Chapter 30
THIRTY
In a sudden draft from under the door, the candle guttered and nearly went out. Ryan sat up and adjusted it in its mug, making it flicker and casting eerie shadows onto the walls.
Everything felt strange. That they were stuck in this one small room in a house in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of a hurricane. That she was sharing deeply personal stories with this man, who was basically a stranger.
Except he wasn’t a stranger. She realized she knew him now better than she knew anybody else in her life. Which was probably the strangest thing of all.
When he settled himself against the wall again, she said, “So there’s been no one else? Since she left?”
He rested his head back, so he was looking at the ceiling. “Nope. And I figure that if I could have found somebody else, I would of by now.”
She drew her feet under her until she was sitting cross-legged. “I haven’t been able to make any kind of relationship work, either,” she said, her fingers finding their way to the ring again. “Not since Daniel.”
Ryan’s tone was skeptical. “This is the guy who got you into this whole mess?”
Her gaze fell upon the ring, triggering the familiar ache she always felt when she saw it.
“He wasn’t a bad guy,” she whispered. “He was just playing the hand he’d been dealt.”
She looked at the marshal, but he didn’t look like he believed her.
She said, “The drugs, the gang, he hated all of it. It was just a means to an end. A way to survive.” She squeezed the ring between her thumb and fingers, feeling something hot backing up behind her eyes.
It wasn’t lost on her that of all the dangerous things he’d survived in his life, she’d been the one thing he couldn’t.
The tears spilled over, rolling down her cheeks.
“You still love him.”
She swallowed and wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. Then she looked at him and nodded.
“And I’m guessing you ain’t found anyone else either.”
“No. When Daniel went, it was like he turned out the light behind him.” She swiped away another tear and made a face. “Actually, it’s like he burned down the whole fucking house.”
It wasn’t like she hadn’t tried to find that kind of spark again with someone else.
In the first few years after she’d arrived in Florida, she had gone through a phase of bringing warm bodies home every night, hoping to catch one of those mythical other fish that apparently populate the sea.
Mostly she just caught STIs. Nowadays, she was more discerning in her choice of bedfellows, and definitely more particular about her sexual health.
But she’d all but given up on finding anyone who could make her feel like he had.
Even the mere memory of his hands on her was more thrilling than any other man’s.
She sighed and leaned her head back against the wall.
“I dunno why I’ve never been able to get my shit together.
Get a proper job. Form mature relationships.
Resume normal transmission.” She gave him a wry smile.
“Honestly, I think half my problem is that I have terrible taste in men. It’s my fatal flaw. I’m like an asshole-seeking missile.”
He smiled and shook his head, like what she said both amused and annoyed him.
“It’s like I have this flashing neon sign above my head that reads ‘Fuck me, then forget me’.” She turned her head toward Ryan. “You’re a guy. Can you see it?”
He wasn’t looking above her head. His eyes were roving all over her face. They were so blue, like the color of a gas flame.
Finally, they settled on her lips. “No,” he said in a low burr.
The room trembled from the impact of another gust of wind, and she heard a metallic grinding that could only be the sound of the tin sheets parting company with the roof. Their attention snapped from each other back to the precarious situation they were in.
Ryan got to his feet, dragging her up with him.
“We need to get out of this room.”
“And go where?”
“The bathroom.”
He half-led, half-dragged her into the adjoining room, wrenching the door shut behind them. The sounds of the storm were muted in here, but the whole house still shuddered with every wind gust.
Ryan pointed at the tub. “Get in.”
She climbed in at one end. He squatted in the other. They both gripped the sides and stared at each other in the dark.
Jessica exhaled shakily. Well. That was a mood killer.
Her lips tingled, like they still remembered what almost happened.
Ryan cleared his throat, shifting his grip on the tub edge. His hand brushed against hers.
Jessica squeezed her fingers into a fist. “If we die in here, how long do you think it’ll take them to find our bodies?”
Ryan’s hand found hers again. This time, he squeezed it tight. “We’re not gonna die in here.”
Jessica tried to smile.
She failed.
* * *
Ryan tried to make himself comfortable in the bathtub, but it was too short by several feet. His legs were bent to the side and the rolled-up towel he was using as a pillow was damp and hard. Curled up at the other end, Jessica was dosing, her cheek pressed against her forearm.
He stared at the ceiling, listening to the never-ending drone of the wind and rain outside, and the steady trickle closer at hand, where water was running down the side of the wall and pooling on the floor.
He shifted onto his other hip bone. At least the discomfort gave him the impetus to think.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. The battery was half-gone; he shouldn’t be using it. Yet, when it came to Kylie, he’d given up counting the things that he shouldn’t have done for her.
He brought up the last text she’d sent him.
From an unknown number, of course. Nearly every time she contacted him, it was from a different cellphone.
Sometimes the gap between those times was weeks.
Sometimes it was months. Once, about five years back, she’d gone a whole year without contacting him and he’d thought, finally, it was over.
She’d gotten clean, she’d gotten her shit together.
And he’d begun entertaining ideas of getting his own together.
Finalizing their divorce. Maybe dating again.
Carlita Owens, a sheriff’s deputy he worked with in Memphis, had been chomping at the bit to put his profile up on Tinder.
And then, an unknown number on his cell. She was back in trouble. Except she now had a kid with her.
He looked down at the screen. This last text was from two days ago.
Ryan, I’m so sorry. For everything. I know I’ve put you through hell.
He stopped reading. He’d read it all before and not just in this text. That she was sorry. That she was getting help. That she was going to rehab.
And yet, she continued to compromise him in every way possible. She’d destroyed their marriage. Trashed his dignity. Jeopardized his job.
This shit had to stop. He needed to pull the ripcord on their pathetic excuse of a relationship and salvage what was left of his youth.
But what weakened his resolve was the knowledge that none of it was her fault.
Addiction was an illness. He saw the damage narcotics wrought in people’s lives nearly every day of his own.
He observed the futility of this country’s ill-fated war on drugs everywhere he looked.
His wife was sick. She needed help. And he wasn’t providing that. Every time he sent her money or showed up to strong-arm some asshole who’d tried to get more than money from her, he wasn’t helping her. He was just enabling her to continue living that life. He was, in fact, making her sicker.
Underlying everything was his own bone-deep feeling of guilt. If he hadn’t gotten her knocked up, if they hadn’t gotten married so young, what would the trajectory of their lives have been?
It was an unanswerable question. All he knew was that he couldn’t let guilt destroy what remained of his life.
He hit delete, and the text vanished.
As soon as he got back home, he’d get a new number. And the first call he’d make with it was to a divorce lawyer.
“I really hope this rehab is real this time, Kylie,” he muttered. Then he turned his phone off and slipped it back in his pocket.
Carefully, so as not to wake Jessica, he climbed out of the tub and stretched his stiff limbs. Then he sloshed across the inch of water that now covered the bathroom floor.
The hallway was pitch black, like the rest of the house.
Too dark to see any of the damage the storm had done, but he could tell from the wind tunneling down the narrow passage that some parts of the living room and kitchen had been left exposed to the elements.
Leaks had sprung up all along the passage, and the carpet was sopping.
Every step was like walking on a wet sponge.
He returned to the bathroom, closing the door before the wind could follow him in.
The candle was burning low in the mug on the floor. Jessica stirred and sat up. “What’s wrong?”
“You hear that?”
“What?”
“The storm. I think it’s moving away.”