Chapter Eight
Jade
I woke with a gasp and a fading scream in my throat. Eric’s voice still rang in my ears. Not a memory of what he’d actually said, but the tone of it. Then the beating had started.
I didn’t lie back down, and I had no intention of going back to sleep. I changed my shirt and pulled on some yoga pants and left the room. I needed coffee to face this day, and lots of it.
The corridor stretched quiet and mostly dark, with only the low glow from security lights running along the baseboards to guide my way. My reflection caught in the glass panel by the stairwell door, but I averted my gaze and kept moving.
The kitchen was at the far end of the building. The smell of coffee reached me before I made it to the kitchen itself, and I stopped in the doorway.
Rip sat at the far end of the kitchen island with a mug in front of him and his phone face-down on the counter. The coffeemaker on the back counter was mid-cycle, hissing quietly. He looked up when I appeared in the doorway and he didn’t look surprised.
“Hey,” I said.
He nodded at the coffeemaker. “It’s almost done.”
I crossed to the cabinet where we kept the mugs and got one down, setting it on the counter.
My hands still trembled from the nightmare.
When the coffeemaker finished its cycle, I tried to pour a cup.
The hot liquid splashed over the rim of the mug and spread across the counter in a dark, steaming pool.
I made a sound under my breath and set my cup down before snagging a paper towel.
Rip moved from his stool. He didn’t say anything.
He reached past me and picked up the carafe himself, filled my mug steadily, and set the carafe back in place.
He gently took the paper towels from my hand and urged me to the table while he wiped up the spill.
He set the mug in front of me and went back to his stool.
I wrapped both hands around it and sat there for a moment just letting the warmth come through the ceramic.
“Nightmare?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He didn’t ask what about. Just drank his coffee in silence.
I pulled out the stool across from him and sat. The kitchen was quiet enough that the hum of the refrigerator was audible. Outside the narrow window above the sink, the sky was still completely black with only the faint halo of security lights filtering in.
“Can I ask you something?”
Rip set his mug down. “Anything.”
“Your name.” I’d been wanting to ask since we’d spoken in the garden, since he’d told me the outline of why he’d gone to prison. “Rip. Where does it come from?”
The corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile exactly. “My name is Randall Isaac Perry.”
I stared at him. Worked it out. “R.I.P.”
“Yeah.”
“And you killed someone.”
“I did.” He said it the same way someone might confirm they’d been to a particular city once. Plain, factual.
“You told me some of what happened, but I get the feeling there was more to it. Was there?” I didn’t know why I asked. Maybe because he’d heard the worst of me out in the garden that afternoon and hadn’t recoiled.
Rip wrapped his hands around his mug and looked at it for a moment.
“When my brother was twelve,” he said, “I was in my senior year of college, so I lived away most of the time. I always came home on the weekends, though. Mostly because my brother hadn’t been acting right for a while and I wanted to make sure he stayed safe.
” I read between the lines and sucked in a breath but kept silent.
“I came home from school early one weekend. I found Ethan in the shower, water so hot his skin had gone red. He’d been scrubbing himself with a washcloth and a shit ton of soap. ”
He paused, his jaw working. “I had to get it out of him piece by piece. What our stepfather had been doing to him while I was at school. Not once. Not twice. For months. Close to a year. And it all just clicked into place. I’d been right Ethan… had been acting off.”
The refrigerator hummed. I held my coffee and didn’t move.
“I took Ethan to school,” Rip continued.
“Then came back home. Our stepfather was in the kitchen.” His voice stayed flat and even, but I heard the underlying emotion he tried to hide.
“I told him what Ethan had told me. He laughed. Said that, yeah, he’d fucked my brother and he would continue to fuck my brother as long as he lived in that house.
” Rip’s knuckles flexed around the mug. “I don’t have a clear memory of exactly what happened next.
But when the police got there and finally pulled me off of him, there wasn’t much left of his face. ”
He took a sip of coffee.
“He was already dead?”
“Oh, yeah. Dead and then some.”
I took another sip of coffee, wrapping both hands around the mug and lacing my fingers loosely. “And prison?”
“Prison is a different world,” he said. “When you go in alone, without protection, you become a target. The first fight came to me inside two hours. A man twice my size thought a new fish was an easy mark.” Rip’s expression didn’t change.
“He was wrong. After that, word got around. But some people decide they need to test it anyway. One of them had a shank.” He turned his forearm slightly and I saw the scar there, jagged and pale along the inside of his forearm.
“Killed him before he finished what he started. The other one, six months later, was trying to take out someone I’d started watching out for.
Younger kid who reminded me of my brother.
” He set down his mug. “So. Three men total. After that last killing, everyone started calling me Rip.”
“Do you regret any of them?”
He considered this with the same deliberate care he gave everything. “The stepfather? No. The two in prison?” He paused. “I regret the circumstances that made it necessary. I don’t regret being alive.”
I stared at my hands around the mug. The trembling had stopped somewhere while he’d been talking.
“I told you some of my story. But there’s more.
The worst part of his abuse wasn’t the hitting.
Not the photos he used to keep me in line.
It was later, when things got bad enough that I actually thought about…
not being here anymore.” The words came out quiet, barely above a whisper.
“He knew I was at that point. He could see it. And instead of pulling back, he pushed.” My voice dropped further.
“He wanted to see if he could push me to take that last step. I think he genuinely wanted to see if he had that kind of power over me.” Rip’s face had gone very still.
“The really horrible part,” I said, “was that I stayed. Even knowing what he was doing, knowing what he wanted. I stayed and I begged him to let me stay.” I laughed, a short, humorless sound.
“To this day, I can’t tell you why, other than I had no way to make it on my own without him.
He’d isolated me from my friends and what little family I had.
Sure, I could leave. I could get a job. But where would I go? ”
“You got out. You’re alive and you’re here.” I could listen to Rip speak all day. But hearing him validate my effort, to praise me for simply staying alive made my eyes sting. “That’s what matters, Jade.”
“I barely made it.”
“’Barely’ counts, honey. Any scenario that gets you here where you’re safe counts.”
We sat in companionable silence for a while after that. When I finished my coffee, Rip refreshed both our cups and the conversation turned lighter until the faintest sliver of light peeked through the window next to where we sat.
Rip’s hand lay flat on the tabletop between us.
I looked at it for a long moment. Then I reached across and put my hand over his.
His fingers curled around mine without hesitation.
His skin was rough and warm, the scars of his knuckles raised under my palm, and I shivered slightly.
The dark outside the kitchen window had started to go gray by the time Rip squeezed my hand and stood.
I watched him open the cabinet beside the range and find the skillet. He knew this kitchen better than I did, which made sense. He was here every morning. I got up and looked in the refrigerator and found eggs and a half an onion in a Ziplock bag and a block of cheddar that was mostly intact.
We didn’t talk much while we cooked. He worked the griddle for pancakes, and I cracked eggs into the bowl and grated cheese and diced what was left of the onion.
Ada came through the kitchen doorway at ten past six with her hair still in its sleep braid and her hands already wrapped around a to-go mug she’d brought from her apartment. She stopped in the doorway and looked at us both.
“There’s coffee,” Rip told her, glancing up at her briefly.
Ada crossed to the coffeemaker. “I see that.” She topped off her cup, took a sip, and settled herself onto the stool Rip had vacated earlier. “You two are up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I said.
Ada looked at me over her mug. She wore a warm expression as she looked from me to Rip and back while I folded the cheese into the eggs and Rip flipped the pancakes. Both of us plated the food into serving dishes before moving to the island to eat.
We ate in companionable silence. The light through the blinds went from gray to pale gold, cutting horizontal lines across the counter.
“It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.” Ada smiled up at me as the sunshine streamed across the table. “Did you guys have plans for today?”
Rip shrugged but glanced at me before he answered. “Figured I’d see if Jade wanted to go for a ride later this morning.”
I inhaled sharply, looking up at him in surprise. That’s when it dawned on me that Rip had reached past me for the syrup twice, and I hadn’t tensed either time. His arm passing near me had barely registered. Then I smiled. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
“Great!” Ada said, her eyes wide with delight. “That sounds like so much fun.”