Circle, page 4
I’d just administered the shot when Glenn stopped by.
“I need you,” he said to me, his eyes on Jed. “Gotta pack up the old girl next door for palliative care.”
Great. Sick kids I could handle. Death, blood, and guts: none of it shook me anywhere near as much as it probably should’ve. But old folk fading away, sometimes by the minute, turned me inside out. And Glenn knew it too, which was how I knew there was no other nurse available to help him.
I left Jed and went to the room next door. A small cluster of relatives was gathered at the bedside of an elderly woman, who couldn’t have looked more like Maggie if she’d tried. The accents in the room were Spanish, not Italian, but their grief cut deep all the same. I stayed with them for the rest of the day. There were moments when I could’ve left them and passed their care to someone else, but I didn’t. I saw them onto the ambulance and then trudged back inside to get my stuff.
On my way out, I found Jed sitting on a bench, his nose once again buried in his notebook. It crossed my mind to walk on by, but he glanced up as I got closer and smiled warmly enough for me to drop down beside him.
“Bad day?”
I grunted. “No one died.”
“They don’t have to if you know they aren’t going to live.”
“True that.” I leaned back on the bench and thought of the Spanish grandma. She’d been ill for years, and it had taken her family that long to accept that they’d lost her. Me? I barely made it six months before I realized it was over for Maggie. “How are you doing? Did you get through the infusion okay? Sorry I didn’t get back to you.”
Jed stared at me, and for a protracted moment, his keen gaze seemed to pierce my soul. He knows. But how could he? Glenn was the only person alive who knew my darkest secret, and though he was Jed’s best friend, I trusted him almost as much as I trusted Ash. A black irony hit me like a knife to the chest, but Jed spoke before I could reel from it, so I saved the pity party for later.
“I’m good,” he said. “Having it in a different hospital dulled the monotony. Change is as good as rest, right?”
“If you say so. You look pretty tired.”
If Jed was offended by my candor, it didn’t show, and why would it when he was used to Glenn pulling no punches when he had something to say? “I’m all right,” he said. “Nothing a four-hour flight won’t cure.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Tomorrow night. I’ve got some business at the VA hospital, then I’m heading to the airport.”
“Oh.” It was the longest conversation I’d had with him so far, but my stomach clenched at the thought of him leaving. And I had no clue why. Something felt unfinished, but what?
Fuck if I knew.
I met Ash at the studio in Andersonville and dragged him to the chili house across the street. It wasn’t as good as the one we’d practically lived at in Lincoln Park all those years ago, but I was so hungry after a twelve-hour shift my belly thought my throat had been cut.
Ash was less enthusiastic and picked at his dinner while I made short work of my own.
I nudged him under the table. “Something on your mind?”
“Esme and Bill want to take Liam to Seattle for Christmas.”
It took me a moment to compute the names. Liam’s foster parents were an English couple who’d moved to Chicago ten years ago and so terribly well spoken they would forever be Mr. and Mrs. Gellar to me. “Okaaay. How long do they want to go for?”
“Three weeks. They wouldn’t be back until New Year’s Eve.”
“Oh.” I sat back in my seat and thought about it. In theory, I didn’t have an issue with it. The holiday season was tough for me because the ER tended to go crazy. I’d spent precisely one Christmas Day at home since Ash and I had lived together, and I couldn’t see that changing anytime soon. Bill and Esme had a huge extended family—aunts and uncles, a fuckton of cousins—and a holiday home in Seattle. There was no contest, really. “Well, I guess it’s up to Liam. I won’t stop him if he wants to go.”
“Esme said they’d all stay home if we wanted to spend Christmas with him too.”
Ash didn’t look at me. I put my fork down and laid my hand over his. “He’ll probably have a better time in Seattle, babe. You’re booked up until Christmas Eve, and God knows what shifts I’ll pull out of the hat. Let him go.”
“It’s not up to me. It’s your decision.”
“It’s Liam’s decision.”
“Yeah, but he’d stay if you asked him to.”
“Why would I do that? He’ll have an amazing time in Seattle.”
“And it’s easier for you to work yourself into the ground, right?”
“What?”
Ash shoved his uneaten food away. “Nothing.”
I stared at him, trying to interpret the uncharacteristic fire in his eyes. Irritation flared in me too, but I didn’t have the energy to act on it. I’d left the hospital with dinner and bed on my mind, not a bickering session about who the hell knew what. “Are you ready to go?”
“I guess.”
Ash threw some money on the table and pushed his chair back. He was still pissed, but my tired brain couldn’t figure out why. He’d never cared much for Christmas, even since Cosmo had been born, so why was he angsting about it now?
We walked home under a cloud, and I headed straight for the shower. The hot spray was magic on my aching bones, but Ash’s silence rankled too much for me to linger long. Therapy had taught him to be better at expressing his emotions, but he still got tongue tied when he was mad at me. The steam cleared my mind, and the perspective I’d been missing over dinner returned. I couldn’t live with Ash being upset, and there was nothing I wouldn’t do to make him happy.
Just five more minutes…
But by the time I’d gotten out of the shower, Ash was asleep, sprawled out on the bed on his back, dressed in sweatpants, his chest bare. He was so beautiful that my mind was instantly devoid of anything but the desire to touch him. I tossed my damp towel aside and crawled onto the bed, careful to move slowly so he’d hear me coming, even in sleep. He was less jumpy than he used to be, but sneaking up on him in bed was still a surefire way to freak him out.
I lay down beside him, propped up on my side, and traced the dark ink on his arm. Ted, his mentor in the tattoo world, had fixed up the wizard so the slit Ash had cut into his throat was barely noticeable to the unfamiliar eye, but I saw that damn scar in my dreams. The wound hadn’t been anywhere near deep enough to kill Ash but had nearly taken him from me all the same.
“Stop staring at me.”
I glanced up and met Ash’s inscrutable, hooded gaze. “Why?”
“Because you don’t mean it.”
“Don’t mean what?”
Ash blinked and his eyes cleared. “What?”
I laid my hand on his chest, absorbing the slight acceleration in his heartbeat. Despite my good intentions, I’d clearly startled him. “Never mind. Sorry I woke you.”
Ash sat up on his elbows. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“No?” That perked me up. These days work and childcare packed our schedules so full that our sex life was sometimes limited to early morning quickies and midnight fumbles. But it wasn’t that late right now and we were both awake, so—
Attuned to me as ever, Ash smirked. “No so fast, fucker. I’ve got something to tell you first.”
“You’re not going to Seattle for Christmas too, are you?”
Ash’s sleepy grin faded slightly. “Of course not. This isn’t about that. I just wanted to tell you that Nicola set up a show for me in Portland in a couple of weeks. I don’t have the exact dates yet, but it’s a rush job, so I need to spend a couple of days at the warehouse to get the pieces ready to ship.”
“To ship? You’re not going?”
“To Portland? Fuck no.”
I sighed. Nicola showed Ash’s work all over the world, but he rarely appeared at the exhibitions unless Danni bullied him into it, and there was no way that would happen this time with her too pregnant to travel. “Don’t miss out because of everything that’s going on here.”
“That’s sweet but hardly practical. Who’s gonna look after Liam when you’re working?”
I shrugged. “I’ll figure something out. Besides, it won’t matter if he goes to Seattle. He’d be leaving this weekend, right?”
Ash bit his lip. I assumed he was considering it, and my heart flared. Being without him for a few days would be as horrific as it always was when he went away, but I’d deal. Of course, I would. I’d bite down on a fucking gun for him, even though he never asked me for anything.
Speaking of biting… I leaned forward and kissed Ash, prying his lip from his teeth, and hooked my thumbs into the waistband of his sweats. I slid them down his hips and pulled back, as awed by him as ever. Just the sight of him naked made me hard, but I didn’t jump on him. He was still half asleep, which had proved a trigger point for flashbacks in the past, especially in the dark. I flicked the lamp on and let him come to me.
I wasn’t expecting the sharp shove to my chest. Ash was a gentle lover when I didn’t goad him to be otherwise, but there was a fierceness in his gaze now that made me look twice. Made me gasp as he lithely straddled my legs, and arch from the bed as he closed rough fingers around my cock.
“Is this what you want?” He leaned down and licked me, knowing it drove me damn crazy. “You wanna fool around? Or you want me to rail you until we’re both too fucked up to worry about anything else?”
“Huh?”
Ash was off the bed before I could take a breath. “I’m not doing this with you, not tonight. I’m tired, Pete, and your apathy is fucking killing me.”
He turned away, swiping his sweatpants from the bed, and left the room—left me—and even as my heart broke, I couldn’t make myself go after him.
Chapter Four
Ash
I’d gotten over my naked tantrum by the early hours of the morning, but by the time I returned to bed—rage-red paint smeared over and up my arms—Pete was fast asleep exactly where I’d left him.
I covered him with a blanket and lay down beside him. Anger wasn’t an emotion I ran into much, but sometimes when Pete turned his blank gaze on me, it was all I had. And I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how he’d never shaken the shit out of me when my own black cloud had left me pretty much mute.
Perhaps the fact that I couldn’t remember much of that dark time had something to do with it. I dodged the monsters in my brain and tried to recall how Pete had comforted me when I’d been so screwed up that I couldn’t tell night from day. But I couldn’t remember, damn it. I’d just known he was there.
And he’d stayed there.
Guilt burned a path through my veins. Pete had never walked away from me, even when I’d turned my back on him over and over again. Pushed him away without ever laying a hand on him. What the fuck was wrong with me?
I rolled as close to him as I could get and pressed my face against his ribs, kissing the tattooed scar over his liver. I’d nearly lost him before, but this was worse than that. The accident had been tangible—so real and raw I saw it in my dreams, even though I’d never seen the news footage of the train crash. This was something else. The gaping wound Maggie’s death had left in Pete’s soul was invisible, but it hurt just as much. It hurt more, and for reasons I didn’t want to contemplate, he wouldn’t tell me why. I kissed his warm skin and closed my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
But Pete didn’t hear me. And that probably wouldn’t change.
The next morning I sensed Pete behind me before I heard him come into the kitchen. His footsteps were cautious, giving me time to spin around if I didn’t want him to touch me like that, but I didn’t move. I’d learned to enjoy the way Pete slid his arms around my waist and pressed his face against my back, even if my guilt-laced frustration with him still fizzed in my belly.
Pete brushed a rough kiss behind my ear and let me go. I heard him take the laptop from the kitchen counter and set it on the battered table we’d had as long as we’d lived in this apartment. The silence between us wasn’t particularly loaded, but it hung over me all the same. I poured coffee and took it to the table. Over his shoulder, I saw the email he was tapping out to Bill and Esme Gellar, giving them his blessing to take Liam away for Christmas, and my heart sank. Pete’s job was intense, but his boss liked him a lot. It didn’t have to be this way.
I retreated back to the refrigerator, where I was attempting to figure out what groceries I needed to buy to keep us all fed for the week. Having kids around meant our favored diet of pasta and take-out pizza had been replaced with organic vegetables and whole-wheat bread, which, in turn, meant trips to the store had become a much bigger pain in the ass.
“Just get them delivered.” Pete appeared at my shoulder. “Fuck schlepping all that home. Damn bag broke on me last time.”
They were the first words he’d spoken since he’d gotten up, but then I hadn’t said anything either, right? “I can’t get them delivered. I don’t know when I’ll be home, and you’re always late on Fridays.”
“I thought you were off today?”
“I might go to the VA with Jed.”
Pete nodded. “He’s leaving right after. Heading home.”
“How do you know that?”
“He was at the hospital yesterday.”
“Giving Glenn a hard time? I can’t work those two out.”
“Something like that.”
I shot Pete a sideways look. He rarely lied to me, but his vagueness seemed forced. Unease prickled my skin like it had so many times recently. “Are you okay?”
“Hmm?” Pete glanced up from the depths of his coffee cup. “Oh, yeah. Just don’t feel good this morning. It’ll pass.”
He tapped his temple; his usual sign that the persistent headaches he’d been left with after the accident were bothering him—a signal that normally compelled me to leave him alone. Was he pissed at me for last night? I doubted it. Pissed off Pete was hard to miss, but I took my cue anyway. “There’s some Tylenol in the bathroom.”
“I know.”
Of course he did. Pete kept track of every pill in the apartment—he had to because of me. And I was the reason he only had crappy Tylenol to ease his pain. “I’m gonna go.”
“Go where?”
“Work, I guess. I don’t feel much like hanging around here on my own.”
“Okay.”
Pete went back to his coffee cup. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t. I just kissed him and left him alone.
Again.
“So, these are all tattoos you’ve painted onto prosthetic limbs?”
I nodded at Jed and resisted the urge to curl my knees to my chest in the corner chair I’d commandeered. The psych department of the military hospital was nowhere near as creepy as my melodramatic imagination had feared—it wasn’t creepy at all—but I’d been agitated all day, and not even Jed’s quiet company was calming me down. “I painted some of them before they were claimed by patients, but I did a bunch of custom designs after that—loads, actually. I’m surprised I remembered each one when it came to painting them onto the mural.”
Jed walked the length of the twelve-foot piece, apparently fascinated by the web of paint. Many of the designs had more color than I used on skin, but Jed wouldn’t know that. Or would he? He didn’t say much, but what he did was scarily perceptive.
“We could use something like this back home,” Jed said. “A lot of my guys are amputees, and I know they miss their ink.”
“Your guys?”
“I work at the VA in Portland.”
“What do you do there?”
Jed glanced over his shoulder. “I’m a psychologist—a military one, if we’re splitting hairs, but we’re more than we know, right?”
“If you say so.”
My non-answer seemed to amuse Jed, though I didn’t feel like he was laughing at me. He left the mural and dragged a chair over to mine. The way he sat down and studied me made me wonder how I’d never guessed he was a fucking shrink.
“I wasn’t always a psychologist,” he said, like he’d read my damn mind. “And I hid from the Army for a long time after I got out. But Glenn talked me into doing something useful with the bullshit I’d tried to ignore.”
“Your injuries?”
“Mainly, but other stuff too.” Jed got up again and went back to the mural. He pointed at a macabre battle scene I hadn’t thought twice about painting onto the plastic calf muscle of a young paratrooper. “I can’t interpret a conversation with a paintbrush, but I can listen. And so I do.”
It fit. Now that I thought about it, everything about Jed reminded me of the therapist I’d seen after I’d had a complete nervous breakdown—the steady gaze and patient smile… the open silences that I, for some reason, felt compelled to fill. “It was Glenn who asked me to paint the prosthetics. If Pete hadn’t brought him home one night, I’d never have thought of it. I didn’t even know this hospital was here.”
“I like Pete,” Jed said. “He reminds me of my friend Paul.”
“In what way?”
“He’s real.”
There was no better way of describing Pete. Since getting clean and ditching the tools to render me numb, living with a near permanent pit of anxiety in my gut had taught me to appear composed, when on the inside, I was screaming. Pete wasn’t like that—he didn’t hide his feelings, even when he had none. “I think he’s depressed.” Think. Ha. I knew. And by Jed’s lack of reaction, maybe he did too. “He’s been through a lot,” I added when Jed didn’t say anything. “I thought he was the same person for a while, but he’s not.”
Jed came back and reclaimed his chair. “Glenn told me about the accident.”
“What else did he say?”
“That he likes you, and he thought I would too. It’s funny, actually—Pete reminds me of Paul, but Glenn figures that he reminds him of me. I can’t see it myself.”
Neither could I. Pete was my whole world, and I’d never met anyone like him.
