Cuts Like An Angel (10 page)

“I doubt you do,” he said. “You’re one of the most oblivious women I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.”

“Oblivious,” she shrilled. “I am the most unoblivious person ever.”

“Sorry,” he disagreed with a shake of his head. “You are totally oblivious.”

“Well if I am, so are you.”

“I can definitely agree there,” he said, putting his palms behind him on the porch to support himself as he stared at her until she smiled.

“You’re skenning me up. It’s rude to sken at me.”

OH my God his laugh. Mr. Oblivious. “It’s rude not to,” he said finally.

“Oh my, do you rehearse these lines?”

He shot out single laugh and angled a look at her. “No. I’m really hitting it lucky with you.”

“You are definitely scoring big points.”

“Good.”

She swung her legs back and forth off the porch while staring at him over her shoulder, her smile hurting her face now at what he’d just said. That he was happy to be scoring points with her. That was kind of … a big deal.

Chapter Thirteen

Josh

He’d was sure he’d done wrong with the hand holding at the park, but now, as she was sitting with him on his porch, flirting with him and letting him flirt back, he realised it had been right. He’d just misread everything as usual.  The brief moment she’d taken his hand, shit, his heart had sped up so fast right then from the feel of her small hand in his. It had taken everything to control the bike, his legs were shaking so much.

He didn’t know how they ended up here, he certainly hadn’t planned to bring her to his house. William’s shadows cast darkness in every damn corner of the place. As Josh sat next to Rosie, perfect, sweet Rosie, he saw them. Places out on the lawn. Weeds tangled in the corners, waiting to infect all the beauty with its poison. “Would you like a drink or anything? Coffee, Lemonade?” he thought he had some lemonade. He remembered seeing it.

“I’m okay, thanks,” she said as she hunched herself up briefly, in that way people do just as they relax. “Have you lived here long?” she asked him, leaning back comfortably.

“All my life really,” he said. “Well most of it. It was my mother’s house.”

“Was?”

He picked at the peeling porch paint under his hand. It really did need a fresh coat of varnish on it. He had bought this swing for his mother. A gift to her. She loved the garden, especially at night with a cold glass of wine in her hand. It was probably the only time she was close to being any kind of respectable woman when she was out there. The other side of her personality. The one who did wear summer dresses. The one who sat outside and tanned her perfect figure. The one who sat here until she was so blind drunk William would have to get her back inside and to her bed.  “My mother is gone.”

“I’m sorry. I …”

“It’s okay. It’s my house now.” His house with all its secrets, all the defecated moments in rooms he still hadn’t dared to enter yet. All her shit. Her. She was inside, the rotting parts of her that he still hadn’t had the courage to face. Maybe later tonight when Rosie was home again ... maybe now was the time to get rid of his mother completely. “I am in the process of fixing it up. She let it go a little bit, that’s why the garden is just a weed bed.”

“I think it is beautiful,” Rosie said right away.

“Like you,” he cut in with a smile, and she blushed, instantly making him chuckle at her reaction. She laughed with him. A delicate giggle mixed with nerves and perfection.

“You’re so bad,” she said pushing against his arm.

“I’m trying.”

“I’d love to help you. With your garden,” she added with a mischievous grin. “If you’d let me.”

“I would love to let you help me.” He paused intentionally before asking, “So you like to garden?”

She nodded, her grin huge. “My mom has a garden back home. “I miss it so much. My dad worked for hours on it, well they both did really. He built her this gazebo so that she could sit out in the evening, even if it was raining.”

“You spent a lot of time there?”

A flash of something went across her eyes, but it was gone just as quickly. “Sometimes. My mother, she is a little … She likes things done her way sometimes.” She pressed her hands together and held them between her knees as she swung her legs back. She didn’t realise that it was actually him making the swing move, his feet on the ground, pushing it back and forth for her. Rosie leaned forward like she was about to spring off the seat, but she breathed in and glanced over her shoulder at him.

Shit, when she did that, his stomach knotted all the way to his damn throat. She could push fucking butterflies through his intestines with that look she was giving him. He smiled back at her, wanting so much to lift his hand to her face … just to touch her. The holding his hand out had been one thing, but this would be too far. “Do you want to take a walk around the garden?”

“I would love to,” she said.

He stopped the swing and stood. His hand twitched at his side, needing so much to hold it out to her again, but he didn’t dare. He clasped them together, instead, rubbing his thumb over the back of his hand—his comforting blanket when he felt awkward.  It calmed him. Especially on those nights when his mother came home steaming drunk with one of her clients, and he knew he’d be in hot water if he dared to make a sound and let the bloke know she had a child. He’d learned how to comfort himself. How to hold himself just right. Sometimes he hugged up against the wall, just to feel the contact from something else.

He pulled his hands apart. That was a William thing. Poor, pathetic, lonely William.  Not Josh. Josh’s mother loved him. They sat on the swing together in the evenings, watching the sun go down.

Rosie walked the perimeter of the garden and Josh walked next to her, hands clasped behind his back. It was a large garden. One advantage of living out in the countryside was the land that came with it. “Ohhhh, there’s a bridge,” she said as they neared the centre of the hedgerow. “Can I?”

Josh nodded with a smile at her child-like eagerness. “Of course.” The bridge led to a deeper part of the garden. The parts hidden where he had played as a child. “Careful, though. I don’t think that bridge has been used in many years.”

She stood at the foot of it, her hand on the rickety railing. The brook that ran the length of the town cut across his garden here. “It’s great,” she said. She stepped across the planks. Testing each one with her foot. Josh was ready in case any of them snapped or she slipped. Or she just wanted to hold his hand. But she made it over and pushed the brambles hanging down out of the way. “There’s so much space here,” she said fascinated. “You could make this into something huge.”

“It used to be clear when I was little. Since my mum … I haven’t been back here in a long while.”

They couldn’t get that far into the place. Mother Nature’s walls had closed in. Rosie reminded Josh of Alice, the way she moved the weeds out of her way. The way her eyes had lit up in innocent wonder. Just the sight of her made his chest ache. He knew there had been something special about her when he had spoken to her that first night. Then seen her through that door at the hospital. She crouched down to a spot at the side and William’s heart hammered in his chest. “Oh, wow,” she said as she pushed away the weeds. There was a board in front of her, carved in childish writing. Just a date and a paw print. “You did this?”

He nodded, afraid in that moment that he would say the wrong thing. He had forgotten about that. Well not forgotten, but he had locked it away to a place inside that couldn’t hurt him.

“Cat or dog?” She asked.

“My cat,” he said. My cat … It
was
his cat. Not hers. But she had taken it from him.

“Even the fucking cat can have babies,”
she had screeched at him.
“You don’t deserve them.”
It had been cold that day. God damn cold. There was snow on some of the trees, but it hadn’t stuck to the ground. His cat, Bob, he had called him, had lived at the bottom of the garden. Only Bob wasn’t a him, he was a her, and she had been pregnant. William had helped her birth those kittens right out here in the dark with the threat of the brook swelling too much and breaking the bridge. But he had stayed with her. She’d had three kittens. Even back then he didn’t know how she had carried them. She had been a half starved mangy animal. It was lucky that she was alive. One of the kittens had died during the first night. When he had got to it, it was just a hard lump of fur, pushed out to the side. The two remaining babies had snuggled to their mother’s breasts and dug themselves into her knotted fur.

His mother had found them. Maybe it was a day or two after, he couldn’t quite remember that part. All he remembered was her expression, twisted with hatred. “I want those cats gone,” she told him. “And I don’t mean fucking given away. You drown those little bastards before they make themselves at home here.”

He didn’t believe she was serious at first. But she grabbed his hand when he had hold of one of them. He couldn’t get her to let go. He tried, but her grasp was too tight. Her long fingernails digging into his wrist, she dragged him, pleading and crying to the brook. She held his hand under the water, forcing him to hold the kitten under. Made him hold onto it until its little life ebbed away and she stopped fighting for air.

A sob scratched at the back of his throat at the sight of Bob’s face, accusing him. Her heart breaking as he killed one of her children.

“You do the other one.”
his hateful mother ordered.

He picked the kitten up, holding it to his chest. Cradling it. He should throw the cat, give it a chance to run, but it was too small, too tiny. It didn’t even open its eyes properly. He begged her. He cried until he couldn’t cry anymore.

“I’m going to take myself a bath,” she ground out to him. “And when I come back, I want to see the body of that piece of shit or you will not be coming back into my house.” She leaned in real close, her breath thick with the stench of booze. “I’ll drown you instead. I should have all those years ago.”

She’d wandered off, back into the house, and William buried his face into the innocent animal’s back. He didn’t drown the second kitten. He got Bob and her kitten and took them to the farthest part of the garden. He put the kitten down, put Bob down. “Get out of here,” he yelled at Bob. He smacked a stick on the ground near her baby, making her hiss at him. He screamed at her. “Get lost. Go.” Each word sobbed from him. “Go.”

Bob left and he dug up the small body of the kitten who had died and washed him off in the brook. He was a little smaller than the one he had let live, but maybe his mother wouldn’t notice.

Josh forced himself out of the memory, leaving William to deal with the dead cats. It was William that couldn’t clean the death off his hands, not Josh. William had done that. He had caused that kitten to die, Josh would have drowned the woman that claimed to be a mother. It was Josh that stood with Rosie, fists clenched to his sides, feeling that kitten dying because William was too weak.

“I had a cat,” she said. “We …”

The phone back at the house rang out with a loud shrill. It was always set to loud so that it would wake his mother when she was out of it. Not that it ever did.

“Give me a second,” he said, dashing off, thankful for that moment where he could push the memories from his mind. “William Carter speaking. How can I help?” he said.

“You left me,” called a woman’s voice on the line. “I can’t do this without you. You left me by myself.”

Josh’s heart sank and he leaned against the counter, head down. “I didn’t leave you.”

“You did,” she sobbed. “You left me. I love you and you left.”

“I didn’t. I’m still here.”

“Come and see me. Please. I can’t cope without you.”

“I’ll come tomorrow.”

“No. I need you now. I need …” the voice trailed off in a mixture of sobs and sniffing. “Please. I just need to see you.”

“I’ll come this evening, okay? I’m just busy with something.”

“You have someone there? You …”

“No. I’m just doing something. I’ll be there in a bit okay. We can watch a movie? You like that?”

“Promise?”

“I promise.” The voice on the other end calmed and Josh untensed. “I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

As he turned to hang up the phone, Rosie was standing at the doorway to his kitchen.

Chapter Fourteen

Rosie

She tried not to hear. Well, more like she tried not to hear what it sounded like—like he’d scheduled a date with a girl. The dread twisting her stomach was hard to fight. “Sorry,” she called when he turned and saw her. “Didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I mean I wasn’t eavesdropping, I just.” She looked around nodding. “Really nice out here.”

“That was … uh—”

“Don’t, please,” she cut in as he stepped onto the porch. “It’s not my business. Your personal life is
not
my concern. You’ve got yours; I’ve got mine.”

“It was nobody important,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets.

“Oh?” Just drop it Rosie. Move along. “A girlfriend?” A
girlfriend?
You
idiot.

“No, not at all,” he hurried.

“Sister?” she blurted before shooting a hand up. “Don’t even answer that. I’m way over the line. I just don’t want you to think you’re obligated.”

“I’m not,” he said. “Thinking I’m obligated,” he added, seeming nervous now. He narrowed his brows like he’d misspoke. “I mean I don’t think …” he gushed a light laugh. “Wow, that was my uh, friend. She’s not very well. She gets a bit lonely at times. I keep her company sometimes when it gets a bit hard for her. I ...”

Immediate shame and relief hit her. “Oh …  so sorry.”

“No, nothing to be sorry about. It’s just what friends do. She’s housebound.”

“Well that’s very nice.”

“She’s just a mate.”

She nodded, trying to remember if mate meant boy or girl in their language. No non-obvious way to clarify that presented itself to her paranoid mind.
Drop it, nosy Rosie, not your damn business.
But if it was a girlfriend she wanted to know, she had to. “Look,” she said, taking a deep breath and gazing around. “I’m going to come right out and just say this. If you have a girlfriend, I’m perfectly fine with that?”

“Okay,” he said, lowering his head, nodding. “And of course if you have a boyfriend I’m okay with that too.”

Wow. Okay. She was nodding a lot, ready to get back to thinking the best instead of the worst. “The garden is so beautiful,” she said, brightening.

“You like it?” he asked, seeming just as eager to change the subject, making her feel worse instead of better. Like he was not wanting to just tell her he didn’t have a girlfriend. Why else would he not want to tell her that, other than because he
did
have one?

He never said that, stop jumping the gun. For once in your life, believe the best instead of the worst.

She’d do what she’d vowed to
start
doing. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

“You’re probably ready to head back,” he said.

“I do have things I need to do,” she half lied. “As do you.”

“Okay,” he nodded, not disagreeing, because he did have to go take care of his friend.

“I have work tonight too,” she said, pushing hair behind her ear, getting more uncomfortable by the second with the way he was acting. Nervous.
Guilty.

God this sucked.

“When do you think I get to start working there?” he asked.

“Oh,” she remembered. “I did bring the paperwork for you to fill out. It’s just questions about experience and stuff. I’ll get the criminal check sent off too. When you drop me off I’ll give it to you and you can do that and, I’ll … or you can call me?” she suggested, not sure what was proper now. “Call me when you have it?”

“I can drop it to you,” he said. “At your place?”

Her heart hammered as she imagined his disgust when he saw where she lived. “How about you call me and we can meet at the same coffee shop and go over it?”

“I can fill it out today,” he said.

“Or that, yes. Maybe when you drop me off at the car, you can fill it out and I can take it with me.”

“I meant just fill it out today later, but I can do that.”

“Whenever,” she hurried. “Today, tomorrow, next week. Never.” She laughed nervously at the stupid slip.

“Never?” he eyed her.

“I just mean you’re not obligated, it’s volunteer.”

He nodded and looked around. “Okay.”

Okay. Okay, okay, okay, it was suddenly his favorite word. “Okay,” she said, nodding.

And that semi-concluded the most disheartening, most awkward, most stupid moment in their brand new relationship.

The ride back was just as awkward. Holding him around his waist suddenly felt all wrong. She remembered how he’d suggested she hold the bar at first and a sick feeling twisted her guts. Maybe he hadn’t wanted her touching him like that.

Then why bring a helmet and take her on a ride? Maybe because not everybody who takes you riding on their motorcycle wants to be your boyfriend? Maybe he thought you would use the hooks on the bike and not his pants?
Well it had to mean something, she wasn’t that stupid. But what? It had better not be some fling kind of meaning.

Was this about the volunteer work? Was he just making sure he got the position?

The thirty-minute drive back was filled with every negative scenario explaining the meaning behind him in her life. All the reasons she came up with had her ready to kick him then push his stupid bike over. She’d not act on any of it of course, she’d wait. Wait for him to prove her right. Piece of shit.

She got the application for him while blathering a hundred miles an hour about the amazing time she had. She couldn’t have him clued in on the acidic thoughts burning in her head just in case she was wrong. Yes, she still allowed a barely there hope to cast its weak light on her bag of worst case scenarios. She’d been at this dating disaster long enough to figure out that
maybe
her negativity was
causing
things to happen, just like that book said. That meant she had to be a ray of pissy
sunshine
until it was validated. And that was happening with every second that ended their date. His entire demeanor screamed
you busted me and you’re not even worth trying to fool.
No, that wasn’t true, he was trying. He was trying to do
something.
She was pretty positive he was struggling with
how
to break it to her,
how
to explain why he couldn’t be in a relationship, or why he couldn’t be more than what she’d been shamefully suggesting, begging to have with him; like a desperate, loser
twit
that he probably was only nice to because he either felt
sorry
for her, or because he wanted her job
.
Probably both.

What ...
ever.

Rosie sat in her car fuming while he climbed on his bike. He sure seemed in a hurry. Probably going to see her now. She started her car, beyond caring about the embarrassment and maybe even hoping it would backfire and startle the shit out of him. She was prepared to smile and wave.

Of course, the car did no such thing. It only did that when she prayed it didn’t. She ground the gears into submission, pulling out of her spot. She eyed the dark visor of his helmet aimed at her and flicked her finger for him to go first. She didn’t want him behind her. He tossed her a wave and went ahead and she found herself hurrying after. When he took a right out of the parking lot, she did the same, even though home was left. Maybe she wasn’t ready to go home.

When he took another right, she fought the need to follow him.
Go left, bunny boiler
.

She forced herself to continue straight, punching the accelerator and causing that explosion of firecrackers in her tailpipe, all while visions of obsession danced in her head. She wouldn’t be
that
person. She hated obsessive stupid women that were so desperate. Course, it would be kind of funny if she went to his house and cleaned out his garden while he wasn’t there. Left ‘I love you’ notes everywhere. In blood.

She made her way back home, every second bringing with it a feeling of regret. By the time she sat in her idling car in the driveway, in her little private dirty part of Hell, she was a rigid wall of cringe as she replayed the day, beginning at the moment she overheard his phone call. God, she’d acted like a jealous girlfriend. Of course he’d
seen
it. Probably what
weirded him out.

Shit, she’d done exactly what she’d practiced and swore to
not
do.

She grabbed her phone and located his number on it. Her thumb trembled several seconds over the send button then
pressed
it.

She put it to her ear, listening to the rings, her heart and stomach switching places. The ringing stopped and she looked down. Call disconnected?

She hit call again, and this time, it connected, then and hung up. What the hell? She stared down at the phone. She had plenty of bar coverage, the call shouldn’t drop. 

She finally texted him what she’d intended to tell him.
I’m sorry if I acted weird.

Why hadn’t she just texted him in the first place? Maybe because she wanted to hear it in his voice, hear if he meant the words.

She waited in the car, shutting it off. He finally texted her back and her heart sank with his reply.

Okay.

Okay? That’s
it?
Okay? What’s okay? He’s okay? She’s okay? What she did is okay? Or okay as in he understands, he gets it, he agrees, he
what?
She’d definitely screwed up. England style.
Royally.

She suddenly wished she’d gotten Williams number. She just wanted somebody to talk to that she didn’t feel the need to play big girl with, somebody that understood what broken was. Even if he didn’t know about her broken, she realized knowing he was, made her feel … at home.