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Ellen watched as Caleb locked the door on the Richard debacle and disappeared out the back. When he returned to the kitchen, he had his phone in one hand, and he was shaking the other and flexing his fingers.
“Do you have any frozen peas? Or corn?”
A coherent response eluded her.
“Never mind, I’ll look.” He started rummaging in her freezer.
After dropping a bag of mixed vegetables on the counter, he turned on his phone and swore quietly at whatever he saw on the screen. He slid it into his pocket.
The vegetables became an ice pack for his left hand, which was already swelling. He wet a dish towel, wrapped it around the bag, and tried to tie it on, but it was an awkward job. He’d split a couple of knuckles; they made crimson streaks on the damp cloth.
She didn’t move to help him. Let him dress his own stupid wounds. She wasn’t Florence Nightingal
e. After the Cro-Magnon shit he’d just pulled, he deserved sore knuckles and a whole lot worse.
He got the makeshift ice pack tied on. Caleb and his capable fingers. Figured.
Without a word, she walked to her room and yanked on some clothes, pulling her hair into a ponytail and wishing the roiling in the pit of her stomach would settle down and her heart would stop racing.
She was so tired of feeling things all the time. She’d thought her life was hard enough—taking care of Henry by herself, burning the candle on both ends for work—but emotionally, it had been the Wide Sargasso Sea. Until recently, most days she’d felt nothing stronger than mild displeasure when her son dumped a cup of grape juice on the floor.
This, on the other hand. This was ridiculous. She’d only been awake twenty minutes, and she felt as if her adrenal glands had been squeezed flat in a cider press. When she’d smelled the alcohol fumes coming off Richard, a sharp, shocking stab of disappointment had killed off the hope she hadn’t even known she was nourishing—hope that he might stay sober and figure out how to redeem himself someday. Figure out how to be a decent person and build a relationship with their son.
A stupid, foolish, babyish hope, given who he was and everything he’d done in the last twenty-four hours. But it had kicked and screamed as it died.
Then there was the mix of relief and anger that had pricked her skin when Caleb came up behind her and tried to step in, defending her from Richard’s drunken outburst. The way her pulse had sounded in her ears again. The sick dismay that had gripped her when Richard reduced Caleb to a piece of ass she was using to scratch an itch. He’d said outrageous things, degrading Caleb and cheapening her, sullying everything the two of them had shared.
Outrageous things she hadn’t denied, because she was still heartsick and confused over what had happened between them last night. The way he’d looked at her. Fear had squeezed her lungs so hard, she could hardly breathe. Caleb wasn’t supposed to look at her that way. She hadn’t signed up for it. But when he did, her panicked reaction had been mixed with happiness she couldn’t ignore or deny, and a raw need for him that left her shaky and horribly confused.
She couldn’t begin to deal with it. She hadn’t even tried.
This morning, she’d awakened in his arms and turned automatically to bury her face in the crook of his neck, where he always smelled like cedar and Caleb. A warm, soft joy had crept through her, a suffusion of peace like nothing she’d ever felt before.
Then Richard had started shouting.
Too many feelings. She’d spent the past week on one cheap fair ride after another, screaming with frightened excitement, bracing her neck and shoulders against every jolt. But she wanted to get off. She didn’t have the guts for this, or the stamina. She was a single mother living in rural Ohio, yet somehow there was an emergency security fence around her property line and a pop star giving impromptu concerts in her neighbor’s yard. There were paparazzi at the end of the driveway taking pictures as two grown men fought over her on the front step.
Her life was not supposed to be like this. Her life was holding Henry and eating his rejected graham crackers and answering the question “Why?” four hundred times in a row until she got so bored with talking about construction equipment and steam engines she was ready to nod off.
She wanted her life back, needed it back. Needed to feel as though she held the reins.
Except there was still a soldier with split knuckles and a stern, beautiful face in her kitchen, and she was going to have to deal with him sooner or later. Ellen sighed and walked back down the hall, carrying his shirt.
He had his back to her, phone to his ear, but he caught sight of her coming into the room and said, “I have to go.” Then a pause. “Just call me when he does … Okay, love you, too.”
He disconnected. “My sister Katie.”
Ellen stepped close enough to hand him the shirt. “I met her.” Katie had Caleb’s dark hair and intense eyes. She’d been friendly and fun and intimidating beyond description. She’d made it clear her brother was no Romeo. Which meant Ellen wasn’t and had never been a Chiclet. Ellen didn’t know what to think about that.
Caleb’s eyes were dark and inscrutable, holding none of the indulgent amusement she’d grown used to seeing there. “She invited you to dinner,” he said. “Wednesday night at our house. We’re having my whole family over for my nephew’s birthday. Six o’clock.”
Our house. “You live with Katie?”
“Katie lives with me.”
Ellen didn’t know where Caleb lived, any more than she’d known he lived with his sister. She didn’t know if the nephew was Katie’s son or if Caleb had another sister.
The depth of her ignorance made her acutely conscious of her selfishness. They’d done the most intimate things together, but she’d asked him virtually nothing personal. What kind of game had she been playing?
