Hell Without You (15 page)

Researching burns and appropriate treatment via the weak 3G coverage was a slow and painful process. After some time, she determined that the blisters on Donovan’s hand and fingers meant it was a second degree burn. Thank God. If it had gone any deeper … according to several sites, third degree burns could possibly require surgical treatment. If she hadn’t noticed what he’d been doing, if she hadn’t pulled his hand away, how badly would he have hurt himself?

The thought was like a knife between her ribs, making it hard to breathe. “I think your burn is a second degree one, but it’s on your hand, so you need to see a doctor.”

He’d been looking pissed ever since she’d mentioned Trevor, and now his frown deepened, along with the line between his eyes. “It’s not that bad.”

“Yes it is, and I know you have to be in a world of pain. Come on – I’ll drive.” As if she had a choice.

“You’re overreacting.”

“Donovan! Damn it, stop with the stubbornness. You made your own bed, now you’re going to lie in it. And I’m coming with you.”

“Seems like a waste of time and money,” he mumbled, but his gaze strayed toward the door.

“A few hours at the hospital and a co-pay aren’t that bad compared to the possibility of your hand getting infected and rotting off. You have health insurance, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Had to buy it independently. It sucks. Emergency room trip’ll cost a small fortune.”

“You can’t buy a new hand. Come on.”

She drove her car, and he seemed larger than ever in the passenger seat of her compact coupe – she was used to seeing him in his truck, a vehicle built big, all hard angles, just like him.

The ER waiting area at Willow Heights Community Hospital was nearly empty. Still, they had to wait half an hour before Donovan was seen.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked when his name was called.

He nodded.

She eyed the angry red underside of his palm as they followed a nurse down the harshly-lit hallway, into an exam room. From what she’d read online, it would take weeks for the burn to heal. And he’d inflicted it on himself as calmly as he’d stirred the pasta, would have made it even worse if she hadn’t intervened…

Under the care of the hospital staff, his wound was cleaned, disinfected and expertly bandaged. A nurse showed Clementine how to apply clean dressings, which she’d obviously need to help him with, since he only had one good hand. That brought up another unpleasant thought – what if he’d hurt himself like this when no one else had been around, and there’d been no one to help? He’d made it clear he wouldn’t have gone to the hospital on his own.

“Wanna head to Ann’s?” Donovan asked later as he walked through the emergency room exit, a hefty bill clutched in his unhurt hand.

She turned to face him in the dimness, her gaze drawn to the harsh shadows the parking lot lights cast on his face.

“We never ate dinner,” he added. “Figured we can get some of that pie you like.”

“You’re in the mood for pie?” Was he trying to pacify her – French silk pie in exchange for his damaged hand? What the hell…

“Might as well get pie if we’re going to eat there.”

And if they were going out, they had little in the way of alternatives – Ann’s was the only 24-hour eatery in town, besides a drive-through or two. Still, a drive-through would’ve provided anonymity, would’ve allowed them to hurry home. “Ann’s is fine with me.”

Going to Ann’s seemed like such an ordinary thing to do. After a day fraught with the unexpected and the frightening, maybe it was a good idea, for that reason.

“Don’t keep looking at me like that,” Donovan said when they were seated in their booth, coffee cups steaming and untouched on the table. “Like you’re waiting for me to do something stupid.”

She wasn’t doing that, exactly, but she was remembering the stupid thing he’d done and wondering if it would happen again. Not now, but … ever. Once had been one time too many. He’d always had a temper, but she couldn’t stand to see him turn it on himself. “Don’t do stupid things, and I won’t have to worry about it.”

“Can’t promise you that.” He raised his coffee cup with his unhurt hand, his bandaged one lying on the table. “Mostly, my life has been a long stretch of stupid things strung together.”

“Don’t say that.” What had happened in the kitchen had been a rarity. He was controlled, deliberate with his plans and actions – except when he wasn’t. Then all hell was guaranteed to break loose. She knew his personality, had seen it before.

 “You’ve done plenty that’s not stupid,” she said, shifting her thoughts back to the present. “You own your own business, your own house… That’s a hell of a lot more than I can claim. I don’t even have a job.”

He shrugged. “Those things don’t matter much. They were just all I could control, so I did. Had to take something into my own hands while I was waiting.”

“Waiting for…?”

“You.” He said it calmly, eyes meeting hers over the rim of his coffee mug.

“Well, don’t go throwing it all away now.” She tried to make her voice light, tried to joke, because God, the past few hours had wound her tight and she was sick of it. “You can’t go getting all stupid just because I’m here.”

“The kind of love that waits for seven years without changing is the kind of love that makes you stupid, sometimes.”

She nearly choked on her first sip of coffee. Truer words had never been spoken.

9 Years Ago

A breeze carried the sound of metal striking metal to Clementine. The hard, rhythmic pounding wasn’t the usual sort of noise that came from under the maple tree, Donovan’s makeshift garage. In fact, he usually worked in silence. Today, something was different, and though she didn’t know what, a prickling sensation swept down her spine as she toed the line between the road’s paved shoulder and the tall grass at its edge, the stalks rustling against the sides of her shoes.

She hadn’t been able to call beforehand to let Donovan know she was coming. His mom had neglected the phone bill again and service to their trailer had been shut off. It happened all the time, and she’d known he’d be happy to see her, with or without notice.

Except, when she finally came close enough to see him beneath the maple, he didn’t look happy at all.

With a wrench in hand, he was responsible for the noise. As she stood frozen in place, watching, he systematically beat the shit out of an old Ford Taurus. Over and over, he dealt the body hard blows, denting the metal and cracking the faded red paint. The doors, the roof, the trunk lid – he distributed the damage evenly. Even from a distance, she could see the results – he’d given the car a pockmarked appearance that was obviously irreparable. And he wasn’t done. Raising one arm high, he lifted the wrench above his head…

And brought it crashing down on the windshield. Cracks spread through its surface like spider legs, long and thin. Three blows and it shattered, raining crumbled glass on the hood and interior of the car. In the fall sunshine, the countless pieces sparkled, rainbow-like.

So did the glass from each window – he broke every one. The headlights were next, then the taillights. She watched, entranced, until he withdrew a knife from his pocket.

Her stomach clenched up at the sight of the weapon, the open blade. As he slashed one of the front tires, she finally continued toward him.

“Donovan?” He’d flattened two by the time she came close.

He looked up, eyes dark and narrowed. “Clementine?”

He paused for all of two seconds before slashing the back two tires, then stood, tucking his knife away.

“What did you do?” She stared at the spectacularly ruined car, unable to look away. It had Pennsylvania tags and an expired Willow Heights town sticker – it belonged to somebody. Somebody local.

“Let’s go for a ride.” He tipped his head toward his dirt bike, which waited a few yards away.

“Whose car is this?”

“Tell you at the quarry. Come on.” He reached for one of her hands and she responded instinctively, curling her fingers around his, returning his touch. Tiny pieces of auto glass scratched her skin before falling to the ground.

“Your hand…” His knuckles were faintly bloody.

He never replied.

They were on the bike within seconds, then on the road, speeding away, leaving Shady Side and the violated Taurus behind.

The quarry was abandoned, dark water and exposed rock surrounded by a blaze of autumn foliage, peaceful despite the roar of the bike’s engine. Donovan parked at the bottom, where the earth was flat on one side of the lake. They hiked up a hill to the cliff on the other side, settling at the top where they could look down on it all.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Clementine asked, unable to pay much attention to the scenery when Donovan drew her eye. His full lips were compressed into a thinner, harder line than usual, and there was a distinct heaviness in his gaze, even when he looked at her. It didn’t make him any less handsome, but it made her heart ache to see him so upset. To have done what he had to the car… Something had to have gone horribly wrong.

“You know Shirley, the woman in the tan trailer next to ours?”

“Yeah.” Clementine had seen her on numerous occasions – the woman was rail-thin but seemed to live in tent-like cotton dresses, all faded and at least three sizes too large. Besides her weird clothing choices, she was perhaps most memorable for her five children, all of whom tended to roam the trailer park like the feral kittens that were constantly being born there, getting into trouble.

“Her brother brought his car over, told me he’d give me forty bucks to fix it. I told him I wanted fifty.”

“The Taurus?”

Donovan nodded. “He said whatever, just fix it. So I went out and started working. Spent damn near an hour on it before I went inside to get a drink.”

Several moments of silence passed. A hawk circled overhead, wings outstretched, riding an air current that was as invisible to Clementine as the source of Donovan’s obvious anguish.

“He was in the trailer,” he said after a small eternity. “Fucking my mom.”

The bottom dropped out of Clementine’s stomach, leaving her suddenly queasy.

“They didn’t even close the damn bedroom door. They were probably high… She doesn’t give a shit about anything when she’s like that. My brother and sister were in the next room over watching a fucking cartoon.”

“Sorry,” Clementine said, her face heating with the same shame she could see clouding Donovan’s eyes. She knew he hated the way his mom lived, knew each week at Shady Side was guaranteed to bring some fresh hell that’d tear holes in his already wounded pride. She knew he never would’ve told anyone else what he’d seen, either. The fact that she was the one person he’d confide in made her ache. Unable to do anything to remedy the situation, she felt woefully useless.

Donovan jerked his head to the side, as if recoiling from her apology. “Know what else?”

“What?”

“He took the last damn Dr. Pepper out of the fridge. I saw it on the nightstand in her room. My mom won’t drink it – she only likes that diet shit.”

Clementine let a little more silence slip by. “What do you think he’ll do when he sees his car?”

“Drop dead, I hope.”

“I mean really. You don’t think he’ll call the police or something, do you?”

Donovan laughed, a humorless sound. “He wouldn’t call the cops if his worthless life depended on it. He was in the trailer for over an hour, so like I said, he probably got high while he was in there, for one. And my mom doesn’t fuck anybody who hasn’t been to jail at least twice already. His car is trashed and there’s nothing he can do about it.” The barest hint of satisfaction entered his voice, a grim tone of victory.

A pang of anxiety sailed through Clementine’s heart, a dark comet that disappeared into the darker, endless depths of her worry for Donovan. She didn’t say it out loud, but she feared what a drug addict might do in retaliation, might try to do to him. Sometimes – most of the time – she wished she could just… Just keep him. Somewhere sane, somewhere safe. Somewhere where people didn’t shoot up and have random sex with probable felons while their kids watched whatever was on public TV in the next room over.

She couldn’t do that, of course. Not yet. She was only sixteen. But she had him, and she’d keep him close in the ways that she could. Help him forget about Shady Side for a while. “Want to hike up to the clearing?” she asked, tipping her head toward the woods behind where they sat. “We can walk really slow, look at all the trees. By the time we get back, that jerk will be gone.” Or so she hoped.

“Yeah.” Donovan stood, dusted off his jeans and extended a hand to her.

The blood on his knuckles had dried.

She let him help her up, keeping ahold of his hand even after she was steady on her feet. “Let’s go.”

* * * * *

Donovan had hardly moved a muscle all night. She knew because she was still wrapped just as tightly in his arms as she had been when they’d fallen asleep. He was on his back, and she lay almost prone beside him, more of her body weight on his chest and hips than the bed. She would’ve known if he’d stirred, if he’d woken in his sleep, or attempted to sleepwalk.

Relief swept through her as she glanced around the room, letting her eyes adjust to the sunlight filtering through the blinds as she remained where she was, her cheek resting against his shoulder. The rhythm of his breathing was slow and steady, his heartbeat a little faster.

Half-hypnotized, she kept her breathing easy too, and imagined that her heart kept pace with his. It was a nice thought, and she felt closer to him than ever, despite the fact that the box of condoms they’d purchased the night before sat unopened on the floor beside the bed.

He’d fallen asleep in the car on the way home from Ann’s, his head tipping away from the passenger seat headrest and toward the window, his temple against glass. At the time, she’d wondered if it’d only been another way to block out the stress and anger incited by Trevor and their argument. Didn’t soldiers, marines – anyone who went to war – learn to sleep at will, when they had to?

But no, he’d said he’d hardly slept at all in Afghanistan. And he’d seemed thoroughly out of it in the car, so lost in dreams or oblivion or whatever that he’d bumped his head lightly against the window when they’d gone around a turn. So when they’d arrived at the house, they’d gone straight to bed, both out within minutes.

“Mmm.” A wordless sound rumbled in the pit of his chest, snapping her out of her half-dazed state.

“Morning,” she said as he rolled over, simultaneously drawing her closer so that their bodies were pressed front-to-front, not even a hairsbreadth of space between them.

“Is it already?” He opened his eyes halfway, exposing slivers of his irises.

“Yeah.”

“I was having a dream…”

“About what?” Thinking of his sleepwalking, she was wary, but the tone of his voice wasn’t particularly ominous.

“I could show you.” He flexed his hips, pressing the hard length of his cock against her belly. Now that they were a couple again, he’d gone back to sleeping naked. Her thin pajama bottoms let her feel every inch of his erection, even its heat. With one hand, he cupped one half of her ass and squeezed.

“Damn.” Squeezing his eyes shut, he pulled his hand away like her bottom was a hot stove burner.

A sick feeling struck her as she realized which hand he’d used to grope her. “Does it hurt?” Dumb question.

“Like a bitch.”

“Let’s go fill that painkiller prescription they gave you at the hospital. It’ll only take a quick drive into town.” All three of Willow Heights’ pharmacies had been closed the night before – such was small town life – and clearly, the medicine they’d given him at the hospital was out of his system.

They dressed – she watched Donovan stretch, muscles shifting appealingly as he slipped into a pair of jeans.

“I’ll get that.” She stopped him from struggling to button his jeans with one hand, taking over the task herself.

The skin above the fly of his jeans was warm, the muscle smooth and firm beneath. Her entire body heated as she buttoned his jeans, eyes drawn to the slashing lines of muscle that defined his hips, dipping down below the denim. When she looked up, he was looking right back. “I can think of something else that’d take my mind off the pain.”