by LJ Evans
I turned so that I was looking at him.
“I’m not sure which one to ask,” I whispered as the boys snored in the background.
“You’re wondering about the tats.”
“Yes.”
“And now you wonder what’s burning up my soul? What acts of horrors I’m asking for forgiveness for or trying to forgive?”
“Am I that easy to read?”
He grinned at me, lazy. “Yes and no. That was question nine.”
“What? No. I didn’t even ask eight.”
“Am I that easy to read? I believe that’s a question.”
I put my fingers up. “You got this many then. Phillips? What’s the hold up? And are you sure you’re okay? Maybe something about, are you sore? That would be seven, eight, nine, and maybe even ten if we are counting those kinds of questions.”
He chuckled quietly. “So I only have ten more?”
“Nine now.”
He kissed me, tugging at my bottom lip and invading my mouth with his tongue in a way that made me groan quietly. His hand wandered up my t-shirt to where I was still wearing my sports bra. I was in a motorhome full of maledict boys and wasn’t going to be flitzing about without a bra.
I drew back and watched him as he watched my lips.
“How many guys have you slept with, Little Bird?”
He was avoiding talk about the tattoos, but I let it go unsure if I could take what he had to say with my own wounds barely scabbed over most days.
And hadn’t I known that particular question was going to come out of his lack of privacy loving lips as soon as he started talking erotica and oral sex with me? And yet, I wasn’t sure I could answer him. Embarrassed. Not embarrassed. I didn’t know what to feel.
“Do you mean like we’ve been sleeping together or do you mean had sex with?”
“That’s your ten,” he grinned at me, and I eye-rolled him which earned me a quick kiss. “And you know what I mean,” he told me. “Full on naked, body part inside body part sex.”
I couldn’t help the blush, and I put my fingers up like I was counting to give myself time. Like it was hard to think about the right number. I could see his eyes get dark and stormy over the tips of my fingers like he wasn’t happy. Finally, I showed him one finger. He looked down at it for a second before realization kicked in. And he reached over and bit my finger, keeping it in his mouth and turning my whole body to a quivering mush pot.
“You are going to be the death of me,” he said, like he had so many times already. But he said it with a huge smile.
Then he kissed me again. Hard, demanding, like he wasn’t going to stop ever. And I kissed him back. Hard, demanding, like I’d always wanted to kiss a boy. With feelings blossoming deep inside me as the walls crumbled and Good Girl Mia hid behind the curtains.
He rested his forehead on mine. “It’s good that I’ll only have to kill one man. I might have been labeled a serial killer if your fingers had kept going.”
I laughed. A light laugh. Like my heart was actually light. And just as that thought hit me, the thought of being light and happy, the guilt came rolling back over me. Because that was my life. I couldn’t escape the guilt for long. And it always hit me hardest when I’d been avoiding it the most.
I rotated in Derek’s arms so I wouldn’t be tempted to kiss him anymore and looked up at the ceiling of the motorhome. Derek let me, but I could feel him watching me as well.
“Question number twelve, moron?” I asked him as I felt his gaze along my face.
“I’m not sure which one to ask,” he teased, lightly prodding me back out from wherever I’d gone.
I wanted to grin again but I was still overwhelmed with the guilt. Trying to battle it aside but I couldn’t. Because I knew that if my stupid body hadn’t failed, Jake and Cam could still be like this. Arm and arm. Flirting. Kissing. Teasing. That Jake would be living out his dreams. It wasn’t fair that he was gone and I was here running around the country avoiding my reality.
Derek seemed to sense the shift in me, like he had so easily been able to do since first meeting me. “Johnny Cash may have had addiction issues, but he was also a pretty smart man.”
“Yeah?” I said without turning to look at him while I tried to calm the remorse and panic in my heart.
“One of my all-time favorites of his goes something like this, ‘Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on them either. You don't let them have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.’ Seems like you give your past doors and mistakes way too much time and energy and space.”
“You don’t know me at all.”
“Really? That’s your come back?”
“Is that thirteen?”
He started tickling me in the ribs. I am very ticklish. So I was instantly kicking and laughing and trying hard not to scream in the middle of a motorhome with three other boys trying to sleep, but he was relentless. I couldn’t help but squeal.
“Kiddies. You’ve woken us all up with your shenanigans,” Lonnie said from the makeshift doorway in the motorhome.
Derek looked over me to him with a smirk. “Payback for your waking us up with your lumberjack snore.”
I laughed because Derek had picked up on my nickname for Lonnie the day before. Lonnie would always be a lumberjack to me. Lonnie, ever the guy, burped and then farted in the doorway.
“Classy, man, classy,” Derek shook his head. “Ladies present, jackass.”
“Nah, Phillips is just one of the boys now,” he said and continued to burp his way down the hall.
Derek rested his head on my chest.
“I apologize deeply for his grossness,” he said into my boobs which, I realized, were still a little sore from their escapades yesterday. Too bad it hadn’t been from all night sex. Wait? Had I just thought that? Where was my Good Girl Mia filter?
She’d come and gone this morning. I kinda liked her gone.
FIREFLY
The Find
“Teach my skin those new tricks. Warm me up with your lips.”
-Ed Sheeran
WE WERE ON THE road after a chaotic morning in which the boys each took turns ribbing each other as if it was a celebrity roast. It was an almost eight-hour journey to Denver, but the band seemed ready to do it in one day so that they would have most of the next day to relax. It made me wonder if Derek had pushed this agenda.
The thought of Derek having almost a whole day to relax made my stomach flop in anticipation, the kind of stomach flop that comes before a roller coaster ride. Excited and yet full of dread at the same time. Fear and desire rolled into one.
True to his word, Derek took his turn behind the wheel. I went back to reading Pride and Prejudice because I wanted to avoid the last seven questions. He let me because I think he was avoiding them now too.
We’d passed Freedom and turned onto US-64 when a repeated sound made my heart twirl for a different reason. I stopped reading and put my head towards the glove box. There it was again. A soft mewing.
“Oh my God, pull over!” I shouted, panicked.
“What?” he said with concern, but was quickly doing what I asked.
I jumped out of the car, slammed open the hood, and stared into the engine compartment with horror. Derek joined me.
“Shit!” he said and ran back to the trunk.
I was already pulling the little body out of from where it shivered, hiding. A tiny little kitten, barely old enough to have its eyes open. A little orange and white striped tabby that reminded me of my old stuffed animal that Jake had given me. Except this one was covered in blood from where only part of a tail remained. I was instantly crying and holding it to me as it mewed pitifully.
Derek was back with a t-shirt. “Here, wrap it in this. Try to put pressure on the tail.”
The kitten mewed at me. A sad mew full of pain. I wanted to throw up, but I did what Derek said, and then hurried back into the Camaro. I handed my phone to him.
He did. It was still about twenty minutes out at a little hole-in-the-wall town, but it would have to do.
I cuddled the kitten who was mewing the whole time while Derek drove like a mad man. Like I imagined Blake might drive when Cam went into labor. Like I imagined Jake had driven that prom night when Seth had hit Cam, and he’d come to rescue her.
I was out of the car and through the door of the vet clinic before Derek had even stopped the engine.
“We need help,” I told the receptionist.
She saw my bundle and the blood and took off to the back. A young female vet and a vet tech came running. “What happened?”
“We heard her mewing as we were driving. Looks like she lost part of a tail,” Derek said, coming in behind me.
“Okay, we got this,” the vet said, taking the t-shirt wrapped bundle and rushing into the back.
The receptionist approached. “Why don’t you go wash up. Bathroom’s over there. When you come back, we’ll fill out the paperwork.”
I walked in a daze to the door marked bathroom. Derek followed me into the one-person room. I let him. I washed up, and he helped with the blood that lined my neck and face like I’d been slit open by a vampire.
“I’ll go get you a new shirt from the car,” he said gently. I just nodded.
He came back with my ‘mischief managed’ t-shirt. I pulled my bloody one off, tossing it into the trash. The blood had soaked through. I pulled more paper towels out, and Derek gently helped scrub off the blood from my still tender breasts. Then he helped me tug the clean shirt over my head as if I was two and couldn’t do it myself.
I was usually tougher than this. I didn’t usually lose it in front of other people. I didn’t show that kind of emotion. Good Girl Mia was not the drama queen. I was good at hiding everything I personally felt. But, for some reason, that helpless little tyke, all bloody and crying, tore at me. It had me shaking and tearing up in a way that felt foreign to me.
Out in the waiting area, the receptionist handed us both waters and a clipboard of paperwork. We quickly realized that it was all geared as if the cat was our own. “Excuse me,” Derek said. “The cat. Well. It’s not ours.”
“What?” the lady looked up surprised.
“We were camping last night at Alabaster Caverns. We don’t know who the kitten belongs to,” he explained.
“Oh! Poor thing. Probably a stray. I’m surprised it didn’t get eaten by the bats.”
My stomach turned remembering the screeching that had filled the stars last night. I could feel the color fade from my face. I swayed, Derek caught me, and held me up against his side as if that’s where I’d always belonged.
“In that case, we’ll take it in as abandoned,” the lady said.
“What will happen to it?” I breathed out.
“We have some funds and an arrangement with the animal shelter. It’ll be looked after, and hopefully someone will take it in.”
I stared at her, her words swirling in my brain. Abandoned. Hopefully someone would take it in. And so uncharacteristically Mia, I started sobbing. Derek pulled me into his chest, and I cried there as if I was truly that toddler he was treating me like.
“Maybe we could keep it? Would we be able to take it with us after it gets fixed up?” he asked the lady over my head.
“I don’t know what the recovery will be like. If you’d like to wait and talk with the vet, I’ll let her know.”
I could feel Derek nod. “We’ll be outside for a few minutes,” he told her.
He tugged my hand and pulled me outside, then leaned up against the wall of the clinic and held me tight up against him while I tried to get a hold of myself.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed as I calmed.
“There you go again,” he said looking down at me with a tender smile. I just stared at him through eyes that I knew must be puffy and red. “Apologizing for things out of your control.”
“Sobbing like a two-year-old is not out of my control,” I told him, voice shaking.
“Well, to be fair that was a pretty traumatic experience. Hell, I thought I was going to bust into waterworks.”
“But you didn’t,” I said with a lot of self-condemnation.
“Why are you beating yourself up over a few tears?” He seemed generally puzzled.
“I’m usually much better at holding myself together, that’s all.” I tried to pull away.
He looked around and saw a diner across the street. “Stay. I’m going to go tell them where we’ll be and leave my cell number.”
He went into the clinic and was back at my side before I could think seriously about darting away. Plus, where would I go? We took in the “Seat yourself” sign and found a booth in the corner where he squeezed in next to me. The waitress came over and Derek ordered coffee and toast for us. I didn’t want anything, but I just let him do his thing while I continued to count backwards by threes from one-thousand-five-hundred-fifty-two in my head and focused on anything but my tears, the cat, and abandonment.
He grabbed my hand and twisted his long fingers amongst my own. His ‘to err’ tattoo snaked around my wrist, making me think of all the errors in my own life.
“Little Bird?”
“Hmm?”
“I think you’ve had to be strong a lot in your life,” he said quietly with no laughter in sight.
I wanted to thunk my head against the table because I was so awfully good at taking this gorgeous, laughing BB and making his serious side peek through. I didn’t want him to be me. I didn’t want him serious and thoughtful. I wanted him laughing and teasing and full of joy.
I tried to shake myself out of my funk as the waitress set down the two coffees and a plate of toast with honey and jam.
“It’s a gift,” I said lightly.
“Don’t do that,” he growled.
I looked up, surprised. His eyes were dark storm clouds again, but not full of passion. This time, just anger was there.
“Wh-what?”
“Try to brush it aside and be light and happy. Is that what you do for your family? Are you the one that makes everyone else feel better? Is that how you survived Jake?”
I didn’t want to hear him talk about Jake. Or my family. Not when I was barely getting my shield back up. “Don’t go there,” I said with my own growl.
“Yes, damn it, I am going there. Doesn’t anyone ever ask you how you feel about it all?”
“Of course they do. I got sent to a shrink when he died. And this isn’t about Jake!”
“Okay. So they sent you to a shrink, but when you came home, did anyone ever say to you, are you okay?”
“Yes!”
“Did they ask you how you felt about giving him a kidney and then having him die with your kidney inside him?”
My whole body felt like it was being ripped in half. How could he ask me that? How could he dare? This was nothing like him asking me about Hayden. No one had a right to ask me about Jake. It was my own little burden. The burden I deserved to carry. My kidney killed him.
“Stop it,” I said with anger, but also fear. Fear that he’d prod at a scab that I didn’t know if I could handle being scratched at today. Not today, when I’d already lost it over a helpless kitten.
“No, I won’t. I want to know, Little Bird. How did that make you feel?”
“You don’t have a right to ask me that.” I could no longer meet his gray eyes when they stormed at me more, so I looked down to the table, my hands wrapped around the coffee cup.
“I don’t? Not even after you’ve been giving me piece by piece a bit of your heart that you’ve had hidden for so long?”
My eyes jumped to his face again. How did he know? How? I hadn’t even really known it myself.
“Mia. Little Bird, please. Just tell me. What has it been like going through this so alone?”
“I haven’t been alone. I’ve had Mama and Daddy and Cam and her parents. And Wynn. For Pete�
��s sake, there’s a whole God-forsaken town of people that lost Jake and have been there for me.”
“No, Little Bird, they haven’t been. They’ve all grieved and waited for you to pick up the pieces.”
“That’s a bunch of malarkey!”
“You aren’t? Picking up the pieces? You’re not trying to be the one to run the dealership because your dad wanted Jake to? You’re not the one trying to take care of Cam in her pregnancy because Jake would be busting something if he knew? You’re not the one making sure your mama smiles every day even when she only has one child living?”
“Stop it!” I put my hands to my ears and closed my eyes like I was five and Jake was teasing me with worms they’d caught and were going to string up on hooks again.
Derek gently pulled my hands into his and then tipped my chin so that he could scour my face with his eyes. I could feel the heat of them even as I kept mine screwed tightly shut.
“God, you’re so damn beautifully heartbreaking,” he said gently.
Tears. More God-awful tears. Squeezed out from underneath my lashes and down my cheeks because I wasn’t used to anyone examining me this closely. No one wanted to examine me this closely. They wanted me to be okay because they had enough on their plates dealing with their own sorrow and anger and hurt. Or if they were Hayden, they just had their own dreams in their eye line.
Derek pulled me up against him again, and I found myself sobbing into his shoulder once more. Crying like I hadn’t cried since Jake died. Like no one had seen me cry because I’d done it alone in my room knowing I didn’t have a right to cry in front of any of them.
“Little Bird, I asked you once if you knew it wasn’t your fault that Jake died, and I guess I know my answer now. You don’t, do you?”
I curled my fingers into his shirt. I so wanted him to stop, and yet at the same time, I didn’t. I wanted to feel healed. I didn’t want to just have a scab covering my wound. I wanted the wound to be gone. Maybe have it leave a scar, but a scar that would have the skin knitted together again into one piece instead of the torn, ragged edges that were still there.
