Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense) (12 page)

“A pompous asshole that thinks he’s somebody important because his dad was.”

“Your grandfather?”

“Yeah.”

Jack stops at the base of the hill and takes a long time looking before he pulls out.

“Should I put in your mom’s address?”

“Not yet, let’s just drive a bit. I know the way. I’m pretty sure Arizona is in a westerly direction.”

“We’ll be in Ohio soon.”

“Yeah.”

“You never talked about your grandfather. Did you know him?”

“Yeah, he died when I was eight. I think my dad was waiting for it before he divorced my mom. It was like six months later.”

“Did they fight?”

He shrugs. “Yes, all the time.”

“What about?”

Jack goes quiet for a minute. “Me.”

“You?”

“She wanted him to spend more time with me. She fired all the nannies he hired, stuff like that. I don’t think she liked having servants and stuff. I don’t like it, either. It’s sick how people treat you like you’re better than everybody just because you have money. It was the worst in the Army.”

“In the Army? I though they were all about orders and stuff, who cares if you have money, that kind of thing.”

Jack laughs. “Right, unless your dad has senators and congressmen on speed dial. I got a six-month deployment to ‘combat’ where I was about five hundred miles from any actual fighting, acting as a gopher for the higher-ups. It was an office job. After that I was rotated around between foreign posts. I kept putting in for something in the States but they always turned me down.”

“Why?”

“You know why they kept me overseas.”

“I mean why’d you want to come back to the States?”

“It’d be my best bet at slipping off to see you. If I was already here, I might have been able to pull it off. If I left Germany on leave and flew here he’d know, even if I hitched a ride with the Air Force.”

“Jack?”

My throat tightens when I even think what I’m about to ask.

“Yeah?”

“Has there been anybody else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, a girlfriend. You’ve been away for ten years.”

“No.”

“What? Seriously?”

“I said no. Nobody else.”

I stare at him. “You’re lying.”

“I am not, I swear on… I don’t know, something.”

As we come to a stop at a red light, I turn in my seat, lean over, and wait. Jack turns to face me, a curious look on his face. Before he can say anything I close the distance and press my lips to his.

When I pull back he says, “Does this mean—”

“It means I’m giving you a chance. I don’t know if I can do this, Jack.”

I sink back into the seat and fold up on myself. My whole face itches. The itching spreads down my neck to the scars on my shoulder, down my side, and I close my eye to stop myself pointlessly scratching, clawing at my face with my nails.

Jack

I settle back into my seat and try not to grin, or let her see my hands shaking on the wheel. I feel like a gawky sixteen-year-old again. She kissed me. I don’t know what this is, but I want more of it. I want her to just open up completely and let me have her.

Ellie draws back and folds up on herself again, like leaning over to kiss me was a great strain and now she has to recover from it. It makes the veins in my forehead pulse to think about the way her appearance pains her. I want to throw my arms around her but I know that’ll just make it worse, and she’ll pull away.

So, I drive. The light turns green and off we go.

The Corvette shifts like a dream. I take it easy; I don’t think Ellie can handle spirited driving right now. All that stuff we talked about is pretty heavy.

Took me a while to figure out what her uncle was getting at with that question about Jessica. When he said that, it pushed on some cranks in my head, turned wheels that had gotten gummed up with dust and become sticky. The coffee helped shake them loose, and now the gears are turning.

I long held on to the idea that my dad was involved in the accident somehow—the steering just cut out in the car. That shouldn’t happen. On dark nights, though, when I drank or when I got low, I’d wonder if I was just remembering it the way I wanted, making an excuse for my own failure.

Maybe I’m lying to myself because I can’t face it being my fault.

On the surface, it sounds crazy. Why would my father risk
my
life to get rid of Ellie? He liked her, even. From what I remember he was even on good terms with her dad. Whatever he said after the accident I’m sure Ellie would be fine from his perspective, if he was even thinking about that. I mean, we were just kids. He probably didn’t expect it to last.

I glance over at her and wonder how it couldn’t. We’ve only been awake for a short while, but it was a big breakfast, and I think I tired her out last night. She starts to droop and then finally her head rests on my shoulder and she starts to snore lightly, mumbling every once in a while. I try to take the turns gently, so as not to rouse her.

We pass into Ohio around three in the afternoon. I made up my mind when we left, I was going to drive all night, get us as close as we can get before we have to stop. In this car we’re not exactly inconspicuous, and they have to be looking for us by now.

I could get used to this. Ellie cuddles up to my arm and I let her lie there, careful not to disturb her when I have to work the stick shift. At some point I’m going to have to get some directions from her phone, or we’ll end up going in circles.

When she wakes up, it’s already getting dark. She yawns and sits up, wincing as she yawns again.

“It makes my mouth hurt,” she says absently. “Here.” She touches the corner of her mouth, where the scars pull at it.

“You want me to put the address in my phone?”

“Yeah.”

I rattle it off to her.

“It says thirty hours. Is that right?”

“Yeah it’s a drive. You can go back to sleep if you want.”

She shrugs and yawns again, her jaw quivering. “I don’t want to sleep my life away. I sleep too much.”

“Okay, hon. Where does it say we are?”

“Outside, um, Steubenville? I’ll give you directions.”

“Okay.”

I drive until the silence starts to bother me, buzzing in my ears.

“Do you still play guitar?”

Ellie flinches.

Jesus, Jack. You should know the answer to that already. Look at her hand.

“I can’t work the frets,” she says, flexing the fingers on her bad hand.

“You ever try playing the other way? Left handed?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t have a lefty guitar.”

“Could you? I mean if you held the pick in your left hand.”

Ellie looks down and works the first two fingers on her hand. “Maybe? I’m not sure if I could grip it. I might keep dropping it.”

“Didn’t they give you any therapy for your hand?”

“They wanted to cut my fingers off,” she says softly. “I wouldn’t let them. I begged and cried. I can’t not have fingers.”

I swallow, trying to figure out what to say until she laughs bitterly.

“Like it matters. What’s a couple missing fingers when half my fucking face burned off.”

“Ellie—”

“Don’t lie to me, Jack. We both know you don’t want to look at the scars any more than anyone else does.”

I sigh. “No, I don’t. I hate them.”

She turns to me sharply, but I cut her off before she speaks.

“I hate what they do to you. I hate that you’ve been hurt. I hate that you’ve been locked up in a tower since I’ve been gone. I hate that you can’t do the things you want to do anymore. I hate to see you in pain and not be able to help.”

She settles back into the seat. “Whatever. What time is it?”

“Uh, seven by the clock, but I think it’s on daylight savings time.”

“We’ve been in the car for seven hours, and we have thirty to go?” She glances at her phone. “Twenty-nine?”

I sigh. “Yeah. Do you want to turn back?”

She wiggles her butt in the seat as she thinks. She always did that, wriggle while she was thinking. That’s why I liked having her do her homework while sitting on my lap.

“No,” she says.

I let out a slow breath.

“I still think you’re beautiful.”

“We need gas.”

I sigh and pull off at the first station I spot. Ellie wriggles into her hoodie, pulls the hood up over her face, and folds up in the seat, hugging herself. I start to use a card but think better of it, pull some cash from my pocket, and head into the station.

The cashier doesn’t even bother to look at me as I tell her to give me thirty on pump four. I’m going to have to do this a lot, I realize. The ’Vette may be a smooth ride, but she’s thirsty.

I lean back from the counter and grab a Mounds. Ellie loves Mounds. After I pump the gas I hand the candy bar to her, and she stares at it like she’s never seen one before.

“You…you remembered?”

“Yeah. We’ll get some real food soon. It’s going to have to be burgers again. Or maybe fried chicken.”

She snorts. “I’m going to be sick of burgers by the time we get there.”

“I say we drive through the night, and stop somewhere tomorrow afternoon to rest up. That okay with you?”

“Yeah, go for it.”

Ellie eats her Mounds in silence as I drive, but she keeps glancing at me. I know because she has to turn her whole head to see me. It’s not very slick on her part. She wriggles and yawns again, and sits with her body cocked to face me as I drive.

“Did you really not have any girlfriends or anything the whole time?”

“Not a one.”

“Why?”

“Wouldn’t be fair.”

“To me?”

“To them. They wouldn’t be you.”

“Very smooth,” Ellie says, smirking. “You know I want to believe you.”

“What about you?”

She laughs, but it has a bitter twist. “Me? What, a boyfriend? Not a chance in hell. My only social contact is online. Where people can’t see me.”

“People get boyfriends online.”

She snorts. “Right, that’d be a good one. I bet it would go viral. I got an online date and she turned out to be the Mummy.”

“Ellie…”

“You can keep giving me a put-on that I’m not ugly but I’m never going to buy it, Jack.”

“What do I have to do to convince you?”

She doesn’t say a word. She just looks at me.

A little smirk twitches her lips, or maybe it’s my imagination.

“You know,” I say, “last night. Did you like it?”

“Why do you ask? Want me to return the favor?”

“Yeah, but I want to know if you liked it.”

She smiles a crooked smile. “What do you think?”

“You seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

“Beats my own hand.”

I flex my hands on the steering wheel.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could do if I got my hands on you.”

“Did you? What would you do to me?”

I flinch, and my stomach tightens.

“Well,” I say, fighting to keep my voice even. “I know way back when, all we did was kiss.”

Ellie barks a laugh then winces and rubs her cheek on the bad side. “Ow,” she mutters.

“Sorry. Why—”

“All we did was kiss, my ass. Dry humping and feeling me up does not constitute ‘kissing.’”

“You had your shirt on, it doesn’t count. A bra, too.”

“Oh, so that’s all it is. You flew halfway around the world to cop a feel. That’s your answer? Oh, Ellie, I’ve been dreaming about squeezing your boobs.”

“I was going to try and be a little more poetic but that’s pretty much the gist of it, yeah.”

She sighs. “You’re still you.”

I laugh. “I don’t know how true that is, God. I feel like a different person.”

“You feel like a different person,” she says bitterly. “Right.”

“You’re still you, too.”

Ellie frowns and turns in the seat to face straight ahead, away from me.

“You keep trying to hide it, but the Ellie I remember is still in there. She’s scared and hurt but she’s there.”

She doesn’t say anything. I drive. It’s a risk, but I pull onto the interstate. I just need to keep it under the limit. It’s hard, the ’Vette wants to stretch her legs.

By the next time Ellie speaks, we’re crossing the border into Illinois, and it’s well after midnight. She was completely silent eating her burger. We hit a drive-thru a few hours ago. Things get weird late at night like this. There’s nobody on the highway but us, a truck way back, and a pair of taillights far ahead. An occasional car comes the other way, or a truck.

“My dad used to listen to that Art Bell guy late at night,” she says absently. “When I was little he’d talk with my uncle for hours about that crap. Aliens and conspiracies. My uncle said alien lizards run the government.”

I bark out a laugh. “No shit, seriously?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how serious about it he is. He never sounded like he really believed it. It was like a joke between them, but they ate it up.”

She swallows.

“Remember that show
Unsolved Mysteries
?”

“Do I? Jesus, just the theme song scared the shit out of me.”

Ellie laughs. “Oh my God, me too. They did this episode about people that got taken into a spaceship by aliens and probed. They call them abductees.”

“God,” I say with a shudder. “Makes my skin crawl.”

“I didn’t sleep for a week.”

She goes quiet again and yawns in her funny, squeaky way.

“I missed you.”

“Ellie,” I say softly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up. I keep replaying it in my head. You ever wish you could go back?”

“Of course.”

“I mean as yourself, like you are now. Like an adult.”

She turns to look at me. “No.”

“I do. I wish I wasn’t such a little shit. I should have punched him in the face, not just took it.”

She lets out a long sigh and says, “It’s not your fault. There was nothing you could do.”

“I can’t accept that. You’re right to question me. I did what he told me at every turn.”

“You should have gotten a girlfriend, Jack. Lived your life, not sat around dreaming about me. I’m lost.”

“No, you’re
not,”
I snarl, “goddamn it, Ellie. I won’t let you do this. What do I have to do?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”