Love Me Gently (Deer Creek #1)

Twenty-Four

Cole

I prepared myself for the same eerily quiet home I’d returned to for the last two weeks. Sometime between getting in my truck this morning, chasing down a couple teenagers who decided to skip school and throw their families and the school into a panic, and finishing up paperwork on a couple other call-outs, I’d convinced myself that this morning had been a dream.

There was no way Trina sat at my kitchen counter eating an entire, single slice of bacon. She hadn’t smiled at me, and she hadn’t stood at the top of the stairs asking me why I was being so nice to her.

So it pretty much shocked me back on the heels of my feet when I opened the door from the garage to the sound of laughter and the scents of sugar, spices, and what could only be Mom’s homemade lasagna and bread. Her own SUV was still outside, so I knew she was still there, I’d just expected to find her quietly knitting a new sweater for the girls or something.

Not laughing.

Not laughing with Trina…because that was definitely the second voice I was hearing.

“Hello?”

I called out, as I slipped out of my boots.

“Up here, dear!”

my mom called back. “Dinner should be ready soon and your dad is joining us, too.”

I skipped a couple of stairs in my hurry to get up there. Was this really my life? My reality? Trina sitting at the table with both my parents again?

I blinked a couple of times when I reached the living space, and sure enough, she was there.

Trina was sitting with her back to me, on the bench at the dining table Elle and June usually fought over, peering at me almost warily over her shoulder. But her color was good. Her cheeks flushed. There was some kind of… glow… about her.

“Hey,”

I said, and hung up my keys.

Her eyes flicked to my belt, to the gun at my hip and then down to the floor. “Hi.”

That sound.

It was so much better. Not boisterous, and it was only two tiny simple letters, but there was a timid life to it.

Heaven. It was better than anything I could have imagined after last night.

“Dinner will be ready in fifteen. Trina and I made pies and cookies so don’t eat them before the girls get back, and your dad will be here any minute. He’s stopping at the store for some more drinks.”

“More?”

My brows rose. “How much have you already had?”

“None. Yet.”

My mom chuckled and tossed down a playing card. There was a face-down deck between them and a stack of cards in each of their hands.

I had no idea what they could be playing, but they were doing something. Trina was out of her room and smiling, as little as it was.

And soon, I’d be with my family and her, enjoying a meal together.

“I’m changing. Be back in a second.”

That was said to Trina, who nodded and then quickly turned back to the cards in her hand.

I reached my room, closed the door, and shortly after, my mom shouted, “WAR!”

“Well, that explains the game,”

I muttered.

Still, I was grinning.

Hope bubbling.

Maybe it was a foolish hope, built on the dreams I had as a teen, but knowing my dad was coming over, my family and Trina were going to all sit down and eat dinner together. The only thing I could figure that would make that day better was if the girls were there to join us.

Soon.

Soon they would be.

As much as I’d wanted to slide into the bench next to Trina, I took my normal spot with my back to the kitchen at the head of the table. My mom stayed across from her, my dad at the other end.

He’d showed up with a couple bottles of wine, some light beer, and managed to say hello to Trina like it wasn’t the first time he was seeing her in twelve years, looking healthy, smiling, and sitting at my table.

Bless them for being able to act so normal when I knew they were feeling anything but. They kept it up all through dinner, too, sneakily tossing in news of town that we all already knew, brief mentions of people, and who was running what these days. No one too close to Trina, and no mention of her parents, but it was clear they were trying to make things as normal as possible for her while also filling her in on how the town had changed.

Like in the truck with me last weekend, she mostly stayed quiet, but there was interest in her expression versus the deadness I’d seen before.

I still had a dozen, if not a hundred, questions for her and still wanted to know why she’d fallen asleep in June’s bed, but the questions could wait.

They could wait a lifetime if she kept giving my mom that soft, timid smile.

Trina stood from the table and began gathering and stacking plates. “Thank you for dinner, Mrs. P. It was lovely.”

She reached for my plate, but I set my hand on her arm. “Don’t.”

Instantly, her face paled, white as the snow, and the plates in her hands began to shake. “I was going to clean up.”

I shook my head.

“I’ll clean,”

I told her. “You two have spent all day in the kitchen.”

She opened her mouth to say something back, possibly to insist, but the light dimmed in her eyes, and she flicked her gaze toward my parents. “Umm…”

She swallowed, hands still trembling until I finally slid the plates from her before she dropped them. When I had them in my hands, she stepped back. Trina glanced at my parents, then me, and rolled her lips together. “I’m supposed to clean.”

Her voice had gone quiet, and in my periphery, Mom’s brows tugged closer with concern.

“You don’t have to,”

I assured her, and I tried to quiet my voice, but when she got like this, my ire spiked. Seriously, what did that monster do to her?

How had she been treated?

I had a killing urge to know, and yet it was probably better I didn’t. Not if a simple touch and correction from me had her shaking like a leaf.

“Trina,”

I rumbled her name, low enough to get her attention, hoping I didn’t scare her. “You can do anything you want in this house, but nothing is expected okay? You and Mom spent hours in the kitchen today, and you know her rule.”

“Whoever doesn’t cook cleans,”

my mom said, but even she was quieter, worried.

Trina blinked. Glanced at my mom and then nodded.

“Okay.”

She turned back to me. “But I still want to help.”

“I’ll let you help,”

I told her. But she wasn’t doing it alone.

I wanted her to learn she never had to go it alone again if she didn’t want to.

“But I’m doing it with you,”

I said, so she knew I’d be with her. Close. My kitchen wasn’t huge and the space to rinse and load was tight.

“Okay,”

she finally whispered.

From his spot at the table, Dad stood. “I’ll get you ladies more drinks. Bridget isn’t cackling yet, so she’s not nearly done for the night.”

It was a joke to lighten the mood. My dad was good at that.

“I don’t cackle,”

my mom cried out, laughing. But there it was…the hint of a cackle.

My lips twitched and I grinned at Trina. “She totally cackles.”

Her grin fought for its appearance, and then she turned to my dad. “I’d like to hear this.”

There she was.

My brave, beautiful, fighting girl.

It was after my parents left. A quick hug from my mom and a gentle pat on the back from Dad shortly after the kitchen was cleaned up, and then they were out the door. I half expected Trina to head back to her cave downstairs, but instead, she curled up into a corner of the couch. Glass of wine nearby, I noticed she drank them slowly, and by the time she got a refreshed glass, what had to be left in it was too warm to drink.

Which meant she wasn’t drunk by any means, but maybe loosening up and relaxed a bit.

“I forgot how nice your mom was,” she said.

I took the chair on the far side of the room near the fireplace. We’d be getting snow soon and it’d be on every night, but for now it was off with a cool draft coming from it. It was also the farthest away from Trina I could get, but I was too afraid if I moved closer, I’d move too close. So there I sat, across from her, and yet she hadn’t run and that alone was progress.

I sipped my beer, my second and last of the night. “They’re good people.”

“She told me your daughters are a handful and a half and that June’s just like you.”

Of course she did. Bragging came with becoming a grandmother. At least it did in Mom’s world. But the last few times she’d brought up my girls, it hadn’t exactly gone well. “Ella’s quiet. She takes everything in. She’s soft-spoken like her mom, but June… she’s…”

I sighed and spun the beer in my hands. “She’s having a hard time with the divorce. But she’s only four, so she doesn’t get why I don’t live with Mommy anymore. But yeah, she’s more likely to paint the walls with nail polish or kick a soccer ball through the house window.”

Which she’d done already.

“You get them back Sunday.”

We’d briefly talked about this. “I do.”

“You said only your parents and Marie know I’m in town.”

“That’s true.”

“But you have kids…and kids don’t really keep secrets.”

Ella was a vault. June, on the hand…June had a loud voice that currently had a lot to say about everything. Which made me realize where she was going with this. “Not really, and not well. No.”

She reached for her wine, and her fingers tappity-tap-tapped on the glass. “That means my parents will learn I’m here. Probably quickly.”

Her top lip curled, and then she blew out a breath. “I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I can see them. I’m not…I don’t…”

Screw the distance. I stood and made my way to the coffee table in front of her. I wasn’t touching her, but I could, and I also realized she didn’t jerk back from my quick movement which was a win in itself.

“My mom called me, and I never, not once, called her back.”

Tears. More freaking tears slipped out of her eyes and onto her cheeks.

I worked my jaw back and forth. There was only so much assurance I could give before she needed to start learning truths for herself. “You wrote me letters and I never wrote you back. Do you hate me?”

She blinked in surprise. “You…what?…You remember that?”

Better than remembered…I kept every single one. I kept pictures and mementos and movie stub tickets and all the dumb shit she and I had ever experienced together. “I was still in my angry phase then,”

I said, and a slow smirk curled my lips up.

She blinked at me. Twice. Then huffed. “It’s not the same.”

“It’s not,”

I agreed. “But your parents are the same people too. Just like my mom was. The only thing that hurts them is not knowing where you are and how you’re doing. I can guarantee you that.”

“I’ll have to do it. Won’t I? Get brave enough to go see them?”

Or have them come here, but I doubted logistics were her question. “If you plan on staying, yeah. And I know you’re going through a lot, but you get it done quickly, and it won’t weigh on you so much either.”

I hoped it brought her some relief, some healing. She’d already come so far in a day. The fact she was even considering seeing them was huge.

“I’ll think about it.”

I relaxed back onto my seat on the coffee table. “Did Mom mention Ashley to you at all?”

“No. I didn’t ask, either.”

“She married Robbie. They’re foster parents too. They’ve adopted one child and currently have three siblings with them in their care.”

“That’s amazing,”

she whispered. “Ashley would be good at that. She was always so…soft.”

“Still is. She teaches at the high school with your sister.”

“You’re still friends with all of them then?”

“Yeah.”

I scratched the back of my neck. “Robbie and I, definitely. We see each other all the time. The four of us…Marie and I and them used to hang out pretty regularly.”

“Oh.”

Her lips formed a perfect O. “Is she…what does she think about all this? Me…and well…”

“She’s a good woman, like I’ve said, and I wasn’t all that great to her, and some of those things are only now becoming clearer, like hanging out with Ashley and Robbie so much with her. She was hurting for a long time, and I’m only now getting how hard being married to me was. That’s my fault, though, and if she gets mad at anyone, guarantee it’ll be me, but even then, Marie’s a good person, and she’s not bitter or anything.”

Her eyes trailed to my large windows. Outside was dark, pitch black except for the occasional twinkling of house lights through the branches. Soon we’d be seeing ski lifts moving and their lights shining bright until the lifts closed at night, but for now, those were dark, too.

“You all did exactly what you wanted. And are happy.”

“We all have our days.”

Before she tunneled back into the empty void, which I could see flickering at the edges of her eyes, leeching away the color in her skin, I held out my hand. “Can I show you something?”

Her head turned to me; eyes wide. “What?”

“Something. Come with me.”

I wiggled my fingers.

Slowly, she set her glass down on the table next to her and stood.

It didn’t escape me that she didn’t take my hand, and I let it fall to my lap before I stood.

“Where?”

“You been outside much yet?”

Since I now knew she lurked, at least in my daughters’ room, she probably had.

“No. I didn’t want to be seen.”

As if that could happen. Not here.

I led the way to the sliding back door and flicked on the lights. A string of white Christmas lights lit up outside, draped and wound all over the deck railings and from poles settled equal distances apart. They created a soft glow, but not bright enough to take away what I wanted to show her.

Thank goodness it wasn’t cloudy.

Trina’s laugh was as bright as the lights as we stepped outside. “What are we doing out here?”

She crossed her arms over each other and rubbed away the chill. “It’s cold and dark.”

“Maybe.”

I gestured to the sky. “But see that? You’ve spent so much time in the city, I bet you forget what the stars look like.”

Her smile faded. I didn’t let her linger on her years living in cities. “I come out here at night. Morning. Doesn’t matter when, because I think you’ve forgotten this, too, but that’s okay. The point is, I come out here to be amazed. To think. To be reminded of my rightful place in the world.”

“And what’s that?”

I spun, head tipped to the dark sky, millions of flickering stars in the distance. “That we’re small. We’re insignificant. We’re vapor in the span of time.”

“How uplifting,”

she muttered, but I swore there was a tease in it, so I turned to her, stone serious.

“We’ll all be gone in a blink, the good, the bad, the happy, the miserable. Life and fulfillment come from the decisions you make with the choices in front of you. You’ve had a lot of corrupt and wicked and horrible choices in front of you it sounds like, and I’m not judging you for that. But today, tomorrow, the day after—all you have to do is step onto a different path, make a different choice.”

I stepped toward her, careful not to reach out, not to take her hand, not to do anything that could wipe away the oddly-focused expression on her face. “You can choose something that brings you happiness. It’s just one simple choice in the moment. That’s it.”

“I’m not sure I’m the best decision maker.”

“Then lean on the people who love you to help you.”

She blew a breath into her hands and then scrubbed them together. I barely felt the chill, but it’d been years since she’d lived in the cold, so I didn’t blame her. “You think I should call my parents.”

I shrugged. “Not sure there’s anyone out there who loves you more than them.”

Except for maybe me. But I’d pressed that enough.

She turned toward the railing, her profile to me, head tipped up to the sky, and I decided to give her all the time out there to think about what I said.

But I left her with a lifeline, and hopefully, she’d choose to grab on to it.

“No one hates you, Trina. No one’s mad at you. They’re all worried and sad, but anyone in this town you reach out to for help, they’ll break their backs and their necks to help you heal. I think if you take a second to truly remember the community and family you came from, you’ll stop being so scared about how they’ll react, because you already know.”