Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense)(18)

With that I stride out of the room and pull the door shut behind me. On my way out I toss my phone, provided by my father, in the nearest trash can.

At the bottom of the tower are storefronts. I walk into the cellular store and walk out twenty minutes later with a new iPhone, and ten minutes after that an Uber driver picks me up and takes me back to the loft, where I retrieve my keys and the Camaro.

Then I dial an old, old number, and hope.

It rings three times, and an elderly man answers.

“Hello?”

“Fitz, it’s me, Jack. I need to talk to Ellie.”

“No,” he says, and hangs up.

I dial again.

He answers again.

“I said no.”

“Wait, goddamn you!”

Silence on the line.

“I just want to talk to her. Put her on. Please.”

“This is what I am going to do. I will tell her you are on the line. If she says to hang up, I am hanging up. If she talks to you and tells you not to call again, or tells me to hang up, I will call the police if you call again. Is that understood?”

“Yes. Just tell her.”

“Very well.”

I tense as I hear the phone clack on the table as he sets it down. My hand chokes the wheel, and I feel myself start to shake all over. Can it be like this? Can it be my last chance?

“Hello, Jack.”

Ellie’s voice is like a balm, even if she sounds so raspy. I let out a breath of relief.

“Talk, Jack. I’m losing my patience.”

“I want to see you.”

“I don’t want to see you.”

My voice cracks. “Please. Just give me five minutes, Ellie. Five minutes. If you tell me to go, I’ll go and never bother you again, I swear on my mother’s grave.”

“Your mother is alive, Jack.”

“Come on, you know what I mean.”

Silence.

“I’ll give you five minutes. Come to the house.”

I park across the street. “I’m already here.”





Ellie





Fitzgerald stands back, a neutral expression hanging on his face. I stand inches from the front door, a heavy four-foot-wide slab of oak from when houses didn’t have any kind of ventilation. The knock comes softly, like he knows I’m right here waiting, damn him.

I swing the big door open, stepping back with it. Jack stands in the doorway in slacks and a shirt and tie with the collar open, his big eyes full of sadness. He looks me in the face without flinching as I take another step back and let him in. He stands still as I close the door behind him.

When I turn around he tries to touch my arm and I jerk back, slipping out of his grip. His hand falls to his side and squeezes into a fist, and he bites his lip hard, until the skin around his teeth goes white.

“Ellie, just hear me out—”

“Let’s sit down in the kitchen.”

I don’t wait for his answer. I walk through the house to the kitchen, a sizable room with big windows that look out over a small backyard, barely more than an alleyway with some patches of grass. I sit down at the big slab of a table and Jack sits at the other end, watches me for a moment, and hangs his head.

“Miss Ellie,” Fitzgerald says, my name hanging like a question.

“I’ll be okay, Fitz.”

He nods and steps out. “I’m in earshot if you need me.”

An old cat clock ticks on the wall, eyes looking back and forth as its tail swings. The sink drips, the drops hitting the bottom of the sink with tiny slaps, and Jack breathes heavily, leans into his hands, and scrubs his fingers through his hair.

He looks at me unwavering, and I match his gaze, looking back.

“Hi,” he says.

I tilt my head to the side. “Say what you’re here to say and get out.”

“It wasn’t my fault—”

“You should leave now.”

“Ellie—”

Fitzgerald steps back into the room.

“I flew thousands of miles for this,” he says, a hint of anger rising in his voice. “You could let me finish one sentence.”

I look at Fitzgerald and nod. He gives Jack a warning look and steps back out.

“I wanted to be there for you, but I couldn’t. When I got out of the hospital two guys twice my size almost carried me to the car and I was on my way to boarding school with a cast on my leg. I was sixteen years old. I had no choice.”

“What about after that?”

He sighs. “Dad said I’d be cut off if I didn’t do what he told me to do. By then…” He looks down. “You have to understand, it still hurt. It hurt every day. I’d be doing something else and I’d just start thinking about you, I couldn’t shut it out.”

“But you tried,” I say softly.

“After two years without a word from you, I thought maybe I should.”

I sit up and glare at him. “Don’t you dare put this on me. You left me in the hospital. After my face was burned off.”

I can see it in his face, the anger. His lips twist, his jaw sets, and he gets that blazing look in his eyes, the same one he used to get whenever something pissed him off. Jack was never the type to let things go, and more than once I can remember him getting into a fight over something silly, until he was in the principal’s office, again and again. More than once it was because someone said something about me, or to me, that he didn’t like.