Kindling the Past, page 17
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just sat there. Knowing he paid that much attention to me made me uncomfortable.
He pulled to a stop in his driveway. I hadn’t noticed we even entered his neighborhood.
He turned off the engine and looked at me. “You still don’t think of me as Ty, do you?”
“I call you Ty.” Where did that comment come from? Though, admittedly, I still used his name very little.
“But when you think about me, if I’m ever in your thoughts, I’m still Master Trahem,” he said. “Aren’t I?”
I hesitated. “Yes.”
He looked away and still didn’t get out of the car. I just sat there.
“I’m no one special, Kindle. All the damn medals and ranks, none of that’s who I am. Just like who you are is more than your typing skills.” He faced me. “You’re so much more.”
Oh God, I hadn’t seen it that way before. I thought of his title with respect, and a good way to help me remember what we were to each other. But he thought I only saw the shell and didn’t realize there was more.
Not sure how to apologize without showing too much, I held his hand in both of mine.
He looked at our hands and watched as I smoothed my fingers over his skin.
He shifted in his seat to face me and used his other hand to touch my face. “This is me, the one you let touch you, the only one you let kiss you.” He leaned closer and touched my lips with his. “You must see something of me, not Master Trahem. Ty. You said you trust me. Is that because of my position, because I’m your instructor? Or do you trust me—because you know me, because you know I won’t hurt you?”
He kept his hand on my skin. I wanted to blurt out the truth. It was gnawing at the back of my throat, climbing its way to the surface.
I took a breath. “I trust you. You’re a good man.” I held his hand to my cheek. “Maybe the best person I’ve ever known.”
He smiled a little. “Say it.”
The corners of my mouth curved. “Ty.”
“Would you try?” he said. “To think of me that way?”
I smiled a little more.
He leaned closer and murmured against my mouth. “Thank you.”
I felt the words clawing up, desperate to reach the top, like a climber without a rope. I kissed him back deeply to shut myself up. A deep sound came from the back of his throat.
A knock on the driver’s window.
Master Trahem—Ty—pulled away from me and turned.
An elderly man was standing a couple feet from the car. He looked abashed, as if he didn’t realize what was going on inside the car until after he knocked. I figured he had to be the neighbor Ty mentioned before, Joe, the man who had also lost his wife.
“Shit,” Ty muttered.
I mostly controlled my giggle. “So, there is a first for everything. I’ve never seen you taken off guard like that.”
“Not your fault at all.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Right.” He opened his door.
I opened my door and set my foot on the ground.
I felt my hand on the handle, and I tried to cling to where I was, when I was.
Chris was frustrated, extremely agitated. I cringed at the look in his eye, the look that meant he wanted to hit someone. I knew that look all too well.
“Kindle?” Master Trahem said from somewhere far away.
Then Chris spoke.
“What?” he growled.
Mark, one of his dealers, had just walked into Chris’ house. He had a girl with him, a whore from the looks of her.
“Wait on the porch,” Mark said to the girl.
“It’s cold out there,” she whined.
Mark grabbed her arm. “Get the fuck out.” He closed the door behind her.
Chris was now pacing and kicking things out of his way, clothes, a porn magazine, an ashtray.
“Uh...” Mark mumbled. “Is there a problem with Hiller?”
I felt myself trying to block, especially what they were thinking. Their minds were unsettling, perverse and cruel. I almost used to be able to feel something more from Chris, something underneath, but I’d long since given up on trying to find it. Blocking them didn’t completely work. The specifics were lost, but I felt the tenor of their thoughts.
Chris’ agitation seemed to have something to do with Representative Hiller, but there was something more to it. Something hadn’t worked out as he planned. He was frustrated...wait, he was frustrated with...himself. I’d never seen that in him before. It was like an iceberg floating by Cuba. It was more than that they didn’t go together. They couldn’t.
Mark sounded tentative, careful. Chris preferred him above the others, but that didn’t stop him from getting his ass kicked on occasion. “With all the people I know, I’m sure—if you want—I could find where she’s staying.”
Chris turned to him and sneered.
Mark seemed to shrink.
“I know where she is,” Chris said.
Mark just stood there, and Chris turned away. “It’s complicated.”
The vision ripped out from under me. It felt forceful, like my mind was throwing it off. “He knows where I am.”
Chapter 20: Move
Ty was there, squatted in front of me. He’d taken my hand off the handle and was holding it. His voice was low. “Chris.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“He knows where you are?”
I knew I should race home and cram my apartment into my car, but I couldn’t let go of Ty. “Yes.” It felt like the vision wasn’t all that long ago, when it was cold outside, definitely after the last time Chris found me.
“Maybe he doesn’t know yet.”
“It’s already happened,” I said. “It’s always like that.” It felt strange to talk to someone about this.
He nodded once. It was like the closing of a cashbox, like the deposit of information, as if he was putting everything about me together piece by piece.
He stayed there with me, letting me cling to his hand.
“I have to go,” I said.
His back straightened. “You don’t have to do anything for him.”
I shifted to stand, to go to my car. “I have to move before he comes.”
He shifted back as he stood out of my way, but kept a hold of my hand. “I’ll help you.”
“You don’t need to. I can—”
He gripped my hand tighter and stopped me from moving away from him. “I’ll help you.”
“You have a guest,” I said. Joe was standing a few feet away.
Still gripping my hand, Ty turned toward Joe. “I’m sorry. We have a bit of an emergency. Can I talk to you later?”
“I was only going to invite you over to watch the fights, but it looks like you have better company than an old man.” He grinned and walked away, across the lawn toward his house next door.
Ty guided me back to the passenger seat of his car.
“I need my car,” I said. “I need it to pack my things.”
“This car is bigger. It’ll be easier.”
My battered cardboard boxes on his leather seats—yeah, that was going to happen. “No, I—”
“Is 295 fastest?”
“Um...yes.” I realized he wasn’t going to back off, and he would delay me if I tried to refuse him. I sat in his car, and he walked around to the driver’s side.
He drove fast, probably too fast. I didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at the speedometer.
I told him how to get to my apartment complex and hoped he was too busy participating in NASCAR to notice the area, to see the empty storefronts and rusty chain link fences.
He pulled into the development, the non-gated community. This wasn’t like his neighborhood that had a gate to keep solicitors and unwanted people out. Many of my neighbors were those unwanted people. There were some college students and families who just couldn’t afford more, and then there was that guy down the way whose car trunk was filled with electronics, not in packages.
“Turn right,” I said then pointed. “It’s that building.”
He parked and followed me up the steps. As I put the key in the door, my mind was still trying to find a way to put him off.
I opened the door and busied myself with taking my phone and the list from my bag, so I might not see his reaction, so he had a few seconds to put on his polite face.
Before he had time even to glance around, he said, “Who’re you calling?”
I looked up. He seemed curious. That was all, not put off by seeing how I lived, that my furniture consisted of a mattress on the floor, a dinky table, and two chairs.
“I have to find my next apartment.”
His head tilted as if he saw something in my face, heard something in my voice. Sometimes I hated how smart he was.
I turned away.
“You don’t want me to be here,” he said.
“No.”
He moved closer. “Why?” Something in his voice was off, as if he was...hurt.
I tried to think of something to say.
Then he was in front of me. “You’re embarrassed.”
I nodded infinitesimally.
His gentle hand lifted my chin, and I met his eyes. Then he looked around my apartment, my one room. “It’s just as I imagined. Just like your car, just like you keep the school—perfectly ordered.” He smiled a little. “Did you think I would expect anything else? You don’t spend on yourself, no matter how much I demand it.” His voice softened. “You’re selfless. That’s not something to be embarrassed about.”
I just looked at him, trying not to show how much that meant.
“At least it’ll be easy to pack,” he said.
I smiled a little. “That’s the point.”
I took my boxes out of the closet, and he started packing my kitchen. While he was busy, I glanced around to make sure there was nothing I didn’t want him to see. I supposed there was nothing to worry about. I didn’t have anything truly personal, not even notebooks filled with drawings like I used to keep. Chris had taken all those things away. I never knew why he took my notebooks, perhaps just to hurt me.
I grabbed my toiletry bag and started emptying the bathroom. I was glad I scrubbed my tub and sink last night and that I vacuumed yesterday morning. I’d always been neat, but now I was becoming obsessive in my cleanliness. I think it was more to do with burning energy, clearing my thoughts for a little while. I couldn’t get Ty out of my head, and it was getting worse.
A few minutes later, he was standing in the doorway, apparently done with the kitchen. “Do you know where you’re going?”
Crap. He’d distracted me. I took my phone and the list from my pocket. I scanned down the list to number ten. “There’s a place on the north side. The manager seemed nice. I think she’ll let me do a month-to-month lease.”
“There are some rough neighborhoods around there.”
“Lots of nice ones too.” Nothing like his neighborhood, of course. I didn’t mention the place I was thinking of wasn’t a white picket fence kind of area.
He stepped closer. “I don’t know if...anyone told you, but I have a couple rental properties. I’d even let you pay rent if you insisted on it.”
I shifted uncomfortably.
“It’s not charity, Kindle.”
“You didn’t say her name. Why?” He’d been about to say he didn’t know if Anna had told me about his rental properties.
He sighed.
“Why?” I insisted.
He hesitated. “I didn’t know if it would make you uncomfortable now that we’re...closer.”
“I still love her as much as you do.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to forget her.” I fought the annoyed edge in my voice. “You’re the only person who knew her better than I did. I don’t want to lose that connection to her.”
He paused. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.” Something in his eyes looked...hurt.
I didn’t know what to do to make him better, didn’t know what I was doing wrong. Surely, our combined connection to Anna was part of why he wanted to be together all the time. I was someone who understood his pain from losing her. Wouldn’t he assume it was the same for me?
I turned back to my toiletry bag and zipped it closed.
“Will you accept my offer?” he said.
“I can’t.”
He touched my arm. “Why?”
I took my toiletry bag out to the other room and dumped it into a box.
He followed. “It’s not charity. I need to make sure... I want to know you’re all right.”
“I know it’s not charity.”
“Then why?”
“I can’t live close to the school.” I took a breath. “I can’t be any more connected to you.”
He lowered his eyebrows and opened his mouth. He looked like I’d slapped him.
“I should quit,” I said. “I should leave. I should stop taking class from you.”
“Kindle, please don’t...”
“He always finds me.” I turned away. “He’ll hurt anyone close to me. I shouldn’t be with you all the time. I should...I should leave.”
He paused, and when he spoke again, he was closer, a soft voice in my ear. “Please don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can, but you shouldn’t have to go through any of this.”
“What if I would rather this?”
I knew the truth—he wanted the other one more, the one he loved.
I turned. “Please, Ty. I have to do this my way. I can’t risk anyone more than I already have.”
His fingers slid down my arm to my hand. “But you’ll stay? You won’t leave Jacksonville?”
“I’ll stay,” I said, “for now.”
As we continued packing, he seemed sedate. At least he wasn’t pushing me anymore.
He helped me tie my small mattress to the roof of his car, and he took my little table apart so it would fit in his trunk. The rest of my stuff fit in his backseat.
He came with me to the rental office so I could tell them I was leaving, drove me up to the north side, and sat with me while I talked to the manager of the new apartment complex. He didn’t say much of anything. He just held my hand.
The complex only had one non-first floor studio available—in the back of the complex. I hated being that far off the main road. After hearing my story, the manager was willing to do a month-to-month lease.
I signed the lease and gave her a check for the security deposit and first month’s rent, postdated for Tuesday so I would have time to move money from my savings to my checking.
Ty helped me carry my things up to my new apartment. He wouldn’t let me carry anything but my purse. While he went back down for another box, I looked around. It wasn’t as nice as my last apartment—smaller and the carpet was stained. The kitchen was one short bank of cabinets, just long enough for a small refrigerator, stove, and sink. The only place my mattress was going to fit, if I wanted to keep my little table, was squished between the wall and the end of the bank of cabinets, maybe a few inches to spare. The only window looked out onto a sparse line of trees buffering the complex from the freeway. The cars passing were a little loud, but at least the few trees were pretty. They were tall, and some of them were pine, still green.
Ty had all my things out of his car in only a few trips. I worked on putting things away, trying to mask the coldness of the space with a neatly made bed.
Ty put the last box down on the counter.
I put my few pieces of silverware in the one kitchen drawer. “It’s getting late. You must be hungry.”
He faced me. “Do you like pizza? I’ll order some.”
“You don’t have to stay with me. I’m all right.”
He moved closer and tried to catch my gaze. He paused. “You don’t want to be alone.”
He was right, so right. But my greatest fear remained the same—letting him see too much. I couldn’t make love to him. I wasn’t strong enough tonight.
He took my hand and led me to sit on the edge of my mattress. Then he swung his leg around to sit behind me while carefully keeping his shoes off my blanket, my crappy cheap-ass blanket. He treated my things as if they were as nice as his.
“Come here.” He pulled me to his chest.
My body relaxed, and I bent my knees up as I turned sideways, curled into him. I’d been tense all day, as if steel poles had been inserted into my bones. He made all that melt.
He held me tightly to him and pulled his fingers through my hair and down my back. It was like lying in a field under the summer sun. His warmth was the sun’s rays, and his gentle hand in my hair was the breeze.
“You don’t have to be strong,” he said, “not right now, not with me.”
Tears formed before I realized, before I had a chance to focus on stopping them.
“It’s all right, Kindle. I’m here.”
I cried quietly, and he didn’t let go.
Chapter 21: Gossip
Several more weeks passed. We didn’t go out together. I didn’t want to risk it. I needed to be able to slide out of his life without people asking him what happened to me. He shouldn’t have to go through that.
We continued to sleep together, and I continued to leave every night. He thought about the other one often. She tormented him, and in turn, she tormented me. I was starting to hate her. He never talked about her to me, but I knew why he seemed sad so much of the time. I gave him what I was capable of giving. He seemed to enjoy the sex. His eyes were peaceful for those few hours every night.
I was finishing up the last of the paperwork one night, and he was next to me, leaned against the counter. All the students were gone.
“Seems like you’ve been busy in the mornings,” I said. “Have you found anything?” He always seemed tired when he came to work, though he was never late.
He crossed his arms. “Not a damn thing.”
“You’ve been asking around?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I’m not getting anywhere.”
I didn’t look at him, didn’t show my fear. “Who are you asking?”
