26. Twenty-Six
Ifeel better. Rephrase—I’m fucking ecstatic. I don’t cuss once on our drive to Airlie Gardens, even driving behind a shithead doing forty in the passing lane. Things are complicated— I get it—but confessing my feelings opens her up to the possibility and brings us closer. And she didn’t refuse me, not entirely.
Besides, we’re here. Together. Admiring the gorgeous oaks draped in Spanish moss, the delicate gardens that remind me of manicured estates from old books, and the water views, where boat and bird spotting becomes a peaceful game to play.
Ahead, the group halts when the paved path ends, debating where to go. Unable to agree, they split up. Tom and Marcy take a right toward the pier to spot oyster beds and herons. Vernon, Rose, and Sara opt for the butterfly house and glass mosaic garden across the vast lawn on the left.
Rowan trails behind Sara. I fall in beside her. In a silent partnership, we cross the crisply mowed lawn with its thick-bellied grand oak in the center. We maze around picnics and families. Rose, Vernon, and Sara disappear into the butterfly house, but she detours to a shaded bench. I ease into the space beside her. We say nothing, like we’re simply the chaperone and driver awaiting our passengers.
Finally, her big blue eyes catch mine. “Parts of my mac-n-cheese story are true. I used to tell myself I was protecting my students from something horrible, but they can handle anything. I’m the one who can’t handle everyone knowing. But I think you should.”
“Only if you’re ready.” Her uneasy smile indicates that she isn’t ready, simply willing. Perhaps baring my heart has lessened her tight defenses. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” She straightens her shoulders with a deep breath. “I was fifteen, just home from school, and hungry. Boxed mac-n-cheese was a typical go-to when I was alone. I started the water in a pot that was too small because I was too lazy to wash the one I should’ve used.”
“Your mom was at work?” Throwing in a benign question is a journalist’s trick to relax someone into talking, and I want to help her through it.
A weak smile flashes over her face. “Yes. She usually didn’t get home until six or so. But that day, she was coming home early.”
“Why?”
“I won an essay contest,” she reports sheepishly. “A thousand words on preserving the sanctity and beauty of our parks for environmental science. Mom insisted on celebrating. She planned to take off work early for mani-pedis, dinner out, and Baskin-Robbins for dessert.”
She stops, head lowered like she’s peering over a cliff’s edge and bracing herself for the fall.
“What happened?” I urge, my voice gentle.
“Mom had been dating a fellow officer. She rarely dated. I used to tease her that she was an army nun, but I understood, too. She was exceptionally cautious. I mean, as careful as she could be… I never thought it was her fault.”
“Tell me about the fellow officer.”
“Rick… Richard Warren Linkous, the third, to be precise.” Her eyes plead with mine. “I don’t tell people this story.”
“I’m not people.”
She glances at the butterfly house, where a family spills out from the double-doored exit. A smile crosses her lips watching Sara through the screened windows, arms laced with resting butterflies and Vernon snapping pictures.
“They’ve adopted each other,” she says. “At least Sara’s scored pseudo-grandparents out of this.”
“She’s scored more than that.”
She turns to me. “Can we go somewhere else?”
We stroll side by side like any other couple, almost. We’re missing the absent-minded hand-holding and automatic touches others naturally drift to. We aren’t there yet. But for the first time in my life, I want that. Someday.
We pass heavy-laden strollers, parents carrying backpacks, and toddlers stopping to examine every leaf, bug, or flower petal on the path. Ready to spill her story, she looks bothered by revealing something wicked in such a lovely place.
I get it. The setting is wrong. Not that there’s a right place for this.
On the opposite side of Airlie, a small church and graveyard bridges the gap to the final garden—well-shaded with fountains, elaborate oaks drenched in Spanish moss, and a circular walkway covered so well in vines that it’s ten degrees cooler inside and almost dark.
She leads me through the vine-covered walkway to a secluded bench. A cocoon of greenery-wrapped columns serves as a cool, dim stage. It smells like dew and honeysuckle. Sitting, she glances around as if worried her story might wilt the white petals and turn the air sour.
“How did you know it wasn’t the true story?” she asks.
I lean forward, elbows to knees, and smirk lightly. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“Yeah, so I’ve been told. Mira’s put it on repeat since Grandpa Ro confronted us about pilfering his whiskey at fifteen, and I couldn’t lie. At least my students buy it… or pretend to.”
We fall into an awkward silence as she fidgets with her scarf.
“Let’s make a pact,” I say, “This is a safe place. Ours and no one else’s. No matter what’s said. No matter what happens. When we leave, we leave it all here, too. We never have to talk about it again if that’s what you want.”
She laughs a little. “What happens in Airlie, stays in Airlie?”
“If it helps… You never have to be afraid to tell me anything, you know.”
“I know.”
I nod and say, “Richard Warren Linkous, the third.”
“Mom dated him. He seemed nice enough, but a few months in, she broke it off. It was an amicable parting to hear her tell it. We were moving again soon, and, I don’t know, she didn’t want any complications. After my deadbeat father and having a daughter in the house, Mom always kept men at a distance. After Richard, she didn’t date at all. That’s why she stopped believing in love. She still doesn’t date. That makes me sad.”
She straightens the rumpled fabric of her dress around her thighs and twiddles her fingers. “So, that day. A Friday. Home from school. Hungry. Mom coming home soon. The doorbell rings, and it’s him.”
Her eyes shut tightly, and I imagine her memories flooding back, his face permanently branded there.
“He was the kind of guy you wouldn’t look twice at—in the park watching his kids play or in Home Depot buying caulk. He was disturbingly normal. But you never know what’s going on under the surface.”
“What happened?”
“He asked for Mom. I said she wasn’t home. I heard the water boiling over and hitting the burner. So, I spouted off a quick I’ll let her know you stopped by before closing the door and rushing to the kitchen.”
Her hands are shaking now, so she tucks them under her legs, and rocks back and forth. “I missed every sign of trouble, did everything wrong—it all happened so fast.”
“How could you have known?” I ask softly.
“The alcohol on his breath. His flushed, bothered face. Jittery hands. Me vaguely remembering then that they’d broken up weeks before. And… that he must’ve blocked the door from closing.”
She rocks faster, energy pulsing. “He never said a thing. I still don’t really know why he did it. Because he could, I guess. And he was angry.”
“Tell me what he did.”
“He snatched the pot from my hand. The water splashed and burned my fingers. I screamed, so he knocked me to the floor and poured it on my face.”
She holds her left hand high on her face, covering her eye, and the lines of her injuries match—burned hand and lower cheek—where she tried shielding herself.
“He laughed when he did it. Laughed at my agony. I still hear it sometimes.”
Our pleasant cocoon feels pressurized now, full of tension that builds in our silence.
She fills it quickly, like she can’t help it. “I remember everything—what he wore, the grime under his fingernails, the bitterness of his breath. I remember wanting to die. But then it stopped hurting. He melted my nerves. I still don’t have feeling in some parts. When the water ran out and my screaming slowed, he pressed the bottom of the hot pot to my face and neck like he wanted to crush me with it. Him on top of me… pressing… my skin sizzling… him laughing… my jaw cracking…”
Her fingers press into her marks, massaging the base of her neck, like she’s experiencing phantom pain just by retelling it. I want to stop her—she shouldn’t have to relive her horror to keep a promise to me. And I never expected how much it would hurt to hear it.
But I see she wants to get it out, like it’s a stone trapped inside her, weighing her down. She’s not even crying, as if she reached her tear quota for this years ago and can’t produce them anymore. Or perhaps, shielded from the sun and surrounded by honeysuckle in our safe place, she doesn’t need tears.
“And, um…” Her eyes lock on her feet, and her voice cracks. “I blacked out. He didn’t like that. The screaming and fighting seemed important to him, so he slapped me awake again and again. That part—hardly anyone knows that part.”
Her voice trails off. I want to touch her, hold her, but that isn’t what she needs. Not that I really know what she needs. There are no words, no magical touches, no combinations of sympathy or anger that could even put a dent in the pain she’s suffered. And still suffers.
She twists toward me and looks surprised to find me crying. It shocks me, too. Soft streams trickle down my cheeks and merge into my stubble like I can’t physically contain the pain of what she’s telling me.
That she went through this…
That someone did that to her…
I have so much rage for her agony and love for the woman she is that my quaking emotions need some release, and tears are all I can do.
I haven’t cried since Devin, and never like this. It strikes me how alike they are—both unfairly poisoned with what they can’t change or ignore.
And Rowan is reminded of it every time she looks in the mirror.
She releases a trapped breath and, twisting in my direction, brings her hands to my face. Her warmth softens me, like her touch naturally releases my pain for her. My cheek presses into her hand as she wipes my tears with her fingertips. I’ve never felt more emotionally connected to anyone before, not even Devin. The world could go to shit around us, disintegrate into ash, fall into the seas, implode or explode, and I wouldn’t care because everything I need is here. With her.
A gentle smile perks on her lips. “A man who cries—I thought that was a myth.”
“You’ve never seen a man cry before?”
“Haven’t been around many. I saw Grandpa Ro get teary once—never cry. For years, the people I loved most shielded me from their pain like it would only add to my own. Even Mom stopped crying in front of me, afraid it would hurt me more to see it.”
“Does it?”
“No. Strangely, it makes me feel better. I wish we’d been friends then.”
I flash her a funny look.
She shrugs. “It’s a weird thing to say, I guess. We were at Fort Hood. I had friends, but none were close, and it was an awful situation anyway. People keep their distance when they don’t know how to comfort someone. I spent weeks in the hospital—the worst pain came when I was healing.”
“I couldn’t have helped that,” I say weakly.
“No. But you never would’ve let me suffer alone—that’s who you are. It would’ve been a relief—someone not being skittish around me. Someone telling me jokes or stories or pulling out a book to read. Someone to share my anger, fear, or whatever else—to feel it with me. No holding back.”
“They’ve been talking to you about Devin.”
“Yes, they gush about you two. I’m sure he was grateful to have you at his side. I would’ve been.”
“He would’ve loved you, you know.” My head droops and tears spill onto my pant leg. “I still see him sometimes, talk to him.”
A light smile plays on her lips. “Good. You should hold on to him as long as you need.”
Tears flow heavier now like she’s granted me permission to feel normal. And I do—for the first time, I think. It’s as if all the shit I went through with Devin prepared me for her. I couldn’t be the guy she needs now without understanding real suffering, real pain. She gets me and trusts I have at least half a chance of getting her. Every word she gives me ties us closer together, tightening the threads of our connection.
But her story isn’t over. A quiet moment later, I ask, “In the kitchen… how did it stop?”
“Mom came home.”
“What happened then?”
“Mom was an Army colonel at the time, a division chief. She shot him with her service weapon.” Her shoulders pop up twice in quick succession, like she hears the gunshots in her head.
“Dead?”
“A man attacking her daughter in her own house? Yes. Dead. She didn’t even warn him.”
“Good.”
“Yeah. Apparently, he was on drugs, pissed at something that had happened at work, and maybe still angry over the breakup—there was a lot of conjecture after. In the news. With the police. With his family. Not that it mattered to me. Reasons and excuses couldn’t heal me faster or take away the damage. I felt like my life was over. It was for a while… But that’s another story.”
A long silence ensues. I wrestle sharp feelings—hatred for Richard Warren Linkous the third, agony over her pain, but, above all, love for this incredible woman who rises above it every day.
I wipe my eyes on my shirt sleeves. Then, standing, I reach for her, and the second she drops her hand in mine, I pull her into my arms. She fits me perfectly. Head against my chest, she relaxes there, just as she did the night of the party.
“I wish we’d been friends then, too,” I whisper into her hair as I hold her.
A deep breath seems to release what’s left of her tension and anxiety, as if she’s expanding the tight bubble she usually keeps around her, giving her more room to breathe. “You’re right. I feel better.”
I edge away to see her face and run my fingers along the goosebumps on her arms. “I can’t take away what happened or erase the pain. Hell, I’ll never even understand what you went through, still go through. But I’m here. And every day from now on, I’ll be here, loving you, wanting you, hoping to make things better.”
“You have made things better.” A light shrug precedes her weak smile as she pulls away. “But trusting you with this is all I have to give you right now. Today has meant so much to me. I never thought someone like you… I wish things were different.”
“Things are different. It’s just a choice, Rowan.”
“It’s more than that. It’s me at a crossroads I didn’t expect, and desperate to do what’s right. I need you to trust me, Jack. I’m glad we had today, but I need you to stay away for a while.”
“What? Why?”
“You know why.”
Her voice shakes again, and her body tenses. My fingers tighten against her back, holding her in place. She cups my damp cheeks with trembling fingers, and for the first time in all of this, tears speck her eyes.
“Jack… something about you strips me bare… and that’s hard for me. And unfair to Dean. Please, promise me you’ll keep your distance until I’m… ready.”
I hate this plan. Every nerve in my body pulls to her like a damn magnet, now more than ever. Distance is torture when what I want is to scoop her up, carry her home, and wrap myself in her for as long as humanly possible.
But I can’t deny her anything, either.
A weak nod makes my hair fall over my creased brow. “I’ll be waiting.”
My fingers drag over her as she pulls away.