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“Hey,” I said, unable to stop myself from looking at her lips.
It had been days since she’d last kissed me, and I wanted to do it again. Hell, I wanted to do it a lot. But I wouldn’t push it. Those things were always better when they happened exactly when they were meant to rather than forcing it along.
She lifted the letter she had been reading. “This is my fourth one,” she said before allowing her smile to droop. “I’m so sorry you went through all of this.”
I invited myself to sit down across from her. “It is what it is.”
“You say that like it’s so normal to be thrown in prison right after your best friend died in front of you and to not have anybody at all come visit you or even write …” She shielded her eyes with a hand and rubbed at her brow. “Nobody deserves that, Soldier. I mean, evenfreakin’ … Charles Manson had people writing to him. He had visitors.”
“Eh”—I shrugged—“if I were a celebrity criminal, random people would’ve written to me too.”
She patted the letter lightly with her fingertips. “I should’ve written to you. I mean, I wish I had. I had heard about what happened, and I thought about it, but I …” She blew out a deep breath and closed her eyes, as if she couldn’t bear to look at anything else. “I was going through my own stuff at the time, so I never, um … I never did … but I wish I had.”
I shrugged again, more nonchalantly this time. “Seriously, it’s fine.”
Ray rolled her eyes at that, now looking as though she might even be annoyed with me for being so dismissive. “But it’snot.”
“Here’s the thing, Ray,” I said, folding my hands against her table. “Ithastobe fine because there’s nothing anybody can do about what has already happened. The only thing any of us have any control over is what’s happeningright now, in this moment, and all we can do is our best to not let the bad shit happen again.”
Ray studied me for a moment, her green eyes dancing as her lips turned into a little melancholy smile. “You are a remarkable man, you know that?”
I laughed awkwardly, shying away quickly to eye a cookie jar shaped like a cow.
One of its ears had been broken off.
Now, Ray had a twelve-year-old son. Things were bound to break at some point. But a twinge of intuition told me that cow had been broken in a way Noah had nothing to do with.
So, I turned from the cow to level Ray with a serious expression and said, “Speaking of remarkable men, why don’t you tell me more about Noah’s father?”
She swallowed and sat up a little straighter in her chair to favor the wrist no longer wearing a brace. It was a small tell but like I had already told her once before, if she wanted me to believe her stories, she would have to learn to act better than that.
“Did he do that to your wrist?” I asked point-blank, and she answered with wide, angry eyes and the opening and closing of her mouth. Like she wanted to saysomething, butdidn’t know what. So, I added, “Noah told me he hurts you.”
She clenched her hand and slowly shook her head as her bottom lip began to quiver. “He wasn’t supposed to say anything. I told him not to—”
“But I can’t help you if I don’t know,” I interrupted, gentle but firm. “So, talk to me, Ray. Please.”
Her gaze dragged slowly from her once-injured wrist to meet my eye for a fleeting moment, just long enough for me to witness the helplessness and despair she carried along with her, concealed from the rest of the world. I saw the hope she was desperate to feel, the prayer for salvation, but then, she abruptly looked away.
“There’s nothing you can do anyway,” she replied, no longer denying the truth. “And, really, it’s not like there’s anythingtodo. We don’t even see him that often. He shows up every now and then, when it’s convenient for him, and he—”
“Hurts you?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and I thought she might finally say something. I thought she might even tell me everything. But instead, she stood suddenly from her chair with such force that it teetered on its legs. She turned to press her hands to the kitchen counter, hanging her head as her shoulders heaved with every anguished breath.
To contrast her brash rising, I stood slowly. “Ray,” I said, my voice low as I approached with wary caution.
When I got no response, I laid a hand against her shoulder, engulfing her slender frame with my palm.
“Rain.”
I spoke her given name with a stern edge, and she reluctantly looked over her shoulder to reveal the tears that glistened in her emerald eyes. The heart I owned had been locked away for so many years, but at the sight of her watery gaze, I listened as the door creaked open to that musty, old cellar, and I heard that telltale beating. Every thumpa reminderthat it was still somehow there, waiting for someone to hold it, to keep it safe.
The hand I held against her shoulder dared to move just a few centimeters over to her golden-brown hair, falling over her neck like a waterfall of honey. Touching its length for the first time after years of wondering, and you know what? It was even softer than I’d imagined.
“I know what to do with pain, Ray,” I said, keeping my tone barely above a whisper. “Give yours to me. Let me carry it, so you don’t havetoanymore.”
She turned against my touch, folding herself into the crook of my arm. It took everything in me not to wrap her into a tight embrace and protect her from the monster who’d hurt her wrist and whatever else I didn’t know about. But I would know eventually. I would ensure she told meevery lastdetail, and I would do whatever it took to make sure she never had to face him again.
