Broken Wings (A Romantic Suspense) (6 page)

“He did.”

It’s halfway between a statement and a question. He has this way of asking me questions without ever challenging me. It annoys me sometimes, like right now. I sneer and curl up a little more.

“I woke up and everything was ruined, and he was gone without a word. He didn’t even leave me a note. When I texted him it bounced back, when I send emails they didn’t go through, when I called him his number was disconnected. I sent letters and got no answer.”

He knows all this. I don’t know why I’m telling him. Maybe I’m telling myself.

“You’re very angry with him.”

“Would you be?”

“Yes.”

“They never told me it was his fault, but he was driving. One-car accidents don’t just happen.”

“You don’t remember what happened.”

“No. The last thing I remember is leaving the diner with Dad and Jack and then I woke up in the hospital.” I look at my hand. “Like this, and they were all gone.”

I’ve cried over this so many times, I don’t think I have any tears left. I down half of my drink and swirl it around my dry mouth before I let it soak into my burning throat. My eye starts to burn. Deep breaths.

“You’re conflicted. If you weren’t you wouldn’t be telling me this.”

“What are you, my therapist?”

“Maybe.”

I snort. I tried therapists. Six of them. They all had something different for me. Pills. Meditation. Primal screaming. It was all a joke. I just went through the motions because Mom made me. The pills made me janky, and what am I supposed to do, meditate my face back? If I scream loud enough, will my hand work again?

My guitar sits on its stand in the corner. Sometimes I set it on my lap and try to curl my useless claw around the fret board, but I can’t even hold on to it. It’s been so long I fear I’ve forgotten how to play.

I was
good
. I took lessons from when I was six. I could play and and I could sing. Mom was always behind me, urging me on, signing me up for double lessons, singing classes, the works.

When I turned fifteen she hired me a personal trainer.

That just pops into my head. It’s true, of course, but I haven’t thought about it in years. He picked me up from school three days a week and drove me to a gym; after an hour of running and spinning Mom would pick me up and take me home.

I just wanted to play soccer but she said that wouldn’t work.

All for nothing. Look at me now.

“What do you think he wants?” Fitzgerald asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

Silence. He sits in the chair and waits, watching me. I sigh.

“He says he wants to make amends. He apologized to me.”

“Alright then.”

I look up, annoyed. “Alright then, what? Ten years go by and he just says sorry and that’s it?”

“Could be. Why not?”

“What? Because… I mean… He can’t!”

“What else did he say?”

“His dad sent him to boarding school and wouldn’t let him say goodbye. That doesn’t matter, he was in college and in the Army for years. He could have contacted me then. It’s not like his father controls every little thing he does.”

Fitzgerald nods.

“Of course, I sort of stopped sending messages, and I didn’t…”

I trail off.

Yeah.

“Sounds complicated.”

“Yeah, it’s complicated.”

I finish off my drink.

“Another?”

“No, thanks.”

“Give a call if you want to talk some more.”

He stands, and I take in a deep breath.

“What do you think I should do if he tries again?”

Fitzgerald shrugs. “I think you can do whatever you want.”

After he leaves I lock my door and draw a bath. While I was in the rehab hospital, Mom had a big whirlpool tub installed in my bathroom. As it fills up with steaming water and starts to bubble, I strip and sit on the edge, shivering, then slip into it.

In the water the ache in my knee slowly melts away, and I can relax, really relax.

The tub has another, ah, useful feature. If I angle myself just right…

I close my eye and let the water flow between my legs. It’s too intense, at first. I can only take a few seconds before I twist so the jet caresses my thigh instead, then open myself to it again. I shudder and let out a little squeak.

Of course, I think of Jack.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been touched, really touched. A hug here and there, and that’s it. The last time was before the accident. Jack and I never went very far, just a lot of kissing and explorations under my blouse. His hands would always be cold and I’d squeak and squirm until they warmed up.

Oh, what I’d do with him if he were here. Or rather, what I’d have him do with me. Grab me by the arms and push me down on the bed, for starters. I smile to myself with my eye closed and feel his fingers on my skin as he pops the buttons on my blouse and spreads the fabric apart, exposing my skin. With a sudden jerk he pops the last three or four buttons and tears my shirt open, and there’s nothing underneath.

I lightly twist my nipple in my fingers and pretend it’s Jack's mouth, tasting for the first time as my stomach starts to flutter because his other hand is pulling at the elastic of my skirt, pulling it down. He grunts in frustration and sucks my nipple so hard it edges on pain, then shoves my skirt up, not down, in his impatience. My panties pull away from my skin and his warm hand glides between my legs, cupping his palm against me.

His hand isn’t enough. I want his mouth. He kisses down my stomach, leaving a hot, wet trail as I slip my legs around him. His skin brushes my thighs as he lowers his head between my legs and drags his tongue over my slit, slowly at first, then faster and faster. As I squirm against him he slowly presses his finger inside my pussy, wetting it with my arousal before pushing it in deeper each time until it sinks in to the knuckle.

I know all the right spots and in my imagination, Jack does, too. His tongue tickles at first while his finger takes long, slow strokes, curling inside me. He gives my clit a light suck and I writhe under him, squeezing him with my legs. His finger moves faster.

“Just like that,” I whimper as he kisses my clit.

His finger pulls back and I feel a second slowly working in alongside the first, opening me wider, filling me up even further.

My eye cracks open a little as I slip deeper into the bath and change the angle of the water jet. I press my eye shut again and now Jack is holding me by the waist as his chest slides up my body. I can feel his cock against my leg, and then there it is, pressing at my entrance. He draws back just a little and I buck until the head of his cock enters me, and he buries himself to the root with an urgent thrust and shoves me down with his weight.

I cry out and clamp down on him with my arms and legs, my whole body moving with his as he thrusts. I grind against him as tension builds in my legs. I can feel my muscles quivering and tightening, squeezing him. He whispers my name in my ear and the tension spreads, growing more intense until it chokes the breath out of my lungs and my body starts to burn. I never want it to stop.

More, more, more. My back arches and then I buck forward, water splashing all around me. My eye shoots open as I writhe in the tub, squeezing my hand between my thighs. I turn on my side as it comes on me hard, slamming through my body in crushing waves before an explosive release, like I’m slipping out of my skin.

I lie panting in the water, the jets bubbling over my body, and close my eye again, but it’s not the same. I reach for someone to lie with me when I need it most and there is no one there, and even the scalding hot water of the tub seems cold.

Jack

I’ve had this dream before.

You know how they say if you
know
you’re dreaming, you can control it? Fly, bang supermodels, rule the world, build a fantasy world? Sounds fun, right?

I know I’m dreaming and it’s not happening. The world makes no sense. I’m in a restaurant that’s also a bridge. The dining room just opens onto a suspension bridge that stops halfway, the decking arching up where it’s been shattered while loose cables sway overhead, nudged by the wind.

Ellie and her father sit at the table, both safe and whole and unhurt. The remnants of dinner sit on plates in front of us and the knowledge that we have to go sits heavily in my gut. The message hasn’t gotten across.

“Dad,” she says, choking up as she squeezes my hand, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to go. I don’t want it anymore.”

She squeezes my hand harder, but her father is all warm smiles. In the dream it’s the same as always. I’m looking right at him but it’s like peering through grimy glass, the details of his face smudged over by time, fallen into the past. He looks a little like my father and sounds a little like him, but different.

“I know, honey. We’ll talk to Jessica about it. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

Ellie squeezes my hand so hard it hurts. “Thank you for understanding. I just can’t talk to her anymore. She doesn’t listen.”

“I know, hon.”

His voice is thick with…something. Understanding? Resignation?”

“We’d best get home. There’s no putting it off. You are my daughter first. She will not impose this on you.”

I’m the first to stand up, and then we’re getting in the car. My first car my dad bought for me, the BMW coupe. I have to hold the seat up to allow access to the back. Ellie starts to climb in, but her dad stops her.

“No, hon, I’ll ride in the back. You kids sit up front.”

It’s awkward with him sitting behind us, but she smiles sweetly at me as she pulls on her seat belt. I duck toward her and pull back. I can’t kiss her in front of her dad. That’s just weird.

I turn the key, but the key remains motionless. The car spins around it, throwing me against the door. It’s starting and I can’t stop it. The car continues to roll and Ellie screams, the sound cutting into me like a hot wire through my heart. The roof
reaches
for her in a shower of broken glass and something grabs me around the middle and
pulls
.

Glass shatters against my back like falling into water from a great height, and pain slams into my thigh so hard it makes me want to wake up, but I can’t yet, it’s not over and the dream has not surrendered me.

There’s a tire iron in my hand and Ellie is screaming my name over and over, the pitch of her voice rising until it turns into an anguished, wordless wail as the fire spreads, reaches for her with greedy, incandescent fingers. I ram the tire iron into the gap between the door and frame and shove my weight into it, agony ripping out from my leg in both directions, flaring deep into my chest to crush my heart in sharp fingers. I push but the door won’t budge.

I hear a roar and lean back. The car twists and opens, and I see her, fire licking her face with sharp tongues that tear away the skin to show charred bone beneath. The car crunches and twists, and jagged teeth of metal and glass open wide as Ellie slides down a razor throat of barbs and slivers, screaming before the teeth come down and crunch and there’s nothing left but a hand, cold and limp in mine.

Then it lets me go and I bolt upright, out of the bed and onto the floor, choking back the dinner of cold hot dogs and orange juice I procured from the kitchen before I crawled into bed last night. I hold on to it long enough to make it into the bathroom and let go into the toilet.

I fall back and my head hits the wall. Angrily I thump it with my elbow.

It takes me a moment to stop shaking. That fucking dream,
again
. I have to sit there and remind myself again and again that she’s alive, it didn’t get her.

Except it did. I saw that already. The monster did get her. Didn’t eat her, just chewed her up and spit her out. Nice job, Jack.

I need to see her. I shower and scrub the taste of puke out of my mouth and dry my hair, eat a cup of yogurt from the fridge, dress, and head for the door.

When I open it, Frank is standing outside.

“Watch out, I’m—”

“Going to work,” he corrects me.

He claps my shoulder and then squeezes, hard.

“I’m going to work,” I sigh.

As we walk toward the elevator—an old service type with a gate—I ask him something.

“Frank, you have a wife, right? You’re married?”

“Yeah.”

“If your wife was in pain and alone and you—”

“Stop it,” he says sharply. “This is not a conversation I’m having with you. That girl is none of your business. I got strict orders to keep you two apart. Just like when you tried to start this conversation yesterday.”

Frank pulls the gate shut and jabs the down button with his finger. The floor glides up in front of me.

“Look,” he says. “I like you. Always did. I liked your mom, too. Lot more than the third one. God, what a bitch.”

“Yeah,” I nod. “She was.”

“Point is, I want what’s best for you, and that’s to go along with your dad. Don’t let me catch you trying to go after the girl.”

He tugs on his coat and jerks his neck from side to side.

Was… Was that a hint? Nah, couldn’t be. Frank is many things, but he’s loyal.

“Wreck wasn’t your fault, kid.”

“So they tell me. If it was, you think my dad would let anybody put that down anywhere? Officially?”

Frank sighs. It’s more of a volcanic rumble. “Why do you have to fight everything like this?”

“I guess I’m my father’s son.”

“Nah,” Frank says as the elevator jerks to a stop. “You ain’t. Come on, I’m driving you to work and you’re going to stay there.”

I have nothing further to say as I mount up in Frank’s car and he drives through the city. The traffic is a mess and we get cut off twice. Nothing ruffles Frank’s feathers. He takes it all in stride. Steady as a rock, that’s Frank.

The world is still damp; the city smells like wet dog even on a cool, crisp day after light rains. It’s rush hour, so the streets are packed.

After driving half an hour to go maybe three miles, we arrive. Frank drives through a private gate onto a ramp that leads right to the top of the parking garage and to a reserved spot.

I step out before he shuts off the car and walk to the railing to look out over the city. It’s just like I remember it. The sun catches the river, turning it to gold. I’m not close enough to pick up the smell, so it’s a lovely illusion.