Chapter Four

And so she did...get over herself. She continued to work and try to put the intruder behind her...tried not to dwell on the past and live in the present.

And it worked – somewhat.

She didn't spend anymore nights at Woody's apartment or the morgue. She would work at the morgue and then go work at the Pogue. She'd work until she was dead on her feet so that when she went home, she'd go straight to sleep and not have time to lay awake and fear that the robber would come back to finish what he had started.

And most of the time she was successful. The robbery began to fade away in her memory and in everyone else's. She could put it behind her, until some nights when the intruder invaded her dreams and finished what he had started. It was the same dream she had dreamed at Woody's apartment. And she'd wake up much the same way....sweating, her heart pounding.

Except this time, she didn't feel she had anyone to call on to protect her...after all, it was only a dream. You can't handcuff, jail, or shoot a dream. So she just kept it to herself, figuring in time, these too, would fade away.

But Woody knew what she was doing. He'd go to the Pogue most nights that he knew she was there and have a beer near closing time. Then he'd walk her out to her car. He knew she was working herself to the point of exhaustion and then going home. He also knew she wasn't really dealing with her fears...just working around them. So one Friday night, after she closed and he was helping her clean up, he slid two quarters in the jukebox and held out his hand. "Dance?" he asked.

She looked at him for a beat and put her hand in his. He had picked a slow song and held her close as he moved her around the dance floor. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Fine....what makes you think otherwise?"

"You just seem kind of preoccupied, that's all."

"I'm just busy...Peter's left and so has Devan. So it's just Nigel, Bug, and I to cover all the morgue work."

Woody nodded. He knew that. "But what about your sessions with Dr. Stiles about the intruder, Jordan?"

"It's in the past, Woody."

"You mean you're working yourself to death for no reason?"

Jordan sighed. The man was far too perceptive for her own good. "It helps me sleep at night."

"Do you still have those dreams?"

"Once in a while," she replied quietly.

"Why haven't you called me?"

"Because they happen in the early hours of the morning...it's too late to call then. You're sleep."

"I'd get up for you, Jordan. I mean it. You need to call me." He couldn't stand the thought of her being alone and frightened in her apartment, thinking she had no one to call.

"I can't wake you up then...not at three or four in the morning. You have to work the next day..."

"And so do you."

"I can deal with this, Woody."

He knew she could. Somehow, she would, by herself, as usual. But she didn't have to. He didn't want her to. As the song ended, he stopped and held her hand tightly in his. "The next time it happens, you call me. Do you hear? I don't give a damn what time it is....call me." He made her promise and then he helped her out to her car and watched her drive away in the moonlight. He slowly walked back to his own vehicle. He knew what it was like to be alone in the world....no one really to talk to about your troubles. At least no one that really understood. He had known that empty feeling since he was sixteen. He didn't want Jordan to know it. Her mother was dead and her father was who knows where, but he wanted her to know that he was there for her.

He had been patient with her for the last three years...knowing she was still trying to adjust to her mother's death...then James....then Max leaving. And she had been doing well...up until the robbery. Until the intruder invaded her life. Now she was back to feeling insecure....feeling violated...feeling alone. As he got in his car and drove away to his apartment, he realized that somehow, he had to make her feel that she could call on him, depend on him...

That he realized how she felt more than she knew. He had been there. He dealt with the hell almost everyday. He sighed. As much as he had avoided telling her the past several years, tried everyway he knew to get around it, he was going to have to give her the truth about the his past...and exactly how painful it was. That way she would know that he did truly understand what it was like to have everything you hold dear, love with all your heart, shattered into such small pieces they can't be put together again. He pulled into his parking slot at his apartment and leaned his head on the steering wheel.

He had never told anyone in Boston about his past in Wisconsin. They knew he had a brother. They knew he had left Kewaunne for better job opportunities with the Boston PD. That's all they knew. That's all he wanted them to know. He had wanted to put his past behind him...all the pain...the world of hurt....not to forget them in his mind, but just to be somewhere where people didn't recognize him as Woody Hoyt – the orphan...the abused child...the fat kid that stuttered....the rejected prom date...the man not good enough to marry Annie.

But if he wanted Jordan, he was going to have to tell her. To let her know why he identified with her so strongly...why he could bear her pain as well as his. He had dealt with it longer....and even on a more extreme level than she had. In order to make her feel comfortable in coming to him with her hurts, she was going to have to know just how hurt he was.

He sighed as he climbed out of his car and went upstairs. Getting through this wasn't going to be easy. But you can't bury the past forever...not when the future depends on it.