“I’ll go fix us somethin’ to eat.”
She inhales a ragged breath, and her voice follows me down the hall. “Jake, I wanted to tell you. I just . . . I didn’t know how . . .”
“You don’t owe me anything, Elle.” I say, and hurry down the stairs before she feels the need to explain herself to me. I meant what I said—she don’t owe me a thing. She isn’t mine, and she can’t ever be mine, and not just because once upon a time she took another man’s name, but because now I see where she’s been, I’m determined to keep her from making the same mistakes.
Ellie Mason has had enough broken men to last her a lifetime. She don’t need the burden of another.
***
After we eat our grilled cheeses in silence, Ellie turns in, and I walk around the house locking windows and securing doors. This is something I do every night, but this time I’m extra diligent, because I will not have anything happen to the Masons on my watch.
When I’m done, I head to my bathroom and splash cold water on my face. I stare too long at the hole in the wall where my mirror used to be. Nuke nudges me and then leaves the bathroom to jump up on the bed, but I shake my head and tell him we’ll be sleeping in the armchair outside Ellie’s bedroom door tonight. I don’t know how much he understands, but I know that’s not a happy whine.
After thirty minutes, I carefully creak open the door of the spare room and stand watching her and Spence. They’re at opposite ends of the bed but turned in toward one another as they sleep. I cop an eyeful of smooth, tanned thighs; she’s still wearing her shirt from earlier, but her jeans are folded neatly on the chair. I should have given her something more comfortable to sleep in. I glance away, so I’m not staring at her like a creeper, and then I quietly close the room up again and settle into the wingback chair I carried into the hall for this very occasion. Nuke is unhappy with the arrangement, and I order him to bed but he gives a doggy huff to show his annoyance and stretches out on the carpet runner a few yards away. I stay awake as long as I can, but even I have my limits, and after the fight and running like I did today, I’m beat. Finally, I feel my lids slippin’ closed and I drift away.
***
“No!” I wake and seize hold of the hand on my arm, digging my fingers in with bruising strength. Her yelp brings me back to the present and I let go of Ellie’s hand as if her touch had burned me. She recoils, backing up into the closed bedroom door. My heart thunders a staccato beat. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“You were having a nightmare.” Ellie rubs at her wrist. It’s dark, save for the moonlight comin’ from my bedroom windows at the end of the hall. In it, I can see that her eyes are round as saucers. “You were screaming someone’s name. I thought you were being murdered.”
I nod. Usually Nuke wakes me, but he may have been thrown off given that we aren’t in the bedroom. The spoiled little brat snuck on back to my bed. “Are you hurt?”
“What’s a few bruises?” she says, quietly. “Maybe if we draw lines from these to the others we could create a picture.”
My stomach lurches and I have to swallow back bile. She might be used to it from her ex, but the last thing I ever wanted was for her to be used to me hurting her. “I’m sorry, angel.”
“Mamma?” Spencer cries out, and she glances at me with a long painful look before she disappears into the room, quietly shutting the door. Beyond it, she coos to him and tells him that they’re safe because they’re with me. I’d feel a hell of a lot better if I hadn’t just attacked her in my sleep.
Nuke jumps off my bed and nudges his head into my lap. I stroke his soft fur for a minute or two, trying to ease some of the anxiety I feel, then I get up and head to the kitchen to put on some coffee. I can’t go back to sleep now. The idea that she heard me screaming is humiliating enough, but the fact that I lashed out at her, that I hurt her—that burns like acid in my gut.
Pacing in my kitchen, I work the kinks from my body. I ache all over from yesterday’s run, and I’m sweatin’ like a whore in church, though I’m sure it’s just the remnants of the nightmare.
I’d been in my cell again. It was pitch black and so cramped I couldn’t lie down on the dirt floor. I couldn’t even sit without my legs and feet touching the sides of the room. The pain from the shrapnel in my body kept me from sleepin’, even if I could find a way to get comfortable. But pain was how you knew you were alive. In this instance, pain had been my worst enemy and my only friend, and I’d tallied it up. I’d kept track of every whip, every lash, and every beating they laid upon my flesh. Every time I’d bled even a drop, I’d made a promise I would pay it back in kind. I would avenge my brothers. The men they’d killed and the ones who were still alive somewhere in that hell hole. One day they’d slip up, and I’d take down every last motherfucking one of those sons of bitches.
It’s funny how you can feel so replete in the idea of revenge, so consumed that it becomes a part of you. The man I was got swallowed down by hate, drowned out by bloodlust, and injustice, and the need to spill blood for blood.
An eye for an eye.
Only I never got my revenge, and the beast inside me who had longed to exact it was never sated. He lives on still, rattling the cage, looking for a chink in the iron bars that hold him and finding his escape only in the havoc he plays with my mind.
The Taliban might not have killed me, but the beast and the guilt slay me every damn day.
Chapter Eighteen
Jake
In the morning, I wake to the smell of biscuits cookin’ in my kitchen. My stomach growls. Elle’s biscuits could rival Willie’s down at the Biscuit King. After she woke me, I ended up moving onto the couch in the front parlor. I barely fit on the damn thing, but time in the Corps had taught me I could sleep standing up like a horse if I had to.
Spencer tears through the room and comes to a halt in front of me. I blink bleary eyes at him and scrub my hand down over my face. My joints are stiff this morning, and there’s a little bruising and broken skin over the knuckles, but I’ll live.
“What are you doin’ on that teeny-tiny little couch, Jake Tucker?” he says, with a frown on his face.
“I got lost and fell asleep here.” I grin and sit up, rolling my shoulders and movin’ my neck side to side until it cracks.
He giggles. “In your own house?”
“It’s a big house. You sleep okay?”
“Like a baby,” Spencer drawls. He stares at me a beat, his lips workin’ but no sound comin’ out, and then in a quiet voice he says, “You ever kill a man, Jake Tucker?”
I exhale heavily and lean back against the couch, scrubbing a hand over my face, Nuke jumps up beside me and paws at my chest. I pat him on the head and answer as honestly as I can without tryin’ to glorify war for a boy who’s far too eager to see it. “Yes, I have, Spence. When you enter The Corps you know it’s a possibility. Why?”
“Did you kill my daddy? He wasn’t gettin’ up, and his face looked like Mamma’s mincemeat right after she adds the spaghetti sauce.”
“No, I didn’t kill him. I imagine he’d be pretty sore about now though.”
He nods, his blond curls bobbing. “I bet he would be too.”
“Where’s your mamma?”
“Making a mess of your kitchen,” Spencer says. I get up and let the blanket fall from my waist and stretch out my aching muscles. I’m fixin’ to find Elle and see how she’s doin’ this mornin’. Wouldn’t hurt to get my hands on a couple of those biscuits either. Nuke jumps down from the couch and follows me.
“Jake?”
“Yeah, Spencer?”
“Will you teach me to fight like that?” He fusses with the back of his shirt where the tag should be and looks nervously down at my floor. “You know, in case he comes back?”
I turn and crouch down to his level, careful not to touch him. “Listen, you don’t need to learn to hit like that, because you have me. How are you with numbers? Pretty good, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
&n
bsp; “If I give you my phone number, do you think you can remember it?”
He nods and I trail off my number and make him repeat it back to me. He gets it spot on first time, and by the third time I ask him to repeat it he rolls his eyes and tells me again impatiently, “I’ll call, but I’m still gonna need you to teach me how to fight. I’m the man of the house; I need to be able to protect what’s mine. Mamma says we protect things smaller than us and girls. She might not be smaller, but she’s still a girl.”
“I’m afraid your mamma might just kill me for that one, kid, but I tell you what. You call that number anytime you need me to come fight your battles until you’re big enough to face off with someone like your daddy. Deal?”
His shoulders slump and he sighs. “Yeah, okay, deal.”
“Swear it,” I warn.
He salutes me. “Yes sir, Jake sir. I swear it.”
I chuckle and salute him back. “At ease, Marine.”
Spencer tears back down the hall screamin’, “Mamma, Jake Tucker’s awake.”
Nuke and I follow behind the boy, albeit at much less of a breakneck speed. When we reach the kitchen, Ellie turns toward me. Her eye looks real nasty today and my whole body tenses, but I remind myself that the yellow of the third-day bruising can sometimes look worse than when it’s done fresh. Still, bastard got off easily.
“I know,” she says, givin’ me a lopsided smile. “I look terrible.”
“You’re perfect.” Her eyes widen and I clear my throat. “It always looks worse on the third day. Couple of cold compresses should help with the pain.”
“It don’t hurt too badly.” She waves it away, as if bein’ hit by your husband is no big deal.
Husband. Shit. I still can’t get used to the idea that she’s married to another man. No, not a man, a scumbag. Real men don’t hit.
“I hope it’s okay that I made breakfast. I figured it was the least I could do, but then I realized it was your food to begin with, so it’s not like I’ve really done you any favors and I just . . . well, there I go again, ramblin’ like always.”
“Breakfast is great.” I glance at the fluffy golden-brown biscuits on my kitchen counter. My mouth waters just lookin’ at them. There’s sausage gravy on the stove, and I lick my lips; there ain’t a faster way to my heart than a good biscuit with sausage gravy. As if she hadn’t already paved her own damn road through my chest right to it. “How you doin’ this morning?”
“I’m great.”
I cock an eyebrow, and give her a cut-the-bullshit glare. “How are you really?”
“I’m fine.”
I gently coax her arm from her side and turn her wrists over to inspect the damage I did last night. The faintest purple fingerprint stares back at me. I trace the outline of it so gently I barely even feel the softness of her skin. “I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head, staring up at me in earnest. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“I do actually. I just beat the shit out of your ex-husband and here I am laying my hands on you in the middle of the night.” I bring her forearm to my lips and kiss the bruise. She closes her eyes and tears leak out from the corners.
“I know you would never hurt me intentionally, Jake.”
I pull her to me, cradling the back of her head the way I had last night as I kiss her hair and whisper, “I’d just as soon throw myself on the mercy of the Taliban again before I hurt you.”
And I mean every word. I’d give my life for this woman and her son—I’d give them my last penny if it would help keep them safe. The two of them came careening into my life when I wanted it the least. That car accident of hers wound up being the best thing that ever happened to me.
***
When we pull into her drive, it’s apparent immediately that something’s wrong. The door to her salon isn’t just open; the whole glass pane is smashed. Ellie puts her hands over her mouth and gasps. I tell her to wait in the car while I sweep the house, but I know he’s probably long gone. I ease open the door. Glass crunches under my foot as I move farther into the salon. The house is trashed, and it’s apparent that Jimmy’s been here. Across the living room wall, painted in what looks to be Spencer’s craft paint in red, white, and blue is the word WHORE.
From a felon to Frankenstein. Elle sure knows how to pick ’em.
I don’t want her to see something like this. Hell, I didn’t even want to bring her back here because it wasn’t safe. She’d hollered and carried on about missing appointments and money lost, and we’d settled on a compromise. She could go to work, but I would stay with her the whole time, and Spencer too. It weren’t safe for either one of them to be away from me while her husband was out there.
I sweep the house and find it clear, but there isn’t a single piece of furniture he hasn’t ruined or left unturned. The TV is smashed and all her plates, glasses, and knick-knacks too. There are a couple of holes where Jimmy put his fist through the drywall.
A noise from the salon has me doubling back before she can see her home destroyed like this. I block the door. “I told you to wait in the car.”
“Let me by, Jake,” she says, looking up at me with tears in her eyes. I shake my head, and I don’t move one bit. Ellie shouts, beating her fists against my chest. I’m now the target for her anger and frustration, and that’s okay. I’ll take it gladly if it means she don’t have to see her and Spencer’s lives destroyed like this.
“You don’t need to see.”
“It’s my house,” she says, her voice shaking. “I have a right to see—” Her words stop short when she glances around me.
“Don’t look,” I say, but it’s too late. She’s already seen it. She sobs, her hand flinging up to cover her mouth.”
“Angel, come on,” I say, attempting to usher her out, but she cries and I don’t know what else to do but pull her against me and hold her.
A moment later, I lead her back outside. Old man Williams is crossing the road on shaking legs and a walking stick that’s trembling so hard, it looks like it might just snap in two. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the man move off that front porch step. Nuke barks at him through the back windshield of the car, and Spence covers his ears tightly with his hands.
“Quiet, Nuke,” I command. The barking stops. Ellie rushes to the car and attempts to soothe Spence, reminding him of his deep-breathing exercises.
“I been worried sick about the two of you.” Williams wheezes. “That rat bastard took you outta here yesterday and I ain’t seen you since.”
“We’ve been at Jake’s, Mr. Williams,” Ellie says. “I should have called you to let you know we were okay.”
He nods and tips his chin toward the house. “He came back here around two A.M, drunk as Cooter Brown and screamin’ like a bear with its paw caught in a trap. I knew y’all weren’t there, ’cause I’d been watchin’ for ya all evening, so I just let him have at it and called the police, but he left in a hurry when he heard those sirens.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Williams. I’ll pay for all the damages.”
“You ain’t gotta worry about that, Miss Mason.” He waves that suggestion off. “What the hell else do I pay all that money to my insurance company for?”
“I’ll come fix up the property once I get Ellie and Spence safe and settled at my place,” I say, ignoring Ellie’s protests.
“No, this is my mess, and I’ll clean it up.”
“No, you won’t.” I stare down at one seriously pissed off southern woman.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with my hands, Jake. You don’t need to wrap me in cotton wool.”
“Alright then, you fix it up. Buy the supplies you need and I’ll see to it that you’re paid in kind,” Williams says, meeting my gaze over the top of Ellie’s head. I nod, and she throws her hands up in exasperation.
“Jake,” Ellie protests, but I put a hand up to stop her.
“Get in the car, angel,” I say. Ellie glares at me and folds her arms across her chest. Now I know she’s
really pissed.
“You alright, boy?” Williams leans into Spencer’s window. Spencer looks up at him with a glum expression.
“You’re not on your porch,” the boy says. “That’s not the same.”
“No, it ain’t.”
“Mamma says change isn’t bad, but Daddy was change, and he was bad.”
Williams nods. “Well, sometimes people do bad things. Ain’t nothing to be done for it now, but you go with Jake; he’ll look out for you. He and your mamma.”
“Yes sir.” The kid nods, and then glances up at me with a curious expression, as if he’s afraid that what Williams said wasn’t the truth.
“You can bank on that, Spencer.” I crouch down by the window so he’ll meet my gaze, even if it is only for a second. The boy needs to know I’m speakin’ from the heart. “I’d lay down my life before I let anything happen to either one of you. Nuke would too.”
He nods, and a half-smile forms on his face. I resist the urge to ruffle his hair, because I know he won’t like that.
When I straighten, his mother’s eyes meet mine. They brim with unshed tears. “Thank you,” she mouths, but I shake my head. She don’t need to thank me. Ellie and her boy have taught me how to be human again. If there’s any thanks to be had, it belongs to them.
Chapter Nineteen
Ellie
After we left my house in tatters, Jake had driven us to Walmart, where we’d fought rather publically about him buying new clothes and toiletries for me and Spence. He won. He’d also won the argument about me staying in the car while he swept the house for danger, and the one where he’d told me I wasn’t coming with him to clean up Jimmy’s mess. It was my damn house.
The second he was gone, I exacted my revenge by cleaning his own house top to bottom and filling every surface of his kitchen with baked goods. I planned on putting the man in a diabetic coma. Not exactly keyin’ the side of his car or breaking windows. Nope, revenge was a sweetly frosted heart-shaped sugar cookie. It might not have sent the best message, but Spencer and I had made enough to keep Jake fat for months to come.
Toward the Sound of Chaos Page 11
