Between the Sheets

by Molly O'Keefe

  And then his fingers shifted against hers and he twined their hands together. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Despite having long hair her entire life she’d never quite mastered the toss, but somehow she managed to get it done so she could look him in the eye.

  His smile was of a different variety. It wasn’t cheeky or cocky. It wasn’t sexy or a barely veiled threat. It was an invitation to a place deeper inside of him, past the sex and the shared weight of the heavy loads they carried in their lives.

  It was a glimpse of who he was and what he wanted.

  And part of her reared up in fear. In panicked fear.

  She didn’t know how to be the kind of person people let in like that. She didn’t know how to be close to someone in that way.

  It was as if all the wants and desires she’d suppressed, the anger and fear created in her by her father, her inadequacy and her awkwardness, were too heavy and she couldn’t carry them with her, couldn’t get them through this door that he was opening for her, and so she was stuck, marooned on an island of her own baggage.

  I can’t get there, she thought. That place you are showing me. That secret side of yourself. I can’t reach it.

  “I only want you, too,” he said.

  She pushed herself back up on her knees and then sat down properly, blood rushing back into her feet, which had fallen asleep the way she’d been crouching.

  “Shelby?” He touched her face and she nearly flinched away. “Shelby, look at me.”

  “Ty—”

  “Look. At. Me.” His voice was firm but soft, and as she lifted her eyes to his, her attention got snagged on his smile. “You think I don’t see you?” he asked. “I do. I see you.”

  She wanted to ask him what he meant, or maybe make a joke, but she couldn’t. Because she knew exactly what he meant. He saw her marooned on that baggage.

  “We’re two people.” His fingers touched her face, the edges of her lips, where if she smiled more she might have wrinkles. Lips she never thought about until he touched them. “Two people who just want each other. Who like each other. It’s not a big deal. It’s nothing to be scared of.”

  But it is, she wanted to say. Because it had been years since she’d started a relationship with a man. Years. And those early relationships hadn’t exactly been giant victories. They’d been mostly cold, slightly awkward affairs with men she wanted very little from. Men there was never any fear would try to get more from her.

  Men who would never claim to see her. Men she’d never give that opportunity to.

  “Shelby?”

  “Okay.” She pulled her face away but he didn’t let go, and his fingers bit into her cheeks as she continued to try and dodge his gaze. He wouldn’t let her. So finally she looked up at him, feeling defiant and wrecked at the same time.

  “Don’t be scared,” he whispered, his beautiful lips curved in a soft smile. “I’m not Dean. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Oh, you stupid man. I’m not scared of being hurt. It’s my sharp edges that will slice you open. You are the one that will regret this. Keep your secret self, keep your softness and your vulnerability. Don’t show it to me, because I will inevitably hurt you.

  “You’re nothing like Dean,” she said. “You’re not like any person I’ve ever known.”

  “Yeah?” He laughed. “Because I only take you to the finest places?” He glanced around the truck and she smiled, the tension inside of her cracking.

  “I like how you take me,” she whispered.

  His eyes narrowed at her words and she felt his desire; the surge of it in his body crashed over his boundaries and onto her.

  “It’s you.” He whispered kisses across her lips. “It’s you who takes me. Every time.”

  She melted against him. The hard stones of her doubts and worries became inconsequential when he touched her.

  Maybe it will all be okay, she thought. Maybe this time, it will be fine.

  A knock on the window sent her scrambling back, her hands on her lips as if she could hide the proof of the kiss.

  It was one of the men from the bar. The man with tattoos on his neck and across his knuckles, with the long beard and mustache.

  A sound embarrassingly like a squeak came out of her throat.

  Ty smiled, swearing under his breath, and unrolled the window.

  “Hey, Jimmy.”

  “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean—” Jimmy’s eyes darted over to Shelby, who tried to fade into the shadows. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Ty said, keeping his hand over Shelby’s. “What’s up?”

  “John poured Tommy into their truck and took off and I was hoping for a ride back to your place.”

  “Hop in.”

  Jimmy ran around the back of the truck to the passenger side and Shelby scooched over to the middle of the bench seat, pulling her purse onto her lap, trying to take up as little space as possible.

  “Thanks, man,” Jimmy said, slamming shut the passenger door. He was big, but he turned himself against the door, making sure there was distance between him and her. Which was nice. “I’m sorry if I was interrupting.”

  “You weren’t.” Ty glanced down at Shelby and then started the truck, easing them off the curb and onto the road. “Shelby, I’d like you to meet one of my oldest friends, Jimmy. Jimmy, this is Shelby. She’s the teacher I was telling you about.”

  Shelby glanced sideways at Ty for a second, slightly alarmed that he’d been talking about her.

  “You’re the one working with Casey,” Jimmy said, holding out his hand. “Ty says you’re doing great things for the kid.”

  “Well, he’s the kind of kid you want to do things for,” she said, slipping her hand into the biker’s giant paw. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too. This is a pretty great town you’ve stumbled onto, Ty. Good people.”

  Ty drove through the square toward the highway out to his house. “It was a good night, wasn’t it?”

  “Thirty thousand?” Jimmy whistled. “I’ll say.”

  Ty laughed and rubbed his hand through his hair. “Yeah, that was something.”

  “Sucks the cops had to come and write those tickets,” Jimmy said.

  “No shit,” Ty agreed.

  “You should think about the Chamber of Commerce,” Shelby said.

  He shook his head. “Shelby, I’m not a business. I refurbish old bikes in my garage. It takes me a year to do one. It’s not like I’m ready to open a shop.”

  “What about a garage?” Jimmy asked. “I mean, it’s good you found steady work, but you’re not a carpenter.”

  “You’re not?” she asked.

  “I am for what Brody needs,” he assured her.

  “You planning on doing that for the rest of your life?” Jimmy asked. “I’m sure you’re a fine carpenter, and if that’s what you want to do, great. But you loved Pop’s shop—”

  “I’m not planning anything past getting Casey back into school on Monday morning,” Ty said as they pulled into his driveway.

  Across the street, Shelby’s house was dark, the illumination from the kitchen windows in the back falling onto the rose skeletons. She imagined Mom and Deena back there working on the photo album. She’d called to say she’d be late, but her phone had run out of charge hours ago. And she very suddenly had that sneaky suspicion that she’d been gone too long. That something might have happened and Deena hadn’t been able to reach her.

  Deena would have called The Pour House, she tried to reassure herself. She knew where I was.

  But what if Sean had been too busy behind the bar to answer?

  That internal panic button was well and truly pressed, and she felt the need to get home and make sure everything was fine.

  Jimmy opened the passenger door and slipped out. Shelby followed, spilling from the warm truck into the cold night. “I better go check on Rita,” Jimmy said.

  “I’m going to walk Shelby home,” Ty said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”


  “Nice meeting you, Shelby,” Jimmy said, his eyes twinkling. “It’s about time Ty here started punching above his weight.”

  “Go!” Ty laughed, taking a fake swing at Jimmy. “Make sure your wife and my kid haven’t eaten everything in the house.”

  Shelby started across the street. “Was that a crack about my weight?” she asked.

  “No. God no.” He grabbed her arm and they stood in the middle of the highway, in the dark between streetlights, staring at each other. “It was a crack about how much better than me you are.”

  She blinked. What a ridiculous idea! “I’m not.”

  “You are. Trust me.” He put his arm around her shoulders and set them back in motion, walking in tandem, their hips brushing. She was awkward at it, never having walked with a man’s arm over her shoulder, forcing her to change her stride and compensate for his. It was harder than it looked. “But I think I can handle it.”

  “Do you want to open a garage?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Jimmy’s been on a follow-your-bliss thing ever since he became a minister.”

  “He’s a minister?” She didn’t even pretend to hide her shock.

  “Look at you, judging a book by the cover. I didn’t think teachers were supposed to do that,” he teased, and surprisingly she loved it. No one ever teased her. People always treated her so seriously. Ty didn’t treat her like anyone she’d ever known. It was addicting. Spectacular.

  “Is being a mechanic your bliss?”

  “I don’t know.” He wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t quite telling the truth. She knew this trick. Every fifth grader started the school year somehow knowing the trick: to downplay what they wanted. To make their desires seem less than they were in fear of ridicule. In fear of failure.

  “Everyone in town has to go to Marietta to get their cars fixed,” she said, nudging him toward his bliss, if that’s what it was. “A garage in town would be amazing—”

  “Whoa, whoa,” he held up his hands. “Stop, Shelby, honestly. I’ve kind of got my hands full right now. I’m not thinking of anything past getting Casey back in school and out of trouble. Starting a shop, opening a business, that takes time—”

  “I know what it takes,” she said and his eyes met hers, solemn and still in the shadows.

  “I don’t know if I have it in me,” he told her. Obviously he wasn’t just talking about time. Or Casey. He doubted himself. His abilities. “Pop’s garage was established. The customers built-in. He had good guys working for him. Accountants and stuff. I don’t know if I can do that by myself.”

  “You’re not by yourself,” she whispered. The words seemed to implode the silence of the night.

  He groaned, leaning in to kiss her.

  “It’s what the Chamber of Commerce is for,” she said against his lips. And after a moment they both broke into laughter.

  “You say the sweetest things.” Again with the teasing, and it felt like a different kind of affection. Another kind of touch. The kind of intimacy that it was all right to flaunt in front of other people, but still tied them together in that secret lovely way.

  “Think about it, Ty. If it’s what you want, I will help you.”

  He touched her nose, the top of her lip. Her bottom lip and then the edge of her collarbone, just above her shirt. “I’m so glad—” he breathed, and then stopped.

  “What?”

  Instead of answering her, he leaned down and pressed a sweet, soft kiss to her lips. A kiss unlike any other that they’d shared. It was unsettling, like being tipped just a little off balance.

  Behind her, she heard the kitchen door open.

  “Shelby?” Deena said.

  “I’m here,” Shelby said, pushing away from the kiss and the shadows she and Ty were standing in, and stood in the light pouring from the back door.

  “I’m sorry,” Deena said, her eyes drifting over her head to where Ty stood. “I don’t mean to interrupt. But there’s been an accident …”

  Reality, like a brick, settled back onto her chest, bringing her right into balance, and she took off at a run for the back porch.

  Chapter 19

  “She’s fine,” Deena said quickly as Shelby charged up the back steps. “There was a lot of blood. But she’s fine.”

  “Blood?”

  Evie sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by dishtowels soaked in blood, her face and hands covered in raw, red scrapes and scratches. On her forehead there was a white bandage.

  “Mom!” she cried.

  Evie’s face was blank, her eyes empty. She looked at Shelby as if she were a stranger.

  Shelby gasped, a giant sinkhole opening up in her chest, swallowing her heart. They’d told her, the books, the doctors, the online support groups; they’d told her it would happen, that at some point her mother would look at her and not recognize her.

  They’d said there was no preparation that would make it okay, that would lessen the burn and sting of it. It was simply the predatory nature of the disease.

  “Mom? It’s me, Shelby.”

  Evie blinked, then glanced down at her hands, the bloody towels on the table.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  Shelby swallowed back the sharp lump in her throat. I don’t know. I wasn’t here.

  “You tried to pull up those rosebushes, Evie,” Deena said, squeezing past Shelby, who was rooted in the doorway. Belatedly, Shelby realized that Deena had her fair share of scratches, seeing a long red scrape across her neck. “I went upstairs for a second to go to the bathroom, and when I came out, I couldn’t find her in the house. I tried the Art Barn and some of the other buildings. By the time I found her she’d already dug up three of the plants.”

  “How did she hit her head?”

  “She wouldn’t leave, so I grabbed her hand trying to lead her out of the bushes, but she jerked back, tripped, and hit her head on the side of the house.”

  “Shelby!” Mom’s voice was high and panicked. “Who is that woman? Why is she here?”

  “It’s Deena, Mom.”

  “Where is my husband. Where—”

  “It’s okay.” Shelby stepped across the kitchen to her mother, who shrank away at her approach. Flinched from her outstretched arms. Her neck and face were raw with scratches, one of which had caught the thin skin near her eye and still oozed red blood.

  “Where is my husband?” she cried again. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “Mom—” Shelby sat down on the banquette, sliding across the old pink vinyl toward Evie, who trembled and shook, trying to escape out the other side. Shelby forced herself to stop, to not try to get any closer. Inside she was explosions of emotion, giant nuclear blasts of fear and worry, but she held herself very still. Forced herself to be calm. “Mom. You’re safe. I’m your daughter, Shelby. This is Deena, your friend—”

  “I don’t have any friends!”

  This was painfully true, not that she could do anything about it. Or knew how to change their natures. Friends were luxuries they’d never had for a dozen reasons.

  “Mom, you’re safe. It’s okay. Everything is okay.”

  Mom’s breath shuddered in her throat and after a moment she allowed Shelby to put a hand over hers. Her skin was like velvet and paper under Shelby’s fingers. So fragile. So thin.

  “I tried to call,” Deena said. “But—”

  “My phone ran out of charge,” Shelby whispered.

  “Don’t,” Deena said, reading the guilt in her face. “If it was an emergency I could have called The Pour House. I knew where you were. We’ve got this handled; I just wanted to give you a heads-up, not make you come home.”

  “Do you want a ride to the hospital?” It was Ty in the doorway, his hands shoved in the pockets of his shearling coat.

  Shelby had forgotten he was there.

  Forgotten all about him.

  How odd he seemed there in the doorway. How terribly out of place in this house of old photographs and fading
memory. Of friendless women.

  He was too bright, too big. Too alive. There was no room for him here. What she and Ty had … it didn’t come into this house.

  She shook her head, denying him. Denying his help and anything he would offer her past the sex they could have in secret.

  “Let me help, Shelby.” His voice and eyes steadily sending her the message that he saw her. All of her.

  “Get out of my house,” Mom spat. Startled, Shelby turned to find her mother seething, her eyes narrowed. She picked up the bloody dishtowels and began flinging them at the door. She managed to get her hand on a teacup and it crashed against the doorjamb a foot from Ty’s head.

  “Mom!” She tried to catch her hands, to stop her from hurling the teapot, the first-aid kit, and the scissors, but they were all flung at Ty.

  “Get! Get out. I’ve told you a hundred times, get out of my house. We don’t want you here anymore. You’re mean, Thomas. You hate her. You hate her because she’s better than you and you can’t stand it. You don’t deserve her. You don’t deserve either of us.”

  Oh good God, the world was just too much tonight. Just too much.

  “Shelby,” he said, still in the doorway, leaning down to pick up the things Mom had thrown.

  “Please, Ty,” she whispered, trying to stop her mother from throwing anything else at him. “Please go.”

  “Shelby—”

  “Get out!” She and her mother both yelled it.

  She knew he would stay and fight, try and help, if she gave him any indication that she wanted that, needed that. So she gave him none. She looked at him as blankly as her mother had looked at her.

  And after another moment, he left, closing the door behind him.

  Saturday morning after Jimmy and Rita took off back to Indianapolis, Ty loaded Casey into the truck and they went over to The Pour House to settle the bill.

  The combination of saying goodbye to his friends and the lingering unease from that scene in Shelby’s kitchen last night sat heavily on his shoulders, and he couldn’t quite shake the sense that she was pulling away. That despite how much he wanted to try and help, she wouldn’t take it.