What Can Be, page 8
I had slid on my knees, scrambling back to my mother, all of them, her, Dalton, Levi, bleeding on the floor except me. I had pulled off my T-shirt, wadded it up, and shoved it against her throat, but it was too late, she was already gone, and I had only our last shared look for the rest of my life.
“Mom killed Dalton’s friend Levi, Dalton killed Mom, and I killed him.” I took a shuddering breath. “But there was one more guy in the apartment that night, Stan Weaver, another of Dalton’s friends, and he got away and went back to his boss, Miguel Trejo. I went into witness protection that night.”
The room erupted in noise, and Craig grabbed my plate out of my hands and was suddenly in my lap, legs folded on either side of my thighs, hugging the life out of me. He felt so good, and I had a moment of clarity.
As bad as it was, as horrible as remembering it was, it didn’t hurt as much to tell this time. I wasn’t crying this time.
Holy crap.
My first year in the program, the deputy US Marshal who took care of me, Audra Long, and her partner, Tim Evans, would visit me and see how my appointments with my shrink were going, and I never thought they were doing anything at all. But Dr. Patel had told me that one day the pain would lessen, there would eventually be distance, and with it would come closure and perspective and relief. All those years I had thought she was full of crap. Maybe I would call and tell her I was sorry for doubting her, call the Marshals and tell them I was sorry for being a punk. Tell them I had been wounded and angry and frustrated for so long and only now, years later, was I coming around to seeing my way clear. Audra had always said when I saw myself the way she saw me, I should give her a call. Maybe it was time to do so.
I squeezed Craig tight, and when he pulled back to look at me, I slid my hands up his thighs. “I can’t thank you enough for being here.”
“I love you.”
“Yeah, I know,” I breathed out. “Get up.”
He rolled off me, and I stood, moving around the room to the side so I could see everyone at once.
“She gave me to Dalton,” I told them all, and Craig looked just as pained as he had the first time I told him. “But in the end, she didn’t. At the end, she was herself. You have to understand something, I was alone in a room with two men, and she came through a locked door to save me. She was amazing.”
My father nodded.
“And before she came through the door, she had to get Stan off her. From what Audra told me, he took quite a beating.”
I let that sink in a minute.
“She was small.” I smiled at them and saw all the nodding, even my father. “I mean, I never saw Stan that night and I’ve only ever seen pictures of him, but he was a big guy and my mother, our mother, got through him and a door and killed a guy just to get to me. Holy shit.”
Gillian’s face was contorted in tears, and both my brothers were crying.
“I was terrified, but when I heard her screaming, I knew I would be alright. I knew she would protect me. She was my mom.”
She was, at the end, not a drug whore but instead a tigress focused on nothing but the men threatening her child. And because of that, because of her protectiveness, because of the depth of her love, I hadn’t been raped and killed. I had been saved.
“Let me understand,” my father said, and when I looked at him, I realized he was shaking. “You killed the man who killed your mother, and then you went into witness protection?”
“Yes,” I told him. “I became Jacob Somerville.”
“Why didn’t you come home?”
“Oh, Dad, I was terrified. I failed her, right? I failed you and them.” I gestured at my brothers. “All I had to do was take care of her, and I couldn’t even do that.”
“You were a baby.” Gillian caught her breath, unable to stem the flood of tears. “Jesus Christ, Eli, you were just a child!”
I watched her surge to her feet and rush me. I had no time to move or anything before she was there, arms wrapped around my neck, her body molded to me, squeezing tight.
“Eli,” she cried. “Oh sweetheart, you lived, and what an amazing, perfect Christmas gift that is for your father. You came home. Thank you.”
I had been so afraid of seeing my father, my brothers, for so long. I’d been running my whole life from the memory and the pain. All those years I had been terrified, leaving, flying away before I got close to anyone. I had been so careful never to love anyone, never allowing myself to put down roots, because if I did, if I trusted again, loved again, what would happen? But I had just finally told my father about the defining moment of my life, about the very worst day, and I was still alive. I was still me. All because I had told Craig first. Trusted him first.
I gave Gillian a tight squeeze, and she gasped before I let her go and stumbled back to him, to the man I loved, falling down on top of him, into his lap, hearing his breath catch as I grabbed him and crushed him against me hard.
“Love you,” I whispered against the side of his neck, holding him, breathing him in.
He just nodded, overwhelmed, and I loved that too.
“Thank you, for everything,” I told him before I kissed his cheek, and tightened my hold.
Craig moaned loudly, hugging me back, unapologetic for the depth of his need to be close to me, to physically feel the connection, to seal the deal between us.
“I love you,” he gasped. “So much. Please come home with me.”
“Oh baby, I will,” I promised for the second time, because he obviously needed to hear it. I was smiling as I held him.
“Don’t—” He was crying now, tears spilling out from under his closed eyelids, but smiling through it all. “Don’t stop. Don’t let me go. I need you, need this.”
I didn’t stop.
Chapter Seven
I could not remember feeling so light. Craig set up something in the living room, something I couldn’t follow, and suddenly there on my father’s TV was Deputy US Marshal Audra Long.
“You look so old,” I told her.
She flipped me off and told my father I was a punk. I laughed, and her smile was glowing. Foster Hartline was completely charmed.
Her words were gentle as she explained about my mother’s addiction and her death at the hands of Dalton George. She explained how my testifying that Stan Weaver was there that night made him an accessory to the attacks on me and my mother. To save himself from doing time, he had rolled on Miguel. Without me set to testify against Stan, the attorney general had nothing on Miguel. I never even had to go to court; just the threat that I would had been enough. The bounty on my head had been large, but as they all knew I went into witness protection, the threat became moot.
“And Miguel Trejo was killed in prison last year,” Audra told my family. “So now, should Jake want to be Eli Hartline again, he could.”
I loved her face, her smooth mocha skin, big brown eyes, and gentle smile. I had always found the way she moved, talked, smiled, so comforting.
“But I can be Jake, too, right?” I smiled at her.
“Yes, you can,” she assured me. “You’re him, he’s you.”
“Thank you for everything,” I told her. “Did I ever say that to you?”
“A million times,” she assured me. “Merry Christmas, dear.”
“You too.” I nodded.
She was gone, and I was going to turn it off, but Craig shook his head, and I was faced with a very pissed-off looking Richard Brewer.
“Oh, hey Rick.” I grinned sheepishly.
“Asshole!” he yelled at me. “Fuck you and fuck—”
“My father.” I gestured around the room. “My brothers.”
“Oh, really, do they all know you’re a dick?”
I heard Chase snort out a laugh, and Lucas said that yeah, he knew.
“Christmas is the season of forgiveness,” I said pointedly.
“Oh, is it?” he barked at me.
“It is.”
He nodded. “Okay, then, asswipe, how ’bout this? You get your skinny ass home now, and I won’t hunt you down like a dog and rip your lungs out!”
“This is fun.” I smiled over at Craig. “Thank you.”
The quick shrug from him told he was enjoying himself quite a bit.
“Get your ass home now! You’re my partner, and I’m fuckin’ havin’ a kid, and what the fuck am I supposed to do when—I need you back here in this goddamn office after the holidays or I swear to God I’m—”
“Okay.” I put up my hands. “I love you too, Ricky. I’ll see you at your house for New Year’s, okay? Tell your Mom to make the stuffed peppers I like.”
He was stunned. “Really?”
“Yeah, me and Craig will be there.”
“Wouldn’t miss the peppers,” Craig chimed in, hand in my hair. “More importantly, we wouldn’t miss New Year’s with friends, Rick. That’s just stupid.”
“Yeah, it is.” He nodded, and I saw him squint and his eyes redden. “Okay. So your dad, huh?”
I smiled at him.
“Nice to meet you, sir. I’m not usually such a psychopath, but your son sorta brings it out in me.”
“I understand.” My father smiled at him.
“You’re invited too, sir, you and everybody, your family, to my house for New Year’s. It’s kinda noisy, lotta kids and all, but it’s good. If you’re in Brookfield, stop by.”
“Thank you.”
Rick nodded, turned, flipped me off for making him worry, and told me that he’d tell his wife so she could stop calling me a fuckin’ idiot every other sentence.
“I’ll make sure to bring her a gift,” I told him.
“Bring her a car, you stupid prick.”
“Nice.”
He growled at me and then was gone.
“He, uhm”—my father chuckled—“really loves you.”
“I’m lovable.” I smiled at him, tipping my head. “It’s late notice, but would you like to come with me and Craig to Aspen to spend Christmas with his family? We—”
“We would love to,” Gillian answered fast. “Home is wherever your family is, and I, for one, would love to meet Craig’s family.”
“I would too,” my father assured me before he looked over at Craig. “Would your parents mind?”
“No, sir, they would love it. My father especially has always wanted to meet you. He’ll be thrilled.”
“Then it’s settled, we just have to get plane tick—”
“We’ll go on my plane, sir,” Craig told him. “No tickets necessary. And your children are, of course, invited as well, Gillian.”
“Thank you, Craig,” she said, and I could tell she was really touched. “But this is their year with their father.”
“Works out perfect, then,” he told her.
And it did—everything was good.
I sat in the living room with my family and talked, and I wasn’t guarded, and I answered questions and asked them and listened and ate and held my father’s hand. When he got up, overwhelmed with the past and the present and the future all at once, I hugged him hard and long and didn’t let go until he wanted me to.
“I love you, Eli,” he breathed into my hair. “All I ever wanted was for you to come home. Thank you.”
“It’s Chase—he brought me.”
“But you followed.”
Because it had been time, which was why I had driven across country to reach them, stopping at that gas station to finally take a breath, call information and get a number. I thought of them every Christmas, and this year had finally been the one where I went home. I wondered if somehow my mother had led me there, led Chase there, and even though I knew it wasn’t really possible, I thought about it nonetheless.
“Tomorrow,” my father said as I left the room later that night, exhausted body and soul, “we’ll have the biscuits and gravy.”
Gillian was leaning against him, looking up at me from where she was beside him on the couch, smiling as well.
“Yessir, we will,” I promised him.
Craig led me up the stairs, holding my hand, and I thanked him for the hundredth time for being there with me.
“I will always be with you,” he told me at the door to my room, hands on my face, thumbs catching the tears leaking from my eyes. “You can count on me.”
“I know,” I said, leaning in, kissing him deeply, tenderly, the love I felt making me shiver. “I hope your family doesn’t feel different about me when they find out who I really am.”
“They already know who you really are,” he said, opening the door and leading me inside.
I didn’t lock the door, I just closed it, and when, minutes later, I crawled into bed beside him in the dark room, I wasn’t scared and I didn’t think about turning on a light or the TV. All I thought about was the man curled into my side, holding me tight, with his face pressed against the side of my throat.
“I want to attack you,” he said, yawning, “but I’m frickin’ beat.”
I chuckled in the darkness and squeezed him tight, rubbing my cheek in his thick hair. “That’s okay, you can have me tomorrow.”
“No, you can have me tomorrow. I dreamed about it all the way here.”
“Did you?”
“Jesus, Jake, of course I did. I dream about you all the time.”
My throat closed up. “I really love you.”
“Me too, baby. It’s going to be a wonderful Christmas.”
Yes, it was. Finally.
Come home for holiday romance.
Get the whole package of stories at
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com
About the Author
MARY CALMES currently lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, with her husband and two children and hopes to eventually move off the rock to a place where her children can experience fall and even winter. She graduated from the University of the Pacific (ironic) in Stockton, California, with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Due to the fact that it is English lit and not English grammar, do not ask her to point out a clause for you, as it will so not happen. She loves writing, becoming immersed in the process, and falling into the work. She can even tell you what her characters smell like. She works at a copy store but has been unable to incorporate that into a book... yet. She also buys way too many books on Amazon.
More Daily Dose
and Advent Calendar packages
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Copyright
What Can Be ©Copyright Mary Calmes, 2011
Published by
Dreamspinner Press
382 NE 191st Street #88329
Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art by Catt Ford
This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the Publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
Released in the United States of America
December 2011
eBook Edition
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-306-7
Mary Calmes, What Can Be
