Chapter 5
ELIZABETH
“Do it.” Devon’s words are encouraging.
They’re also intimidating.
Who am I to swing a hammer at a wall?
I sit at a desk. I’ve done it my whole life. In school, then at the office. The most strenuous activity I do is yoga.
“C’mon, you can do it.”
Beneath his protective goggles his smile is big, and the old shirt and jeans he changed into while finding me some clothes to wear have me seeing him in a different way.
Why have I never noticed how good looking he is?
Obviously, the blinders I’ve worn most of my life have limited my observation skills. I stare at him so long he walks over to me and puts a hand over mine on the sledgehammer, the other on my lower back.
“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I thought it might feel good to smash something, but you really don’t have to.”
“No. I want to.” My gaze moves to the wall in front of us. “I just don’t know if I’m capable.”
“You are. You can do anything you want. All you have to do is try.”
“Just lift and swing?” I ask, my gaze still on the wall.
“You play tennis, right?”
The reminder of the sport played at the club Grandfather insisted I be a member of has my insides tightening. I hate everything about that place. More so when I think about how often Peter wanted to go there when we started seeing each other. “I have. But it falls in the same category as math.”
“You’re good at it but don’t like it.”
His words snap my gaze back to his. How does he remember that so easily? Peter didn’t even remember today is my mother’s birthday. She would have been sixty-two. She’s been gone most of my life but every year I make sure to celebrate her in some way. And I call Dad.
It’s what I was doing when I overheard Peter and Darryl.
Another thing I let someone else talk me into. Getting married without my dad there to walk me down the aisle. I hate myself right now. The pushover I’ve been. The pleaser of everyone except myself.
“Lizzi?”
“Elizabeth,” I correct automatically. Nicknames are beneath a Foxworth.
“Is it?” he asks with a smirk and raised eyebrow.
“Yes?”
His laughter echoes around us. “Here. In my house. You’re Lizzi.”
I’ve never had a nickname. Not since—cutting off those thoughts, I nod. “Okay.”
“So…tennis?”
“I can play. I just don’t like to.” Haven’t since Mom died and Grandfather fought for custody of me and Edward.
“Well then, pick up the hammer and hold it like you’re going to smash a ball over the net, just swing at the wall instead. I can draw a tennis ball on there if you want.”
“No. I don’t think I need a smaller target.” Taking a deep breath, I lift the sledgehammer. “You’d better stand back. I don’t want to hit you.”
Laughing again, Devon moves off to the side. “Whenever you’re ready.”
It takes two hands to hold the hammer up because I’m not accustomed to the weight, and I’m not ashamed to admit I’m already sweating. Not from exertion. I’m nervous about taking this swing. Something about all of this feels monumental. Like a shift in my life—in the core of me.
Then again, listening to my fiancé and his best man getting it on moments before our wedding altered things in an irreversible way. Today has opened my eyes when I never knew they were closed.
Smashing down the wall is symbolic as much as it’s literal.
I glance at Devon and find him standing casually, arms loose by his sides, a small smile of encouragement on his face, and the support I feel emanating from him is so foreign I almost drop the hammer.
Instead, I take another deep breath and focus on the wall, and after my next breath I swing.
The wall stops the forward motion, the hammerhead bouncing back. Vibrations flow up the handle causing my grip to slip before I even hear a sound. The boom has me jumping back and I let go, cringing when the head slams into the floor.
Shaking out my arms, I stare at the dent in the drywall. At the sledgehammer on the floor. Back at the wall. “Holy shit!”
“Feel good?” Devon asks beside me.
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” I shake my head. Bounce on the balls of my feet. “That didn’t go the way I thought it would.”
“How did you think it would go?”
I frown at the wall. “Well, for one, I thought I’d at least put a hole in it.”
“Next time.” He bends over and picks up the hammer. Holds it out to me like it’s a toothpick. “That was a practice shot. Try again.”
“We’ll be here all year if you let me demolish it.”
“I’m not in a rush.” He reaches for my hand and pulls it toward him, wraps my fingers around the smooth wooden handle. “And this isn’t about taking down a wall. It’s about discovering what it looks like when you do.”
“Oh.” His insight is frightening. And relieving. He reads me in a way no one ever has. Not even my brother.
“I find clearing physical things helps me clear mental ones.” He nods at the wall. “Keep going. I’m going to make us something to eat and drink.”
“You don’t have—”
“I need to feed myself and I’m not doing that without including you.” He grins. “Consider it payment for labor.”
I laugh. And unlike most of my laughter tonight, it’s filled with joy. Happiness I feel deep in my chest. “Okay, if you trust me on my own.”
“I do.” He turns then quickly spins back. “And if it helps, picture Peter’s face painted on the wall. Or Darryl’s. Anyone who you’ve ever wanted to smack.”
Grinning, I glance at the wall and see it. Peter’s thin face, Darryl’s pudgy one. What surprises me is the image of my grandfather my imagination adds. I face Devon again.
“Why the frown?” He’s next to me in a few long strides.
“I think I’m mad at more than my ex fiancé and his best friend.”
“Then smash ’em.” Gripping my shoulders, he turns me to face the wall. “Smash every one of them.”
“It feels wrong.”
“What? Wanting to hit them?”
How does he understand me so well? “Yes. The violence of imagining slamming a hammer into their faces.”
“You’d never do it in real life. This is a way to release the anger and frustration and disappointment, whatever emotion evokes the urge to hurt someone.”
“Are you a therapist in your spare time?”
“No. But I’ve had to channel my emotions in constructive ways in the past.”
“Did it help?”
“Yes. It didn’t solve the situation but it helped clear my emotions so I could think of ways to fix things without resorting to violence.”
“I don’t know if one wall will be enough.”
“Good. I’ve been short on labor around here.”
“You’d let me come back?”
“Lizzi, I don’t want you to leave.”
I don’t get a chance to question his words because he’s walking out of the room, leaving me alone to face my own emotions.
Except unlike others, it doesn’t feel as though he’s abandoned me.
He’s given me the tools and support to deal with today—hell, the last decade—how I see fit. Not how he’s thinks I should.
Turning back to the wall again, I stare at the dent I inflicted. I could put the sledgehammer down and not swing at it again and Devon wouldn’t think any less of me.
And that right there tells me a couple of things.
One, he’s a good guy, one who offers help without bulldozing me.
Two, in a few hours he’s let me be me, cowardly escape, crazy thoughts and self-pity tears. Not once has he told me anything I’ve said or felt is wrong. In fact, he’s encouraged me to say and feel exactly what I want—what I need.
In less than one night, Devon Boyd has validated who I am more than anyone else in my life, and I want to hold on to that feeling more than I want to smash a hole in this wall.