Toward the Sound of Chaos (14 page)

Jake

I
know I shouldn’t be here, soaking wet, watching through the windows and hiding
out in Ellie’s backyard during a rainstorm. Hell, if anyone needs an RO out
against them it’s me, but I promised to keep the Masons safe, and that’s not an
oath I intend to break. I hunker down into the bushes, miserable and sodden to
the bone, though it’s certainly not the worst position I’ve ever found myself
in. I didn’t bring a coat with me—didn’t think I’d need one in the Alabama heat—but
the weather we’re having isn’t so much seasonal as it is caused by a hurricane
off the gulf coast.

The
light in Elle’s bedroom switches on. The blinds are drawn, so I can’t see
anything aside from her silhouette, but even that’s enough to have my dick
twitching inside my jeans. She begins removing her clothes. I glance away, but
I can’t keep my eyes off of her for long. I know it ain’t right, yet still my
gaze follows the glide of the negligee as it skims her body like a second skin.

Jesus
Christ she’s beautiful
.

Before
I can gather my wits about me, I move toward her window, my feet swallowed by
the wet ground. I can’t be here. I shouldn’t be watchin’ her like this so I
don’t know how I wind up on the front porch, banging on the door to her salon for
her to let me in. One by one, the lights flicker on in the house as she moves
towards me. She pulls back the blind and her shoulders fall as she glances at
me. She opens the door, and I don’t give her time to speak. I slide my hand
through her hair and pull her to me. She’s surprised, that much is obvious by
the way she stares up at me with her gorgeous whiskey eyes.

I
lean my forehead against hers. “I know I shouldn’t be here. I know I’m no good
for you.”

“Jake—”

“Just
listen.” I shake my head. “I’m probably gonna break your heart, but it’ll break
mine if I don’t get to kiss you just once.”

I’m
a desperate man. In my grasp is the only thing I’ve wanted in as long as I can
remember. I’m holdin this woman’s heart in my hands, and I’m tryin’ so damn
hard not to crush it. I should leave her be, but I can’t.

Instead,
I press my lips to hers. Her mouth opens, and her tongue moves between my lips,
tangling with my own. Her hands slide through my hair. I groan into her mouth and
palm her ass, lifting her so she can lock her legs around my hips. I stumble
backward into the closed door, the wall, and then finally I get a hold of
myself and march over to the washer. I sit her on top of it as I cup her face
with my hands and devour her mouth.

I
can tell she’s trying to keep from touching me. Her arms are wrapped around my
shoulders, but her hands don’t caress my neck or back. A part of me feels the
loss of that, and another part relishes the fact that she already knows my
triggers so well.

I
grind myself against her soft panties, and she breaks our kisses to moan softly
into my ear. I wish I could just slip inside her, release my cock from my pants,
yank her panties out of the way and bury myself right to the very hilt, but I
know that ain’t the way you treat a woman like this. She’s been hurt before; she’s
felt the touch of a man who wasn’t kind, and she deserves more than a quick
fuck on top of the washer in her empty salon. If I could just stop kissing her,
stop touching her, I could tell her that. That she deserves more than Jimmy,
more than me, more than some scared Marine who hasn’t let a woman touch him in
eight years, and one whose mind has been ravaged, eaten away like acid by
death, blood, and war.

If
I could just move away out of her grasp, I could explain this to her. I could
show Ellie her worth with my words and my heart, because it counts for nothin’
if you can’t tell a woman that she’s the most precious thing you’ll ever hold
in your hands. I know I’m not worthy of a woman like this, because how could
someone so perfect desire someone as ruined and ugly as me?

“Mamma?”

I
leap back from Ellie and cover my mouth, angling my body away so the kid won’t
see the erection straining at my jeans.
Shit.
I shouldn’t have come
here. He’s gonna have questions that neither one of us are able to answer right
now
.

“What
are you doing out of bed, Spence?”

“I
heard a noise.” I glance at the kid who rubs his fists against tired eyes.
“What’s Jake Tucker doing here? Hey, is Nuke here too?”

“No,
Spence, he’s at home. I was just out for a run and came by to make sure you and
your mamma were alright.”

“Well,
what are y’all doin’ on the washing machine?”

“Er
. . .” I shoot a glance at Elle, hoping she’s a fast thinker, but she’s busy
staring at the bulge in my pants while she bites her lip
. Damn it, that’s
just gonna make it even bigger
. “Elle, you wanna tell your boy here what we
we’re doing?”

“Huh?”
she says, her brows drawn together in confusion. “Oh, um . . . we were testing
its strength, see? Jake bet me it couldn’t hold my weight.”

“Well
it can,” Spencer tells me, matter-of-factly. “Mamma says I ain’t allowed to sit
up there because that’s her special place.”

Ellie
blushes all over.

“That
so?”

“Uh
huh,” the kid continues. “No one’s allowed in the salon when Mamma’s doin’ the
laundry.”

“Okay,
Spencer,” Elle says impatiently. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“But
I wanna stay up with Jake.”

“Sorry,
kiddo, I gotta get back and feed Nuke, and you best listen to your mamma now,
you hear?”

“Yes
sir.” He salutes me with a yawn, and my heart plummets to the very bottom of my
gut. I pray to God that this kid never makes it to Marine boot camp. I couldn’t
stand to see him hurt by this lifestyle. I don’t want him giving up his freedom
to fight a war that will ruin him, if he even comes back at all. I don’t want
him ending up like me.

“Please
don’t run.” Ellie pins me with a look as she passes. I reach out and slide my
fingertips over hers in the lightest of touches.

“I
don’t think I can run from you anymore.”

I
watch her walk Spence down the hall. If I was a better man, I’d walk away. I
have nothing to offer the likes of her. Nothing but heartache and the demons I
fight in my head, and she deserves so much more than that.

I
shouldn’t be here. But I am. I kissed her, and maybe it was selfish of me and
stupid of her to let me in after what she saw last night. Maybe we both just
got tired of fightin’. All I know is I’ve spent long enough being a prisoner to
the Taliban, to the demons in my head, to my anger, and my grief, and to the
feelings I’ve been tryin’ to hide from her. I’m awfully tired of tryin’ to
break free from all of it, so I give up.

I
give in.

I
surrender
.

Jake

I
left Elle’s last night shortly after she’d finished putting Spencer back to
bed. I was soaked through from the rain and I didn’t want to ruin her
furniture, but more than that, I didn’t trust myself not to take things
further. I’ve fallen hard and fast for Elle but now that I’ve tasted her on my
lips, held her in my arms and known the touch of her hands, I am afraid of
fucking it all up. Ellie Mason isn’t a woman you screw; she’s a woman you make
love to. She is the kind of woman you worship for hours between the sheets. She
is that rare gem that if you’re lucky enough to find, you grab onto and hold on
like hell. So with a lingering kiss at her door, I said goodnight.

Walkin’
away from her was the last thing I wanted, but it was the smart thing to do—the
right thing. What happened at my house—the screamin’, the nightmares—is the
kind of thing she could expect every night if I took her as my wife, or even
just as a girlfriend, and I needed her to be aware of that.

Fuck,
what the hell was I thinking?
I’d never wanted a wife
before. I’d considered myself a career Marine; the idea of leaving a wife and
kid behind each time I deployed had been my worst nightmare. With every
deployment, I saw the buddies in my platoon go through it, and it was some kind
of hell that haunted them all those long days and nights in the desert. And then
upon my return home, I saw the haunted looks in the eyes of the widows
unfortunate enough to be burying half-empty caskets and handed neatly folded
flags in honor of their husband’s service.

I
had no wife or children to survive me. My parents were gone, died long ago in a
car accident, and my granddaddy and grandmamma had raised me. Mawmaw passed
from throat cancer the year I joined the Marines, and I’m told Pawpaw died from
a heart attack the day those service men came knockin’ on his front door to
give him word of me being a prisoner of war.

No
one would have been left to mourn me if I’d died over there in that desert. The
Tucker bloodline ends with me, and I’m okay with that. When my
service
had finally ended, I’d come home to an empty house, yet it had been bursting so
full of all my demons and all my guilt that I’d never felt alone. Miserable,
but not alone. And though this town had given me a wide berth because I was the
face of a war that made them uncomfortable, I’d never felt the need to put
roots down somewhere else. I had roots, and they might’ve been severed
somewhere in that desert, but I’ve grown new ones and buried them right here in
my granddaddy’s house. I’ve been alone a long time, but this woman makes me
want more. Still, wanting and knowing how to handle more are two very different
things. And it isn’t gonna be easy. I know that, and I guess Ellie probably
knows that, too.

I
lace my running shoes and stretch, though not as long as my physiotherapist
would like me to I’m sure. I don’t bother leashing Nuke—that way he don’t have
a lead pulling at his neck and suffocating him as we run. He’s wearing his vest
though, and I tuck his lead in my back pocket to attach once we hit the duck
pond. Those ducks have been through enough these last few weeks without Nuke
chasing ’em.

We
start out slow, one foot in front of the other. I ignore the ache in my left
side, the way my T-shirt sticks to me after just a few minutes, and the
wheezing coming from not just my lungs, but Nuke’s too. By the time I round the
corner and hit the path to North Beach Road, I’m struck by the sunrise over the
gulf. Not its beauty, or stillness, but the way it reminds me of the first
glimpse I’d had of morning when those Green Berets had pulled me from that dark
hole in Afghanistan.

Every
muscle in my body grinds to a halt as I sink into the sand the way I had then,
my body too weak to carry me, too fucked up from the torture and from being
kept in a room so small I couldn’t stretch my legs out properly. An anguished
cry rips from my chest and frightens a flock of nearby birds. They take flight,
and for a brief second as their wingbeats sound in my ears I hear the
thump,
thump, thump
, of the chopper airlifting us out.

“Jake?”

Shit
.
Not here. Not like this. I don’t want her to see me like this. Not after last
night. She’s already seen too much.

I
brush my hand across my cheek and I’m surprised to find moisture there.

“Jake,
are you okay?”

I
clear my throat. “I’m fine.”

“You
don’t look fine.”

I
sit my ass back in the sand and scrub my hand over my stubble. I can’t talk to
her about this stuff, but I’m tired of runnin’ every time shit gets hard, so I
decide to change the subject. “Where’s Spencer?”

She
gives me a hard look, her eyes tellin’ me she knows exactly what I’m doing, but
she lets it drop and sits down beside me. “They moved his physiotherapy
appointments to Mondays before school.”

“How
did that go over?”

“About
as well as you might think.” She shrugs. “He’s there now, so that’s all that
matters. They don’t like me to be in the room; they feel having me to fall back
on might hinder his progress.”

“And
you let them kick you out?”

She
huffs. “Well, I didn’t go without a fight, but as much as I hate the idea, it’s
important for him to know that I’m not always going to be around. One day he’s
going to grow up and leave home, and I’m not doing him any favors by wrapping
him in cotton wool.”

“Is
that you talking or his pediatrician?”

She
rolls her eyes. “Them, mostly. I understand what they’re saying; it’s just so
hard to learn to let go, you know?”

“Yeah,
I know.”

“So,
you wanna talk about it?”

I
grab a fistful of sand and let it sift through my fingers the way Spencer does.
“No. I really don’t.”

“Okay
then, you wanna talk about last night?”

“Which
part exactly?”

“All
of it. What you were doin’ standing at my door in the pouring rain, that kiss?
Where we go from here?”

I
frown. “Where do you want to go from here?”

“I
asked you first.” She grins and nudges my shoulder with her own. I don’t flinch
at her touch. A part of me wants to pull her closer, but I don’t know if she
wants … well, I don’t know what the hell she wants. I certainly have no idea
what she sees in a hot mess like me.

“What
are we, in junior high?” I smirk.

“Okay,
clearly we’re not discussing that subject this mornin’, either.” She sighs and
gets to her feet. “You wanna take a walk with me, Jake Tucker?”

I
stare at her outstretched hand. “I’ve never been much good at relationships or
at opening up.”

“I
see that.” Elle jams her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “But I’ve never
been good at taking no for an answer.”

“Yeah,
I see that about you.” I laugh, feeding her own words back to her as I climb to
my feet. Even though walkin’ through town right now with everyone starin’ is
the last thing I want, the smile she gives me makes it all worth it. “Alright,
I’ll walk you. But you should know, you have terrible taste in men.”

Her
shoulders rise and fall with the quiet chuckle that escapes her. “I really do.”

“Terrible
taste.” I shake my head and clip Nuke’s lead to his collar, and together we
walk toward the town center and the Pier Park Fountain, the town’s pride and
joy. There’s an unusual amount of people gathered around it for this early in
the morning.

Elle’s
soft hand slips into mine, and I snatch my hand away as if her skin was a
branding iron. “Sorry.” I clear my throat. “It’s gonna take some time to get
used to that.”

She
offers me a tight smile. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have—”

“No.”
I tentatively reach out for her hand, and she slides her fingers between mine.
I’m so used to hiding the disfigured monstrosities from everyone that it feels
odd to have another person holdin’ onto them. I turn and face her. “I don’t
ever want you to apologize for touchin’ me, Elle.”

The
high-pitched wail of a police siren interrupts the hush of morning by the bay,
and I glance over toward the commotion. Joggers and couples out for an early
walk on the pier crowd around the fountain to see what all the fuss is about. I
pull Elle closer to the commotion. The throng is thick, but through it I catch
glimpses of the fountain, and water bubbling from it that’s red as the roses in
the garden surrounding it.

I
blink. Flashes of my past, of blood bubbling out of the mouths of my men,
crimson spraying my neck and face as I knelt on a thick Afghan rug, my best
friend, Gunner, alive just seconds before, his body now slumped on the carpet
and bleeding from a golf-ball-sized hole in the back of his head. Nothing I’d
experienced in my nine months with the Taliban had ever been as horrifying as
that. One second my buddy, a man I’d met in boot camp, and who I’d deployed
with on four tours, was alive, and the next his skull was blown open from a
single bullet.

Nuke
pushes his muzzle against my thigh and whines.

“Jake?”
Ellie’s eyes are wide with worry. “Where did you go just now?”

“Nowhere
good.” My voice trembles, and I wipe a sheen of sweat from my brow. “Come on,
you don’t need to see this.”

“What’s
going on?” Elle pushes forward into the crowd, and in the swarm of people, I
lose my grip on her hand.

I
dive into the throng. Even though the press of so many bodies makes me want to
curl into a fetal position, I can’t let her see that. Sweat prickles down my
spine, my skin itches, and my head screams at me to get out, but I can’t
because I have to protect her from this. I scan the scene; three officers urge
the crowd back, blood spatters on the ground are smudged by the shuffle of our
feet, and there, lying face down in the fountain, the one turning the water as
red as the roses around us thanks to an exit wound in the back of his skull
from what looks like an assault rifle, is Ellie’s husband.

Her
hands cover her mouth. Her face is frozen in horror, and a deep, keening cry
tears from her throat. I grab hold of her and pull her into me, turning her
head away from the sight. The words start as a whisper, but are soon so loud it
appears as if they’re being shouted at the two of us:

Gunned
down.

Husband.

Marine.

Affair.

I
cover her ears, as if I could protect her from the vitriol that spews from
their mouths as if it were gospel, but I can’t help her un-hear it or shield
her from the disgust in their gazes, so I take her hand and I drag her out of
the throng.

When
we’re back at her car, I put her in the passenger seat, getting the strangest
sense of déjà vu, and then I drive her to Paws for Cause where I tell her to
stay put with Nuke in the car. She doesn’t even nod; she’s catatonic. I can’t
say I blame her. It’s one thing to see a dead body—it’s another entirely to
know that body intimately. She had a child with this man. Whatever he was after
that no longer matters because the man who fathered her son is dead.

Inside,
I tell Olivia about Elle’s husband. She’s halfway to the car before I can
finish the sentence. After a lot of tears—Olivia’s not Elle’s—she offers to
pick up Spencer from his appointment and keep him with her at the shelter for
the day.

Elle’s
knees are shaking. Nuke is in the driver’s seat, body laid out across the
center console, head buried in her lap as he attempts to comfort her the way he
does with me. I scratch his scruff and tell him to get in the back.

“I’m
gonna take you home, okay? Olivia will take care of Spence, and he won’t know
anything until you tell him.”

She
stares out the window, her expression blank. “I can’t go home.”

“Elle—”

“I
don’t want to go back to that house.” Her voice tremors with the words.

“Okay.”

I
start up the engine and head for my place. When I pull into the drive, I shut
the car off and pull the keys from the ignition. I seem to be making a habit of
bringing her back here after disaster strikes. Climbing from the car, I let
Nuke out and head around to her door to open it for her. She makes no move to
get out. “Ellie?”

“He’s
dead.”

I
take a deep breath. “Yeah, angel, he’s dead.”

“I
never seen a dead body before.”

“Most
haven’t.”

Her
eyes snap to mine. “But you have.”

I
clear my throat. “Yes I have. Now, you gonna sit in that car in my drive all
day, or do you want to come inside?”

She
moves slowly, getting out of the car and drifting towards my front porch. Her
steps falter, and I put my arm around her waist and pull her into me before she
can fall.

“I
got you.” I plant us on the stoop, fit her into the space between my legs, and
wrap my arms around her. She sobs, desperate cries of both anguish and what
seems like disbelief. I don’t say nothing; I just hold her.