Ray studied me for a moment, her green eyes dancing as her lips turned into a little melancholy smile. “You are a remarkable man, you know that?”
I laughed awkwardly, shying away quickly to eye a cookie jar shaped like a cow.
One of its ears had been broken off.
Now, Ray had a twelve-year-old son. Things were bound to break at some point. But a twinge of intuition told me that cow had been broken in a way Noah had nothing to do with.
So, I turned from the cow to level Ray with a serious expression and said, “Speaking of remarkable men, why don’t you tell me more about Noah’s father?”
She swallowed and sat up a little straighter in her chair to favor the wrist no longer wearing a brace. It was a small tell but like I had already told her once before, if she wanted me to believe her stories, she would have to learn to act better than that.
“Did he do that to your wrist?” I asked point-blank, and she answered with wide, angry eyes and the opening and closing of her mouth. Like she wanted to say something, but didn’t know what. So, I added, “Noah told me he hurts you.”
She clenched her hand and slowly shook her head as her bottom lip began to quiver. “He wasn’t supposed to say anything. I told him not to—”
“But I can’t help you if I don’t know,” I interrupted, gentle but firm. “So, talk to me, Ray. Please.”
Her gaze dragged slowly from her once-injured wrist to meet my eye for a fleeting moment, just long enough for me to witness the helplessness and despair she carried along with her, concealed from the rest of the world. I saw the hope she was desperate to feel, the prayer for salvation, but then, she abruptly looked away.
“There’s nothing you can do anyway,” she replied, no longer denying the truth. “And, really, it’s not like there’s anything to do. We don’t even see him that often. He shows up every now and then, when it’s convenient for him, and he—”
“Hurts you?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and I thought she might finally say something. I thought she might even tell me everything. But instead, she stood suddenly from her chair with such force that it teetered on its legs. She turned to press her hands to the kitchen counter, hanging her head as her shoulders heaved with every anguished breath.
To contrast her brash rising, I stood slowly. “Ray,” I said, my voice low as I approached with wary caution.
When I got no response, I laid a hand against her shoulder, engulfing her slender frame with my palm.
“Rain.”
I spoke her given name with a stern edge, and she reluctantly looked over her shoulder to reveal the tears that glistened in her emerald eyes. The heart I owned had been locked away for so many years, but at the sight of her watery gaze, I listened as the door creaked open to that musty, old cellar, and I heard that telltale beating. Every thump a reminder that it was still somehow there, waiting for someone to hold it, to keep it safe.
The hand I held against her shoulder dared to move just a few centimeters over to her golden-brown hair, falling over her neck like a waterfall of honey. Touching its length for the first time after years of wondering, and you know what? It was even softer than I’d imagined.
“I know what to do with pain, Ray,” I said, keeping my tone barely above a whisper. “Give yours to me. Let me carry it, so you don’t have to anymore.”
She turned against my touch, folding herself into the crook of my arm. It took everything in me not to wrap her into a tight embrace and protect her from the monster who’d hurt her wrist and whatever else I didn’t know about. But I would know eventually. I would ensure she told me every last detail, and I would do whatever it took to make sure she never had to face him again.
“What would you do?” she asked, her eyes twinkling with tears and hope.
She lifted her palm, slowly bringing her fingertips to the side of my face, tracing the scar that ran from below my eye to disappear into my beard. The hairs at the back of my neck stood on end at her touch, featherlight and barely there, as I widened my stance and craned my neck to drop my forehead to hers.
She held my gaze and flattened her palm on my cheek, covering the evidence that I’d once protected her. Before I knew her name. Before I knew her. And she had to know now that there was nothing I wouldn’t do. I’d mark my entire body if I had to. I’d lay down my life. I’d run to hell on my bare feet, harness the Devil, and force him to kneel in submission. All to be certain that the bogeyman she knew and feared never laid a hand on her or her son again.
But my tongue failed me now as she held me captive within her bejeweled eyes. I was rendered stupid and useless with the softness of her palm soothing the hardened, jagged edges of my heart, and all I could utter in reply was, “Everything.”
Her mouth moved to mine as quickly as mine went to hers. A passionate rush of energy, forcing our bodies to converge in a frantic coupling of lips, opening on contact to coax tongues from their hiding places. I tasted her mouth, and she tasted mine, both of us savoring every moment with sharp inhales and choked whimpers. She hooked her arms around my neck, and I took my hands to her waist, digging my fingers into her flesh and biting her bottom lip to ward off the temptation to go further, to do more than just kiss.
“Soldier.” My name was spoken breathlessly, almost as a sigh.
Nobody had ever uttered my name that way before. Nobody had ever said it as if it were the most cherished, most precious word to ever exist in the English language, and I wanted to wrap it up in a neat little bow to save for always.
I moved my lips to her jaw, then her neck, where I inhaled the scent of freshness and purity and warmth. A soothing blend that reminded me of childhood and sunshine and all the things I’d been missing for so long. I wrapped my arms around her, burying my nose in the crook of her neck as a consuming need to get lost in this emotion crashed against me. All of a sudden, all at once, she became everything I had lost and needed so desperately that I could hardly breathe, and now, with her in my arms, I released a deflating exhale, afraid to ever let her go again.
“Soldier,” she repeated in a tone that matched her scent. Comforting and consoling. She weaved her fingers through my hair, cupping the back of my neck. “God … why do I feel like I’ve needed this for so long?”
“I know I have,” I replied, not giving a shit about how stupid I must look. Six foot seven and tucked around this woman who was well over a foot shorter.
She sighed into my shoulder. “I … I need to tell you something.”
The sound of her voice …
It was reluctant and regretful, and that wasn’t at all what I wanted to hear. Not when I was ready to bare my soul for her to steal and use at her will.
I swallowed in preparation as I stood up straight and took a step back, moving my hands from her waist to her shoulders. I didn’t say anything; I just waited for what suddenly seemed like the end of the world to come tumbling down around me.
Life always did have a way of taking away the good things the very moment I’d gotten a taste.
Ray moved her hands to my chest and pressed them over my thundering heart, now more alive than ever. She stared ahead, watching every rise and fall of my chest, before asking, “Do you remember that night we first met?”