A Year of You (20 page)

He flung the door open. The yellow bug light washed into the living room, painting it egg-yolk yellow. “What the hell did you do my dogs?” he roared.

Crouched on the floor by the fridge, she wrapped her arms around herself.

He crossed the room in four steps and yanked her to her feet by the front of her shirt. The fabric gave under his hand with a harsh rip. Half-dragging her, he thrust her out the front door. She hit the porch boards inches from the puddle of dog vomit.

“Look at that! Look out there!” He dropped to one knee next to her and yanked her head back by a handful of her hair. She barely made a sound. Strands of hair tangled around his fingers. “Look at them! What did you do?”

He let her go. Her hair fell away from her neck. In the yolky light, he saw dark smudges on her neck, like ink. Her soft sobs punctuated the night, jarring through his anger.

Trust her. You have to keep her safe. You’re all she’s got.
His thoughts were in Ruth Ellen’s cancer-weakened voice.

Sickened, ashamed, he sat back on his heels. The awful light only increased his frustration. “Please, can we go back inside?” Mattie whispered, shivering.
Her entire body quivered. He waited for her to move, to stand.

She stayed on the porch, knees to her chest, arms around her legs. Her face was turned away so she stared out over the yard.

Something in her huddled, protective stance reminded him of the abused dogs he helped rescue from animal shelters. When he got them home, they acted like that anytime he came close. She wasn’t going to move until he told her to.

“Come on, Mattie,” he said softly, offering her his hand. She stared at it with dull eyes.
She doesn’t even see me right now.

He wrapped his hands around her upper arms and encouraged her to stand up, to walk into the trailer. Scruffy whimpered from the doorway and followed them inside. West sat Mattie down at the kitchen table. Bathed in the bright fluorescent light, the bruises on Mattie’s neck looked as dark as ink.
“Mattie, what the hell happened today?”

At the table, she hunched over her forearms. The tips of her fingers barely touched, and she stared at them like they were the most fascinating things on earth. “Nothing,” she whispered, shaking her head. Her shoulder-length hair fell away from her neck, revealing even more bruises. Wispy-voiced, he couldn’t hear any of her usual fire. He pulled out the other chair and sat down. He brushed her arm and she flinched.

“Mattie, I’m not accepting that answer. My house is torn apart, my computers are trashed, my wife is so scared she can’t even look at me, and my dogs are all dead! Something happened here today.”

She shook her head again. “Nothing happened, West.” Her voice was so soft he barely heard her. “You’re not getting up from this table until you tell me.”
She flashed him a tired, exasperated look. He got a glimpse of the dark rings around her eyes. Her tears—the ones that puddled in her eyes and the ones that had stained her cheeks—wrenched his heart.

After fifteen minutes of silence, he knelt by her side and turned her chair toward him. “Mattie, I want to know who hurt you.”

“Nobody hurt me, West.”


“Nobody sure left some hellacious bruises on your neck. Don’t lie to me. You’re terrible at it.”
Is she?
West sighed, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ears. She flinched when his fingers brushed against her face. “Don’t do that, Mattie,” he admonished gently. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
You proved that real good outside a minute ago.

“I know I have a temper, Mattie, but I wouldn’t ever hurt you. If I did hurt you while ago, I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t.”

“Tell me what happened today. It’s scaring me, Mattie.” Maybe something in the tone of his voice reached her, because she looked up, her thunder-cloud-gray eyes dark with a myriad of emotions. “Did somebody hurt you?”

“I’m sorry about the dogs, West.”

Frustration exploded in West, and he jumped to his feet, stalking to the counter. He pounded it with his fist. “Damn it, Mattie! Will you just fuckin’ tell me? Did somebody try to rob us?”

“No, West. It’s...it’s my problem. Somebody found me that I was hoping...wouldn’t.”

West leaned back against the counter. “What is it, Mattie? Gambling, drugs, money? Did you steal something from somebody?” As frustrated by her non-answers as he was, a slosh of relief washed through his gut when he heard the strength returning to her voice. Her eyes flashed with life and she took a deep breath. One hand plowed through her hair and the other pushed the strap of her tank top back up her shoulder.

“No. Just an asshole that I thought I left behind years ago. He heard about me and thought he could get some money from me.” She shrugged. “When he saw this place and couldn’t find any money, he left.”

“Good God, Mattie.” He sagged into the chair again. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

“It’s my problem. I’ll get all this cleaned up. It’s my problem.” She tried to walk past him toward the living room, but he blocked her way. He hated that cold, numb look in her eyes. Victimized for who knew how long, and she’d learned to shove it all down, deal with it.

“No. It’s not your problem. It happened here, in my house, so it’s our problem. I’m calling the police.”

“No!” Her outburst startled him.

“What? Yes! Look at your neck, Mattie! Someone tried to strangle you. They left bruises. My dogs are all dead, and this place has been ransacked. It’s not your decision. This is my house, those are my dogs, and you’re my wife.” To emphasize his point, he grabbed the phone off the counter and dialed 9-1-1.

“West, you can’t! It’s over with. They aren’t coming back!”

“They—yes, um, I need to report a robbery and an assault. Address is 1540 State Road 40...yeah, EME Greens and Landscaping. My name’s Brant West.” West watched Mattie fight back frustrated sobs as she paced the kitchen. She gave up and sank down on the kitchen floor next to the fridge, just like she’d been when he first came in.

He told the dispatcher he wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure what had happened, but that his wife had been hurt and the house ransacked at some point during the day. “And my dogs are all dead. I think somebody poisoned them.”

With the promise of a deputy responding, he hung up. He crouched a few feet away from Mattie. “I’m sick of the secrets, Mattie. If me and you are going to make this work, you’ve got to be honest with me.”

“What are we making work? You barely like me. This show of suddenly caring about me stinks of bullshit.”

Whoa. Where had all that anger come from? There had to be so much more to the story than he even thought he knew.

“Mattie, I do care about you. You’ve shown me a side of you over the last couple of weeks that I didn’t expected.” He dropped to his knees and used his hands to slide himself across the linoleum until his knees touched her toes. She yanked her feet in closer and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Mattie, I don’t know how to say this other than you’re amazing. You’ve showed me everything I really want.”

“Shut up!” she cried, burying her face in her knees. “You just want me to tell you what happened today. You don’t mean that. You want Emeline, remember?”

“I swear it, baby. This is about you and me. It has nothing to do with Emeline.”

“Why are you doing this? Don’t do this to me. This is a cheap shot, West. You’re manipulating me.” She glared at him.

West raised his eyebrows and pantomimed shooting a gun. “Bang. And no, I’m not manipulating you. This scared me, Mattie. I think me and you need to start thinking about, well, us.”

“Us?”

“Yeah. In two weeks, you’ve helped me accomplish more than I generally do in a month.” Flashing her a half-smile, he tapped his heart. “You’re making me feel funny things in here.”

“It’s just indigestion,” she deadpanned.


“Mattie, we should be friends. We’re married, you know.”


She balked, shaking her head.
At least that scared-rabbit look is gone from her eyes
, West thought. Her anger made him feel so much better. She was coming back around. That vacant look in her eyes frightened him.

“What, you suddenly want to be friends because I’ve got a decent business sense and don’t mind getting my hands dirty?”


“Yeah. And because you’re sort of pretty and I like watching you shake your booty. I might want to take liberties with you at some point, too.”


Her eyes widened. Then narrowed. “What about Emeline?”


“Who? Don’t worry, Mattie. One of the reasons I’ve been so quiet lately is I’ve done a lot of thinking about her. I know you were right, back when you told me I had talked myself into loving her. She’s my Tweety Bird, I guess.”

Mattie frowned. “I don’t know, West. It’s sort of a sudden drop, you know? How do I know what you’re telling me is real? This sounds really fake. You can’t completely change everything about youself in two weeks. I still think you’re thinking you’re going to trick me into talking about something I don’t want to talk about.”

“It’s not sudden. I’ve been working up to it since the night we caught her in the club.” The red-blue flash of police lights brightened the dark living room, in rote. West glanced over his shoulder. “There’s no rush. We have a year, right?” He ruffled her hair and got to his feet. “Please, Mattie, tell the cops what happened. The fact that someone came in here and hurt you breaks my heart. I hate that I wasn’t here to protect you.”

I’m already failing Ruth Ellen. And Mattie. She does need me.
The deputies pounded up the front steps. Mattie whimpered and buried her face in his shoulder. She stayed attached to him the entire time the deputies questioned her and investigated the scene. The only time she left his side was to sit on the couch so the paramedics could check out her neck and the awful bruises on her ribs and back.

West felt sick to his stomach. She came back to him and looped her arm around his waist. He held her tight. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

“It’s not your fault.” She lifted his hand to her lips and pressed a kiss against his palm. The rose-petal-soft kiss made his heart flip and the bottom drop out of his stomach.

He held her at arms’ length and made her look at him. “It won’t happen again. I swear it.”

Later, when the cops were gone and the dogs gathered together to be buried in the morning, West put Mattie to bed. After she’d gone to sleep, he went to the living room with his cigarettes and his acoustic guitar. If he’d ever needed music, it was now.

He smoked a cigarette as he mindlessly strummed his fingers over the strings. As he hummed the melody his fingers were picking out, he tried to wrap his brain around what had happened.

Mattie was being investigated because of him.
Ruth Ellen insisted she was Elaine and charged him with her protection.
Mattie had been attacked. He was sure she knew who was behind it. If it had been Justine, she would have told him.
So that meant it was someone else. Someone from her past, someone she was terrified of.
Another husband? A boyfriend? Jealous ex?
The thought of another man touching her enraged him. His fingers channeled his anger and tore it out through his music.

“West?”

He jumped, startled when Mattie spoke his name and appeared around the corner. “Hey, baby.”

“Are you okay?”


“Yeah. Yeah. Just trying to relieve some stress.”


“Is it working?”

“No.”


“Why don’t you come to bed with me? I sort of need you tonight. I don’t want to be by myself.” His blood was boiling at the sight of her standing there in one of his old T-shirts, her bright pink panties visible beneath the hem. The shirt was worn so thin he could see the dark circles of her nipples through the white fabric.

If he’d ever needed somebody, something, tonight was the night. If he didn’t touch her, if she didn’t touch him, he’d never survive.

I can protect her the most if she’s part of me.

“Mattie, if I come to bed with you now, I’m going to make love to you.”

She stepped forward and took the guitar and cigarette away from him. She put the cig in the ashtray on top of the TV and leaned the guitar against the wall.

She came back to him and held her hand out to him. West’s heart leapt, even though he hadn’t expected her to reject him. Standing close together in the moonlit living room, she pulled his shirt off and pushed his jeans and boxers down his hips. He stepped out of them, and she stepped back.

“You’re beautiful,” she said, running her fingers down his chest and firmly stroking his dick. He sighed and resisted the urge to do what he’d angrily threatened so often during their arguments; bending her over the table and fucking her silly from behind.

“Now you,” he replied, reaching for the hem of her shirt.
She pushed his hand back. “Not now. I’m not very attractive without clothes on.”


“Shut up, Mattie. You’re beautiful. I want to see and feel every inch of you.”


“But—”


“Are you trying to tell me what I’m attracted to?”


“No.”


“Good. Then shut up and take your shirt off.”
She closed her eyes and pulled the shirt off. West swooped in and kissed her hard, claiming her mouth with his and her breasts with his hands. He pinched her nipples as he massaged.
Mattie’s hands moved, uncertain about what to cover up. He solved the problem for her by holding her wrists together over her head. The action held her breasts high, stretched out the soft flesh of her abdomen, and straightened her posture. He turned her around slowly.
“Tonight, you’re mine,” he told her, reveling in the way she nodded, her eyes sparkling. “You’re going to do what I want, be what I want.”

“Anything. Everything.”

Her skin was so hot. She had a sleepy, dark-eyed look that charged his nerves, making the slightest brush of her skin electric. He hugged her from behind, getting even more turned on by the way his naked cock felt pressed against the hot, smooth skin of her ass.

West wanted to be inside her, buried to the hilt, taking what was his.

Mine. All mine
.
The possessive, dominant tendencies that he’d never been able to indulge welled up and overflowed. Here she was, the perfect woman, a woman receptive to him and all his impulses.

That damn table...
Maybe he would take her on it. He kissed her shoulder and her neck, bit her ear hard enough to make her gasp. She pushed her ass against his hips, though, so he knew she was all for it.