She didn’t know how she was supposed to—not after he’d held four days of silence. Not after they spent the entire weekend together, close, and he hadn’t said a word. She couldn’t let that go. She didn’t know how to. She shook her head, unable to summon the speech to tell him so.
It took a moment for James to grip the doorknob, turn it. Training his gaze on his feet, he scraped his knuckles over his lips with his first two fingers. “Then you know where to find me.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE SMELL OF bacon drifted up Adrian’s nose as she pushed the strips around the pan. She frowned when James’s face popped into her head complete with a lazy morning smile. But I have bacon, he’d said.
The frown deepened as Kyle said something from the table and she blinked, the bacon on the stove before her coming back into focus.
Damn it. Daydreaming again. It had been a week since James had left her bed, a week since they had spoken about their relationship. Kyle had been the only bridge between them, one where they only met halfway whenever Kyle transitioned from one parent to the other.
Things had been perfectly civil. Adrian had even somewhat learned to ignore the longing in James’s eyes. Particularly at the end of any exchange when there was a long pause, during which he simply looked at her, clearly waiting for her to say what he wanted her to say.
It wasn’t just about giving him the benefit of the doubt. It was the risk. Sure, she’d plunged headfirst off that rocky cliff years ago without questioning him or anything else. It had been easy then...when she hadn’t thought she had anything to lose.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
Adrian glanced at the table. Kyle sat with his mathematics textbook open, forgotten, in front of him. There was a pencil in his hand. He’d been chewing his lower lip, she noted. He did that when he was trying to work out a complicated problem. There was concern in his eyes and a line burrowing between them.
She worked to lift the corners of her mouth to show him things were fine. “Of course,” she said. Turning her attention back to the bacon, she flipped the strips and asked, “Is there anything you want on your BLT besides bacon, lettuce and tomato?”
Kyle opened his mouth to answer but was interrupted by loud and sudden pounding on the front door.
They both froze. Kyle’s head swiveled toward the entrance in the living room, then back to Adrian, his eyes wide with alarm.
“Come here,” she said, dropping the fork with a clatter. He rose and rushed over to her. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders. Neither of them breathed as they waited for the pounding to come again.
Though her stomach twisted, her mind grasped for a desperate strand of hope. Maybe it wasn’t who they thought it was. Maybe it was just Cole or James or...
The pounding came again. They both jumped. A voice echoed through the walls, insistent. “Aaaadriaaaan!”
“Mom,” Kyle said, his hand tight on her wrist. She could hear the fear wavering through that one word.
It snapped her out of the cold, frenzied state Radley always reduced her to. Gripping both of Kyle’s shoulders now, she looked at him. “Listen to me. I want you to go in your room and lock the door, just like you did the last time. Take my cell phone,” she said, handing it to him from the pocket of the apron she had donned to cook bacon. “As soon as you’re safe inside, call Cole and ask him to come over immediately.”
“What about James?” Kyle asked. His lips trembled but he licked them as if trying to fight it.
The pounding came again. It sounded as if the door was rattling on its hinges. Adrian gave Kyle a push. “Go!” she said, guiding him from the kitchen. She watched him go down the hall, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw him enter his room without further question. Taking a deep breath, she waited for the door to close before going to the couch. Feeling in the scant space between it and the wall, she groped for the crowbar she’d hidden there after Radley’s first visit.
“Adrian! Open up, you bitch, and face me!”
Gritting her teeth, she felt wildly for the cold steel. Her heart galloped in her eardrums as she pressed her cheek to the wall for better leverage.
“I’ve got a knife!”
“Oh, God,” she said on a shuddering breath. Forgetting the crowbar, she dashed back into the kitchen. She reached for the back of the chair Kyle had been sitting in. Her damp palm fumbled over the wooden rail and the chair clattered loudly to the floor. Cursing, she picked it up and dragged it across the kitchen. Her eyes fell on the small kitchen window above the sink. She could see a light over the fence.
“James,” she whispered. Yes, Kyle was right. She should call James...
First the gun, some distant voice in her head told her firmly. Radley had a knife. If he got through the door, she had little doubt he’d use it. Pushing the chair against the counter, she clambered on top of it and reached for the butt of the gun on top of the cupboard.
Just as her fingers locked onto it, the bay window over the table exploded. Adrian ducked and screamed, the BB gun falling to the counter and then onto the floor next to the brick that had shattered the glass. She looked up to see Radley climbing through.
His eyes lighted on her. They were grim and bloodshot. They were hungry for violence. His face was sheened in sweat. Perspiration soaked his shirt and he held a long buck knife.
“Come ’ere, you!” he said and lunged toward her.
The knife caught the light. She judged the distance between herself and the gun. The stove was closer. On impulse, she closed her hand over the handle of the bacon pan and swung it at him.
Bacon grease landed on him. Radley yelped as it dripped, thick, down one arm. Driven by success, Adrian took the opportunity to swing the pan up again and slam the bottom into his face.
Radley went down, hollering now in pain and rage. Empty-handed, Adrian climbed off the chair and leaped for the gun.
Fingers closed over her ankle, biting. She went sprawling. The edge of the kitchen island rose up to meet her. She twisted and the side of her rib cage connected with the granite counter before she tumbled onto the upturned chair beneath it. Her temple grazed off the point of one chair leg and her shoulder came down hard on another. She felt something crack in the area of her collarbone.
Pain, bright in intensity, filled her. A gray cast swamped her vision, blinding her momentarily as her teeth rang with pain. Don’t black out, she willed herself. She was all that was standing between Radley and Kyle. You will not black out.
Choking back a whimper, gnashing her teeth as her ribs and collarbone added their own voices to the screaming inside her head, Adrian lurched across the kitchen floor on her knees and the heel of one hand until the kitchen island was between her and Radley.
He was cursing up a storm. “Damn it,” he grunted. The words ran together. “Goddamn it, Adrian! If you’d’ve just listened to me...if you’d just listened to your husband...none of this woulda’ happened.”
Her lips peeled back from her teeth. “You’re not my husband,” she said between pained pants. She cradled her ribs, pressing her back to the island. Every move she made escalated the pain. She bit the inside of her lip to fight through it. “Husbands don’t hit their wives, you trailer trash son of a bitch.”
“Only whores have mouths like that,” he said, closer now. She crouched at the corner and judged the distance between herself and the archway leading into the living room. “You’re a whore, Adrian. That’s why you left.”
She shifted toward the door, ready to make a break for it. No matter how bad it hurt, she had to get to Kyle before Radley did. The toe of her shoe sent something skidding across the floor. The silver blade caught her eye.
Radley’s knife. It had gone flying when she’d hit him with the pan. Her breath caught. Her hand went to it just as his fist came around the corner of the island and made
a grab for her throat.
On a ragged cry, she gripped the knife handle hard and swung it toward him in an arc. It met his hand in the air.
The sound Radley made was something akin to a mauled animal. Blood poured from the wound. The knife hadn’t penetrated all the way through his palm, but it was lodged there. As she scrambled away, making a break for the door, he used his other hand to pull the knife out of his hand. It clattered to the floor.
She ran for the archway. Her hand skinned the wall before his arm caught her around the waist and hauled her back. She flailed, but her ribs wrenched and she crumbled. She felt something tear as he turned her roughly to face him. His uninjured hand backhanded her in the face. She saw stars again as she fell to the floor and had to blink several times before his face came into focus above hers.
“Wives don’t leave their husbands,” he groaned. His breath fell over her face, sickly sweet. The stench was almost as bad as the reek of perspiration coming off him. “I don’t care what the papers say. You’re my wife, goddamn it, and you’ll die that way.”
Kicking, she almost managed to get a knee between his legs before his pressed heavily into her thigh. Arm flailing blindly to the side, she reached for something...anything. Finally, she felt something cool and warm. Metal and wood all wrapped up in one. The Winchester. She looked him in the eye, wanting the message to ring clear as she fought against the tidal wave of pain thundering down on her. She lifted the gun. “Get out of my house!”
She brought the butt of the gun down. He looked up at the last second. He jerked away and the blow skimmed the top of his head. Hissing, he gripped both her arms in a bruising hold and pinned them over her head. The pain in her torso reached the tipping point and she gasped, sobbed. The gun was useless in her hands.
Close above her now, he sneered in a twisted smile that chilled her to the bone. He’ll kill me, she thought.
She saw his head come down to meet her in a head butt. Again, colors flashed behind her eyes. She swam through gray again, then white before a puke shade of green took over. “No,” she muttered. “No, no, no...” Fighting to stay conscious, she thought about Kyle. Cole would be here any minute, right? Then Kyle would be safe and she could slip down into that milky-green fog and disappear for a while into a place without Radley.
Suddenly, Radley’s weight lifted. She heard something other than his voice. A vicious growl that sounded like something wild. Rolling to her side, folding her arms over her ribs, she looked blearily through the haze clouding her vision.
The sight that came into soft focus made her heart stutter. James. His movements seemed sluggish. But then again, she was. Still, the fist that he hammered into Radley over and over had no less force in slow motion. She watched Radley’s head snap back again and again. Blood flew. Blood. There was blood everywhere. She didn’t know if it was Radley’s or hers or...
On a surge of towering strength, James let out a roar, picked Radley up and heaved him into the upturned table. Adrian jumped, the noise breaking apart in her ears, deafening, whereas before it had seemed dulled. As if she’d been underwater and the sounds were carrying to her from the surface.
Cringing, she shrank against the wall behind her. The look on James’s face... She’d never seen him look so enraged. So savage. He picked up a chair and tossed it Radley’s way. It splintered. She cried out as he went for Radley again, a fist coming down to meet Radley’s marred face. She got a hurried glimpse of James’s knuckles. They were bloody, split so that Radley’s blood mingled with James’s...
She was sobbing when Cole finally barreled in. He grabbed James by the shoulders and hauled him back. James fought against his hold but Cole locked his arm around James’s throat. “Enough!” Cole shouted in his ear.
“No!” James yelled, trying to throw Cole off again.
“Look at him, for Christ’s sake!” Cole demanded. “Much more and you’ll kill him!”
“I know,” James replied, breathing hard. He reached up to brush the back of his hand over his mouth. Blood smeared there. At that moment, his head turned and his eyes, wild and fierce, locked on hers.
Adrian cowered back against the wall. Little whimpers and cries were tearing out of her—she couldn’t stop them. Her pulse was clouding her head. It felt like an insistent, tinny bell and it rang and rang until her head pounded with it. All the while, James looked at her and his eyes went from violent to blank, then shocked and fearful before softness took over. “Adrian...” he said in a choked voice. “Baby...” He took a step toward her.
She saw the blood on his hands and face and flinched. He came up short, alarm, hurt and dread slackening his features. She told herself not to be afraid. He’d taken care of Radley. He’d saved her. But whatever had taken over her, whatever was causing her to shake so badly she thought her ribs would splinter, had too hard a hold. She could do nothing but shrink into a protective ball and close her eyes against the mess that was her kitchen and the helpless expression that had consumed James’s face.
That fog seemed like a safe place now. She heard Cole’s voice, felt him near but she sank deeper into the fog. The further down she sank the more the pain and fear numbed, so she swam into it until the green and gray faded to black and she felt nothing. Nothing at all.
* * *
JAMES PACED THE waiting room in the ER. Several people tried to stop him. Briar implored him to sit and steady himself, but he couldn’t stop. He had to move or else he’d fly apart at the seams or succumb to every desperate thought blazing through his brain. Adrian’s screams. Adrian’s limp form underneath Kennard’s. Adrian’s blatant, fearful cringe when James had tried to comfort her...
His heart knocked hard against his throat. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. He’d felt that look like a blow to the chest. It had gutted him. All that was keeping him from going to pieces right now was the fact that Kyle was sitting with Van and Edith in the corner. The kid was doing his best to hold himself together as the wait stretched into an hour and a half.
James owed him just as much. With his bloody hands and clothes, he was hardly a comfort. Several other people waiting had sent him wary glances. Olivia had all but ordered him to sit down and rest when she arrived. He ignored her, too. Cole at one point tried to wrestle him into a chair. Still, he continued pacing restlessly, like a caged tiger, until the sliding doors opened and his mother and Stephen walked in.
As he stopped and stared, Mavis spotted him, scanned him, then made her way over. “Come,” she said, taking him by the hand.
“But—” James began.
“No buts,” she said sternly. “Just come.”
She led James back into the white halls of the hospital until she found an empty exam room. “Sit,” she said, jerking her head toward the bed. When he failed to comply, she arched a brow.
James heaved a sigh and went to the bed. He felt brittle. The numbness that pacing had brought was slipping away and he was starting to feel everything. His split knuckles. The pounding in his head. The desperation that threatened to go on a tear inside him if he didn’t soon get the news that Adrian was okay. Scooting back onto the crackling paper surface, he shifted as Mavis brought forth a bandage and cleaning supplies. “Mom...” he began to protest.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said.
James wondered how she managed to sound so sharp and gentle at the same time. He frowned when she handed him a wet cloth. “What’s this for?”
“Clean your face,” she told him.
Confused, he swiped the cleaning cloth over his features. When he pulled it away, he saw the blood. Suddenly, the looks from the people in the waiting room made sense. As he continued to wipe away the evidence of violence from his face, Mavis’s smooth, narrow hands went to work cleaning his free hand and he made no bones about it as she peeled away the layers of dried blood. He felt a sting behind his eyes and cursed.<
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Her hands kept working and her gaze didn’t stray to his, but she said in as gentle a tone as she could manage, “You’re shaking.”
Looking down, he saw the quiver in his hands and fisted them. She tutted and he winced when his knuckles split again.
As she finished cleaning and bandaging him up, the shaking worsened. He could feel it worming its way down into the marrow of his bones. He had no control over the tremors. And as she disposed of the adhesive strips and cleaning supplies, he felt the sting behind his eyes worsen, too. He muttered an oath, reaching a bandaged hand up to his face.
Mavis’s arms lifted around him. He didn’t question the embrace. He simply folded himself into her arms as the emotions he’d been fighting took hold and he crumbled like a dry leaf. She said nothing as his breath hitched and his shoulders heaved.
He’d been too late. When Kyle came flying into his house to tell him he’d snuck out of his bedroom window because Radley had broken in and was going after his mother, James hadn’t thought. He’d told Kyle to lock the door behind him and had gone running, armed with nothing but his fists.
He’d heard the screams from outside, both from Adrian and Kennard. He’d seen the broken window and had gone charging through what was left of it. The sight of her on the floor beneath the big bastard, white as a ghost and unmoving, had stopped James in his tracks for a moment. He’d thought she was dead. After the crippling thought had crept through, a red haze had taken over.
He’d had every intention of killing Radley before Cole pulled him off. Before he saw that Adrian wasn’t dead. The look on her face had killed him because he’d seen the glazed fear coating her expression and had known that something inside her had shattered, snapped.
A knock clattered against the door. James and Mavis broke apart to see Van standing in the door. His gaze locked with James’s, stilled.
James reached up quickly to wipe his forearm over his face. It was wet. The sleeve of his shirt was no match for the mess that tears had made. Before he could speak, Van held up a hand. “I came to tell you the doctor’s got some news for us,” he said. “Thought you’d want to be there when he gave it.”
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