Chapter 36 #2
It took me asking a few more times, but he finally did. He studied the red marks blooming around the metal, as if he couldn’t fathom what caused it.
“Poor baby,” he murmured, kissing each wrist.
I withdrew from his touch and let out a heavy yawn, feeling my body sway. “I’m really tired.”
Tucking the gun in the waist of his pants, Deaton pulled out a small vial and tapped a small mound of white powder on top of his hand. He leaned forward and sniffed and the mound disappeared in a flash. He sighed, then licked the residue away. “You want a bump, babe? It’ll wake you up.”
I shook my head, a bitterness rising into my throat.
“Come on . . . Don’t be a party pooper.”
“I need to pass my drug test or I’ll go back to prison, but you enjoy.”
“More for me then!” Deaton cranked the music up. My sore wrists forgotten, he grabbed them and yanked me off the couch. Wincing, I held back a yelp and danced as he instructed, just thankful he didn’t force the drugs on me. “Come on, Sassy. Gotta wake you up for our hurricane party!”
If this guy says hurricane party one more time . . . !
With no other choice, I danced with him, listening to his cackling laughter and repeated words over the loud music. It was maddening and my head spun.
Sometime around three in the morning, the storm showed up in a rage, knocking the power out.
Finally, Deaton turned the music off, leaving my ears ringing.
We listened to the wind howl and rain squalls slap against the windows.
I was beyond the point of sleepy, that otherworldly place where you’re too exhausted to feel the fatigue.
“There are some flameless candles on the shelf in the laundry room,” I told him, not wanting to sit in the dark with a tweaking drug addict. I contemplated making a run for it while he left the room, but the threat of a bullet stopping me kept me pinned to the couch.
Deaton fetched the candles and set them around the living room. “This is romantic.” He looked over his shoulder and winked at me.
Kidnapping me is romantic? I think not.
He returned to the couch and placed his hand on my knee.
My body stiffened. “Please don’t do that, Deaton.”
He shoved off my knee and glared at me. “We could have a good time, enjoy each other like we did that one night, if you’d just loosen up!
” He started up pacing the room again, hurling explicit names at me.
Stuck-up this, snobby that . . . Fine by me, as long as he kept his hands to himself he could call me all the names.
Eventually he shut up and just marched around in a zig-zag pattern. Mid-pace he stopped and cocked his head to the side. “What is that noise?”
I listened for a few beats. “Rain and wind.”
He shook his head and stumbled a bit sideways. “No. The other noise.”
I angled my head and listened again. “I don’t hear anything else.”
“Yes, you do!”
Oh shoot. Was he starting to hallucinate?
His eyes darted wildly around the room. “That ticking! Something’s ticking! Tick, tick, tick!”
I finally picked up on the sound. “It’s just the clock.”
“Well, it’s driving me crazy! Where is it?”
“The back hall.”
Grabbing a candle, Deaton stormed out of the room. I jumped up and followed him and watched in horror as he reared back and punched the clockface.
“Deaton! No!”
In a blind rage, he punched it again and this time the glass shattered.
“Stop! I’ll turn it off. Please stop!” I took a chance and pulled him by the back of his shirt.
His hand flew to his waistband and yanked out the gun.
“J-just step back and I’ll make it stop. P-please!”
He stumbled out of the way. “Shut it off! I can’t take much more!”
With trembling hands, I opened the bottom case and pulled the weights until they rested on the bottom of the clock floor, then I stopped the pendulum. I wanted to scream at him and punch him as hard as he punched my clock, but I took a breath and calmed myself as best as I could.
“See. It stopped.” I looked behind me when he didn’t respond. “Deaton?”
“I’m bleeding,” he said in a bewildered tone, his attention on his hand.
I took a cautious step closer and saw a stream of blood dripping down his arm. I had a good mind not to bandage him up but I didn’t want blood all over the place, ruining even more of my grandmother’s precious home. “Let’s move to the kitchen. There’s a first aid kit in there.”
“’Kay.”
“Does it feel like there’s glass in the cuts?” I plundered under the sink and pulled out the red box.
“Dunno.”
“Okay. Well, let’s rinse it and then I can wrap it with gauze.” I cleaned the wounds the best I could. The dim light made it hard to assess the cuts but I thought they weren’t too deep. The idiot would survive. I wrapped his hand, then secured it with tape.
“You’re too good to me, Junie,” Deaton slurred. “You fixed my hand.”
Wanting to keep him calm, I said, “Of course. You’re my friend.”
“That’s all I’ve wanted.” He looked so sad that I wanted to reach out and comfort him, but decided against it. Deaton moved me to the couch and sat next to me, his knee bobbing up and down, jostling the entire couch. “I’m heading out of town soon. Got some friends up in Colorado.”
“What do you plan on doing in Colorado?” I figured I just needed to keep him talking until the high wore off enough for him to pass out.
“My buddy is starting up a river excursion business. I’m thinking about going in on it with him.” Deaton scooted closer, sadness gone with excitement in its place. “You should come with me.”
“I can’t. My daughter is here.”
He snorted. “No she isn’t. You lost custody of her.”
That stung so deep, it made my eyes water. I bowed my head to avoid his scrutiny. “I’m working on getting her back.”
“Don’t you think she’s better off where she’s at?” Deaton brushed my hair out of my face, gripped my chin, and forced me to meet his eyes. “We can just disappear. Start over, yeah?”
Hating that he stirred my doubts and insecurities, I bit down on the inside of my lip to the point it should have hurt but I felt nothing. Too numb to do anything but bite down hard.
“Now you’re bleeding!” His bloodshot eyes widened.
I licked my lips. “I’m okay.”
“Stop that.” Deaton rose to his feet. “I’ll grab a washcloth.”
Watching him go straight to the bathroom, something niggled in the back of my lethargic mind. He was way too familiar with my house. When he returned with a washcloth, I said, “You’ve been in my house before.”
He hitched a shoulder. “A few times.”
“How?”
“I saw you put in the code that day we went to Mex 1.”
“But that didn’t give you the right to break into my home.”
He didn’t seem to hear me or just didn’t care. Instead, he crouched in front of me and started cleaning my chin and lips. There was goodness in him, in a twisted way.
Deaton leaned closer. “What are you thinking, Sassy?”
“You’re not a bad person, Deaton. The gun and handcuffs . . . this isn’t you.”
He frowned. “How do you know?”
“Most people aren’t bad, I don’t think. Just good people who have done bad things. Me included. I’m a good person who’s done bad. Arlo, my late husband, was a good person too. Just made a lot of bad choices. You remind me of him.”
Deaton’s expression morphed into a more somber one. “You really think I’m good?”
“Yes. But you’re making some bad choices.” I raised my cuffed wrists.
He stared at the handcuffs for several long beats and I thought maybe I’d reached him, but then he handed me the washcloth and went to stand by the window.
His silence didn’t last long, nor did him standing still.
Moving around the room for hours, he retold me about going to Colorado to start up a business venture with his friend.
A dim morning showed up, barely making itself known as the storm churned over the top of us. Seemed it had no plans on leaving us alone. As Deaton twirled the gun in his grasp, over and over, I concluded he had no plans of leaving me alone either.
Sometime midmorning, I heard my phone go off in my bag somewhere on the floor and wondered who was calling. Gilbert? Cy? Would they think it odd that I didn’t answer? Would they come out in the storm to check on me?
“When is that power coming back on? It’s so hot in here.” Deaton wiped his sweaty face with the back of his hand, the gun still in his grip. He’d yet to put it down. “I can’t breathe!” Tremors overtook his body.
“Why don’t you sit down and rest a bit?”
He slammed his fist down hard against an end table, making me jump. “Why don’t you shut up!”
The mood swings grew worse by midday and Deaton took up rambling about how terrible his father was.
“That man has never loved me. He’s always treated me like I was an embarrassment! He’s a bigwig, thinks I’m not good enough!” Deaton yelled and ranted until his voice grew hoarse. The day had started slipping away by the time that happened and he finally shut up, just sitting beside me, swaying.
My eyes burned but I didn’t take them off of him or the gun as he rocked, even when his motion threatened to lull me. I’d worked out a pattern of blinking, widening my eyes, blinking again, watching, waiting, blinking, praying for this to be over.
Deaton finally picked up a pattern of his own. His head bobbed forward a few times before he’d jolt awake. His pattern didn’t last too long. One last bob, then his body slumped like a felled tree against the armrest.
I contemplated just lying back and giving in to sleep too.
My body felt like lead weights were holding me to the couch, but eventually I managed to scoot off.
I checked to make sure he didn’t wake and sighed when he hadn’t budged.
The gun had slipped out of his hand and was now wedged between the cushions.
I was terrified of the gun but more terrified to leave it with him, so I went at it like a game of Jenga, ever so slowly sliding the gun free.
Deaton shifted and his leg brushed against my arm.
I froze, studying his face. Thankfully, his eyes remained shut.
Without bothering to look for a key for the handcuffs, I tiptoed over to my bag.
Another glance over my shoulder showed he remained asleep.
Holding my breath, I tucked the gun into my bag.
On shaky legs that felt close to buckling, I moved to the front door and almost knocked over the lamp on the entry table.
It wobbled but I placed my palms on either side to steady it.
With sweat trickling between my shoulder blades, my instinct urged me to run screaming, but I tamped it down and, quiet as the mouse Deaton claimed me to be, I scurried right outside.
Dodging broken tree limbs and other debris I didn’t take the time to catalog, I stumbled over to Henry’s porch and dialed 911.
The next hour turned into a blur of blue lights and commotion. As a uniformed man put Deaton into the back of a cop car, I thought about Gilbert telling us not to cause a calamity during the storm, yet that was exactly what happened. He was going to be so disappointed in me.
“Ma’am,” a police officer spoke, drawing me out of my haze. He held the gun I’d handed over to them earlier. “Just wanted to let you know this is a pellet gun and it didn’t even have any pellets in it.”
I rubbed my sore wrist. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? That I was held against my will with a fake gun?”
He had enough grace to blush. “No, ma’am. What he did is against the law, the federal law at that. I just wanted you to know.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“Sure thing.” He tipped his head and walked away. “Oh, and the power’s back on.”
After the police left with Deaton, I locked the house up as securely as I could, going as far as shoving chairs underneath the doorknobs.
I moved upstairs at a snail’s pace. The adrenaline from earlier had seared through my system and now I was close to crashing.
I turned the shower on and then stood staring into the bathroom mirror while waiting for the water to heat.
It made no sense to have someone like Deaton James infatuated with me.
My green eyes weren’t dull but far from sparkling.
Lips formed well enough to do their job assisting me with eating, drinking, and talking, but neither plump nor pillow soft.
Chapped most of the time. At the moment my plain blonde hair was much more ratty than normal due to the night’s horrific events.
Shaking my head, I moved away from the unassuming reflection and stepped into the shower.
Clearly, Deaton’s infatuation spawned from wanting something he couldn’t have.
Like me wanting a muscle relaxer or pain pill or shot of tequila at the moment to alleviate all the hurts currently housed inside and outside me.