34. Lana
Lana
My heart broke alongside that of the man sobbing in my arms.
I’d never heard Toren cry. Even stuck between two boulders, broken and bruised, he’d never cried.
He clutched at my arms wrapped around his bulk like I was the only thing holding him together.
So, I held on tighter.
I pressed my face into his shoulder and didn’t say anything, my own tears soaking into his shirt. There wasn’t anything to say.
For long minutes, we sat huddled together, letting all the emotions process through us, his heavy sobs and my softer hiccups the only sound except for the occasional squawk on the porch from one of the chickens.
Toren shook beneath my grasp. His good hand fisted in the back of my shirt, the sobs coming out rough and broken, like they were being torn out of a place that hadn’t been opened in years.
Which, maybe it hadn’t been.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that. Long enough for my knees to ache against the floorboards, and for Toren’s breathing to have slowed when a vehicle finally came up the driveway.
I heard the slam of a car door, then Ozzie’s voice barking my name across the clearing.
The next little while was a blur.
Ozzie came through the door with his weapon drawn and took in the scene in one sweep. In seconds, he’d holstered his gun and was crouched next to us, asking what happened. Through more tears and broken sentences, we explained.
More people followed. Ozzie’s colleagues and his chief.
A paramedic who shone a light in Toren’s eyes and winced at the dark bruising appearing on his throat.
Then, after waiting for Ozzie to take pictures of his hands, he helped Toren wash the blood off.
Another handed me a blanket in deference to the cold and the fact that my sweatshirt was out in the yard, discarded after I tossed Eloise at her friends.
Ozzie ushered us out of the cabin at some point and had us sit on the porch, away from the scene inside. One of the officers came over and pulled me away to take my statement. When I glanced back at Toren, Ozzie had sat down in my place, no doubt getting Toren’s version of events.
The officer with me called my name. I turned to him and apologized, then asked him to repeat his question. For fifteen minutes, I stood there and recanted what I’d witnessed.
Finally, he flipped his notebook closed and told me to hang out over here until Ozzie was done with Toren.
I went to the barn instead and sat with the chickens.
They’d all scampered into their run when the convoy of cars showed up; some of them had come inside.
I found the treat bag and perched on the hay bale inside the roost. Plastic crinkled as I opened the bag, bringing a couple more of the birds inside. I tossed a few treats toward them. Eloise strutted up the ramp, clucking like the queen she was.
“I still want to turn you into fried chicken.” I threw a treat at her feet. “Next time, just do what I want, and I won’t have to treat you like a football.”
She clucked and came forward, then pecked at my shoe. I nudged her away, then chucked another treat at her.
Pulling my legs up, I let my head fall back against the wall.
Silent tears tracked down my face. These were more from relief than anything else.
I was so very happy to be sitting in the barn with the chickens, even with Eloise pecking at my shoe, and not running for my life through the woods after Deke murdered Toren and decided I was next.
It had been so very close to being a different outcome.
Squawking from the few chickens remaining outside alerted me to someone approaching. A moment later, the door into the barn opened, and Toren walked through. Without a word, he crossed to me, unlatched the screen door on the side of the roost and came inside, sitting down next to me.
Eloise walked up and right into his lap, purring.
I chuckled and rolled my eyes. “Filthy bird.”
A ghost of a smile played with his lips. “She saved my life.”
“Under duress.” I raised a hand and tipped a finger. “I blindfolded her with my hoodie, then threw her at her friends.”
He ran a hand over the chicken’s back. “The indignity.” He clucked his tongue and smiled softly, sadness still marring his expression.
His smile slowly faded, and he was quiet again, staring at Eloise as he slowly stroked her back. I let him be, having learned he would talk when he was ready.
But I wasn’t ready for what he had to say when he finally did speak.
“I thought he was going to win.” Voice low, he kept stroking Eloise’s back. “There was a moment when he had me in a stranglehold, where I felt my body quit on me.”
He stopped petting Eloise and raised his hand to look at the dried blood under his nails and in the creases of his knuckles. “But what was in my head at that moment wasn’t that I didn’t want to die.” He turned to look at me then.
The raw emotion shining in his eyes made my breath catch. All his walls were down.
“It was that I didn’t want you to die. All I could think was that if I lost, he’d walk out the door and find you.
I couldn’t—” He stopped, looking away. Muscles worked in his jaw.
“I couldn’t let that happen. I’d have torn down the gates of heaven and come back from the dead before I’d let him hurt you. ”
My hands covered my mouth. Oh my…
“I told you before I wasn’t sure I could let myself love again. Losing Cara broke something in me I didn’t think I could fix.”
When he looked at me this time, the myriad of raw emotions had coalesced into something tender.
“I was wrong, Lana. So very wrong.” He reached up with his good hand and brushed a strand of hair back from my face, his rough fingers impossibly gentle.
My breath hiccupped in my lungs.
“I think I’ve been falling for you since you showed up at my door in those high-heeled boots, looking like some hoity-toity city girl who didn’t know the first thing about life and survival.
” His thumb traced my cheekbone. “I was wrong about that too. You’re one of the strongest people I know.
I wouldn’t have survived the bush or Deke without you. ”
His hand slid around the side of my head to cup the back of my neck. “And I don’t want a quiet, risk-free life anymore. I want you in it, making noise as you wear your fancy shoes on our hardwood floors. I want to watch Eloise terrorize you, and you return the favor.”
That drew a smile from me.
He bent his arm, drawing me in closer until his forehead touched mine. “I love you, Lana. I wish it hadn’t taken a madman for me to realize it, but I do. With every fiber of my being, I love you.”
I brought my hands up to frame his face. Pulling back, I looked him in the eye. “I love you too.” My voice broke on the last word, but I cleared my throat. There was more to say.
“I’m not Cara,” I continued, softly. “I’ll never ask you to forget her or try to replace her.
I know what she meant to you, and it would be wrong to think you could just shove her aside for me.
I think there’s room for both of us in your heart.
We’ll just live in different parts.” My thumbs stroked his stubbled jaw.
“You’re stuck with me now that you’ve admitted how you feel.
I’ll run off with your heroic chicken if you try to leave me. ”
He huffed a quick laugh, the sound a little watery.
I silenced the sound with what I’d been wanting to do since I ran to him in the cabin.
I kissed him.
Tightening his arm, he pulled me closer, hugging me to his torso.
Eloise let out a squawk and pecked my arm.
“Ouch.” I pulled back, frowning as I looked at my arm, then the chicken.
Toren laughed, the sound ringing through the barn.
“One day,” I shook a finger at her, “you’re going to be in my skillet.” I looked at my arm again. I had a red spot, but it wasn’t bleeding. “Stupid bird…”
Toren’s good arm came around me, drawing me back into his side, and I went without a fight. He pressed his lips to the top of my head and just left them there. I felt his chest rise with a deep breath. He stroked Eloise’s back again, and she settled down.
I closed my eyes, a single tear sliding free as I said a quick prayer of thanks, both for getting me through the worst day of my life but also for making it one Id never forget for an entirely different reason.
The End