Just a City Boy (Midnight Train Series) (16 page)

“The thing is, I never could bring myself to hate Daddy for what he did. I mean, I knew it was wrong and terrible and irreversible. Maybe it was all that studying up on post-traumatic stress, but I felt in my heart it wasn’t his fault. Not really,” I said. “Curtis Lee felt otherwise. We haven’t spoken much really, because of that,” I said. I slumped back in pillows, still holding Zack’s hand. “Thanks for listening. I feel much better.”

He lay back right beside me, not saying anything, but stroking my good arm. He did finally say something.

“That must have been hard. Living through that, and then trying to move on, finally,” he paused and looked at me. “Sharing that with me. Considering my, uh, situation,” he said.

I studied his face. His masculine jawline and firm mouth projected strength. Yet his eyes showed concern and compassion. I wondered again what those eyes had seen. I brought my casted hand over to his face, and let my naked fingers trail down his cheek and follow the curve under his jaw.

“You’re a special man, Zack. Any girl would be lucky to have you. If you still want me after finding out all this stuff,” I waved toward my shoebox and its contents, as if they could symbolize my entire life and its upheavals. “I would be thankful for all my days.”

He leaned in and gave me a gentle kiss on the lips. It was chaste but filled with tenderness.

“Are you okay if I go?” he asked gently.

I understood he needed to get going, and I was okay. I really was.

“Of course! I have cold cuts in the fridge. You can make a quick sandwich,” I told him. I was carefully placing all of the things back in my box.

He ate and then changed, and then I walked him to the door.

“You can wake me up if you want,” I told him shyly.

He kissed me again, this one a little wetter.

“If you insist…” he said to me with a little smile.

My heart fluttered and I closed my door.

I did it. I told him the most awful thing about me, and it was over and he didn’t do or say anything that made it seem like he regretted his decision to be with me. I felt all kinds of relief, and decided to get to the thing that was going to make the rest of my day just right. It was time for full hair, full makeup.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Zack felt like his insides were torn up. He knew better than he thought Lauren did…he was falling in love with her. And that was exactly why he needed to break it off as soon as it was humanly possible, or rather, humanely possibly. He couldn’t justify doing it right after she told him her story. That gut-wrenching prophecy of what their lives could be like in a few years scared him spitless. But it would be cruel beyond words to do that to her. She was not going to understand where he was coming from.

The horror those kids witnessed, coming back from school expecting to do homework and maybe call a friend. Expecting that they’d sit at the dinner table and tell their parents that classic kid answer: I don’t know, when they asked them how their day went. To be met with that scene…

Zack got choked up about it. He’d seen horror. He knew all too well what those feelings were like. The shock, the terror, the sense of displaced reality. He felt jittery just thinking about it, and his leg started tapping while he rode the People Mover to his stop. He could actually feel a panic attack coming on. He couldn’t let Lauren know about this. Ever. She would blame herself, when there was nothing to blame. She blamed herself for her parents’ accident. She didn’t have to say it for him to see it. She would blame herself for anything he did here on out. It was her personality, to take others’ burdens and make them her own. She had a heart of gold, and wanted to ease suffering any way she could. It was what he loved about her.

He was so wrong for her on so many levels. He couldn’t willingly give her his burdens. They were too much for him to bear, how could a little thing like her help carry him?

By the time he got to Lonely Nights, he was barely keeping it together. It was a weeknight, so hopefully the crowd would be manageable. He needed an uneventful night to make it through his shift.

He tried counting by threes, but it wasn’t working. Then he resorted to as many digits of pi as he could. All the guys in his unit called him The Pi-man because that what he would do right before a mission. He couldn’t explain it. It just worked.

So guests came up to the door, and he quickly assessed their IDs and he checked bags and if his mouth seemed to be reciting something, nobody said anything.

He was keeping his cool.

He needed this job. He needed to be able to save up that money. He couldn’t live with himself; he most certainly couldn’t live with or marry Lauren if he was a threat to her. Maybe if he could get this treatment, they might have a chance.

He grit his teeth. Zack knew she was going to fight him like a cheetah on this. How could he make her see what was right in front of her eyes? He could end up like her father?

A headache like no other seized his head right behind the eyes, and he almost blacked out from the pain. He held a large hand to the doorframe until the most recent customers made it inside. Then he practically stumbled to the bar.

“Matt,” he groaned. “Do you have any painkillers? I just got this headache…” he said. He put his elbows on the bar and held his head in his hands.

“Sure man, hang on!” Matt said. He rushed around and pulled a little first aid kit out from under a counter. He poured a glass of water and gave Zack the pills and drink.

“Hey, I can cover for you for a few minutes. The crowd’s not too big and you look like you need to get some air or something,” Matt said.

Zack actually agreed with him.

“Yeah, thanks. I’ll do that. I’ll get some air,” he said.

He stepped out into the September air. It was perfectly chilled, and it helped him right away. He was overthinking everything, he knew it.

Once his shift was over, he’d head back to Lauren’s. He’d gather up his couple items, and explain that he needed to get back to Dave’s and he’d call her tomorrow.

Then he could slowly just wean himself from her sunshine. She’d get so fed up with him; she’d break it off herself. Simple.

That’s what he told himself for the next seven hours of his shift, and by the time he crawled up the steps to her apartment, his headache was only at half-power. His plan would work. It would.

He was still telling himself that when he climbed onto her bed fully dressed and collapsed next to her. He just had to smell her one last time. That was all.

She smelled like apples. Apples. Two apples plus two apples gave you how many apples? The farmer had fifteen bushels of apples. He sold seven bushels. How many were left? See, math problems were great. If only there was an equation that could solve all his problems. He’d solve it right now. She stirred a little, and he wrapped his arm around her waist and buried his nose in her wild curls. He didn’t have any solutions. Only apples. He had all the apples. He wanted all the apples. He didn’t want to sell any apples.
My apples
, he thought to himself.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I woke with a stretch. Zack didn’t wake me up after all, and he was going to catch it, as soon as I found him. “Zack?” I called out. I didn’t hear him answer me back, so I got up and shuffled out of my room. He wasn’t in the bathroom, and he wasn’t in the kitchen or front room.

Confused, I stood with one hand on my jutted hip. “Zack, where did y’all go?” I asked nobody. I noticed his backpack was gone, and I got a real bad ache in my gut.

Oh no. Oh no he did not do that. I saw a loose paper lying on the table. I ran to it and snatched it up.

Good morning, Beautiful

Don’t be mad. I made up with my friend Dave, and I’m back at his place. This will be a little easier on us, right? You’re just too tempting of a morsel.

I’ll call you today, either before or after I work at the sports bar.

Stop thinking that this has anything to do with what you told me. It doesn’t.

Love,

Zack

I crunched it up. Of course it had to do with what I told him. Did he think I was a numbskull? Did he think I was born yesterday?

Oh I was in a fury, and I stormed to my closet and picked out the hottest outfit I owned. I stomped into the bathroom and put on my face, and I spent an hour putting together the biggest hair anyone had seen since 1988.

He was not doing this to me. I would drag his butt to the courthouse today, if he thought he was going to brush me off like yesterday’s paper.

I just had one thing to finalize, and I had to do that at the library. Then I was going to Lonely Nights and find Brenda and strong arm her into giving me Zack’s friend’s address. She had to have it. He didn’t have any other references I was aware of. Then I would march in to that boy’s room and take him by the ear and demand an explanation!

My Southern Baptist granddaddy left me a legacy of spitfire that would not be quenched until I got this situation under control.

I piled all kinds of ammunition into my big bag. Anything that I thought might help convince Zack that he belonged with me. My bag wasn’t so heavy at the moment, because the cops still had my S&W for investigative purposes. It was fairly cut and dried that it was a self-defense situation, but there was all the paperwork and reports and what not. I put my full can of hairspray in there. I put my novel. I stuffed my long strappy shoes in there, and a handful of some more cosmetics. I didn’t know what I was going to do with all of it, but I was desperate.

My first stop at the library was completely successful. I returned my novel. It was a shame, but I never got around to reading it.

Then I got on the train to Lonely Nights station.

I stalked in the doors and shouted a little too loudly at Matt.

“Where is she? Where’s Brenda?” I asked.

He pointed down the hall.

I ignored Andy leaning against a table and chatting with Tracy. They stared at me like I’d grown two heads.

I found Brenda in her office.

“I need Zack’s address, and I need it now,” I said.

Brenda sat back in her chair. She stared at me for a full minute while my breathing gradually slowed to normal.

“I just remembered why we decided your stage name should be LuLu,” she said coolly. I gave her a tiny smile. “You might be the only woman save Dolly Parton who looks good in mall hair,” she said, and scribbled some numbers on a notepad.

“Don’t hurt him. He’s the best bouncer I’ve hired in a while,” she said with a straight face. I smiled again.

I made it to Dave’s apartment building, and looked around the neighborhood. It wasn’t terribly far from Lazy Eye’s place. I sort of knew the area. I pinched my cheeks, just in case my blusher wasn’t doing the job, and braced myself in front of the door. Three, two, one. I knocked nice and bold.

I heard voices inside and the creak of the floor as someone came to the door and looked in the peephole.

It opened, and Zack stood there without a shirt on and wearing nice blue jeans, but no socks.

All my speeches faded away to nothing as I stared at his sculpted shoulders, chest dusted with dark hair, chiseled abs on one side and a scar so horrendous on the other side that I couldn’t believe he was standing in front of me. My jaw was about on the floor. I looked up into his face, and I saw pain flit across it like a butterfly in an oil field.

Tears sprang to my eyes. All my thoughts were disjointed. I tried to speak.

“I brought my hairspray,” was what came out.

He frowned but invited me in.

I stepped in as gracefully as the Queen of England. We Southerners placed a lot of importance on civility and manners.

“You have a lovely place,” I said, channeling my Mama since all my own thoughts and words were a jumbled mess of emotion.

Zack was so much dreamier without a shirt on. But that scar…that scar told a story that rivaled my own family history in gore and terror.
Don’t mention buses. Don’t mention buddies.
I remembered my mental notes. He never talked about his army buddies. They must have all died. Why else would he never mention them? My heart was breaking over and over and over again.

Maybe I wasn’t good for him. Maybe he knowing about my Daddy and Mama was somehow going to hurt him and hinder his progress in getting better. Maybe it was better this way. Tears sprang to my eyes, but I tried to will them back into my head.

“Didn’t you get my note?” he asked me. His voice was a little shaky.

I cleared my throat. “Ah, right. Your note,” I said. I looked all over the apartment. There was no sign of this Dave person, but there were green game cases lying around and a tatty old couch, and pizza boxes on the floor. I sniffed a little. I knew about messy roommates.

“The thing is, Zackory,” I said in my haughtiest voice. “I think you weren’t being very honest with me. I think you were trying to pull the wool over my eyes. But my eyes are wide open. So I can see very clearly what is going on,” I said. I was starting to warm up, too. “You’re trying to make a clean break with me. For whatever reason, you’re too chickenshit afraid of me. Is it my beauty? My strong personality? My insurance? I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. Because whatever is going on in that thick skull of yours can’t be right. I’ll tell you how I know that. Because of the way I feel right here!” I struck my chest with my cast, and the thunk threw me off guard. “Ow,” I said.

“We’ve got something special. I think the stars aligned to bring us together. What are the odds, Zack? That a man suffering with PTSD would stick up the only woman in the city that didn’t A) shoot him or B) report him to the police? We were meant to be together, you and me! A city boy and a small town girl. It’s like a song, or something! And dammit…you didn’t even give me a chance to tell you the wonderful news!” I said. I dug in my bag and found a tissue so I could carefully dab at the tears threatening to smear my eyeliner. I grabbed my compact too, and snuck a peek at my makeup, because I couldn’t help it.

“Zack Daniels. Remember how I told you I couldn’t get into any schools? I couldn’t finagle a single scholarship? Well I learned a thing or two during that long process. And I found your Dr. Gutierrez online, and I found a scholarship program for vets, and I faxed him the form all filled out except for the stuff I didn’t know. I talked to him yesterday while you were at work. You’re in, Zack! You’re in! He’s even going to fly you out!” I was almost shouting in my excitement, and my hands were gesturing, and my cast about bumped a picture off a wall, and I didn’t even care.

It was Zack’s turn to drop his jaw, and then tears sprang into his eyes and grabbed me in a tight hug. We squeezed each other, and he started sobbing into my neck.

“You did that for me?” he said, tears straining his voice. I felt the stubble from his cheeks graze across my soft cheek, and it thrilled me to no end.

“Of course I did that for you,” I said into his ear. “I don’t understand how it’s possible to happen so fast, but I love you, Zack Daniels. I love you so much and I want you to be happy,” I cried.

“Oh Lauren,” he said. “I was telling myself I had to leave you. That I couldn’t give you a happy ending. But you’re
my
only happy ending. It turns out I can’t deprive myself of that,” he said.

“Good. Because when you mugged me, you signed up for the whole bucket of chicken. I’m not letting you get away,” I told him.

He nuzzled my neck and began kissing my ear and my jaw and my cheek, carefully making his way to my mouth.

“I told myself you deserved a whole man. I really wanted to get out to Bethesda and become that whole man for you,” he said between kisses.

“But you’re already a whole man,” I reminded him. “You just need a little help putting all the pieces together,” I whispered. “You just needed to believe it could happen.”

“Ah Sugar. You’ve got me believing all sorts of things,” he said, using that endearment again that made my heart sing louder than a rooster at Daylight Savings Time.

“Let’s kiss some more before your roommate comes back,” I whispered into his mouth.

“Oh Dave? He doesn’t care. He’s right there in the easy chair,” Zack said.

I jumped back, startled.

Dave waved sheepishly.

“Sorry. You had a lot to say and I didn’t want to interrupt. My Mom taught me to never interrupt a woman when she was in a rant,” Dave said.

I decided I liked him already.

“Do you have a girlfriend Dave?” I asked.

“Uh no. Mine just dumped me,” he said, making a sad face. “She was a real hot city girl, too,” he said.

I snorted. “You don’t need a city girl, Dave. You need a small town girl,” I said matter of factly. And then I went back to kissing Zack like I meant it. He would need a lot of kisses the next several days before he left for the treatment center. My kisses had to tide him over until we could get married when he got back. I thought I better ask him, just to be sure.

“Did you want to get married still?” I asked him.

“Do armadillos make great speed bumps?” he asked.

That’s my boy, I thought to myself. Just my city boy.