Innocent Lies (15 page)

“You were mad the first day I saw
you in the Pizza House?”

“I was always mad.”

“Did you know . . .” I started to
ask.

“Yeah, beautiful, I did. It was so
hard to ignore you. But there were a few other associates there. I
couldn’t take the chance of them figuring out who you were.” He
handed the clothes over. “Get dressed. I’ll be on the
couch.”

I stood there long after he was
gone. I threw the clothes to the floor, stripped, and marched to
the living room. I stood before him naked and unsure.

“What do you see?”
The tears clouded my eyes until I was unable to see. “The woman you
almost took in your bed earlier or the young girl laid bare,
exposed, and beaten out in that field.” I felt sick to my stomach
as my heart rate elevated. I couldn’t remember the last time I had
been so nervous. His eyes turned to ice.

He threw a blanket at me.
“Sit.”

Immediately, I collapsed on the
edge of the sofa, tugging the blanket around me. Ethan stood over
me. “My brother was an evil asshole. He hated me because my dad
loved my mom. I was the chosen son. Instead of him trying to do
what was right to gain dad’s attention, he did everything wrong.”
He downed the drink he was holding and tossed the glass across the
room. “I got a call one night from Devon, the little one. He told
me what my brother had done and that he was about to kill this
girl.” He took four deep breaths, no doubt trying to calm down. “I
rushed out there. We couldn’t have a murder traced back to
us.”

“You didn’t care
that he was hurting someone? You just didn’t want trouble?” I asked
and started twisting my hands. I felt like I was going to throw up.
I clutched the blanket tight around me and darted to the bathroom.
I locked the door and fell to the ground. The door vibrated at my
back as he pounded his fist onto it.

“Damn it, Dylan.
You asked me what I saw when I look at you naked. I don’t just see
a body I would like to fuck. I see the body I want to make love to
for the rest of my life. I see the body I want lying by me when I
take my last breath. I see the only body I would ever consider
holding my children. When I think that is the body I saw bloody and
mangled out in that field. Fuck, Dylan, I go crazy. Because
beautiful, that is the only body I could ever love.” He said
through the locked door. “Please babe, open the door. You have to
stop running. I won’t let you push me away.”

I slipped on the tee-shirt he
handed to me earlier and unlocked the door. I stood there, tugging
on the hem of the shirt.

“You’re so
beautiful. I still remember all that red hair sprawled over the
dirt.” He reached for my hand and brought it to his lip, softly
kissing it. “You saved me that day.” He shuddered and laid his face
in my neck. “Put those pants on. I can only take so much
tonight.”

I soothed his knitted brow with
the pad of my thumb. “How did I save you?”

“Pants. Then we’ll
talk.” He kissed my forehead and walked away.

I slipped on the pants and chased
after him. I tripped over my own feet and tumbled onto him,
knocking us both down. He busted out laughing, squashed me to him,
and vibrated with laughter. He couldn’t stop laughing. He released
all the pent-up emotions of the day in laughter. His laughter
started to slow to suppressed breaths. He laughed as my world
crumbled. I wanted to go back to being numb. Feeling was hard. I
thought I had experienced them all, but hearing him laugh at my
pain sent an entirely new gamut of emotions my way. I slapped him.
He didn’t flinch. His laughing stopped, but he didn’t acknowledge
the slap. I sat up and brought my fist back, slamming it hard
against his face. Blood busted out of his nose. He sat up and
kissed me. I pulled back and tasted the blood. “You bastard.” I
pushed him against the ground.

He followed me to the kitchen,
grabbing a shirt from somewhere on the way. He stood there with a
cloth shoved under his nose and stared at me. “You asked me how you
saved me. And didn’t I care that someone was getting hurt? That is
how you saved me.”

I looked out the window over the
sink, scrubbing my face with a wet washcloth, and tried absorbing
what he was saying. “Huh?”

“I didn’t care. We had a business
to run and if someone got hurt to carry out that business.” He
shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, well.” He pulled me into his arm.
Holding the shirt under his nose with one hand, he crushed me
against him with the other. “That was until you. They knew you were
alive. You were whimpering. It was soft and sweet like a newborn
puppy. Something snapped in me. I don’t know how but I knew that
you had been hurting for years and it was not the physical pain
that was killing you, but the mental pain. My protective instincts
kicked in. I forced the three to leave. I still didn’t know what I
was going to do with you.”

“Did you think of
killing me yourself?” Stunned that I wasn’t crying. For the first
time in my life, I didn’t cry. Tears couldn’t put what had been
wronged back together.

He never stopped looking at me. I
tried looking away but found it impossible. I couldn’t do anything
that might make him uncomfortable. “No.” He shook his head. “You
were shivering. All you had on was a tee-shirt and underwear and
even that was torn. It was freezing that night. I took off my coat
and wrapped you up in it. I still don’t know why, but in that
moment you got under my skin and have never left.”

“It’s the red
hair. They said you had a thing for gingers.”

“Because of you. I’ve never given a
ginger a second look to you.” He diverted his eyes from mine. “I
tried screwing you out of my system. I’ve never gone a day without
thinking about you. I guess I was hoping if I slept with enough
reds I could forget you.” He glanced back. “It didn’t work. My
love, I wanted the feeling I got when I laid down by you that night
and you snuggled your head onto my chest.”

“Huh?” I asked,
burrowing my forehead into his shoulder. His hand was instantly in
my hair. I should’ve moved away from him. But it was so damn
comforting in his arms. I agreed nothing compared. But I shouldn’t
have found comfort from him or anybody for that matter. One thing
life had taught me was that I could only trust myself and even that
was iffy.

“I got the two
guys that came with me to fetch some water and a sleeping bag. I
told them I would take care of you. They let everybody know I would
be back in a week and not to worry. I had always taken care of
business. I knew that no one would even give you a second thought.
I still didn’t know what I was going to do with you to be honest.”
He started stroking my arm. I watched his hands and for the
briefest moment, without a doubt, I knew those hands would never
harm me. “Your face was swollen. I could tell your nose and
possibly your jaw was broken. Your arm was fractured in at least
two places. I crushed up some pain pills I had and helped you
swallow them. I might have been unsure what to do with you but I
couldn’t stand seeing you hurt. I splinted up your arm, popped your
nose back in place, and then kissed it.” He placed a peck on the
tip of my nose and released me. ”I know this is too much to take
in. But Privy, you need to hear it.”

He led me to the couch and sat
down. He was raw. I had never understood how we connected on such
an intimate level so fast. It was because we had fallen in love in
that field five years earlier. I remembered the kisses. The way he
held me. All those sweet words. My eyes were too swollen to see his
face. It wasn’t his face I fell in love with. It was his heart.
What I felt for him wasn’t wrong or fucked up. It was
overwhelmingly right. I sat in his lap, straddling him.

“I don’t
understand what you’ve done to me. But don’t stop.” He squashed my
chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I still remember how
wonderful it felt to hold you that first time. It was cold. So I
worked and got us wrapped in the sleeping bag together.” He mashed
my head against him. “You laid your face against my chest, gripped
my shirt, and whispered, ‘Don’t hurt me. I can’t take anymore.’ I
knew then, I would save you no matter what it cost me.” Ethan took
a deep breath, then forcibly released it. “I couldn’t leave. I kept
pumping you with pain medicines, because there was no letting you
go, only protecting you. After three days, I had an idea. I called
Devon and got him to bring me some LSD. It would make you
delusional so no matter what you told them, they wouldn’t believe
you. You would live and no one would be the wiser.” Ethan stilled
my arm under his, and it wasn’t until then that I realized how
badly I was shaking.

“I did
remember.”

He slid his hand behind my neck
and softly kissed me. “I know. I couldn’t give it to you. I
promised you I wouldn’t hurt you and I couldn’t.” His expression
was completely serene. “I still can’t. I gave you a shot of
morphine.”

“Where did you get all the
drugs?”

He snickered. “Family business. We
own a few clubs, but they are a front for the real business. We
deal in all kinds of drugs and guns. It’s quite profitable. That is
how that animal that lived with you ended up owing us.”

“How did you end up being a lawyer
for the good guys?”

“To keep the good guys in jail and
get the bad guys out. I wasn’t kidding when I told you I wasn’t the
good guy. Only for you, my love. Only you. Now back to the story.
The morphine shot put you to sleep. I cleaned up the field around
us, took the splint off your arm, kissed your cute little face, and
did the hardest thing I have ever done.”

“What?”

“Walked away.” A
single tear spilled down his face. “I still don’t know how I did it
. . . I have a few friends in the sheriff’s office. I called ‘em
and told ’em where to find you.” He wrapped his hand around my
neck, right below my ear, and brushed his thumb along my jaw. “I
almost went crazy worrying about you. It had been a week and I
hadn’t heard a word. It wasn’t in the news, no one was talking. I
was scared they didn’t find you. I would wake up in the night in
terror that you were left out there. I left you out there. It was
like the world was lifted from my chest when the police showed up
and arrested my brother and uncle. My family was being torn apart
and all I cared about was you.”

He paused. He didn’t kiss me. I
kissed him. Seeing him like that, hearing those words, the fact
that he cared about me even then. He had been carrying around all
that blame. He needed to know I didn’t blame him for any of it. No
matter what happened from that day forward, we were connected.
Pieces of our souls merged out in that field and as long as we had
each other nothing else mattered.

“That bastard you
were forced to live with was a coward. He told the police
everything and then blew his own damn brains out. My biggest regret
in this life is that I didn’t get the privilege to kill him
myself.” He placed his head in the crook of my neck and squeezed me
hard enough that it hurt.

“I love you and I don’t blame you
for anything. I just thank God he brought you back in my life.” I
said.

He leaned his head onto the back
of the couch and looked at me. “I figured out what hospital you
were in and came to see you. You were sleeping. The swelling in
your face was going down. You were even more beautiful than I
dreamed possible. I promised you that night that I would always
take care of you.”

I pushed the hair off his face.
His eyes were red and swollen. I kissed each eyelid
softly.

“I did too. The, um . . . M.S.M.
scholarship that paid for your schooling.” He shrugged his
shoulder. “Was me. It stands for my sweet miracle. I’ve done
everything I could to take care of you. I even tried staying
away.”

What the heck?
I remembered the lady greeting me in
the courthouse after the verdict. She had an offer for me. I was
granted the M.S.M. scholarship, a scholarship for young people
going through a hardship. I would receive ten thousand dollars to
get my school supplies, then thirty thousand dollars a year as long
as I was attending college full-time and maintaining no lower than
a b average. It was a dream come true to a girl who had never had
anything. It was Ethan all along. He did what he could to take care
of me; take care of me from a distance.

“Why did you want to stay
away?”

“Because you deserve better than
me. But Privy, you’re stuck with me now.”

“Good.” I removed
the shirt he still had stuffed under his nose. “Sorry.” I said with
a smile and kissed the tip of it. I rubbed my hands around his
neck. Immediately, I was consumed with this indescribable
peacefulness.