Burying Water (Burying Water #1)(35)
“How did you and Viktor meet?”
“My mother owned a small cleaning business. I worked for her, scrubbing strangers’ toilets and washing floors, before and after school and on weekends, long before I was legally old enough to do so. Viktor was a client; he has a condo in Seattle. I was seventeen when I met him.” A sad smile curls her lips as she reminisces. “I was terrified of him at first. Sometimes, I’d prepare meals and leave them in the fridge. I love to cook and he’d leave me extra cash for having dinner ready for him. Then, he started leaving roses for me every week, with the cash. One day, he offered to treat me to dinner and I said yes. He was kind and handsome and made all kinds of promises about taking care of me, paying for me to go to college. He said I’d have nothing to worry about.” She shrugs. “I was naïve, and I had too many memories of waking up cold and hungry because we couldn’t pay the bills. The last thing I wanted to do was follow in my mother’s footsteps, working my fingers to the bone and collapsing in bed from exhaustion every night. I wanted more for my life and he was offering it. So, I took it. We got married just after my eighteenth birthday.” Her chin dips down as she focuses on a spot on the ground, her voice soft and mocking as she admits, “He seemed like Prince Charming and I felt like Cinderella.”
“And now?”
“And now . . .” The two simple words crackle over her rising emotion. She pauses, her chest puffing out with a deep, slow breath that she releases with her eyes closed. “Now I don’t believe in fairy tales. Or at least, not in the happily-ever-afters that Disney brainwashed us all with.”
I open my mouth, the urge to tell her that the night at The Cellar wasn’t the first place we met overwhelming. But I rein it back as a new thought springs to my mind. Maybe she doesn’t want to remember that night. Maybe she regrets that night. Maybe she’d be too embarrassed to sit out here with me. That would suck, because I’m enjoying getting to know her, as depressing as the topic of her marriage is.
When her eyes lift, there’s a hopelessness in them that she’s kept firmly veiled until now. She stares at me, through me, beyond me to somewhere I can’t reach. But I hold her gaze, trying to follow.
In slow motion, she shuts her book. “Neither of us is going to get any work done. I should get going.” At the door she stops. “Good night, Jesse.” The tone of her voice is so soft, so sad, and yet so unbelievably sexy, I can’t even form the simple words to answer her.
Thirty minutes later, struggling to focus because every slight noise has my eyes darting to the door, I finally pack up and leave.
FOURTEEN
Jane Doe
now
A stranger stands before me in the dark, only the outline of his jaw visible. He is faceless, nameless. And yet I know that I know him.
I reach up, my fingers gliding over his masculine features, reading them like a blind woman. Regardless of what my eyes cannot confirm, I know that he is beautiful. I find his lips, soft and parted. I marvel at the feeling of air drawing through them, at the quickening of his breath.
Like a cord severed by a swinging axe, our connection breaks, leaving me cocooned in cold dread.
“No one will ever touch you again,” he hisses.
That voice belongs to another faceless figure hovering over me.
And I know I am about to experience pain like I have never felt before.
I bolt upright in bed, the whispered promise swirling around me like a suffocating smoke, making me gasp and cough and claw at my throat for air. I will myself to breathe in and out as my surroundings come into focus, my heart hammering against my chest. What was that? Just a bad dream?
Or . . . was that a memory?
Because I can’t deal with any more memories like that.
I fold my arms around my stomach and clutch myself until my breathing calms, rocking back and forth, the creaky springs in the mattress producing a rhythmic sound that slices through the night’s silence.
Sliding out of bed, I pad over to the woodstove, pulling my pajamas tight to ward off the cold. The fire that Sheriff Gabe helped me light earlier now burns low. I chuck two more logs in and then head to the kitchen for a glass of water, my eyes drifting toward the window and a spotlight shining from the front of the Welleses’ garage. I peer out and see a lean but solid frame pass through it, several pieces of wood cradled within his arms. It’s Jesse and he’s heading toward the property line. He throws a leg over the rickety old fence.
Definitely more than a pinky toe. Ginny would be freaking out.
He disappears from view just below my window. Only for a few seconds, though, and then he reappears empty-handed. Climbing back over, he collects more wood from the neatly stacked pile against their garage before repeating the trek.
Sheriff Gabe warned that nights would be cold for another two months and I could use whatever I need from their stock. I figured I’d be the one collecting tomorrow. I definitely didn’t think that meant his son would be doing it for me at . . . A glance at the clock shows me that it’s after three in the morning! I ease myself up onto the counter, curling my good leg under me to get comfortable, while my injured one hangs free.
And I watch Jesse Welles, the boy who somehow earned Ginny’s wrath, bring me my firewood in the middle of the night.
“One of these days I’m going to learn how to ride you . . . Felix,” I murmur, curling the massive horse’s crimped brown mane of fur around my fingers. And then I start giggling.