Cracked & Crushed

by A. J. Downey

  “It’s the second tallest lighthouse in Florida,” she said and automatically took my hand once it was free. Marcy and Tom had found parking and were coming across the lot.

  “I thought you weren’t a couple,” Tom called and Hayden’s face fell, she tried to take her hand back but I wouldn’t let it go. I gave Tom an unfriendly look which lost some of its fierceness from behind my own dark lenses.

  “Baby if it makes you feel better to hold my hand you don’t ever have to let it go,” I murmured before the other couple drew close enough to hear me. She nodded and took her hand back anyways and I tamped down the urge to kick Tom’s damned teeth in. His wife Marcy was looking at him with the tried and true wife’s “I can’t believe you just said that” look.

  I plastered on a fake smile deciding that Hayden didn’t need me acting like a dick. That it would just make things more uncomfortable for our final day or so at the bed and breakfast. I followed her up the cement steps and across the sweeping cement slab leading up to the light house. When we stepped inside it was immediately apparent that this was more a museum than a functioning lighthouse anymore.

  Off to our right, the archway leading into the light keeper’s quarters opened up into a gift shop rather than a home. I looked up and blinked up the long sweeping set of spiral stairs and nearly got a case of vertigo from it. Hayden was looking up as well, her green eyes luminous with curiosity; her sweet, full, sexy lips curving slightly at the corners in a mysterious little smile.

  God she drove me wild. I could look at her all fucking day and all night and never grow tired of the subtle nuanced expressions she wore. An older woman appraised us from over in the corner as we all four looked up the stairs. We could see people above us through the steel grating of each step. The flicker of movement and flashes of color through the black steel… or was it iron? I blinked.

  “How old is this place?” I asked and cue the older woman, wearing a sweatshirt with the lighthouse on it and a name tag that said “Gladys” to come forward.

  “The Acantilados Cortos, or Short Cliffs, light house was built in 1878,” she told me kindly. I smiled down at her stooped frame and cap of snowy white hair.

  “Thank you Ma’am,” she smiled up at me with soft blue eyes and said,

  “Oh please, call me Gladys! You folks interested in going up to the top?” she asked and we all exchanged looks.

  “Does the Pope… uh, wear a funny hat?” I asked. Hayden and Marcy burst into a fit of giggles and Tom grinned.

  “Well as soon as the tour that’s up there comes down we’ll go on up,” Gladys said beaming. I spied the chain across the old iron steps. A painted wood plaque hung from it and declared ‘tour in progress…’ and below that, ‘please visit our gift shop’, I nodded.

  “I think I’ll take the sign’s advice,” I said to Gladys and gave her my best charming smile. She reminded me of the grandmother I never had. I wandered with Hayden,, Marcy and Tom into the gift shop and picked up some free pamphlets on the light house.

  I was midway through reading about The Wailing Gray Lady, the lighthouse’s resident ghost when I caught Hayden at the register buying a few things. I wandered along the shelves and looked for something to take to my boy Connor, settling on a wood carved and painted likeness of the light house and a slim book on the building’s history and it’s ghost.

  An old brass ship’s bell was rung out in the lighthouse and the people wandering the gift shop turned to look. Gladys stood in the archway and smiled sweetly.

  “Next tour!” she called.

  About seven total herded in her direction, I paid for my stuff and went out after Hayden who was standing in the front, rapt, the shine of curious excitement all around her. I smiled and Marcy stepped up beside me.

  “You really do love her don’t you?” she asked.

  “Yep,” I said.

  “But you were going to let her marry someone else?” she asked.

  I sighed. I didn’t know how to explain that it was really none of my business, that Hayden had chosen her path and as much as I’d wanted to complicate things for Andy I didn’t wish that for my girl. I smoothed my hair down and grunted noncommittally and went forward to stand with Hayden. She smiled up at me and I smiled down at her and there wasn’t any more time for uncomfortable questions I didn’t feel like answering because Gladys was welcoming us to the Acantilados Cortos lighthouse and was launching into her tour of the place with gusto.

  The lighthouse was built in 1878 and rose to a height of 152 feet. The tower was conical in shape and mirrored the design of its big sister, the St. Augustine light house which was only a few years older. Gladys went on and on about the light house’s history, when it was built, how it was built, when it got its first lamp, when that lamp was replaced and when it went from being a manned light house to being automated by the U.S. Coast Guard.

  She told us about when it was declared on the National Register of Historic Places, how it narrowly escaped being torn down after it was decommissioned by the Coast Guard and the grassroots effort that had been waged to restore it to operating conditions for the history tours today. Throughout the lecture we climbed and I was amazed.

  For as aged and frail as Gladys looked she took to the iron stairs like a mountain goat. Tom and Marcy and a few other younger people in the tour group were getting winded and Gladys just kept on gaily prattling on and she was doing all the talking. I grinned and had a new appreciation for our tour guide. Hayden was just in front of me and I could nearly feel the tension radiating off of her, bursting with the need to ask about her ghost which Gladys hadn’t even mentioned yet.

  I put my hands on Hayden’s narrow shoulders and gently dug my thumbs into the muscles on either side of her spine along her shoulder blades. The tightness there eased and she sighed out and so I continued my ministrations until we started to climb again. Gladys had a flair for this tour stuff, her voice dropping in tone but not volume as she launched into the family histories of the keepers of the light house.

  “It was nineteen twenty-six during the height of prohibition when the light house was being run by Matthias Toungstead. Matthias had a wife, Mary and a daughter Annabeth and was an accomplished light house keeper,” Gladys was saying, Hayden was leaning forward slightly hanging on Gladys’ every word. We were just below the room that housed the light house’s grand brass and glass lamp, just a few more steps and we’d be at the top.

  “Now Annabeth was a willful girl of seventeen, much like teenager’s nowadays she had a mind of her own and wasn’t afraid to use it. Unlike teenagers of today, things like that were frowned upon back then, especially by Matthias who was raised in a strict Protestant household, the God fearing son of a minister and a strict church goer.” Everyone was listening to the older woman, rapt, myself included.

  “Annabeth spent a lot of time out on the beach and in town and met a boy, Anthony Wilde, and Tony was wild. A trouble shooter for the local speakeasy, that’s a bouncer for your modern times, Tony was also neck deep in rum running. Well, you can imagine Matthias’ protest at his only daughter spending so much time with a roustabout rapscallion like Tony. He would have none of it!” Gladys gave a melodramatic sigh.

  “So Annabeth and Tony eloped, wed in secret, and Tony, well he started rum running harder than ever in order to buy a house for himself and Annabeth. In the meantime though, Annabeth had to stay with her parents,” Gladys’ voice filled with regret.

  “Matthias found out about the young couple and boy he knew just how to fix Tony. It was a particularly bad night on the water and Ol’ Matthias made the long climb up here after having it out with his daughter. He knew Tony was out on the water and he knew just what to do to fix the man who’d stolen his child. Annabeth wailed and screamed and begged her father on her knees but Ol’ Matthias would hear none of it and he came up here and snuffed the light.” Gladys paused.

  “Tony and his boys went down in the storm and Annabeth was inconsolable. She leapt from the light house
to her death on the rocks below. Still, on stormy nights, Annabeth’s wailing and crying can be heard and she’s appeared to some visitors and staff as an indistinct gray shade, hence her name as the Wailing Gray Lady of Acantilados Cortos.” You could hear a pin drop as everyone stood and let the tragedy sink in.

  I sighed inwardly and wondered what I would do if Hayden’s pops had gotten in my way, if he’d been more like Matthias and less, well, understanding. I was pretty sure the minute we had departed Hayden’s daddy had started making phone calls to vet me. Shit if I had his money and connections and she were my daughter I would. I wondered what kind of fallout I would face when I got back up north from those calls.

  Gladys was telling us to take our time exploring up here and checking out the view and that she’d be there for any questions we might have and our little band of folks dispersed throughout the confined space.

  I was checking out the giant brass and glass monstrosity that was the lighthouse’s original lamp which had been lovingly restored and replaced to add to the building’s value as a historical museum. The lamp was fully functional and apparently something they lit on special occasions. At least the plaque nearby said so. I looked around for Hayden and spotted her near the window.

  She stared out across the water that seemed to go on forever, dotted with bits of green and white, distant islands that were almost too far for the eye to see. Her look was stoic, her eyes far away as she stared off into space… or into herself which was another very real possibility. I slipped up behind her and became a presence at her back like I had been on the beach just hours ago, only this time I had to ask…

  “Hey Baby, what ‘cha thinkin’?” She leaned back the fraction of an inch that it would take to come to rest against my chest and I put my arms around her. She continued her sightless staring, her green eyes weighted with thought and said, “You’re a force of nature Reaver.”

  My eyebrows went up, “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell if you’re the storm or my shelter from it...” she said and I felt my heart drop out the bottom of my stomach. Before I could open my mouth to apologize to her, to find out what she needed me to do, who she needed me to be to make things better for her she was going on…

  “What I do know, is that when we’re like this, you touching me, holding me, I feel okay, whole, safe and loved and it’s amazing but it’s hard too, because I thought this is what I had with Andy, I thought that he was my rock, my shelter… the person I could go to but looking back on it, especially over the last year. It was you, wasn’t it? You and Ashton and Trigger and the rest of the girls and the club. Always there to listen, to keep me busy when he was gone. But mostly it was you.” She sniffed and I tipped a finger under her chin. She looked up and her eyes, made so much brighter, so much greener by her tears, tore through my heart like it was a wet paper bag.

  God she was fucking gorgeous when she cried but at the same time I didn’t want her to cry. Not like this, not from the hurt that was her crushed and broken heart. I wanted my Hayden back. The bright, vivacious spitfire that had my balls in a vice the second I laid my eyes on her. I wanted her laughing, I wanted her dancing and the only time I wanted to see her cry was from the intense as hell things I did to her in the bedroom.

  “Baby don’t get me wrong, you’re hot as fuck when you cry, but please don’t. Not for him, not for what was or what could have been, you’re okay. It’s okay.” I gave her a watery grin. “You may be a little late to the party sweetheart but I promise you, it’s only fashionably late, isn’t that what you rich folks do?” she laughed, and swallowed her tears and her smile was the way Trigger explained Ashton’s to me once. Like the sunshine coming out from behind the clouds after a long absence from the rain.

  I bent and impulsively kissed away her tears and with the salt of them still on my lips covered her mouth with mine. I felt her delicate fingers touch the side of my neck and my pulse throbbed, jumping up to meet them.

  I kissed Hayden gently, sweetly, the way she should have been kissed, the way she should have been cherished from the beginning. She sighed out and went boneless against me, her back easing that much further into my chest, my hands settled on her trim waist and it was a moment that was perfectly captured with a click of Marcy’s cellphone camera.

  Hayden startled and the moment was gone. Marcy looked sheepish and asked me,

  “What’s your number? I’ll text it to you.” She stood, thumbs poised, the bag from the gift shop down stairs dangling around her wrist. I gave her my number, completely aware of Hayden’s vivid green gaze roaming my face. A moment later my phone buzzed and a moment after that it buzzed again. I pulled the phone from the inside pocket of my cut and held it so both Hayden and I could see.

  The first text was the picture as it had been taken, in full color. It was taken from the waist up, vertically and it was something I would likely treasure forever. My eyes had been closed for the kiss and Hayden’s had too. The lovely lines of her face were smooth with peace and serenity when I kissed her. Her body lax against my own. I held her, fiercely protective and my own face was just as peaceful as hers.

  I flicked to the next image and I gotta say, I liked this one much better. Through some magic on her phone, Marcy had removed all the color and the image of Hayden and I locked in our embrace was so much more powerful in the stark black and white image. I looked up at the woman and smiled.

  “Thank you,” I said and I meant it with my whole being. Marcy smiled and nodded and went back over to her new husband who was watching the whole exchange from over by the light house’s lamp with some kind of fascination. Marcy murmured to him and showed him the picture and he smiled and kissed her like she was his whole world. He looked at me and an understanding passed between us, which was kind of cool.

  Hayden was staring at the picture on my phone, finally she looked up at me and blinked owlishly.

  “Is that really how you feel about me?” she whispered and let her eyes roam my face, before turning back to the photograph. In the picture, the hard lines and edges of my general look, of my personality, was markedly softened by her presence.

  “Yeah Babe. That and so much more that no images or words could convey.” I pressed a kiss to the top of her head and saved the images to my phone. Texting the black and white one to Trigger and Ashton for safe keeping before putting the device away. Hayden sagged into me further.

  “I’ve always dreamed of being loved like that,” she whispered. Her gaze returning, out over the vast ocean.

  “Like this…” I corrected her.

  “What?” she asked, voice far away.

  “You always dreamed of being loved like this Baby, there’s no ‘like that’. That’s past tense and there’s no past tense here. There’s just the here and now, right here and right now. I love you like this.” And to prove it I kissed her all over again and she let me.

  I drew back from her and smiled at the shine of tears in her eyes. She smiled up at me tremulously and I did a little victory dance in my head. Those were the kind of tears I wanted from her. I thumbed one out gently from beneath her eye and she smiled.

  “Sorry,” she said, “I’m such a sap.” I smiled at her, a genuine grin.

  “Don’t ever be sorry about these,” I said, wiping another away and sucking it from my thumb. She gave a little gasp of surprise at the action and I put my lips close to her ear.

  “You are so fucking pretty when you cry,” I growled and I nipped the shell of her ear. She jumped in the circle of my arms and I smiled.

  The brass ship’s bell downstairs rang twice and we looked back over our shoulders to Gladys who smiled and announced that was our cue to head back down. We filed down the spiral stairs, our descent much quicker and easier than our ascent had been. When we reached the bottom steps an eager bright eyed small crowd of tourists stood listening to another tour guide begin the story of the light house’s history.

  I slipped my shades out of the inside pocket of my cu
t, the opposite side of where my phone rested. It had started buzzing insistently midway down the tower and I smiled to myself. No doubt Trigger and Ashton were blowing me up wanting to know what the fuck. Marcy was speaking softly to Hayden and I let them talk, pulling out my phone to see what was what.

  Trigger: Didn’t see that coming at all ;)

  Trigger’s Girl: Reaver OMG I thought you were going to look after her!?

  I responded to Trigger’s text first.

  Sarcastic bastard.

  Then to Ashton’s.

  Baby girl I am taking care of her. Look at the picture again.

  Trigger’s text came back first.

  Trigger: LOL U now it.

  I shook my head, he needed to learn how to friggin’ spell.

  Trigger’s Girl: Okay. I see what you’re saying, just please be careful with her. She’s my best friend. *kisses*

  I smiled and Hayden’s voice brought me back to the here and now.

  “What’s that look for?” she asked softly, curiosity coloring her tone.

  “Ashton says she misses you and hopes you’re okay,” I said. Hayden smiled.

  “Tell her I miss her too and I’m okay,” she said. I looked at her and smiled, tucking my phone away.

  “Yeah?” I asked her.

  “Yeah I think so,” she answered. I hooked an arm around her shoulders and neck and pulled her into my side. She brought her hand up and linked her fingers with mine where they rested at her shoulder and we walked like that back to the bike.

  “Where are you off to next?” Marcy asked.

  “Gotta meet up with Cutter,” I said. Marcy frowned.

  “Where do you get these names!?” she asked and Tom put his arm around his wife. I shrugged a shoulder indelicately.

  “Cutter’s the president of the local motorcycle club, the Kraken,” I said.

  “They tend to be named after certain physical or personality traits, sometimes mannerisms.” Hayden said.

  “Do you have time for lunch?” Tom asked looking his wife over.