Delaney's Shadow (11 page)
Authors: Ingrid Weaver
Tags: #mobi, #Romantic Suspense, #Paranormal Romance, #Fiction, #Shadow, #epub
“You need to let this go, Deedee.”
The way he said the childhood name was like another caress. “What?”
“The accident. Your husband.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“It’s the only way to get past the pain.”
“No,
remembering
is how to get past it.”
remembering
is how to get past it.”
He withdrew his hand and placed it on the wall beside her head. “I’m giving you good advice, but you’re as stubborn as you always were.”
“It’s just that this is important. I feel as if there’s something I have to know but I don’t. It’s like . . . a tickle in the middle of my brain. And I really don’t understand why you keep resisting the idea of cooperating with me.”
“Simple. I’ve changed. I’m not the boy I used to be.”
“Max . . .”
“That means I’m not into rescuing little girls or needy women anymore.”
It took her a moment to process what he’d said. Her temper stirred. “I am not a child, nor am I needy. I’m not asking you to rescue me, only to help me help myself. This bad-boy attitude of yours is getting irritating.”
“If you don’t like it, then stop barging into my head.”
She frowned, tipping up her chin so she could look into his face. He’d been taller than her when she’d been a child, but she’d never thought much about the difference in their heights. She was aware of it now, though. She was also aware of the breeze, and the moonlight, and the intimacy of being alone in her bedroom with a large, partially dressed man.
Which was crazy, since he wasn’t even here. “Maybe you’ve got a point. Maybe that’s why you’re being so unpleasant. It’s forcing me to face the unpleasantness. That’s something I tend to avoid. By creating you again, I’m already on the way to breaking through my block.”
“Creating me?”
“It’s a form of self-hypnosis,” she said, deciding she needed to remind herself of that before her fantasy got out of hand. “I imagine I see you just as I did when I was young because you’re a way for me to unlock my subconscious.”
His eyebrows drew together, mirroring her frown. “I’ll be damned. You don’t believe I’m real.”
This was getting complicated again. She tried to imagine Max the way she wanted him to be, smiling at her, patient with her, never saying a bad word, walking across the lawn near her swing . . .
His image wavered briefly. He slapped his other hand against the window frame, caging her between his arms. “No you don’t. You’re not breaking off this time until I’m ready to go. We’re not done.”
Her pulse stuttered. The illusion was getting so vivid, she imagined she could feel the heat from his body. A faint whiff of paint came from his sleeve, mixing with the musky scent of male skin. She held her hands up to his chest, meaning to push him away, even though part of her knew there was nothing to push in the first place . . .
Her palms touched soft cotton. The tip of her index finger brushed over a button. Beneath the shirt lay the firm contours of a man’s chest. It rose and fell with his breathing. Like his touch on her skin, the impressions didn’t come from outside, they came from inside, as if she
knew
them more than sensed them.
knew
them more than sensed them.
“I’m not who you think I am, Deedee.”
“Yes, you are,” she said. “You’re Max. I know you as well as I know myself.”
“That’s not saying much. Your memory is full of holes.”
“Stop being like that!”
“You know the solution.”
“I can’t let you go. I’ll do whatever I have to, to remember.”
“You don’t need me for that.”
“Oh, yes I do. I know you can help me, Max.”
“Why? I’m not a shrink.”
“Yes, but you’re my friend.”
He took his hand from the window frame and touched her hair. “I take it back. You didn’t grow up. Only a kid would be naive enough to trust a man she hasn’t seen in twenty-four years.”
Her imaginary friend had become cynical. What did that say about her? “Go ahead and bluster. I don’t care, because I have faith that somewhere in there”—she poked at his chest—“you’re still the sweet, kind, and gentle little boy I used to love.”
He didn’t respond.
Her finger rested on his shirt, then slowly sank into the place where he stood. She could see the bed behind him. She reached for his arms but grasped only air. “Max, wait!”
The old Max would have stayed.
This one turned without another word and faded into the wall.
SEVEN
MAX HELD THE PALETTE KNIFE ON EDGE, SCRAPING THE blade over the slab of glass where he mixed his colors. He slashed it across the canvas in one fluid motion, and another flame swirled to life. With a twist of his wrist, he dragged the knife tip through the wet paint to define the outer contour of the fire. Instead, he revealed the layer beneath. A core of pale white diluted what should have been red. He used the heel of the knife to repair the stroke, but that made it worse. Blue bled into the muted red, softening the entire area to a gentle smear of lilac.
He cleaned it off, wiped the knife on a rag, and tried again.
The same thing happened. The canvas seemed determined to reject the vision in his head.
Max let the vision fade, then stepped back from the easel and tossed the knife on the table. The daylight was waning. That explained why the colors weren’t cooperating. How long had he been at this? He rolled his shoulders, only then becoming aware of the discomforts in his body. His right arm ached. His back was stiff. The low rumble in his stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten since noon. He’d agreed to put in an appearance at the opening of his show in New York tomorrow, so it was past time to call it a day.
He capped the paint tubes and cleaned his tools, then returned to regard the painting. He’d left his brushes in the jar for this one. Only his palette knives could have applied the pigment with enough force to suit him. The result was as violent as the concept he’d begun with. Flames licked in oily circles. The darkness surrounding them was crusted with monochrome ridges of blackened aquamarine, like terrors glimpsed on the limits of vision and only half-remembered. The image extended to the very edges where the canvas was stapled over the wooden frame, as if it fought its containment in two dimensions.
The accidental smear of pale white in the center didn’t belong. It was a mistake, a contradiction. A core of softness, light inside darkness, hope inside horror, like the woman who had created this image in the first place.
He’d been trying to recapture Deedee’s nightmare in this painting. The image had been haunting him almost as much as she had. Both had been impossible to get out of his mind.
She was a puzzle, a mass of contradictions with as many layers as the paint he’d applied to the canvas in front of him. Darkness inside light inside more darkness. Innocent. Sensual. Both woman and child. She didn’t seem to realize the power of her mind. She wielded it as carelessly as a kid with a crayon.
Max shifted his gaze from the painting to the easel. He’d screwed two slats of wood on either side of the back leg to patch it together and had completely replaced one of the front ones to fix the damage he’d caused when he’d fallen into it. A faint outline of red still stained the floor. He hadn’t been able to get all of the paint out of the wood planks any more than he could keep Delaney out of his thoughts.
That was three times she’d found him now. The panic that had sent him crashing into his painting the first time hadn’t happened again, though. His fear had been unfounded. The ugly emotions he’d learned to control had remained locked away in spite of her repeated forays into his head.
But she wouldn’t think about what her return was doing to his peace of mind. She didn’t care how often she barged into his thoughts or how many demands she made. Why should she? She didn’t believe he was real.
He should have figured it out earlier. She would have been too young to remember their first encounter, and she’d obviously blocked her memory of the way she’d almost drowned. She wouldn’t have questioned their exceptional relationship, either. Kids accepted what happened to them, both the good and the bad, with no explanation, as if it was meant to be. Children had no choice. They were powerless to change anything. The best they could do was to pretend it wasn’t there.
Delaney wouldn’t have questioned leaving him behind, either. How could she have deserted someone she hadn’t considered human? Max had opened his heart to her as well as his mind. He’d shown her parts of himself no one else had seen. When she left, he had felt her loss all the way to his soul, yet in her mind, she’d have packed him away with no more concern than boxing up an old doll.
Max moistened the corner of a fresh rag with turpentine and rubbed hard at the dried paint on his fingers. He’d been more of a fool than he’d thought. The closeness he and Delaney had shared couldn’t have meant as much to her as it had to him. She’d used him to ease her loneliness and to amuse herself. Like a toy. Or a pet.
I know you can help me, Max.
She wanted to use him now, too. That was the only reason she’d broken her silence.
It was the wrong thing to ask him. No one called him Max anymore. He hadn’t answered to that name for years. He was John Harrison, artist, ex-con, the monster mothers warned their children to keep away from. The last time he’d helped a woman, it had landed him in prison.
He twisted the rag between his hands as he walked to the window. He filled his lungs with fresh air, clearing out the taste of the solvent. The stink of confinement hadn’t been as easy to shake off, that mixture of steel and concrete and recycled air that wasn’t touched by the sun. It had lingered for years. Even now, he seldom closed his windows, regardless of the weather.
In spite of what he’d told the parole board, he had no remorse over what he’d done. He would have said practically anything to regain his freedom, so he’d told them what they’d wanted to hear. His only regret was that he hadn’t managed to finish the job. Virgil Budge had needed killing. That fact had never been in doubt. Although he hadn’t taken his belt to Max once he’d grown big enough to defend himself, the man had been incapable of change. He’d merely gotten craftier. He’d gone after Max’s mother only when he’d been sure Max wasn’t around, and he’d made sure the bruises he’d given her didn’t show. She’d never said a word, because she’d known what her son would do if he found out, so she’d lied and pretended everything was fine.
The farce had ended the summer Max turned seventeen. He’d been working construction, long, hot, and dusty days of framing houses. The trailer had been dark when he’d come home that night, but even before he’d reached for the door, he’d felt that something had been wrong. He’d found his mother on the bathroom floor, spitting up blood. Virgil had broken three of her ribs, and one of them had punctured her lung.
Hell, yes, the bastard had deserved to die, so Max had let the rage out. He’d unleashed a lifetime of anger. It had poured from his muscles and bones and memories in a blur of violence that had strengthened with each blow. It grew with each scream for mercy. It fed on every drop of blood that had spattered his hands and shirt and face. Damn, it had been easy. And it had felt good.
It had taken five cops to pull him off Virgil. Max had weighed less than he did now—he hadn’t yet filled into his height—but swinging a hammer and carrying lumber all day had conditioned his body better than any prizefighter’s training. Three of the cops had ended up in the hospital. They’d gotten out in time to testify, but they hadn’t needed to. His mother’s testimony alone had been enough to damn him.
She hadn’t viewed what she’d said as a betrayal. The truth was, she hadn’t wanted to be rescued.
You’re still the sweet, kind, and gentle little boy I used to love.
Max snorted a laugh. Delaney was wrong on all counts. The boy was gone. His illusions had been scoured away by the only two people he’d allowed himself to love. The whole concept of love was a lie. It was as make-believe as the worlds he and Delaney had created. She hadn’t loved him; she’d cared only about what he could do for her.
And she didn’t believe he was real. Why couldn’t he get past that? He should be pleased. It made the situation easier to handle. He might be unable to stop her from touching his mind, but there was no way he would let her touch his heart this time. No one did.
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