Color of Forgiveness (42 page)

“Hi,” he says again, smiling. He beams at
her like her showing up just made his day.

She smiles back. “Hi. Can you move over a
little bit?”

“Sure,” he says happily as he moves over.
She rolls the windows up and turns the heat on.

“Why are you out here drinking?”

“I dunno,” he says with a shrug. “Just got
thirsty I guess.”

She hums as she turns in her seat to look at
him.

He’s still grinning at her from ear to ear,
his eyes glassy. He’s so cute she can’t help but smile back at him.
He’s a happy drunk, the total opposite of his normal angry, gruff
self.

“You’re so pretty, like really pretty,” he
says, leaning towards her. “You’re like the prettiest girl I’ve
ever seen.”

She giggles especially when she considers
how beautiful his supermodel ex-wife is. “Thank you. How about we
go inside now? It’s pretty cold out here, don’t you think?”

“Nah, it’s not cold. Come here,” he says,
grabbing her hand and tugging her closer. “I have to tell you
sumpin’.”

“What?”

“I don’t like that Jackie person. She’s
mean. So I’ll just stay right here.”

Myra sighs, trying to figure out what to do
next. She turns off the truck and slips the keys in her pocket.
“I’ll be right back, okay?”

He grabs her arm. “You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Okay,” he says happily with a big, wide
grin.

When she gets up to Jackie’s door, she finds
Jackie standing there with her hands on her hips. “Well? What’s
going on?”

“He’s drunk, and he won’t come in. What
should I do? I can’t leave him out there in the cold.”

“That man is so annoying,” Jackie rants as
she puts on her shoes and grabs her coat. “Let’s see if we can get
his stupid ass in the house.”

Jackie marches up to Dylan’s truck and
throws open the door. “All right, I’m grouchy because I’m tired.
Now get up and get your ass in the house, Dylan. Let’s go.”

“Why’d you bring
her
?” he asks Myra.
He looks back at Jackie. “My ass ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

Jackie looks at Myra. “He’s too big for us
to drag into the house. I say we just leave him out here all night.
Let him sleep it off.”

“I can’t do that,” Myra says. “What if the
stalker shows up and hurts him or something?”

“Well, call Porter and have him come over
and help us.”

Myra looks at her watch. “It’s almost
midnight. Plus, I can’t call Porter for something like this.”

“Well, we have no other choice than to just
leave him.”

“No. I’ll stay out here with him.”

“You’ll what?” Jackie shouts as Myra closes
the truck door. She starts walking back towards the house with
Jackie shouting at her the entire way. “You can’t stay out here!
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of in my life. What if
the stalker shows up while you’re out there? The two of you could
get murdered!”

“No, we won’t. I’ll take my gun with me. I
can protect us.”

“This is unbelievable,” Jackie says,
throwing her hands up in exasperation. “Whatever, Myra, I can tell
I’m not going to be able to talk any sense into you. If something
happens, remember that I warned you, and that I am not
responsible.”

“We’ll be fine. I’ll protect him.”

Jackie sighs. “Well, give me one last hug
since I may never see you again,” she says as she pulls Myra into a
hug. When she lets her go, she sighs. “I’m off to bed. If I wasn’t
so tired, I’d fight with you more. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Myra gathers some pillows, several blankets,
a flashlight and her gun and heads back out to Dylan’s truck.

“Hi, again, pretty lady,” he greets her,
grinning.

“Hi,” she says, grinning back, as she climbs
into the truck. She turns the heat on high again. “Let me feel your
hands,” she says, reaching for his. They feel like icicles.

“Dylan, you’re freezing. Let me warm them up
for you,” she says as she starts rubbing his hands in between
hers.

“
Mm
… you’re so warm.”

Goosebumps break out on her neck when she
feels his nose in her hair. “You smell… yummy,” he whispers,
causing her to giggle. He’s
so
drunk.

“We’re really having a baby?” he asks out of
the clear blue, causing her to gasp. She quickly looks up at him
and sees that his expression is serious.

“Yes. We are,” she whispers, her heart
beating hard.

He frowns. “I’m sorry I was mean. I don’t
wanna be like that.”

“I know. I forgive you. It’s okay.”

He picks up her hand and brings it up to his
chest over his heart. She looks up at him as he looks down at her,
his eyes shiny. “I need to tell you sumpin’. This,” he whispers as
he presses her hand against his chest, “is yours… my heart. It’s
all yours. My heart, well, it loves you, but it hurts. I don’t know
how to make it stop. It just hurts all the time, ya know?”

Myra nods, tears filling her eyes. “I know,”
she whispers back. “I wish it didn’t hurt.” She rubs the spot over
his heart, wishing she could take his pain away.

“Me too,” he whispers as a tear spills down
his cheek. “I’m scared.”

“I know you are,” she whispers, bringing her
other hand up and wiping the tear from his face. She cradles his
jaw in her hand. “I am too.”

“I love you,” he mumbles, his voice
slurring, his eyelids heavy.

Her heart stops in her chest, those drunken,
slurred words so precious to her. She closes her eyes, tears on her
cheeks as she savors them. She tries to memorize every vowel; how
they sounded on his lips. She opens her eyes and starts to share
with him what’s in her heart when she sees his head bob as he nods
off to sleep. “I love you, too, Dylan,” she whispers back, tears
blinding her eyes. “So much that it hurts.”

Grabbing a pillow, she tucks it lovingly
behind his head. She turns off the truck, then crawls into his lap,
sitting sideways and wraps a blanket around them. She tucks her gun
in her coat pocket and sets the flashlight on the floorboard so she
can grab it quickly if needed.

She picks up his limp left hand and kisses
each of his fingers. Flipping it over, she kisses each of the rough
callouses on his hand and then his palm. “Dylan, I love you,” she
murmurs, her voice choking with emotion. “I love everything about
you.” She brings his hand to her chest like he did hers and presses
it there. “I ache inside too. I ache for you. I know you hurt and
I’d do anything to take your pain away.” Keeping his hand close to
her heart, she moves her own to his chest. “There’s a beautiful man
in there, Dylan, I know there is. He’s just hiding behind all that
pain.”

He snores lightly as she runs her fingers
through his hair, touching his cheekbones, his jaw, his lips. She
knows she shouldn’t be touching him so intimately while he’s
inebriated and passed out, but she finds that she can’t help
herself. She presses her lips to his, kissing them softly. He
groans and shifts, his arm wrapping around her and pulling her
tighter against him. “Mm, Myra,” he hums, a small smile on his
lips. Myra gets a flashback to a time not so long ago when he was
drunk and whispered Sabrina’s name in her ear. Now it’s
her
name on his lips. She smiles, settling her head against his chest,
bringing their entwined hands close to her heart. She closes her
eyes and whispers, “My heart is yours too. It’s
all
yours.”

CHAPTER 12

Dylan stirs and his head feels like
someone’s beating the shit out of his skull with a hammer. Sensing
Myra’s warm, soft body on top of him, he ignores the pain for a
moment as his hand slides down to her ass, squeezing it and
pressing her closer. Her thigh rubs against his hard cock and the
friction feels so fucking good. He tries to swallow but has no
goddamn saliva in his mouth. The inside of his mouth tastes like
he’s been sucking on old dirty rags.

He tries to open his eyes, but they feel
like they’re glued shut. He shifts again and he can tell he’s
laying down somewhere. He moves his other hand up to scratch at his
neck when his hand comes in contact with something cold. He jerks
back away from it and tries to lift his head to see what the hell
he just touched. But his eyes scrunch up in agony as pain radiates
from the top of his head, shooting out of his temples and forehead.
He groans as he gently lowers his head back down.

For several minutes, he doesn’t move a
muscle. He stays still as he waits for the hammering in his head to
subside a bit. After another painful swallow, he scrapes his teeth
over his chapped lower lip and tries to pry open one eye.

Everything’s so blurry and bright that he
cringes and slowly turns his head to the side. As he tries to peer
through the tiny slit of his scrunched up eye, he blinks several
times and things start to come into focus, and he sees a…
dashboard?

With great effort, he turns his head
slightly and pries his other eye open, squinting and blinking, and
sees the top of Myra’s head. Where the fuck is he? What happened
last night? All he can remember is something about them… fighting?
He remembers chasing after her with his truck and being extremely
pissed off for some reason.

He wonders if this could be some kind of a
dream… if it is, he prays like hell he never wakes up, ever. He
pulls Myra tighter to him with the hand that rests on her ass. But
something nags at the edges of his memory, just barely out of
reach. Why were they fighting? Was that the nightmare…?

His other hand touches Myra’s laying against
his chest. Grasping it, he pulls her hand tighter and presses it
against his…

His eyes pop open but shut immediately when
the light causes searing pain.

A feeling of déjà vu comes over him.
Something about his heart… What was it? He tries desperately to
remember. He told her something but what? His heart, it…

Someone pounds on the window, causing him to
almost jump out of his goddamn skin. “
Myra?
” an annoyingly
high-pitched voice trills. Myra jerks and shrieks in terror. When
he opens his eyes, Myra is sitting up between his legs, holding a
gun in both hands aimed directly at the window. Her eyes are wide
and her hands are trembling so hard she can barely hold onto
it.

“Jesus Christ
,
” he mutters, grabbing
at his head and closing his eyes for a second because of the
pain.

“What the hell, Myra?” Jackie shrieks,
causing Dylan to wince and groan.

“Oh my god... Oh, shit, I’m sorry, Dylan.
She scared me so badly,” Myra mumbles in an out-of-breath voice. He
peers at her through his squinted eyes and watches as she lays the
gun down on the floorboard. She turns the key in the ignition
enough to roll the window down.

“What were you thinking?” Jackie screams at
Myra. “You almost shot me! Holy crap... You just pointed a gun at
my head! You could have killed me, Myra, do you know that? You
could have killed me!”

“I know. I’m so sorry. You scared me… I
didn’t mean to…”

“You might not have meant to, but you still
did it!” Jackie shouts.

“For Christ’s sake, would you please lower
your goddamn voice,” Dylan says through gritted teeth.

“No, I won’t!” Jackie shouts as she sticks
her head inside the window and stares down at Dylan lying down in
the seat. “It’s your fault that she’s out here with a stupid gun in
the first place. How could you go and get drunk like that, huh? You
put the both of you in danger.”

The pounding in Dylan’s skull multiplies by
a million, which he didn’t think was humanly possible.

“Quit yelling at him,” Myra says in a low,
angry voice.

“Quit defending him!” Jackie shouts
back.

Everyone quiets for a moment, while Dylan
rubs his temples.

Finally, Jackie sighs. “I need to go finish
getting ready for work so I’ll be in the house. I just wanted to
make sure you were okay.”

Dylan assumes she walks away, but he doesn’t
know because he can’t see anything from his prone position.

Myra touches his chest. “Are you okay?” she
asks, her voice not much louder than a whisper.

“No.”

“Do you remember anything from last night?”
she asks.

“No,” he says, keeping his eyes on hers. She
watches him for a moment before her expression drops. She stares
down at her hands in her lap as she frowns and nods slightly.

He does remember a few things, something
about…
his heart.
Shutting his eyes tightly, he groans when
a visual of him offering his heart up on a goddamn platter flashes
in front of his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

He tries to sit up but it’s hard with Myra
sitting on her knees between his legs. He finally manages to scoot
his back against the door. He clears his throat. “What exactly
happened last night?”

“Well, you were out here in your truck,
drinking. Jackie and I tried to get you to come into the house, but
you wouldn’t.”

“You stayed with me… out here? What the fuck
were you thinking?” he says much too loudly causing him to groan
and grab his temples.

“I couldn’t leave you out here by yourself;
I had to stay. I care about you too much.”

Her words cause a funny, weird fluttering
feeling in his chest. “Shit, Myra, you shouldn’t have done that.
I’m supposed to be the one protecting
you
… and our baby.”
The more he thinks about it the more pissed off he gets. “Goddamn
it. What if something had happened to you while my stupid ass was
passed out drunk? Holy shit...” His eyes squeeze shut as his
breathing becomes rushed.

She grabs his hand in hers and rubs it.
“Dylan, calm down, nothing happened. I
am
capable of taking
care of myself and our baby. I had my gun and—”

His eyes fly open. “Yeah, and you almost
shot Jackie in the fucking head,” he says, grimacing at the volume
of his voice.