A Dark Path – Chapter 15
She was angry with him. She was angry with herself. They were brittle and fragile like tiny bits of frozen energy ready to snap off and spin into space. He sat just three feet from her, yet in truth he was miles away.
He hadn't eaten fruit for days – at least not any she'd seen. The reason for this was unclear to her, but she could guess and she knew she'd be close, but he wouldn't admit it.
He felt it too; that uneasiness, the fragility of their bond, which was stretched to the breaking point because he loved her and she refused to let him. He was snapping a rubber band against his wrist idly. She was trying to do paperwork and failing. She bit into her pencil and grimaced at the taste of lead on her tongue and flecks of paint on her lips.
"I'm gonna go…" she began.
"Get coffee," he supplied the rest of her thought dully without looking up.
"Come with me?" she invited. His motion stopped and he considered it for a moment before his head began to shake no before the words could leave his mouth. "Fine," she snapped.
She was standing at the kiosk waiting for her latte when he approached. His eyes were hidden but something in his posture made her know he wasn't there for coffee. He stood in front of her, his long shadow covering her and held still and silent a moment considering his words.
"Change your mind?" she tried to joke to keep him from going somewhere dangerous for both of them. "Decide you can't go another day without an orange?"
"Dani," he interrupted. His tone was deep and low. It commanded her full attention. "They found your father." He said nothing more, but she knew from the way he said it that Jack Reese wasn't alive when they found him.
He hadn't said I found your father. To her knowledge, no one else was looking for or at Jack Reese except her partner, the man with her father's photo pinned to the wall in his closet with notes on butcher paper about a robbery from the 1980's. He hadn't said your father came home; he chose his words carefully. He'd told her that Jack was dead without actually saying the words.
"I wanna…" she began. Her own voice sounded strange to her.
"Go there?" he confirmed, "You want to go there?" He sighed heavily knowing the fight he was in for. "No," he was firm in his denial.
She was instantly angry, livid and a hundred other unnamable emotions. She brushed past him and he grabbed her by the elbow and spun her. She slapped him hard, but he held her tight against his chest.
She registered the cool, smoothness the fine cotton his shirt was made from, the crisp masculine cologne he used and the steady thumping of his heart against her before he bent to speak words meant for her and her alone.
"Whatever else he was, he was your father and I know you loved him," his lips brushed her ears in a low rumble. "I won't let you see him like that. I won't let you remember him like that." He released her when he felt the fight leave her. He stepped back and tenderly brushed a stray lock from her cheek.
She batted his hand away. "I don't need you….anyone to look out for me," she shot back still emotional, but trying to distance herself from what she craved. She wanted to stay there listening to the sure and solid beat of his warm heart.
"I know, Reese, I know," he reached back and retrieved her forgotten latte.
He placed the coffee in her hands and wrapped them around the cup with his over hers, holding them against the cup for a moment. The hot liquid became uncomfortable through the thin skin of the cup. "Just because someone helps you – it doesn't weaken you," he offered and released her hands. "It releases some of the heat, some of the pressure, but doesn't make it go away."
She stared at him as her hands cooled. He was still the same man. He was still her partner and still the man she trusted more than she trusted herself. She nodded and her rage died like a slow fire going out.
"I'll take you home," he said simply. "You'll want to be with your mother," he knew her and where she'd go when she was hurt. Like most people she'd go home to her mother. Crews' mother died while he was in prison, this much she knew. He had no friends except Early. Where did he go? She wondered.
Six hours later….
It had been a long day. Battling the heat, Crews and crime. She held it together when she felt like she'd break into a million sharp pieces of glass – to be strong for her mother. It left her drained. She felt like someone pulled the plug at the bottom of the world and the goodness was being sucked out of her.
She was tired, soul weary and bone tired and he was waiting for her when she walked through the door; the firebird, the dragon, or whatever mythical beast graced the bottle that promised freedom from all her problems came from a clear liquid that burned as it went down. It took less than a minute for her to give in.
Her eyes watered as the liquor burned it's way down her throat. She wanted it to burn the house down and her with it. She choked back the tears; they weren't real anyway, just her body's way of expressing pain and anguish. If she ignored them they weren't real. Just like him, if she kept ignoring him, kept pushing him away – then what she felt wouldn't be real. It couldn't be.
She drank past the taste, past the burn, until her eyes glazed over, until everything became blurry and she quit only when she dropped the glass, which conveniently rolled under the table. She was too tired to retrieve it and too unmotivated to get a fresh one. She pushed her chair back and looked at the sad little juice glad lying on its side under her kitchen table.
She imagined it filled with orange juice and the color orange pervaded her thoughts. A series of disconnected scenes flashed before her: rows of oranges, shiny and neat in large crates, Crews with his orange hair lit by the sun lying in tall green grass amongst trees with dark green leaves laden with dots of orange fruit. He smiled at her with eyes the color of the sky. She wanted to be angry with him, but she couldn't. He'd done nothing more horrific than care.
It was hours before she moved from that spot, but when she did it was to him she went.