“Listen, I need to mop up some of this blood, and about all I’ve got to do that with is my underwear, so . . .”
She stared at him for a moment as if waiting for him to go on before her face registered understanding. “Oh,” she said, pushing herself away and turning around. “Right. That’s a good idea.”
He groaned as he sat up, and he saw her shoulders rise right before she started singing.
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray.”
Evan removed his pants with effort, attempting to hold in his groans of pain, but damn, he hurt. He hurt everywhere. He didn’t think he had any broken bones, but he had at least two lacerations that probably needed stitches, one on his cheekbone, and one he felt gaping open along his jaw. He pressed the flap of skin closed, grimacing against the sting, doing what he could to get himself back in order. His body would have to do the rest.
His father had hit him over the years when he’d been displeased with him. And he’d often been displeased with Evan. They were so different. Evan had this sense that his father considered him weak, and the physical abuse was his way of “toughening him up.” But he’d been careful not to leave marks, careful not to hit his face. Evan almost laughed. Maybe his father had done him a favor after all, because he’d learned how to take some hits.
“You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away. Hey!”
As he began removing his underwear, he paused for a heartbeat at her overly exuberant added lyric, smiling slightly despite his present state, then continued undressing.
“The other night, dear. As we lay sleeping, I dreamed I needed you in my arms. When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken. So I hung my head and a plan.”
He let out a small huff of breath, what would have been a chuckle if it hadn’t been swallowed up by a grunt of agony as he dabbed at the cuts on his bruised ribs, wiping the mostly dried blood away. Noelle obviously didn’t know all the lyrics to that song, even though it was simple.
She sang softly as he completed his cleanup tasks to the best of his ability. The song died away, and she turned, sitting across from where he was. “Better?” she asked.
“A little, yeah. Do I look better?”
Her eyes washed over his face, and she gave him a sad smile. “Not much.”
He let out a pained laugh, squinting over at her.
She gave a slight wince. “I don’t know that my ear was worth all that.”
“I meant what I said, Noelle. We leave here whole. It’s a promise. It belongs to us.”
She bit at her lip, and he had the idea that she was thinking what he’d thought earlier: that appearing “whole” from the outside could be misleading.
“Can I tell you about my mom?” she asked.
He tilted his head, surprised. Her mom was the very last topic of conversation he’d expected Noelle to bring up. They’d agreed to leave all that aside so they could work together. Why was she willing to talk about this now? Was it because she felt indebted to him for taking a beating rather than allowing her to be physically hurt again? She shouldn’t. She’d endured a rape, for Christ’s sake, so that his fingers remained attached to his hand. She’d had her virginity stolen by a disgusting predator.
“Noelle, you don’t have to—”
“I want to,” she said, flaring her eyes slightly as though communicating some message. “I want you to hear who she was from me. Not from your father, or some court transcripts, or a news story, or whatever else you might have read about her. I want you to know who she was to me.”
“Okay.”
She pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. “My mom . . . she was a really great listener. She had this ability to read between the lines.” That slight eye flare again, there and gone, and followed by a casual shrug. “And then after she listened, really listened, she gave great advice. She had this way of sprinkling just the right words in to get her point across in the simplest way. It was like music, the way she did that. Her message always felt so perfectly strung together.” She looked away on a sigh as though picturing her mom. The skin on the back of Evan’s neck tingled. What she was saying . . . it sounded reminiscent, but there was something else mixed in there. Was she sending him a message? Saying something secretive under the guise of sharing memories of her mother? “I miss her,” Noelle said. “I still talk to her in my head. These private conversations.” She let out a small embarrassed laugh. “I guess that’s hard to understand.”