Page 51 of Hidden Desires

His head ached from the continual buzz, but his mind was clear. He still saw the horrid pictures of his mother lying on the floor, blood pouring from her body. The image had haunted him for years, still haunted him, as he sat in the cemetery talking to the one person who could possibly help make it all go away.

“Jackson, will you stay where you’re at so I can come to you?”

“Yeah,” he rasped. “Hurry.”

He clicked the phone off and dropped his head to his hands. Autumn would know what to do. She had a good heart and a strong mind. She would know what he needed to do to get over this. She would be his only hope of getting over his sins of the past.

* * * *

Autumn spotted him immediately and knew he was drunk. Davis promised her Jackson would be fine but two days without him was torture. He knelt over someone’s grave—his mother’s, she assumed—with his head in his hands shuddering.

She walked toward him slowly. Her heart ached as each step brought her closer to him. She wanted to comfort him, to take away the pain and kiss away his tears. She wrapped her arms around him and he held to her tightly. He smelled like beer as he cried on her shoulder, shaking with sobs while she held him.

“It all my fault.” He pressed his face against her neck, the stubble on his chin scraping against her skin. “She’s dead because of me.”

Autumn glanced at the tombstone. In bold letters, it stated: Beverly Ann Cooper. Beneath it, it showed the date of her death, twenty-five years ago. She stroked his back, holding him as tight as he held her. He clutched her shirt in his hands with his lips against her neck.

“I’m sorry.” He spoke, though she knew he wasn’t speaking to her. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Autumn kissed him. “Jackson, why don’t we get a motel for the night?” Home was only a few miles away, but he needed to be alone with her. “Let’s get a room at Fort Dix Motel.”

He nodded against her shoulder.

She helped him up and walked him to her car. After settling him in the passenger seat, she got behind the wheel and drove to the motel just a few blocks away. When they arrived she rented a room and then unlocked the door and helped him stumble inside. She stripped off his clothes and forced him into the bathroom where she turned on the shower and pushed him inside.

She stood there, holding him up with the cold water spraying down on him. Whatever pain he harbored inside, getting drunk was hardly the way to deal with it. She grabbed the bar of soap and lathered her hands and began to wash the stench of beer and sweat from his skin.

“I want to be inside you, Autumn. You’re the only thing that can make the pain go away. I want to fuck you now.”

Autumn rubbed her hands along his stomach. “Jackson, neither one of us is ready for that. You’re drunk.”

“I’m not drunk.” He shook his head. “If I were drunk I wouldn’t feel the pain anymore.”

She stopped her movements and glanced up at him. He broke her heart standing there. She looked into his glossy eyes and saw the pain he talked about. A pain that to him was not on the surface, but soul deep.

“Tell me what happened, Jackson. Tell me everything.”

He pulled her against his wet body and kissed her. She closed her eyes and squeezed him in a hug, afraid to let him go. The only thing that mattered was him. She wanted him close to her just as much as he needed her near him.

After the water turned icy against their skin, she pulled away long enough to flick the water off and grabbed a towel to wrap around his waist. She pulled one for herself and quickly shed her wet clothes and wrapped the soft terry cloth around her. Jackson stood in a stupor, hurting so badly she could see it in his eyes. She reached for his hand and led him to the bed where he fell face first against the mattress. She climbed in beside him and waited for him to start the conversation.

“I was just nine,” he began with a whisper. “My mom was pregnant with a little girl, something she thanked God for every day. My dad, however, was an abusive man and liked to take a lot of his troubles out on others.” He grabbed a pillow and propped it up under his chin. “He hardly hit me, but I’d done something that day and he took off his belt and came after me, over and over. My mom entered the room, in the middle of it and snapped. She pushed me away from him and put herself between us. She told my father he could do anything he wanted to her, but he wouldn’t touch her child. She stood up for me.”

Tears filled his eyes when they met hers and Autumn reached out to touch his hand. He stopped talking and she wanted to push him to tell her more. She brushed his wet hair back and waited patiently.

“They started fighting, and my dad pinned her to the floor. He called her every name in the book as he punched her. She begged him to stop, but he kept on until she started bleeding.”

Jackson went quiet. The silence was almost deafening to her ears as she waited for him to resume talking again. She couldn’t imagine what he went through witnessing that. She couldn’t imagine what he lived with feeling the way he felt. In a silent signal telling him it was okay to continue, Autumn scooted closer to him. She rubbed his neck and kissed his forehead before pressing his head against her shoulder.

“I’m right here, Jackson.” No matter how hard she tried, Autumn would never get Jackson close enough.

“I know. I wanted to stop it. There was so much blood coming from her, and she wasn’t moving. I tried stopping him. I screamed. I cried. I jumped on his back. Nothing stopped him, though. He slammed me into the wall and kept hitting her until she stopped fighting.”

Autumn closed her eyes, forbidding the tears gathering in her eyes to fall. “What happened afterward?”

“My dad looked over at me and said my mom paid for my sins and that he was stuck with a sorry bastard son like me.”

“Oh, Jackson.” The tears fell. She wrapped her arms around him.

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