by Kristie Cook
Once we were outside, her fists beat against my lower back and her feet kicked wildly as I made our way through the packed parking lot. I shifted her over and grasped her tighter before her boot nailed me in the balls, but I wasn’t about to let go. Her yells vibrated through my shoulder and back, and I could only imagine what names she called me.
We’d almost cleared the parking lot without any problems, but someone must have heard Leni screaming because something big and hard crashed into my side. We slammed into the sidewall of a pick-up, and Leni’s body immediately fell limp. I set her down, and she slid to her butt and slumped over. Shit. She might have hit her head. I didn’t have time to check on her, though, because someone came out of the shadows again. Two forms, dressed in black pants and hoodies, their faces barely visible. Not cowboys or truckers. Shadowmen.
One lunged for me and the other for Leni. She still didn’t move, didn’t defend herself, so I had to take them both. I clocked one in the temple with my fist and threw another punch into his gut. He hunched over, and my knee connected with his nose, sending him sprawling. With two hands, I grabbed the other guy’s black hoodie and yanked him off of Leni. His elbow jabbed out and slammed into my cheek. Stars shot across my vision with the impact, and I stumbled backwards.
I dragged him with me, and we went tumbling to the pavement. He lay on top of me, so I wrapped my legs around his in a tight hold while crossing my arm over his throat. I squeezed against his Adam’s apple while punching him in the head at the same time. His hands clawed at my arm, and he thrashed and twisted, but I wasn’t letting loose. I hadn’t planned on his legs and the rest of his body disintegrating into smoke. Normal opponents didn’t do that.
My mind had barely accepted the freaky escape maneuver when a shadow flew down at me and slammed my head into the pavement. If I’d seen shooting stars before, now I saw a whole galaxy exploding. A fist landed on my lip and the salty iron taste of blood filled my mouth. Shit. I hated it when the other guy drew blood.
I jumped to my feet to find both assholes standing, one again headed for Leni. A roundhouse kick knocked him off his feet. I pounced on him, tackled him to the ground and delivered blow after blow to his face without stopping, his head my own personal punching bag. With one final punch to his throat, his whole body broke apart and the pieces flew into the air. Shit. These Shadowmen were weird.
I spun to the other guy. He was gone. And so was Leni.
My feet moved without a thought, and I darted out of the row of cars. A glance up and down the aisle showed no one. I looked across the next row. There—a man’s form carrying a woman toward the highway. I sprinted for them. The Shadowman didn’t stop to check for traffic, but sauntered onto the road with Leni over his shoulder. She didn’t kick and scream now. She still remained limp. Unconscious. He made it across the westbound lanes, but headlights shone on the eastbound side, headed right for them. My heart blasted into a gallop.
“Leni!” I tried to yell, not knowing what it actually sounded like. I ran for them, noticing the headlights belonged to a semi. They weren’t going to make it. Maybe that was the Shadowman’s plan. After all, he probably couldn’t die. He didn’t have much of a soul left anyway, so what did he care if he did?
I pumped my legs harder across the westbound lanes and into the first eastbound one. Intense vibrations shook through me—the oncoming semi. I plowed into the Shadowman but his form exploded, just like the other one. Leni’s body flipped over in the air. The truck barreled down on us. I lunged, reaching my arms out to catch her. We hit the ground and rolled right as the semi passed.
My heart pounded against my ribs as we lay in the ditch in the dark, and I tried to suck in a deep breath. With a grunt, I pushed up on my hands and knees and looked around. The Shadowmen had disappeared. Fuckers.
I hovered over Leni and assessed her body, glad to find she didn’t have any obvious cuts or broken bones. When my gaze reached her face, her eyes fluttered open. The headlights of another passing car shone into them, showing full alertness, but she cringed and passed out again. I didn’t know if she had any serious injuries, but no way were we hanging out on the side of a highway. I personally knew the danger all too well. Hoping her spine and neck were okay, I slid my arms under her and lifted as I rose to my feet to carry her home.
About ten steps in, she lifted her arms and wrapped them around my neck and nuzzled her face against my chest.
Thank God. She was okay.
I carried her to the camper, inside and to the back room, where I laid her on the bed and pulled off her boots. I considered removing her jeans, too, but didn’t want her thinking I’d tried anything, so they stayed on. After locking everything up and wrapping some ice in a paper towel, I came back and lay down with her. My fingers gently pushed through her thick curls, searching for any bumps, but didn’t find any, so I pressed the ice against my lip while I watched her sleep. I had to find a way to make up to her for what I’d done. I could only hope she’d forgive me in the morning.
I woke up to her pushing me off the bed with fire in her eyes.
“Your girlfriend’s banging on the door,” she signed angrily.
“My girlfriend?” I asked, bewildered. “But you’re—”
She shoved me again. “Go take care of her and tell her to shut the hell up.”
With that, she rolled over, putting her back to me.
I stumbled groggily to the door and pulled it open, blinking at the morning sun as Bethany and another chick stood in the doorway.
“We need to talk to your girl,” the other chick’s lips said, and her eyes flitted to something behind me.
With a glance over my shoulder, I knew this probably wasn’t a good idea. Leni stood right behind me, fuming, and the next thing I knew, she was shoving me out the door again and throwing my bags and shoes at me. Her mouth moved as she did, and when I looked at the other two girls, their mouths moved, too, but all of them too fast for me to catch the words. By facial expressions and body language, I could only assume the girls were pleading with Leni for mercy and she was slewing a series of profanities in answer.
Dude. I’d known when she finally blew, it would be bad, but this? I half-expected her to grow fangs dripping with venom, and when she shook her finger in my direction as she yelled at the girls, I cringed as though she pointed a sharpened claw at me. I’d created a monster—one with me as her target. I wasn’t so sure she’d ever calm down to her usual self.
But then her arms fell limply to her sides, and her reddened face blanched as her eyes grew wide. She lifted a hand to cover her mouth as her gaze flitted to me and back to the girls. What the hell had they said?
Chapter 31
The anger from last night returned in full force when banging on my door and hollers from outside woke me up. Jeric lying in bed with me, cuddled against my body, didn’t help matters at all. Had I not been clear enough last night? What had happened anyway? I vaguely recalled him carrying me out of the bar, some kind of fight and a blaring horn. If it had been the cowboy chasing after us, I hoped Jeric knocked him out. That one move of his on the bull brought back bad memories. But I also hoped he’d landed a few on Jeric. Just because. Not very nice, I knew, but hell, here he was with me, and his playmates were at the door.
“We need to talk to your girl,” one of them said as soon as Jeric opened the door.
I bolted to the front.
“I have nothing to say to you,” I said as I pushed Jeric out the door. “Take him. Do what you want. I don’t care. Just get him out of my sight!”
I threw his bags, which he’d apparently brought in while I was gone last night, out the door after him.
“Ma sista needs to tell ya somethin’, though,” the dark-haired girl said, throwing her hand out toward Bethany who stood behind her, as if cowering.
“Really. I don’t care,” I said. “I d
on’t need any damn details or excuses. If you don’t want him, show him to the bus stop.”
“Please don’t do this,” Bethany’s sister pleaded. “I think he really loves you.”
“Ha!” I barked. “If that’s how he loves someone, I don’t want it. The douche needs to go.”
“Just listen for a sec! Beth, you gotta tell her.”
“I said I don’t want to hear it!” I yelled, blood pulsing into my head, making my brain feel on the verge of imploding. My hands balled into fists at my sides. If they didn’t shut up and get out of here—and take Jeric with them—I was going to punch someone.
“Nothin’ happened!” Bethany finally piped up.
I narrowed my eyes. “You seriously expect me to believe that? He smelled like a damn whorehouse. Your lipstick was smeared on his face. But it doesn’t matter. He’s not even my boyfriend.”
“Please listen!” Bethany’s sister yelled. “Yeah, she tried to kiss him, and I’m really sorry bout that, but that’s how she is.” She glanced at Bethany with annoyance, and when she went on, her voice came out lower. “She’s always lookin’ for love in all the wrong places, says my grams’ favorite song. Bless her heart. But nothin’ happened ‘tween them.”
“So it was you?” I accused.
“No! Bethany, explain!”
Bethany’s eyes widened for a moment, but then she cleared her throat. “I, um . . . I found him layin’ out here on the picnic table late the other night and your door was locked. All his thangs was out here, so I thought ya had a fight or somethin’. That ya kicked him out. So I brought him home, and I, uh . . .” Her eyes flitted nervously about as she wrung her hands. “I did try to kiss him, but he wanted nothin’ to do with may. He wanted nothin’ to do with either of us.”
I opened my mouth to argue. Were they talking about the same guy I knew?
“I swear to ya!” she said before I could say anything. “He pushed me off and passed out on the couch, and Grams sat out there with him all night, a shotgun in her lap. You know, in case he changed his mind bout us and tried somethin’. But he never did. He didn’t even move ‘til you came hollerin’ down the road. I don’ even know how he knew, since he can’t hear and all, but he did. Like he’s tuned inta ya or somethin’.”
I brought my hand to my mouth, too shocked to speak. My eyes darted to Jeric, confusion filling his face, and back at the girls whose expressions couldn’t have been more sincere.
“I swear to God and sweet babay Jesus, nothin’ happened,” Bethany said again. “Ya can even ask Grams, if ya don’ believe may.”
You know that horrible moment when you’re in a heated argument, on the verge of exploding and wishing you could spew lava all over the other person to return the pain they caused you—only to realize you’re the one who’s wrong? Yeah, never happened to me before either. But now it did.
I stared at the two girls, my mouth still hanging open. My whole body sagged. When I didn’t say anything—couldn’t say anything—they offered me warm smiles I didn’t deserve.
“I’m, um . . . I’m sorry,” I mumbled.
“We just thought ya should know,” Bethany’s sister said.
“And I think he really does love ya,” Bethany added. “He, uh, kinda moaned your name while he slept.”
With that, the two girls turned and sauntered toward the front of the RV park.
I stared after them, then looked at Jeric to see if he watched them, too. The way they swung their hips was bound to capture any hot-blooded guy’s attention. At least, if he was heterosexual, which Jeric most definitely was. But he only looked at me, a mix of bewilderment, pleading and expectation written all over his face. Did he understand everything she’d said? Were their lips clear enough?
I went inside, and he followed.
“They say nothing happened,” I signed once the door was closed. “With you and them, I mean.”
His lips jumped as though he tried to control a smile. Relief washed over his face.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I demanded, trying to hang onto the anger because I hated the bile of guilt rising in the back of my throat.
“Would you have believed me?” he asked.
“Probably not.”
He grimaced. “To be honest, I didn’t really remember.”
I rolled my eyes. The guilt lowered a notch.
“I really didn’t think I had, thought I would know if . . . you know,” he said, as if suddenly too shy to talk about sex. “But when you showed me the lipstick and I saw that look on your face . . .”
I didn’t know it was possible to stammer while signing, but Jeric was certainly flustered now. I pressed my lips together and let him sweat as he continued to fumble along.
“The whole thing with Jacey . . . ,” he started again. “Her getting sick and then dying triggered a memory, and then the rest of everything started coming to me. What happened to her—I almost let it happen again. To you. I couldn’t handle it. The shock . . . I couldn’t take anymore. I was done with all the crazy shit.”
“So you ran?”
He gave me a sheepish look. “Not far. I just needed a drink or two. I didn’t mean to drink the whole damn bottle.”
“And your note?” I asked.
His face softened, and his eyes gazed at me like no man had ever looked at me before. Not in this lifetime anyway. “I couldn’t leave you, Leni. It’s not physically possible for me to be apart from you.” He took a step to close the gap between us, and when I didn’t push him away, he took another, close enough to lift his hand to my face. To stroke his fingertips across my cheekbone. To grab my chin and run his thumb over my bottom lip. “I love you. Always have. Always will.”
I didn’t respond, afraid of what I might say or do with my heart palpitating from his closeness.
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. With a couple of taps on the screen, he showed me the text message app, with my question, “Did you really leave me?” And although I hadn’t received his answer, he’d replied: “Never.”
Tears formed in my eyes and my heart throbbed in my throat. I looked into his eyes—fell into them, actually—for a long moment, but forced myself out.
“I’m sorry,” we both signed at the same time.
Jeric shook his head. “You have no reason to be.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I did. I bailed on you. You thought I’d abandoned you. And I went and got drunk, which led to this whole mess.”
“And I went ape-shit.”
He glanced around the camper, which was still a disaster, and grinned, dimples showing. “You finally got mad.”
A small smile tugged at my lips while heat rose in my face at the same time. “That’s an understatement.”
“It felt good, didn’t it?”
My smile grew, but I shrugged. “Maybe.”
He cocked his head. “And it took me—the thought of me being with some other girl—to do it?”
I narrowed my eyes. “You only sent me over the edge.”
That was as much as I would give him. Yeah, the thought of him being with someone else had affected me like nothing ever had, but my feelings for my mother and all the crap she’d done to me had also reached the boiling point.
“There’s more to my story than you, Jeric Winters,” I said.
He stepped closer to me. “I know other ways to make you feel good, too.” When my breath caught and my face flushed hotter, he grinned and flicked a curl with his finger before adding, “But I’m very interested in this story of yours.”
I stepped back and steadied myself. “Over breakfast? I’m starving.”
I needed a shower and my camper needed to be cleaned, but my growling stomach needed food more—all I’d eaten yesterday was
the plate of fries—so I changed my shirt, delaying the rest for later. We crossed the road to the truck stop once again, through the store and into the diner.
“So are you going to tell me how you learned to do what you did last night?” Jeric asked after we ordered plates of pancakes, eggs and bacon, and biscuits and sausage gravy.
I grimaced. “You know how you asked if New York had been my dream or my mama’s?”
He nodded.
“Well, you were right. Kind of.” I paused as I gathered myself. “See, my mama was the product of a secret relationship her white birth father ended as soon as he found out my granny was pregnant. Sleeping with black girls was iffy back then, and marrying them was pretty much out of the question, especially in the South. So my mama was raised by a single mother. Her dream had been to be a ballerina. She had the talent and the drive, pushing on even when her life made things tough. Unlike me, Mama’s tall and thin, like a reed waving in the wind. She had it all—talent, form, grace, everything. Then she met this guy, my daddy, and they had a fling. She got pregnant, and she wasn’t about to have the same life as Granny who’d died single, so when Daddy asked her to marry him, she gave up her dream.”
Jeric leaned back in his booth. “So she blames you.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. She miscarried that baby. She had a couple of miscarriages, actually, until she was finally able to have me. By then she’d wanted children so badly, and Mama was especially happy to have a girl. I can’t believe she denied I even existed.” I paused, blinking against the sting in my eyes. “Her new dream had become for her daughter to be the internationally renowned ballerina she never was. She became more determined for it to happen than I think she’d been for herself. She pushed me hard, signing me up for class after class, show after show. Dancing filled every waking hour.”
“But you enjoy it. Right?”
