Eddie’s Prize (32 page)

“It certainly is!” she agreed with more enthusiasm than she actually felt. “I could make them a baby blanket.”

He beamed with delight for her new skill. “You like doing this?”

“I really do. It will keep my mind off…”

“Madison,” he finished for her. “You don’t want to think about him? If you wanted to talk to him, you could.”

Lisa wound the lavender yarn around her fingers and picked up her crochet hook. “No, I think it’s best to try to forget about him.”

“Even if he wants to talk to you? Even if he wants you back?”

Except for the guitar, the room was suddenly quiet. Lisa swallowed against longing. “It would depend on whether or not he was willing to change. I won’t go back to him if he doesn’t trust me enough to share everything with me. He’s not willing to do that, so there’s no point in talking to him.”

Snake patted her knee. “He doesn‘t deserve you.”

She smiled to keep back the tears. “Snake, how old are you?”

He shrugged. “Maybe twenty now. I was born in late January or early February.”

In some ways he seemed older. She examined his face, not seeing a physical resemblance to her brother Derek, but it was there somehow all the same.

“You really do remind me of my little brother. Derek was three years younger than me. We were best friends growing up.” With their mother’s love affair with alcohol, they’d only had each other to depend on. The many boyfriends and stepfathers their mother had foisted on them wouldn‘t look out for them. “He watched out for me, and I looked after him.”

“I’ll be your brother,” he vowed. “I’ll look after you. Tami doesn’t need me anymore, but you do.”

She let her hand slide down one of his braids. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

Lisa woke freezing cold the next morning and automatically reached for Eddie’s warmth. When she encountered only cold sheets, she curled into a ball of misery. Even her nose was cold. She tucked her face under the covers and considered. A phrase from a motivational speaker she’d once heard came to her.

“You may not be able to choose your circumstances, but you can choose your attitude.”

To mourn a failed relationship wasn’t wrong, but did she need to let it control her? She stretched out and then pulled her legs up in a fetal position, curling her toes to conserve warmth as she pondered the events of the last three months. She may not have been a perfect wife, but she had truly given Eddie everything she had. Should she have stuck it out longer and given him a chance to be more open with her? Maybe, but she didn’t think so. The failure of their marriage sat on his shoulders. Starting today, she was moving on.

Of course, she’d have to leave the bed and brave the cold to do that.

It took her another fifteen minutes to drag herself out of bed and into the bathroom. The only advantage of sitting on a toilet seat that could double for a block of ice was that it woke the sitter up in a hurry. With a laugh, Lisa rejoiced that the toilet flushed, unlike the facilities she had used in Kearney, and tonight was her turn for a hot shower. Lisa raced to dress and hurried to the fireplace in the rec room. Snake was already there, adding wood to the fireplace.

“Breakfast won’t be ready for a half hour,” he announced in a cheerful voice. “I could fetch you a cup of hot tea, though.”

“I wish we had coffee,” she sighed, before cringing at her ungrateful words. “But tea sounds terrific, thanks!”

She picked up her crochet hook and selected a new color for the next round on her granny square. She thanked Snake when he brought the tea.

“Your blanket is getting bigger,” he commented as he sank to the floor beside her chair and leaned against her.

“It’s taking longer to go all the way the around the square,” she agreed. “It’s fun to see how the colors look together.”

He was quiet for a minute, watching her fingers flick the yarn around the hook and pull loops through. “Did you want coffee?”

Lisa shrugged, continuing to crochet. “I like coffee, but tea is fine. I asked Eddie once to get some coffee and he agreed, but he never did.” She shrugged again. “He doesn’t like coffee.”

Snake made a feral sound not too different from some of the sounds Eddie used to make when he was angry. “Selfish son of a…”

Lisa gasped. Snake was really angry. He broke off and cleared his throat. “Sorry. It just makes me mad he treated you so bad.”

“He didn’t treat me badly,” she said quietly. “I think his problem was he never saw things from my side.”

At breakfast she was quiet, thinking about how Eddie had treated her. Except for the few times he had grabbed her arm too tightly, he’d never hurt her physically, and she honestly believed he hadn’t meant to hurt her then. He probably hadn’t meant to hurt her with his mistrust either, but he had.

Oh, God, she had to stop thinking about him! She went into the rec room with Carla and The Grandmother and took up her granny square, determined to not think about Eddie for at least the rest of the morning. The sight of Tracker and Tami entering the dining hall late made her smile. She couldn’t quite imagine Tracker as a passionate lover. He was just too coldly unemotional to be passionate about anything, but Tami didn’t seem to have any complaints. They tended to run late for breakfast, and when they did show up, both looked very satisfied. It reminded Lisa of the mornings she and Eddie had overslept…
Quit that!
Lisa told herself fiercely.
Crochet!

A howl from outside cut through the quiet conversations in the rec room. Snake got up and went to the window to see what was going on. He stood for long minutes, staring hard, until Taye came in with a flyer in his hand. The Alpha went to Carla and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

“Sweetheart, bad news,” he said in sober tones. “Three women have died, JaNae and Kathy from the Plane Women’s House, and a woman visiting from Omaha.”

Lisa felt something inside crumble. Being here in the den, its own little world away from Kearney, had made the quarantine seem silly. This was real.

Snake put a hand on her knee, patting her anxiously. “What other news, Chief?”

Taye looked at the paper he held. “Three other women have fallen ill.”

“Only three?” said The Grandmother. “This might not be such a bad episode of the Plague. Normally, there would be twenty women sick by now. Especially when you consider so many were together in one place at the mayor’s party.”

Taye’s face lightened before turning sober again. “It’s early days,” he sighed. He scanned each of the women in the rec room, Carla, The Grandmother, Lisa, and Rose, before saying, “Being cooped up inside isn’t good for you. We’ll meet in an hour in the back behind the stable for fight practice.”

The Grandmother said firmly, “Count me out, young man.”

Rose seemed happy about it. “Will you show me how to swing my arm to block a knife again? I always get that wrong.”

“You put your weight on the wrong foot,” Taye explained patiently. “We’ll go over that again.” He looked at Lisa. “We’ll start you off easy this morning.”

“Me?” Lisa pointed her crochet hook at her chest. “Learn to fight?”

Snake pulled her up. “It’ll be fun! Besides, you should know how to defend yourself. If you’d known a week ago how to twist away from a man’s hand, you wouldn’t have those bruises now.”

As Carla led the way out of the rec room, Lisa heard Taye say to Snake, “Keep her in the back, okay? I don’t want her to have to see…”

She didn’t hear what Taye didn’t want someone to see because she was out of range of his voice. Somehow, without intending to, Lisa found herself bundled up in her long johns with Tami, Carla, and Rose in the open snowy area in back of the stable where Carla kept the horse Taye and his people had given her. She wondered how Alexander was doing.

Jay, one of Taye’s top men, dragged her attention away from the memory of the baby horse. “One of the most important things you can do to defend yourself is to always be aware of where you are and who is around you. The best fight is the one you can avoid. Are you listening?”

Lisa nodded. “Yes. Avoiding a fight is best.”

“There’s nothing wrong with screaming for help,” he went on. “Now, if you cannot avoid a fight, it’s best to disable your attacker.”

Lisa listened while he described the ways she could most easily hurt an attacker. Jay obviously didn’t care about fighting fair. He said he wanted her to be able to survive a fight, not be polite to an attacker. She practiced how to sharply twist her wrist so it could slide out of a man’s grip most easily and how to stab her fingers into his eyes.

“You’re tall,” he said approvingly. “Your arms give you good reach. Tomorrow we’ll start on how to use a knife.”

Lisa wasn’t sure she wanted to learn to use a knife, but after the attack on the den a month ago, Taye had demanded that all the women learn to defend themselves. Since she lived here now, that included her.

As Lisa followed Jay toward the den, she heard raised voices. “…talk to my wife!” thundered one.

Eddie? She rushed around the den to the front and drank in the sight of him outside the gate. Snake was standing there, arms folded over his bare chest, looking particularly ferocious. “She’s not your wife! She repudiated you.”

But Eddie wasn’t looking at Snake. His eyes were fixed on her. “Lisa,” he breathed so softly that only his lips shaping the name let her know what he said.

She wavered between getting closer to him and going straight into the den.

“You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to,” Snake growled.

Lisa drifted forward, her gaze drawn to Eddie with almost painful eagerness. He looked tired. Even though she stopped ten feet from the gate, she could see the dark circles under his eyes. “Hello, Eddie,” she said quietly.

He pressed closer to the gate. “Lisa … how are you? Have you been sick?”

Why?
she wondered.
Do
I look like a hag?
“I’m fine. How are your mom and Bree?”

“They’re fine. We had a little scare with mom, but Doc Whitten said it wasn’t the plague.”

Lisa felt her stomach drop. “The baby?”

“Fine.” Eddie sounded impatient. “Lisa, why did you leave me?”

Lisa stared at him in anger-edged shock. “Really? You have to ask?
Really?
”

“You can’t still be pouting because I don’t share every single detail of my life with you?”

Lisa clenched her fists. “Every single detail? I’m not asking for every single detail. Only the ones you yourself told your mother you thought I should know. And I’m not
pouting
.”

Eddie raised his hands as if to say he surrendered. “That was a poor choice of words.”

“Yes, it was.” Anger, clean and sharp, rose in her. “That was the kettle calling the pot black. Which of us was it who ran away from every fight and stayed out all night? Which of us stayed away from home as much as possible for the week before the Gala?”

Eddie’s jaw worked. Conflicting expressions crossed over his face so fast Lisa couldn’t decipher all them before they were gone. She saw hurt, desperation, panic, and anger among them. “I had my reasons,” he finally said. “Let’s not argue. Please.” His open palm pressed against the fence. “I miss you, Lisa.”

Something inside Lisa melted. She took a step closer to the gate. “You do?”

“Yes, you don’t know how horrible the last few days have been. All I wanted to do was find you. But with the Woman Killer Plague on the loose, I had to put my personal concerns aside. You can understand, can’t you?”

“Of course.”

She would have gone closer, but Snake put out an arm to hold her back murmuring, “Keep back. Don’t forget the quarantine.”

Lisa paused, still five feet away from the gate. “You look tired, Eddie.”

“I haven’t gotten much sleep since you left. I spend hours every day riding all over the place to bring the news to people and check on how they are doing and if they need anything.” His eyes were yearning when he looked at her. “I come home at night, cold and weary, and the house is empty. I miss your wonderful suppers. I loved coming home and finding a hot meal you cooked waiting for me.”

The tender bud of hope shriveled inside Lisa. She was waiting for words of love and regret, and he was talking about not having a hot supper on the table when he got home? “Really?”

“And I go to a cold, lonely bed. You’re not there, and I’m so alone. I miss having your warmth beside me in bed.”

“Really?” She turned on her heel. “I’m sure Ruth would be glad to warm you up and put a hot meal on your table,” she tossed over her shoulder.

“Lisa!” It didn’t sound to her like a broken-hearted cry. It was a demand, accompanied by the gate rattling violently. “I love you. Come back! Please! We’re not done talking!”

She ignored him, sailing through the various members of the Pack that had gathered around the fence. At the door to the den she turned to look at Eddie. Snake and Jay obligingly moved aside so she had direct eye contact with her ex.

“How many times did I ask you to talk to me? How many times? But I’m done. It’s over,” she said with hard won calm. “Don’t come back, Eddie.”

She went to the rec room and grabbed the growing granny square out of its bag. Jelly followed her and asked fearfully, “Are you gonna cry now?”

“No,” she snapped. “He’s not worth it.”

Jelly smiled with open relief. “Good. I hate it when you cry.”

“Me too,” said Lisa. “I’m sick of crying. I’ve been bawling for three months straight. It’s time for that to stop.”

Carla entered the rec room in time to hear that. She sat in her big chair. “You’ve had reason to cry, Lisa. The plane crash, leaving everything behind, getting married… It takes a toll.”

Jelly nodded with the earnest expression of a teenager trying to be comforting. “Especially getting married to someone like that.”

The urge to cry was swallowed by slightly hysterical giggles. “I’ve always been emotional, and it’s going to take me some time to get over Eddie, but I’ll do it.”

Jelly curled up at her feet with a happy smile and watched her crochet furiously until lunch.

* * * *