Break On Through Page 17

  He dropped his hands to look at her. “A magic potion is not the ticket this time. I sure as hell don’t want to go back to sleep.”

  “Oh.”

  Wearily, he sat back against the cushions. The moonlight streaming through the glass only served to make his features appear more elegant and severe, the angles highlighted, the hollows shadowed. So beautiful, Cleo thought. And again she was struck by the juxtaposition of his face to his tough-guy physique. His upper body was cut, his arm muscles well-defined. When he adjusted the blanket, his biceps flexed, and she felt a little thrill at the power in even that small movement.

  “Go to bed, Cleo.”

  Have you considered maybe there’s something Reed needs from you?

  She knelt at his feet, almost like a supplicant, and she felt like one…prepared to beg him to let her inside his head. Cilla’s words re-echoed inside Cleo’s. Have you considered maybe there’s something Reed needs from you?

  “Reed…” she whispered.

  He grunted in response.

  “Who is Ben?”

  Reed stiffened, then vaulted off the couch. He stalked into the kitchen and she heard him rummaging around. Then he came back into the living room, a bottle of some kind of liquor in hand. He had a glass in the other.

  “Tequila?” he said, holding out the glass to her.

  “No.” She watched him bring the booze to his lips, take a swallow. “I’m sorry if my question drove you to drink.”

  He swallowed. “The nightmare drives me to drink.”

  As he dropped back to the couch, she wondered what to do next. She couldn’t force him to talk and maybe the impulsive question had been a mistake anyway. Gathering herself, she made to rise, but then Reed put his hand on her head. “You don’t have to leave,” he said.

  She re-settled onto the rug. “You don’t have to answer me, either.”

  Sighing, he set the bottle and glass aside, on the end table at his right. “Maybe I do.”

  She waited him out.

  “Bing told me you seemed interested in the job at his and Brody’s construction company.”

  “We haven’t talked in any detail,” she hedged. “So I don’t—”

  “If the details are acceptable, would you take the job?”

  It would mean the beginning of renewed stability. At the treasure hunt she’d had the opportunity to talk to Bing a little and he seemed like he’d be a good guy to work for. Cleo liked Alexa and Alexa loved Bing, so there was also one of those friend-of-my-friend deals. And Reed wouldn’t have steered the other man in her direction if he didn’t believe it would be a comfortable fit.

  “Oh,” she said, guilt giving her a pinch. “I haven’t even thanked you for setting that up.”

  “I don’t want your thanks,” he said, brushing it away. “I want your answer.”

  “I would take the job,” she said. “I know you and the others have done too much—”

  “It will be work, not charity, Cleo,” he said. “They need someone with your kind of experience.”

  “Then I’ll do the best for them that I can.”

  “Okay.” He blew out a breath. “In that case it would be wise to explain…Ben.”

  She suddenly regretted prying. “Reed—”

  “Working for Bing and Brody means you need to know more about me…so things between us don’t get misunderstood and complicate your new position.”

  “All right.” Her eye caught on the dinosaurs the boys had left under the end table. They were in a jumble, their container upended. Automatically, she scooted over to tidy them up.

  “Cleo.” Reed bent over and grabbed her chin, forcing her gaze to meet his in the moonlit room. “You need to be aware of what I can’t offer.”

  Embarrassed, she jerked out of his hold. “I’m not aware of expecting anything in particular from you.” Snatching up a T-Rex, she addressed her remarks to its snarling face and massive teeth. “I apologize if I gave you that impression.”

  Reed sighed. “Maybe I need to remind myself.”

  During the following silence, she walked Big T to the plastic bucket, turned it over, and placed the plastic figure inside.

  “I think I told you I spent that year at military school,” he finally said.

  “Your grandfather placed you there.”

  “Yeah. I was shit for a student and somehow he convinced my father—probably cornered Hop when he was stoned—that I would benefit from Oceanview. I think he had dreams of the Naval Academy for me after that.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “The Captain—that’s what we call my grandfather—wrote her off at nineteen when she began shacking up with the band here at the compound. I think she was Bean’s lady first, but then she hooked up with Hop and hung in there to get pregnant and birth Beck, Walsh, and me. After I was born she followed some artist to Europe. Last we heard of her I think she was in Antwerp. Or maybe it was Amsterdam.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. What they call a ‘free spirit’.”

  Or a flake, Cleo thought. Even if you didn’t want to be a woman attached to the Velvet Lemons, you shouldn’t leave your kids.

  “But we aren’t real harsh on her, because being raised by the Captain couldn’t have been any picnic.”

  Cleo ran her fingernail along the points of the back of a Spinosaurus. “Did Beck and Walsh go to military school as well?”

  “I was the last ditch effort to bring one grandson to heel.”

  “You were what age?”

  “Fourteen.”

  Cleo pitched Spiney into the container. “I can’t imagine sending away a young teen boy from all he knew.”

  Reed stretched out his legs. He still wore his jeans and the warmth of one knee brushed her shoulder before inching away. “When I think back on it, maybe some other kind of environment might have turned out all right for me. At Oceanview I didn’t have a chance.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Regimented. Every minute was accounted for.”

  “Like in your books. The School.”

  He nudged her with his leg. “No flies on you.” Then he sighed. “Imagine going from the wild Velvet Lemons compound to someplace like that.”

  “Jesse—the character in your books—didn’t know how to make his bed when he first arrived.”

  “Neither did I. Housekeepers came through the compound and did laundry and sprayed disinfectant on all the surfaces once or twice a week, but nobody made us do anything.”

  Cleo’s nose wrinkled at the necessity of all the germ-killing. “A fish out of water.”

  “Oh, yeah. Most of the cadets entered the school in sixth grade. I was going into ninth when I arrived.”

  “Were the other kids mean?” She thought of Eli and Obie and clutched an Apatosaurus to her aching chest.

  “Hazing was part of the culture. Establishing a pecking order the normal thing for boys to do there. Expected.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How bad was it for you?” She glanced up at him. Most of his face was shadowed.

  “I was big for my age and I had two older brothers so I knew how to handle myself. It didn’t take long for the others to leave me alone.”

  “But not Ben,” she said, hazarding a guess.

  “Not Ben.” He abruptly changed position, drawing in his legs so he could rest his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. His hair hung around his face.

  Swallowing, Cleo couldn’t help but reach out to him, then realized she still held the plastic figure in her hand.

  Reed glanced up, caught her mid-retraction. “Were you going to pet me with an Apatosaurus?”

  “Maybe he could stomp out the sadness in your voice. He was one of the largest animals to have ever lived on Earth.”

  Reed snatched the toy from her hand and walked it from her chin up her cheek. “How about the sadness on your face?”

  Goose bumps prickled in the wake of the plastic footsteps and she
shivered. She tried drawing away, but then Reed caught her arm and pulled her onto the couch beside him. “Sit closer,” he said. “You’re cold.”

  Oh, closer was trouble. He drew her even nearer, placing her sideways across his lap. “I’m too heavy,” she protested, wriggling.

  “Quiet,” he said, and wrapped both arms around her, tucking her head beneath his chin.

  Because she thought he might be deriving comfort from her presence, she stopped struggling. Closing her eyes, she breathed in the fragrance of his skin and reminded herself that this connection she felt was a combination of pheromones and hormones. The odorless chemicals he exuded and her long-term celibacy.

  Nothing more dangerous than that.

  “Ben was in seventh grade,” he said.

  Cleo felt her heart quake. Just four years older than Eli.

  “The entire school is one unit, divided into companies. Ben was in mine. We slept in the same barracks, had chow at the same time each day.”

  “Were you in charge of him or something?”

  “Naw. But we were both new that year. His bunk was below mine.” Reed hauled in a breath. “Ben was small for his age. Scrawny, even. He said his dad sent him to Oceanview to toughen him up.”

  A shudder went through Reed and alarmed, she enclosed him in her arms. “What is it?”

  “It’s hard…remembering. And yet I never forget.” He rested his cheek on the top of her hair. “Ben cried himself to sleep every fucking night.”

  “Oh, Reed. You could hear that?”

  “Yep. So did everyone else. Of course he was instantly known as Crybaby Ben. Even the instructors called him that.”

  Cleo’s spine went straight. “Are you saying he was bullied by adults as well?”

  “Oh, yeah, darlin’.”

  “That poor boy.”

  “His life was miserable for the entire year,” Reed said. “He was lousy at sports, not much better at academics, and the stupid marching…he’d get so nervous he couldn’t remember his left from his right foot. We had a six-week course on tying knots. He was good at that.”

  “I’m glad he found a special skill…” Cleo started, then her words petered off as she registered the tension in Reed’s body.

  “I kept telling him I was there to protect him,” he said, his voice low. “I kept the thugs away when we were in the barracks, at chow. But I couldn’t be everywhere.”

  “Of course you couldn’t,” she whispered, stricken.

  Reed buried his face against her hair. “He had hopes his parents were pulling him at the end of the year and he wouldn’t have to come back. I finally got through to Hop that the place was making me miserable and he promised I was out for good in June.

  “Then Ben’s parents told him they’d signed him up for another year.”

  Of course she’d known what RIP meant as part of that tattoo. But now Cleo was beginning to think the unthinkable…that there hadn’t been an accident or an illness. Scrambling out of his lap, she got to her knees beside Reed and pulled him against her, his head cradled on her breasts. His arms went around her hips and she stroked his hair.

  “Shh,” she said. “It’s all right.”

  “It’s really not right at all.”

  “I know.” She rocked him a little.

  His hands clutched her tighter and his mouth found bare skin above the neckline of her nightshirt. When he spoke again, the words seemed to sink straight into her heart. “I found him, Cleo. Lights out was nearing and he wasn’t in his bunk. There’d be more marching if he didn’t make it in time.”

  “Where was he?” she whispered.

  “The library has three stories with a round center room. He’d climbed to the top balcony, tied one end of the rope on the railing and put the noose he’d fashioned over his neck.”

  A chill spread across her skin. “Oh, Reed.”

  “He’d jumped. I got there too late. I poked my head inside, didn’t see anyone, but then something made me look up. He was wearing his gym shorts, those skinny legs of his hanging down. At the end of them his small, dirty sneakers.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath instead of crying out.

  “I couldn’t save him, Cleo. Not then, not before.”

  Her eyes squeezed shut. Her throat closed. What words were there anyway to help his pain?

  “So now my head, it’s full of monsters and regret.” He sat up, then drew her lower so he could press his brow to hers.

  She cupped his face, his scratchy cheeks in her palms, and just held on.

  “I’ve cut myself off from caring since then. So I’m not good at it anymore. I don’t want to be.”

  Oh, Reed. Not good at caring? “What about the tattoo? Can you tell me about that?”

  He sat back on the cushions and rubbed his hand on his neck, beneath the layers of hair. “It’s a red-tailed hawk. Ben found the feather of one and it was his most treasured possession. One of the guys in our company was Native American and said the feathers show up when you need to pay attention…when you should look for an underlying truth.”

  Glancing at her, his lips curved a little. “Now don’t laugh.”

  “I would never laugh at you.”

  “When I was older, I read that the red-tailed hawk is a creature of both the seen and unseen worlds, able to move freely between both. I like to think that Ben is able to do that now, soaring high above all the pain and misery and able to appreciate the beauty that eluded him when he was here.”

  Tears stung the corners of her eyes. “Wow. It’s like you’re a writer,” she said, trying to keep it light. But one hot droplet rolled over her lid and slid down her cheek.

  Even in the darkness, Reed saw it and he captured it with his thumb. He rubbed it into her skin like a salve.

  Cleo knew it wouldn’t heal her wound.

  Because he’d done that, wounded her. With talk of monsters and regret, his despair, as a boy, of not being able to help another one, that tattoo of a hawk flying between two worlds. Of not being good at caring.

  God! If someone asked her right now, she’d say she was in love with him. That despite all her talk about him just affecting her at skin-level, he’d gone ahead and made a place for himself deep in her heart.

  It was weird how comfortably he rested there.

  Chapter Twelve

  When Cleo walked into the kitchen the next morning, Reed decided she didn’t look much older than Eli. Her gilt hair was pillow-mussed and her eyes were at a drowsy half-mast. Her long robe hung loose to reveal the knee-length night shirt she’d worn to sleep.

  Blinking at the sight of him sitting at the table with her sons, it seemed to take her a minute to absorb there were plates in front of each of them and syrup on the table. Obie shoved a bite of pancake into his mouth. “Hi, Mommy.”

  “Hi, baby,” she said, and rubbed at her eyes with her fists. “You’re eating.”

  “Reed made breakfast,” Eli said.

  “I think I see that,” she murmured, looking around her. Sunlight streamed through the French doors and the brightness seemed to dazzle her. “I smell coffee?”

  Reed hid his grin. “On the counter. Shall I pour you a mug?”

  She shook her head. “I never sleep this late,” she told the carafe of dark brew.

  “You were up late.” His fault. His nightmare had brought her into the living room and he’d wound up laying out his demons for her. Now that it was morning, he felt…he supposed he still felt it was the right thing to do. While he didn’t talk about that year at Oceanview much, and only had made vague noises about Ben to people who asked about the tattoo, his reasons for sharing with Cleo held true.

  Working for Bing and Brody—and since she’d become friendly with Cilla and Alexa as well—would likely mean that once she moved out of his neighborhood they’d run into each other from time-to-time. If she read too much into this interlude of togetherness, that might prove awkward in the future.

  He sure as hell didn’t want her leaving a good job
because she’d gotten too attached to him. Now she knew the score—that he would never attach back—and anything they enjoyed in the short term she wouldn’t build false hopes upon.

  Eli wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Reed said he’s taking us all to the beach today.”

  Cleo frowned. “What?”

  He focused on his plate. “The compound can feel a little…close.” Locked within its walls with Cleo and her boys, the forced togetherness might begin to feel—falsely—too intimate. “I thought we would appreciate an outing in the ocean air.” When she didn’t say anything, he glanced up. Her expression didn’t give her thoughts away.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” he added. And didn’t that sound defensive?

  “You can go,” Cleo offered. “We’ll be fine here.”

  Obie dropped his fork to his plate with a clatter. “Reed said we all get to go to the beach!”

  “Sorry,” Reed said, grimacing. “I should have checked with you first.”

  “Mom—” Eli started.

  She held up her hand. “We shouldn’t trouble Reed.”

  “It’s no trouble,” Obie said. “I’m no trouble.” He shot Reed a winning smile. “I’m good as gold.”

  Eli rolled his eyes, then folded his arms over his chest, his expression mutinous.

  Cleo remained silent seven seconds, then she caved. “All right, all right,” she grumbled. “But I expect your best behavior.”

  The kids did a damn fine job in that respect, as far as Reed was concerned. They helped clear the breakfast dishes from the table, dressed themselves, and didn’t exhibit too much impatience while their mother readied the group for the outing, which included slathering sunscreen on any inch of her boys’ available skin.

  When she turned to him, more of the white stuff in the cup of her palm, he backed away. “Oh, no.”

  Something sparked in her eyes. “This trip was your idea. You don’t want to set a bad example for Eli and Obie, do you?”

  Revenge for painting her into a corner, he realized. So instead of bitching, he obediently leaned down so she could slime his face with the lotion. But instead of just tolerating the process, the feather-light strokes of her fingers on his face became a different type of retaliation as his body reacted to the simple pleasure of her touch. Even with two impatient kids in the periphery of his vision, blood was rushing south.