Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
RONAN
The rain still hasn’t let up by the time I pull onto Cedar Street.
It runs in thin rivulets down the windshield, distorting the houses beyond the glass.
My grip tightens on the wheel, and dried blood cracks across my knuckles as I flex my fingers.
Pain flares, shooting up my hands and into my wrists.
Dan’s blood. My blood.
The adrenaline is fading now, leaving behind a tremor in my hands that won’t stop.
My shirt is soaked through, clinging to my skin, rain and sweat mixed with blood that’s not all mine.
Every time I blink, I see it … Lily’s head snapping back, blood spraying across her face, the sound of Dan’s fist connecting.
I should feel something about what I did to him.
Regret. Satisfaction. Fear for the consequences, even. But I don’t care about anything other than the way she swayed on her feet, and the shock in her eyes.
Is she okay? Did someone take her to the hospital? Dan hit her hard.
My stomach lurches, bile rising and burning my throat like acid.
I left her there, bleeding, surrounded by people who saw me lose control.
I force myself to move, stepping out of the car and onto the drive. My boots scuff against the ground as I slam the door. For a second I stand there while the rain falls, soaking what’s left of me that isn’t already drenched.
My hands are throbbing. When I look down at them, the skin is split in multiple places, swelling already setting in. My right hand is worse. Two knuckles are still bleeding. I rub my left hand down my face, smearing blood into my skin.
I need to prepare for the inevitable knock on the door. The police are going to turn up eventually.
A door creaks open nearby, and I turn my head to see Tom standing on his porch, coffee mug in one hand, eyeing the sky as though the storm clouds are a personal insult.
His gaze moves to me, dipping to my hands and pausing on the blood streaking my shirt and arms. I can hear his sigh from where I’m standing, a deep exhale through his nose as though he’s already deciding how this conversation is going to go.
“You planning on letting those knuckles get worse, or do you want to clean them?”
My first instinct is to ignore him, go inside, lock the door, and let the silence eat me alive until it’s just another scar under my skin.
But then I think about Lily’s face, and the way she looked at me after Dan’s fist hit her.
The shock in her eyes, the blood on her lip, the moment of stillness before I let the monster inside me loose.
Tom is still watching me, waiting for an answer.
“I’ve got a first aid kit inside,” he says, as though we’re discussing the weather. “And you look like you could use some coffee while we sort out those cuts.”
I hesitate, torn between wanting to hide and not wanting to be alone when the police show up.
“You know Beverly’s already got her binoculars trained on us.” His voice is dry. “Do you really want an audience for whatever this is?”
That finds it’s mark. I absolutely don’t want an audience. So, I follow him inside.
The warmth hits me immediately, a wall of heat that makes my cold skin prickle.
The house smells of coffee and old wood.
It feels lived in, the kind of place that doesn’t change much, no matter what storms rage outside.
Photographs line the hallway. Tom with a woman who must be his wife, family gatherings, grandkids. A life built over decades.
Everything the house I’m living in isn’t.
He moves toward the kitchen, leaving me to decide whether to follow. I do, dripping water onto his hardwood floors.
“Sit.” He gestures toward a chair at the kitchen table before disappearing down the hall.
I sink into it, my body grateful for the support. My hands won’t stop shaking, and I press them flat against the table. When Tom returns, he’s holding a metal box with a red cross on the lid, and a towel.
“Dry off first. You’re dripping everywhere.”
I take the towel, rubbing it over my face, hair, and arms, then fold it and put it on the table.
Tom sets the first aid kit down, and pours two coffees.
The normalcy of it feels out of place, like I’ve stepped into a different version of reality.
One where someone bothers to notice that I’m bleeding.
Once he’s put one of the mugs down in front of me, he opens the kit.
“It’s old, but it’ll do the job.” He pulls out gauze and antiseptic. “Hand.”
I stretch my right arm across the table. Tom doesn’t comment, just cleans each cut gently, pausing whenever I wince. When he’s done with the right one, he nods toward the left.
“That one too.”
It’s not as bad, but the sting of antiseptic still makes my fingers twitch. I focus on the pain, instead of replaying the sound of Dan’s fist hitting Lily’s face.
“You do this often?”
“Used to be a firefighter.” He tapes the last piece of gauze into place. “Learned real quick that some people will walk around bleeding to death before they’ll ever admit they need help.”
I don’t think the words are meant to hit quite the way they do.
He leans back, studying me. “Want to tell me what happened?”
I curl my fingers around the mug. “No.”
Instead of pushing, he gathers up the wrappers from the gauze and tosses them into the trash can, then sits down across from me and takes a slow sip of his own coffee. “You know the town is gonna talk either way.”
“They always do.”
He nods. “Usually easier when they have the right facts though.”
My sighs comes out as an explosion of pent-up frustration. “Dan Hartman threw a punch at me. Lily got in the way.”
Tom’s expression doesn’t change, but his grip on the mug tightens. “Shit.”
“Split her lip. Maybe worse.” The memory rises again—her head snapping back, blood on her mouth, the sound she made, small and pained. “I should have been faster. I should have …”
“Hey now.” Tom’s voice cuts through my spiraling. “Breathe.”
I force air into my lungs, but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps.
“I left her there, without checking whether she was okay. I just … left. I couldn’t …”
“No. I expect you couldn’t.”
The clock on the wall keeps ticking, marking time while rain drums against the windows. Tom sits quietly, while I try to find words for the rest of it.
“I lost control.” The confession spills out. “As soon as I saw her blood, everything—”
“Went red?” He gets up and refills our mugs without asking. “You did what anyone would do if they saw someone they care about get hurt.”
“I don’t—”
He just looks at me, one eyebrow raised, until I drop my gaze back to my drink, heat rising up my neck.
“That’s not—”
“It’s a small town, Ronan. People notice things. Even things they pretended not to see back then.”
I drop my eyes, and focus on the coffee in front of me.
“Are you worried someone is going to come looking for you?”
He means the police. I don’t answer him, because I don’t want to tell him that yeah, I am worried.
It has nothing to do with what Dan might try, and it’s not really just about the cops.
I know how this town works, the way whispers spread.
I know how quickly people will twist this story so I’m the one at fault.
Ex-con loses control. Violent criminal shows his true colors.
Same old story, different day.
“People are gonna ask questions.”
My eyes go to my bandaged hands, then back up at him. “Why do you care?”
He shrugs. “Harris asked me to keep an eye on things.”
“He had no right.”
“No,” Tom agrees. “But he did it anyway.”
I swallow down the instinctive angry response. Harris is gone, but even in death, he’s somehow found a way to tether me to this place.
“Do you need a minute, or do you need to do something about it?”
I take a sip of coffee, absently noting that my hands have almost stopped shaking. “I don’t know.”
“What’s running through your head right now?”
That’s easy. If Dan presses charges, I know exactly what will happen. The cops will show up, and it won’t matter that I was defending her, or that Dan threw the first punch.
I’m the ex-con with a record. He’s the hometown boy with a family name that means something.
I push the empty mug aside and roll my shoulders, the ache in my muscles settling deep. Everything hurts. My hands, my shoulders. But it’s nothing compared to how Lily must be feeling.
“Finish your coffee, then go and put some clean clothes on. Whatever comes next? Well, we’ll deal with it.”
We.
The word catches me off guard.
Not you, but we.
I look at Tom, this man I barely know who just spent twenty minutes bandaging my hands and making me coffee.
“Thank you.”