Red Rose Bouquet: A Contemporary Christian Novel (Grace Revealed Book 2)

by Jennifer Rodewald

  Brock was out there in the whole mix. She’d watched for a time. He came alive, very much like her memory of him on race days. All energy, full-blown smiles, and fun. The kids breathed in his enthusiasm, and somehow it seemed their marionette strings, which had pulled them half alive from the bus, fell away, and they became real. Vivid. And loud.

  No more screaming.

  She moaned, pressing one ear into the vinyl beneath her head and covering her face with her free hand. No more noise. Please, let a black blanket of silence overtake her. Please…please…

  “Hey, Sherbert.” Brock’s soft voice drifted from above her head. “What’s going on? E says you’re not feeling well.”

  She pulled her hand away from her face and forced her eyelids open. Light pierced through her skull like jagged blazes of lightning, and she could make out the features of his face as he hovered over the back side of the sofa. “Headache. Need to go home.” She squeezed her eyes shut again.

  “Pretty bad, huh?” His fingers brushed over her cheek. “Don’t think you’d better drive if you can’t even open your eyes.”

  “Please, Brock. Just tell Ethan to give me my keys.”

  “No. I’ll take you.”

  “Brock, the kids…they love you. You need to stay.”

  “E and Brandi have got it. No worries, kid.” He came around to the front of her temporary bed and lifted her shoulders up. Squatting, he slid an arm under her legs as if to lift her.

  “I can walk.”

  “Can you see?”

  “If you pick me up, I’ll puke on you. Let me walk.”

  Brock chuckled. “Even sick, you sure have bite, you know that, Sherbert?”

  She couldn’t even raise her eyes to him to give him a proper scowl. “Just take me home.”

  “All right. Here we go.” He guided her to her feet, and though he’d just insulted her, his arm came around her waist with a gentle touch.

  Her stomach rolled as a painful dizzy spell washed over her. A high-pitched squeal rang through her ears, and the world became a harsh collage of sharp, blazing white shapes. Though irritated that she was in the middle of this migraine because of Brock’s failure to communicate, she tucked her face against his gray T-shirt, covering her exposed ear with one hand.

  “You gonna be sick?”

  She moaned.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s yes. You want to puke here, or can you wait until we get to the cabin?”

  What cabin? “Home,” she mumbled against his shirt.

  “Okay. Here we go.” He held her tight against him as they moved forward. He directed her blind steps out the door and down the stairs. Something felt off as they continued, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at the blinding light beyond her shut eyes. The sense of disorientation grew as the ground didn’t dip beneath her feet as it should have, and when Brock paused, he didn’t bend to open a car door. He reached forward, and the click of a latch didn’t sound right.

  He moved her forward again, and the light beyond her closed eyes lessened.

  “Brock.” She stopped moving and pushed against his chest, forcing herself to look. His cabin. She wanted to crumble, and tears stung the base of her eyelids. “I want to go home. Please, you said you’d take me home.”

  His hand cupped the back of her head, and he pulled her against him again. “No one’s there to check on you.”

  “So?” She’d done this drill a million times. She didn’t need anyone to check on her.

  “I’ll worry.”

  “I’m a big girl.”

  “You could just sleep it off in my guest bed. Clean sheets and everything. I promise.”

  She leaned against him, his mild scent filling her nose as she worked on those unsuccessful breathing rituals. Deep breath in. Focus on the strong rhythm of his heart against her cheek. Long breath out. The pads of his fingers gently massaged the base of her neck. In. He held her up. She didn’t have to be alone. Out.

  A shout cracked the air outside, jarring her brain and sending a mushroom cloud of pain into her skull. Her entire body coiled, fighting against the roll of nausea building from the deep.

  There was no winning against it. With a jerk, she pulled out of his hold and jammed her face into the yogurt container she still gripped in one hand. The convulsion sent her to her knees, and Brock gathered her hair in both his fists while her stomach emptied.

  A cold sweat covered her skin, and all her strength drained. She moved to lie against the floor but found herself being pulled into Brock’s lap. Had he gone down on the floor with her? The container she’d just filled with putrid fluid was removed from her hands, and a soft kiss brushed her forehead.

  “That was fun,” he whispered.

  Horrible. Not fun. Crazy man.

  “Please take me home, Brock.”

  He pressed another kiss to her head. “Okay. Stay put for a minute, and I’ll get the truck.”

  She was moved and gently laid against the cool wood floor, and then he shuffled away.

  God, please… she moaned, wanting to cry but knowing it would do no good. Please make these stop…

  She was somewhere between fitful sleep and painfully awake when Brock lifted her again. This time she didn’t argue. As long as she was going home. There was no way she could stay at his cabin. Even if she had loved seeing Brock be the fun those kids needed.

  The nightmare was coming. It was usually the most vivid right after a migraine, and there had been nights when she’d woken herself up with her own sobs.

  No one needed to know anything about that. Especially not Brock.

  ~*~

  “I’m going to stay a little longer.” Brock clutched the phone against his ear. “She’s puked three times, and she doesn’t seem coherent anymore. Nana Grace is already asleep, and she seemed a little…distant tonight. I just want to make sure they’ll be okay.”

  Ethan sighed. “I can come stay with them if you think I should.”

  “No, dude.” Brock brushed his chin. “You’re still on your honeymoon, sort of. Everything’s okay with the kids, right?”

  “Yep. Dinner was good, and they’re all settled. Nothing to worry about. Brandi needs to chat with you about some stuff from her meetings, but that’ll keep for the morning.”

  “Okay. I think I’ll just give it another hour or so, and then I’ll head back.”

  “’Kay.” Ethan snickered. “So you kind of like my sister, eh, bro?”

  Brock rolled his eyes.

  “Only took you like fifteen years to admit it,” Ethan said.

  “You would have killed me back in the day.”

  “Nah. Not you. I would have thought you were weird, because, dude, she’s my little sister. But I trust you. I have to say, though, good luck with that one. She’s no damsel in distress, if you know what I mean.”

  Maybe completely untrue. Distress didn’t always look like a cry for help. Sometimes it looked like a well-trained blade of steel.

  “She’s definitely not boring.”

  Ethan laughed. “Always the thrill seeker, right?”

  Yeah, something like that. “Hang up and go find your wife.”

  “Done. Later.”

  The call ended, and the space around him grew still. Brock glanced up the stairway, hoping by then Cheryl was lost in a black cloak of nothingness. Poor woman. Ethan had said this had happened before since she’d come home. That was a little concerning. Maybe she needed to visit a doctor or something.

  Obviously not tonight. There was nothing else he could do. He’d catch a Burn Notice rerun or something, check on Sherbert after, and then go home. He should be in his own bed by midnight, and they’d start again tomorrow.

  Michael and Fiona were about to blow a hole in some warehouse on the television screen, when a cry sounded from the space above the couch, where Brock had stretched out. He looked at the ceiling, as if he could see through it, and waited.

  It came again, stronger. Then another, still louder.

  “Stop
!” Terror trembled through Cheryl’s scream.

  In a breath, Brock was on his feet and taking the steps two at a time.

  “Stop.” This time she pleaded, tears in her voice.

  He didn’t pause at her bedroom door, but clawed at the knob, pushing with his shoulder as if he needed to break through. The door gave, and he found Cheryl huddled against her headboard, rocking back and forth, her hands clutching her hair, arms pressed against her ears. Spasms of sobs quaked over her body.

  He’d never heard a cry come from so deep, as if her very soul were ripping apart.

  Three long strides carried him to her bed. She didn’t fight him when he touched her shoulders—strange, because he would have sworn she was being attacked in her dream—so he gathered her close and held her tight as she continued to cry.

  “Shhh, Sherbert. You’re safe. I’ve got you, and you’re safe.”

  Her hands dug into his shirtfront, and she turned her face into his chest. She continued to tremble with sobs.

  “Cheryl, wake up. You’re safe.”

  “Make them stop.”

  “Make who stop what?”

  “Stop crying. Please, please stop crying,” she pleaded desperately.

  Brock moved so that he could take her head in his hands and look at her. “Cheryl, you have to wake up. Who is crying?”

  She hid her face, trying to tuck it into her shoulder. He wouldn’t let her.

  “Baby, wake up!” His fingers pressing into her head, he gave her a small shake.

  Cheryl’s hands covered his and initially tried to push him away, but then she looked at him and stilled. Completely. She blinked twice, sniffed, and then took in a long, shaky breath.

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice hitched.

  He loosened his hold as he exhaled, suddenly aware of how his heart throbbed against his ribs. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  Her hands slid from his, and he combed through her hair with one hand. She turned away, removing herself from his lap.

  “Cheryl?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He caught her hand. It still shook. Not at all fine. “Tell me what happened. In your dream.”

  After slipping her hand from his, she shuffled until she could slide between the sheets. Brock moved off the mattress, landing on his knees next to her bed.

  “Talk to me.”

  “It was nothing.” She reached for the heavy top quilt.

  Brock beat her to it and brought the covers over her shoulder and tucked them under her chin. “That was not nothing.”

  She shut her eyes. “Go home, Brock.”

  He cupped her head with one hand, and with his thumb, he traced her dark eyebrow. “Cheryl…” His voice cracked.

  Turning into the pillow beneath her head, she burrowed away from him.

  What should he do? With a light touch, he fingered the wisps of hair that had escaped from beneath the quilt. Cheryl didn’t move. The silences grew heavy and felt as if it were pushing between them, building a barrier he couldn’t see or understand.

  What was she keeping from him? Why would she refuse to tell him what had terrified her so violently?

  Someone along the way had done something to her. Rape? Yes. That was likely it. His stomach twisted. Surely she would know that she needn’t be ashamed of something out of her control. Surely she would know that he wouldn’t reject her because of it.

  Apparently she didn’t know. The bondage of fear wasn’t always rational. He’d learned as he worked with trauma kids that their behaviors didn’t always come from rational places—they were often rooted in fear. Fear that the worst would happen all over again.

  No. Cheryl didn’t know she was safe with him. He’d simply have to show her…and maybe, over time, she’d begin to trust.

  ~*~

  Brock finally left.

  Cheryl rolled to her back, horrified. And yet she secretly wished that he’d stayed. Maybe even pushed a little more. That he hadn’t let her retreat into her lonely, cold existence, maintaining a death grip on a secret she wished desperately she didn’t have to keep.

  No, that wasn’t what she really wished. If he’d pushed, eventually he’d find out. All of those loving looks, those tender touches…they’d be gone. Irrevocably removed.

  Irrevocable. That was the word, wasn’t it? Some things were irrevocable. Nothing fixes them. You can’t take them back.

  You simply live with them. Or die. Sometimes the two were the same—a living death.

  A door unlatched beyond her bedroom, and the sound of shuffling feet whispered from the hall.

  “Brock?” Nana’s hushed voice drifted to Cheryl’s hearing.

  He was still there?

  “Hi, Nana Grace. This…I…uh…”

  Cheryl imagined Brock looking to his hands, his ears bright red.

  “She has them quite a lot,” Nana said softly.

  “The nightmares?”

  “Yes. I hear her whimpering. They’ve never been that…violent before though.”

  A pause settled. Then, “I was downstairs, and I heard her scream. I promise, Nana—”

  “I know. I heard you run up the stairs.” Another gap of silence. “Is she okay now?”

  “I don’t know. She woke up, so that’s good, I guess.”

  “What happened in her dream?”

  Brock sighed. “She wouldn’t say.”

  “Hmm. Maybe she can’t really remember.”

  Yes. She could play that one. It’d work.

  “Seemed pretty vivid.”

  Brock and his stupid logic.

  “Did she have nightmares before?” he asked. “Like when she was a kid?”

  Nana must have had to think on that one. She answered after an extended pause. “Maybe once or twice. After her mom died. But not like this.”

  “What about headaches? Has she always struggled with them?”

  “No.”

  Cheryl sank deeper into her covers, squeezing her eyes shut. Stop asking questions. No more hunting.

  He needed a distraction—something that would make him believe she was fine, the woman he wanted. If he’d stop digging, maybe she’d stop trying to bury things deeper, and the dust would settle. They could play that everything was picture perfect.

  She knew of only one way to begin that charade. And maybe this time it would last.

  ~20~

  Brock leaned his elbows against his desk, letting his forehead rest in his hands. So tired. Blame it on no sleep. And a whirlwind of anxiety. Cheryl—

  Brandi cut off the thoughts before they could form as she swept into the office.

  “They ran another investigation on Sonja’s living situation.”

  “And…” Brock knew the answer before he even asked. If it was all good, Brandi would have led with that.

  “She’s been moved to an emergency location until new long-term arrangements can be made.”

  “Why?”

  Brandi’s mouth twisted to one side. “You know better than to ask, Brock.”

  He did, but that didn’t remove the desire to know. Hundreds of good people offered their love and protection within their homes for foster children. Why did So-J have to be the one to find her way into the rare situation of system abuse?

  Man, that kid had really snagged his heart. He could still picture her rich brown eyes, slightly slanted and oh so mischievous, when they weren’t completely hard and cold. A sense of possession and protectiveness locked in his chest—not really unusual, but unusually strong this time.

  “How long until they find a new home for her?”

  Brandi sighed, dropping into the chair across from his. “I don’t know for sure…there are some complications. Her track record…”

  Another detail Brandi really wasn’t supposed to make known.

  “Let’s just say she’s more of a challenge than most.”

  That could be saying a lot. Brock’s hand drifted over his hair and anchored on the back of his neck. Why’d he fe
el so responsible? So tangled up with this girl he’d known for all of one week?

  The image of So-J suddenly collided with his mental picture of Cheryl, curled up at the head of her bed, sobbing. Two traumatized souls he felt bound to.

  God, what are you doing to me?

  Nothing about his life in that moment reflected his plans from years past. Not one single image. He’d been on track to set some amazing records—had actually landed a few of them—in the sport of snowboard cross racing. He was a man who loved thrills and speed, and if he was being honest, all of the attention that came with being good at both.

  Now? Now his heart was so tangled up he couldn’t sleep. Cheryl’s bondage. A gut-deep concern for a ten-year-old girl named So-J who was bound to compel him into action. He didn’t have a map for these things. No plotting web to untangle this story line God seemed to be thrusting upon him.

  But it was his story line. Their stories—Cheryl’s and So-J’s—were now a part of his, intertwined, with all the frayed edges and convoluted knots he was certain to not understand. God’s will launched him into the middle of it all.

  It terrified him with a level of fear equal in proportion to the conviction that moved him forward. While maybe physically a strong man, made solid by days spent weight training, running, and taking ride after ride after ride on the slopes… Emotionally? Spiritually?

  He wasn’t Superman in those departments. Realistically, he was barely average.

  “What are you thinking?” Brandi tilted her head and lifted a brow.

  “Who says I’m thinking anything?”

  “Your face.”

  Brock twirled a pen he’d snagged from the mug resting on the corner of his work space. “So-J…”

  “You want her here.”

  He met her eyes. “Yeah. There’s something about her.”

  “Good.” Brandi dipped a single nod. “Because I’ve requested a home visit for Ethan and me.”

  “Wait, what?” That wasn’t what he had in mind. Close, but not exactly. “You just got married. Is that going to be an issue?”

  “We’re stable. I’m already a familiar face in the system. I don’t think that’ll be the issue. The issue would probably be location. Over the mountain range is quite a long distance from the Fort Collins area.”