by Jewel, Bella
“I will,” I say, and lean my head back against the cupboard. “I’m so sorry, Liv.”
“Me too.” She chokes up as she says this, and my own tears begin to fall faster as I hang up the phone and prepare to tell my son the bad news.
As expected, he does not take it well.
He cries so hard I swear to God he stops breathing, and just when I think he’s cried himself out, he cries some more. I don’t know what to do, so I cry with him, and there in a puddle on our kitchen floor, around spoiled ice cream that I’d really been looking forward to and the remainder of the bag of groceries spilled out around us, he climbs into my lap and lets me hold him for the first time in a long time.
We cry over Lady, the dog who would have been his Autism assistance dog if only I could afford to keep one and if Mr. Williams had allowed us to own a pet, and when Spencer falls asleep and I carry him into bed, I send a silent thank you to Lady—who I just know is in doggy heaven for all that she’s given to my little man.
4
Jake
I stand with my hands on my knees, my torso pitched forward, and my lungs on fire as I gasp for breath. I don’t know where the hell I am, and I don’t much care either, as long as I’m not cooped up in that doctor’s office no more.
Rising to my full height, I hug my ribcage and wonder if I ran so hard I dislodged a piece of shrapnel from my side. A beat later the pain subsides, and I call myself a pussy for the eighteenth time today, and it’s not even noon yet. I stare at the car window in front of me and see what looks to be a homeless man reflected back.
Jesus. When did I become a fucking mountain man?
I scrub my hand over my too long beard and then up through my hair. When I was in recovery in that German hospital after my service, I wanted nothing more than a hot meal, a buzz-cut and a clean shave. I’ve grown both my beard and my hair since my return to US soil, but then pretty blondes weren’t exactly lining up around the block to date me.
What, like they are now?
I run over today’s checklist in an attempt to shut that voice in my head up.
Run with Nuke? Good.
Leaving Nuke at the house? Bad.
Appointment with my shrink? Bad.
Wanting to punch my shrink in the face when he pushed too hard? Bad.
Going through with it? BAD. BAD. BAD.
I rake my hands through my beard and step away from the curb, glancing around the quiet leafy street. Houses line each side. Not grand or overly large, like the ones on Sea Cliff Drive, but they aren’t rundown either.
Across the road, a surly old man watches me from his front porch stoop, but they aren’t the only eyes trained on me. I turn around. The single story Créole-style home might be a little run down, but she is a beauty. The cream roller shade covering the glass-paned door moves. It flicks up violently, stunning me and exposing the small, angry blonde on the other side of it. Painted on the door between us is a logo that reads Big Bama Hair and beneath that in pink script I can just pick out the words close shave.
It must be my lucky day, after all.
Ellie Mason turns and gives me her back as I amble up the walk. I open the door, the bell above let out a high-pitched ding. Cool air-conditioning wafts towards me from the vent and it’s a small mercy because my whole body is burning up from running several blocks in the Bama heat.
“Ma’am, are you open for business today?”
She turns abruptly and narrows angry eyes on me. “I was just closing up, actually.”
“How’s your boy doin’?” I ask, and when her frown deepens and she doesn’t answer, I bow my head and prepare to get the hell out of there. “Alright. Well, I’m sorry to disturb you. I won’t take up any more of your time.”
“Wait,” she says, sounding resigned. “Come sit down.”
“I don’t wanna impose.”
“Don’t make me ask twice, Jake Tucker.”
“Well alright then.” I close the door behind me and walk towards her. She pats the back of a barber chair, indicating that I should sit. I awkwardly fold my body into the too small seat and stare at the mirror in front of me. My reflection makes me uncomfortable. Mercifully, my face is free of scars, with the exception of one very small mark marring my hairline—my neck, however, is not.
“Where’s your dog today?” Ellie says, as she moves away to grab a black cape.
“Back at the house.”
“Aren’t you supposed to take him everywhere with you?” She asks as if she’s genuinely interested. I stare at her a beat. “Olivia Anders is my best friend. I’ve helped out at the shelter a time or two.”
I nod and fidget by running my thumb along the scar on my index finger. It calms me, until she glances down at my hands.
“What did you do to your hand?”
It takes me a moment to realize she doesn’t mean the scars; she wants to know why my knuckles are inflamed and bleeding. I place them in my lap. It may cover the blood, but not the scar tissue, because both sides are ruined and were Frankensteined back together almost a year after the original injury. “Nothing.”
She meets my gaze in the mirror and shakes out the black cape around me. I close my eyes as she lifts my hair from my neck in order to fasten the cape. I’m breathing heavily. She probably thinks I’m a freak.
The metal snap of the press studs closing makes me flinch. I close my eyes, feel the tight pinch of rope around my neck, the shortness of breath as he yanks me toward him like a dog on a chain.
No! I repeat that shitty mantra in my head Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day. Every day may not be good, but there is something good in every day. Every day may not be good, but there is . . . FUCK!
“Jake, are you okay?” Ellie says, looking terrified, as if I’m about to jump up and slit her throat.
Breathe, you fucking cock sucker. You’re scaring her.
I meet her gaze in the mirror and bark out a gruff, “I’m fine.”
Oh great, ’cause she definitely doesn’t think you’re Ted Bundy now.
“We can stop if you like?”
Sweat prickles along my spine and over my brow. “I’m fine. Just cut it. All of it. I want it all gone.”
Her brow furrows. “You want me to shave everything?”
I nod.
She lets out a sigh. “You should keep your hair. With a good cut we’ll be able to see your eyes, and it will really accentuate your jawline. I mean, you’d need a close shave for that, but don’t cut your hair. Most men your age would kill to have this much of it.” Her eyes grow wide in the mirror. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean they’d kill, kill. It’s a figure of speech, I didn’t mean nothing by it. I’m sorry. I ramble when I’m nervous. I’ll just . . .” She peters off and pulls her scissors from the little tool belt at her waist, carefully trimming the bulk of my beard away, allowing it to fall to the floor.
Once she’s finished, Ellie pumps the shaving foam into a bowl and mixes the brush through it. She lifts it to my face. I pull away. “You know it’s hard to shave your face when you’re moving all about like that and won’t let me get the cream near you.”
“I make you nervous?” I ask quietly, meeting her gaze in the mirror.
“Well, sure you do. You’re jumpier than a jackrabbit.” She touches the side of my face and I wince. Her expression softens as she meets my gaze. “I’ll be gentle. I promise.”
She exhales softly, and her palm on the side of my face holds me steady while she swirls the soft-bristled brush through the cream and applies it with slow, fluid strokes. When she’s finished the right side, she removes her hand. She doesn’t have to hold me still to complete the other. I’m covered head to toe in goose pimples. It’s the strangest feeling to have a beautiful woman tending to me with such care. Especially one who I’ve pissed off so recently.
I wince when she pulls the razor from her sheath and it glints in the bright lights of the small salon, but I stay as motionless as I can.
“Hold still,” she whispers. “Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Carefully, as if she were approaching a spooked horse, she places her hand on the top of my head and tilts it back a little, and then the sharp scrape and zing of the straight blade over my facial hair fills the quiet salon. My heart races so fast I don’t know how it doesn’t combust. The sweet scent of flowers mixed with shaving cream assaults my nostrils, and I have this insane desire to take her hand and kiss the inside of her wrist, to run my tongue along it, to feel her softness and taste her perfume.
Ellie tilts my head further, until it rests against the back of the chair. She bends over to run the blade along that difficult spot where my neck and jaw meet. I slant my head to the side for her. The blade slices my skin. I grab her wrist—it’s automatic. Muscle memory. She cries out. I glance down and find I’m holding her with enough strength to bruise. The blade falls from her hands and clatters on the floor by her feet.
A beat passes. My reflection meets hers in the mirror. A trickle of blood, warm and bright red, runs down my neck and I let her go.
She gasps, grasping her wrist with her free hand as she takes a step back.
“I’m sorry.” I yank the cape from my neck. Three strides and I’m at the door. I pull it open and turn back to face her. She shakes as she picks up the bent blade from the floor.
I close the door quietly behind me and use my shirt to wipe off the excess shaving cream, then I sprint away from her house like a coward deserting his post. I must look like a madman because everyone I pass stops to stare.
Fairhope was my home town before I went away to war. I’d deployed four times, and each time I came back a little less Jake Tucker and a little more of the Marine they taught me to be. A group of men go to war. They kill, they follow out orders, they sweat, bleed, and hurt, and they lose brothers. No matter how brave or how tough you think you are, every man that ever steps into a war zone comes back different. Some of us with scars you can see and some with scars you can’t. Others come back in a box. It affects all of us, even those who say it don’t. They’re just better at hiding it than the rest. This last time, all that returned of my platoon was the shell of a man, scarred on the outside and broken within, and this town don’t have a clue what to do with broken soldiers.
The second I rattle open the screen door with trembling fingers, Nuke barks. He can tell there’s something very wrong, and as I seek out the corner of my bathroom and huddle into it, he whines and licks at my face. He nestles himself in between my legs as I press my forehead against the cool tile.
I don’t know how long I stay that way, huddled in a corner as if it could save me from the demons that shadow my every move, but it feels like days and nights pass. And maybe they do—maybe this is what hell looks like. You wake every day and do the same thing and expect different results. Only I didn’t do the same thing. Not today. I pushed my boundaries the way Crenshaw told me to do and I hurt Ellie Mason because of it. I terrorized the woman—I saw it in her eyes.
I beat my fists against my head until Nuke paws at me to stop. My ass is numb from the cold tiles, and my legs and side ache. With a debilitating fear that almost cripples me, I crawl across the room and lie down beside my bed, hidden from the harsh rays of the sun that stream through the open window. Nuke stretches out alongside me. I know I need to take him outside, but I can’t. He won’t leave me, even if he could make his own way out, so I quietly whisper to him, “Soon, we’ll go out soon.”
Fear has other ideas. It grips me by the throat and pins me down to the carpet, and there we stay until well into the night.
Stupid.
I’m a U.S. Marine. Nothing holds us down. Not war, famine, deprivation, and certainly not terror. When others run from the sounds of chaos, we run toward it. Me? I ran so far that I became the chaos. I reveled in it, wrought it until I couldn’t wield any longer and it won.
War takes little toy soldiers and breaks them. Afterward, we’re glued back together with pain meds and doctors that shrink our heads. We’re given shiny medals of honor that are supposed to make the sacrifices of scars, lost limbs, and fallen brothers worth it. But freedom comes at a price, and it’s rarely worth it. This isn’t freedom; it’s hell on earth. There’s nothing free about a broken soldier.
Nine years I fought their war. Now, every day I wake and fight my own. All I have is my guilt and my dog whose life is dedicated to making sure I don’t lose my shit and blow my fucking brains all over the walls of my empty house.
All I have is nothing, and the cost of that was way too high.
5
Ellie
By Friday week we aren’t doing much better. I spent all week feeling guilty, about everyone and everything. I cried my eyes out when we got to the shelter and Lady wasn’t there to greet us. I felt responsible for her death, because if I hadn’t been watching Jake Damn Tucker in my rear-view mirror, I never would have crashed my car, Olivia wouldn’t have had to babysit me, and she’d have been at home with Lady and Pebbles.
I’m so humiliated and confused beyond belief. I’d puked on Jake one day, chewed him out the next, and the following day he’d had a Spencer-sized meltdown in my salon. I never did thank him for pulling me from the car, and I guess I had been a little hard on him at the beach, but with the way he came at me, and then seeing that blood on Spencer’s arm, and the torment in his gaze when I accidently cut him—well, I was completely flummoxed.
That man just turns me into a walking hormone, which is so unlike me. Okay, that’s a lie—it’s not completely unheard of for me to lose my head around those big, broody, silent types. I did fall hard and fast for Spencer’s dad and look where that got me. It seems the meaner they are, the harder I fall.
Being attracted to those kinds of men, though? Well, it’s hard not to lose yourself and become a walking doormat. I stayed with Spencer’s daddy when I should have tucked tail and run. It took two years for me to pluck up the courage to take my son and get the hell outta Dodge. I didn’t make it to the next town before he found me and dragged me kicking and screaming back home.
The next time I left, I made sure he’d never find us again. We zigzagged all over Southern Carolina before deciding on moving two states over and settling in Fairhope. That was six years ago, and I hadn’t been interested in letting a man get close to me since. Before Jake Tucker came home, that was.
I lean against the railing of the shelter’s training ring. Until Olivia bought this property it was used as a horse ranch; now it’s the perfect place to train and house the dogs she rescues from death row.
Spencer plays in the small puppy pen off to one side of the ring. He giggles as those furry little monsters climb all over him and lick and slobber and mouth his hands, face, and boots. Olivia comes out from the house and I hand her the double-shot mocha with low-fat whip that I promised her for making my week with this here little visit.
“How you doing, Spence?”
He laughs again and calls out a greeting to Olivia, but one of the pups sticks its long, pink tongue in Spencer’s face, and he giggles and tackles the dog.
“He okay?” She tilts her chin toward Spencer.
“Yeah, we both got a bit teary when we came in, but he’ll be alright. We sure are going to miss her, though,” I say. Spencer picks up the puppy and holds it up in the air, zooming it around as if it’s an airplane while he hums the Superman theme song. “Careful, baby, they’re little and what do we do with things that are smaller than us?”
“We protect them,” he replies, setting the dog on his chest and rubbing its silky ears between his thumbs and forefingers.
“That’s right, so you be gentle, and you be their protector. Okay?”
“Yes, Mamma.” He glances down at the wriggling ball of fur and whispers his secrets to the puppy.
I turn my attention back to Olivia. “We held our own little memorial for Lady down by Mobile Bay yesterday. We’ve both been moping ever since.”
“That mean
old bastard Williams. If he’d let you have a pet—”
“Mamma,” Spence says, sitting up as an array of furry bodies go sprawling. “Aunt Olivia cussed.”
“I know, honey.” I give my friend a pointed look.
“Speaking of service dogs . . .” Olivia trails off, and I follow her gaze across the yard. Jake Tucker and his dog approach us.
“What is he doing here?”
“Who, Jake?” Olivia says, as if she doesn’t know. “Well, I asked him to help out with the puppies. Plus, Nuke’s comin’ in for a little more training. Can’t have him disobeying orders, now can we?”
My mouth falls open. “How did you know about that?”
“Honey, there ain’t a thing that happens in this town that everyone and their dog don’t know about by the end of the day.” Olivia pushes off of the fence and walks toward him. “Jake, nice to see you again,” she purrs, and raises a brow at me before turning to Nuke. She sooks him up appropriately and he wags his tail. “Eloise and Percy are just finishing up inside, and then we’ll get started. Why don’t you two talk amongst yourselves a little while I go and help them out?”
“Olivia,” I protest, but she just chuckles, tying up her rich chestnut locks as she walks across the yard to the big old brick building.
“Hi,” Jake says, holding up his hand, which has a camouflage lead wrapped around it. “He’s on the leash.”
I smile sheepishly. “I may have overreacted a little bit that day.”
“It’s okay. You were just lookin’ out for your boy.”
I give a half-hearted nod. “I may have also been embarrassed about puking on you the day before.”
“Ah. Well, I could lie and tell you it’s fine, but it was pretty gross.”
I stare at him, my mouth agape. Did he seriously just say that? I mean, obviously it was gross, but still, could he make me feel any worse?
Jake chuckles, one corner of his mouth quirking up in a half grin. “I’m teasin’ you, Elle. Besides, I’d say we’re even after I ran outta your salon screaming like a little girl, wouldn’t you?”
