Ransom (36 page)

“I do like it, but it’s your room. You should stay in it.”

She cut her eyes to the floor. “I don’t want to sleep here.”

“But why? I mean there’s no question that you spent a shit load of time putting it all together. It seems strange that you don’t want to bunk here.”
 

I backed out of the room into the hall, trying to make my point. I wasn’t having any part of throwing her out of her own space.

“I don’t want to sleep there,” she said.

 
She brought her gaze back to my face. The pain that I had witnessed earlier was back. Seeing her discomfort locked the rest of my protests in my throat.
 

I nodded. “Fine, if that’s what you want,” I said, not wanting to upset her any more than she already was. Her face brightened again.

“I’ll sleep in the other room,” she said, motioning to the closed door across from where we were standing.

“Sure,” I said.

“I’m starving,” Lexie said. The rapid shift in conversation was a little jarring, but I went with it. I had to respect that she had her reasons for not wanting to talk about her reasons for steering clear of the room.

“Yeah me too,” I said.
 

Lexie led the way back to the kitchen. She began unpacking the few groceries that we had picked up. Since I had no idea where anything went, I sat on the edge of the bench at the dining table, watching her work. I hadn’t noticed until I had sat down, that the house had been built in a way that though the dining area and kitchen were separate, the view between the two rooms was open.
 

 
“Can I do anything?” I asked, increasingly feeling guilty that I was sitting on my ass doing nothing.

“Nope,” she said, not bothering to look at me. “Do you like omelets?”
 

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

She laid a carton of eggs on the counter near the stove. Without pause Lexie began cracking eggs in a bowl like she had done it quite a few times before. I watched her throw all the ingredients together and toss it into a frying pan. Not long after, the house filled with the delicious aroma of fried eggs and toast. My mouth was literally watering by the time she strode over with two plates laden with food.

“Thanks,” I said.
 

I knew I was smiling at her with a goofy expression on my face. It had been too many years since anyone had cared enough about me to cook me a meal, and serve it without having to pay for it. When we were on the road I did all the cooking in the trailer for Gabriel and me. Usually it was heating up a can of ravioli or soup, nothing like real food. If I was being truthful I hadn’t had a home-cooked meal since before Ma had died. It seemed more than a little sappy to be kind of choked up over something as insignificant as an omelet, but I sort of was.
 

“You like it?” Lexie said, smiling.
 

She ate her food with a little more class than I did. I was happy to see that she wasn’t the kind of girl who picked at her food, and said she was full before she’d had more than two bites.

“No one has cooked for me like this in a very long time,” I blurted out.
 

I hadn’t known I was going to tell her that, until after I had spoken. Now that I had, I couldn’t help but think how it had been a fucking pathetic comment. The last thing I wanted was her pity. In my opinion someone feeling sorry for you was right up there with being called a pussy.
 

Like Pa had always said, shit happens and you sucked it up because nobody wants to hear about the crappy parts of your life, they want you to smile and say hell yeah, everything is just peachy on my side of the world. I found it strange that I was actually buying into one more concept that Pa had hammered into my head more times than not. I guessed that was the weird thing about parents, no matter how bad they were, they always seemed to leave their mark on you, in my case it was both literal and figurative.
 

“Yeah I guess it’s hard when you’re on the road all the time,” she said, taking my comment in stride. I appreciated her casual acceptance.
 

I finished everything on my plate and would have probably gone for seconds if they had been available. Lexie finished her omelet, stood up and cleared the dishes. She dumped them into the dishwasher. I hadn’t realized that the dishwasher had existed until Lexie had opened the door, since its front blended in perfectly with the cupboards. After a few minutes of digging, she retrieved a bottle of wine and two long stem wine glasses from a storage space behind a folding door.

 
She placed the wine and glasses on the table, then came back with a corkscrew.
 

“Do you want to do the honors?” she said, passing me the cork screw.

I shrugged. “Sure.”
 

When I took it from her, our fingertips brushed against each other. It felt good to feel her skin against mine, even if it was just our fingers. As bizarre as it might have sounded, being with Lexie gave me a snapshot of what it might have been like to have a girlfriend. Not that I had ever even wanted a girlfriend. As far as I had heard, having one was more of a pain than benefit. Sure regular sex was a bonus, but it went hand in hand with broads being all needy and controlling, something that I wouldn’t have had the stones for. But this thing between Lexie and me was all about necessity. In the real world I would never have looked at her twice. She was the kind of person you dated and eventually married, something I would never do.

I tugged the cork out of the bottle of red wine, a French vintage from 2005. I poured us each a glass. Lexie took hers in her delicate fingers and sipped. From her reaction it didn’t appear that she even liked the taste of it.

“Pricy,” I mused.

I didn’t know much about wine, only that the older it was, the more expensive it tended to be.
 

“Are you sure that your father is going to sanction us drinking this?” I said with a crooked grin.

Lexie had already told me that her father didn’t give a shit what she did or didn’t do, since apparently he was all up in his new wife’s ass. I didn’t know if that carried over if money was on the line.

Lexie’s face pinched as if she had bitten into a lime.

“Like I really care,” she said then laughed bitterly. “He hasn’t been here at the cottage since he and Mom divorced. In fact if I’m telling the truth, I haven’t been here since…”
 

Her voice trailed off, and once again I saw unshed tears swim in her eyes. She shook her head, as if she wasn’t allowed to feel what was pushing to be released.

“How old are you Ransom?” Lexie asked.
 

It was glaringly obvious that she was trying to shift the subject away from her family, something that I had already noticed her doing on more than one occasion. I found her evasiveness a bit amusing because it mirrored my own reactions to her questions about Pa, or anything other than Gabriel and being on the road. Only I wasn’t as tactful as Lexie was when I didn’t want to talk about something.

“I’ll be twenty-three in a few weeks,” I said, scratching my head. It seemed as if I’d just had a birthday and another one was just around the corner.

“How about you?” I countered.
 

“I’ll be twenty-one in August,” she said.

“Next year,” I grinned. “You’re practically jail bait,” I said with a chuckle.

Lexie glared at me. I was immediately sorry that I had said it because obviously it had pissed her off, though I had no idea why.

 
“I didn’t mean anything…it was just a joke…”

“Yeah well, your comedy sucks big time,” she said with a scowl.

“Shit Lexie, tell me how you really feel,” I said.
 

All traces of amusement had left me, and I was on the defensive.

 
“Are you PMS-ing?” I said ready for a fight, but not really sure why.

Lexie leapt up, knocking her glass over when she did. Garnet colored wine spread across the table.
 

“No I’m not PMS-ing,” she hollered.
 

The tears that had been jockeying to get out from the moment we had walked into the place, fell freely now.

“Shit Lexie, I’m sorry, please don’t cry,” I said, instantly regretting my shitty comment. Once again I was reminded about how very unschooled I was with women. Sure I could take them to some amazing places in the sack, but this other stuff, feelings and shit, or whatever it was, felt like maneuvering through land mines, you just never knew when you were going to blow your foot off.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, racing out of the room.
 

I heard the door slam a few minutes later. I grabbed a handful of paper towels, sopped up the wine, then sat down again at the table. I took a huge gulp of wine. I decided that getting a little buzzed was better than feeling guilty for upsetting Lexie. But I was also pissed off that she hadn’t even bothered to tell me what exactly she was ticked about.

 
The wine was smooth, and it didn’t take long for me to understand the difference between the crap they sold in the supermarket and the good stuff. I wasn’t sophisticated enough to be able to decipher the different flavors, only that it tasted good. By the time I had downed another glass, a pleasant warmth had enveloped me. The whole Lexie thing seemed way less important. I reasoned that it would all smooth out in the end, that’s how things worked, or at least I hoped that was the way.
 

I polished off the rest of the bottle in silence, then strode down to Lexie’s room. The door to the adjacent room was firmly closed. I listened at the door for a few seconds but heard nothing. I figured that she had already fallen asleep. I still felt weird taking her room, but I decided to keep my trap shut since I had already stirred enough shit for the night. I left the bedroom door open. I had always hated closed doors and confined spaces. I could thank Pa and his closet punishment for my phobia.
 

I stripped off my clothes, leaving just my boxers on, then slipped under the covers of Lexie’s bed. The sheets smelled clean, like the fabric softener and soap smell that was ever-present at the Laundromat when we had a laundry run on the road. The wine was just enough to relax me and allow my mind to go blank. Even so, I couldn’t stop thinking about Lexie, and what was really going on with her.
 

Sure I had made a stupid comment and had set her off, but there was no questioning that she had waffled between calm and agitation since we had arrived. All I could think was that there was so much more going on with her than she had told me. Whatever secrets Lexie was keeping were weighing heavy on her. And if anyone knew how secrets could mess with your mind, it was me. For her sake I hoped she let me in, before she imploded.

26. LEXIE

Every mile closer to the cottage had my stomach twisting a little more. Quite a few times I had wanted to turn around and go back to the hospital. It would have been so easy to get in the car with Aiden and Trinity and forget all about Ransom. It hadn’t helped matters much when Trinity had ripped a strip off me about driving back with him. She was already against him, even before she knew that he was a fugitive from the law, something she was bound to find out as soon as she flipped on the television.

“He’s got some rage issues,” Trinity had piped in.
 

Aiden had nodded agreement which spoke volumes. Aiden had a cool-headed approach to everything, always wanting to get the details before making a judgment. His one nod meant that he wasn’t a fan of Ransom’s either.

“He caused the accident you know,” Trinity said.

Aiden winced as if in pain. “Trin I didn’t say he caused the accident, only that he startled me and…”

“Caused the accident,” Trinity finished. “That kind of thing happens when you get smashed in the head with a cell phone.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. I half expected her to stomp her foot, because I had never seen her that furious before.

“He flipped out over some phone call, and started smashing his fists against Aiden’s seat and… the only reason Aiden wasn’t charged was because the woman who hit us was bombed…” Trinity’s face suddenly crumpled.
 

She raced to Aiden, sitting in a metal-framed chair at the bedside of the small hospital room. She grazed her fingers across the thick bandage that covered the gash on his forehead. A nasty purplish-black bruise stained most of his forehead around the bandage. Aiden looked quite a bit worse for wear. I hated seeing him like that. Trinity brushed her lips tenderly against his, as if she had forgotten that I was even in the room.

“It’s okay baby, I’m okay,” Aiden crooned, drawing her in close. He brought his eyes to mine, there was pleading in his gaze.

“We’re just trying to look out for you Lexie, I mean you don’t really know him, only that he’s Gabriel Sanders brother. I don’t like to say this, but he’s got quite a temper on him. It’s like he’s pissed off at the world.”

“He’s not like that with me,” I said, failing to mention how I had witnessed Ransom’s temper a few times already. “He’s just passionate about things,” I said with a hopeful smile.

“He’s bad news, and I don’t understand why he has such a hold over you, you hardly know him Lexie.”
 

Trinity sprang from Aiden’s arms and stalked toward me. Her hair was uncombed and her face gaunt with exhaustion. The grey fleece sweatshirt and matching grey leggings she was wearing, only added to her spent appearance. I couldn’t help but feel guilty that I was putting them through this, but I didn’t know how I could go back and undo what I had promised, or if I even wanted to do that. Ransom was an in, a way to see Gabriel Sanders. The opportunity to possibly meet him had been like a gift that had dropped into my lap, I wasn’t about to give that gift back, no matter how much Trinity and Aiden wanted me to.

“I love you guys, you know that, but I need to do this,” I said in a low voice.

“Do what, exactly?” Trinity asked. “I know you have something planned, what is it?”