Chapter 2 Martin
MARTIN
She perches on the edge of the couch, back rigid, eyes fixed straight ahead, chewing on her bottom lip like she’s trying to take the damn thing off.
I might not have trained as a psychiatrist, but I know at a glance when someone is in a bad way, and this girl?
It’s hard to imagine anyone doing worse.
“You want something to eat?”
She jolts when I speak, head whipping around at once.
“I—I’m fine,” she replies, forcing that smile back onto her face again. She keeps grinning at me like that whenever I ask her something, as though she’s apologizing for making me worry.
I eye her for a moment, but then nod. I’m not going to force anything on her that she doesn’t want, even if it’s clear she could use a hot meal and something to drink.
I can practically hear Martha’s voice at the back of my mind, telling me I’m crazy for bringing a woman I don’t know into my house. That’s your problem, Martin, you can’t see when something has nothing to do with you. You always want to get involved…
Hell, maybe she’s got a point.
But there was no chance I was going to leave this girl on the side of the road in the rain when she so clearly needed someone to bail her out.
I don’t even want to think what the wrong kind of guy might make of her presence there, don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if she had stepped into the wrong car.
She might not know me, but I don’t mean any harm to her.
That’s part of the deal as a doctor, taking care of the world at large, even when you’re not in scrubs.
“Can I check your arm?” I offer, and she frowns at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Your arm,” I repeat gently. “When you were in the car, you said you slept on it funny. It looked pretty bad. I could take a look for you.”
She doesn’t move for a long moment. I realize, at the last second, how it must sound.
“I’m a doctor,” I explain. “I can fix you up if there’s something wrong.”
“No, I’m fine, really,” she tells me, wrapping her arms around herself protectively. Her jacket, which she has not taken off, slides down her shoulders a little, and a bruise reveals itself on her upper arm.
My brow furrows, and I move closer to her, between her and the crackling fire I’ve set up in the hearth to warm her up. “What’s that?”
She glances down at the bruise and swiftly grabs her jacket to cover it. “Nothing.”
She sounds defensive. Whatever is going on here, it doesn’t have to do with just her. There’s someone she’s covering for. But why the hell would she want to protect someone who caused her harm like that…?
The question answers itself as soon as it appears in my mind.
Abuse. Must be. I’ve dealt with enough couples over the years in my work as a prenatal specialist to sense when someone is trying to protect a significant other, doing what they can to cover for someone who isn’t treating them the way they’re supposed to be treated.
We have protocols in place for handling it at work, but I’m not sure if any of them apply the same way here, in the confines of my home.
I take a seat opposite her in the large red armchair, not taking my eyes off her for an instant.
Her dark blonde hair is loose around her shoulders, still damp from where she was standing out in the rain, her olive skin flecked with muddy raindrops.
Her eyes, a deep brown, reflect the firelight ahead of her, and I wish more than anything that I could reach into her head and figure out what happened to her.
She said she left the city without knowing much about where she was going; was she fleeing from someone? Are they following her, even now?
“I’m going to make myself something to eat,” I tell her, rising to my feet. “You want to clean up, or change? There’s a bathroom at the end of that hall…”
For a moment, I think she’s going to turn me down again, but she must realize how lost she looks. She rises to her feet, grabbing the bag she rescued from her car and clutching it to her chest.
“Sure,” she replies. “This door, at the end…?”
I direct her to the bathroom, and I notice that she walks lightly, as though trying to move without attracting attention. She seems more like a frightened deer than a person right now, staring down the barrel of a hunter’s shotgun and doing everything she can to make sure it doesn’t go off.
She can’t be much older than her early twenties, too young to have lived a life that has put so much weight on her shoulders—though there’s no age that could prepare anyone for this, for whatever hell she’s been through.
I head to the kitchen, pulling some leftovers from the freezer and heating it up on the stove as the rain taps against the large glass windows that overlook the forest beyond.
This place was meant to be a sanctuary for me.
When I moved out here nearly ten years ago, after the divorce, I wanted somewhere that was entirely removed from the rest of the world, somewhere I could retreat to when everything got to be too much.
Of course, I still spend most of my time at the hospital, or in an apartment in the city that I keep for sleeping over those nights when I’m called in later than expected.
But this place was meant to be entirely for me.
I don’t bring people here. Not much, if at all.
When I saw her on the side of the road, my first instinct was to pull over, make sure she was okay, and then continue on alone; it wasn’t until I saw the look on her face that I knew there was no way I could leave her out there, as vulnerable and as helpless as she was.
I don’t think I’ve had anyone stay the night here in the whole time I’ve lived in this place, so the sound of the shower running from the next room should be alien.
But instead, it’s oddly…peaceful. Comforting, even. It reminds me of when I had a family of my own, a home that was full of life, even if that family is long behind me now.
Even if that family is, in some ways, the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
Even though she said she wasn’t hungry, I make her up a bowl of soup and place it on a tray along with a glass of water which I bring through to the living room just as she emerges from the bathroom.
Her hair is pulled back into a messy bun at the back of her head, and her face is glistening with steam; I can make out a small smattering of dark freckles over her cheeks and forehead.
“I… You didn’t need to make me anything,” she blurts out, standing still for a moment, in a pair of sweatpants and an oversized tee.
She’s dressed like she’s doing everything she can to distract from her body beneath, but I still find my mind briefly straying to how she must look underneath her clothes. Soft, curvy.
I dismiss the thought swiftly. That’s not what she came here for.
“It felt rude,” I remark. “To make something for myself and not for my guest.”
“I’m not your guest,” she replies. “I mean—it’s not that I’m not grateful for you doing all of this for me, that’s not what I mean, I just—I don’t expect you to put yourself out for me, that’s what I’m saying…”
“I’m not,” I reply. “Here. Sit. Have something to eat. It’s cold out there, you need to warm yourself up.”
She doesn’t protest any further, padding over to the couch in her bare feet and picking up the tray to put on her lap.
She gulps down some of the water and lifts the spoon to take a mouthful of the soup.
As soon as it touches her tongue, she seems to gain her appetite back, and she sets about putting the entire bowl away.
I watch her as she eats, picking at my own food distractedly.
Now that she’s in a T-shirt, I can see a couple of bruises on her arm, including the newest one that she leaned on when she was in the car.
It’s not the only mark on her skin, though.
There are a few that look older, several that wrap around the base of her wrist, like someone gripped her there tightly with no intention of letting her go.
She notices me looking, and shifts sightly so they’re out of sight. She’s not ready to acknowledge them yet. I get it. Pushing her is only going to make her vanish further into herself, and the last thing she needs is to feel like I’m prying further than she’s comfortable with.
“The soup is delicious,” she tells me after a long pause, finally lifting her gaze to meet mine.
“Glad to hear it. Old family recipe.”
“You made it yourself?” She sounds slightly surprised.
I chuckle and nod. “Hard to get a private chef all the way out here,” I remark, gesturing around. “You’ve got to know how to take care of yourself.”
She smiles—not the kind of smile she gave me before, but something real. It lights up her entire face, like a weight has lifted from her shoulders, and she scrapes the last of the soup up with her spoon before she devours it.
“Well, tell your mother that her recipe is amazing,” she replies.
I decide not to mention that my mother has been dead for a long time now.
She’s young, so she likely hasn’t had to contend with the loss of her parents the same way I have, and I don’t want to burden her with that weight when she’s shouldering enough as it is.
“I will.”
She carefully plants the tray on the small driftwood table in front of the fireplace, and casts her gaze around the room as though she’s seeing it for the first time.
“This place is beautiful,” she remarks. “You live here alone?”
I nod.
“It must be so nice, having a place outside of the city.” She sighs. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I see why people love it so much, but…all those people, all the time. I would love to have somewhere I could go if I needed a break from it all.”
“Do you?”
“Do I…?”
“Have somewhere you can go.”
She pauses, her brows tugging together for a moment. I wonder if it’s the first time she has considered that question. If she left in a hurry from wherever she was, she might not have thought about what she was going to do when she got to where she was going.
“I guess so,” she replies softly. “Nowhere like this, though.”
“Too reliant on a personal chef, huh?”
I try to lighten the mood with a joke, and she laughs, even through I’m not convinced it’s actually funny.
“Your accent,” she remarks. “You’re… Are you American?”
I shake my head. “Irish. Though I thought I’d gotten rid of my accent by now, given that I’ve lived here for a few decades.”
“I noticed it right away,” she remarks. “Not that that’s a bad thing, I mean. It’s so cool, the way you speak—God, I must sound like such a typical American, people must say things like that to you all the time…”
She presses her lips together, as though trying to keep herself from burbling any further. Her gaze flicks to the floor once more, as though she’s cursing herself for letting herself speak too much.
“Not as much as you’d think,” I reply. “People don’t notice it, most of the time.”
“I think it sounds lovely,” she remarks, slightly shyly.
And to my surprise, I notice a small flush of pink appearing on her cheeks.
She must just be warming up after her shower, and there’s nothing more to it than that.
Because there’s no way in hell a girl like that could be looking at me with anything other than gratitude.
“Thanks,” I reply, straightening up and grabbing the tray from her to distract myself. “You want anything else? I have more soup, if you—”
“A drink?” she suggests.
“More water?”
“No, I was thinking…uh, something a little stronger,” she replies hopefully.
When she flicks those brown eyes up to meet mine, I know I don’t stand a chance of disagreeing with her.
Call me gullible, but there’s something about having a pretty girl in my living room asking for a drink that makes it hard for me to focus on my good sense, even though I should be.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I reply. I’m not a big drinker, given that my job often calls for me to be ready at the drop of a hat, but I’m sure I can find something for us.
I dig through the cabinets and eventually come up with a bottle of scotch that one of my colleagues gave me for my birthday years ago.
He seemed to think that Scotland and Ireland were functionally the same place, and that this amounted to a gift from my homeland.
Either way, I appreciated the effort, even if I haven’t cracked into it yet.
And now is as good a night as any. I pour myself a generous helping and her a small glass, not wanting it to seem as though I’m trying to get her drunk or something, and return to the living room.
I extend my hand, holding the glass out to her, and she takes it, our fingertips brushing for the barest moment.
“Thanks,” she murmurs.
There’s that smile again. That sweet, open smile.
It’s a little crooked on one side, her lip rising a little higher on the right to show more of her teeth, but there’s something endearing about it.
I work with so many doctors who’ve had little tweaks and dental improvements made at every turn, but I like seeing someone whose face actually looks… well, real.
“And thank you for…for picking me up the way you did,” she continues. “I know a lot of people would have driven on by if they had seen me there, and I…I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t pulled over to help.”
“Call it my good deed for the day.”
“For the year, more like,” she corrects me as she takes a sip of the drink.
There’s something about the sight of her lips skimming over the top of the glass that makes it hard for me to focus on much else, but I swiftly draw my gaze away from her and turn it back to the fireplace, trying to remind myself that I’m meant to be focusing on helping her, not lusting after her.
And yet, as the sound of the crackling fire fills the room, and the scent of woodsmoke sinks into the air, all I can think is that I have a beautiful girl sitting just a few feet away from me.
And there are parts of me that cannot deny the entirely selfish reasons I helped her the way I did.