Dylan's Redemption (6 page)

“Good morning, brother. Nice of you to rise and shine.”

Brian wiped a hand over his face and turned to sit on the sodden couch. His blurry eyes found Jessie standing over him. His mouth dropped open and his eyes rounded before he gained his voice.

“You’re dead. I’ve hit that bottom people talk about. I’m dreaming, hallucinating after a night of drinking. It can’t be you. You’re gone, and it’s all my fault.” He covered his face with his hands. Choked-up tears filled his voice, his pain and sorrow sharp and piercing. She refused to let it get to her, despite her guilt for making him believe she died. Brian needed a good ass kicking, not a sympathetic ear.

“You’re going to wish I died when I get through with you, you miserable drunk. What the hell happened to you?” She handed over the mug of coffee and shoved it up to his mouth to make him take a sip. Reality setting in, he needed the coffee and a shower before he’d concentrate and focus on her and what she had in store for him.

“Don’t yell, my head is killing me.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his eye, probably hoping his brain didn’t explode.

Jessie sat on the coffee table in front of her brother between his knees and leaned forward with her elbows braced on her thighs.

“Listen to me, brother dear. It’s past time you cleaned up your act. Starting today, you are going to quit drinking yourself into a stupor. You’re going to take care of your wife and child. You’re going to show up for work on Monday morning clear-eyed and ready to earn an honest day’s pay.”

“Work? I don’t have any job lined up for Monday.”

“Yes. You do. I gave Marilee the information. You report to James on Monday at the new housing development going up on the outskirts of town. You’ll earn a decent paycheck and have medical benefits for your family.

“The old man left you the house. I’ll go over tomorrow after the funeral to see what needs to be done to make it livable for you and Marilee. I, big brother, am going to make you be the man you used to be, because I can’t stand to see you turn into the next Buddy Thompson. You got that?” She’d yelled at him to get his attention and to reinforce the fact he’d created his condition. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he groaned in pain, all the reward she needed.

“If you don’t show up for work on Monday, I’m coming after you. And I’ll keep coming until you get it through that thick head of yours, you are not him. You’re better than that. So get your ass up, take a shower, mow the lawn, kiss your wife, tell her you love her and you aren’t going to be this asshole you’ve turned into anymore. You hear me?”

“Your voice is ringing in my head.” He stared into his coffee cup but glanced up to say, “You look good. Life’s apparently turned out all right for you.”

Jessie shrugged that off, focused more on the lost look in Brian’s round, sad eyes.

“I thought you died that night. I left and he killed you. Where have you been?”

“Around. Mostly Solomon. I have a house about twenty miles outside of Fallbrook.”

“You do?” The surprise lit his face.

“I started my life over. It’s time you did the same.”

Brian ignored that. Mired in the past, he asked, “What happened to you, Jessie?” His soft, anguish-filled voice pierced her heart and made it ache. She didn’t want to go back. She wanted to fix things for him now and move on.

She stood and walked away and stared blankly out the window. She hated thinking about that night. She didn’t want to talk about what happened, but Brian needed to hear it.

“What do you think happened that night?”

She’d heard some of the rumors, but she wanted to know what he thought. He’d been there at the beginning and on many other similar nights.

“Dad had been drinking pretty hard. After we quit for the day, he and some of the guys sat around knocking back a few while you put tools away and cleaned up the jobsite.

“We got home and you went in the kitchen.” He paused, thinking back. “You were chopping an apple at the counter when he started in on you, slurring his words, yelling, cussing. I don’t remember about what. Doesn’t matter. Never did. He’d pick something out of thin air for no reason, except to get in your face.”

He took a sip of the steaming coffee and shook his head, trying to clear the images from his mind. She knew from experience it wouldn’t work. Some things were burned into your cells. “He threw you up against the wall and choked you.

“I’d seen him do that so many times before, I can’t even count them all. I’ve seen him punch you and slap you.

“You never cried. Sometimes, I’d see the tears come into your eyes, and maybe one would fall, but you’d never cry. You took every blow, every nasty word, and you never backed down.”

Brian’s intense stare bore into her back. She hadn’t moved from standing in front of the dirty window looking out at nothing but a past she didn’t want to remember or hear about ever again.

“He wanted to break you. Beat you down and make you weak. He never could.”

No, he never could. The harder he’d tried, the harder she’d fought to stay strong.

After losing Hope, she’d come close to giving up. Even then, she’d somehow found the strength to go on, but it had been a near miss, standing on the edge of life and oblivion.

“He was angry with Mother. Not me. He blamed me because she killed herself. Really, he blamed her for leaving him. I was here, she wasn’t.”

“He yelled you weren’t his daughter. He screamed about how you look like her, and then he backhanded you.”

She turned from the window and focused on her brother, a pile of misery sitting on the couch. “I reminded him of her and her betrayal every day she was gone. She had an affair, and then me. The note she left when she died said she couldn’t accept the other man didn’t want her, had left her, and she didn’t want to live without him. The old man blamed me.”

“So you aren’t his daughter?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? A friend of mine pointed out yesterday he was the only father I had.” She held up her hands in a “whatever” kind of gesture. “What’s important is you are my brother. We’ll bury the old man tomorrow and be done with the whole mess.”

“But all the blood. I left in the middle of the argument. I came back to an empty house, the kitchen floor covered in blood. I can still see it, smell it, like it was yesterday.

“You were nowhere to be found. When Dad came back the next morning alone, I thought he’d done something with you.” Brian hung his head and stared down at his now-empty coffee mug. The alcohol had worn off, the fog thinned. The guilt hung on him, weighing down his shoulders, his very spirit. The turmoil in his eyes and laced in every word tore at her.

“Brian, listen to me. It wasn’t your fault. He did it. Not you.”

“I left you alone with him, and he hurt you!” Brian roared from the couch. “How many times did I walk out the door and leave you behind without so much as one word in your defense? Never once did I pull him off you, or stand between you.”

“I don’t want to do this with you. It’s over. Done. Stop blaming yourself for something you couldn’t have prevented or stopped. When have you ever known me to need someone’s help?”

Well, maybe one time she’d needed Dylan, but he’d abandoned her.

Brian pulled her focus back. “Jessie. I need to know what happened that night. It’s haunted me for too long. Did he stab you? Did you end up in the hospital? Where did you go?”

Brian stood up to face her. Time to put the past to rest and move on, but Brian couldn’t do that until she told him what happened. She wouldn’t get away without telling him.

“After you left . . .” She took a breath when her emotions backed up in her throat. She started again, “After you left, he kept at me. Usually, he’d wind down and start drinking until he passed out. That night he just kept at it. I don’t know what set him off, but I made it worse when I took a swing at him and gave him a nice shiner.” She smiled a little, proud of herself for standing up to him. “I knew better than to provoke him. I’d never back down from an argument, but I also wasn’t stupid enough to take him head on. That was the one and only time I took a swing at him.” At least she had that. “He grabbed the knife I’d been using to cut the apple and came after me.”

She stood there looking at Brian and seeing the past.

“Did he stab you, Jessie?” Brian’s soft, sad voice had her choking back tears.

“I turned to run as he swung the knife down. He cut a gash down my back.” The only way for him to know what happened was to show him. She turned around, crossed her arms over her middle, and pulled the hem of her tank top up to reveal the long scar down her back. Brian inhaled sharply. She put her shirt down and turned back to face him.

“As the knife went in, I fell to the floor. I rolled over and he stood over me with the knife in his hand. I could smell the whiskey on his breath. I thought he’d finish it then, but something came over him and the knife slipped from his fingers and landed at my feet. He grabbed a bottle from the table and rushed out the back door. He probably drove somewhere and drank himself unconscious.

“I dragged myself up off that floor and left. I refused to take it from him one more second of one more day. I’ll spare you the gory details about how many stitches it took to close up the gash.”

“Jessie, how the hell did you survive that?”

“I sucked it up and moved on. Which is exactly what you are going to do now.” Overwhelmed with her past, she needed to get out of there. She knew this would be hard, but not like this. She hoped this was the last time she ever had to think about and relive that night. “Marilee has all the information for the funeral and your job. I hope you come tomorrow. We both need to bury the old man and our past. It’s over. I hope you start new today. Either way, on Monday you better be at work, or I will come and get you, and you won’t like it if I do.

“And another thing, I’d make things right with your wife. I’ve already told her I’d help her leave you. I’d be scared if I was you. She actually took a minute to think about my offer. I won’t have another Thompson grow up with an alcoholic for a father. Clean up your act.”

With that hanging between them, she walked out the front door and ran straight into the one person she never wanted to see again. Dylan.

Chapter Six

D
YLAN PULLED UP
to Brian’s house and parked behind a sleek, black Porsche at the curb. Nice car, not exactly something you’d see in this part of town. He walked up the cracked path to the front door, but five steps away, the door opened and a beautiful woman walked out. They stared at each other. His heart stopped, his throat closed, cutting off his breath, and everything inside of him froze for a second before the relief washed over him and he realized he wasn’t staring at a ghost.

“Jess.” Her name came out on an exhale.

God, she was beautiful. And all grown up. Fifteen the last time he’d seen her, at twenty-four she was a knockout. He took her in from the fall of her rich-brown wavy hair pulled back into a ponytail, to the tight white tank top hugging the curve of her full breasts and slim waist, to the tight blue jeans that showed off the slender curve of her hips and strong thighs, down to her black cowboy boots.

No wedding ring. If he’d been relieved to see her alive, it was just as powerful to discover she wasn’t married.

A gold chain hung around her neck and disappeared down the front of the tank top and into her cleavage. Light makeup enhanced her eyes and mouth. God, that mouth. He wanted to kiss her.

Dylan wanted her as much today as he had at eighteen. All the years he’d thought about her, wondered about her, dreamed of her, hadn’t done justice to having her close. His chest hurt just looking at her.

“Jess? Is it really you?”

He reached for her, grabbing her arm to pull her close. She gave him the shock of his life and seized his hand, spun, and using his momentum and her leg, flung him to the dead grass. He landed on his back, and she stood over him.

“Hey!” Still shocked, he didn’t know why she glared down at him with enough fury in her eyes to scorch him.

“Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me again.”

Everything inside of him refused to accept that warning. All he wanted to do is hold her close.

“You can’t toss people to the ground, you know. Nice move though.” He tried to lighten things up, despite the murderous look in her eyes.

“You deserve to be dropped on your ass. No worse than what you did to me, and far less than you deserve. What are you going to do? Arrest me?” She waved her hand, dismissing the idea, but paced away and back again, her anger turning to uncertainty in her eyes.

“No, Jess. I just want to talk to you. Where have you been?”

“Why the hell do you care?”

Dylan rolled to his feet, raked his fingers through his hair, bent, and picked up his Stetson from the grass, setting it back on his head. “I thought you were dead.” He stared at her wide, shocked eyes.

“Why the hell would you think I’m dead?”

Anger laced her voice. Her eyes fixed on his gun and moved back to him with a cold glare. He wondered if she could hate him that much because he’d left without saying goodbye. He owed her an explanation, but he hadn’t expected her to be this angry. She really looked like she wanted to use his gun on him.

“Thinking about shooting me, honey?”

“The thought did cross my mind. It is tempting.
Honey
,” she said with venom. “You of all people knew I wasn’t dead.” She pressed her hand to her belly and the color drained from her face. “Why would you think I’m dead?” she asked, less hostile and more hesitant.

Dylan didn’t understand the stunned disbelief on her face, or why she’d ask that question when everyone thought she died. “You disappeared a few days after I left town. My parents said no one knew what happened to you. All kinds of rumors floated around. Your father and brother were questioned about your disappearance. Brian told me about the night you left. His story is pretty convincing your father killed you and took your body and dumped it somewhere.”

“Are you serious?” She planted her hands on her hips. “All this time you thought I was dead?”