The Fight for Us (35 page)

When Isaiah approached the chief, he shook the man’s hand as the chief spoke. “Take care of her.”

“I intend to.”

He said nothing else, and as he backed out of his parking spot, Joss pulled out behind him. She did exactly as he asked and pulled up behind him, leaving her car in the driveway. The moment she went inside the house, he closed the garage door, moved some of the boxes to the empty stall, opened the door back up and ran down to the mailbox. His home was set off the road a bit through a winding lane, but the trees were bare this time of year, and the front of his house was visible from the road. It was all for show, and he made a point of waving to his neighbor across the street who was already shoveling his drive. It was likely all a bit overkill, but he was thorough if nothing else.

He left the garage door up and ran inside.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Hey, Mom.” Harper glanced up at her as she entered the living room.

“Hi, guys.” She forced herself to smile.

“Umm…What the heck are you wearing?”

“Oh… Nothing. I just had to change. It’s nothing.”

Harper stared at her for a moment but eventually dismissed her mother’s weird behavior.

Steph instantly stood, crossing the room to her and hugging her.

“I’m fine.” Joss said quietly.

Naturally, Steph didn’t buy it, and as she pulled back, she remarked in a whisper. “You don’t have to be fine.”

“Mom, where were you? Steph said you weren’t feeling good.” Harper was looking over her shoulder at her again, still with the quizzical expression and eyeing her clothes.

“Yeah. Just feeling a bit under the weather. Had to run to the doctor, but he says I’ll be fine. How are you girls?” She sat down in a side chair, and both Nat and Harper looked at her.

“Better,” Nat said.

“Yeah?”

Natalie actually did look better than she had even that morning, never mind the night before.

Nat nodded her head. “Yeah, I am.” She said with a marginal amount of conviction. “Why should I care what people think of me?”

Harper nodded her head in emphatic agreement. “Yeah.”

When Steph sat on the arm of the chair, she leaned to Joss’s ear, speaking quietly. “It has been pep talk central around here today. I wouldn’t be surprised if these two go to school next week all bully vigilante like.”

“Please tell me you’re kidding,” Joss commented. She was struggling to stay in the now with them, but oddly, she was soaking in the distraction at the same time. “We don’t need both of them getting suspended.”

“I know. But you put these two together in a room, and they are quite the force. They’re strong together. I’m not kidding.” Steph gave her a squeeze as Isaiah finally came in from outside. “That’s my cue to go. Try to relax tonight, okay?”

Joss nodded.

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” She watched as Steph passed Isaiah, telling him goodnight, but after she’d disappeared, she reappeared quickly. “Hey, you want me to close your garage door?” She hollered into the living room.

Isaiah responded quickly from the kitchen. “Nope. I’ll get it.” He glanced at Joss after he said it, and she watched him. Something was off. Of course, her whole day had been off, so she wasn’t sure she should be surprised that he was acting off too.

She stood a moment later. “I’m going to go take a bath. I might just go to bed after that.”

Isaiah walked from the kitchen, meeting her near the hallway. “I’m going to help, Joss.”

Harper snorted, and even Nat looked up with a sarcastic smile, but it was Joss’s daughter who had the nerve to respond to that one. “She needs help bathing?”

Nat giggled, and Isaiah’s attention snapped to her. He was smiling quizzically at his daughter, likely just as shocked as Joss had been to see her finally in better spirits. He stared at Nat for a moment before finally shaking his head and responding. “She’s not feeling well, so yes. Are you two always going to act like weirdoes about this stuff?”

The girls shrugged in unison, and he took Joss’s hand, pulling her toward his bedroom.

She watched as the water filled the bathtub, and while she stared at the faucet, he stared at her.

“How are you feeling?” His deep warm voice infiltrated her brain as she got lost in the sight and sound of the water filling the tub.

She turned to him, sitting on the edge of the bathtub. “Like the toxic poison that was in my mouth a week ago migrated elsewhere and contaminated a different part of me.” It was an appropriate analogy. She’d never felt more disgusting in all her life. Odd, really, when she considered that being fucked by Todd had been a part of her existence until a few months ago. Had anything at all happened that hadn’t happened a gazillion times before? She wasn’t even sure she had the right to be upset.

She caught herself staring at the floor. When Isaiah suddenly kneeled in front of her, he slowly peeled the scrub shirt off over her head. Her nipples hardened as the cool air touched her skin. He pulled the drawstring at her waist, and she lifted her butt from the side of the tub as he pulled them past her hips and down her legs. He helped her into the bathtub, and she pulled her knees up to her chest as she rested her cheek against them and watched him. He was kneeling beside her, refusing to look away from her.

“Natalie seems better,” she commented.

His lips pulled up ever so slightly at that. She was trying to avoid talking about it, and he was onto her. “She does, largely, I think, thanks to your daughter. But I want to talk about you.”

She knew that was coming. Of course it was. He was attentive with her in that way. He wouldn’t avoid the hard conversations even if she wanted him to.

“What do you want to know?”

“For starters, how are you feeling—aside from the migration of toxic substances within your body?”

“Tired.” She didn’t bother looking up from the place her focus was glued to on his chest.

“Come on, there’s more to say than that.”

“No, there’s not.” She finally glanced up. He deserved more of an answer than that. “I feel stupid. I’m just the stupid girl all over again,” she muttered. “I’ve always been the fucking stupid girl.” She shook her head, letting her focus shift away from him again.

“I’ve never thought of you that way—not ever.”

“Then you’ve not quite figured me out yet.” She turned away from him, resting her other cheek on her knee and staring at the wall.

He didn’t ask her to say anything more. He’d likely figured out she wasn’t above self-chastising even now. Hell, this was just fuel to her fire really. But he didn’t leave either. He sat silently with his back to the bathtub, and he waited. She eventually leaned back, letting her head submerge, and when she came back up for air, he was looking at her. He grabbed some shampoo from the shower, and as she sat like a sullen child with her knees once again pulled up to her chest, he started scrubbing her hair, sudsing it into a soapy mess of white bubbles.

His fingers massaged, and she closed her eyes until his hands worked their way down to her shoulders and then her back. She sank back into the water again, disappearing beneath the surface of the water that was skimmed with soap. He pulled the drain, and as the water receded, he turned the faucet back on and helped her lean under it to rinse the last of the soap from her long hair. His hands ran over her stomach as she arched back under the faucet.

When he leaned down to her mouth, he spoke against her lips. “There’s nothing toxic about your body.” He kissed her gently, never letting his tongue push past her lips, and when he leaned back, he offered her a hand, pulling her up to sit.

When he helped her crawl from the bathtub, her skin was wrinkled and pruned, and she was quite sure there was still poison lurking inside her body—even if he didn’t think so. She couldn’t shake the disturbing and disgusting feeling of knowing something had happened but not being able to remember it. There was a gigantic hole in her brain that spanned the night before, and she couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad. She could go either way, really.

He left her alone in the bedroom to dress, and she put the scrub pants and one of Isaiah’s T-shirts on before she left the room. She found the girls playing a game of gin rummy with Isaiah in the living room. He was sitting on the floor in front of the couch with his legs crossed under the coffee table. She curled up on the couch behind him, and he leaned back, kissing her quickly. The girls instantly started giggling.

“Shut up, both of you,” he muttered as he studied his cards.

When her phone started vibrating across the coffee table where she’d abandoned it, Isaiah grabbed it, glanced at the number, and then handed it back to her.

“It’s Chief Jeffries. Can I drop by to give you your key back?”

“Of course. We’re here.”

“I’ll be pulling in in just a couple minutes. You want me to come inside or—”

“No, I’ll come out. Thanks.” She was very intentionally avoiding calling the man by his name, but she was guessing she didn’t need to explain that to him.

She stood, and Isaiah did too.

“Hey, why don’t you girls find a movie we can watch? Joss and I will be right back.”

The girls watched them curiously for a moment, but eventually they shrugged. The dining room window looked out over the driveway, and Isaiah wrapped his arms around Joss from behind her body as they stared out at the snow being whipped through the air. Chief Jeffries’s SUV pulled up beside Joss’s car moments later, and she walked toward the front door. Isaiah stopped her though, pulling her toward the mudroom off the entryway that led to the side door into the garage. He helped her into her coat quickly, ignoring his.

The garage doors were standing wide open, and she hugged her arms around herself as she stepped into the cold air. Jeffries was walking up to the garage toward them, and as she walked toward him as well, she caught sight of the boxes stacked in the usually empty second stall of the garage, and she glanced at Isaiah as her brow furrowed.

“Why did you—”

He stopped her as he ran his thumb down the palm of her hand. He glanced at her quickly but looked away nonchalantly.

“Here you go, Joss.” Jeffries handed her key to her. “We’re finished. No smoking gun, I’m afraid. How long has the bedding been on your bed?”

“I just changed the sheets a couple days ago.”

“Well, we took them as evidence, but even when we went over your bedroom with the black light, we didn’t find anything. But if he’s smart enough to take the wine bottle with him, then he’d be smart enough to take any incriminating evidence too. Collected some prints, but…” He shook his head. “Not going to do any good anyway if they’re his.”

“Yeah,” she commented.

Jeffries looked around for a moment as the headlights of his SUV illuminated the otherwise dark garage. “You know, Isaiah, it’s rude to make a woman park outside when you have a three stall garage.”

Isaiah chuckled. “Yeah. Just haven’t gotten through all the boxes yet. Doubt we’ll be getting out much this weekend though.”

Joss looked at him as he lied about the boxes to Jeffries, but he ignored her.

“Gonna get drifted in too if you don’t get that garage door closed.”

“Forgot all about it when we got home. Thanks, chief.”

“I’ll be in touch. Change the locks on your doors, Joss. He might own that property, but he can’t stop you from doing that, and he’s not allowed to enter without prior notice anyway. I don’t want you there alone though. If this is him, then he’s completely disregarded every law in place to protect your rights by entering the property without your permission.”

“I won’t be going there anytime soon.” She couldn’t even imagine the idea of walking into that house at the moment.

“Glad to hear it. You two take care and stay warm this weekend. They’re saying eight or nine inches at this point, but who knows. They’re damn good at underestimating.”

They nodded. “Bye, chief.” And Isaiah pulled her toward the door. They waited until the chief had pulled from the driveway before Isaiah closed the garage door.

She stood in the mudroom, and he pushed her coat off her shoulders as she watched him. He studied her eyes as he pulled her coat from her arms, and she didn’t look away. There was a hell of a lot going unsaid at the moment, and she could either delve or let it go. But Joss wasn’t good at letting things go.

“What’s going on?”

He remained expressionless as he watched her. He said nothing at all for many long seconds, and he didn’t blink an eye. When he finally took a deep breath, he opened his mouth. “You’re going to let me deal with Todd.” His eyes seared harshly into hers. “Don’t question me on it, and trust that I will tell you what you need to know.”

She took a shuttering breath as she watched him. “Isaiah—”

“Nod your head please.”

She watched him for a moment, but she eventually did nod, and he leaned to her mouth, kissing her.

When he pulled back, his thumb brushed across her lower lip. “You’re going to let me fight for you now.”

Her body coursed with a shivering wave of emotion as he studied her, and she nodded again.

He left her staring after him as he headed back to the living room, and when she caught up to him, he’d just collapsed onto the couch, commenting casually to the girls, “So, what’s the movie, ladies?”

When she approached the couch, he looked up at her. His eyes were that same unreadable searing expression as they’d been in the mudroom moments before, and when he offered her his hand, that expressionless stare didn’t falter. She glanced at his hand, placed hers in it, and then let him pull her down by his side.

She zoned out as they watched a movie, and eventually, she lay down with her head in his lap. She closed her eyes, and his fingers gently stroked through her hair. She listened to Harper comment wryly about the stupidity of whatever comedy they were watching, and Joss’s lips pulled up when Nat agreed. Nat was finding her voice again, and while Joss had no idea what Monday would bring for her or whether she would even choose to face the students at school, it was impossible not to smile when she heard a glimpse of Nat’s normal, perky self.