Chapter Eleven #2
She told him. “The other students acted like they’d never heard someone from below the Pennsylvania state line speak before.
Half of them made fun of me, asking me stupid questions like, when was crop season startin’ and how much moonshine would it take to get me to take my clothes off?
” His grip tightened, then relaxed after a moment.
“The other half treated me like I was unworthy of breathing the same air as them. Didn’t talk to me.
Never answered a question if I had one. Made the times I was in mandatory study group for some classes almost unbearable. ”
His hand gently glided along her calf again. “How did ya get through it?”
“I had karate. Before I registered for classes, I found a dojo. My old Sensei emailed the new one, told him all about me, and, lickity split, I was accepted into the fold. Made gettin’ through school easier when I could punch and kick the stuffin' outta things.”
His smile came quick.
“I also graduated top of my class and got two awards at graduation.”
“You put the rest of your class in their place just like you did to those boys in karate class when you were a kid. Good for you.”
She grinned at the memory of her name being called as valedictorian and then shaking the two department chairs’ hands as she accepted her awards.
“Pea green with envy, the lot of’em. Mama, Daddy, the boys and my grandparents were all hootin’ and hollerin’ so loud I was sure they were gonna get tossed out. Luckily, they settled down once my awards were over.”
Kolby stared at her for a moment, his hand still cupping her ankle.
She read the pleasure in his eyes for her.
His grip softened as his fingers danced lightly up and around the bony prominence again.
His touch, although gentle, made her feel as if she’d been thrown into a tub of water with a live electric cord sitting in the middle of it.
The hair on her arms stood at attention, the prickly sensation of expectation flowed across every inch of her skin. Her legs and feet no longer ached.
But other parts of her did.
Parts that had no business aching in any way, shape, or form for this man or his touch.
In that moment, something shifted in the air between them, and she was helpless to ignore it.
Expectancy and promise surrounded them. Kolby loosened his grip, one hand keeping her legs cocooned in his lap as he shifted and moved closer, his gaze zeroed in on hers.
The pleasure fled from the moisture in his eyes now, replaced by something she didn’t want to see there.
Something she was powerless to fight against.
Something that would surely be her downfall.
Her breathing quickened, as did the galloping of her heart when he stretched out a hand and, with the back of a knuckle, caressed her cheek. The move, incredibly tender, sent a shiver of longing down her spine.
“Do you know how amazing you are?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper. “How lovely? How irresistible?”
“Kolby,” she said in a voice that barely registered; it was so soft.
If he heard it, he ignored her, his hand now moving to cup her chin, hold it prisoner as he licked his lips. Her breath caught, her own lips parting.
“Char—” His brow furrowed as he blinked and sat back.
What the heck?
Reaching behind him, he slid his chirping phone from his back pocket. A quick glance at his screen and Charity watched all the color drain from his cheeks.
“O’Brian,” he snapped into the phone. Standing, he moved from the sofa to the lanai doors, the phone cradled over his ear as his other hand dragged through his hair. “I don’t understand. She went off them? When?”
The unexpected fear she heard consume his voice pushed Charity up off the couch and quickly to his side. She didn’t touch him, just stood next to him while he continued to speak.
“Surgery?” he said, one hand now reaching out to brace himself against the glass door. “Why?”
While he listened, she tugged her phone from her dress pocket, having forgotten she’d placed it there during the reception. She opened a browser and checked their flights, instinct telling her they were about to change. While she scrolled through the availability, Kolby continued his conversation.
“No, no. Of course. Yes, I give my consent... I understand. No. No. I have to make some arrangements. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Yes. Yes, this number. Thank you. Thanks.”
He disconnected and cupped the back of his neck.
A sigh that tugged at her very soul pushed out of him.
He turned, found her next to him and said, “I – I need to leave. ASAP. My mother...” he swallowed.
“My mother’s been in an accident. They’re.
..they’re taking her into surgery. I had to give consent. ” His voice broke. “I need to go.”
Nodding, she pushed a button on her phone. “I just changed our flights. We leave in two hours, the last flight out tonight. We’ll be back in Concord by two a.m., the latest. Go get packed, and I’ll call up to the hotel and request the van take us.”
He stared down at her, bewilderment covering his face.
Charity reached out a hand and pressed his upper arm. “Go pack, Kolby. I’ll take care of the arrangements. Go.”
She squeezed his arm again, then dropped her hand. Kolby snatched it back up, held it in his own. His fingers, just moments ago warm and seductive, were like icicles, a fine tremor shoving through them.
“Charity...”
She’d be an ignorant, heartless fool not to recognize the terror in his voice, and the Quinlans didn’t raise dumb or unkind kids. She squeezed his hand again. “It’ll be okay, Kolby. It’ll be okay. Go.”
His expression told her he didn’t believe her, but he obeyed and jogged to his room.
When they landed six hours later, Kolby bolted to the parking garage, Charity running to keep up.
“If you let me drive,” she said as he tossed their bags in the back, “You can call and get an update.”
He stopped short and stared down at her. “You can drive a truck?”
Lord, protect me from clueless, chauvinistic men.
“I grew up on a farm. I can drive anything from a tractor to a hay baler and everything in between. Give me your keys.”
She held out her hand. She’d never know if it was the shock she could drive a truck or the fact he needed an update ASAP on his mother that made him drop the keys into her palm, but no matter what the reason, he did.
While she navigated through the pay-line and onto the highway, he connected to the hospital and then waited to speak to someone who could give him some answers.
She listened to the one-sided conversation while pushing the truck up to speed. When he disconnected, waves of his frustration shunted her way.
“She’s still in surgery,” he said, tapping the phone on his thigh. “The nurse thinks it’ll be at least another hour.”
“We’ll be there when she wakes up, then. That’s good. You can speak to her doctor and get a full update before you see her.”
He nodded, his gaze fixed on the empty road in front of them. At almost four in the morning, there was nary a traveler, which made driving at night at high speeds much easier for Charity.
The thigh tapping continued.
“You want to talk about it?” Charity asked, passing him a side eye before concentrating on the road again. “Do you know what happened?” She hadn’t asked until now.
“Not the whole story. The ER doc who called me said she was up on a ladder doing something. He couldn’t get a full story from her. She must have missed a rung, fell, and landed oddly.”
“Did someone find her? Or was she able to call for help?”
“Neither.” He shook his head. “She drove herself to the ER.”
“So, if she drove, she couldn’t have been that bad off, right?”
Another head shake. “Oh, she was bad off. Broken arm dangling at a weird angle, huge gash on her temple, bleeding like crazy, the doc said. Facial cuts, too, with pieces of glass hanging out of them. They think she fell on a table or a vase or something.”
“Good Lord. How could she do anything, much less drive? The pain must have been horrible.”
“She wasn’t feeling a thing,” he said. For the first time, a note of bitterness shot through his tone and Charity turned to him. Hands now fisted on his thighs, the phone tapping ceased, his body resembling a too-tight spring about at its limit and ready to unfurl for relief.
“What do you mean? She had to have been in pain.”
Kolby stared straight ahead. His profile could have been etched in concrete. He swallowed once, the sound echoing in the quiet cab.
There was a backstory here. A bad one.
Push, or let it go? Let him wallow or help him process?
The girl who’d instituted Operation Ignore the Beast wanted to let him sit with his anger and let him be. The one who’d finally come to realize she wanted to do anything but ignore him pushed back against that.
Girl number two won.
“Kolby? Talk to me.” She lifted her right hand from the steering wheel and pressed it against the fist propped on his thigh.
Without a word, he opened his hand and she slid hers into it.
“Talk to me.” She squeezed the hand.
He swallowed again. “My mom has...issues.”
When he went no further, she squeezed again.
“Darlin’ we all have issues,” she said, letting the drawl play out, hoping it would make him smile.
He shook his head and looked down at their hands. She could feel the grin he was fighting when he squeezed her hand.
Mission accomplished.
He blew out another breath. “Mental issues,” he said after a moment.
She heard shame and a world of heartbreak in those two words.
“Are there any other kind?” she quipped, that drawl dragging the words out. “Go on,” she prompted.
After closing, then opening his eyes, and hauling in a breath deep enough to rob all the air in the cab, he told her, “She was diagnosed as bipolar when I was a kid. Some manic/depressive tendencies thrown into the mix, too. She takes meds to control her impulses and wild thoughts. They did bloodwork to figure out her levels, but the ER doc said he thinks the fact she didn’t feel any pain and thought it was a good, logical idea to drive herself to the hospital when she was bleeding and hurt proves she was probably in the throes of a manic episode.
That would mean she’d stopped taking the meds. ”
“She’s done that before? Stopped her meds?”
“Yeah. Not for a few years, maybe seven? Eight? But yeah. When she does though, she spirals. Never to the point she physically hurt herself, though, like now.”
“Did something trigger her? Something to make her stop the meds?”
For the first time he turned to her. The weight of his stare sent tingles down her spine.
Had she overstepped asking that? Lordy, she hoped not.
“Yeah, something must have. How do you know that? About triggers?”
Relief poured through her.
“Like I said, we all have issues.” She shifted to get more comfortable in the seat.
Keeping her eyes on the road, she said, “My Granny’s brother, my great-uncle Ephraim on my daddy’s side, had some issues of his own.
Never diagnosed, but when he came back from Vietnam, everyone said he wasn’t quite the same as when he left. ”
“PTSD?”
“Probably. Like I said, he wasn’t diagnosed, and back then no one was talking about mental illness out in the open.
Well, Southerners were and always have. We don’t hide our crazy people away and make excuses for them.
We just love’em and bring’em out into the open, sit’em on the porch and serve’em sweet tea. ”
She could feel his body relaxing next to her.
“Anyhoo, story goes one day Great Uncle Ephraim grabbed a 20 gauge from the gun cabinet in the dining room, went out to the chicken coop he and Aunt Polly owned and shot up every last bird in it. Fifty in all. Great Aunt Polly surely was pissed because he killed her best layers, Doris Day and Liz Taylor, along with all the others and she had a full egg delivery order she was supposed to get to the local market the next morning. Now, with no chickens, she had no eggs. And no eggs meant no money was gonna come in that week, ‘cuz that’s how they supported themselves. When she asked why’d he do that for, he shrugged, put the gun back in the cabinet as calm as you please and told her he had a hankering for fried chicken for dinner. ”
She turned to him, thrilled to see some life had come into his eyes.
“Every now and again he’d do something a little off, like take the tractor out onto the county road and weave it back and forth in the lanes so slow it made it impossible for people driving behind him to move along or even pass without the fear of having an accident.
He died at the age of seventy-two after jumping in front of a train.
Great Aunt Polly said he’d had enough of living. ”
She shrugged again as she pulled into the hospital parking lot.
“Everyone and every family’s got issues,” she repeated as she tucked the entry ticket under the driver's side visor.
Kolby stayed silent as she found an empty parking space and pulled into it.
She killed the engine and lifted the keys towards him. “You ready to see your mama?”
Deep and intense eyes peered at her across the cab. She jingled the keys, but he didn’t take them from her.
“Charity.”
There was so much emotion swimming in his eyes and gracing his voice that she almost slid her hand into his again, just to offer him the comfort she thought he needed.
Before either of them could say another word, his phone chirped.
“O’Brian,” he said after swiping it open.
Charity waited while the caller captured his attention.
“Thank you. Yes, we’re here. Fifth floor, right. Thank you.”
He ended the call and turned back to her.
“She’s out of surgery.”
Charity nodded. “Then, let’s go.” She lifted the door handle, but his hand on her arm stopped the motion.
“Kolby?”
He licked his lips, then shook his head as his gaze drifted to where he gripped her forearm. He pressed it, once, then covered it with his other hand. He focused back on her face.
“Thank you.” The grating, raw pitch to his voice told her he was barely hanging on. For such a virile, self-possessed man to show such vulnerability was something she wasn’t used to. And for that man to be someone–until recently–she’d thought her nemesis was almost more than she could handle.
CarlieRae’s voice shot forward from the back of her mind. “A man who’ll show you his emotions is a man worth knowin', Baby-girl.”
Charity patted his hands and lifted her lips in what she hoped was a graceful smile. “Let’s go see your mama.”