Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Jessa
I’ve reconciled the same three figures four times, and they keep coming out wrong because my head is twenty minutes across town at a public park.
Marc has my daughter. Bella’s there too, which ought to settle me. It doesn’t.
I close the spreadsheet, then open it again so I don’t lose the morning’s work.
My hands aren’t quite steady on the trackpad.
We’ve been in his town ten days, and already I’ve let him drive my kid to a park, sit at my breakfast table, and blow on my knuckles without once asking if he could.
Every time I push us apart, he strolls back through the gap.
Some traitor cell in my body lights up whenever he walks into a room, and I hate it.
Worse than the wanting is the calm. When he’s close, the noise in my head shuts off, my shoulders come down, and I breathe easily for the first time all day. Nothing about a man should do that to me, least of all him.
I admired him once, back when he was a name on a jersey. That was before. Before he showed me the rest of him.
I could survive the lust and desire. The fear is the problem. If he ever works out whose daughter Mia is, the warmth goes cold. I’ve watched what men do when they decide they’ve been robbed.
He doesn’t remember me, though. Ten years and a string of women sit between us. I was a few hours of a night he can’t reconstruct, the one mercy I’ve got left, and I should leave it untouched.
My phone says half past two, an hour since they left. Somewhere across town, Marc is crouched in the wood chips, patient with two girls who adore him, and the picture refuses to frighten me, which is the whole problem.
A knock pulls me out of it before I spiral any further.
Rachel stands on the mat with an empty measuring cup in both hands and an apology already on her face. “Sorry to bug you. Do you have any sugar I could steal? I ran out, and the store’s a hike with three kids.”
“Course.” I step back to let her in, then catch the hitch in her step. She’s favoring her right leg, putting it down carefully and lifting it quickly. “Hey. Are you limping?”
“It’s nothing. I tripped on the stairs.” She says it too fast, the cup turning in her hands.
I look at her face, then back at the leg. “Did you trip, Rachel, or did somebody do something?”
The cup goes still. She bites her lower lip and stares at a point past my shoulder. “Jared came by yesterday afternoon to see the kids.”
“And?”
“He grabbed at my little one when she wouldn’t go to him.” Rachel keeps her voice down, afraid the kids might hear through the walls. “I got between them. The stairs were right there.”
“And you’re telling me you tripped.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re clearly in a lot of pain. You don’t have to hide it from me.” I take the cup out of her hands so she can’t hide behind it. “Come sit down. Let me look at it.”
“I really shouldn’t, the kids are—”
“They’ll be fine for five minutes. Sit.”
She lets me steer her to the couch, lowering herself with a wince she tries to swallow. I crouch and ease her shoe off. The ankle’s puffed up tight, the skin shiny over the bone, going purple at the edges. That’s no bruise from a fall, and I keep my opinion of Jared behind my teeth for now.
“This needs ice.” I push up. “Do you have insurance? We should get it X-rayed.”
“He took me off his plan, months ago.” She says it evenly, picking at a thread on her sleeve.
I push that aside to be angry about later and head for the freezer. “What are you going to do, then? Are you working?”
“I wait tables at the diner on Fourth.” A small, tired shrug follows me across the room. “Living off savings to make rent here. It won’t stretch forever.”
I wrap a bag of frozen peas in a dish towel and bring it back, settling it over the ankle. She hisses, then sighs as the cold bites in.
“Why aren’t you doing something that pays better?” I sink onto the cushion beside her. “No offense. You’re sharp. You shouldn’t be running plates for tips.”
“I’ve been out of the workforce a long time.” Her mouth twists. “I used to do IT, mostly networks and ticketing. It’s been years, though. Nobody hires the gap.”
“My firm’s hiring.” It’s out before I’ve thought it through, and I don’t take it back. “We’re expanding. Half the building’s empty desks. If there’s an IT seat open, I can put your name in front of the right person.”
She catches my eye, then looks away. “I’ve got the kids. I can’t do nine to five with three little ones.”
“Half our roles are remote.” I nudge the peas higher on her ankle. “Lots of people work from home. You’d be there for school runs and still pull a real salary.”
“And if I had my own paycheck,” Rachel says slowly, half to herself, “he couldn’t hold the rent over me anymore. These days he likes reminding me I can’t afford to leave.”
“That’s the whole point of him doing it.” I top up the coffee I’ve started for us. “The money’s a leash. Cut the leash.”
“I’ll look into it.” It comes out somewhere between a no and a yes, which is further than she’d have gone a week ago.
I hand her the mug and come around to what I’ve really been wanting to ask. “Have you thought about getting out? Leaving town? Go somewhere he can’t drop by whenever he feels like it.”
“I can’t, legally.” She curls both hands around the mug. “Not with the custody mess. I want to file for divorce, but I don’t think he’ll let me go that easy.”
“If you’ve got proof of what he does, you can make him.” I keep my eyes on her. “Build a case.”
“Jared’s a firefighter.” Her laugh has no humor in it. “He hauls people out of burning buildings, and the whole town loves him for it. Who would believe me over him?”
“Get video evidence.” I say it plainly because she needs plain. “All that respect evaporates the second there’s video evidence.”
She goes quiet, turning the mug.
I dig a pamphlet out of the kitchen drawer, the one a women’s center pressed on me my first week in town, and close her fingers around it. “The day we moved in, I put cameras up in this apartment. I don’t sleep right without them. You should think about doing the same.”
“He’d lose it if he found cameras.” Her thumb worries the pamphlet’s edge. “If he ever thought I was putting a case together against him.”
“Then we keep them hidden. Mine are.” I shrug. “He won’t know they exist until a judge does.”
She makes a face, then nods slowly. “Maybe.” Her gaze drifts toward the hall. “Where’s your girl? It’s quiet in here.”
“Out with her friend.” I take a sip and keep my tone easy.
“The friend with the uncle.” Rachel’s eyes sharpen, done with her own troubles for the moment. “The director from Crestline Academy. I saw him last night, you know. Parked outside, sitting in his car.”
My stomach drops a floor, but I keep my face bored. “His niece and Mia are joined at the hip. He brought her home, that’s all.”
“So he had breakfast with you.” A slow smile spreads over her face, the first real one I’ve seen from her.
“It wasn’t—”
“He’s gorgeous, Jessa.” She’s enjoying this way too much. “And kind, by every account. Good man. Both my kids are at that academy on scholarships he handed out.”
That catches me off guard. “Both of them?”
“I know.” She huffs a laugh. “Neither of them could kick a ball straight a year ago. I think his scout came for some other kid and spotted mine instead. Everybody in town knows my situation. He probably took pity.” She shrugs.
“I’ve never seen my two play this well. They’re good now, but a year ago I don’t think they knew which end of the field was theirs. ”
Marcus did this.
“He didn’t even know who I was. I doubt he does even now.
” Rachel shakes her head, almost wondering at it.
“Why would he? Hundreds of people work under him. But there are other kids in that school from broken homes, parents who couldn’t afford a uniform, let alone tuition.
He handles all of it without making a show.
” She tests the ankle and stands. “He’s a good person. ”
“Maybe he is,” I murmur, and I don’t like how much I mean it.
At the door, she balances the borrowed sugar against her hip and looks back at me.
“Thank you for the coffee, the ice, the bandage, the talking.” Her smile wobbles.
“It’s nice having a friend out here. Most of the women won’t come near me.
They know what he is, and they want to stay on the fire department’s good side. ”
“I don’t have a side.” I lean on the frame. “And I could use a friend too. So we’re even.”
She laughs, a real one this time, and limps off down the hall toward her kids. I stand in the doorway and watch her go: three kids, a swollen ankle, a husband the whole town calls a hero but who is violent behind closed doors. None of it is fair, and there’s nothing about it I can fix today.
I shut the door, then go cut up the watermelon I’ve been ignoring in the fridge. Spearing a piece, I chew on Rachel’s whole life, on Marc scouting broken kids, paying for their uniforms, saying nothing about any of it.
“Why can’t you just be an asshole?” I tell the watermelon, jabbing the fork in. “It would be so much easier to hate you.”
The knock that answers a few minutes feels almost smug.
I open the door to all three of them: Mia and Bella vibrating with sugar, Marc behind them with his hands in his pockets. His mouth’s set hard, and he won’t quite meet my eyes, but whatever’s wrong, he buries it under a quiet “We’re back.”
I try not to look at him directly, my heart feeling strange in my chest after this new information I’ve just learned about him.
“So I see.” I crouch to the girls. “Did you have a good time?”
“The best,” Mia announces. “I went so high on the swings. And something bit me, but Marc fixed it with a bandage.”
“Did he?” I find the strip of bandage low on her shin and peel back the edge to check the damage. There’s clean skin underneath, no welt, no bite, no scratch, nothing but the faint pale line where the adhesive sat. I press the spot. She doesn’t flinch.
I look up at Marc. “You sure something bit her? There’s nothing here.”