“Why don’t we go inside and talk about it?” he asked, shoving off the railing.
She started toward him, toward her front door, swerving around him as she passed. “It’s not a good night. I know I said it before and then said I didn’t mean it, but I really do need to be alone tonight.” She kept her back to him as she unlocked her door.
“Too bad,” he said as the door swung open and he reached over her head to hold it for them both to pass through. She looked at him over her shoulder again. He hadn’t a clue what had happened, but the weary frustration on her face—frustration that seemed to have her close to tears—rocked him.
He swallowed. “Your alarm,” he said as the beeping picked up speed to indicate that it was headed for a full-on blast. She stared at him, then abruptly moved to the device and keyed in the code.
Drew locked the door behind them and moved into the house where he waited for her to turn around, but she didn’t. Instead, she kept her back to him as she tossed her coat onto one of the kitchen chairs.
“Look Drew, please. I’m not in the mood for company tonight, and I can’t,” she paused, maybe looking for the right word. “I can’t be bothered with any niceties. I really can’t.”
He could tell from her voice that she was speaking the truth—and it was a truth, a place, he’d been before. “Then don’t.”
She turned. And when she did, he noticed that her uniform was stained. Barely visible on the dark material, it was more the telltale stiffening of the fabric than any color that gave it away. It was soaked with blood.
“Jesus, Carly,” he managed to choke out. “You’re covered in blood.” He didn’t move toward her. The logical part of his mind told him it wasn’t hers. He knew this to be true for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that she wouldn’t be walking around if she’d been injured enough to warrant that much blood. Still, he held back because he felt his own hands shaking and he didn’t trust himself to go to her.
“It’s not mine,” she said, her voice faded in fatigue.
“I can tell,” he responded. “What happened?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then she opened it again and spoke. “Look, I can’t do this right now. Right now, I just need to shower and be alone. It was a shitty day. I really need some time to myself.”
“Too bad.” The words were out of his mouth before he’d had a chance to think. He’d said them before, outside moments earlier, but now—after seeing her, hearing her—they seemed to take on a different meaning. A meaning not to be so easily brushed off.
Carly narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m asking you to leave,” she repeated.
“Too bad,” he said for the third time. Thankfully, he outweighed her, so she couldn’t physically kick him out. What she could do mentally was a different issue, but physically, she didn’t have a choice. He wasn’t wild about the fact that he was using his size as an advantage over her, but he believed—no, he knew—that she should not be alone.
She pursed her lips, shoved a piece of hair behind her ear, then crossed her arms over her chest. Still, he didn’t move. Finally, after about a one-minute standoff, she threw her hands up.
“Fine, you can stay, but only because I can’t force you to leave short of using my weapon as a threat. Don’t expect anything from me tonight, though. Don’t expect me to talk or have dinner with you, or even acknowledge you’re here. I honestly can’t deal with anything tonight. Nor do I want to.”
He hesitated, then nodded.
She eyed him for another beat, then turned and headed up the stairs to her bedroom. A few minutes later, he heard the shower start. Covered in blood as she was, as her clothes were, he anticipated she’d spend a good long time under the spray of the water, trying to wash away whatever had happened. From experience, he knew it wouldn’t work, but she’d have to learn that herself.
On a sigh, he removed his jacket, hung it on the back of one of the kitchen chairs, and took a seat. He thought about pulling out his phone to see what he could find in the local news about whatever had caused Carly to be covered in someone else’s blood, but in the end he decided he’d leave it for her to tell him. If she told him.
He was still at the table a half an hour later when she came downstairs. Her hair was damp and she wore a robe. A short white silk robe.
The sight of her bare legs and the knowledge that she very likely wore nothing beneath the thin fabric hit him like a sucker punch in the gut. Blood rushed to all sorts of places it shouldn’t, especially considering she didn’t want him anywhere near her and was doing her best to ignore him.
She didn’t acknowledge him as she entered the kitchen and headed straight to a cupboard in the back. When she reached up to one of the higher shelves where kept the bottle of whiskey he’d given her, her robe rode up the back of her thighs almost to the point where he could see the curve of her backside.
Itching to touch her, he crossed his arms tightly over his chest to stop from reaching for her.
She got ahold of the bottle and moved to grab a glass. All the reaching, however, had pulled her robe askew, and it now gaped open when she turned toward the cabinet with the glasses—toward him.
He shifted in his seat.
“Carly?”
She looked up from the amber liquid pouring into her glass.
“What are you doing?” He tried to keep his gaze from dipping to her chest and the way the silk fell, barely covering her breasts.
“Making dinner.”
She put the bottle down and, thankfully, turned away from him to recork it. He managed a few breaths when she didn’t bother to put the bottle back in the cupboard. He shouldn’t be feeling the way he was feeling; he shouldn’t be wanting what he wanted from her at that moment. He knew that. But when she opened the freezer drawer and bent down to grab a cube of ice for her drink, he stopped breathing entirely. Her robe hung open and he had a perfect view down its front. He saw everything.
Fierce desire roared through his body, leaving him shaken and inexplicably angry. He felt the muscles in his arms tense from restraining himself. He’d swear his body was vibrating.
As if sensing this change, Carly looked up as her fingers closed around an ice cube. Ever so slowly, she straightened, dropped the ice in her glass, and closed the freezer drawer.
Without a word, she turned and walked back upstairs to her bedroom.
He heard a door open and shut. A few minutes passed before his brain was his again, before he could think clearly. He took a few more moments to breathe deeply, thinking about Carly, what she had asked of him, and what she needed.
When he felt capable of being himself, of being in control, he rose from his seat and climbed the stairs. Looking into her bedroom, he saw her through the window, curled up on one of the chairs on the balcony. She had a blanket, but it looked thin. He pulled the comforter off her bed as he walked by, opened the door, and stepped out.
She glanced up at him as he shut the door, then stared back out into the darkness. She’d hardly touched her drink. Lifting the comforter, he tucked it around her nearly naked body, then sat beside her on another chair in silence. Pushing his own desires aside, he recognized what she was doing as she sat there, gazing at nothing. He’d been there before.
Whatever had happened that day was something too big to process all at once. He knew that, consciously or not, Carly was attempting to empty her mind of all the images, thoughts, doubts, and emotions that were crowding in around her. And when her mind was clear, she’d go back to the beginning, to when there was nothing there—no story, no players, nothing. And then, and only then, could another story be built. Maybe one in which she could make sense of whatever had happened.
Pieces of the past would be filtered through and selected to build the new story. She would remember moments where things could have been different or could have gone a different way, and it would be those moments that would be the hardest to cope with. Because, in the new story her mind would build—a story
without all the messiness of real life—those moments would become so prescient, so obvious, that she would wonder how she could have possibly missed them and let this thing that had happened happen.
But she wasn’t there yet. So they sat.
After a few minutes, he tuned out the cold and focused on listening to the woman next to him. Her breath came in and out in a steady rhythm. Every once in a while, she’d sniffle a bit or take a sip of her drink, but other than that, stillness weighed heavy on the night. Even the creatures of the dark that he knew were out there hid silently in the shadows.
Finally, she stood, grabbed the comforter as it fell from her lap, and moved into her room. All without acknowledging him. He didn’t mind, just simply rose and followed her in. He watched her toss her comforter on her bed and disappear into the bathroom. Not knowing quite what to do with himself, he wandered to the other side of her bedroom and lingered in front of the open door of her closet. He could see her uniform lying on the floor inside, crumpled, discarded in haste. He knew that feeling too. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d wanted nothing more than to rid himself of whatever stench he wore. And it wasn’t always the clothing that carried it.
Listening to Carly brush her teeth, he slipped his hands in his pockets and waited for her to emerge. When she did, he could see that fatigue was taking its toll. From her unyielding expression, he could also see that she hadn’t changed her mind about his presence.
“I’m going to bed,” she said. She’d turned the bathroom light off and now the only light filtering through her room came from a small lamp on her bedside table.
“What happened today?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now. I won’t be able to sleep if I do.”
“And you think you’ll be able to sleep if you don’t?” He knew the answer and suspected she did too, but whether or not she’d admit that sleep was a long way off was something else entirely.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she repeated.
“It’s not going to go away.”
“I’m well aware of that,” she shot back. “But you need to go.”
“No,” he answered. “You’re not going to be able to shove it into a dark corner of your mind, you know. Not even for tonight. Trust me, whatever happened is going to stay with you and the longer you try to keep it tucked away, walled off from every other part of you, the bigger it will get and the more power it will have over you.” He’d revealed more about himself than he’d intended, maybe more than he had even recognized, but he spoke only the truth.
Carly gave a dismissive laugh. “Power? You think this is about power?”
He opened his mouth to say that the power he was talking about was different than the power she referred to.
But she continued, cutting him off. “I have none. That’s part of the problem. With everything.” She threw her arms up in an all-encompassing gesture before crossing them over her chest. “None, Drew. I have no power in anything and I’m tired of it. I know I can’t change it, but I can’t deal with it right now either. I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want it thrown back in my face, but the fact is, I can’t do anything right now. I can’t bring Marguerite’s killer to justice, I can’t bring my mother’s killer to justice. I can’t convince my boss to give Marcus his job back as deputy chief. I can’t keep kids from drinking and driving and doing dumb things, and I can’t make women in abusive relationships leave.”
She paused and took a deep breath and, in that space of time, he wondered if there had been an accident that night involving kids, or perhaps another incident with that woman, Mary, that Carly had mentioned before.
Carly shook her head. “I’m the police. I’m supposed to have some sort of power, right? But I have none. Not where it matters. So don’t talk to me about power. Don’t talk to me about strength. And don’t talk to me about talking about things, because right now, right now in this room, I feel like I have nothing. No power and no strength to fight. And talking about it will do nothing but remind me of that.”
Drew studied her, noting the bleakness in her eyes, even as her chest rose and fell with the argument she’d put forward.
“You’re stronger than you think, and power isn’t always about exerting it over other people. Sometimes it’s about finding it for yourself. If you feel you can’t do anything for other people, what can you do for yourself?” he asked.
She regarded him for a long moment. Then her head cocked a fraction of an inch.
And he realized his mistake. “Carly,” he said in caution.
She ignored his tone and walked toward him.
“This isn’t what you really want,” he said.
She stopped not twelve inches in front of him.
“You asked me what I can do for myself. This is something I can do for myself.”
Slowly, she began pulling his shirt from the waistband of his pants.
“This wasn’t what I meant,” he said, but even as he said it, his body called him a liar. As her cool hands made contact with the skin at his waist, every ounce of need and want he’d felt in the kitchen earlier came roaring back.
“Too bad,” she said, echoing his words as she slid her hands under his shirt and up his chest.
“Carly,” he managed once she’d slid her hands back down and drew them away. But then they came back and began unbuttoning his shirt. He closed his eyes.
She didn’t need this, which should be reason enough to stop. But everything she’d said about having no power, about feeling helpless and useless, was too familiar for him to turn away from. And in her truth, he had glimpsed a brutal reality of his own. His own frustrations and fears were starting to slip into this night, into this moment.
He should stop this.
He should stop her.
“Jesus,” he said as she slipped his shirt off and ran her lips across his chest.
He didn’t make a single move as her hands guided his sleeves off his arms or when they untied her robe, letting it drop to the floor. Or when her hands curled over his belt and her fingers slipped between his skin and the waist of his pants. She pulled him against her, feeling his body’s reaction to her, and looked up at him with her hazel eyes.
“I’m happy to do all of this myself, but it would be more fun if you joined in,” she said, unbuckling his belt and releasing the button and zip of his pants. Holding his gaze, she slid his pants and boxers down over his hips.
He watched as she began to kneel. And digging his hands into her hair, for good or for bad, they dove into the abyss. Together.
• • •
Drew awoke tired, sore, and having no idea what to expect from Carly in the morning light. Her frustrations had unleashed his own and, between the two of them, years of pain, loss, and even anger had come out in the night. Being together hadn’t been sweet, it hadn’t been beautiful. It had been raw and furious and, at times, ugly.
But it had also been honest. More honest than he’d ever been with anyone. More honest than he’d ever been with himself. In the dark hours of the night, the cost of his own helplessness, the price demanded of him in order to toe the line in his type of work, came pouring out in every move he made. Much of what he had done over the years, he stood behind. But there were things, things he couldn’t speak of, things he couldn’t change, not then and not now, that had cost him a part of his soul. And it wasn’t just those events that had cost him, but also the silence he’d had to keep.
“You’re awake,” Carly’s voice came from the direction of the bathroom. He opened his eyes to see her standing in the doorway, showered and back in her robe. Despite how they’d spent the past several hours, his body reacted in a predictable way.
“Yeah,” he said, sitting up and reaching for the water they’d brought up at some point in the night. He glanced at his chest as he put the glass down and noted the marks she’d left on him. Looking back at her, he realized that she probably had a few marks of her own. “Co
me here,” he said, holding his hand out to her.
She eyed him. “I need to get to work in a few minutes,” she said, even as she moved toward him.
“Tell me what happened yesterday?” he asked quietly.
She sat down beside him and paused before answering. He took her hand and held on, even as her gaze went to the windows. “Do you remember me telling you about Mary and Bill Hanson?”
“The woman in the abusive relationship?” He knew that if he had it right, the story wasn’t going to be a good one. Not with all the blood on Carly’s uniform the night before.
She nodded. “We got a call at around five reporting a couple of gunshots. It was,” she paused and absently played with his fingers which were entangled with hers. “It was awful,” she said, opting not to give him the play-by-play. “He finally did it. He finally killed her. Then shot himself. When we got there, Emily, their daughter, was sitting next to her mother—in a pool of her mother’s blood.” Her voice caught as she relayed the last bit. He tightened his fingers on hers.
“I picked Emily up. I needed to,” again Carly’s voice choked. She cleared her throat. “I needed to get her out of the blood.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, sitting up a bit more.
She continued to play with his fingers, holding them in her hand. “I tried so many times to get her help.”
“I know.” He didn’t bother to point out that successfully helping people depended more on the people actually wanting the help than on the quality of the help being offered. Instead, he pulled her into his arms and onto his lap.
They sat that way for a long time. She didn’t cry or break down, but they shared a quiet moment as he rubbed her back and held her. He brushed a kiss across her hair as she slid her arms around his bare chest.
“I hate that I couldn’t help her,” she said, looking at him. Then she buried her head against his shoulder.
He held her as she finally did cry, her body rocking against his. “I know,” he said quietly.
Chapter Twenty
An Inarticulate Sea Page 28