Chapter Forty-Two
O’Connor
She enters the room, squeezing the wetness from her hair with a towel, and I forget my words. It’s surreal being a part of her life and not just watching from the sidelines. Even the normal moments mean everything to me.
“Copy?” My handler repeats in my ear. I have to force my attention back to my phone, but my eyes don’t leave Linden as she moves through the room.
Her bruising is already starting to fade yellow, and her limp doesn’t strike pain across her face with every step. Instead, a gentle smile rests on her lips.
Happy looks beautiful on her, and peace makes her happy.
That’s all I want to give her.
“Copy. Boots down in 24 hours.” I end the call, sighing in regret when her worried gaze finds me.
“What does that mean?”
“Sit with me.”
She doesn’t sit on the mattress beside me; she scoots between my thighs and gets comfortable on my lap instead. I don’t think we’ll ever take up enough space to use this king-size bed.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
Humor fills my chest, and she quirks her head at me.
“I’ve never had anyone say that to me. All the deployments I went on… It never bothered me to go because I had nothing waiting for me.”
“I don’t know how that’s possible. You’re hot. Girls were probably begging for your attention.”
I shake my head in amusement. “I never wanted anyone to see me.”
“I saw you. The first day when I looked across the fence line. I saw you.”
“I thought I was the only stalker.” My palm rubs circles on her hip, squeezing lightly when she smiles.
“I wasn’t stalking you. I just couldn’t stop trying to see glimpses of your stupidly handsome face.” Her fingers pinch my chin. “Which is how it made it so easy to suspect you behind the mask.”
“Did I scare you?”
“The unknown scared me, but you never did.”
I can’t contain the exhale of relief. “I never want you to be afraid of anything ever again.”
“I’ll be afraid every time you walk out the door.”
“They’ve got a location on Edmund and Merrill. I have to go.”
Her face falls just at the mention of their names.
“All those people they took… Dead,” she chokes out. “I’m sitting here alive, and in love, and happy… And they’re all dead. It’s not fair. They deserved to live,” she cries.
I tuck her into my chest and let her feel all of it. If I had even an ounce of the heart that she did, then I never would have survived the horrors I’ve seen. Now I only wish I knew how to navigate emotions so I could help ease hers.
If I wasn’t so stunted, I could do more than hold her. But if this is all I have, then I’ll do it well.
My fingers stroke her back, in the way my mother used to do to me. It’s moments like this when I can’t help but remember my parents, and I almost let the grief creep back in.
Shove it down. Shove it away.
“Jack?”
The drumming of my heart nearly drowns out her voice. Shove it down. “Yeah, baby.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I’m not strong like you. I can’t handle this.”
I cradle her cheek in my hand. “Don’t say that. You’re stronger than I’ve ever been. Don’t ever apologize.”
“But–”
“You’re better than me, Linden. Don’t you see that? I don’t want you to be anything like me. I–” Shove it down. Shove it away.
“You what?”
“I want to be like you.”
“You want to cry all the time?”
“I don’t want to be afraid to feel.”
“You can, you know? With me.” She wipes her eyes. “I can handle whatever you’ve got.”
Looking at her tear-stained cheeks is nothing compared to the brightness in her eyes. The spirit of hers that never dulls. No matter what life throws at her. She doesn’t lock it away.
She feels all of it, and deals with it.
It used to be easier to shove the pain away, but I can’t anymore.
“I failed them, Linden. I was in that house night after night and had no idea those poor souls were down there. We always suspected another location, but we were wrong. I should have found them. I could have saved them.”
“No, I saw how well they were hidden. They made sure no one would suspect what they were doing. They had full-blown parties right on top of their sick medical room. If I can’t blame myself, then you can’t blame yourself either.
” Her tone is stern with authority, and it makes me smile. She’s a force to be reckoned with.
“My parents would have loved you.”
Her surprise is quickly covered by a soft smile as she wipes her cheeks dry. “Will you tell me about them?”
I might not be ready to talk about them, and I don’t know that I ever will, but she deserves to know. A little discomfort on my part is worth it if it means I can continue to see her smile.
I lay us back on the bed, ready to open up about my life, but I’m staring at the plain white ceiling, and my mind is blanketed in nothingness.
Until her fingers thread through mine and I look at our hands linked on my chest.
I see life so much more clearly now. The way my father loved my mother. The way they loved me. It’s exactly how I plan to love her and Avery.
That part feels easy.
“My father was in the shipping trade. He worked in the ports, and from his account, the man who ran everything. He was in D.C. petitioning to open more ports along the East Coast when he ran into my mother. Literally, according to them. She was picketing because of the ecological damage the ships were causing the marine life when my dad got caught up in the crowd and fell into her. She was ready to blow up on him because of who his employer was.”
“Did she?”
“Yeah, she did. But she didn’t need to fight with him. He fell in love with her the moment he knocked into her. She said that she tried to argue with him and he just gave her googly eyes and asked her to go to dinner with him.”
“No way that worked.”
“She said that she would never go to dinner with a man in his line of work. So he quit. Called his boss right on the spot, and then asked her to dinner again.”
“Wow. I see the allure of the O’Connor men is genetic.”
An easy smile stretches across my face. “That was just their version of the story. She said she didn’t mind staying in Boston because he gave up everything for her in the first moment they met, and so they moved in here when I was born. My mom continued in activism, and my dad got a new job.”
“You guys were happy,” she states. Not a question, a fact.
“We were. I was lucky to have them.”
The bigger question is looming over me. She asked me once why we moved to South Dakota, and I wasn’t brave enough to tell her then.
I’m not sure I am now either.
“They worked a lot though, and Kay watched me. On weekends I would go to church with her, and I ended up becoming involved myself. I had joined the youth group. I was an altar boy. I didn’t really pay much attention to all the religious stuff, but my friends were there so I wanted to do what they were doing.
“I was eight the first time I was alone with the deacon.”
Linden’s fingers tighten around mine, and I anchor myself to them.
“He uh, he made me think it was something all of the boys did. And, fuck… Maybe they did. But it wasn’t right. It started with him asking me to sit in his lap. Change my shirt in front of him. Nothing severe enough to run away…
“Weeks went by, and he started offering me wine. Suddenly, it was normal to hang out in his office without a shirt on. I hardly blinked when he asked me to take my pants off in front of him.” My head starts to ache because I’m clenching my eyes shut so tightly.
“It’s okay,” Linden whispers, running the pad of her finger over my brow bone.
“I was standing in his office in my Batman underwear when I turned around, and he was right beside me. Exposing himself from between his robes… It was February, and it was freezing outside, so when I crashed through the front door nearly-naked and bordering hypothermia, it’s like everyone knew what happened before I said a word.
I wouldn’t have run home like that unless it was bad…
“My dad was ready to go to the church to confront him, but I had to tell him that it didn’t matter. It was too late.”
“What do you mean? Of course it mattered.” She starts to sit up in agitation, ready to defend the boy I used to be…
“It was too late because I killed him.”
She looks down at me in horror. Shock. “What?”
“I liked baseball, remember? I swung the wine bottle at his head so hard that it cracked his skull open,” I admit sadly. Eight-year-old me shouldn’t have had to make that choice.
A choice that made it easier to slip into the shadows of society.
Linden can see that, too. “You had every right to defend yourself.”
“It didn’t feel so simple back then.”
“So, what happened?”
“Well, he didn’t actually die. Turns out a kid doesn’t really know the difference, and for a few hours, I really thought I had killed him.
It didn’t matter, though. My family was looked at like we were sinners.
As if we were against the church because we accused him of such a heinous crime.
People went as far as making remarks about mine and my mom’s skin tone, and how uncivilized we were. They turned on all of us.”
“That’s why you left?”
“I didn’t get in any trouble from the courts because the deacon was caught with his pants off.
The police knew I was telling the truth.
Public opinion wasn’t so forgiving. My parents wanted me to start over.
Aunt Kay was left to deal with the aftermath here.
I suspected that she stopped going to the church where it happened, but I think she stopped going to church altogether, and I’m afraid that’s my fault. ”
“I don’t think she would agree. She seems perfectly happy. She has found her own purpose in the community.”
“Yeah, well… I guess I know a thing or two about disrupting people’s lives. Plucking you and Avery from yours was light work compared to what I put my family through.”
“They did it because they loved you, and you saved us because you love us. I feel really lucky that you disrupted our life… It was pretty fucked up before you came along.” She smiles softly.
“The chaos will settle… I promise.”
“I believe you.”