leave the room, climbing the stairs two at a time in order to get away before he can see my tears fall.
* * *
I’m woken twice during the night by the screams coming from Jake’s room. I lie awake and listen to him at the end of the hall. I can’t do nothin’ for him. In fact, I seem to only make things worse, so I squeeze my eyes closed and will myself to go back to sleep. It doesn’t work, of course. How can I sleep when he’s in so much pain?
I lie there for an eternity, staring up at the ceiling, listening to Spencer snoring, the house creaking, and Nuke whining. Against my better judgement, I creep out of bed and close the door so as not to wake Spence. Jake’s door is open, but he’s not there. I pad quietly down the stairs and through the house in my pajamas. I hadn’t bothered to grab my robe, and as I open the patio door and the tepid air from outside collides with the AC and hits me, I wish I had because my nipples ar
e peeking out through the thin fabric to say hello. Nuke bolts outside, and I follow.
“Jake?” I call. No answer.
Cold dew stings my bare feet as I walk through the yard. The garden is lit up by fireflies. The moon overhead is high and shimmers on the waxy leaves of the Red Buckeye trees that sway with the breeze as I pick a path through the overgrown shrubbery at the edge of the cliff. The lights are off in the pier house, but Nuke scurries down the stairs toward the pier and as the sounds of splintering wood and breaking bottles echo up to me, panic seizes my chest. I take off, running as fast as I can over rocky stairs carved into the hillside and along the salt-worn wooden pier.
The closer I get, the louder the din becomes, and it seems Jake isn’t limiting the destruction to just the furniture. A window in the pier house shatters as he throws a bottle through it, the loud screech piercing the quiet bay as glass falls into the water below.
The door is wide open and Nuke dives into the fray, jumping up at Jake’s back, and the Marine turns with a vehement growl, “Go back to the house.” The dog whines and sits back on its haunches as Jake’s eyes meet mine. He takes in a sharp breath. “Go back inside, Ellie.”
“No,” I say, stepping closer. I don’t dare reach out and touch him, but I do notice the sheen of sweat covering his body. It glistens in the half-light against his naked skin. I can see the dark outline of what looks like scars on his torso. I inhale sharply. “What did they do to you?”
“They ruined me,” he growls, taking a step towards me. I can smell the whiskey on his breath, and fear grips my insides the closer he comes. “They carved me up like I was a fucking animal.”
I take a step back but meet the wall. Nowhere to go. He grabs me, seizing my wrists and laying my palms flat against his body. He runs them roughly over puckered skin and scars. “This is what they did to me. This is why you can’t just casually touch me.”