Commitments

by Barbara Delinsky

  It had to have something to do with Derek, with the fact that he was removed from the rest of society, that he had pain just as she did, that on some very basic level she trusted him.

  As she stood there looking up at him, she thought of trust. She also thought about how tall he was and how broad his shoulders. She’d dumped the incident with Nicky on those shoulders, and they’d held it well. Somehow she’d known they would.

  Derek, who’d spent the last sixteen-and-a-half months fighting for his life, would very happily have drowned in her eyes just then. He didn’t get the chance, though, because the moment was shattered by the crack of the door as it slammed on its hinges. His head shot around. One of the guards had taken off after a prisoner who’d left in a fury.

  “What was that about?” Sabrina whispered, shaken.

  Derek, too, was shaken. He thought he was used to the sudden spurts of violence, but he was wrong. “Who knows,” he muttered, then cleared his throat and forced a look around. “Uh, want to sit down?”

  She nodded.

  He led the way to a pair of chairs, let her choose one and sit before following suit. This time he sat closer, facing her with his chair turned only enough to allow for leg room. And Sabrina didn’t mind. She wanted the closeness. Derek was her buffer from the prison’s darkest sides.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, searching her face for the kind of momentary panic that he knew from experience could hit when the prison air closed in.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You look tired.”

  “I’m always tired.”

  He gave her a very slow, very thorough once-over in an attempt to lighten the mood. “But you do look springlike.”

  The once-over had been nice—not lecherous or suggestive but cognizant of her femininity. It wasn’t often nowadays that Sabrina felt feminine. A shrew wasn’t feminine. Nor was a diaper changer or a strained-beef feeder or a mini-limb exerciser. She liked feeling feminine. It relaxed her. It brought a flush to her cheeks and made her feel a little less tired and, yes, even a little springlike.

  She plucked at her sweater. It was a cotton knit, white with splashes of pale blue and peach, and it fell low over a long, peach skirt. “Last time my sweater was mohair, and I thought I’d melt. This one’s cooler.” She tucked in her chin and studied the sweater. “By March I’m sick of winter. I need a pick-me-up. A new sweater does the trick every time.” She cleared her throat. “That’s another of my faults.”

  “What is?”

  “Buying.”

  “You like to spend?”

  She raised her eyes to his and announced, “No, not spend. Buy.”

  “But buying requires spending.”

  “But the spending is incidental to the buying, which is the part I enjoy. When I get upset, I buy. It’s not boredom, because God knows I have enough to do when I’m free without running over to Third Avenue. And it’s not to spite Nicholas, because I support the habit myself. And it’s not because I need anything…” She didn’t have to finish. “I pamper myself, I guess. I keep looking for a deep psychological meaning, but I can’t find one. When I get upset, I buy.”

  Derek was thinking that if Nicholas Stone pampered her, she wouldn’t have to pamper herself. He was thinking that Nicholas Stone was a fool, but it wasn’t a new thought. “What do you buy?”

  “Sweaters.”

  He waited for her to go on, arched both brows, even opened a palm in invitation. When she said nothing more, he coaxed, “That’s all? Just sweaters?”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Have quite a collection, do you?”

  “I’ve been upset a lot, lately.”

  He studied the sweater from hem to collar, making careful note of the curves along the way. “Nice,” he murmured, then quickly raised his eyes. “The sweater … it’s perky. And you’re right about, March. Manhattan always was pretty dreary this time of year.”

  “It hasn’t changed.” She paused, took a breath. “Do you think about it much?”

  “Not when I can help it.”

  “Last time, you mentioned reading the paper … No,” she corrected herself, “you said you’d seen recent pictures of my husband, so I assumed you read the paper.”

  “I do.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Like rubbing salt on the wound?”

  She nodded.

  “It bothers me, but it serves a purpose. Prison life is totally regulated. It’s monotonous and boring. It’s marking time, going nowhere, doing nothing.”

  He stopped speaking. His eyes clouded. Sabrina could see him begin to turn off his thoughts and tune out the world. But she didn’t want him to do that.

  “Go on,” she coaxed.

  He held her with a blank stare for the space of several breaths, before chasing off the cloudiness and resuming. “There are days when I feel like I’m suspended in time, like my mind is on hold. Reading the paper helps. It’s frustrating to see the rest of the world pass me by, but at least I won’t be emerging from a total vacuum when I’m released.”

  “When will that be? Three to seven isn’t really three to seven, is it?”

  “I’ll be up for parole after serving two-thirds of the minimum.”

  “That’s two years. Do they credit you with the time you spent awaiting trial?”

  “Damn right.”

  “Then you could be out in eight months.”

  “Seven and a half.”

  “You think about it a lot,” she said unnecessarily.

  “I think about it a lot.”

  She let her own mind wander seven and a half months ahead and couldn’t imagine what her life would be like then. She couldn’t go on as she was now; she knew that. There was Nicky and Nick and the matter of her own identity … loose pieces that didn’t fit into the puzzle, and until they did, she could only plod on.

  “What do you want to do when you get out?” she asked, then sat helplessly by while his features hardened. The hardening took nothing from his handsomeness, but it distanced him from her.

  “What I want to do is very different from what I will do.”

  “Start with what you want.”

  “I want to go back to doing what I did before.”

  “Outside Insight was canceled.”

  Abruptly he grinned, that same heart-stopping, half-mischievious grin that brought a dimplelike slash to his cheek, and this time she felt it full force. “Isn’t that great?” he asked.

  It was a minute before she could rebound enough to gather her wits. She was a yo-yo and Derek held the string; he tossed her away, then brought her close, tossed her away, brought her close. He set her off balance, but she didn’t mind as long as he flashed that grin from time to time.

  “I’m, uh, is it … great? If it’s been canceled, it isn’t there for you to go back to.”

  His grin persisted. “But do you know why it was canceled?”

  His self-satisfaction was a dead giveaway. She said, “Ahhhh,” and gave a sage nod.

  “The ratings plummeted,” he went on, savoring the explanation, however superfluous. “Mind you, I didn’t get gobs of supporting mail when I was on trial, but after I was gone, something must have been missing from the show.” The grin faded. His voice dropped, and though his words were innocent enough, his tone had an edge. “They stole hot shots from other shows, but it made no difference. The mix wasn’t right anymore. It was poetic justice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “I was working on a story for the show when the shit hit the fan. It’s kind of nice to know I wasn’t the only one soiled.”

  “Your personal revenge?”

  He looked off, pushed out his lips in contemplative fashion, wanted to say, “Not yet, baby, not yet,” but didn’t. Particularly in its planning stages, revenge was private and very, very personal.

  Sabrina saw the look in his eye and wanted to get away from the topic of revenge as quickly as possible. It was dangerous and ugly and fri
ghtening. “Then what you meant,” she said, “was that you want to return to investigative reporting.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And the discrepancy between want and will?”

  “Marketability.”

  It took her a minute to follow, and when she did she was skeptical. “No one will hire you? I don’t believe that. You have the talent. You have the name. You obviously have the following, if what happened to Outside Insight accounts for anything. Fame, notoriety—both work in the field of entertainment.”

  “I killed a man, Sabrina,” he said tightly.

  She didn’t blink. “I know.”

  “It may not bother you, but it sure as hell may bother Ms. and Mr. Middle America out there.”

  “I was under the impression that your audience was a little more savvy than the average.”

  “Some, not all; and besides, before I get to the audience, I have to pass through the producers and the network. If they think that potential sponsors will shy away from a murderer, I’m sunk.”

  “But you acted in self-defense.”

  “I was convicted.” He could feel the agitation growing, as it always did, at the injustice of it. The day-to-day hell of prison life was controllable through carefully constructed defenses and mind-numbing techniques; the mental anguish wasn’t. The agony he’d felt when the jury’s verdict had been returned had long since become a visceral thing. Frustration spread through every muscle in his body like a noxious gas, making him wire-tight and clammy. If he’d been in his cell, he’d have dropped to the floor and done pushups to oblivion. Now, though, all he could do was to tap his foot, clench his jaw and say, “I was found guilty.”

  “A jury doesn’t have the final say. Not in this day and age.”

  “Sabrina, I’m doing time! How much more final a say—”

  “McGill!” came a sharp bark from one of the nearby guards. Derek whipped his head around in time to see the guard arch a brow and aim a rigid thumb toward the door.

  “It’s cool,” he said, holding up both hands. “I’m cool.” With carefully measured movements that belied the pounding in his chest, he turned back to Sabrina.

  She was staring at his neck.

  Her fingers flexed, then left her lap.

  Derek was caught in a cross fire. He wanted her touch. He wanted, no, needed, no, was desperate for something soft and warm and caring. But he was tainted. His skin was infused with prison air and prison grime, and if she touched him, she’d feel it and be repulsed.

  Indecision held him immobile for seconds too long—or perhaps it wasn’t indecision at all, but the reverse. He’d be touched. He’d see what she felt.

  Feather-light, her fingers probed the ridged scar. “This is new,” she said with unnatural calm. “What happened?”

  Her fingers remained on his skin. Not repulsion. Oh God. In the space of a blink, he tuned out the guard and his threat, the jury and its verdict, the future and its haze. He concentrated on those small spots of heat where Sabrina’s fingers gently touched his skin.

  He didn’t want to move, didn’t want to rock the boat, scare her away, unintentionally dislodge her fingers, lose her touch for any reason. Breathing as shallowly as possible, he said, “I was cut.”

  She gave him a do-tell look, then whispered, “How?”

  “A razor.”

  “If you’re going to tell me you were shaving—”

  “Actually,” he murmured back, still barely moving, barely breathing, “one of the other guys was shaving. Two of them started to fight. I got in the middle.”

  The words echoed in his mind, reverberating in and around other words spoken years before and worlds away. He was ten. He was trying to worm his way out of a beating. His mother had him by the scruff of the neck and was shaking him …

  But it wasn’t his mother’s hand on his neck. It was Sabrina’s, and the only shaking going on was something akin to a tremor deep in his belly.

  She moved her palm to cover the scar, letting her fingers curve gently around the back of his neck. His muscles were drawn tight, but his skin was warm. Her forefinger tangled readily with the hair that fell over his nape. “If it had been a little more to the front—”

  “I know,” he bit off.

  “Why can’t they protect you?”

  “They can’t be everywhere at once. They can’t see everything. Anyway, it was my fault. If I’d kept to myself—”

  “And this one?” she asked in the same whisper. She splayed her fingers so that her thumb grazed the scar by his eye.

  He swallowed hard. “A small price for preserving my chastity.”

  “Oh God.” Her eyes enlarged, filled with the same kind of horrible images he still saw too often himself.

  He hadn’t wanted to taint her, but he was doing it. Her hands wouldn’t show the stain, but it would linger in her mind like black ink spattered on fine white silk.

  Forgetting everything but the need to undo the damage, he covered her hand, pressed it to his neck. “It’s okay, Sabrina. It’s okay. A scar isn’t so bad.”

  “But you could have been—”

  “I wasn’t.” He smiled crookedly. “Got into a humdinger of a fight, though. You should’ve seen the other guys when I was done.”

  “Guys plural?” She choked out another, “Oh God,” more high-pitched this time.

  “Hey, it’s okay. I got all of them—a punch here, a kick there. Bam, wop, splat—I was a regular Batman and Robin rolled into one.”

  Her whisper jumped an octave. “How can you joke about it?”

  “It’s either that or go crazy.” He lowered her hand, but he wasn’t letting go. Instead, he propped his elbows on his thighs and held her hand between his knees. He liked the feel of her skin, which was smooth, and the feel of her bones, which were delicate, and the feel of her fingernails, which were neatly trimmed, wore a coat of clear polish and looked eminently feminine.

  “When did it happen?” she asked.

  “A long time ago.”

  She tightened her fingers around his. “When?”

  “Three weeks after the trial.”

  “You were in another prison then.”

  He nodded. “Maximum security. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “It’s disgusting!” she said in an angry whisper, then forced herself to take a calming breath. “I don’t understand why you were there in the first place.”

  “Classification. It’s routine.”

  Her gaze fell to where their hands were joined. His fingers were as long and strong as the rest of him, and they retained a gentleness while his voice had grown harder. “What happens during classification?”

  He slid his thumb up and down her forefinger and found a small, lightly scabbed nick. “Paper cut?”

  “No, I misjudged a diaper pin. What does classification entail?”

  The scab was a point of reference on her hand; he traced it again, then again. “Intelligence tests, psychological evaluation, medical workup, analysis of the record—crime, sentence, criminal history, aptitude for violence. They decide where to send you based on the results.”

  “So you were transferred after that. Was it very different there from here?”

  “In some ways.”

  When he didn’t go on, she squeezed his fingers. “What ways?”

  “You don’t want to hear.”

  “If you don’t tell me, I’ll imagine.”

  He stared stonily at the faint pencil pad on her middle finger. “You really don’t want to hear.”

  “I’ll imagine the worst.”

  “Why should you imagine anything?” he asked. “You have enough grief of your own. You don’t need mine.”

  “I’m tired of my grief. Give me a diversion.”

  He grew very still. His eyes were focused on the meeting of their hands. His hair tumbled over his forehead. The wind kiss on his cheeks had long since faded, leaving the shadow of his beard darker than ever against his prison pallor.

  Though he’d
argued that she didn’t want to hear, there was more. He didn’t know if he wanted to tell her about what it had been like in maximum. Prison was little more than an animal cage, and he was one of the animals. It was degrading.

  He ran his thumb over the ridge of her knuckles, then slowly dropped her hand, straightened and said the only thing he could think of to avoid the discussion she wanted. “I don’t think I like being a diversion.”

  Sabrina’s hand felt naked. She buried it in her lap, curling her fingers under the low, ribbing of her sweater. “A few minutes ago, you told me that you asked me to come because my being here would get you out of work. Did I get offended?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you have no right to get offended now.”

  “I take whatever rights I can get, because there aren’t a helluva lot that come my way.”

  “I’ll rephrase that, then. You shouldn’t have been offended, because I didn’t mean it derogatorily. A diversion can be good and positive. I meant it that way. You give me something else to think about.”

  Taken in its broadest sense, the statement was revealing. Derek’s eyes reflected the revelation, but he said nothing.

  Sabrina wondered if she’d overstepped her bounds. She knew that she was being a little foolish, a little shortsighted and more than a little unfair to Derek. To cover up her faults, she raced on with perhaps a little more spirit than she normally would have. “Lately, my whole world revolves around Nicky. I’ve become a very boring, one-dimensional character. You’re not the only one who feels penned in, you know. Maybe it’s a matter of misery liking company.”

  “Your pen has doors. You can walk out anytime you want.”

  “Spoken like a man who has never been a mother.”

  He had no proper retort for that and could only offer a begrudging, “True.”

  “And it’s also true that you relax more when I talk about Nicky. I’ve seen it, Derek. Six weeks ago … today … you listen to my problems, and for a few minutes you forget about your own. Mine are a diversion for you. Why shouldn’t yours be a diversion for me?”