by Ranae Rose
CHAPTER 5
“I’m ready to go.” Clad in jeans, her comfiest flats and an oft-worn jacket, she felt casual enough for a day at Donovan’s garage. A day of web-surfing, anyway. She carried her laptop bag at her side as she stepped into the kitchen.
“Okay.” Donovan wore old jeans and a black thermal shirt that clung to his shoulders and pecs in a way that could’ve stopped traffic. He made the simplest things look amazing – he always had. “We’ll get an early start, maybe head home by four or five. I can bring you home before then, around lunchtime, if you want.”
She shook her head. “I’m fine with spending the day at the garage.” No way was she going to lounge around zoning out in front of daytime programming again. “I have plenty of job hunting to keep me busy – after all, that’s why I came to Willow Heights.”
“Suit yourself.” He pulled on a work-worn jacket. “We’ll go out for lunch, then.”
Go out. His words settled in the pit of her chest and made her skin tingle. What was she, fifteen? That was how old she’d been the first time he’d asked her out – for a ride on his dirt bike. Zooming down Willow Heights’ rural roads on the old contraption, which hadn’t even been street legal, had been a thrill at the time.
That’d been ten years ago. Her chest tightened as she remembered what he’d said a few hours ago, over coffee.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked, his expression betraying wary curiosity.
“I was thinking we could get lunch from Ann’s Diner,” she lied. “I love their French silk pie.”
“We’ll get whatever you want.”
* * * * *
“Any luck?” Donovan asked as they sat across from each other in the back of Ann’s, ensconced in one of the red vinyl booths that had been fixtures in the diner ever since Clementine could remember. From its rectangular chrome exterior to its black and white tiled floor, Ann’s hadn’t changed much since it’d been built decades ago, and that didn’t seem to bother anyone in Willow Heights.
“Job hunting, you mean?”
He nodded and took a bite of the roast beef croissant sandwich he’d ordered.
“Well, it’s too early to say, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I e-mailed my résumé to three different companies this morning. One of the positions I found seems like a dream come true.” She took a bite of her French onion soup. “Of course, it’s probably a long shot for a recent college grad like me.”
“What about your internship?”
She’d been thinking the same thing, though she hadn’t dared to say it out loud. Feigning casualness, she shrugged. “I guess we’ll see if that helps.” It had damned well better – she’d bankrupted herself to intern at the prestigious firm, throwing herself at the unpaid work in an attempt to learn – an attempt to pad out her meager résumé. Having worked part-time at a café throughout her college years wasn’t the kind of experience the employers she wanted were looking for.
“Two slices of French silk,” Donovan said to the waitress when she appeared. “And coffees.”
“That’s what you wanted, right?” he asked when the waitress had disappeared with his latest order.
Clementine nodded, her heart speeding at the thought of what had really prompted her to smile that morning. “This is weird, isn’t it?” she asked, toying with an empty straw wrapper.
“What’s weird?”
“Having lunch at Ann’s. It’s like … before.”
His gaze locked with hers. “I don’t think it’s weird.”
“Maybe not weird,” she amended, her heart beating light and fast, like some kind of winged creature. “But who would’ve thought we’d ever eat here again, let alone together?”
“I thought of it, sometimes. After I enlisted. Mostly just at first. The Marine Corps taught me the difference between reality and fantasy pretty quick.”
She took a hasty sip of the coffee the waitress set on the table, scalding her tongue just like his words had scalded her heart.
“I’m sorry.” What was wrong with her? She kept thinking of zooming around on his old dirt bike, her arms around his waist and the wind in her hair. Back in Willow Heights, back in Ann’s, the memory seemed so real that she couldn’t help but say dumb things.
Maybe she should’ve accepted his offer to take her home at lunch time, after all. She’d had her head on straighter alone at the house the day before, even if she had been bored out of her mind.
“Saying that doesn’t change anything.”
“I know.” Her throat tightened, burning, and not just with the spices in her soup. “But it seemed right to say it.”
“Don’t talk about before if you’re just going to try to make it out to be nothing. I’m not interested in listening to you trying to act like it was … fuck, I don’t know. Some faraway thing that you can just bring up over soup, like it was cute and you expect me to laugh about it with you.”
He might as well have hit her. Being knocked down by him the night before last had hurt less. “That wasn’t what I was trying to do. Not at all.”
How could he think that?
“It seemed like it.” His voice was flat, deadpan.
“Maybe you’re projecting your expectations onto me.” Beneath the sting of his accusation, her blood began to boil. Did he really think she was trying to manipulate him into laughing off what they’d had as kids’ stuff, as a good time to be remembered and joked about when they didn’t have anything better to do?
God, how could she ever? After everything that had happened... Dirt bike rides and occasional lunches at Ann’s had been an innocent beginning to something that had spiraled out of control and imploded all over them, twisting the strings of her fate.
“How’s that pie?” The waitress appeared beside their table and glanced down at their untouched desserts, eyebrows raised.
“Fine,” Donovan snapped, effectively driving her away.
“I won’t bring it up again,” Clementine said. “Forget I said anything.”
He didn’t reply, but she knew what he was thinking – he didn’t forget. And he didn’t forgive.
* * * * *
“May I ask who I’m speaking to?”
“Jeffrey.” The middle-aged man standing on her grandmother’s – Donovan’s – front porch extended a hand. He was heavy-set, balding and a total stranger. “Hugh Jeffrey. Are you Mrs. Kemp?”
She did her best to keep her surprise from showing on her face. “No. If you have a question about the house, you’d better speak to Donovan.” Problem was, Donovan was in the shower, rinsing off after a long day of work. The stranger who stood before her had knocked at the door seconds before, stating vaguely that he had a question about the house.
She didn’t want to invite him in – it wasn’t her right to do so, and besides, she wasn’t fond of the idea of sitting alone with someone who’d barely given her more than a name.
“Can I speak with him?”
“I’m sorry, but now’s not a good time. Maybe if you come back in a little while?”
Hugh frowned, but nodded.
“Not too late,” she added, thinking of Donovan naked and armed in the kitchen the night before. “Before eight would probably be best.”
No way would he be in bed that early.
The unexpected visitor had barely pulled out of the driveway by the time Donovan appeared at the foot of the stairs, dressed in fresh jeans and a t-shirt, his hair shining dark and wet like rained-on onyx.
“On your way out?” Clementine asked.
He was wearing boots.
“Yeah.”
Curiosity struck her, along with a stab of disappointment she had no right to feel. “Where to?”
“School.”
“School?”
“The community college across town,” he clarified, striding into the kitchen and plucking a jacket from the back of a chair.
“You’re a student at Willow Heights Community? I had no idea.”
He shot her a sardonic loo
k, as if to emphasize the fact that there was a lot she had no idea about. “When I saw you for the first time in seven years, my enrollment at Harvard on the Hill wasn’t exactly the biggest thing on my mind.”
“You must’ve just started this semester. Or did you take summer classes?”
“Just started this fall. I have night classes two days a week. Figured I might as well take advantage of the GI Bill.”
“What are you studying?” She was more curious than she would’ve liked to admit. Why would he be pursuing a degree when he was already doing what he wanted to do – running his own garage? Did he have other aspirations?
If so, she’d never known. Stupid as it was, that fact made her feel as if a hell of a lot more than the kitchen separated them.
“Business management. Figured the classes might help me get smarter about running the garage.”
“Business.” A spark lit inside her. “That’s my specialty. I could—”
She bit her tongue before she could insert her foot into her mouth again. She could what – help him with his homework?
Like he needed it.
Like he’d want it.
“How late does your class run?”
He said nothing about her less-than-smooth change of subject. “Until eight-thirty.”
“Guess I’ll see you sometime before nine. That should still be early enough for you to take me into town and drop me off at a motel.”
He stiffened, one arm in his jacket and one arm out. “I thought you were over that.”
“We never really talked about it this morning, like we said we would.” Like she’d said they would. And then she’d gotten distracted … by memories of dirt bike rides, by Donovan’s anger and the misunderstanding that still stretched between them like a gaping canyon.
“I’m not taking you to a shitty motel where you’ll be lucky if all you get are head lice. Forget about it, Clementine.”
She stood straight, trying to will an extra inch or two into her height. She was 5’8”, but that didn’t feel tall compared to his 6’1”. “I can’t stay here. My being here is messing with you – endangering you.”
“You think it’s going to be better if you leave?” His voice was all steel now. “You think I’m going to sleep better knowing you’re camping out above a Chinese buffet so bad that no one will eat at it? You think that even if I fall asleep I won’t get up anyway and come looking for you?”
She swallowed the argument she’d planned. “I think you’re seriously overestimating the risks of staying in one of Willow Heights’ cheaper motels.”
“Doesn’t matter. If you seriously believe I’d rest easy after abandoning you at a place like that, you’re lying to yourself.”
Despite the dangers – or lack thereof – associated with local no-star lodgings, it was obvious that he was right. His brow was furrowed and he’d pressed his full lips into a hard line. His sculpted cheekbones seemed sharp when he was angry, like knives. The truth of his words radiated from him like poisoned energy.
“So what, I have to stay here or else you’ll run naked into the night with a knife in hand?”
“You hid the knife last night.”
“Still. I have to leave eventually.” That she was even considering staying was absurd.
“You don’t have to stay at a shithole like the ones you’re talking about. Just stay here. No bill, no bedbugs. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight. I’m going to lie awake worrying about you.”
He arched a brow, half-sneering. “Yeah? That bothers you, but you’re okay with me lying awake worrying about you?”
She sighed. “Fine. I’ll stay until the townhouse repairs are finished, or until you admit that you’re tired of having me around – whichever comes first.”
He strode to the hall closet, plucked a backpack from a hook on the inside of the door and walked back into the kitchen. “See you at a quarter ‘till nine.”
When she couldn’t hear his truck’s tires crunching on the gravel driveway anymore, she retreated upstairs, crawling into bed. She might as well get some rest now – she wasn’t going to get any that night.
* * * * *
“I forgot to tell you – a man stopped by earlier today, when you were in the shower. He said he had a question about the house. I asked him to come by again later.”
Donovan slung his backpack onto a chair at the kitchen table. “He give you a name?”
“Hugh Jeffrey. Is he someone you know?”
“Never heard of him.”
“He came by again while you were at class. I’d forgotten all about him. He seemed annoyed, though he said he’d try again later.”
Donovan shrugged and dropped a textbook on the table.
She retreated upstairs, dug her e-reader out of her suitcase and settled on the couch in the living room. It’d been forever since she’d downloaded anything new, and without an internet connection in the house, she didn’t have that option now. Still, she’d had her fill of TV – re-reading an old book would be better.
An hour crept by, then another. Halfway through a mystery she’d first finished six months before, she realized that it was late. As if on cue, the sound of a heavy book closing came from the kitchen.
She strolled into the room, taking a glass from the cupboard and filling it at the tap. Being in the house felt so easy, so familiar – even with Donovan there. Especially with Donovan there. “Heading to bed?” She tried to sound casual.
“Yeah. You planning to join me at the garage tomorrow?”
“Yes. Is that all right?”
“Fine with me. Goodnight.”
He strode upstairs without another word, pausing only to hang his backpack in the hall closet.
Alone in the kitchen, she finished her water, hyper-aware of its coolness pooling in the center of her being.
What now? Bed? Yes. But not sleep. Feeling the effects of her ultra-early morning and knowing that real rest would be impossible, she climbed the stairs too.
In the fleur-de-lis room, she took as long as possible changing into her pajamas, then checking her e-mail on her phone. The 3G connection in Willow Heights was pitiful and it took forever, but that was the point.
No replies to her job e-mails yet. Maybe someone would call the next day. Breathing a sigh, she turned over in bed, letting her phone rest on the silver-grey carpet, where a nightstand had once stood. The lights were out, but she was on, anxiety and expectation zipping through her veins like electricity.
After an eternity, she slipped into a state of half-sleep, one where she listened and waited, breathing lightly. Maybe it was the same way Donovan had slept in Afghanistan when “outside the wire”, as he’d put it. It was a terrible excuse for rest.
The subtle creak of a door hinge drew her out of purgatory, jolting her back to full awareness.
She threw off the covers and went to her own door, lurking cautiously behind its cover.
Donovan shuffled down the hall, weak moonlight highlighting the muscular planes of his back as he reached for the bannister.
Her heart seized up as he took the first step. God, what if he fell? She hadn’t thought of that before.
She didn’t dare startle him while he was on the stairs. Frozen in place, she waited, following only when he’d made it safely to the landing.
She wasn’t surprised when he headed for the kitchen, but she was ready. As he crossed the tile in the dark, she flipped on the light and headed for the sink.
From a safe distance, she doused him with a glass of water before he could touch anything.
He didn’t come out of it as cleanly as he had the last time. Mumbling and swearing, he pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes and shook his head.
It was agony to stand there and watch, afraid to reach out, afraid to lend a hand even though her fingers tingled, aching for contact with his skin.
This time, the fact that he was naked hardly fazed her. She was t
oo worried to be turned on, so no harm done.
“Donovan, you’ve been sleepwalking again,” she said when his cursing trickled down to a few choice words. “You’re in the kitchen.”
He didn’t remove his hands from his eyes, and the sight of him with his head in his hands made her stomach shrivel up with doubt.
What was she doing? Throwing water on someone who wandered in the dark, thinking he was in a war zone on the other side of the planet?
She might be fucking things up even more spectacularly than his experiences there had. She might be doing it all wrong, and still, she didn’t have a clue what she could do differently. Her strategies had all been born of desperation, tempered by that first night, when she’d first realized that he could be dangerous.
“Damn it.” He finally dropped his arms to his sides. His eyes were red around the edges, slightly puffy after the way he’d rubbed them.
“Come on. Let’s get you back to bed. There’s still plenty of time for sleep.” It wasn’t even one in the morning yet.
Shoulders taut with tension, he strode forward. No reaching for the checkered towel that hung on the front of the stove, no offers for coffee or jokes about loincloths. Not even an argument.
She followed in his wake, feeling useless. Wasn’t there anything she could do besides throw water at him when he wandered off in his sleep? As a kid, she’d used the same strategy to punish the family cat. When the tabby had climbed on the screens, she’d misted it with water from a spray bottle.
It didn’t feel right, doing it to Donovan.
When they reached the top of the stairs, she followed him to his room, so wired with worry that she needed to see him climb back into bed.
“Clementine…” He paused in the doorway, silhouetted by the weak sickle moonlight that drifted through the window.