Dream of You (42 page)

             
“If it helps,” Paige offered, “I’ll take full responsibility for pushing you toward him in the first place.”

             
“You didn’t do any pushing. I wanted him. Badly.”

             
“And since I can’t think you’d be miserable about
owning this house
, I can only assume you still want him, for whatever reason.”

             
“Don’t say it like that.” She frowned. “With the exception of Thanksgiving, he…” Her throat ached to remember it. “He was sweet to me. You don’t get it, Paige.” She looked pleadingly to her best friend. “He’s smart and he’s got this horrible dry sense of humor no one else thinks is funny. His…his shampoo smells like pears and he’s nothing like any of the boys I’ve gone out with. He - ”

             
“You love him.” Paige lifted pink-clad shoulders in a shrug. “I know that. But if he doesn’t love you - ”

             
“He doesn’t,” Ellie said, and knew it was true with a crushing certainty as it left her lips. She heaved another sigh. “But…it’s just gonna take me a little while to get over this, okay?”

             
Paige gave her a long, sympathetic look, then filled both their glasses. “This’ll help.” She slid one across the island and lifted her own. “To your new house.”

             
“To
our
new house,” Ellie corrected as she clinked their tumblers together. “To baking and writing and being independent females.”

             
She couldn’t scrape together a smile though. Independent or not, she was still completely heartbroken.

34

             
J
ordan hit SKIP and his Jet CD jumped to the next track. “Cold Hard Bitch” wasn’t anything he was in the mood for.

             
But neither were the next two songs, so he punched the radio off with his thumb and stared through the windshield in silence, watching the taillights of the KSU van in front of him.

             
It had been a good weekend. Of his three guys, only Anton had placed well, coming in third in his race; but all three had such marked improvements in time from the beginning of the semester that he’d stood on the sidelines, hand white-knuckled on his stopwatch, pride surging through him.
“I’m really glad you didn’t get fired, Coach,”
Anton had said with the sort of breathless, happy, post-race smile that took Jordan all the way back to his high school days, and put a smile on his own face.
“I won’t do anything like that again,”
Lane had promised, head ducked. And all three of them had awkwardly inquired about his situation with Ellie, curious if he was really going to turn loose of the girl who’d helped them sabotage Kyle.

             
He hadn’t told them, and didn’t plan to tell them, that Ellie was the reason his drive back to Georgia was restless, every song on the radio an irritant.

             
Every time he told himself that he’d been played, he remembered the way she’d ducked away from his touch in her kitchen; the big, fat, real tears that had coursed down her cheeks when she’d told him she couldn’t just play, that she needed to think what they had was real. Just when he had himself convinced that she’d been trying to get knocked up just like the shallow, irresponsible eighteen-year-old she was, he thought about what Paige had said; pictured Ellie in a dressing gown in a doctor’s office, just getting good and started with her life, and finding out she might not get to have children.

             
He thought about the way she knitted words together on paper and turned them into something he could
see
. Thought about the sleepy, unconscious way she murmured when he slipped out of her bed in the mornings. Thought about the way she’d been with his mother, poring over photo albums. Thought about her palm colliding with his face, about
how dare you
.

             
And the thing he kept thinking about – the thing that he’d been thinking about all weekend – was the way she’d asked him, more than once, if he still wanted to compete. Not because she was a sports fan, not because she wanted some by proxy glory; but because she’d said,
“Oh, Jordan,”
at IHOP and had looked like all she wanted was for him to be happy. To do something that he was passionate about.

             
He’d spent seven years mourning the loss of his childhood dreams. Becoming someone who wasn’t certain about anything. Who didn’t care about anything. How could he do
anything
he was passionate about when he was passionate about nothing?

             
And now he was a coach and a professor.

             
Which was better than being a lot of things in life.

             
And he’d cursed at an eighteen-year-old girl who might someday have cancer and who had a horrid family and who loved him.

             
Which was about as low as he’d ever stooped.

35

              “
A
re you kidding?”

             
“I wish I was,” Jo said as she turned into the drive at home and coasted up to the edge of the backyard. She held her cell phone between her ear and shoulder as she slid the Mustang into park and cut the engine. She smiled. “Now I’ll have to deal with you thinking you have psychic premonitions for the rest of my life.”

             
“A girl,” Tam breathed on the other end of the line. “Wow.”

             
“I wish you could have seen her.” She let her head fall back against the seat. “Up on the screen.”

             
“I know. You had it printed out, didn’t you?”

             
She fingered the edge of the ultrasound in the cup holder. “Yep.” For a long, silent moment, she imagined they were hugging each other across the distance that separated them. “Are you leaving school?”

             
“Walking to my car. I’ll be home in a bit.”

             
They traded love-yous and goodbyes, and Jo sat in her car after she hung up, watching the heavy mass of clouds sit on top of the earth like stacked quilts, leaves tumbling across the brown grass of the backyard. She was never home this early, before everyone else, but she hadn’t returned to work after her doctor’s appointment. Her parents were still at work, Tam and Jordan just finishing up at school.

             
Poor Jordie. He’d been home every night save the past weekend he’d attended a track meet up north. He hadn’t admitted – at least not to her – but she knew he’d broken things off with Ellie, and he was a brooding, miserable ass about it.

             
The air that went up her nose and down into her lungs was sharp as glass scraping down her esophagus when she climbed out of her Mustang. Cold, smelling of ice and snow and a true winter that hadn’t yet arrived. With a shiver, she locked her door and pulled her jacket tighter across her growing belly – her girl, she knew now – and headed toward the stepping stones and the back patio, her ultrasound in her back pocket.

             
The yard was already hibernating, the grass short and stiff, the flowers shriveled black husks against the pine straw. There were two empty beer bottles and a handful of crushed cigarette butts on the picnic table. A wet newspaper someone had left in a tent propped up against the side of the house. She ticked through her keys until she found the one that opened the back door, hunched her shoulders up against the wind that slapped at her back –

             
And saw a man coming down the stepping stones toward her.

             
Jo froze, a cold knot of air catching in her throat, her hands and keys hovering in front of her for one regrettable split second. The tall, broad man coming toward her with long, ground-covering strides was Hank Wales. And his forehead was a maze of frown lines.

             
She scrambled for something, anything to say that might thwart whatever was about to happen, but she had none of her sister’s grace or Delta’s superiority. “I haven’t changed my mind about giving you money,” she bit out, and jammed her key into the lock. It turned, and her suddenly-clammy palm slipped on the knob…but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because he was too close and she hadn’t had enough time to escape in the first place. Floodgates opened inside her, fear pouring out, overrunning her system, and Hank’s big hand slapped down and clamped around her wrist.

             
“No!” came ripping out of her a hot, curling note of terror. She’d never been attacked before, and she realized, as her lungs pumped and her skin hummed with a kind of electricity that stood her hair on end, that no amount of tomboy youth could have prepared her for this.

             
She tried to wrench away from him and his hand tightened until she felt the delicate bones of her wrist grinding together.

             
“Hold up a minute!” he roared at her, his breath hot and smelling like beer as it tumbled down into her face. He squeezed until she had tears in her eyes, until she thought her arm might break, and dragged her away from the door, her boots scrabbling against the concrete as she struggled to maintain her footing. “I just wanna talk to you!”

             
Jo pulled her keys from the back door as she staggered along with him to the edge of the patio. She concentrated on sliding her fingers through the rings in an effort to keep the pain in her right arm from clouding out what little logic she had left. Her heart was ferocious, thundering against her ribs, her pulse like kettle drums in her ears.

             
“I don’t have anything to talk to you about!” she said through her teeth. “Let me - ”

             
He shook her, one hard fast, snap of his arm, and elicited angry
pop
s from her elbow and shoulder. Her teeth snapped together on the tip of her tongue and she tasted blood.

             
“Listen a minute, you nasty little bitch.”

             
His dark eyes were bloodshot and glassy, his face a harsh, mindless caricature of anger. He was drunk and he was locked into the place in his head that had allowed him to beat his wife and his son all those years. He was not rational. Almost wasn’t even human. Jo wondered if he could smell her fear, because she was shaking head-to-toe with it.

             
“I need money,” he said. “I can’t pay my power bill, I can’t eat. You’re so selfish” - he gave her another shake and she pressed her lips together to keep sound from escaping - “you wanna be family but you can’t even spot me a couple hundred dollars.”

             
“I don’t want to be your anything,” she said, throat choked with tears, and lunged away from him. She brought her left hand down on top of the one holding hers, raking at his skin with her keys.

             
He threw her.

             
Pain was one long, blinding arc from her wrist to her spine as he dug his fingers into her wrist and flung his arm wide, dragging her with him. She staggered, trying to keep her feet. When he turned her loose, her momentum carried her forward. “No!” This time it was a true scream as she tumbled into the picnic table. The corner bit into her hip so hard she thought it drew blood, and the sky spun gray and bleak above her as she rolled up onto the table’s surface, sprawled with her boots thumping against the bench. The full-body shock of impact sent tears streaming down from the corners of her eyes. She gasped for air, but her lungs wouldn’t open.

             
Hank stood above her as tall and solid as death. She saw his eyes go to her stomach, to where the halves of her jacket had fallen open on top of the table.

             
“You let him put a kid in you,” he said, half confusion, half contempt.

             
Get up!
An internal voice screamed; she curled her hands around the edge of the table, groaning through her teeth, and she righted herself. She finally managed to suck in a deep, gasping breath, gulping in air like a fish. She had every intention of leaping down off the table, but it was like she was fighting her way through tar; her muscles wouldn’t cooperate.

             
She started to cry as he closed the distance between them. Her girl…her little girl…

             
Jess was right: she should have told Tam, should have told someone.

             
“Big man,” she choked out as she climbed off the table, “beating up a pregnant woman.
Aren’t you proud
?!” The last came out as a shriek as she dove for the back door again.

             
She waited for the interception, but it never came. He had her purse, she saw, as she chanced a look over her shoulder. She fumbled the keys at the lock, pulse racing.

             
Hurry! Hurry!

             
But he was digging out her wallet, sliding it in his jacket pocket.

             
Moving the fingers of her right hand sent fresh needles of pain racing up her arm, but she managed to fit the key into the lock and turn it…only to realize she’d unlocked it before.

             
Damn it!

             
She grabbed the knob… and Hank slammed into her from behind. He flung her up against the door – she felt her belly get pressed hard and another scream tore out of her. His big paw of a hand grappled against hers, curled around the knob. She kicked at him, but she couldn’t turn and she couldn’t get away and the stink of his breath was hot on her cheek.

             
“Little bitch - ”

             
“
Hey
!” A shout from the driveway was angel’s music.

             
Hank let go of her, his weight lifted off her, and she heard the heavy soles of his work boots on the patio as he fled. He was an abuser in every sense of the word, and like all of his kind, he was easily spooked.

             
Jo rolled against the door and put her back to it, deep, insufficient breaths rocking through her. She flattened her palms against the paint and as adrenaline left her in one great, sweeping drop, she was racked with the shakes and totally limp. She could taste fear on the back of her tongue still, bright and metallic.

             
Jordan was the one who’d shouted, and he had sprinted from the driveway, was standing in front of her now, his eyes wild and blue-green.

             
“What in the…are you…oh, shit, are you hurt?”

             
His hands hovered in the air almost like he was afraid to touch her. She closed her eyes and wished the tears would stop.

**

              Jordan was a traitor. After he sat her down at the kitchen table, relocked the back door, ensured Hank was truly gone, and set a glass of water down in front of her, he called Tam.

             
He was the last one to arrive home, the kitchen heavy with shock and silence: Jordan and Randy holding up opposite ends of the breakfast bar, Beth standing behind Jo’s chair and finger-combing her hair. Tam came into the house on a sharp gust of wind, completely crazed, the jumbled layers of aggression on his face breaking her heart.

             
“I’m fine,” she said as he charged across the kitchen to her, but he didn’t hear.

             
His face was flushed, eyes huge and blue and ricocheting as they scanned every inch of her that he could see. The cold clung to him, dropped off him in an ominous way. His hands shook as he pushed her hair back and took her face between his palms. His skin felt like ice. Jo had spent a large portion of her life learning to read him, and under the seething, rolling anger, she could tell that he was devastated.

             
“Are you…” His voice was the low, sweet, gentle one he used when they were alone together. “Did he…” Pain twisted his face. His thumb stroked across her cheek. “Are you okay?”

             
Her voice had normalized. “I’m
fine
, Tam. I swear.” Now that she wasn’t afraid for her life, she was afraid for Tam’s – for what he might do next.

             
She reached for his wrists but his hands were moving. He touched her shoulders, plucked at the ends of her hair, pressed a hand over her stomach, his movements erratic, the stress that radiated from him not dimming in the slightest.

             
“What about her?” His fingers spanned across her belly. “The baby…?” His eyes bounced across her face, probing.

             
“She’s okay, too.”

             
She didn’t want to do this in front of her parents – it felt like they were witnessing something they were never meant to – but Tam was too lost to care. “I’m so sorry. Oh, I’m so sorry, baby.” His Adam’s apple jackknifed in his throat.

“I -
”

             
She thought he meant to gather her into his arms, but he spun away instead, pacing across the kitchen with his hands in his hair. “Oh my
God
,” he said it like a curse. “I –I’ll…I’ll kill him.” He turned to face them all, fingers still laced through his hair, somehow looking dumbfounded and certain at the same time. “I will
kill him
.” His eyes found her again. “Oh my God. Joey….shit…”

             
Jo got to her feet, panic welling up in her chest. “I’m fine,” she said again, stupidly. “I’m fine and she’s fine and…” He was shaking his head, “Tam, no. Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

             
“Regret?” he exploded, hands flying down to his sides. “The only thing I regret is not putting a goddamn knife in the bastard the last time I saw him!”

             
“You didn’t do it then and you’re not doing it now.” Randy stepped around the bar, his voice bigger than life and exactly what Tam needed to hear. “You get your ass arrested, then you and me are gonna have a problem.” Jo watched her father point to her, watched Tam’s eyes bounce to her and then back to Randy.