Break On Through (21 page)

But there was an urgency to his tone that made her slide off the mattress and grab up her robe. On her way to the living room, she glanced in at the boys. They were lost in slumber and she tiptoed out, shutting the door behind her.

Reed’s sleep was not so tranquil.

Moonlight shone through the window over the couch where he was stretched out. He lay on his stomach, the blanket pushed down to his waist, his arms beneath the pillow. “Ben,” he murmured, his voice agonized. “No. Ben, why?”

The tortured tone drew her to him. Unsure what to do, she knelt on the rug beside the cushions, her hand hovering over him. Should she awaken him?

He turned his head toward her as one arm crept from beneath the pillow and he crushed its softness in his fist. “Ben.” He groaned it. “Ben.
Nooo
.”

The despair in the words tore at her. Cleo placed her hand on his warm shoulder. “Reed. Wake up, Reed. It’s just a dream.”

Still lost in his nightmare, he moaned. She stroked the heavy blade of bone. “Reed,” she whispered again.

Her touch seemed to settle him, so she continued brushing her palm along his back. After a few minutes, she slid it away and prepared to leave him be.

Then he thrashed, as if unseen hands were holding him down. “Let me go,” he muttered darkly. “Let me go.”

“Shh.” Cleo stroked the back of his head, then lightly drew her fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp from crown to nape. There, the long layers parted and she saw marks on his skin.

A tattoo, just below his hairline.

A predatory bird of some sort—hawk?—in flight. Beneath it was lettered BEN – RIP and below that, a date some sixteen years before.

It seemed too intimate to examine when Reed was asleep, especially since it was usually hidden—was that his intention? She was rearranging his hair to cover it again, when a big hand suddenly clamped over hers.

Cleo squeaked. Her gaze shot to Reed’s face and she saw he was now awake, his eyes open and trained on her.

His fingers tightened. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice raspy.

Swallowing, she tugged out of his hold. “You were dreaming.”

On a groan, he sat up, then rubbed his hands over his face. “Shit. Sorry. Go back to bed.”

“Can I warm you some milk?” she asked, thinking of that night of Obie’s nightmare.

He dropped his hands to look at her. “A magic potion is not the ticket this time. I sure as hell don’t want to go back to sleep.”

“Oh.”

Wearily, he sat back against the cushions. The moonlight streaming through the glass only served to make his features appear more elegant and severe, the angles highlighted, the hollows shadowed. So beautiful, Cleo thought. And again she was struck by the juxtaposition of his face to his tough-guy physique. His upper body was cut, his arm muscles well-defined. When he adjusted the blanket, his biceps flexed, and she felt a little thrill at the power in even that small movement.

“Go to bed, Cleo.”

Have you considered maybe there’s something Reed needs from you?

She knelt at his feet, almost like a supplicant, and she felt like one…prepared to beg him to let her inside his head. Cilla’s words re-echoed inside Cleo’s.
Have you considered maybe there’s something Reed needs from you?

“Reed…” she whispered.

He grunted in response.

“Who is Ben?”

Reed stiffened, then vaulted off the couch. He stalked into the kitchen and she heard him rummaging around. Then he came back into the living room, a bottle of some kind of liquor in hand. He had a glass in the other.

“Tequila?” he said, holding out the glass to her.

“No.” She watched him bring the booze to his lips, take a swallow. “I’m sorry if my question drove you to drink.”

He swallowed. “The nightmare drives me to drink.”

As he dropped back to the couch, she wondered what to do next. She couldn’t force him to talk and maybe the impulsive question had been a mistake anyway. Gathering herself, she made to rise, but then Reed put his hand on her head. “You don’t have to leave,” he said.

She re-settled onto the rug. “You don’t have to answer me, either.”

Sighing, he set the bottle and glass aside, on the end table at his right. “Maybe I do.”

She waited him out.

“Bing told me you seemed interested in the job at his and Brody’s construction company.”

“We haven’t talked in any detail,” she hedged. “So I don’t—”

“If the details are acceptable, would you take the job?”

It would mean the beginning of renewed stability. At the treasure hunt she’d had the opportunity to talk to Bing a little and he seemed like he’d be a good guy to work for. Cleo liked Alexa and Alexa loved Bing, so there was also one of those friend-of-my-friend deals. And Reed wouldn’t have steered the other man in her direction if he didn’t believe it would be a comfortable fit.

“Oh,” she said, guilt giving her a pinch. “I haven’t even thanked you for setting that up.”

“I don’t want your thanks,” he said, brushing it away. “I want your answer.”

“I would take the job,” she said. “I know you and the others have done too much—”

“It will be work, not charity, Cleo,” he said. “They need someone with your kind of experience.”

“Then I’ll do the best for them that I can.”

“Okay.” He blew out a breath. “In that case it would be wise to explain…Ben.”

She suddenly regretted prying. “Reed—”

“Working for Bing and Brody means you need to know more about me…so things between us don’t get misunderstood and complicate your new position.”

“All right.” Her eye caught on the dinosaurs the boys had left under the end table. They were in a jumble, their container upended. Automatically, she scooted over to tidy them up.

“Cleo.” Reed bent over and grabbed her chin, forcing her gaze to meet his in the moonlit room. “You need to be aware of what I can’t offer.”

Embarrassed, she jerked out of his hold. “I’m not aware of expecting anything in particular from you.” Snatching up a T-Rex, she addressed her remarks to its snarling face and massive teeth. “I apologize if I gave you that impression.”

Reed sighed. “Maybe I need to remind myself.”

During the following silence, she walked Big T to the plastic bucket, turned it over, and placed the plastic figure inside.

“I think I told you I spent that year at military school,” he finally said.

“Your grandfather placed you there.”

“Yeah. I was shit for a student and somehow he convinced my father—probably cornered Hop when he was stoned—that I would benefit from Oceanview. I think he had dreams of the Naval Academy for me after that.”

“What about your mother?”

“The Captain—that’s what we call my grandfather—wrote her off at nineteen when she began shacking up with the band here at the compound. I think she was Bean’s lady first, but then she hooked up with Hop and hung in there to get pregnant and birth Beck, Walsh, and me. After I was born she followed some artist to Europe. Last we heard of her I think she was in Antwerp. Or maybe it was Amsterdam.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. What they call a ‘free spirit’.”

Or a flake, Cleo thought. Even if you didn’t want to be a woman attached to the Velvet Lemons, you shouldn’t leave your kids.

“But we aren’t real harsh on her, because being raised by the Captain couldn’t have been any picnic.”

Cleo ran her fingernail along the points of the back of a Spinosaurus. “Did Beck and Walsh go to military school as well?”

“I was the last ditch effort to bring one grandson to heel.”

“You were what age?”

“Fourteen.”

Cleo pitched Spiney into the container. “I can’t imagine sending away a young teen boy from all he knew.”

Reed stretched out his legs. He still wore his jeans and the warmth of one knee brushed her shoulder before inching away. “When I think back on it, maybe some other kind of environment might have turned out all right for me. At Oceanview I didn’t have a chance.”

“What was it like?”

“Regimented. Every minute was accounted for.”

“Like in your books. The School.”

He nudged her with his leg. “No flies on you.” Then he sighed. “Imagine going from the wild Velvet Lemons compound to someplace like that.”

“Jesse—the character in your books—didn’t know how to make his bed when he first arrived.”

“Neither did I. Housekeepers came through the compound and did laundry and sprayed disinfectant on all the surfaces once or twice a week, but nobody made us do anything.”

Cleo’s nose wrinkled at the necessity of all the germ-killing. “A fish out of water.”

“Oh, yeah. Most of the cadets entered the school in sixth grade. I was going into ninth when I arrived.”

“Were the other kids mean?” She thought of Eli and Obie and clutched an Apatosaurus to her aching chest.

“Hazing was part of the culture. Establishing a pecking order the normal thing for boys to do there. Expected.”

“Ugh.”

“Yeah.”

“How bad was it for you?” She glanced up at him. Most of his face was shadowed.

“I was big for my age and I had two older brothers so I knew how to handle myself. It didn’t take long for the others to leave me alone.”

“But not Ben,” she said, hazarding a guess.

“Not Ben.” He abruptly changed position, drawing in his legs so he could rest his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. His hair hung around his face.

Swallowing, Cleo couldn’t help but reach out to him, then realized she still held the plastic figure in her hand.

Reed glanced up, caught her mid-retraction. “Were you going to pet me with an Apatosaurus?”

“Maybe he could stomp out the sadness in your voice. He was one of the largest animals to have ever lived on Earth.”

Reed snatched the toy from her hand and walked it from her chin up her cheek. “How about the sadness on your face?”

Goose bumps prickled in the wake of the plastic footsteps and she shivered. She tried drawing away, but then Reed caught her arm and pulled her onto the couch beside him. “Sit closer,” he said. “You’re cold.”

Oh, closer was trouble. He drew her even nearer, placing her sideways across his lap. “I’m too heavy,” she protested, wriggling.

“Quiet,” he said, and wrapped both arms around her, tucking her head beneath his chin.

Because she thought he might be deriving comfort from her presence, she stopped struggling. Closing her eyes, she breathed in the fragrance of his skin and reminded herself that this connection she felt was a combination of pheromones and hormones. The odorless chemicals he exuded and her long-term celibacy.

Nothing more dangerous than that.

“Ben was in seventh grade,” he said.

Cleo felt her heart quake. Just four years older than Eli.

“The entire school is one unit, divided into companies. Ben was in mine. We slept in the same barracks, had chow at the same time each day.”

“Were you in charge of him or something?”

“Naw. But we were both new that year. His bunk was below mine.” Reed hauled in a breath. “Ben was small for his age. Scrawny, even. He said his dad sent him to Oceanview to toughen him up.”

A shudder went through Reed and alarmed, she enclosed him in her arms. “What is it?”

“It’s hard…remembering. And yet I never forget.” He rested his cheek on the top of her hair. “Ben cried himself to sleep every fucking night.”

“Oh, Reed. You could hear that?”

“Yep. So did everyone else. Of course he was instantly known as Crybaby Ben. Even the instructors called him that.”

Cleo’s spine went straight. “Are you saying he was bullied by adults as well?”

“Oh, yeah, darlin’.”

“That poor boy.”

“His life was miserable for the entire year,” Reed said. “He was lousy at sports, not much better at academics, and the stupid marching…he’d get so nervous he couldn’t remember his left from his right foot. We had a six-week course on tying knots. He was good at that.”

“I’m glad he found a special skill…” Cleo started, then her words petered off as she registered the tension in Reed’s body.

“I kept telling him I was there to protect him,” he said, his voice low. “I kept the thugs away when we were in the barracks, at chow. But I couldn’t be everywhere.”

“Of course you couldn’t,” she whispered, stricken.

Reed buried his face against her hair. “He had hopes his parents were pulling him at the end of the year and he wouldn’t have to come back. I finally got through to Hop that the place was making me miserable and he promised I was out for good in June.

“Then Ben’s parents told him they’d signed him up for another year.”

Of course she’d known what RIP meant as part of that tattoo. But now Cleo was beginning to think the unthinkable…that there hadn’t been an accident or an illness. Scrambling out of his lap, she got to her knees beside Reed and pulled him against her, his head cradled on her breasts. His arms went around her hips and she stroked his hair.

“Shh,” she said. “It’s all right.”

“It’s really not right at all.”

“I know.” She rocked him a little.

His hands clutched her tighter and his mouth found bare skin above the neckline of her nightshirt. When he spoke again, the words seemed to sink straight into her heart. “I found him, Cleo. Lights out was nearing and he wasn’t in his bunk. There’d be more marching if he didn’t make it in time.”

“Where was he?” she whispered.

“The library has three stories with a round center room. He’d climbed to the top balcony, tied one end of the rope on the railing and put the noose he’d fashioned over his neck.”

A chill spread across her skin. “Oh, Reed.”

“He’d jumped. I got there too late. I poked my head inside, didn’t see anyone, but then something made me look up. He was wearing his gym shorts, those skinny legs of his hanging down. At the end of them his small, dirty sneakers.”

She sucked in a sharp breath instead of crying out.

“I couldn’t save him, Cleo. Not then, not before.”

Her eyes squeezed shut. Her throat closed. What words were there anyway to help his pain?

“So now my head, it’s full of monsters and regret.” He sat up, then drew her lower so he could press his brow to hers.