“Finished early,” she replied. “I’m making smoked chicken cannelloni for dinner and you are going to love it.” She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and grew quiet. “What’s wrong?”
“Just tired.”
Brooke’s high heels clicked into the living room. He winced when he saw her outfit. She was dressed to kill in tight fitting jeans and a red top that showed off her rack and made his heart beat faster at the same time.
“You look good.”
“Thank you,” she said, her face pinched with worry. “I thought we could go to a movie or something after dinner. I’m getting cabin fever already and it’s not even Christmas yet.”
He snorted, staring at the darkened TV through glassy eyes.
She sat down on the edge of the couch. “What’s going on?”
Options tumbled through his mind like socks in a dryer: feeling sick, aunt just died, super long day. Another thought slipped through his mind: break up with her now and send her packing before it’s too late. If he really loved her it was the right thing to do. Outside of owning his own shop someday, which was quickly becoming a distant reality, his chances of living paycheck to paycheck the rest of his life were suddenly looking up.
She deserved better than that.
He had grown up living that way after his dad had bailed, his mom always crying about overdue bills or another surprise car problem. It was a tough road to hoe and one he would not put her through that. If he did, it would purely be for selfish reasons and he would come to despise himself for it. He wanted to take care of her, just like he had promised Will that he would.
“I lost my job.”
She didn’t speak for a few seconds and he wasn’t sure if she had heard him or not. “Are you serious?”
He nodded glumly. “I got canned.”
Brooke reached out and took his big hand in her small one. “Oh no, I’m so sorry, baby. What happened?”
He told her the truth. All of it, terrified she would think he was violent. Terrified she would think the shadow of his temper would fall on her next. But his temperament was under control and he knew it. It’s just that sometimes when life pushes…you have to push back.
“What a dick!”
Ben found her angry green eyes. “That’s what I said.”
“That is not a man you want to work for, Ben.”
“I didn’t think I was.”
Brooke shook her head from side to side, staring off into space. It both warmed and saddened him at the same time. She was in his corner but he felt unworthy of her allegiance.
“I wish he would’ve been in there last week so I’d at least know what the muscle head prick looks like. If I saw him in the grocery store I’d give him a piece of my mind!”
Ben almost cracked a smile. Last week was the first time she had come into the shop and Ben had been forever grateful Doug hadn’t been around to screw it up. She had brought them lunch from Sonic and watched him work his magic on a guy wanting a Batman logo on his chest. There had been something uplifting about her coming into his work for the first time, like she was in it for the long haul.
“Look,” he began, “things are about to get a little choppy around here. I’m not even going to lie. You may wanna grab a life vest and abandon ship while you still can.”
Her eyebrows lowered in slow motion. “Why would you say something horrible like that to me?”
“Because I care about you.”
“What kind of person do you think I am?”
Her offense to the suggestion almost made him smile. “I just…” He stopped short to look into the kitchen. “Did you already start cooking?”
“Not yet, the oven’s preheating.”
“What do you say we save it for tomorrow night and go grab something somewhere? I’ve got to get out of here for a few minutes.”
“Sure, sweetie.” Brooke curled up in his lap. “Everything will be fine. Something better always comes along.”
“I know,” he replied, his eyes deceiving him.
She kissed him softly on the lips. “And don’t you dare touch that nest egg of yours and I mean it. You’ll never get that shop if you do.”
He nodded weakly.
“We will be fine.”
The way she said we broke his heart, like this was her problem as well. It wasn’t. She brushed her fingers across his cheek and gave him another light peck on the lips. When she pulled away and stared at him with that look in her eyes, there was a moment he was certain she would tell him she loved him. Instead, she got up and turned the oven off.
***
Last call had never come so quickly. The drinks went down with the time as they jumped from one subject to another. Work, family, Doug, and dreams all made an appearance. As did politics, religion, stories of lost loves, and back to Doug again. Ben waved to the bartender as they pushed through the front door and spilled into the night where snow and ice covered the sidewalk. She hooked her arm through his, a cold wind turning their cheeks red as they hurried back to Ben’s place around the corner.
“You do not?” Her breath wafted out before them in white clouds.
“Sometimes.”
She pulled on his arm and brought him to a full stop, furrowing her brow with bewilderment. “You join volunteer search teams for people who go missing?”
“If it’s not too far away and I have the time off.” He snorted, sending chilled air bursting from his nose. “Now, I’ve got all the time off in the world.”
“Why?”
“Because I just got fired. Remember?”
“No, I mean why do you volunteer like that?”
He stared at the wide walkway ahead. “Because I can.”
The wind stirred tears in her eyes. “That’s kind of creepy.” She pulled him back on course and started walking again, the two blocks to his place seeming further in the cold.
He laughed. “Why is that creepy?”
“Volunteering for missing people? Hello? What’re you on Law & Order: SUV?” She laughed and slipped.
He caught her arm just before she hit the deck. “You mean, SVU? SUV is a sport utility vehicle.”
“Whatever,” she said, regaining her gait. “Stupid cop shows. They’re on every damn channel every night. Network TV needs to take a page from cable.”
“That’s what Netflix is for.” Ben’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He dug it out and studied the screen. “Nice!”
“What?”
He handed her the iPhone. “Check out this ink that Hick’s cousin, Jared, slapped on somebody earlier today.”
She took it and stared at the screen, its glare lighting up her bloodshot eyes. “Is that…a vampire bite in some girl’s neck?”
“How cool is that?”
Brooke tried not to slip on the shoveled snow while squinting at the pair of jagged puncture wounds with blood trailing from their darkened cores. “It looks so real.” She looked up. “Who gets that on their neck?”
“You’d be surprised,” Ben said. “I’ve only met Jared a couple of times but the dude’s got skills, huh?”
“He does. Where is he at again?”
“Milwaukee, which is where Hicks is originally from.”
She tapped the screen when it went dark, bringing the picture back to life. “Would you do that tattoo on somebody or turn them down?”
“Very funny.”
A white guy in a puffy coat meandered out from a bank’s cubby hole, cutting off their path. At first glance, Ben thought he was a transient seeking shelter from the cold.
“What’s up, homeboy? Member me?”
Ben slipped between him and Brooke. “Should I?”
“What about you, shorty?”
Brooke’s eyes got round. “It’s the guy from Wooly’s,” she whispered, the cell phone trembling in her hands.
“Wooly’s?” No sooner had the word had slipped from Ben’s mouth, when a light went off in his head. “What’re you following us?”
The guy shrugged. “Just good timing I g
uess.”
Except for the ringing in Brooke’s ear, everything went dead quiet. Not a soul around. It was a week night with most already home tucked in bed.
Ben took Brooke’s arm and turned to go the other way. “Come on,” he said, stopping in his tracks when two black guys popped out of a Chevy Impala with shiny rims and skinny tires parked in the street. “Oh shit.”
Brooke’s eyes widened when she saw the aluminum baseball bat in the shorter man’s hands. She pulled on Ben’s coat to go the other way but the white guy had already circled around and blocked that exit. Indecision mounted as his two friends trotted closer.
The taller quarterback looking guy threw his arms out to the side. “Yo man, sup!”
Ben glanced at the white guy behind them, who spit into the snow while glaring at Ben. “You guys aren’t still pissed about that one night, are ya?” he asked, putting himself between them and Brooke the best he could.
The pit-bull guy gestured with the bat. “Naw, we ain’t pissed.”
“Damn! Look at the titties on that bitch!” The taller guy with a black stocking cap ogled Brooke’s chest beneath her coat, which was zipped down just enough to expose the top of her cleavage.
She immediately zipped it up and, despite the liquid courage coursing through her veins, bit her tongue and remained silent.
“Just take it easy, guys,” Ben said calmly, backing Brooke away from the three amigos. “We don’t want any trouble.”
The short guy busted up laughing, white streams jetting from his mouth. “Man, why is it that white folk always say that right before there’s about to be trouble?”
The tall guy strolled closer, a wry grin dancing on his chapped lips. “Let us see those titties and we’ll walk away.”
“Probably been awhile, huh?” Ben said, preparing to take out the big guy first in hopes the other two would run scared. If push came to shove, it was the only play. “I mean, you don’t seem like the most charming guy in the world.”
Brooke squeezed arm, digging her nails through his coat.
The tall man’s grin slid to the sidewalk. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean, playa?” He pulled a black handgun from his waistband and held it against his side. “Now, I ain’t gonna ax you again.”
“Jesus Christ, take it easy, man. Everything is cool.” Ben kept his eyes glued to the gun, readying his fist, seeing his next move happen before it did.
Brooke’s breath shot from her in shaky bursts and drifted up into the blackened sky.
The tall man’s grin resurfaced. “Oh, I’m gonna enjoy this shit.”
Ben waited for him to take two more steps before leaping into the air and driving a fist into his face as hard as he could. A shrill crack, like a gavel striking a sound block, pierced the night as his fist connected with the guy’s jaw. The tall guy’s legs buckled with the Superman punch. He fell onto his side, the thin layer of snow preventing his head from cracking directly against the cement. A pool of blood spread beneath his head, turning the snow a dark shade of crimson. He didn’t get back up.
And his friends didn’t run either.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ben saw the white guy in the puffy coat advancing on him just in time, but he never saw the guy with the aluminum bat. It all happened so fast. People always talk about seconds turning into minutes during life and death situations, but not this time. When Ben hit the ground Brooke screamed so loud the two guys took off running for the car, leaving their tall buddy lying in a pool of his own blood. She fumbled with Ben’s cell phone, her fingers numb with cold and shock, and shakily dialed 911. Her breath squirted out in white waves, clouding her view of Ben and the tall guy. Neither made a move or a sound, lifeless and surreal, the ringing in her ear so loud now she thought she might join them on the sidewalk herself.
The dispatcher answered, his tone way too uncaring for the gravity of the situation at hand. In between heavy gulps of oxygen, Brooke spit words into the phone. She described what had happened, the blood, and their location in a run-on-sentence without punctuation. At first the dispatcher didn’t respond and she thought the call had dropped but she could hear typing in the background. He asked her questions like someone would inquiring about a used car for sale on Craigslist. The world around her began to spin as she reached the conclusion she had told him everything she could. She hung up on the unsympathetic operator and rushed to Ben’s side. She dropped to her knees and stared at his back, her chest rising and falling.
“Baby, are you okay?” She shook his arm, afraid to roll him over for what she might find.
He didn’t respond, his body as limp as a wet noodle. She inhaled a deep breath and held onto it, bracing herself for what she was about to do, and rolled him over. He flopped onto his back and she fell onto her butt, a scream caught in her throat. The dent above his hairline was deep and, with all of the blood, there was no doubt he was dead.
***
They let her ride in the back of the ambulance. The screaming sirens and frantic way the paramedic worked on Ben scared her to death. The large cab was bright and warm but she couldn’t stop shivering. Her teeth chattered inside her colorless cheeks. The oxygen mask and blood covering Ben’s face made him unrecognizable.
“Is he alive?”
The medic hooked up an IV and glanced up at a monitor mounted up in the corner.
She pounded the bench seat she was sitting on against the wall. “Is he alive?”
“He’s alive,” the man calmly replied from his single seat next to the stretcher, not taking the time to make eye contact with her. This scared her even more. “But his vitals are weak.”
“Weak?” She looked to the monitor, which, in her mind, appeared to be in Japanese. “How weak?”
The medic slipped a stethoscope into his ears and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Ben’s arm. “What’s your name?” he asked, pumping the inflation bulb and studying the aneroid gauge.
At that moment, for some stupid reason (probably shock), she couldn’t stop thinking about how much the medic looked like Tyrese Gibson. “Brooke.”
“Brooke, I’m Roy and I’m going to need you to think good thoughts for your friend here, okay?”
She blinked at Roy, barely able to process what he was saying let alone think good thoughts. “His name is Ben.” She stared at Ben’s unmoving body laid out on the yellow stretcher with his arms strapped across his chest in the funeral pose. If he was dead, she would never be the same, forever scarred by what might have been. Damaged goods. Always comparing everyone after to the one who came before. The one named Ben. The sweetest man she had ever known. The one who didn’t deserve this. Anger pushed her sorrow to the far corners of her mind, but not for long. Her sorrow was too strong and ran too deep to go unnoticed for long.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ben was in surgery for what seemed like an eternity. During that time, Brooke watched the sun rise and set before finally falling asleep on Evy’s wet shoulder in the ICU waiting room. When she awoke, her first impression was it had all been a bad dream. Relief washed over her, until she saw Ben’s mom sitting across from her. Irene looked tired and ten years older and Brooke’s heart broke all over again.
“Brooke.”
She realized someone was gently shaking her arm, but her eyelids were too heavy and puffy to see who it was. Everything was a blur. She crack her eyes open a little wider and saw Evy still sitting in the chair next to her. Evy said something but Brooke couldn’t make out a single word. Everywhere she looked, people were staring at her with eyes too big to be real. Her mom and dad, Evy, Irene, and people she didn’t know watched her, waiting for her to say something. Anything.
Evy raised her voice. “Brooke?”
“Huh?”
“There’s a detective here to ask you a few questions. Are you up for talking with her? It won’t take long.”
The look on Evy’s face made Brooke’s heart sink. This was no bad dream. It was real and apparently Evy knew more than she d
id. Brooke tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry, tried to wake up but couldn’t move.
“I already talked to them,” she said bleakly.
“This is somebody different.”
Brooke studied Evy, her eye little more than sleepy slits. “How is he?”
The lines in Evy’s face deepened. Black flesh rimmed her sunken eyes like she hadn’t slept in days. Brooke could only imagine what she must look like, but didn’t care and repeated the question.
Evy took her hand. “He’s hanging in there, sweetie.”
Brooke knew that tone. “Is he going to make it?”
Evy struggled to maintain eye contact with her sister and finally looked away.
The conversation level and beeping noises around them faded to a far off murmur even though the room felt as if it were shrinking. The tears came swift and hard. Evy wrapped her in her arms, cooing softly in her ear, saying things like: it’s okay, you can’t give up now, and he needs you as Brooke soaked her shoulder again.
Brooke struggled from Evy’s tight embrace. “Is he awake?”
Evy ran a hand through her tangled hair, trying to buy some more time to come up with a better answer. “Not yet.”
“I have to see him.” Brooke got to her feet, instantly dizzy from the abrupt motion.
Somebody steadied her by the arm and said: “We’re going to have to wait just a little bit longer before they let us see him, pumpkin. Okay?”
Brooke turned to the soft voice behind her. The look on her father’s face sent an ice pick through the middle of her already broken heart. He eased her back into the chair and crouched down beside her.
Her voice came out as a frightened whisper. “It was horrible.”
Will’s pallid complexion made the rings circling his eyes look like tractor tires. “I know it was, honey. I’m so sorry you had to go through that, and so sorry that…” he trailed off to look past the nurses’ station down the hall, “that Ben did, too.”
She hugged him so hard he nearly toppled over. Brooke sobbed into his neck, cutting off his windpipe. “I’m sorry, daddy.”
Brooke & Ben: Before Fate Interrupted Page 22
