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“I suppose we haven’t officially been introduced. I’m Bryce. I’ll be ruining your life. Welcome to Hell.”
“You’re about six years too late to be conducting that train, my friend. Hell is actually my hometown. They just let me out to shoot an asshole or two every so often.”
“I’m going to enjoy every fucking second of this,” he said and offered me that deeply disturbed smile another time.
“In that case, could you maybe wear a cup or something while you torture me? If I’m going to have to be in pain, I’d prefer to be able to picture your sister’s tight little cunt rather than have to stare at your raging hard-on the whole time.”
He laughed at that and much to my displeasure, it sent goosebumps all over my skin.
“We’ll get started soon, New Jersey.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
trista
I stopped so quickly in the open doorway of Jersey’s bedroom that Kyle bumped right into me. Memphis was sitting on the massive bed in the middle of the room, staring at something in her hands, crying so hard that her whole body was shaking.
“Uh, crying women are definitely not an area where I’m comfortable,” he said quickly. He dropped all our shit right there in the hallway and turned back for the front door.
I was smacked in the face with a rush of cinnamon as soon as I crossed into the room. I even stopped a second time to look in every direction like the man might have suddenly just materialized in the room right behind me. I tried to make a mental note to remind myself to ask Kyle what the fuck he was having those cleaning ladies use in here to make the room smell like Jersey without him being here, but I had a hard time focusing on anything other than the sounds of Memphis crying the way that she was.
I went to the other side of the giant bed to climb up and sit right beside her. Crying women really weren’t a strength of mine either, though. I took the framed photo from her hands and found myself crying right alongside her a second later. Jersey’s wife really could have been a supermodel, and his daughter had his blue eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was crying out of a weird and uncomfortable jealousy over this woman who’d known a version of that man who had died with them and I’d never get to meet, or if it was the deepest form of pain to see the little girl who’d been taken from him.
Faith.
Her name had been Faith. She had one of those perfectly round and full faces that only toddlers seemed to have. Jersey’s blue eyes went beautifully with his wife’s wavy blonde hair when they were combined in that small person. She had a tiny gap in the middle of her front teeth and looked like the kind of child who was perpetually smiling. She felt too perfect to have been something that came from Jersey. Well, she felt too perfect to have come from the Jersey who I knew. Maybe she was a miniature version of the man he used to be. Everything about that made the pain deep in my stomach so much worse.
“I don’t think I can stay in this room,” I said in between the pathetic sniffles.
“I don’t think she was ever here,” Memphis said, trying desperately to wipe the tears from her face. “He wouldn’t have needed a place like this from the Marine days. His parents were from New Jersey. He ended up buying a house in the same neighborhood as them once he was married. I don’t think they ever lived anywhere else.”
“Even if that’s the case, how does it fucking smell like him in here?” I sobbed.
“Thank God,” she said. “I thought I was losing my mind already. I was only in his physical presence for a matter of minutes, and I felt like cinnamon was burned into my nostrils. I wondered if my mind just decided that this room was supposed to smell that way.”
“He always smelled like that.”
We both held our breath to try to be as quiet as possible when what sounded like jingling keys came from the hallway. Then a door closed a moment later and we could both hear light footsteps.
“Mr. Groundskeeper?” I asked.
“You can’t just call him Kyle like a normal person?” Memphis whispered.
“I really can’t,” I said and even giggled. “That’s a story for another time.”
“What the fuck is that?” Memphis said, staring at the doorway.
We both laughed at the sight of a golden retriever popping its head through the door. It sniffed around for a second before it decided it was coming the rest of the way toward both of us, the tags on its collar jingling the whole way. The dog stopped and whined just beside the bed, next to Memphis. She sniffled another time and the dog whined again. It laid its head down on the edge of the bed to try to get as close as it could without actually being on the furniture.
“Oh my God,” I said and got off the bed to go around to the other side. “He said he had a dog.”
I knelt on the floor beside it and reached for its tags.
“Dandelion,” I laughed. “Her name is Dandelion.”
I turned the tag over to read the other side. “PTSD Service Dog. Protected under federal law. Do not separate from handler.”
“He didn’t know what to do with us, so he sent his dog in here?” Memphis asked laughing. “That’s the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever been part of. God, him and Jersey might as well be the same guy.”
