AN: Huge thank you again to all the readers out there! And a massive thank you to the kind reviewers - I'm so appreciative of your supportive words and can't tell you how much they've motivated me to keep up with this! It's so encouraging to see the parts of the story that are speaking to you guys, and what you're liking most. Makes it all worth it! I hope you all enjoy this chapter - see you next weekend :)
Chapter Eight
For the second strange night in a row, she turned out the light on the bedside table in the guestroom and allowed her muscles to slowly unwind their tension into the cloudlike mattress beneath her. After untangling herself from Jack, they exchanged a whispered goodnight and she floated down the hall, the weight of his hands in hers still tingling in her fingers. She gently closed the door behind her and climbed into bed with the physicality of a ghost, feeling herself suspended between two disparate existences: one reality indicated by her surroundings - the four walls of the room, the cotton of the bedsheets, the feathery pillow under her head - and the other poorly concocted by her mind, hidden by a dense fog that sloshed with confusion and insecurity, so unmoored from what she understood of her life just days ago.
Kate focused her eyes on the ceiling above her, the machinery in her mind working through the trying to make sense of the day and all it contained, as if trying to understand an intricate lace design. Each juncture of threads she encountered sent her to a new and unexamined section of the piece, leaving her disjointed, with no pattern to follow.
Her tired mind wrestled with the dichotomies of the day, trying to create some order amongst her chaotic psyche that would allow her to drift to sleep. She found herself swaying on a pendulum between the feeling of detachment she recalled as she wandered the house in the early part of the day, trying to catch glimpses of herself in the mundane - a linen closet with neatly arranged towels, a kitchen drawer containing boxes of tea varieties, a stack of partially opened mail - and the deep anxiety that set in as she lifted the lid off the first box of legal documents she'd discovered in Jack's office closet.
The trial documents, of which she'd only read a fraction, were heaviest in her mind. In their hiding place only feet away in the closet, Kate could sense their presence like an itch that wasn't satisfied by her cursory review that day. Beginning with the pretrial depositions, she thumbed through the pages, avoiding names she wasn't ready to confront yet, and settled on names that felt friendly to her. But even through the strategically crafted questioning by her defense attorneys, the prosecution's cross was brutal and targeted, posing challenging questions about her behavior and attitude, if she hid things, if she lied, and if people felt safe around her. She set the daunting mass of trial transcripts aside entirely.
The testimony that she'd read tumbled in her head endlessly, like waves crashing on the rocky jetty of her memory and posing the same questions over and over again, ceaselessly and impatiently: What had that time really been like? For her, for them? Somehow, all the events of her life had coalesced into this existence, a life that she could not comprehend. It felt as if, with each element of her past that she discovered, the gray area that filled her mind would grow and fill into the cracks, spreading across an ever wider and more pervasive scale, and there was no box of files that she would discover to explain it all.
Lying under the roof of a carefully maintained home, between the smooth and fresh linens on a well designed bed, Kate felt imprisoned by what she feared she might never fully understand again: the history of her own personal growth, how she had adapted her scared and frantic mind to survive in this reality. And, perhaps most troubling of all: how she had somehow repaired a heart broken by years of neglect and abuse, tragedy and mistakes, to allow it to open and thrive in the hands of another. Someone who laid just down the hall from her, his words still echoing in her ears in the dark, quiet house that contained them.
Kate took a deep breath, opened her tired eyes, and wiped the back of her hand across her damp brow, looking out at the sea of green spilling out in front of her across the floor. She placed the tile carefully, nudging the sharp edges with her fingers until the placement was even. She reached for another tile from the stack behind her, laid it next to the tile she just placed, and inserted the spacers. Kate wiped her palms across her thighs, the jeans she wore dirty and dusty from her day of work, and pushed herself up from her kneeling position on the floor to stand. She bent and twisted, stretching the sore muscles in her lower back and shoulders, tight from the repetitive hunched maneuvers of laying tile in the bathroom. Finally, she paused to survey her work - the bathroom floor was neatly adorned with the vintage emerald tiles she'd been painstakingly installing all day - her morning's work satisfying and proof of time well spent. She massaged her lower back and moved her head side to side to stretch her neck before leaving the bathroom.
As she walked down the hall, she heard the distant music of rock and roll snaking into the house from outside. Passing through a wide arching doorway to her right, she entered the kitchen. The countertops were covered with thin sheets of protective plastic taped down by bright blue painter's tape, all the cabinets were bare and exposed, the doors having been removed, and on the stove sat an electric drill where a tea kettle could have been. The double doors on the far end of the kitchen were both open wide, leading to a sun soaked deck, the fresh breeze circulating through the kitchen and bringing with it the trailing scent of earthy sawdust and acrid wood stain. Kate pulled the door of the refrigerator open and grabbed two bottles of beer from the middle shelf.
Twisting the caps off, she walked out onto the deck, rolled her shoulders, and turned her face up to the sky. The warmth of the high afternoon sun permeated her skin, her eyelids awash in their pink glow.
Opening her eyes, she looked down the steps of the deck into the backyard to see two folding tables covered with more of the same plastic from the kitchen, the cabinet doors neatly arranged on top. Half of the cabinet doors bore the fresh sheen of drying wood stain, the others receiving their first coat.
A radio laid in the grass near one of the tables, plugged into one end of a long, beat up orange extension cord that ran up the deck stairs and past her feet into the kitchen. Seventies rock and roll filled the backyard and Kate took a deep breath of the fresh air, savoring the pungent scent of the wood stain. She walked down the few steps and into the grass.
Sawyer looked up from the cabinet doors in front of him as she approached, lifting the paintbrush in his hand mid-stroke. His Crimson Tide football tshirt bearing the evidence of many days of staining, painting, and working in this house.
"Tile in the bathroom is down," she said, holding out one of the open beers to him. Sawyer raised his eyebrows in surprise, smiling at her and taking the bottle.
"Well, look at you," he said, laying the paintbrush down across the top of the open stain can on the table. "I guess bringing you on as my apprentice wasn't such a bad decision, now was it?"
She smiled, rolling her eyes. He raised his bottle towards her in appreciation before taking a long swig of the beer, exhaling in satisfaction. She followed suit and took a sip of her own, savoring the crisp and bright tang, the sharp bubbles marching down her throat.
"Should be dry in a few days and I can go back in and lay the grout," she said.
"Far be it from me to stop you. Can't argue with all this free labor."
"I'm just glad to have the distraction."
"My mama always did say, idle hands are the devil's workshop," Sawyer said, taking another sip of his beer and running a hand through his long hair, pushing it back from his eyes.
"Cabinets look good," she said.
"Yeah, it's kinda comin' together, ain't it?" he asked, his free hand on his hip, while his eyes scanned the yard around them. The grass was littered with tools, rolls of tape, plastic tarp, and five-gallon buckets. The driveway next to the yard was home to a worn out shop vac, several additional coils of extension cord, and a substantial stack of lumber next to a temporary workbench.
"Did you get the paint samples yet?" she asked.
Sawyer set his beer bottle down next to the can of wood stain and picked the brush up again, resuming his work on the cabinet doors.
"Not yet."
"Well, if you get those today we can put them up tomorrow and make a decision about the kitchen color -"
"Cool your jets, Freckles," he said, shaking his head. "You're more eager to get this placed finished than I am, and I'm the one living here."
"Just trying to think ahead, is all," she replied, coolly.
"Well, as the person who has been bathing in the kitchen sink for two weeks now while you worked on the bathroom, I'm doing enough thinkin' ahead for the both of us," Sawyer quipped.
"You? Bathe?" Kate asked sardonically, lifting her beer to her mouth with an eyebrow raised. Sawyer paused mid-brushstroke and looked up at her with a smirk.
"Bob Hope, ladies and gentlemen," Sawyer announced, unamused, gesturing out to the yard in front of him with his paintbrush as if to an audience. He glared at her halfheartedly before dipping the brush back into the can of stain.
"You know, I was thinking..." Kate began, looking to the far edge of the yard where a smattering of succulents and several unhealthy low-lying bushes hugged the fenced edge of Sawyer's property.
"Careful, now," Sawyer chided, not raising his head from his practiced and even paint strokes across the cabinet door in front of him. Kate continued without acknowledging him.
"We could expand the deck with a small stone patio down here, with a path to the driveway, and do some landscaping along the fences. A lemon or avocado tree would do really well back here with all the direct sunlight. We could even do an herb garden over here, maybe with some ground coverage up to the fence there," she said, using her half empty beer bottle to motion the perimeter of her landscaping plans.
"Damn, Sassafras," he said, raising his head and shaking a stray lock of hair from his eyes. "You gonna move in or do I get to make some decisions about this place?"
Kate caught the glint of sarcasm in his eye, but shot a glare his way in response anyway. She was eager to move onto the next project and he was stalling her for his own enjoyment of watching her squirm impatiently. She raised her hands in mock surrender.
"Just saying," she said innocuously. "I'm sure the backyard will be nice no matter what you decide," she conceded, giving him a bright, albeit taunting, smile.
"Yeah, yeah," he laughed, running the paintbrush along the edge of the cabinet door he was working on. When he was finished, he leaned in to examine his work and look for missing or uneven areas of stain. Once satisfied, he stepped to the side to begin on the last cabinet door.
"When do you think you'll start on the drawers? I could bring them out while you're finishing the cabinets."
Sawyer leaned his head back in exasperation and closed his eyes against the bright sunshine.
"I'll get to 'em, Kate," Sawyer said, warning her. Kate could feel his irritation emanating across the yard like radar picking up an approaching missile but she couldn't suppress the itch she felt to keep probing, keep working, move on to her next project while the torturously long process of her tile drying played out over the course of the next few days. She watched as he hunched over the last cabinet door on the table in front of him, the gray of his tshirt bearing the dark imprints of his sweat around his neck and underarms brought on by the unseasonably warm spring sun. She inhaled deeply, almost detecting the faint smell of his sweat on the air amongst the perfume of their various home improvement projects around them. For a split second, she envisioned him reaching to the hem of his shirt and pulling it up, across his abdomen, up over his chest, exposing his shoulders -
"Grab me that sheet of sandpaper over there, will ya?" he asked, interrupting her thoughts. She glanced over to the haphazard pile of materials at the far end of the table he was working on. She stepped forward, handing him the piece of sandpaper already abused by a morning of sanding the cabinet doors, and he reached up to snatch it from her without raising his eyes from the offending section of wood beneath his hunched form.
Kate took another long sip from her beer while Sawyer worked the sandpaper over the cabinet door, the hiss of his effort repeating across the backyard. She began coaxing her thumbnail between the beer label and the bottle in her hand, lifting and peeling it from the glass. The stereo nestled in the grass had moved onto another rock and roll classic and Kate tapped her fingernail against her beer bottle in time with the rhythm of the heavy drumbeat. Sawyer blew the wood dust from the work surface in front of him, brows knotted together in concentration, and felt a vague sense of calm wash through her. Looking around her, she could comprehend her surroundings as simple, the tasks that were literally scattered at their feet uncomplicated undertakings, each with a beginning, middle, and end. Her thoughts were quiet and unhurried, and she could feel herself slinking behind this door in her mind, into this world of reprieve.
Sawyer was more than halfway through the first coat of his last cabinet door when she spoke again.
"I have time for lunch before I have to head out. If you're hungry," she offered. Her voice sounded meek in her ears and it irked her. The beer label was bunching and tearing under her thumbnail. Her fingers were cold under the glass, damp with its perspiration. She dug her fingernail into the label harder.
"Oh, that's right," Sawyer said, raising his eyes to her from the cabinet through his eyebrows, his devilish grin just barely catching the sunlight. "I forgot someone has a hot date tonight," he smirked at her before resuming the slow and repetitive motion of passing the brush back and forth, leaving a glistening trail of amber in its wake.
"It's not a date," she said dismissively, examining her thumbnail now flecked with the silver and blue paint from the beer bottle's label.
"Keep tellin' yourself that, sweetheart."
"Are you gonna get lunch with me or not?" she asked, hotly.
"Don't you want to save your appetite for the Doc?" The lilting tone in his voice was prickling at her skin and she felt sparks dancing around the edges of her temper.
"Sawyer…" she warned.
"You should count your lucky stars, cupcake," he said, standing up straight to stretch his back, locking eyes with her before he said, dead-panned: "A night on the town with one of People's Sexiest Men Alive? I'd be shakin' in my boots."
"Shut up, Sawyer."
"I'm sure he has something real special planned," he continued, ignoring her glare. "Fireworks, a petting zoo, or a surprise party -"
"That's enough, James," Kate spat bitterly, using his formal name that felt so alien and impersonal on her tongue. Sawyer paused, eyes steady with hers, the paintbrush in his hand held aloft, allowing one lone drop of stain to fall from the bristles to the cabinet door below.
"Are you actually gonna go this time?" he asked, an eyebrow raised, challenging her.
"What do you care?" she retorted, childishly, lowering her eyes to her beer label, still suffering under the abusive pressure of her thumbnail. It was almost entirely removed, only the bottom third still clinging to the glass.
The backyard was quiet for a moment, the song on the radio crescendoing into an epic guitar solo, escaping the stereo's speakers in a tinny opera across the grass at her feet.
"What do I care?" he repeated incredulously, pointing to himself, his finger pinning the damp gray Crimson Tide tshirt to his chest like a dart. "Well, let's see. You've been coming here nearly every damn day for weeks, Kate. Working yourself to the bone on this place like you owe me money or somethin'. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the help and all, but in case it's slipped your mind, this was supposed to be my project."
"What does that have to do with anything? Are you saying you want me to stop coming around?"
"What I'm sayin' is, you need to ask yourself why you're workin' so hard to stay so busy."
"I don't know what you're talking about Sawyer," she replied, her words laced with disdain.
"Oh, don't play dumb with me," he snapped. "Let me ask you this: How many times have you bailed on him now?"
Kate kept her eyes down on the beer bottle in her hands, her thumb pushing the last of the label from the glass.
"How many, Kate?" Sawyer demanded, louder now and she snapped her head up to look at him, a flare of indignation hot in her throat.
"That's none of your business," she said, lowly, the anger simmering in the pit of her stomach now, her nerves on edge. She crumpled the damp beer label in her hand, squeezing it tightly in her fist.
"Nah, see, that's where you're wrong, pumpkin," he drawled, tilting his head with a sneer. "Every time you ditch that poor bastard, you wind up here, all hot and bothered, ready to swing a hammer at anything that will stand still. At first, I didn't care. I figured you'd get your head on straight eventually. But that ain't happened yet. And every time you show up here when I know you should be somewhere else…" he trailed off, shaking his head in contempt.
"You don't know anything about where I 'should' be, Sawyer," she muttered, seething.
"Yeah, well, that may be so," he chuckled dryly and nodded, before adding, "But you need to think about somethin', Freckles. One of these days, he's gonna stop callin'. And then what?"
Kate clenched her jaw and eyed Sawyer as he reached for his beer bottle again, daring her to hit back with some sassy counter that they both knew wasn't coming. Because he was right, and he relished in it as he lifted his beer to his lips again, a sliding shift of sunlight flashing along the length of the brown glass as he tilted his head back and took a long, languid swallow. He pulled the now empty bottle from his lips with a satisfied exhale and looked her dead in the eyes.
She held his stare for a moment, silently provoking him to say more, nudge her further, or push another button outside of his jurisdiction. But he didn't - instead he raised his eyebrows at her deliberately - they both knew he'd won this round and there was nothing left to say. He went back to his task at hand, applying the stain to the last cabinet door laid out in front of him in the backyard. Kate let out a deep sigh, exasperated, and opened her hand to look at the crumpled and soggy paper that had once been glued to her beer bottle. She took the final sip of her beer and rolled her eyes, the frustration receding down her spine to return to its hiding place. Sawyer applied the last few strokes of stain across the bottom of the cabinet and stepped back in the grass to inspect his work. Satisfied that he'd completed his task, he flipped the lid back onto the can of stain and set down the brush. Hands on his hips, he looked up at Kate with his typical boyish grin and said:
"This calls for some tacos."
He rubbed his hands together in childlike glee and walked past her and up the stairs towards the kitchen, expertly pushing aside the heated words that hung in the air between them. Even though she was still annoyed, she was also hungry, and she slowly turned to follow him into the house.
"Hey, would you mind bringing the extra tile out to the garage before we go?" he called behind him as he went down the hall to change. As he opened the door at the end of the hall, she caught a brief glimpse of him pulling the sweaty tshirt over his head, exposing his tanned back, before he disappeared into his bedroom.
Kate crouched at the doorway to the bathroom and started organizing the remaining tiles to bring them outside. But just as she lifted the stack from the floor, she felt the top tile slip from her grip. It toppled to the floor, the edge hitting the hardwood beneath her and cracking into pieces. Her fingers, in trying to catch the tile before it could break, just missed and instead gripped one of the jagged edges of the broken tile and she felt the sharp pain of the porcelain slice into her skin.
"Shit," she hissed and quickly put the stack of tile down, careful not to do any more damage, and cradled her bloodied fingers in her left hand. She pinched her thumb over the cut before gingerly lifting it to assess the severity of the wound. As soon as she released the pressure, a wave of blood bloomed to the surface and dripped off the end of her finger.
"Damn it," she groaned, before quickly heading down the hall into the kitchen. At the sink, she turned on the faucet with her elbow and held her hand under the cold water, the basin awash in the pink of her blood.
Sawyer came into the kitchen behind her, pulling a clean shirt on, saying, "Did you hear me about that tile? I will definitely trip over that in the middle of the night and I'm not trying to hang those cabinets with a broken arm..."
Coming up to her side at the sink, he saw the blood washing down the drain.
"Jesus, Freckles, what'd you do to yourself?" Sawyer asked in horror.
"I broke a tile. Cut my finger. Do you have a bandaid anywhere?"
"Yeah, somewhere around here. Give me a minute." Sawyer hurried towards a stack of boxes in the corner of the kitchen. He flipped their tops open, digging through their contents haphazardly. Kate turned off the water and pulled a wad of paper towels from a roll sitting on the counter next to the sink. Wrapping them around her finger tightly, she turned to watch Sawyer frantically dig through a box at his feet.
"Sawyer, it's fine, I can just stop at the corner store and get some -"
"No, I know they're in here, just give me a second," he grunted. Then: "Aha, found you suckers."
Sawyer held up a small battered box of bandaids and came back over to Kate.
"Let's see it," he said, working the lid of the box open.
"Sawyer, I can do it, it's fine," she said, slowly unwrapping her finger.
"Quiet. Just get rid of that paper towel," he ordered and she complied. She pulled the towel from around her finger, exposing the pink and red tie dye of her blood across the gauzy surface and Sawyer whistled.
"Really did a number on yourself here, Princess," he said and pulled her hand toward him, their bodies only a short distance apart, spanned by her outstretched forearm. He concentrated as he twisted the bandaid around her finger, delicately securing the edges to her skin, before examining his work. He held her palm and lifted it up into a slanting ray of sunlight that fell through the kitchen window. The cut, on the inside of her middle finger and nestled in the supple flesh between two knuckles, was now tightly bound and throbbing under the pressure.
"Good as new," he announced, crumpling the papery wrapper in his hands. "Does it hurt?"
"It does now," she said and flexed her fingers to test the give of the tight bandage and assess the pain level. The stinging had subsided, but the dull ache of the cut radiated down to the tip of her finger and back up through her hand.
"Maybe you can get yourself some stitches tonight," Sawyer teased, lifting an eyebrow at her before tossing the bandaid wrapper into the trashcan near the sink. Before she could issue her annoyed response, he continued, "I'm starving. Let's get movin'."
Kate followed Sawyer out of the house and waited while he locked up behind them, the sun now bright and strong above them. The neighborhood was active and enjoying the warm day late into the spring, the southern California city eager to kick into their summer gears. After a quick walk down a few short blocks, Kate and Sawyer arrived at the restaurant they'd come to know as their second home.
They planted themselves on two stools at the bar, the restaurant just setting up for their lunch service. A short redheaded bartender stood toward the end of the bar, organizing glasses, and noticed them sit down. Sawyer raised a hand in familiar salute toward her and she made her way over.
"Hey guys," she said brightly, her short curly hair bouncing around her smiling face. She was young and energetic, wore enormous silver hoop earrings, and displayed a smattering of colorful tattoos down her left arm. "Y'all are here earlier than usual," she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Well this one here," Sawyer said, tilting his head towards Kate, "got all the tile down in the bathroom ahead of schedule." He looked over at her, beaming, and she smiled reflexively.
"Wow, I'm impressed!" the redhead exclaimed, raising her eyebrows in appreciation. She expertly pulled two water glasses from beneath the bar and placed them in front of Kate and Sawyer. Filling them with ice water from a pitcher, she said, "Sounds like cause for celebration to me."
"Damn right," Sawyer said, playfully. "Two Cadillac margaritas, if you please."
"And to eat?" she asked, setting the pitcher of water down and placing her hands on her hips. "Y'all gonna surprise me or stick with the usual?"
"No ma'am, fish tacos for me," Sawyer confirmed, taking an eager drink from his glass of water. The bartender turned to Kate.
"Same for me, thanks Sam," Kate said, shooting the young girl a warm smile.
"You got it."
The ebullient bartender turned toward the register behind the bar to punch in their order. Kate took a drink of her water, crunching an ice cube between her teeth. Down the bar, Sam set out two glasses and got to work on their margaritas. Kate and Sawyer sat side by side at the bar in silence for a moment, listening to the murmured voices of other diners as they slowly trickled into the restaurant. She ran her thumb down the side of her water glass, tracing a path in the beaded condensation and watched from the corner of her eye as Sawyer leaned into the bar, resting his elbows on the edge and clasping his hands together in front of him. He didn't look at her when he spoke, instead focused on his fingers laced together hovering over the bar.
"This is the last I'll say about it," he prefaced, and Kate bristled, taking a slow breath and filling her lungs in preparation. She heard the flare and sizzle from the kitchen to their left, the scrape and squeal of chair legs at tables behind them.
"I'm not trying to meddle in your personal business, Kate. But even I gotta call 'em when I see 'em, and enough is enough," he said simply, his voice devoid of any intonation, no hint of ridicule or satire. "You had your way and got your space. Hell, I get it. But this is the end of the line, sweetheart. The hideout act ends here."
Kate watched his face as he spoke, his brow drawn down over his eyes. Examining his profile, she saw the sincerity in his taut jaw and the thin line of his mouth. Helplessly, she nodded. Before she could respond, Sam returned with their drinks and set two brimming margaritas on the bar in front of them.
"Here we are," Sam announced as she set the glasses down and wiped her hands on her apron. "These are my treat. But I do expect an invite to the party when the house is finished," she clarified, raising an eyebrow in Sawyer's direction.
"Wouldn't have it any other way, my dear," Sawyer said, easily slipping back into his charming drawl for her benefit.
As Sam headed down the bar towards a new group to take their drink orders, Sawyer lifted his margarita towards Kate, turning to her with a glint in his eye.
"Now that I've said my piece," he said, breaking into a sly grin, "Happy birthday, Freckles."
Kate's eyes edged open slowly, her senses acutely aware of the heat that spread across her skin and a strange tingling sensation running down her arm. She opened her eyes slowly against the bright light in the room, her blurry vision adjusting to the morning sun. She could feel the sweat beading across her chest and she pushed the blanket and sheet off her body, the relief immediate as the heat began to dissipate. Kicking herself for wearing sweatpants to bed, she pushed her damp hair from her face and neck.
Stretching her limbs, she felt her uneasy sleep begin to evaporate from her body, unsure of how long or well she'd slept. Although the sunlight that flooded the room was lush, her mind was still foggy, clogged with images she couldn't understand or shake. Kate raised her palms to her face, examining her fingers carefully, vaguely aware of a phantom pain in her right hand that she couldn't quite explain. She flexed the fingers again, holding them out above her and turning them back and forth in the warm morning light.
That's when she noticed it - a fine, translucent pink scar curving around the middle finger of her right hand. She pressed her thumb over it, seeking some kind of texture or proof of its existence. But what rushed to her mind instead was an endless sea of green bathroom tile beneath her knees, the repetitive and reliable drum beat of rock and roll, the acerbic scent of some kind of chemical that filled her nose, and finally the painful pressure of a bandaid staunching the flow of a fresh cut across her finger.
TBC