Chapter 6
Six
Jami
The day starts like any other.
Sun through the blinds. Coffee in the travel mug Tommy left ready on the counter. I head to work and embrace the day. The smell of sawdust and fresh paint hit me as soon as I walk into the new build house.
I’ve been doing this long enough that my body moves on autopilot.
Gloves on, broom in hand, bagging up drywall scraps, broken tile, and any other remnants of construction left behind.
I hum along to the radio one of the crew has blasting from the scaffolding, some old country song about heartbreak that used to make me cry and now just makes me roll my eyes.
Normal. Steady. Safe.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Unfamiliar number.
I frown, swipe, hold it to my ear. “Hello?”
Silence.
Not static, not a butt dial. Silence.
“Wrong number,” I mutter, hanging up.
Back to sweeping.
Five minutes later, it buzzes again. Same number.
I sigh, answer sharper. “Hello?”
Nothing. Just breathing.
The hair on my arms stands on end. “Listen, if you don’t say something, I’m blocking you.”
Click.
I shake it off. Probably kids, or some telemarketer messing around. I’ve had worse. Hell, I’ve survived worse.
But something about the way the breath slid down the line sticks to me like grease. I should have listened to my instincts but I’ve never been good at that.
By lunch, I’ve forgotten about it. Sandwich in one hand, Coke in the other, I sit on an overturned bucket in the almost-finished kitchen and watch the crew argue over whether NASCAR still counts as a sport.
My phone buzzes again. Different number this time.
I answer, irritation flaring. “Hello?”
A voice. Low. Male. Familiar enough to twist my gut.
“Still got that little heart-shaped mole under your left breast?”
The sandwich slips from my fingers. My whole body goes cold.
“Who is this?” My voice cracks like a teenager’s.
He laughs, soft and mean. “Don’t pretend you don’t remember. I remember everything. The way you taste. The way you sound when you beg.”
I hang up so hard my thumb aches.
The crew doesn’t notice. The radio’s too loud. My heart’s louder.
I shove the phone deep in my pocket, but it feels like it’s burning through the fabric.
The calls keep coming. Different numbers. Always unable to give a result when I search them.
“Miss your thighs around me.”
“You still got that crow tattoo on your hip?”
“You were my favorite. None of the others compared.”
Each word is a knife.
I try blocking, but new numbers keep popping up. I try ignoring, but the voicemail pings, filled with silence and breath or words of filth that makes bile rise in my throat.
By mid-afternoon, my hands are shaking so bad I can’t hold the broom. I lean against the wall, knees weak, air stuck in my chest.
It’s like I’m back there. Back in that body that wasn’t mine, not really, because men like him took it like it belonged to them.
I thought I’d buried it. I thought these years of sobriety, years of Tommy’s steady hands and steady love, had built a wall high enough to keep the past out.
Turns out the past knows how to dial a phone.
I barely make it home. Every buzz of my phone rattles me, even after I turn it off and bury it at the bottom of my bag.
My chest feels tight. My skin crawls. The mole under my breast burns, the tattoo I got in a haze of high feels like a mark of a time I can’t escape.
It’s like his words branded me all over again.
Rushing to the shower I try to wash all the pain and memories down the drain. I can’t breathe. I can’t scrub hard enough.
The shower runs hot, steam filling the room, water pounding my skin. I sit on the tile floor of the shower space, knees to my chest, scalding spray beating down on me. I dig my nails into my arms, rub at my skin until it’s raw, whispering, “Get it off, get it off, get it off.”
But it doesn’t come off. I can’t wash it away.
When Tommy gets home, I don’t even hear the door. I don’t hear his boots, don’t hear the jingle of his keys.
What I hear is the curtain pull back and his voice, rough with panic.
“Jami. Baby, what the hell—”
I look up, water running down my face with the tears I can’t stop. “I can’t—” My voice breaks. “I can’t get them off me.”
He’s down on the tile before I can blink, jeans soaking, shirt sticking, his big hands catching my face. “Hey. Hey. Look at me. Who?”
“The calls.” I choke, the words ripping out like glass. “They know. They talked about… moles, tattoos. They said they miss my taste. Tommy, I thought I was clean, I thought I was free, but I feel dirty all over again.”
His jaw clenches. His eyes go storm-dark. “Jesus Christ.”
I sob, burying my face in his chest. “I can’t do it. I can’t fight them. They’re still in me. I’ll never be clean.”
“Bullshit,” he growls, so fierce it makes me flinch. But then he kisses my hair, gentler. “You hear me, Jami? Bullshit. The past doesn’t get a vote. Not in this house. Not in your body.”
I shake my head, broken. “I can’t believe that right now.” This is the part of recovery that taunts addicts. The parts where soberly I have to face the things I did, the choices I made, all for the sake of chasing a temporary high.
“Then I’ll believe it for both of us.” He tilts my chin, presses his mouth to mine—soft, steady, not asking for anything but giving everything.
We move to the bedroom, clothes wet and clinging, skin damp with steam and tears. It’s not like other nights. Not frantic. Not playful. Not even the slow burn we’ve perfected.
This is different.
Tommy touches me like he’s drawing lines over a map, like he’s reclaiming territory from an enemy who trespassed too long. His lips on my collarbone, whispering, “Mine.” His hand over the mole on my breast, whispering, “Beautiful.” His mouth on the crow tattoo, whispering, “Fly free.”
Every place they named, every piece of me they tried to stain, he blesses with his touch.
By the time he’s inside me, the tears on my cheeks aren’t all from grief. Some are from relief. From the way he looks at me, like I’m the only thing that’s ever mattered.
“I need you to hear me,” he says against my lips, thrusts slow and deep, anchoring me. “The past can’t touch you anymore. Not while I’m here. Not while we’re us.”
I sob his name, clutch him tighter.
“You’re clean,” he whispers. “You’re whole. You’re mine. Not because of what you’ve done, not in spite of it. Because you’re Jami. And that’s all I’ll ever need.”
I come apart with his words, with his hands, with his body heavy and safe over mine.
Later, when we’re tangled together, sweat drying on our skin, he strokes my hair until my breathing steadies.
“Tomorrow,” he explains, voice low but steady, “we’ll change your number. I’ll run down every bastard who thinks they can reach into our life. But tonight? Tonight, it’s just us. And they can’t touch that.”
I close my eyes, listening to his heart.
For the first time all day, the silence feels safe.
The next morning starts gentle.
No calls. No buzzing. Just the clink of Tommy putting a mug on the counter and the soft tisk he makes when I try to beat him to the sink.
He kisses my cheek, smelling like coffee and toothpaste, and pretends not to study my face for signs that the night stole anything from me. I know better. I know him.
“I’m good,” I tell him, and for once it isn’t a lie.
We eat eggs and toast. He burns the second slice and swears at the toaster. I laugh—really laugh, the kind that shakes loose the last cold grip on my ribs—and that feels like a small miracle.
At the site, I put my head down and let the work pull me.
Broom. Bags. Bucket. The bristles whisper over concrete; screws ping into the dustpan; the sun slants through new-framed windows.
Normal is the nicest word in the language today.
The phone stays silent in my back pocket.
By lunch, I’m almost giddy with the monotony of routine, the freedom of nothing happening.
The day cruises. We pack up. I get home tired in the best way—the kind that comes from moving your body on purpose for hours.
Tommy grills chicken, kisses my neck while it rests, and pretends he didn’t notice me use his fancy meat thermometer like a spear.
We eat on the back steps as the sky goes orange.
He tells me a story about Red and a runaway nail gun (every Oleander story is part comedy, part cautionary tale), and when we crawl into bed, I fall asleep fast, the good heavy kind that has no edges.
No calls.
I wake up surprised by the silence again. I shouldn’t be. But that’s how fear works. It makes you suspicious of peace.
Day two’s the same—work, sweat, shower, dinner, a ride after dinner tucked tight behind my man. No unknown numbers. No voicemail breath. The world remembers how to be itself.
By breakfast on day three, I’ve decided I was dramatic.
That it was a fluke. That the person found something else to do or the numbers dried up or my block list finally outsmarted them.
Tommy’s talking weekend plans—he gets a look in his eyes when he’s scheming; it’s bright and boyish and a little smug—and I’m smiling into my coffee at the sound of him plotting groceries and a ride and “maybe we go north on Sunday, Tiny. I want you to see something.”
“I’ll do the grocery run,” I tell him. “You’ve got that bid to write, and you’ll overbuy bacon if I let you.”
“Impossible to overbuy bacon,” he explains like always, but he slides his list over and kisses me like I just saved his day.