by Cole McCade
Jacob held completely still. The look on his face, that frozen rictus of a cornered animal, made her grin spread wider. She’d bet he’d never known that feeling before in his life, while she’d lived every day with the knowledge that that feeling could pounce on her at any moment, around any corner, in any situation where someone suddenly decided she’d make a good victim.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His words trembled, and her shaking hand steadied on the gun.
“Of course you don’t.”
She nearly fucking caressed the trigger. This close, she couldn’t miss. No one would miss him, except maybe her mother—her mother who loved perfect Jacob more than Leigh ever could, her mother who thought Jacob was the proxy solution to all her bad choices. Do it. Splatter those fucking Chiclet teeth into shrapnel and blow his face open and make sure he never calls anyone baby girl again. He’s a waste. He’s a filthy waste a cock on legs it’s all about him and his dick-shaped ego so fucking do it do it do it do it DO IT—
Shuddering, she closed her eyes. That pale sweating face tempted her, rousing a rage that had been born into her blood but that she’d buried, some time between the trials of Sister Mary Anne and that moment when she’d said I do. That rage was a phoenix now, resurrected and burning through her, combusting wild and hot and terrifyingly destructive, and if she let it take her over she’d do something so terrible she would shatter more than just Jacob’s fragile flesh.
She’d shatter every hope that the little boy downstairs might ever have of a normal life.
Distant came the sound of sirens, baying hounds hunting for blood. Fuck. One of those overpaid fucking Wall Street pigs had probably called 911, even if she hadn’t heard anyone come inside. They were probably all cowering past the glass like it was made of steel and barbed wire.
She opened her eyes, looking at Jacob. At his pathetic fishbelly cheeks and shallow eyes and the way he carried himself with a touch of self-assurance even now, as if nothing could knock him off his pedestal and he was just waiting for his moment to play big damned hero and put her in her place. One step at a time, she backed toward the door, keeping the revolver stretched out before her like a shield.
“If you fucking come down those stairs, I’ll shoot you,” she said. “So help me fucking God, I’ll shoot you. Stay where you are.”
She retreated until her back hit the doorframe, then turned and fled, clattering down the stairs. Dozens of white moon-faces pressed up against the glass patio door, peering inside. Their shrieks of She’s got a gun! trailed her as she dove into Elijah’s room, shut the door, and locked it before dumping the revolver in the trashcan as if it had burned her palms.
Her son still wailed, waving his arms and legs in his crib, his face red and splotched with tears. Leigh hurried to lift him out of his crib, cradling him on her hip. This was probably the last time she’d ever hold him again. Clarity closed around her throat in a stranglehold. Bouncing him in her arms, she buried her face in his soft little neck with a choked sob.
“Shh,” she whispered. “Shh shh shh, Mommy loves you, Mommy loves you…”
But that love didn’t feel like enough. Not when hate boiled in her blood and turned her black inside, corrupting her from the inside out. Maybe she’d never loved Jacob, but this was the first time she’d truly hated him.
And she didn’t know how she could love her son, when the hate crowded out everything in her heart to leave room for nothing else.
She knew what she should do. Stay. Stay for her son, let Jacob explain it away as a domestic altercation, just those histrionic women being dramatic, more wink-wink nudge-nudge, you know how the little women are. Bile roiled up the back of her throat, and she clutched Elijah tighter. If she did that, she would become her mother—and all her impotent rage toward her blind, stupid, implacable husband would fall on her son instead. She could feel the poison taking root inside her, and if she stayed she would pour it into Elijah until she killed everything sweet inside him.
Gulping back a scream, she rubbed her cheek to Elijah’s hair. She had seconds to choose, seconds to decide; once the police arrived, she’d be cornered and backed into whatever story Jacob chose to tell.
When she laid Elijah back into his crib, she felt like she was setting fire to the fluttering tatters of her paper heart. “I’m sorry, baby,” she whispered, and stroked his hair back. “I’m sorry. I just…I…I thought I knew how to stop being so broken. I thought I knew how to make myself into what I was supposed to be. I thought I could fit into this life, and I can’t. I can’t and if I try, I’m just…I’m going to break you, too.” Her chest was bursting, cracking. “Please don’t hate me. Your Mommy is selfish and horrible and I don’t…I can’t…” She shook her head. “Be better than me. Be better. I love you, Elijah.” She pressed her lips to his brow. “That’s why I have to go. So I always will.”
It was a horrible reason. She knew it—but she also knew if she went out there with the flock of cardigans and smiled and acted like nothing was wrong so nothing would damage Jacob’s precious reputation, tonight she would go to the upstairs bathroom and take out his straight razor and hope she could maintain enough motor control to slash up the street, not across the road. It was said that the soul couldn’t survive in a vacuum, but it wasn’t absence that would kill Leigh.
It was knowing there was so much more beyond the bars of her cage, if she could just break free and reach.
She took one last look at her son, memorizing everything from the little pink crescents of his fingernails to the wrinkles in the bends of his elbows to the tiny button of his nose.
Then she turned and fled, bolting from the room and from the house with nothing but the contents of her pockets and the demons riding her back.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IT WAS BECOMING TOO EASY to spill her heart out to Gabriel.
They’d curled up in bed together again, Leigh tucked into Gabriel’s lap with her cheek resting to his chest and her gaze fixed on the quiet rise and fall of Gary’s shoulders. Some part of her felt as if Gary should be awake for this, to hear her confession. So he would know she wasn’t who he thought she was. That she hadn’t run away from a crack house or an abuser or a family who left her locked in the basement.
She’d just run away from the shattering of her last vestiges of naiveté.
“Until then I’d thought I was jaded,” she said, sighing. “Until then I’d thought I was cynical. I’d thought I knew everything, after—” She broke off, and curled her hand against Gabriel’s chest. “Worse things have happened to me. Deeper hurts. Every last one cracked me just a little bit more. I’m not sure why that’s the one thing that broke me.”
“Everyone’s breaking point is different.” Gabriel’s slow breaths had provided the tempo while she’d told him everything; he’d listened quietly without judgment, and now he smoothed his hands over her back, their warmth soothing and melting her. “The strongest foundation can survive a million earthquakes, only to topple at one last tremor.”
“I wasn’t a particularly strong foundation to start with. You would hate me if you really knew me, Gabriel.”
“No, little mouse. I very much doubt that.”
But she knew the truth. She knew the truth of herself, her own selfishness and weakness, and she didn’t understand how Gabriel could say that after the way she’d jerked him around.
“You probably think I’m crazy now. This psycho who pulls a gun on her husband, then runs away to spread her legs for every half-hard cock in Crow City.”
“Not crazy, no.” He kissed the top of her head. “Wounded. You married him. That means something. Only he turned out not to be the prince he should have been, in your story.”
“He should have been.” She laughed bitterly. “That’s the lie of it, you know? That’s what I was told my whole life. That if I just subverted everything I am to make him happy, he’d make me happy too. And it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true at all.”
“Then som
eone was teaching you the wrong things.”
“I know. But I don’t know how to un-learn them.”
“Have you tried?”
“Where would I even start?” She looked up at him. “I don’t even know if I can. Maybe I’m stuck like this. Maybe deep down, I was always broken and I always will be.” She shuddered. “When I think of how close I came to putting a bullet in his brain…”
“What stopped you?”
“I…” Leigh bit her lip. “I felt like it was my fault. Like I set myself up for this, and I deserved it. Marrying him because I was supposed to, not because I loved him. He had to figure it out sooner or later. Had to feel how cold I was. How empty I was. He didn’t feel loved enough because I didn’t love him. I cut a hole in him like the hole inside me, and he went looking for someone else to fill it.” The words stabbed into her chest. “That makes it my fault, doesn’t it?”
He smiled slightly and traced a fingertip down the line of her jaw. “Relationships are more complicated than just saying it’s one person’s fault or another. People are more complicated than that.”
“But I drove him away.”
“If you didn’t love him, why do you care?’
Her stomach sank. “I don’t…like feeling like I failed.” And that was what she’d been taught. That was what had hit her like a crushing fist, when she’d seen Jacob squatting over Brittany like a gargoyle: that she had failed in everything her mother taught her about being a woman, even if deep down she knew her mother had been wrong. “I agreed to it. I just had to do one simple thing. Make him happy.”
“That’s not much of a life, only living to make someone else happy.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“That’s not your fault,” Gabriel pointed out quietly. “It’s not his fault, either. You both made bad decisions. You both treated each other poorly.”
Leigh stiffened. Her heart twisted in her chest as the dagger of betrayal plunged deep. “Are you saying I deserve the way he treated me? The way I was just…just an object to him, a possession in a glass display case?”
“No. No, little mouse. I’m not saying that at all.”
She pushed away from him, but he wouldn’t let go. “Fuck you.”
“Leigh—”
“Fuck you!” She raked her nails against his imprisoning arms. “Where the fuck do you get off saying—”
“Leigh!” He caught her wrists—gently, for once. So gently, looking at her quietly, something frank and stark darkening silver eyes. “Stop. Stop using him as an excuse to push me away.”
“It’s not a fucking excuse,” she snarled. “I hate you. I fucking hate you!”
“It’s not me you hate.”
She shrieked and tried to pull her knees up between them to thrust him away, but he wrapped his arms around her tight, trapping her, holding her, whispering soft, soothing nothing sounds and rocking her gently.
“I hate you,” she gasped, over and over again, her nostrils stinging and her throat swelling and her eyes filling. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…”
“Say what you really mean,” he murmured into her hair, and she squeezed her eyes shut, curling up tighter.
“…I…I hate him.”
“I know.” Every word rumbled through her with gentle understanding. Understanding she didn’t deserve, yet she clung to as his voice washed over her. “Hate is just like any other drug. It’s addictive. And just like any other drug, it gives you a rush even while it’s tearing you up inside. But you can’t just let it go. Not really. And it won’t let you go until you decide you’ve had enough.”
Leigh had stopped struggling while he spoke, and now she huddled against him, shaking until her bones threatened to apart. “I don’t know how,” she said. “I feel like hate’s been the only thing keeping me alive.”
He cupped her cheek, searching her eyes. “It doesn’t have to be.”
She stared up at him, a terrible knot of pain pulling just below her rib cage. What was he saying? She shook her head, her tongue shriveled and frozen. She couldn’t—she didn’t know how—
Gary snorted, stirring restlessly, his shoulders twitching. Leigh jerked, looking over her shoulder. She’d forgotten he was there, unwitting audience to her little stage play. What would he think, if he’d heard all that? Would he still show her a father’s love, with his gruff and scowling kindness?
Or would he realize she wasn’t worth it?
Would Gabriel?
She looked back to the man who held her like some kind of treasure, who looked at her like he needed her more than he needed air. No one had ever looked at her that way. Not even him. Gabriel looked at her like he saw her. Her, not an expectation, not an object, not a possession, not an obligation. Just Leigh.
And she was afraid of what he saw.
She licked her lips and lowered her eyes. “I need to go.”
“Running away again?” he asked, a hoarse and hurting edge to his voice.
“Don’t start. I need to see my son.”
“May I come?”
Leigh froze, staring at him. “Why…why would you want to?”
“He’s important to you.”
“This is…I…” Her shoulders hunched, and she wrapped her arms around herself. “No. No, Gabriel. This is private.”
“As you wish.”
Slowly, his hold on her relaxed, then fell away. He had that look again—that look that said he saw right through her, understood her, but wouldn’t push this time. Wouldn’t force her over the edge. He only ever pushed her as far as she could stand, she realized. There was a gentleness in him she hadn’t seen before, and she wondered if it had always been there.
Or if he, too, was finding parts of himself previously undiscovered, each time they crashed together and chipped away at another layer of each other’s armor.
She pulled herself out of his lap and out of the bed, avoiding looking anywhere at him while she pulled her boots on. Knee-high combat boots and Daisy Dukes. Wasn’t she just the little rockabilly.
Snorting at herself, she slung her backpack on. Gabriel was still watching her like he was waiting for her to say something, but there was nothing to say. She needed space. Room to let the air back into her lungs. Time alone to figure out just what she was doing, what she was feeling.
She looked at him, sprawled in Gary’s bed like a wildcat lounging on a tree branch, and cursed herself for the urge to crawl right back in that bed, hide against him, and forget the world.
Instead she turned away, and ducked through the shimmering beaded curtain.
“Would you like to spend the day with me?” Gabriel called after her. “When you’re done. Spend the day with me, and tonight we’ll take the boat out.”
She paused on the top step, looking back at him through the swaying strands. “I’m not sure I can stand another day cooped up in these walls, but if you need me to stay…”
“No. Not here.” He shook his head. “I don’t do well in a cage. I’m going home.”
She frowned, stepping back through the curtain. “You’re okay now?”
“I’ll never be completely okay. But I can manage.”
Leigh studied him—his stillness, his calm. He was so good at hiding his pain, but she didn’t think he was hiding now. She nodded and turned away again. “I’ll come by and check on you when I’m done,” she said, and that was the most she’d commit to. “Just to be sure you made it home safe.”
“If you do that, I might almost think you care.”
She clattered down the stairs. “Don’t get too full of yourself,” she called back. His voice drifted in her wake.
“I’ll be at the garage.”
Leigh just snorted and spilled out into the bar, then let herself out onto the street. Idiot.
And she was an idiot for going along with this.
On her way out, she checked her phone. Caller ID showed a missed call; voicemail gave her Maxi’s voice, distracted and oddly strained.
“Hey.
Appraisal came through faster than I thought. You can come by during open hours. Remember I can only hold it for three weeks, so the sooner you get here, the better.”
Looked like Leigh was making a detour.
She took the walk to the pawn shop slowly; her legs didn’t want to move faster than a slow amble, still jellied after last night and the ache between her thighs making her shorts hurt, where they clung to her. She let herself savor that and think of nothing else as she moved through the morning sunshine, surrounded by the noise of traffic as people drove to work and dropped the kids off at school and ran their little errands. It was so ordinary, so normal, but for the first time in a long time she didn’t feel out of place in the middle of it, a gray spot blotching out the sunny sky. For once her emptiness wasn’t a hollow void, but the lightness of finally letting someone else shoulder some of the weight she’d been carrying around with her for years.
By the time she reached the pawn shop, Maxi was just pulling back the accordion bars from the windows and flipping the sign in the window to Open. Her hand was on the lock when Leigh stopped outside; Maxi froze, looking through the window at her almost warily, as if Leigh was hexed and the curse was contagious. For a moment she thought the woman wouldn’t open the door, but then the lock clicked and the knob twisted. Maxi swung the door open with a toss of her head.
“Come on.”
Leigh stepped into the pawn shop’s cool, quiet gloom. Maxi gave her a hard look and shut the door behind her, locking it again. Leigh frowned.
“Something wrong?”
“Don’t like to have the place unlocked during large cash transactions.”
“My ring checked out, then.”
Maxi’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t expecting it to?”
“I was expecting you to report it stolen and have me arrested,” Leigh answered with a shrug and a wry smile.
Maxi rolled her eyes and stepped behind the counter. “Don’t think I wasn’t tempted.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You got that little boy, right?”
