Breathe the Sky

by Michelle Hazen

  “It was nothing. A nightmare.” She pushed her hair back and gave him a weak smile. “It’s fine, really.”

  A nightmare? She’d screamed like . . . He hadn’t heard full volume like that, not ever.

  What had happened to her that was bad enough that even the memory could make her scream?

  He stared at her, his fists slowly uncurling as it dawned on him that there was nothing he could do to save her. And more, that he had no business being in this room at all. He wasn’t anything to her. She wasn’t even speaking to him right now.

  Her eyes were sad beneath the strangely beautiful spray of her chaotic chocolate-and-silver hair.

  It wasn’t until the cold air of the AC brushed his chest that he remembered he was naked. Or near so, wearing old black boxers gone gray with washing. He blinked. “I’m sorry.”

  He meant for himself, for yelling at her so she wanted to avoid him. For being in only his drawers in her room when she wanted to be sleeping. And being an asshole when she probably wanted him to care about baby birds more than his job, the way she did. Mari would have stood up to being fired to protect those birds, he was sure of it. He was a coward for not doing the same.

  But that scream . . . that scream was straight out of the hellhole trailer park where he grew up. It quivered in the marrow of his bones now, like he couldn’t scrub it out of the air.

  He couldn’t go back there. He needed this job.

  “Sorry,” he said again, talking over more of her apologies. He edged toward the door and let himself out. Rattled the knob to make sure it could still latch safely after the damage he’d done to it.

  And then he stood there and stared at the blank side of her door, with her on the other side. She’d looked so small and scared, and all he’d done was frighten her more. Hadn’t been able to do shit for her.

  She was alone in there, behind that crappy door in that tiny room, thinking God knew what about him. Whatever it was, however bad it was, she was probably right.

  * * *

  —

  After Jack left, Mari half fell, half sat onto her bed and tucked her shaking hands under her legs. Embarrassment squirmed up her body, and she could still feel her husband’s hands from the dream, holding her down until the rough fibers of carpet rubbed the skin off her back.

  Ex-husband.

  She swallowed, listening to Jack going back into his room next door. He nearly broke down her door because he thought someone was hurting her. And they weren’t even really friends.

  No one else had cared that she was screaming. If she ever wondered if the motel management would respond in an emergency, this was her answer. All those years with Brad, even when he cracked the front window with her head . . . no one had come. People called the cops sometimes, but they never came themselves.

  She crawled up onto her bed and pulled the blankets over her, folding them so she could have more layers between her and the world. The lights she left on, but it didn’t matter because all she was seeing were the moments when Jack had been there.

  How frantic his voice had sounded. The embarrassment in his face when he’d realized he was in his underwear, and how upset he must have been not to notice for so long. The way his hands curled at his sides. From fists into something . . . gentler. Something that made her ache.

  The way his eyes flicked from her face to the floor like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to look at her. The way the door had shuddered and nearly given way under a single blow from his desperate strength.

  She stared at the wall with him on the other side, and thought about what kind of man would do all of those things. Or why he would do anything at all for her, a virtual stranger. After a while, she stopped wondering about why and just thought about the way his eyes looked when he realized she was safe.

  And she fell into a deep, soft sleep.

  * * *

  —

  Mari piloted her truck along the dirt access road just as the sun was barely peeking over the horizon, backlighting all the cactus so they glowed with prickly golden halos.

  She should have felt odd or off-balance after last night; it was an embarrassing thing, after all, to have disturbed everyone and been seen in her scant pajamas. Not to mention seeing Jack’s bare chest when he was clearly not comfortable with that. She should be feeling guilty at the fresh reminder of why she shouldn’t have neighbors.

  Instead, she felt centered and . . . warm. Like she’d just woken from a nap in a beam of sunlight, someplace very safe.

  Her hands twitched on the wheel, though, when she saw Jack’s truck. His personal one, not his work truck, and not at the job site they were supposed to meet at. Instead, he was parked at the tower site she had closed because it was too close to the bird nest.

  Even stranger, he wasn’t supposed to be there before her. She always got to work before the crew so she could make sure to move any animals out of the way that had burrowed into the tower pieces or pallets overnight.

  Mari blew out a slow breath. “Oh, Jack. What are you doing? And why are you doing it today?”

  She parked next to his green truck and walked out to meet him with a sinking feeling in her stomach. He was standing well inside the flagged buffer zone, right next to the delicate little nest.

  If he’d destroyed it, she’d have to report him. She had no idea what the penalty was, but it was a state law. Worry tightened her throat.

  When she reached his side, he was just staring down at the nest, hands hanging at his sides. She had to drag her eyes from his face to the small hollow of the nest.

  The eggs were untouched.

  Perfect, tiny little speckled eggs. He hadn’t hurt them. Her heart jagged as she realized it would have changed something in her if he had.

  “Fuck.” He whispered the curse word so heavily that it felt like it sucked all the hope out of the dawning sunrise around them. “They’re so . . . little.”

  “They are.” She waited, not crowding him because she knew he wasn’t going to make a move on the nest. The possibility of that had come and gone far before she got here.

  “It’s just a sparrow,” he said, but without much conviction. “You know, my boss is gonna raise hell about this tower. Not now, not direct like. But he will.”

  She touched his arm. They needed to go, before the mother sparrow tried to return, or more of their scent tainted the nest site. “Everyone deserves a chance, though, don’t you think? Even the creatures who aren’t the flashiest, or the most popular.”

  He turned at her touch. His head ducked, looking deeper into her than he usually did. She held his searching gaze. He looked tired, and maybe even a little afraid.

  But he nodded, and he let her lead him away.

  9

  Silver Lining

  The bios all stood in a circle for their weekly meeting, shoulders hunched beneath hoodies against the predawn bite of the crisp desert air.

  “First,” Marcus said, “I think we ought to have a round of applause for Mari, who survived not one, not two, but three weeks on Wyatt’s crew. Without medication. Or illegal drug abuse.”

  “That we know of,” Hotaka added.

  Everyone laughed as they began to clap. Lisa slung an arm over Mari’s shoulders and gave her a little side hug.

  “Lisa . . .” Marcus tugged at his beard. “Sorry, but it’s your turn.”

  She nodded. “I swear that Wyatt won’t make me cry this time.”

  There was a conspicuous silence.

  “At least not more than twice,” Lisa amended.

  Marcus sighed. “Well, that would be an improvement.”

  Something dark twinged in Mari’s belly, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to join in the laughter. It wasn’t fair of them to talk about Jack that way. It wasn’t that he was mean, like they were making him out to be. He liked animals, and he watched out for his men. Gr
anted, he did have a tendency to raise his voice more than strictly necessary, but everyone was acting like he was going to lay into Lisa like he wanted to make her feel bad. Jack wasn’t like that.

  She took a small step forward. “Lisa doesn’t have to go. I’ll stay with Ja—with Wyatt’s crew.”

  Hotaka frowned. “You know they drug test on this job, right?”

  “You don’t have to,” Marcus said. “You’ve proven you’re willing to do more than your share of the dirty work around here.”

  “I’ll be fine, honey,” Lisa said as she touched Mari’s arm. “It’s sweet of you to worry.”

  Mari shrugged. “I really don’t mind. Wyatt and I have come to an understanding.” She did not feel that was the strict truth, but it was at least in the same zip code as the truth.

  She was getting better at figuring out the right approach to take with him, and the shouting matches were getting a little shorter, perhaps losing a decibel or two. She didn’t shrink these days when he got mad.

  Marcus made a mark on his clipboard. “Well, I’m not going to stop you if you’re offering. Next up, I need volunteers for monitoring the helicopter crew.”

  After the meeting, Lisa tagged along with Mari when she headed back to her truck, her sparse eyebrows low over narrowed blue eyes. “I appreciate you trying to save me, but I don’t know how you can stand it. He’s so loud and mean, I just get all flustered.”

  That dark feeling twisted in her stomach again and she resisted the urge to snap at Lisa. Instead, she shrugged. After all, she couldn’t claim he hadn’t flustered her a time or two. Or twelve.

  “He’s just under a lot of pressure from his boss. That’s why he gets impatient with the slowdowns from following the environmental mitigation measures.”

  Lisa took her arm and turned Mari so they were face-to-face, lowering her voice. “Listen, I know you don’t like to talk about it, but I know you’re divorced, and I’ve seen the medical bills. It’s not healthy, you thinking you have to take it from another guy who yells and screams at you. I don’t know if I’m comfortable with you volunteering to take that on for the rest of us.”

  Mari stiffened, but it wasn’t like the other woman was wrong, even if it wasn’t her business. “Hey, at least I’m used to it,” she joked, trying to lighten the mood a little.

  “That’s my point. You shouldn’t ever get used to that, from men. You don’t deserve to be treated that way. You know that, don’t you?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  Lisa looked unconvinced, so Mari took a breath and tried to explain.

  “Jack’s not cruel. He wouldn’t hurt me. And when he yells at me, I don’t feel like he ever really means it.”

  Lisa sighed. “Oh, honey, they always say they ‘didn’t mean to’ and ‘don’t take it like that’ and whatever they have to say to get away with doing exactly as they please. But the proof is in the pudding.”

  Mari’s skin prickled with annoyance. It wasn’t like she couldn’t tell the difference between a guy like Brad and a decent man. And it wasn’t as if Lisa would know the difference, when her main complaint about her boyfriend, Marcus, was that he was too nice to argue with her. She squinted against the rising sun, taking a long breath scented with creosote and the hint of dew.

  “Jack never yells at me when we’re not at work,” she said. “That’s how I know he’s not really like that. He just gets stressed out, because of his jerk boss and the responsibility of all his men’s safety.”

  Lisa had started to braid her dark hair over one shoulder but she paused at that. “Um . . . when exactly do you see him when you’re not at work?”

  She paused, feeling vaguely guilty. “We stay at the same motel. And he helped me out, when I got that flat tire the other day. So you see? He’s not as bad as all that.”

  Lisa snapped a tie onto the end of her braid. “The construction company bought out a block of rooms at the Best Western. If he’s staying elsewhere, he’s doing it on his own dime.”

  Mari glanced away. Apparently he’d lied about doing it to save money. Once he’d seen Ricky’s truck at her motel, he didn’t even wait for the next day off to move, when he would have had more time.

  She looked down to hide the warmth that suffused her. He was paying out of pocket to live in a far crappier place, all so he could be there if Ricky harassed her.

  Not to mention he’d nearly broken down her door to get to her when he heard her scream. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had gone to such lengths to protect her.

  But he also flew off the handle and cursed a blue streak whenever she told him he couldn’t do what he wanted on the job site, and she remembered the look in his eye when he’d stepped toe to toe with Ricky at the kit fox burrow. Jack clearly wasn’t a stranger to using his fists.

  She’d found him at that roped-off bird’s nest, too. What would he have been there for, alone and that early, if it weren’t to destroy the nest? Maybe she’d been wrong, and he would have smashed the eggs if she hadn’t shown up just then.

  Mari tugged at the ends of her sleeves, hiding her hands inside of them.

  “I don’t like you making excuses for a guy who treats you bad,” Lisa persisted, apparently taking her silence as tacit agreement. “Especially if he’s following you after work, to your motel no less. Mari, you know you can move into the house a bunch of us are renting. If it’s about money, you can have the couch for free.”

  She’d worked on other jobs with Marcus and Lisa. When they all got hired on here, Marcus had offered to let her move in with them, renting one of the smaller rooms at a suspiciously discounted rate. Mari shook her head, just like she had then. If she really wanted a chance at that biologist-in-residence job, she should take the practice living near coworkers, but the idea of being in the same house with so many other people made her throat go tight. It felt safer to stay at her seedy motel, with Jack next door. He hated all people equally, so she couldn’t really disappoint him.

  “I, uh . . . snore.” She smiled ruefully. “I wouldn’t have many friends left if you had to put up with all the noise I make at night.” She gave Lisa’s arm a gentle squeeze, equal parts annoyed and touched at her new friend’s misplaced concern. “Listen. I know abusive men. Jack isn’t one.” She took a breath. “And I’m equally aware of my many shortcomings, one of which is—clearly—my taste in men. I’ll be careful, both of him and my own instincts. I promise you I won’t take any crap from him, at work or otherwise.”

  Lisa hesitated, then nodded, and Mari tried not to be offended at how unconvinced the other biologist appeared. But no matter how calm she kept her face, her stomach was churning as she got into her truck.

  * * *

  —

  Mari’s strides were pensive as she made her laps around the construction site. The sun warmed her back, and the sharp scent of creosote made everything smell fresh and interesting. The birds were active today, calling to each other as they flitted from bush to bush. She absently dodged the reaching spines of cactus, too many things on her mind to pay them much attention.

  She kept thinking about the concern in Lisa’s expression, and how when Jack lost his temper about the bird’s nest, she’d shrunk down to a smaller version of herself. And then how she’d been able to straighten and hold her ground, when it was to protect the eggs.

  Then again, it hadn’t been the first time. She went up against Rod to protect Jack. She could be tough, if she had someone to stand up for.

  Mari paused a moment, staring out at the construction site without really seeing it. Even though the nest argument with Jack had kicked loose one of her old nightmares, when she woke back up, she felt different. Not helpless like the woman in the dream. Something in her had shifted in a tiny and fragile way that she wasn’t ready to talk about to anyone yet. Just in case she was wrong.

  But then again, she’d felt like that b
efore. There had been so many times with Brad when she was sure that things had turned a corner, and this time he’d really resolved to change.

  Lisa was concerned, and she had a much better track record with choosing men than Mari did. Was facing Jack’s temper doing her good, or exactly the opposite?

  The crew was climbing off the tower, streaming out toward the trucks for lunch, and Mari watched Jack unbuckle his tool belt and shuck it off by the base of the tower.

  He’d seemed so sad since that morning she’d found him alone inside the bird nest buffer. She’d second-guessed a hundred times why he’d been out there by the nest. He hadn’t said, and she hadn’t asked, but whatever it was, it had left his shoulders dragging and heavy for days.

  Despite her worries about him, it was hard to see him unhappy.

  Even now, the rest of the crew was grouping up under their EZ-Up awning, laughing and giving each other a hard time, but Jack was headed off to his foreman’s truck without a word to any of them.

  He shouldn’t be alone, not when he was already feeling low. But she just so happened to have something stashed in her truck that she hoped would fix both those problems.

  * * *

  —

  Jack was halfway through wolfing down his dry bologna sandwich when he sensed that something was wrong.

  He checked the tower, but everybody was already down and on break. Checked behind him to make sure Rod hadn’t snuck in without his noticing. Nothing. Huh. But then, slowly, it sank in what was different.

  It smelled . . . good.

  Nothing ever smelled good on a job site. They smelled like sweaty, ugly men and hot metal. Sometimes like animal shit, because so many of their power lines went through pastures. Right now, it smelled like a bakery, all vanilla with a tang of melting chocolate.

  What the hell?

  He got out of his truck, half convinced he was having a brain aneurysm, or one of those seizures where you smelled oranges and jet fuel right before you fell down and started flopping like a trout. But no, it smelled like brownies. About forty miles from the nearest kitchen.