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“Let’s get you home.” I picked her up and carried her down to the basement level out of the club through a back entrance led by two other suits placing her inside my car gently buckling her in. We had a shit ton to discuss once I got her back to her house.
This was it.
She was it for me…and I was in so much fucking trouble.
Seven
JUDE
“Are you going to tell me who the f-fuck you r-really are?” We had been sitting in his car, a jeep or something large for some time letting the engine idle, the heat on high blast. Sweat began to trickle between my breasts and I fumbled reaching for the switch to turn it off between swaths of fabric from his jacket. I felt uneasy having traded one strange situation for another. My throat constricted as I tried to desperately control my emotions and leaking tears.
“I brought you back to your house. I thought you’d feel better being in familiar surroundings.” He sounded contrite, my mystery man.
His response made me snort. “I mean–who you really are not some bullshit excuse.” I clutched his jacket closer around me taking in his familiar scent.
He cleared his throat and I felt his fingers touch my hand, his much larger, warmer one closing over mine canceling out Ken’s slimy impersonal touch from earlier. The warmth seeped into me like a virus spreading only this one brought comfort and the fevered shivers didn’t frighten me.
“My name is….” He cleared his throat before continuing and I spiraled back into the past, my ears lifting back to hear him more clearly discerning the changes in the tone of his voice over time.
“Stay with me Jude. I’m not going to let you go. I am so sorry this happened. You weren’t supposed to be here.” The burning feeling overwhelmed me and I couldn’t open my eyes. I was choking from the inside out and his touch was cool against my heated skin. His voice is smooth and pleading with me. He sounded unsure and I forced my eyes to open. It felt like the skin was splitting at the seams and I cried out loud. My last vision was of a familiar youthful face behind a mask that reminded me of a bad sci-fy movie before it melted away into nothingness. I felt him pick me up and air sliced at my exposed skin. Something was burning at me and I struggled to get it off my body. Pain consumed my thoughts and his identity washed away with more pressing concerns for my livelihood.
“Shhh….Jude. I’m so sorry. I wish…I wish there was something I could do.” There was something so final in is voice. I was pretty sure I was going to die here and it was because of him. He laid me down on something soft and I turned my head to the side. Between the smell of something chemical and toxic there was the scent of something floral. Flowers maybe, but I wasn’t sure because the overriding pain that clouded over everything else and the chaos.
“Lorand Duvall.” I breathe
d in to clear my thoughts and search my brain for why he seemed so familiar to me now that I have a voice and a name to put together. Why I didn’t connect it then was a mystery but the shock of the events made that day filter into a muddy mess I stopped trying to recall years earlier.
His body moved like he was nodding though I couldn’t visually tell and part of me fractured. He was there. “Oh my god, it was you.”
“It was me and I am so, so sorry for what I did.” I’m not sure what he thinks he did except save my life. Shaking, I touched his face and my hands rested against his throat. Thick and muscular I felt him swallow deeply with regret and my fingers reached to touch each indentation, angle and curve of his face placing it from my memory to now.
The first night alone in my house I get up, unsettled as usual. Banging against unfamiliar furniture and things I forgot to pick up which bruise me now that I’m alone. “Hello?” My hands darted out into nothing and unbalanced I nearly fall head long into nothing.
Hands clasp around my forearms gently. “Who?” I tried to pull away scared at first. Confused the hands become an embrace both restraining and holding me before guiding me over to my kitchen table. Warmth radiated unexpectedly from the table with scents that pleasantly tickled my still sensitive nose. “What?” A hand places a warm croissant between my fingers and pushes it towards my lips to taste. Weird. I should be screaming down the house calling out for my deaf but nosy neighbor Mrs. Goddard to come running and help me. My panic button is here somewhere, but I don’t know where I’ve put the damn thing having just moved in.
I take a bite of the flakey dessert and taste something buttery sweet and filled with fruit jelly and sweet cream. A treat, something a guardian might give a child. I felt resentful for a moment. I wasn’t a child, but I was more broken than most.
The hand, I recognized as masculine traced over my skin and after I ate the French pastry he placed that missing panic button into my palm and waited. Maybe food does soothe the beast? I had no desire in that moment to press the button calling for help. I placed it on the table, my decision made. Leaving me at the table he kissed my forehead with tenderness that made my damaged eyes burn with tears as he left me alone in my darkness. I sat there until the next morning hearing Mrs. Goddard banging at my door.
“You went to Karim?” I made it sound like a question but I knew.
“Yes. Both my sister and I.”
“I always thought it odd neither of you sounded Texan. French, then?” I asked him, the quiet thudding in my brain sorted accents like shapes in my world placing the puzzle pieces together. The accent was light, barely there, but traced in his voice like a hint of smooth vanilla and spicy cinnamon mixed together.
“Originally, I’m Canadian. Ontario province up by Lake Huron but…please don’t hold that against me.” So he has a sense of humor…my mysteriously silent hero.
“I’ve never been, seems pointless I guess.” I fall deeply into my hole of self-pity and doubt unwilling to crawl out from the feelings that swallow me up.
“Travel is never pointless. You can still see places in the crisp smells; textures...places have a feel about them.” I snort but he continues talking. “I have a house on Lake Huron. You’d like it, it’s…peaceful.” Tuning off the car, I guess he decided we were out here long enough. He gets out of the car shutting the door with a gentle click. A moment passes and he’s opening my door and reaching in to unhook my belt and help me out on unsteady legs triggering another memory.
My legs give out as I fall to the floor. I can’t tell if it’s morning, noon or night. My eyes, they’re broken is the best way to describe my state of being. The tiles are cold, hard and unforgiving inside the hospital. My elbows and knees hurt from falling so many times and refusing to let anyone help me. My face is wrapped up like a mummy. I’m supposed to be wearing these stupidly soft socks with rubber soles but I don’t. I think they’re childish and stupid and I don’t want to be either. I want to rebel whenever and however I can. I don’t have much, but this I won’t give up on. I assume he’s a nurse or an orderly, but he doesn’t speak to me. And I don’t ask. His arms folded around me and he picks me up carrying me back to my room. The silence is the place between where we exist. He lays me on the bed and instead of putting the stupid socks on like my mother would have insisted on doing he picks up one foot and then the other rubbing them warm until I fall asleep.
I fall into his arms and he holds me upright letting my legs find stable ground. “Is that where you go…when you’re not here?” The question escaped quicker than I have sense to hold back. A pause and a sigh leave me waiting for my answer. I’m confused because I know somehow that not all of the pieces he was giving me fit together in nice neat picture.
He’s tense standing on my doorstep and the moment is disjointed at best. “Sometimes.” Using his own key, made from mine at some point I assumed, he takes my arm and guides me inside. I should have known he would have made one of his own. I know the way by heart, but tonight I just want it all to be a bad dream I’ll wake up from and gladly accept whatever help he gives me. He does have a canny way of sneaking in and out on me.
“Honey, we want you to consider moving back in with us.” The accident happened when I was seventeen and by the time I left the hospital I was eighteen. I moved to a special housing complex my uncle had found for me so I could manage on my own. My mother didn’t like it but when I fought with them tooth and nail there wasn’t much they could do. “It’s for the best.”
