Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense)(47)

“You okay?”

“I think so.”

He runs his fingers through my hair. We just sit, with the TV droning softly in the background. I like this. I like just sitting. It reminds me of before, when were kids madly in love with each other. We couldn’t stop touching. Holding hands, rubbing up against each other, me sitting on his lap. It drove my mother crazy. She would check on us every five minutes. We could never be alone.

I’m half asleep by the time Helen calls out that dinner is ready. She’s put a leaf in the table and set places for us, sitting across from each other beside the head of the table where she sits.

Dinner is pot roast. Jack cuts my meat for me, and I don’t snap at him over it this time. I find myself surprised by how good it is.

“Eat up, you have a trip ahead of you. You are staying the night, yes?” Helen says.

She looks at Neil, but he says nothing.

I touch my foot to Jack’s leg under the table before he answers.

“We will, but we need to leave early in the morning.”

“I’ll make up the guest room for you after dinner.”

After I slowly eat a bowl of chocolate ice cream, the girls help Helen clean up while we sit at the table with Neil.

“So, you two,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jack says.

“Your mom told me about the accident,” he says to Jack. He glances at me briefly. “Terrible shame. I’m surprised to see you two together after all this time.”

“So are we,” I say.

“I’m not,” Jack says, smirking at me. “Like I would ever give up.”

“I met your mother through work,” Neil says. “Before she quit to take care of the kids she was one of the best regarded teachers at her school. She’s the most wonderful person I’ve ever met.”

“Thank you,” Jack says. “I wish I could see a lot more of her. Hopefully I will.”

“I don’t think your father would approve of that.”

“May I be blunt?”

Neil looks at us.

“I don’t give a flying f*ck what my father approves of. Trust me, his approval is the last thing I’m ever going to seek.”

Neil chews on that, his jaw working.

“No harm is going to come to my sisters, sir. I won’t allow it. We’ll be gone by the time anyone realizes we’re here.”

Helen reappears and shows us to the guest bedroom in the corner of the house. It’s small, just a bed and an empty dresser. A queen bed, smaller than the one we shared at the motel.

“Jack,” Helen says, tugging his wrist.

He steps out and I sit on the bed and sigh.

Jack returns a moment later.

“You have the run of the house,” Helen says before she steps out of the room. “Feel free to join us in the living room if you like.”

When she closes the door and leaves us alone, Jack sputters and starts laughing.

“What?”

He pulls a box of condoms out of his pocket. “She gave me these.”

I can’t help it, I start laughing. “How many are in there?”

“Three.”

“Well. We’d better get the most out of them then. I just want to lie down for a while. Is that alright?”

“Yeah. I’ll join you,” he yawns.





Jack





Ellie starts to snore not long after she lies down. She rolls on her right side and tucks up to me, and I slip my arms around her and breathe softly against the top of her head. Her hands and feet are cold, but I don’t care.

Half awake, she mumbles something about me being warm. I grab the blanket from the foot of the bed and pull it over us.

My mother’s words roll around and around and around in my head, until I can hear the sound of them like a marble on the rim of a metal bowl.

I always assumed my father was behind the accident. Mom has a good point, though. Something I never really thought about.

I was in the car. Would he risk me being injured, or even killed? One of the three people in the car that night didn’t make it. As Ellie’s breath tickles my chest, I find myself wondering.

I was driving the car.

The car wrecked.

Her father died.

“Jack,” she says in a small voice, “I want to ask you something.”

She pulls herself closer and doesn’t wait for me to say anything.

“What do you see when you look at me?”

“I see you.”

“I know that, you jerk. I mean what… Why…?”

I lie for a while, holding her in my arms. Nothing feels as good as this, as good as her breath against the crook of my arm. She can’t keep her freezing-cold feet off my calves, but I don’t care. I’d rather be tickled by chilly toes than be without her.

“I see you. I see us dancing. I see you helping me with my homework. I see you playing your guitar. I see you scribbling in that journal you’d never let me look at. I see you with snowflakes in your hair. I see all the joy you bring me just by being in my presence. I see your pain. I see you.”

She tightens her arms around me. “That was almost poetic, Jack.”

“I read a book once.”

She giggles.

Then I have to ruin it.