Forgiven (Ruined) (10 page)

             
She looks like she's going to answer, then laughs instead.  "Only when it comes to other people's stuff.  So if we're through with your stuff can we get on to mine?"

             
I feign surprise.  "You have stuff?"

             
She pretends to be offended.  "Of course I have stuff."  Then she giggles.  "I think I've met somebody," she says, pulling me to my feet so we can leave the coffee shop and walk as we talk.

             
"You
think
you've met somebody?" I ask.  "How can you not be sure?"

             
Out the bell-jangling door into the fall sunlight, still talking.  About the guy Emmy met at the club, that he asked if he could call her, and then did call her, and they're going out, a daytime thing first time, and if that works out, maybe a double date with me and Kellan?

             
It all sounds so normal.  I'd love to do normal. 

             
Normal just doesn't seem to know where I live.

             
Kellan's on the beach when I get home, laying on a towel down by the water, just looking out to sea.  Unless he has eyes in the back of his head, he hasn't seen me as I come from the street, but I still hesitate.  I keep trying to give the man all the freedom and room he could ask for.  I'm doing it out of respect, or something like that, just because it seems like the right thing to do.  But what if giving him space is exactly what's wrong?  What if he thinks
I'm
the one who's not interested? 

             
Maybe he can't tell me what's going on because I keep backing away from him.  So even though I'm getting a mega-headache and what I'd like to do is go inside and sit in the cool house and eat something light and maybe nap, what I do is kick my sandals off up onto the porch, throw my purse up after them, and walk barefooted across the sand to plop down on the towel next to him.

             
Either he really does have eyes in the back of his head or prison made him hyper aware.  Or he's just that confident.  Or he saw my shadow.  Because he doesn't jump at all when I flop down beside him, just rotates his head, chin on one fist, and gives me a lazy grin like nothing has been tense between us.

             
"Where'd you go?"  Those lazy green eyes.  And that so sensual mouth, all mixed into the rugged, unshaven guy. 

             
What was the question again?  Because it's gone right out of my head.  Oh, right.

             
"To coffee with Emmy."

             
He purses his lips, nods a little.  "Seemed kind of sudden."

             
Abruptly I'm fed up with cat and mouse.  "It was kind of sudden.  See, someone dropped off a package in brown paper with no address or return on it.  And when I say dropped off, I mean threw it at the door with a bang."

             
Kellan's looking very cool.

             
"Then while I'm trying to figure out where the person went, the really hot guy I'm seeing comes along and says the package is his and nothing in it is any of my business and I shouldn't worry my pretty little head about it."

             
"He said that?  Tsk."

             
I sigh at him.

             
"You're seeing a hot guy?" he says next.

             
I sigh again, loudly and ostentatiously.  "Hot.  And annoying."

             
He nods.  "Super hot guys can be that way."

             
I'm starting to smile even though I don't mean to.  "I didn't say he was
super
hot."

             
He considers that.  "Are you sure?  I thought I saw you with him once, and he was – "  He reaches out and runs a thumb over my lower lip.  "But he wasn't anything close to you."

             
The sudden emotion in his eyes catches me off guard.  "Kellan."  It sounds like a protest.  "Is anything going on?  Are you all right?  Because you don't seem like yourself."

             
"How would you know?"  His attention all seems focused on my lips.

             
"OK, you don't seem the same."  How am I supposed to get through to him?  It's hard to even think with him touching me like that.  I try again.  "You don't seem the same as you were when I met you."

             
"I'm the same.  Let me prove it to you."

             
I should argue.  I should demand to know what was in the box.  I should point out I live in the house too.  If something is putting him at risk, it may put me at risk as well.  I should point out if it's something dangerous, it could be dangerous to all of us.  And that even if it isn't, we all care about him.
             

             
Some of us more than others.

             
But I can't think and kiss him at the same time.  His mouth is sea spray salty, hot from the sun.  His hand cupping my face is gentle.  I feel myself melting under his touch. 

             
When he pulls back, he says, "Do you want to go in?  We have the house to ourselves." 

             
As if I didn't know that. 

* * *

             
We fell on each other as soon as we got through the door.  Screen door slammed, and Kellan pushed the front door shut and pushed me up against it, all one smooth move.  His arms, tan now from being on the beach, the goofy smiling sun standing out on the right arm, went around me, pulling me hard against him.

             
His mouth was hot, still salty.  Sand grated between us.  A shower wouldn't be out of line but we weren't waiting.  Kellan wore jean cutoffs, sandy bare feet.  His broad strong chest was hot from sunlight, his hair tangled and getting longer.  Bruce was after him to get it cut and it wouldn't hurt the job hunt if he did, but just now I liked being able to grab a handful of it.

             
Kellan's hands were in my hair, on my back, under the tank top I wore, fumbling with the zipper of my low riding capris until I showed him I could easily slip them off without bothering to unzip. 

             
He made a sound as I stepped free of them, and we moved together across the living room, fell onto one of the couches, twisting so he lay against the cushions and I stretched out on top of him.  I could feel his heart beating hard.  My breathing quickened.  All the questions that had been in my head escaped.

             
We nipped at each other, kissed hard, licked longingly, teased.  Hands and tongues traced down bodies.  We got in each other's way, each greedily trying to provide more pleasure to the other, as if it were a contest.  He pulled my tank top off, I licked down his chest.  He spun me under him onto the couch, I wrapped my legs around his waist and pulled him closer.  He kissed my neck, I bit the edge of his jaw.

             
Sand grated between us.  Feet slid together.  Legs entwined.  Afternoon sunlight filled the living room from the southwest windows.  Hands, mouths, bodies, pressing together.  By the time we got to the shower we were ready to go again, tumbling into Kellan's clean sheeted bed.

             
This was the weekend I'd had in mind.

* * *

             
The weekend I didn't have in mind reestablishes itself the minute we get up.  I pull on one of Kellan's long t-shirts and back out of the bedroom as he's heading to a second shower.  He issues an invitation that's hard to resist, but if I don’t resist it, I might end up biting him for real. 

             
"Food," I tell him, backing into the hallway.  "Sustenance?  I'm starving!"  My hands on my stomach which refuses to rumble on cue.

             
He gives me a look like I'm abandoning him.  I don't buy it. 

             
"Put on some shorts.  Come with me."

             
"Sand," he said.  "In bad places."

             
That makes me laugh.  "I'll heat up a frozen pizza."

             
"Order one.  Takes the same time.  Tastes better."

             
I should probably eat something other than pizza this summer.  A salad, maybe.  Fruit. 

             
Kellan.  No, no, that's not nourishing.  And he's looking at me that way again.

             
"I'll be in the kitchen."

             
He starts to say something, but his cell rings, and he turns back to it, calling over his shoulder, "I'll be down after showering."

             
I almost say something Emmy-like about his choice of words –
be down?
– but that's the lust talking.  And nice to chat with the lust again, too.  But instead I let the need for food float me down the stairs.

             
Into the kitchen.

             
Where the brown paper package is still on the counter.

             
I give it a look I might give a spider that's crawled up there.  Then I move past it, digging in the fridge with one hand while I scroll through my phone with the other for the closest pizza place.  I order a large.  Feeling guilty, I order a pineapple and ham.  Pineapple is a fruit.  That has to be healthy, right?

             
The fridge offers up fruit and cheese, beer and soda, wine which is my mother's.  There's a good many To Go containers and doggie bags.  There are protein bars and protein shakes and some of Carmelita's homemade tortillas and salsa. 

             
But the pizza is on the way.  My appetite is suddenly on hold.  I pull out a plum, biting into the crisp skin, feeling juice spread down my chin.  I hardly notice.

             
I can hear the water running upstairs in Kellan's bathroom.

             
The box is on the counter.

             
I shouldn't.  I should ask him again.  But I have asked him, and he's refused to answer me.  Despite what we've just done together, I still feel a distance between us.  I felt it when we got up.  I felt it when he answered his phone despite bantering that I should come back to bed. 

             
I'll feel it again when he comes downstairs and tells me this box is his.  And refuses to tell me anything else.

             
I put the plum down on the clean marble counter top and run my hands under water in the sink.  The whole time I can't keep my eyes off the package.  Probably there's nothing but the box here.  It seems unlikely Kellan's left anything but packaging. 

             
In which case, I tell myself, abruptly drying my hands and reaching for the brown paper package, there's no reason not to look.  I can tidy up.  If it's an empty package, no harm done.

             
Right?

             
It's not empty.  At first I can't even figure out what I'm looking at.  Or rather, who I'm looking at.  There's a photo on top, a youngish woman with short cropped red curls and a big grin.  She's holding a fishing pole and making a face at the camera, both grinning and obviously being silly, like she's not really comfortable having her picture taken.  I have no idea who she is.

             
But the next picture down in the box, I start to get a bad feeling.  There's two little girls, toddler age, I guess, or maybe a little older?  I never had any siblings, and never really got a chance to baby sit.  I don't know kids and kid ages.

             
But I know David Reynolds.  I met him during the forgiveness series.  Actually, I met him before I started the series.  When everything I was doing was for Kellan.

             
This is Aimee Reynolds, I guess, realizing there were no pictures of her in David Reynolds' office and that the only photos he showed me and Emmy were of his new family, the three-month-old son, the new wife he'd met at a Mothers Against Drunk Driving meeting. 

             
But I don't understand why this is here.  David Reynolds had offered to meet one on one with Kellan, but Kellan never took him up on it that I know of.  If he did, Reynolds would have had to come to Charleston from Atlanta, because Kellan couldn't go that far without permission from his parole officer and he'd have had to take a cab or something, because he can't drive.  No license.

             
So maybe they didn't meet in person.  Maybe Kellan got in touch and – and what?  David Reynolds sent him a big box of photos of the family Kellan killed?  Does that even make sense?  David Reynolds forgave Kellan.  I interviewed him and I believed him.  His faith helped him make peace with what had happened, as did his new marriage.  There'd be no reason for having sent this.  Something about the box bothers me.  For all the happy family photos, this feels like darkness.