Season for Love

by Marie Force

  “Nightmares, no doubt,” he said gruffly.

  The pain she heard in his voice hurt her, too. “Let’s leave her be,” Laura said. “David said the medication would ensure that she sleeps all night.”

  They returned to the sitting room, but Owen stopped her from proceeding to the sofa. “I have an idea.” Using the pillows from both sofas, he built them a bed on the floor in front of the fireplace.

  While he lit the fire to warm the room, she went upstairs to get another blanket and some pillows. She took advantage of the opportunity to change into pajamas and brush her teeth. With her hands braced on the sink, she took a brief moment to gather the fortitude to see him through this crisis.

  She was still coming to grips with what she’d learned about him and his family. No wonder he rarely speaks of his childhood. The thought of what he’d endured had her on the verge of tears, but she fought through the emotion, wanting to be as strong for him as he’d been for her.

  “Whatever he needs,” she whispered. He’d been there for her in every possible way in the months they’d known each other, and she wanted nothing more than to return the favor.

  Carrying the blanket and pillows, she went downstairs to find that he had changed, too, into a pair of flannel pajama pants that hung low on his lean hips. The firelight cast a warm glow on his chest, giving the light dusting of hair a golden hue.

  He took the pillows from her and helped her spread the blanket over the sofa pillows. With the bed made, they stretched out together and pulled a second blanket over them. He reached for her, and she settled into his embrace as if they’d been sleeping together forever.

  She ran her hand over his chest and belly, hoping to soothe and comfort.

  He released an unsteady laugh and stopped the movement of her hand.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  Bringing her hand to his lips, he pressed a kiss to the back of it. “Don’t be sorry. I love when you touch me. I love it a little too much, if you catch my drift.”

  Laura smiled and turned her face up to kiss him.

  “If you weren’t here, I’d be going crazy right now,” he said. “Whenever this happens, I fight my own battles with rage.”

  “That’s only natural, Owen. Of course you’re angry. Anyone would be.”

  “It goes so far beyond angry. I hate him. I want him to die in some awful, painful way. When we were kids, he would drag us all to church every week and knock us around afterward if we dared to move during the service. I used to pray that he would die. I prayed he’d get hit by a car or get cancer or get shot when he was deployed. But none of that happened, and after a while, I stopped believing in God.”

  Listening to him, she ached for the boy he’d once been and the man he was now, still so full of pain.

  “I was five the first time he hit me. I said something he didn’t like. I think it was about lima beans, and he slapped me right across the face at the dinner table. I went flying out of the chair, and my head hit the wall. That’s my very first memory. I was in kindergarten and had to stay home from school for a week because my face was bruised. After that, he got smart about hitting in places that were less visible.”

  Laura blinked back tears, imagining the shock of a five-year-old when one of the two people he trusted to love and care for him betrayed him so completely. “What did your mother do?”

  “Nothing.”

  Astounded, Laura tried to find the words. “I don’t understand. How could she do nothing when he hit her child?”

  “I didn’t understand for a long time either. It took years for me to get that she was terrified of what he’d do to her if she dared to question him. By then she had three children, me and three-year-old twins, and no way to support us without him. We were living in Washington, DC, at the time, far away from her family in Ohio. She had no way out, so she kept her mouth shut, tended to the surface wounds and focused on surviving each day. It took a very, very long time for me to understand that pretending it wasn’t happening was her way of coping.”

  Laura wanted to tell him to stop, that he didn’t have to put himself through this, but she sensed he needed to get it out, so she kept quiet and let him talk.

  “By the time I was ten, I was getting between him and my siblings, who continued to arrive on a regular schedule. I got so I could tell when he was about to blow. A vein in his forehead would bulge, and that was my signal to get the other kids the hell out of there.”

  “So you took the beatings for them.”

  “As often as I could. Sometimes I wasn’t home…”

  He blamed himself for the times he’d been unable to protect the others. “It wasn’t your fault, Owen.”

  “I know that now. Took years of therapy to get me there, though.”

  The spark of humor she heard in his voice was a small comfort, knowing his father had failed to break his spirit entirely.

  “No one ever stepped in to help you? Surely, people knew what was going on.”

  “Everyone knew. But he was a rising star in the army and outranked most of the people who knew. No one wanted to get on his bad side, so they kept quiet. It wasn’t like it is now with mandatory reporting and teachers on the lookout for abused kids. Back then, people turned away from things they didn’t want to see. The closest we came to going public was when I was in tenth grade, and he broke my arm.”

  Laura gasped. “Oh God. Owen… God.”

  “He made up a big story about me falling off the top bunk. I could tell the doctor didn’t believe him. He managed to get me alone when we went for the X-ray, and he asked me, point blank, if someone had hurt me. He was a young officer in the medical corps. I remember him vividly, as if it was yesterday. I wanted so badly to tell him, but I didn’t believe he stood a chance against my father, who could squash him like a bug.”

  Owen released an ironic laugh. “I was concerned about ruining his career before it got started, so I told him it happened the way my father said it did. I’ve thought so many times about what might’ve been different for all of us if I’d had the guts to tell that doctor the truth.”

  “You were a frightened child navigating a nightmare,” Laura said. “You can’t hold yourself responsible for not stopping it.”

  “Again, I know that now, but at the time, I felt like the biggest coward on the face of the earth. And my father tuned into that. He knew that doctor had his number, and he knew I’d been too afraid to tell the truth. He got off on that.”

  “Sick, sadistic son of a bitch,” Laura said.

  Owen laughed and hugged her tighter, his lips brushing her forehead. “If we weren’t talking about him, I’d think my princess’s dirty mouth was insanely sexy.”

  “I’ll share some of my other naughty words with you at a more appropriate time.”

  “I’ll look forward to that.” He ran his hand over her back in a gesture that comforted and soothed her. Wasn’t that just like him, to worry about comforting her while reliving his own nightmare? “The only respite we ever got was the summers we spent here with our grandparents. Gram could never understand why we cried for days when it was time to go home.”

  “So even she didn’t know?”

  “He warned us about talking about our family’s business to ‘outsiders’ and the dire consequences our mother would face if we ‘talked out of school.’ That was one of his favorite expressions. Since she was stuck at home with him while we were here, we kept quiet. Now we know Gram had her suspicions something was off, but after it all came out later, she said if she’d known how far off it really was, she would’ve shot him herself and borne the consequences.”

  “From the little I know of her from our phone calls, I have no doubt she would’ve done it.”

  “Oh, I know she would’ve. She loves us like nobody’s business. If it weren’t for her and Gramps and those summers we spent here we’d all be in the loony bin.”

  “It must’ve been so tough to go home at the end of the summer.”

  “It was horrible
. We had this period of total normalcy every year, and we lived for it. Other than his deployments that got more infrequent the higher up he got, it was our only break from the insanity.” Owen’s fingers slid through her hair absently, as if he needed to touch her. “I was offered a couple of scholarships to college, and my father wrangled me an appointment to West Point.”

  “I thought you didn’t go to college.”

  “I didn’t. I refused to go, which led to his never-ending belief that I’m good for nothing, along with another violent confrontation. But I wasn’t a little kid anymore. I’d grown into a man when he wasn’t paying attention, and I laid him out flat. Knocked him right out cold.”

  “Oh my God. What did he do?”

  “He called the cops and pressed charges against me.”

  Laura sat right up and looked him in the eye. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Smiling at her choice of words, he said, “I wish I was. I was eighteen at the time, so I was charged with felony assault, which was later whittled down to a misdemeanor, but it’s still on my record. He saw to it that I spent a few nights in jail, too. I lost my appointment to West Point, which further infuriated him. Of course he took no responsibility whatsoever for his own role in the incident.”

  Laura had never heard anything so outrageous in her life. “What about the scholarships?”

  “As much as I wanted out of there, I turned them all down.”

  “Why?”

  His small smile conveyed a world of meaning.

  “Your siblings,” she said as understanding dawned on her. She resettled her head on his chest. “You couldn’t leave them.”

  “Righto. I did what I could for them until he kicked me out of the house when I was twenty. He was getting tired of not being able to pound on anyone because I was always interfering. After I knocked him out, he knew better than to screw with me. I took my sisters, Julia and Katie, with me. They’re the twins, and they were eighteen at the time. We got jobs and our own place, and the others spent as much time with us as they could. We thought about reporting him to the authorities, but we were always afraid he’d wriggle out of it because of his standing in the community and then things would be even worse for the others. So we kept quiet and did what we could for the younger ones. When he was transferred to Ft. Hood in Texas, we went with them, doing everything we could for the four still stuck at home. Our imperfect system was working pretty well until the youngest one, Jeff, tried to kill himself when he was fourteen.”

  “Jesus,” Laura said.

  “Long story short, he made it very clear he would try again until he was successful unless we got him out of that house. That’s when we finally told my grandparents what’d been going on. They retired and moved to Florida. My father fought it tooth and nail, but Jeff went to live with them, and the rest of us were finally free. Everyone except my mother, that is.”

  “With all of you out of the house, why didn’t she leave him?”

  “Ahhh, isn’t that the question of the ages? We did everything we could to try to convince her to leave. We offered her money and places to stay and anything she could possibly need. Every time we thought she’d finally had enough, she went back for more. Eventually, we quit trying. After one of these incidents, the child of choice patches her up and listens to her swear this was the last time. And then they come home from work to find her gone again. It’s happened at least a dozen times in the last ten years. She’s never come to me before. It’s always one of the others.”

  “It’s because she knew if she came to you, she’d have to face her own conscience for what she allowed you to endure for all those years.”

  “Too bad I didn’t meet you sooner. You could’ve saved me a small fortune in therapy. That’s exactly what my therapist said.”

  “Maybe the fact that she’s here is a sign that she’s finally had enough.”

  “I’ve learned not to get my hopes up.”

  They were quiet for a long time as his fingers continued to spool through her hair.

  “Now you’ve heard the whole ugly story. I can only imagine what you must be thinking.”

  Laura rested her chin on his chest and met his gaze. “I’m thinking that you are, without a doubt, the most amazingly heroic man I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet.”

  “Oh please, Laura,” he said with a groan. “Don’t pin me with that. I missed so many opportunities to put a stop to it.”

  With a hand on his face, she forced him to look at her. “If I want to think you’re heroic, I’m allowed to. You were very brave, and you stood up for your younger siblings, protecting them from the worst of it. You sacrificed your own chance to escape to be there for them. If that’s not heroic, I don’t know what is.” She kissed the protest off his lips. “I hate to think about what you went through for so long. I wish I could’ve been there for you.”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted you anywhere near it.”

  “If your mom hadn’t come here, would you have ever told me?”

  “I suppose I would’ve had to explain at some point why I have nothing to do with my parents other than an occasional call to my mother to make sure she’s still alive.”

  “Where are your brothers and sisters now?”

  “Julia and Katie still live in Texas. Julia is an office manager, and Katie is a nurse. I’m really proud of both of them. They lived through the worst of it with me and came out on the other side happy and productive.”

  “Are they married?”

  He shook his head. “None of us are. I’ll let you dissect the deeper meaning of that.”

  “It doesn’t take a shrink to figure out why the institution doesn’t hold much appeal to any of you.”

  “My brother John put himself through college with some help from me and my grandparents. He’s an engineer living in Tennessee. Cindy stayed in Texas, too. She cuts hair at a salon outside of Dallas, and does really well. Josh is a cop in Virginia, fortunately not in the town where my parents live, so he won’t have to be the one to arrest my dad.” This was said with a chuckle that belied the deeper pain he had to be feeling as decades of violence came to a head.

  “And Jeff?” Laura was almost afraid to ask about his youngest sibling.

  “He had some issues with drugs for a while. My grandmother waged war, got him into a top rehab and nipped it in the bud. Now he’s in college and doing really well. Fingers crossed.”

  “You know, I thought the world of her before tonight, but now…”

  “She’s amazing,” he said simply. “We never would’ve survived without both of them.”

  “I wonder…” Laura stopped herself, not wanting to delve too deeply into things he might consider private.

  “What, honey? After all I’ve told you, there’s nothing you can’t ask me.”

  Laura chose her words carefully. “I don’t know Adele all that well, but I have a sense of her as a strong, capable woman from our frequent phone calls. And now, after hearing what she did for you and your siblings, I admire her even more. So I can’t help but wonder how a daughter of hers ended up in this situation.”

  “Gram and I have had many a conversation about that,” Owen said. “Apparently, my mother fell hard and fast for my dad at a dance when she was in college. Her parents had him tagged as verbally abusive and passive aggressive from the get-go, but there was no reasoning with her. After a while, Gram said it became a matter of pride to my mom. She refused to admit they’d been right.”

  “Pride goeth before the fall.”

  “Exactly.”

  With her hand on his face, she kissed him with all the love and passion she felt for him. “This doesn’t change anything between us, so don’t add that to your list of worries. I was already head-over-heels in love with you, and after this, I love you even more than I did before.”

  “Laura…” He cupped the back of her head and brought her in for another sweet kiss. “I love you, too.”

  The kiss took on a new urgency as need overtook t
hem. Before she had time to register his intent, she was under him, clinging to him as he kissed her with deep, sweeping strokes of his tongue.

  Even though it was the last thing she wanted to do, she turned away from him to suck in greedy breaths and to gather her sanity. “We can’t do this with your mother in the next room.”

  “Yes, we can.” His lips were hot on her neck as his erection throbbed against her core. “We’ll be so quiet.” He rolled the tendon at the base of her neck gently between his teeth, setting off a wave of reaction that went all the way through her.

  She bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out from the intense burst of longing and pushed hard against him.

  “I knew I could convince you.”

  Her unsteady laugh drew a smile from him. “You think you’re so clever.” She hooked her feet around his legs, giving in to his passionate persuasion.

  All at once, he stopped moving and dropped his forehead to her chest, drawing in deep breaths.

  Confused, Laura combed her fingers through his hair. “What is it?”

  “I have something else I need to tell you.” He raised his head and looked into her eyes. “Your dad called earlier.”

  Surprised, Laura said, “Why didn’t you tell me? Did he want to talk to me?”

  Owen shook his head. “He wanted to tell me that he’d talked to Justin.”

  “And?” Laura asked, sensing she wasn’t going to like this.

  “Justin agreed to the divorce and the custody arrangement you wanted for the baby.”

  She gasped. “Are you serious? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because it came with a condition.”

  A sense of dread overtook her. “What condition?”

  “You have to give me up, and greedy bastard that I am, I didn’t want to tell you because I need you so damned much. Especially right now.”

  “I’ll never give you up! He’s crazy if he thinks he can blackmail me that way.”

  “You need to think of what’s best for you—and the baby.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing. You’re what’s best for us.”

  His eyes went soft at her pronouncement. “Your dad is talking to the senior partner at Justin’s firm on Monday. Apparently, they’re old friends.”