Chapter Twelve #2
Because Penny had been left alone when her father had been sent to prison, a few years after Sheena’s dad had died.
Penelope Case had stayed here. A girl from the exact same neighborhood as Sheena.
A strange sort of jealousy began to expand in her chest. She’d been taken care of by Denver. She had this soft, nice room
for all those years, and Denver had sent her to college and . . .
He had done the same for her sisters.
Well. She had.
She had taken his money and that was what she had used it for. She had chosen not to use it on herself, because how could
she choose to use it on herself?
But suddenly then she wished that she’d had him.
Because she wished that she could have been taken care of in that way. That she could have been the one who was swaddled up
and given a handmade quilt.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
He disappeared, then reappeared a moment later while she was still standing there lost in some kind of petulant grief that she couldn’t quite parse. He handed her a white T-shirt. Soft and oversized. His, clearly.
“Change into this,” he said. “Get under the covers, and I’ll bring you some medicine, and some tea.”
“Okay,” she said.
He left, closing the door behind him, and she began to take her clothes off, and she was wondering why she was letting him
do this.
You’re hilarious. You were just standing here feeling violently angry about a quilt, and all the care you didn’t get, and
now you’re mad at yourself for accepting a little bit of help.
The truth was, she didn’t want to drive home. She felt gritty and exhausted, and that feeling that had descended upon her
in his kitchen right when he’d taken her temperature had only gotten worse. The one that was something like getting hit by
a freight train of fatigue.
So she put on that soft T-shirt, and climbed beneath the covers. And it felt so good.
To sleep in a bed that she hadn’t made. In comfortable clothes she hadn’t had to go and find for herself.
There was a light knock on the door. “Come in,” she croaked.
He came inside with a tray. And on that tray was a steaming bowl, and a steaming mug. “Soup and hot tea. Eat what you can.
He handed her a packet of orange pills. “Pain reliever and fever reducer. Might make you a little bit more comfortable.”
“I’m going to get you sick too,” she said.
“I’m pretty sturdy,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
“But I do,” she said. “Mostly because I’d feel guilty.”
“Well, I would actually pay to see that. You feeling guilty.”
“Oh, come on,” she mumbled. “We’re not so different, you and I.” She laughed ruefully through her pain.
He shook his head. “I guess not.”
She took the pills with the tea, and grimaced when the hot liquid hit the back of her throat. It was good, but intense.
She managed a couple bites of soup after Denver left the room, and then she fell into a weird, dreamless sleep that was a
lot like being unconscious.
When she woke up, it was dark out, and her head was pounding. And like he had sensed it, Denver was suddenly coming into the
room. “More medicine,” he said.
He had a large glass of water, and when she swallowed the pills this time it felt like she was being stabbed directly in the
back of the throat.
“Oh my . . . blehhhh,” she groaned. “I feel like garbage.”
“Don’t try to talk,” he said.
That was when she first realized just how gross she sounded.
“Oh no,” she groaned.
“You’re fine,” he said.
“What time is it?”
“You’re very bad at following instructions.”
“Obviously.”
“It’s about two o’clock in the morning.”
She put her forearm over her eyes, and felt that her forehead was scalding hot.
“You’re all right,” he said. “Just get some rest.”
She went to sleep after that, and didn’t wake again until morning. She felt like she’d been run over by the truck that had
hit her yesterday.
But Denver brought her oatmeal and pancakes, and it was by far the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her. Well. Maybe
the cold pills were the best part. Yeah. That felt pretty significant.
“I need to get up,” she said.
“You don’t,” he insisted. “You’re still a mess.”
“People can go home and have colds.”
“Sure. But then you’re going to have to take care of yourself. And that seems silly, when I’m happy to do it.”
“Why?”
He looked at her, a strange expression on his face. “You know why.”
Obligation?
The fact that they’d slept together?
She didn’t think it was the second one. Because he was like her. That stuff never mattered. Not especially.
So it just had to be because of all the guilt that he had about her dad, and then being alone.
“Denver,” she said. “Why did you take Penny in?”
“Because she was alone,” he said.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her, his expression far too earnest for her to handle. “She didn’t have anybody.
Her mom was long gone, and her dad was in prison. She was just . . . She was young and vulnerable, and I was in a position
to take her in.
“You didn’t take us in.”
She felt so stupid, the minute that came out of her mouth. Because he had taken care of her. She’d been an adult, anyway.
Penny had been something around fifteen when her dad died. Sheena had been grown.
Denver looked away from her, his jaw set into stone.
“I know,” he said. “Sheena, if I was in any kind of place to do that when your dad died, I would have. But honestly, right then it didn’t even occur to me.
I was a mess. I was climbing my way out of that same pit.
I knew that I wanted to take care of you, I knew that I wanted to .
. . make sure you didn’t suffer because of him, but I was still lost in the programming, basically.
Until that day, I had been working with my dad.
Until that day, I was complicit in what he was doing, and that haunts me.
It’s really just a terrible thing to have to contend with.
I’m not making excuses for myself. Not really.
I feel guilty about being taken in by my dad in the first place.
It’s more to do with the fact that I did not know who I was yet.
” He let out a heavy breath. “I went off gambling after that. I was trying to make money, because I thought if I could pay for everybody’s pain and suffering some things would be better.
Fixed. I took my dad’s money, and invested it in the poker games.
But I was losing myself at the same time. ”
“What are you talking about?” She didn’t know if he was being hard to follow or if it was all because she was illness-addled.
“I’m just not proud of who I was then. I was playing the part of stalwart older brother, helper. A man redeemed here. Then
I would go to Las Vegas and get drunk. Have lots of sex.”
“Sounds like a good Saturday night to me,” she said.
“It’s not so much what I did, it’s how selfish it was. That’s all self-indulgent stuff. I left my brothers behind and yes
you’re right, I took Penny in. I gave her a place to stay, but I wasn’t . . . really engaged with anyone not here. And when
I was there I was just in oblivion. Drunk and hooking up. Fleecing people out of their money because my brain works in a certain
way, even if I do drink.”
“You were a drunk, horny Robin Hood. What’s wrong with that?” She shrugged beneath the covers. “Those men who sat down at
those tables, they must have had the money to gamble.”
“You and I both know that isn’t true. My father built a whole empire off of the fact that men gamble when they don’t have enough to play with.
It was his extortionist interest rates that made him real money.
He was able to get those people so desperate that they took loans from him.
That was the real money. I hate that I was part of that.
Even a little bit. It was climbing out of that hole, coming back here, seeing the effects that were still echoing through the community, that’s why when I heard that Penny’s dad had been taken to prison I thought to bring her in. ”
“I’m just sick and whiny,” she said. “We had a fine life. I didn’t really need you to bring us in and turn us into your passel
of plucky orphans.”
“I don’t think I could’ve managed a passel of orphans. The truth is, I don’t know that I’ve managed much of anything as well
as even my siblings think that I did. They’re so quick to talk about how I took care of everything, but for the first few
years I had that outlet. Gambling, sex, drinking. I wasn’t reformed. I was playing the part of a reformed man.”
“Honestly,” she said, feeling a little bit better after the pancakes. “Wouldn’t it have been better if our fathers had tried to play the part of reformed? A little bit of playacting might have made our lives a lot better. But we didn’t even get that.
Don’t you think . . . don’t you think that there are points for doing the right thing even when you don’t feel like it? It’s
like you were saying before, you don’t like it when people say we are extra good. Because we don’t feel like we are. Because
we know that we are just . . . people. Dealing with all of this garbage that got dumped into our laps. But what really matters
to the people who were depending on us was that we came through for them. Not that when you were in Vegas you blew off a little
steam. Sometimes, I finished a shift and went to some guy’s hotel room because I just . . . needed somebody to see me for
a little bit. For an hour or so of somebody’s life to be about me, because my life was all about my sisters.”
“There’s no harm in that,” he said, gruffly.
“I know there isn’t. Any more than there is harm in what you did. I mean, unless you were out in Vegas being a secret serial
killer.”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Then you didn’t cause any harm. There’s nothing wrong with having a little bit of something for yourself, is there?”
Even feeling as gross as she did, asking that question, looking at him while she said it, sent a lightning bolt of desire
through her body.
“Maybe not,” he said.
“Forget I said anything about . . . you taking us in. I’m tired, like I said.”
She had only meant to reference being tired right that second because of her illness. But she felt like she was admitting
to a much broader exhaustion. Which was truer than she wanted to acknowledge.
“Get some rest then.”
He stood up from the bed, and walked out of the room. And left her lying there in all her state. She felt exhausted, and sorry
for herself, and when she fell into a deep sleep, it wasn’t dreamless this time.
She saw herself, young and standing in a field, staring down at her father’s dead body. And when she looked up she saw Denver,
reaching his hand out to her.
And all she wanted to do was take it, but for some reason, she couldn’t make her feet move forward.
It went on like that, for three days. In and out of consciousness, barely out of bed. Sweating through sheets and T-shirts.
Taking short showers and promising to keep her phone close by so she could text him if she fell, and acknowledging that if
she was longer than fifteen minutes he was going to come in and make sure she was all right.
And something changed inside of her over those few days. Because nobody had ever done this for her. Not when she was a kid,
and sure as hell not when she was an adult.
She could remember catching the same awful illness as all of her sisters, and still taking care of everything. Cooking, cleaning, bringing them food.
And if they ran out of soup, she would be the person who didn’t get any.
She had never considered herself a martyr. She supposed she was.
She didn’t know how else to be, though. Because everything she had done had made her sisters’ lives better. So what was the
answer? Because the self-sacrifice had been a reward. It had gotten them through. It had turned them into functional adults.
Better adults than she was.
So it mattered. She couldn’t regret it. But being taken care of like this, it made her feel a lot of things.
But more than that, it was the way his hands had touched her fevered brow, the way he had looked at her intensely.
She had felt too awful to be turned on by it at first. But as she had started to heal, the intensity of his attention had
begun to stoke a different kind of fire in her. One that had nothing to do with a fever.
When she woke up on the evening of the fourth day, it was dark outside, and she finally felt good.
She listened for sounds in the house, anything to suggest that there were other people around.
She got up, her legs shaky, still dressed only in panties and one of Denver’s white T-shirts. She looked at herself in the
mirror. Her dark hair was a total disaster, the T-shirt just coming to the tops of her thighs. It was see-through, her nipples
visible as she stood there staring at herself.
It was . . . perfect.
She opened up the bedroom door, and walked out into the hall, then slowly made her way down the stairs as muscles she hadn’t
engaged for days made themselves known.
The lights were off downstairs, so maybe he wasn’t home. Disappointment hollowed out her gut. But then she saw one of those antique brass lamps on in the corner of the room, and then him, sitting in a chair beneath it, holding a glass of whiskey.
And right then, he looked up at her, his eyes connecting with hers. She padded the rest of the way down the stairs and crossed
the room to him.
“Did you need something?” he asked, his voice rough.
“As a matter of fact,” she said. “I can think of something.”
She moved toward him, and climbed onto the chair, straddling his lap. He didn’t move, his jaw clenched tight, his eyes glittering.
Then she reached out and stole the whiskey cup from his hand. She put it up to her lips and knocked back the rest of the alcohol.
She leaned forward, putting it on the table with a firm click. That brought their mouths close together. Almost touching.
“Just one more time,” she whispered. “Please.”
And then his strong hands went to her hips, and he pulled her down hard, so that she could feel the iron length of his erection.
“This is not why I took care of you.”
“I know. And I’m not paying you back.”
“Good.”
And then on a growl, he claimed her mouth with his.