A quiet whimper reached his ears, sounding entirely out of place in the soft darkness. It definitely wasn’t Laura, since he had been listening carefully to make sure she was undisturbed, but where it had come from wasn’t as clear. Brian lay still, waiting to see if it happened again. There was a distant sound of footsteps as someone on the floor above walked down the main stairwell. A police siren wailed and faded a few blocks off.
Another whimper, louder this time, and Brian recognized it as Owen. Now that he had identified it, it seemed like all he could hear were sounds of distress from Owen’s room. He glanced at Laura’s bedroom door, but it seemed that she hadn’t been woken up yet by the noise. Brian hesitated for a long moment, unsure of what to do here. He didn’t want to intrude on Laura, especially while she finally seemed to have settled down into a restful sleep, but one loud shout of fear had him moving.
Brian padded into the boy’s room, his eyes searching for any danger that might have invaded the sanctuary of the child’s space. Owen lay in his bed, curled up around his stuffed bear, only his eyes and one stuffed ear peeking out from the cocoon of blankets wrapped as armor around him, staring into the darkness. There was a look of stark terror on his face that Brian instantly hated to see, and he was sniffling wetly.
“Owen?” Brian kept his voice quiet and soft like the rest of the night. “Hey, kiddo, it’s Brian. You okay in here?”
Owen squeaked and shuddered, then slowly sat up. Brian could see tears smeared over his face, and Owen only made it worse when he dragged his arm under his nose.
“Unca Brian?” Owen whimpered. “I had a scary dream. Where’s Mommy?” A long, wet sniffle punctuated his question.
“She’s asleep in her room. But I was awake and heard you; thought I’d come check.” Brian stepped over a half-finished block tower, and sat on the edge of the bed. Countless nights where his mother had soothed him from his own nightmares washed through his mind, the memories all layered and folded over each other. “What was the dream about? Sometimes it helps me be less scared if I say it all out loud.” Brian almost smiled when he said his mother’s old, familiar words. They felt somehow right coming from his own mouth.
Owen shuffled over the bed to press his face into Brian’s arm, and Brian readjusted him till he had Owen snuggled securely in his lap, still wrapped in the blankets, but his head free. Owen promptly turned it to press into Brian’s chest.
“That bad man from the park was chasing me,” Owen said, half into Brian’s shirt. “I was running and running, but nothing happened, and he kept getting closer and he was a scary monster that was coming to get me and I couldn’t get away from him and he was gonna get me.”
Brian had to work to understand the half-mumbled words, but he got enough to understand. His skin chilled but he forced his voice to stay steady and warm.
“I gotcha,” he said. “That does sound pretty scary. But that’s not what really happened, right? The bad man wasn’t a real monster, and he wasn’t after you specifically. He just ran by, because he was running away from the good guys. You maybe didn’t see, but there was a man chasing him.” He rubbed Owen’s back absently through the blankets while he listened, hoping that a bit of physical contact could dispel the fear of the nightmare.
Owen sniffled again and peered up at Brian’s face.
“Unca Brian? Can you stay here with me? It’s too scary to be by myself.” Owen buried his face in Brian’s shirt again. Brian froze for a few seconds, unable to answer the child’s innocent faith. He certainly didn’t deserve this moment, not with what he was hiding.
“I don’t know, kiddo. I think I’m too big for your bed.” Maybe he should have woken Laura after all. It wasn’t his place to be here. He had no right to comfort a child in the middle of the night.
“Please?” Owen sniffled again, but Brian could feel the boy starting to sag in his lap, sleep coming to reclaim him. He trusted Brian enough to relax and drift back to sleep, sure that he would be safe from more nightmares now. The weight of Owen’s belief in him hit Brian like a sledgehammer.
“I…” Brian stumbled, groping for the right answer. Nothing came to him, and Owen was sliding back into sleep already. He shouldn’t be here, and the guilt at stealing the few moments of normal life— someone else’s life, really— were starting to weigh on his conscience. He knew that he’d promised Laura that he’d stick around for a while, but he should make his excuses and leave. It wasn’t really doing anyone any favors to let these two keep thinking that he was some kind of hero. He shifted the boy off his lap, sliding him to the bed to tuck him back in, and Owen snapped awake, wrapping his arms around Brian’s neck in a choking grip. Brian had to grab an elbow and gently free his throat just to keep breathing.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “Not so tight, okay? I won’t leave you alone. But let’s go clean you up a little first, and then you can come out to the sofa. I really won’t fit on your bed, it’s not grown up sized.”
“Promise you’ll stay?” Owen asked. Brian took a deep breath, and finally nodded.
“Yeah, Owen, I promise. I’ll be here. Nothing for you to worry about.”
Chapter 5
Laura had a vague sense of concern when she woke up. There was no little boy pestering the hell out of her to get out of bed and start playing at the crack of dawn. In fact, it was now the crack of eight o’clock. She’d slept in. Something was not right. Where was Owen? Maybe he was still in his own bed, although that seemed pretty unlikely given his usual habits. Maybe he was sick? Maybe he’d gotten up and wandered out the front door again? Or gotten past the childproofing in the kitchen? Or…
She surged out of her bed, wrapped her robe haphazardly around herself, and hurried out into the living room. On her way to Owen’s room she automatically glanced over at the sofa to check on Brian and froze, her heart stuttering.
Brian lay on his side, backed up into the sofa as far as he could get, giving Owen all the room he could to sprawl out on his back. Owen, meanwhile, rested his head on Brian’s arm and snored softly in his little boy way, with his left arm stretched up to rest a hand on the bridge of Brian’s nose. Brian had his other arm draped gently over Owen’s waist, holding the blanket over the boy and preventing him from sliding off the edge of the sofa. One foot’s worth of Owen’s toes peeked out from the edge of the blanket, to dangle down the front of the sofa.
It was almost too much for Laura. She swallowed the sudden tightness back down her chest and turned silently into the kitchen to make coffee as quietly as she could. Owen had managed to pick up on her own distrust of men over the years, try as she might to not show him. Kevin had broken her faith in the whole gender, except for a very few individuals like her own father, and children notice these things. So it usually took him weeks to open up to a man even if it was one Laura had known for some time, or trusted to be professional and friendly like their building’s maintenance guys. But within minutes of meeting Brian in probably the most traumatic way she could think of, he’d been playing trucks with the man. And now he was snuggled up with Brian like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Laura poured a cup of coffee and took it out into the living room. Owen was stirring now, and she crouched next to him, her fingers brushing his hair from his sleepy eyes.
“Hey, baby. Good morning.” She spoke quietly and smiled into his sleepy face.
“Mommy! I had a really bad dream, but it’s okay. Unca Brian saved me from it.” He grinned back at her, wide awake now, and leaped up off the couch.
“I’m so glad, sweetie. Good thing he was here then, huh? Go get some clothes on and I’ll be over to get your breakfast in just a minute, okay?” She said, rolling her eyes as he scurried off towards the kitchen instead. She turned back to meet Brian’s eyes starting to blink groggily at her. “I brought you some coffee, Unca Brian.”
“You’re a saint,” he said, sitting up. His movements were stiff and she guessed that it had been hours at least since he’d been squished up to make
room for Owen. “Sorry about Owen. He was just sort of rustling around and making noise so I went in to check, in case… I don’t know, in case Kevin broke in or something. But he was just having a nightmare and when I went in he was already awake and was crying and stuff and wanted me to stay with him but I’m a little big for that bed, so I brought him out here to settle down for a bit. I know I should have woken you, but you seemed so stressed out last night. I meant to carry him back to bed when he calmed down, but I guess I never got that far.” He gave her a sheepish, sleepy smile Laura watched him close his eyes in appreciation for a moment as he breathed in the steam from the coffee before taking a long drink. Laura was still crouched at the edge of the sofa, watching Brian’s face.
“So,” she said. She had to speak a little slowly because her throat was feeling tight. “You woke up in the middle of the night hearing Owen have a nightmare, and instead of waking me up, you went in to soothe him back to sleep? And then when he wanted to be held, you actually let him snuggle up next to you for the rest of the night.”
Brian looked stricken. “I really should have gotten you. I knew it. I just— ”
“You just thought that I’d had several really scary events happen over the past few days, and you were trying to give a single mother a break.” Laura finished for him. Brian swallowed and nodded.
“I’m sorry. It was really presumptuous of—”
“And to do that you voluntarily took care of someone else’s kid, just because he needed it.” Again Brian nodded, looking really uncomfortable.
He looked like he expected her to throw him out on the street any second. Laura wasn’t going to let him off so easily. There had to be something wrong with Brian. People didn’t do things like this. Not for no reason at all, and there was absolutely no reason for him to have gotten up in the middle of the night like that. She couldn’t think of a single plausible explanation that made any sense, but she knew one thing for certain.
“I—” Laura cut him off.
“You are a very dangerous man; did you know that?”
*****
Brian’s brain woke up before his body did. He knew that he was waking up, even though he didn’t seem to have control over his eyelids yet, so he lay there and took stock of himself for the morning. There was a warm body snuggled against his chest, a head laying heavy on his bicep. There was definitely a hand resting against his face, and he was pretty sure that was a finger in his nose.
Well, so much for carrying Owen back to bed once he fell asleep.
The apartment smelled like coffee, and he heard footsteps shushing across the carpet.
“Hey, baby. Good morning.” Laura’s voice said, somewhere near his face. Did she—Was she talking to him? Owen was already answering, though, and scrambling up off the sofa. He tried to open his eyes with only a small degree of success.
“I brought you some coffee, Unca Brian.” Even her voice was smiling and bright. A voice like that and she brought him coffee? If he died right now he’d die happy. His right arm was all pins and needles— that kid’s head was heavier than it looked! But as he inhaled that glorious roast smell of morning and took a sip, the world started to come much more fully into focus. Man, if he wasn’t very careful, he could get comfortable here. He couldn’t do that to Laura, though. She deserved much better.
She was staring at him now, like she could see into his soul— whatever he had that passed for one anyway. He could hear the tension in her voice and it seemed like she had to fight to keep her words calm. He’d overstepped. It was obvious that she was angry, her words were spoken slowly, driving her point home, and he really had no excuse. He’d just wanted to do something nice for them both, that’s all. Owen was such a sweet kid with a smile that beamed like a spotlight in the darkness, and Laura was somehow so damned upbeat and optimistic in the face of everything that had happened to her that Brian felt compelled to do whatever he could to lighten their load.
It hadn’t felt like much, to comfort Owen after a nightmare and let Laura sleep a bit. Still, it was too much to assume that he had any right to get between a mother and her young son, Laura was absolutely right. He could have the best intentions in the world and this was all he should expect now, anyway, all things considered. It was just the horrible, cosmic joke of his life hitting him with another punchline. He opened his mouth to agree that he would leave immediately, she didn’t have to worry.
“You are a very dangerous man; did you know that?” she said.
Brian’s heart clenched. How could she possibly know that? He’d worked so hard to not scare her, to hide any clues. Gods, it was worse than he’d thought. He set the coffee cup down on the side table, about to speak again, to assure her that he’d be gone in just a few minutes, when suddenly she was leaning over him.
Dear gods. Far more effective than coffee, the feeling of Laura’s soft kiss on his cheek was terrifying and tantalizing in equal measure. Something in the kitchen thumped, and she pulled back to face him.
He forced his hand away from her shoulder where it had somehow landed, and back to the sofa as she spoke again, looking steadily into his eyes. He hoped she didn’t see his panic or his grief in them. “A woman could easily fall for a guy like you,” she said. What? Oh. What?
“Laura,” Brian tried to get a coherent sentence out of his mind, but his brain seemed to have short circuited completely. A much louder thump came from the kitchen, then a crash. The moment was shattered.
Laura skidded into the kitchen just ahead of him and stopped so abruptly that Brian almost ran her over. Owen sat in the middle of the floor surrounded by cereal, cardboard boxes, the contents of the silverware drawer, the drawer itself, and an overturned chair. Laura clapped her hands over her mouth— trying to stifle a laugh or a sob, Brian wasn’t sure. He just stared at the chaos scattered all over the kitchen.
“Look Mommy! I got my breakfast all by myself!” Owen said cheerfully holding up a bowl with three cereal bits and a spoon in it.
*****
“So I have this week off, cause Owen’s daycare is off for spring break.” Laura sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and finally eating her own bowl of cereal. “The downside is that my folks had planned a little getaway of their own, way back last summer before I knew that the daycare would also have a spring break. The library has been super generous with my schedule this year. I think my boss is sympathetic— she has four kids of her own, so she understands my pain here, and she knows I’m a single mom.”
She was still somewhat in shock that Brian had simply pitched in to clean up the disaster in the kitchen without hesitation while she checked Owen over for injuries and set him up a bit more neatly at the table. He had even gotten Owen to brush his teeth without much of a fight, and now Owen was playing happily in his own room for the moment. A small miracle, and Laura was thankful. So now they sat in the kitchen, and Laura was discussing an idea she’d had overnight and which had been growing on her all morning.
“Well that’s pretty generous. She sounds like a great boss.” Brian sat down with his own coffee.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew perfectly well it was probably a bad idea. It was probably the worst idea. Hell, that moment just before Owen’s breakfast tumble was easily the most foolish thing she’d done since getting pregnant, by a very long stretch, and she was still scrambling to cover her nerves. It was just a quick peck on the cheek. No big deal, friends do that sort of thing all the time. If she kept telling herself that she might believe it eventually. And what she was about to propose was, in her mind, likely to be ten thousand times dumber than that. The absolute last thing she should do is let herself get infatuated with a drifter, even if he was an honest to gods heroic wonder.
“I was thinking that I want to get Owen out of town after yesterday. I know it’s basically just running away, but if Kevin knows our names, he could find where we live and come here, and… I’ll admit that I’m scared. But it’s spring break, so why not have a little vacation? Maybe cam
ping, or to the beach or something. What do you think? Would any of that appeal to your wanderlust?” She smiled.
She was carefully avoiding mention of what she’d said earlier. There had been something in his eyes just before Owen’s breakfast crash. He seemed honestly terrified for a moment. The man put himself between a knife and her son and then smiled about it. He’d confronted her violent ex without batting an eye. But something about her comments this morning scared him, and it wasn’t the sort of skittish reaction she’d seen from players avoiding commitment. Those guys would push you away, dodge your phone calls if they thought you were getting ‘clingy’, or just plain ghost. They certainly wouldn’t snuggle your preschooler after a nightmare and then look like you tried murder them after a perfectly chaste kiss. She couldn’t figure out what she could have said or done that would get that reaction.
But he had promised to stick around for at least a little while, and she fully intended to make him keep that promise. It may be selfish, but she’d earned a little selfishness, hadn’t she? After all, he was a good-looking man that was willing to risk his life for complete strangers and also cheerfully pitched in to help with Owen where she was used to doing everything alone, and on top of that he seemed to genuinely care that she herself was taken care of. What part of that wasn’t attractive? She just had to keep her hands to herself, that’s all.
It was stunning how fast he’d proved himself. That was really all it was, she was sure. He was the first man that Owen had really taken to, aside from his Grampa. The first thing he’d done, in fact, was to save Owen’s life, after all. Then he had to be talked into staying with her. Laura wasn’t sure why she’d been so adamant about that, and she wasn’t going to examine it too closely.
It felt like looking a gift horse in the mouth, a bit. Brian had kept trying to give her an out on her offer of a place to stay on Saturday, but she’d just felt safer with him nearby, and she wasn’t about to question it. After the scene in the cafe she knew she’d made a good choice. Even if he did continue his wandering around the country sooner or later, Brian could be a good friend while he was in town, and maybe when he moved on he would send Owen postcards from his travels. That would be nice.
Personal Demons: A Riverton Demons Novel Page 4