Clothes and all he stood, shaking badly, under the spray until the pain began to localize. He knew that his left eye and bottom lip were swollen, but his nose had stopped bleeding and didn’t seem to be broken. There was pain in the area of his ribs. He assumed he’d bruised, if not broken, a few, but he could handle that. What bothered him more was his stomach. He prayed that the pain he felt was caused by muscle bruising, rather than internal bleeding, because he had no intention of reporting to the dispensary.
He remembered hearing of an inmate who, after a fight, had lain for days on his cot holding together a gash that should have been stitched. He supposed he could do that, too—if there was a gash to be held. But when he’d completed the excruciating ordeal of peeling off his clothes, he found nothing but badly discoloring flesh.
Not knowing whether to be relieved, and feeling distinctly sick to his stomach, he made it back to his cell in time to throw up in the toilet. Then he collapsed on the cot and waited for death.
Death didn’t come that night or the following morning. And that afternoon, shortly after three, it wasn’t death that came, but Sabrina.
Derek would have been better prepared for death.
Sabrina’s appearance took him totally off guard. It was Tuesday, for one thing, not Thursday, and after the way she’d run off the week before, he hadn’t expected her to show at all. For another thing, he didn’t know if he wanted to see her. He was still furious that she’d been less than forthright with him, and he blamed that fury on the distraction that had caused his lapse in the dining room, which in turn had caused the beating that was responsible for his present agony. Which led him to the last point—that he wasn’t sure he wanted her to see him. He looked awful.
“Well?” demanded the house guard who’d notified him of her arrival. “She’s waiting in the yard. Are you going or not?”
Derek hadn’t moved a muscle, partly because he didn’t know if he should and partly because he didn’t know if he could. Sheer grit had enabled him to struggle through his work assignment, but the effort had drained him. He hadn’t made it to any meals since dinner the night before. The thought of moving was nearly as painful as the deed itself.
“What’ll it be, McGill?”
Carefully, Derek maneuvered his legs over the side of the cot and sat up. He took several shallow breaths, then pushed himself to his feet. Straightening his shoulders, he set off.
Pure determination kept him walking. He had a thing or two to tell Sabrina Stone, and the sooner he said them the better off he’d be. He wasn’t a plaything. He wasn’t a spectacle or a novelty. And he wasn’t a man to be lied to. If she couldn’t come clean and accept that, she could just stay the hell away.
In fact, staying the hell away wasn’t such a bad idea, he decided. He didn’t need her. David was right: she was an unnecessary complication. What in the hell good was she doing him—besides stirring him up and then walking away?
Past the row of cells, down a flight of stairs, out the door, along a lengthy path—he plodded on. His anger helped: it kept his spine stiff and his pace remarkably steady. Something happened, though, when he reached the visiting yard and caught sight of Sabrina standing by a tree with her back to him.
Anger fled. His heart started pounding. He struggled to swallow. He felt—though he didn’t understand it, because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done it—as though he were going to cry.
Then she turned and he knew he couldn’t cry. On top of everything else, the humiliation would have been too much. So he steadied himself, sucked a stream of air into his lungs, held it there and sauntered forward.
Sabrina stared. Her eyes widened with each step he took, and by the time he was standing an arm’s length away, she had lost what little color she’d had. “My God!” she cried hoarsely. “What happened?”
All he wanted to do was take her in his arms, hold her and weep, and he couldn’t do any of it. “I walked into a wall,” he said in the somewhat weak and grainy voice that had been his since the beating.
“You didn’t walk into a wall.” She looked over his face again and whispered another horrified, “My God”; then she raised a hand to touch the scabbing cut on his lower lip, thought twice, pressed the hand to her own lips.
“I didn’t expect you today,” he said stiffly.
Sabrina had been so upset by his appearance that it took her a minute to recall why she’d come. She dropped her hand from her mouth and closed it around the soft leather of the purse that was clutched under her arm. “I had to see you,” she said, but distractedly. Having given up on the cut lip, she was studying his eye. He had a whopper of a purple shiner, which was in turn rimmed by skin that was scraped and red. She couldn’t help but wince. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“No.”
“You’re not walking right.”
“I thought I did pretty well, all things considered,” he quipped, then wished he’d saved the cockiness for a more appropriate time. “I’ve got to sit down,” he mumbled and moved as fast as he could to the nearest seat, which happened to be a picnic table that was unoccupied. Gingerly he eased himself down, facing outward on the bench. He leaned back until the table touched his spine, further braced himself with his elbows, and with a small moan, extended his legs and closed his eyes.
Sabrina sat down beside him. “You’ve hurt your ribs, haven’t you?”
“Yup.”
“Are any broken?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“And you haven’t bothered with a doctor? Derek, even your voice sounds strange. What if you’ve broken a rib and it’s punctured a lung?”
“I’d be coughing up blood and I’m not.”
She reached out and lightly touched his middle. “You’ve wrapped it?”
He nodded. “Tore up an old shirt.” Then he opened his eyes and smirked as much as his crusted lip would allow. “One advantage of working in the laundry.”
Her hand stayed where it was, resting lightly, very lightly, on the worn blue fabric of his shirt. “What happened?”
“I fell down a flight of stairs.”
“You were in another fight.”
“I didn’t fight.”
“Then you were beaten.”
“I decided not to fight, so, yes, I was beaten. For Christ’s sake, Sabrina, stop staring at me like that. I know I look awful, but you’re making it worse. Say something nice. Lie a little.” He was about to say that it wouldn’t be the first time she’d lied to him, when she started to speak.
“Nick and I split. It happened almost three weeks ago. I should have told you when I came last week, and I don’t know why I didn’t, but I’ve been having trouble knowing what to do lately. I’m sorry.”
The words had come in a soft-spoken rush, and if the urgency of her tone hadn’t taken the wind from Derek’s sails, the apology in her eyes would have. And then he felt even more contrite when she said, “I wrote three separate letters to you, but none of them said what I wanted to say. The problem was that I didn’t know what I wanted to say. So I figured I’d come instead. I decided that this morning, and it seemed foolish to wait until Thursday, but I wasn’t able to get Nicky set as quickly as I’d hoped, so I’m a little late.”
Looking at her as she sat beside him, Derek was reminded of the first time he’d ever seen her. Then, as now, she was the picture of innocence. She was even wearing similar clothes—a long, softly pleated skirt and a full overblouse that gave her a delicate look. Mint green was the color this time, and it added a dimension to her eyes that refreshed him like cool spring water.
He felt the pinching in his body ease a little. “Do you know what you want to say now?”
“No.” She swallowed. “Maybe you could ask questions.”
He didn’t want to ask questions. His jaw hurt when he spoke. But he remembered how angry he’d been, and that kind of pain was worse than anything with his jaw, so he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about you and Nick last week?�
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“Not that question. I don’t think I have the answer yet.”
“How about what went wrong with the marriage?”
She lowered her eyes and drew her hand back to the shelter of the folds of her skirt. “It’s a temptation to say that Nicky went wrong with the marriage, but that wouldn’t be fair.” Her voice was muted by shame. “Or accurate. If Nick and I had been right for each other, we’d have been able to handle Nicky’s problems. Some couples come through hard times closer than ever.”
“Why didn’t it work?” When she simply frowned at her skirt, he prodded. “You must have thought it would when you married him.”
“I did,” she said, meeting his gaze for a minute before looking off down the yard. “Nick struck me as being very strong, very organized, very dedicated, very normal.”
“Normal?”
“He wasn’t weird like my family.”
“Don’t you like your family?”
“I love my family, but they’re weird. They are their books, and that’d be fine if they wrote something that related to reality, but they don’t. Mom is spacey, Dad is an anachronism, and J. B. is his own little shop of horrors. And it isn’t only what they write, it’s how they do it. Twenty hours at a stretch—honest, twenty hours—and when they finally stop you never know what mood they’ll be in. They could walk out of the room and take your head off if the writing went poorly. Or they could spring for dinner at the Top of the Mark and throw in a carriage ride through the hills for good measure. Then again, they could come off their writing to find that the others were on, so there was no one to go to dinner with, and then there was trouble.”
“All three work that way?”
She nodded. “It’s one of the reasons Mom and Dad don’t live together; one of the reasons J. B. is divorced. That kind of life doesn’t make for easy companionship.”
“And you thought you’d have that with Nick?”
“You look skeptical.”
“I’ve never met the man myself, but from all I’ve heard, Nicholas Stone isn’t the companionable type.”
“He was at first.”
“But it ended with the ‘I do’s’?”
“No. It went on a little longer, until business really got hot. Then he was putting in sixteen-hour work days, and when he came home he didn’t have time to relax with me.”
Strange, Derek thought, but if he’d ever married, his wife would probably have said the same about him. Some men were driven. He’d always assumed that it was inherent to a particular personality. He was a natural competitor. He wanted success and he wanted it badly. Now, though, he wondered if being driven was simply a way of compensating for what one’s life lacked. He couldn’t imagine not wanting to spend time with Sabrina if she were his.
“It wasn’t the long work days that bothered me, though,” she continued. “I had my own writing. I could easily fill my time while Nick was working. But I wanted time with him. He seemed to think that was frivolous. He said that he had to make the most of his free time, since he had so little of it, and making the most meant exercising—playing handball or tennis or golf—or attending to social obligations.”
She fell silent, thinking about what she’d said, wondering if she sounded like a spoiled brat who wanted attention, wondering if she was one. But no, it wasn’t attention she wanted so much as love. There was a difference.
She looked up to find Derek studying her, and she was struck again by his bruises. “You really look awful,” she whispered, knowing that if he wasn’t normally so handsome she’d never have been as blunt. “Do you feel as bad as you look?”
He would have shrugged but didn’t dare. “It comes and goes.”
“You’re very pale.”
“That’s prison pallor.” The good corner of his mouth curved. “You’ve got it, too.”
She returned a small smile. “As wardens go, Nicky is tough. He doesn’t allow me much yard time.” The smile waned. “You’re very pale. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m not going to be sick, if that’s what you’re asking. I haven’t eaten a thing since last night.”
She was about to tell him that that was why he was so pale, that he needed food if he wanted strength. But she’d done enough hovering. She wasn’t his mother. She didn’t want to be. So instead of browbeating him, she opened her purse and took out a small bag.
He looked from her face to the bag and back. “What’s in it?”
“Open it and see.”
He looked at the bag again. “I can’t. It takes too much effort. You do it.”
Carefully unfolding the top of the bag, she removed a thick cookie, one of several inside, and handed it over. He took it with a minimum of movement, just the slight swivel of his forearm on his elbow. “Oh God,” he said hoarsely, “Mrs. Fields’… white-chunk … macadamia nut…” Squeezing his eyes shut, he looked in more pain than ever.
“Derek? Are you okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” he croaked, but she didn’t know what to think, so she began to babble.
“You said you dreamed of them. I thought you’d like a few. I didn’t know if they’d let me bring them in, but I couldn’t not try. You don’t have to eat any if you don’t want. I’ll take them back home if—”
With a suddenness of movement that surprised them both, he shot out a hand and grabbed the bag. “No way,” he gasped, eyes wide open. “I’ll keep them, thank you.” He raised the cookie and took a small bite. It all but melted in his mouth. This time when he closed his eyes and effected the look of pain, she understood that the agony was ecstasy.
“They’re not that good.”
“Fine for you to say. You haven’t had to go without them for eighteen months.” He took another bite, let it linger on his tongue until it slid down his throat. And he realized that, prison or no prison, no one had ever brought him little goodies before. He’d never been the little-goodie type. He was always on the go, never sick, usually the one in charge, the one to order the tickets, send the bouquet, pick up the tab. Oh, women had given him things—coffeetable books, silk dressing gowns, cologne—and Sabrina could have afforded the best of any of those—but she’d chosen to bring him the one thing he’d mentioned wanting.
His throat tightened up, and again he had the unsettling urge to cry. He sat forward with deliberate force, knowing that the pain would stem that urge. It did.
“Derek?”
“Just stretching,” he managed to grunt, then settled carefully back again. Aware that Sabrina was watching him, he finished the cookie as nonchalantly as he could, then said, “Tell me more about your marriage.”
“Ask another question.”
Another question. Another question. Derek took a breath that was a little too deep. He flinched at the sharp pain in his ribs, then tightened his jaw in compensation. “Do you love him?”
He’d asked the question, more than once when she’d visited him last. She’d been evasive then. Now she felt she owed him more. “No. I don’t love him. I did once, or I think I did, but I may have just been in love with what he represented, I don’t know.”
Derek felt immeasurable relief. He didn’t know why, because there were still a million obstacles standing in the way of any relationship he and Sabrina might have. But one less was one less. So he enjoyed the relief for a minute, which was just about all he had. Sitting up was doing him no good. He hurt. In an attempt to ease the pain, he shifted gingerly, but the new position was even less comfortable, so he returned to the old.
“You’re feeling worse, aren’t you?”
“Just a little stiff.”
“I have aspirin. Will you take some?” She was already digging in her purse for the small, commercially labeled container.
Derek wasn’t a masochist. He opened a hand to receive the two tablets and was about to slap them toward his throat when a guard came from nowhere and clamped an iron hand on his wrist.
“Hold it right there.”
“It’s aspirin, damn
it,” Derek grunted. “Look for yourself. The name’s right on the pill.” The way the guard was leaning put pressure on his shoulder, which in turn compressed his ribs and hurt him all the more.
“Here’s the tin,” Sabrina said in a frightened voice. She held it out to the guard, but her eyes were on Derek’s ashen face. “They checked it when I came in.”
That made no difference. Taking his time, the guard examined each of the pills in Derek’s hand, then took the tiny tin from Sabrina and studied the remaining six tablets. When he’d satisfied himself that nothing but aspirin was being exchanged, he straightened and walked off without the slightest apology.
Derek tossed the pills back, swallowed them dry, then muttered, “I gotta lie down.”
For a split second, Sabrina feared that he meant to end the visit and return to his cell. Her heart dropped, then lifted when he pushed himself from the picnic table and limped toward a nearby tree. Moments later, he was lying on the thick bed of shaded grass, but her heart had dropped again, because she’d seen the pain he’d endured to get himself there.
Without a qualm, she lowered herself to the grass with her back against the tree. “Lift up a little,” she whispered, and very gently eased his head onto her lap. “Better?”
He closed his eyes and sighed. “Mmm.”
She began lightly to massage his temples. It seemed the most natural thing to do. She couldn’t imagine letting her hands lie idle when they could so easily offer a little relief.
“You seem exhausted,” she said. “Is it from the pain?”
“I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“This happened yesterday?”
“Mmm.” Her fingers were warm, smooth, gentle, and they worked magic. “Sabrina?”
“Yes?”
“If Nick were to be waiting for you when you returned to New York, would you take him back?”
“No.”
“Not even if he begged?”
“Not even then, but he wouldn’t beg. I think he’s as relieved to be free of me as I am of him.”
Commitments Page 16
