Stay With Me (13 page)

When I clicked on
Images,
fifty of them populated the screen. Ian over the years, at various stages, in different news articles in Key West and some of the other local Florida papers. Group photos holding plaques, many snapshots of Ian and another guy in front of boats, on boats, in front of a store holding colorful new dive gear. A couple of what looked to be society events, dressed up with the same dark-haired woman.

Of course I had to zero in on those, see who this woman was that warranted repeat dates. Nice dates. With cocktail attire. Bet he didn’t pick her up on a motorcycle for those. And Ian looked positively edible in a black-on-black suit. Freakishly at ease in something I would have never imagined on him.

Maybe she cultured him. Taught him that.

“Oh, God, stop,” I muttered.

Of course, on the flipside, the other picture that caught my eye was one of him in a dive skin on a boat, one foot propped up on a bench, clearly teaching a class of onlooking students. The dive skin was unzipped and pulled down off his shoulders, arms knotted haphazardly around his waist. And he looked delicious.

I clicked back to the web data and all the articles to go with those photos were there, one after another. His dive shop, MJ’s, was prominent in most of them. He’d evidently done pretty well for himself. Certainly better than I’d always assumed, when I’d hear about Jim’s drifting, irresponsible, scuba-diving brother out in Key West. And oddly, I never questioned it. I guess because of his tendency toward the shadier, shoplifting-for-kicks side of life. But I’d been right there with him, so what did that make me? A petty criminal? Hell no. You had to get caught to be a criminal, right?

The second page—because, yes, I had to—listed the older, more common things like his Copper Falls high school listing for the year we graduated, and an old advertisement for McMasters Meats. And his father’s obituary. Nothing for his mom—as she had passed when he was a preteen and pre-Internet. Nothing bad, no arrests, no crimes—that hit any record, anyway. There wouldn’t be. Because he wouldn’t get caught. Or maybe his “backing in” days were over as well.

Old habits.

Ugh, he knew just where to poke.

I needed to quit and go home. Find a movie about space aliens or war or anything not resembling a romance and curl up with Gracie on the couch. Maybe talk to Duncan or send sexy texts.

I picked up the skeleton key Ian had played with and set it back on top of the pile. Was it the one? I turned it over and no—it wasn’t. I wondered if he’d been thinking of that too. Moving some aside, I found the one I was looking for. It was distinctive.

It was still so early when we puttered up on Ian’s bike, slowing as we passed a long grove of trees. He slowed as much as possible to keep the noise down. All we needed was a couple of nosy neighbors calling the cops on us. Then again, what difference did it make? I clutched him tighter, not wanting to get off.

“Just keep going,” I said, my voice still hiccupping from the sobs of the previous hour. I’d been awake since four thirty, staring at a plastic stick like the result would change. “Ride till the road runs out.”

“Come on, babe,” Ian said, squeezing my hands lovingly as he pulled them loose. He made me get up. I didn’t want to get up. “I want to show you this.”

“Really not a good time, Ian,” I said, wiping my eyes for the four hundred and fortieth time. “I just want to—”

“Go wallow, I know,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me behind him. “This is better.” He glanced around him. “Keep your voice down.”

“I don’t wallow,” I whispered.

“Not normally,” he said, walking us around the side of what I finally noticed was a beautiful and quaint little stone house. The stained glass above each door and window caught my attention. “But you’re not normally pregnant.”

“Shut up,” I cry-whispered. “Don’t say it out loud.”

Ian shook his head and continued to pull me behind the thick curtain of trees and bushes that nestled the house until we were at a back door. The most beautiful back door I’d ever seen. Hand carved and inlaid with different wood grains going different directions. Even in my traumatized what-the-fuck-do-I-do-now state, I had to wonder why anyone would put such a thing of beauty outside in the elements, and hidden away in the back, at that.

Pulling a worn pouch from his jeans pocket, he plucked a tool from it and clicked the old hardware into submission in seconds.

We walked in and he clicked the door behind us quietly. As my jaw dropped.

It was like stepping back in time. The house was an open concept, with all the downstairs rooms visible at once. An iron spiral staircase led up to bedrooms designed into a large loft. Stone was inlaid into the walls and thick wooden beams framed every room, with a wood-burning stove smack in the middle of it all, piping all the way up and out the ceiling.

The furniture was covered in sheets, but a few prize antique pieces peeked out here and there around the walls. Mosaic mirrors and candleholders were clearly a favorite, flanking more than one shelf and wall. The morning sun coming through the stained glass painted colors on the walls that no artist could ever do justice.

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

“I know,” Ian said. “I told you, this place is like a damn fairy tale.” He let go of me and turned to look around him. “I’ve never been in here in the daylight.”

I gave him a look. “What made you come here at night?”

“See what might be in here,” he said. “Old house like this, you never know.”

Leave it to Ian to see a job in any form. My dad needed to know about this place—it was a gold mine. Then again, it clearly still belonged to someone.

“Look,” he said, picking up something he knew would make my heart flutter. A skeleton key, sitting on a baker’s rack.

“Oh—” I breathed, glancing around. “I wonder what it goes to.”

“Doesn’t matter, keep it,” he said.

I turned it over in my hand, noting the tiny flecks of colored glass in the handle. It had been specially made.

“What if the owner needs it?”

“Does it look like anyone is using anything?” he said, pointing at the layers of dust.

“How’d you know no one would be here?”

“Checked it out for a while,” he said. “There’s an old guy that comes once a month to check on things, but far as I can tell no one actually lives here.”

“God, that’s a shame,” I said. “I would kill to live here.”

“That staircase probably isn’t kid-safe.”

Oh, shit-fuck. I felt my chest crumple, and I put my hands over my face. “For eight seconds there, I forgot,” I said.

“Hey,” Ian said, pulling my hands away. “I was kidding.”

“There is no more kidding,” I said, the tears building up in my throat. “Ever again.” I looked up into his eyes. “Everything changes now. My whole life—”

“Is not over,” he finished.

“Easy for you to say,” I said, shaking my head. “What was I thinking? How could I be so stupid?”

“Not using a rubber?” Ian said, his voice taking on a slight irritability. “I have no idea. I knew that guy was a dick.”

It was an old argument and I put my hands up to protest, but he took them in his.

“It doesn’t matter now, Savi.” I closed my eyes, panic and uncharacteristic fear overwhelming my senses. Still holding on to my hands, he shook me gently. “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated, his voice firm.

My chin quivered, and I cursed the weakness. “I’m a mess, Ian. I don’t do anything right, I’m not like Lily, I’m not responsible. I blew off college to piddle around at the barn, I fly around on the back of your bike when I want to.” I shut my eyes tight and felt the hot tears stream down my face. “I get knocked up by a guitar player in a crappy band.”

“Really crappy band.”

I blew out a breath and gave him a look. “How the fuck do I become someone’s mother?”

Ian’s hands cradled my face, wiping my tears away as fast as they came.

“By being the badass woman that you already are, Savi,” he said. “And knowing you’re not alone.”

I scoffed. “My parents are gonna shit things they’ve never shit before.”

“You’re twenty-two, not sixteen,” he said. “They’ll get over it. And I wasn’t talking about them.”

I looked up in his face—that gorgeous face that never failed me, that was always there, always telling me things with his eyes that his mouth would never say. That neither of us would ever say. The two of us were damaged souls—not from anything happening to us—we just seemed to come out that way. That’s why we didn’t bother falling in love. We just fell into each other.

I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around him as tight as I could, burying my face in his chest.

“I’ve never been afraid before,” I said, hearing the wiggle in my voice. “Not really.”

He held me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe, but that was okay. The tighter, the better. It was safe there.

“I know.”

“I’m terrified, Ian.”

He only let go enough to hold my head and look down into my face, and I saw something for the first time. He was scared, too. But I didn’t call him on it.

“We got this, Sav,” he said. “We’ve got this together.”

A chuckle bubbled up in spite of everything. “You gonna be Uncle Ian?”

“I’ll be the Lizard King if you want me to be,” he said, kissing the tip of my nose. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll teach this kid to be a badass too.”

“She’s gonna have a lock-picking set?” I said, sniffling through a laugh.

“Or he,” Ian said. “I might buy him a Harley tricycle.” He looked around us. “Maybe we can all live together in this little house one day, or one like it.”

I laughed and pressed my forehead against his chest. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You never have to find out.”

Turns out, I did.

I took a deep breath and swiped under my eyes, unaccustomed to these little trips down memory lane of late. I looked out at the mirror again to see it had gotten a little darker, and sighed. I had something else to do before I could go home.

I got the bags of garbage together and set them outside the front door while I got my stuff and locked up. Why was I looking around guiltily like a criminal trying to get away with something? Old habits.

“Yeah, well, kiss my ass,” I muttered, realizing that talking to myself didn’t add a good mark to the combination, but that was okay, too. I was ready for the day to be over.

Peering over toward the butcher shop, I took notice that Jim’s and Lily’s vehicles weren’t there, and that was good. Unfortunately, there was a white car—which could belong to anyone along the street, really—and a black Harley that left no doubt.

Jesus.

There was a light on in one of the rooms upstairs, and my stomach burned. Both with knowing he was up there—and remembering the last time I’d seen him up there. He hadn’t been alone.

Might not be now, either.

Holding my head up, I grabbed the two giant garbage bags and used their weight to balance, walking nonchalantly across Terrell toward the butcher shop alley.

The sourness of the rotting chicken salad was about to choke me, even permeating the big industrial bag. I looked to my left to see if Old Lady Burns was putting a hex on me, but it was all dark that direction. The smell was getting stronger though as I walked, and shit, the road was growing as I crossed at an angle. Maybe she had thrown a curse my way after all, because it sure didn’t seem that far when I wasn’t carrying fifty pounds of garbage.

My eyes kept darting upward. Like maybe at any second Ian was going to throw open a window and bust me.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered.

It was muggy out. The air felt like wet oatmeal, and I was actually sweating by the time I rounded their building. In the dark, with a lack of light from Main Street, the alleyway was nearly black. I blinked to adjust my eyes, but I still had to stop for a moment to even find the damn Dumpster.

“There it is,” I whispered, spotting it about ten yards farther in. “Shit, I gotta start working out.” I was sucking wind and my arms were burning from the strain of holding the bags out. I’d become a friggin’ wuss.

Once upon a time, I could climb a roof, jump out a window, run like my life depended on it, scale a fence, and not even be out of breath. If that were now, two garbage bags would have sent me to jail.

Reaching the Dumpster finally, I set the bags down, mercifully, and reached for the lid. It didn’t move.