Circle, page 12
His own yawn cut him off, but the sentiment broke through. I closed my eyes again and counted his heartbeats against my ribs. He was still a little lost, but he was trying, and I’d never ask him for anything more.
Waking up alone always unnerved me, especially now, when I’d gotten so used to Pete needing an earthquake to disturb him. I sat up in the unfamiliar bed and pressed a hand over my pounding heart, unsure of what had woken me. Was it a dream? I checked my skin for the telltale beads of cold sweat, but there was nothing.
A clap of thunder shook the cabin. Lightning followed, lighting up the bedroom with an eerie flash, and my heart skipped again. We got plenty of thunderstorms in Chicago, but so far from home, this felt different, and the cold empty space beside me seemed ominous.
Idiot. He’s probably in the bathroom.
I pulled myself together and retrieved my T-shirt from the floor. The cabin was as toasty warm as always, but walking around without a shirt wasn’t my bag unless Pete and I were alone.
Dressed, I ventured out of the bedroom. The cabin was silent; only Zola came pattering up the hall to see what I was doing, and I apparently wasn’t that interesting. She regarded me briefly and then turned back the way she’d come. With Pete nowhere in sight, I followed her, passing the empty kitchen on the way to the living room. In there, I found a crackling fire, Desta and Zola on the rug, and Jed asleep on the couch, but no Pete or Max.
Another crack of thunder stopped me from checking the workshop. Instead, I found my phone and called Pete, but his phone didn’t connect, which had happened a lot since we’d left Chicago. Damn fucking Verizon. I wondered if Max’s cell number would be tacked up in the kitchen somewhere.
It wasn’t, and then I remembered he didn’t have one. I checked the emergency phone Flo and Desta were trained to use, but the only numbers there were the hospital’s and Max’s sister, who I’d gone to bed to avoid.
Chewing my lip, I drifted back to the living room. One of my sketchbooks was on the table from yesterday. I picked it up as I sat on the floor by the fire and flipped through it to a blank page, but my heart wasn’t in the lazy sketches I made of Zola and Desta. The storm raged outside and seemed to get worse with every rumble of thunder. I couldn’t believe Jed was sleeping through it until I realized a little while later that he wasn’t asleep at all—he was propped up on one elbow, watching, though the lines of pain on his face told me I wasn’t the only thing on his mind. “Can I get you anything?”
He shook his head. “Nah. Just too decrepit to move right now.”
That explained why Desta hadn’t looked my way. “Sure you don’t want some tea or something?”
“I’m good, Ash. Can I see what you drew?”
I knew a deflection when I heard one, and so I passed the sketchbook over. “Do you know where Pete is?”
Jed’s gaze flickered to the rain-lashed windows. “Last I knew, he and Max were heading out to the fixer-upper cabin on the other side of the lake. They probably stayed there when the storm picked up. Flo doesn’t like getting wet in her old age.”
“Pete’s not a big fan of it either. Is the other cabin dry, then?”
“Some of it. Rest of it is as fucked up as me.”
“Bullshit. Max told me you lap the lake in good weather, and I know you ran the Boston Marathon with Glenn last summer.”
“Ain’t summer now, is it?”
There was no bitterness in Jed’s tone, but his reality hit home as I stared at him. He was so reticent about his disabilities that I sometimes forgot they were there. Lucky me. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know?”
Jed chuckled. “Then don’t worry about— Jesus, was I drooling?” He held up my sketch of him sleeping on the couch, though my focus had been Desta and his unwavering watch over his master. “My niece draws me sometimes when I’m sick. I don’t get the fascination.”
“If you’re anything like Pete, when you’re sick or sleeping is the only time you’ll let anyone stare at you for that long.”
Jed’s grunt was noncommittal. He put the sketch down and sat up as the room flashed with the lightning outside. His gaze drifted to the window again, but he was, as ever, hard to read. “I’m going to chuck the kettle on the stove. You want some tea?”
“Um…” I hadn’t gotten the taste for the weird tea Jed and Max drank yet. Pete seemed to like it, but it tasted like grass to me. “Can I get some water?”
“Sure.”
Jed rose from the couch and limped from the room. I didn’t offer to help him because I knew he’d refuse, but I listened as he moved around the kitchen—both for him and for Desta’s alert bark.
Zola jumped daintily from the couch and ventured closer to the fire. I put a hand out to pet her, but she evaded me, and I grinned to myself. The tiny dog was more than a little attached to Pete, and I didn’t blame her, even though my heart ached for her as the rumbling thunder made her tremble.
It made me tremble too as I thought of Pete holed up in a derelict cabin with Max and Flo. At home we sometimes watched storms together from our big bay windows, but I remembered sleepless nights when Pete had been a city paramedic, watching the weather roll in with no idea where he was.
“Don’t fret.” Jed appeared in the doorway with tea and water. “It rains a lot here. Max knows all the best places to hide.”
I got up and took both drinks from him and set them on the coffee table. “You’re not worried at all?”
Jed shrugged. “I’d rather Max was out there with Pete than anyone else.”
He didn’t say why, but he didn’t have to. Max’s epilepsy was far more noticeable than Jed’s disabilities. He hadn’t had a grand mal seizure while we’d been here, but glitches in his consciousness happened all the time, like a devil knocking at the door, and Jed’s apparent calmness didn’t quite ring true.
But I left it alone. What went on in Jed’s brain was none of my business, and as the hours ticked by and the clouds darkened, his state of mind was the least of my concerns. The storm raged, relentless and fierce, and the possibility that Pete and Max wouldn’t make it back before nightfall made my teeth itch. What about food? And how cold would it get? Chicago winters were fucking brutal. How many news reports had I seen about homeless people who’d frozen to death— “Jesus!”
Desta flew past my head, kicking Jed square in the chest as he leaped from the couch and shot out of the room. I scrambled to my feet and followed him as he hurtled to the front door, little Zola hot on his heels, her bark echoing in the hallway.
The dogs stopped at the door. Desta whined and scratched the wood.
“Open it,” Jed said from somewhere behind me. “They can hear something we can’t.”
I opened the door. The dogs threw themselves out and charged into the fading light. I followed them, ignoring the heavy rain as it soaked my clothes and the freezing puddles that seeped into my socks, and trailed them to the path that led around the lake. At first, I couldn’t see anything, not even the dogs, and anxiety squeezed my heart. What if the dogs had heard something terrible? What if Desta had sensed something happening to Max? He was Jed’s assistance dog, but I’d seen the way the working dogs watched over both men. If something had happened, he’d know… right?
Well, maybe, but it turned out not to matter. Just as my last grip on my mind faltered, two figures appeared in the murky distance, led by Flo and Desta, with one figure clutching a dark bundle that revealed itself to be Zola as they got closer—a very wet Zola, making herself at home, as usual, in Pete’s arms.
Relief poured out of me in a whoosh of air I hadn’t noticed myself holding in. I started towards them and met them half way. Max offered me a slightly loopy grin, plucked Zola from Pete’s arms, and walked on, but as pleased as I was to see him safe and sound, I barely noticed—I had eyes only for Pete, who was wet and bedraggled and wearing the widest smile I’d seen from him in months.
He wound his arms around me and lifted me off my feet, spinning me in a slow circle. “Not that I’m not pleased to see you, but what the fuck are you doing out here?”
“I was worried about you being out in the storm.”
“So you thought you’d dance in the rain in solidarity?”
“I wasn’t dancing. The dogs heard you coming, so I followed them.”
“Without your shoes?”
Dammit. I lifted my wet feet from the ground and stood on Pete’s boots. “I don’t need shoes. I got you.”
“Yes, you have.” He stared at me, and the pouring rain faded away. My world narrowed to just him, and his gaze held me prisoner in the bubble we’d fought so hard to save. “I’m sorry, Ash.”
“What for?”
“For everything. I’ve been talking to Max about a lot of stuff today, and he figures that I think better when I’m doing something.” I opened my mouth, but Pete cut me off by tapping his cold fingers to my lips. “I don’t mean work, I mean something practical… constructive, maybe? I helped him fix up the roof before the storm came over, and I loved it. Kinda made me want to build something for us.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but that’s not what I’m trying to say. We’ll get to that, eventually.”
“So what are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying that I want to find a therapist who can do things my way. I can’t sit in an office downtown and spill my guts, Ash. I gotta do it, not say it, you know?”
I rubbed rain out of my eyes and nodded as his plan clicked together. It made sense; of course it did. Pete had come to therapy with me when I’d asked him to, but getting him to talk had been like pulling teeth. How had it never occurred to me to put a hammer and wrench in his hand? “I get it, I think. Maybe Jed knows someone who can help?”
“I’m going to ask him.”
“You are?”
Pete cocked his head sideways. “Yeah. I’ve got a plan, fucker. I promise.”
Pete
If Max thought Ash and I had lost our minds when we stumbled into the cabin, soaked to the skin and laughing at something and nothing, he kept it to himself. Already in dry clothes, he merely handed us some towels and disappeared to where I presumed Jed was.
Ash and I retreated to the bathroom. I pushed Ash into the shower first; somehow, even though I was the one who’d spent all day outside, he was splattered with the most mud.
After a couple of minutes, he poked his head around the curtain. “Come in with me?”
There wasn’t much room in the cubicle, but I was hardly about to refuse. We hadn’t fucked since North Dakota, and I was so goddamn horny that my dick thought it had been amputated.
Not that Ash was about to fuck me with Max and Jed down the hall. Still, being naked with him was everything. I washed his back and his hair and nuzzled his neck, biting gently until his dick responded.
“Pete.”
“What?”
“Don’t tease me. I’m so hot for you right now that we’d break stuff if we got down and dirty, and we can’t do that here.”
Wow. It had been a while since things had exploded between us to the extent where Ash got rough. A jolt of excitement buzzed through me, and it took all the willpower in the world to ignore it. I groaned softly and banged my head on his chest, and his gentle fingers running through my hair were anything but soothing.
With herculean effort, I sighed and pulled away. “We’d better get out before we use all the water.”
Ash grinned and shut the shower off. Inexplicably, the sudden silence surprised me, and I stared at him. However much of an ass I’d been recently, it wasn’t unusual for him to smile, but it seemed different somehow—he seemed different. Lighter, like the burden of waiting for me to take responsibility for my own bullshit had finally lifted. I looked down at our clasped hands. Mine bore his mark—the word amato etched into my skin, as if I could ever forget—but save a plastic bracelet Cosmo had made him at day care, he had nothing to remind him how much we all loved him. He’d argue that he didn’t need it, but how many times had I looked at that tattoo and known it was the only thing keeping me swimming?
Too many, but I had no big ideas how to fix Ash’s bare hands right now.
We got out of the shower and dried off, only to realize we’d neglected to bring any dry clothes into the bathroom, which meant a mad towel-clad dash across the hall, not that Jed and Max seemed to be around.
“Jed’s not so good today,” Ash said when we were dressed. “He was asleep for ages.”
“He was up pretty early, to be fair.”
Ash chewed on his lip. “He was in a lot of pain.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that; Jed’s illness and injuries weren’t going anywhere. I sighed and pulled Ash close one last time before we left the sanctuary of the bedroom. “I’ll check in with him if he’s in the mood, okay? But there won’t be much I can do that he hasn’t thought of himself.”
And my prediction was depressingly accurate. Ash and I found Max and Jed having some kind of standoff in the living room, and it was clear Jed was in some serious discomfort. I sat with him while Max and Ash went to make dinner. The sight of them together stirred something in me that I couldn’t describe, but I pushed the déjà vu aside and focused on Jed, despite his obvious desire for me to fuck off already.
“You don’t have to nurse me, Pete.”
“I know.” I took my chances and grasped his wrist to count his pulse. “But Glenn will kill me if he finds out that I didn’t get up in your grill and check you over.”
Jed snorted but let me look him over anyway. He was humoring me, I could tell, but it didn’t matter. My initial prediction was correct—Jed was in pain, and there was nothing I could do to help him.
“What medication do you normally use? Vicodin?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you take some already?”
“Nope.”
I shot him a sideways glance. “Why not? Do they make you sick?”
Nausea was a common side effect of hard-core pain relief, but Jed shook his head. “Nope.”
A few seconds ticked by. Max’s melodic laugh filtered down from the kitchen, echoed by Ash’s shy chuckle. And then it clicked. Ash. And for the life of me, I didn’t know if Jed’s valiant caution was necessary. After my accident, I’d been sent home from the hospital with a bag full of Oxy, but Danni had hidden them at Ash’s request, and I’d never asked him to find them. How would Ash react to being around someone stoned on narcotics? Shamefully, after all this time, I had no idea.
But I did know he’d flip his shit at the idea of Jed suffering on his behalf. “You want me to go and pick up a script for you? Because Ash will deal if you need them. He’s stronger than he gives himself credit for.”
“Max said that.”
“Did he?”
“Uh-huh.” Jed shifted and stretched his bad leg out in front of him. “But I never told him I was holding out for Ash’s sake either, so how you clowns think you can read my mind, I don’t know.”
There was no malice in Jed’s words, only the tired kind of humor that came from someone who had been in pain a hell of a long time. Was Jed using the debate as a distraction? If he was, I didn’t blame him. “I’m just making an assumption,” I said. “Same as you did when you cleared the place out of Vicodin before we got here. If I’m wrong… fuck it, I apologize, but it’s whatever now, right? There must be something I can do to help you.”
It took a little more pushing, but eventually Jed let me past walls the depressive in me would’ve been proud of and showed me how to manipulate the damaged muscles in his leg to relieve some of the tension there. I’d have bet my apartment that his belly was cramping up too, but there was nothing I could do about that.
I’d been working on Jed a while when Max came in with some tea. He flashed me a wink. “Thank you.”
I shrugged and returned my attention to Jed, who for all intents and purposes appeared asleep, but I knew he wasn’t, and I also knew he wouldn’t take kindly to me muttering over his head.
Max retreated to the kitchen. I heard Ash laugh again, and my bones warmed another notch as the life I’d been missing slowly came back to me, one day at a time. I remembered my promise to ask Jed for help, and when I looked down to see his eyes open again, it kind of fell out of me before I’d thought of a way to word it halfway intelligently.
Jed stilled my hands on him and used my arms as leverage to sit up. His face was pale and drawn, but I could tell he had an answer for me. Perhaps he had all along. “I know a guy who specializes in the kind of therapy I think you’d respond to. He’s in Illinois at the moment, but his place is a ways out of Chicago, so you’d have to travel.”
“I’d travel if it was for something real.”
“You don’t think conventional therapy is real?” Jed cocked me a half grin. “Don’t answer that. I know where you’re coming from, and trust me, this dude wrote the book on letting stuff go instead of taking it to the grave.”
I speared him with a sharp look. Jed was a wise motherfucker, perceptive and shrewd, but he and Glenn were close. Had been for two decades. Did he know about Maggie? But as he met my gaze with a steady one of his own, I realized that it didn’t matter. Somehow, over the weeks I’d known him, Jed had become a friend, and whatever he knew—or perhaps suspected—my secrets were safe with him. “What’s the guy’s name?”
“Raffi. He served with Glenn and me in Iraq. He doesn’t say much, but I imagine you won’t either. I’ll reach out to him later. Tell him to expect your call.”
Ash came in as Jed was speaking. His concern for Jed was obvious, but Jed found a grin from somewhere that would’ve convinced even me if I hadn’t seen the brutal scars on his leg and hip. “Whatcha got there?”
“Um…” Ash glanced down at the dish he was clutching. “Yams, I think? I got distracted by the rolls Max had me kneading. I kinda lost track of what else he was doing.”
Jed laughed. “Sounds like Max. He didn’t tell you that fucking around with bread was good for your soul, did he? ’Cause he really believes that, but somehow, I’m still a grouchy bastard.”
