Page 10 of Brutal for It
I pull a chair to the bed, but it’s not enough. It’s never enough to sit near something you need to guard. So I slide off my boots, ease myself onto the mattress like I’m trespassing, and slide one arm under her. I lay on top of the blanket, pull another corner over us like a tent, and take her hand so she’ll know when she comes back to herself, someone is here.
“Tommy,” she whispers, so faint I almost mistake it for a dream.
“I got you, baby.” My voice comes out scratchy, softer than I knew I had. “You gotta rest.”
Her eyes crack just enough for a sliver of green. “Am I okay? No pain meds, did you tell them?”
God, the woman. Even bleeding, even carved on, she’s managing her sobriety like a general manages a battle plan. I squeeze her fingers and sit up enough to make sure she can see me. “You told them,” I say, and let pride into my voice because it belongs there. “You fought to tell them yourself. Kelly listened. Head Case listened. They took care of you.”
I take a breath. The words stack behind my teeth like they’ve been waiting there all day, maybe all year. I’m not a man who talks feelings—not the long, delicate kind. Mine usually come out in fists or miles. But a bullet rewires a man.
“Jami,” I whisper, low. “You got a second chance at life tonight. And I’m not missing mine. I can’t walk away. Can’t let you go. I gotta know—this second chance you got—can we give it a go? Me and you. No more running.”
She smiles then. Not a big thing, not a performance. It’s the kind of smile that makes a man believe in a version of himself that only she can see. “You are everything good Thomas Oleander,” she whispers, a little slur of exhaustion at the edges, and nods once like she’s signing a contract.
I lean down and press my lips to her forehead. It’s warm and smells like soap and a little like copper and a lot like home.
By the time I pull away, she’s asleep again, mouth parted, breath shallow but steady.
I settle in beside her, back against the headboard, our hands laced. The room ticks. Somewhere outside, a bike growls then dies. The night wraps around the duplex like a blanket stretched tight.
I let my mind roam because if I don’t, it’ll circle the same square foot of flooring like a caged thing. It drifts where it always drifts when I’m too tired to aim it—backward.
The first time I saw her after our kiss, I knew this was a problem waiting to happen. She stepped onto Mom’s porch with those clear eyes that looked like they’d been polished new, and I lost my breath. She smelled like clean shampoo and summer, not like the whiskey cloud she used to bring with her. She laughed soft and real. She kissed me under the string lights, a quick, clumsy thing, and then walked away like she hadn’t set me on fire.
I told myself to back off. Told myself she needed air and time without a man in her way. I’m not good at backing off. I am good at waiting like perching beside a road I know a person has to take.
When she went into the trailer tonight—went to face the devil in his own living room—and I watched her stand there and take her life back. I watched her say she wasn’t owned. I watched her bleed to prove it. I don’t know how to walk away from that kind of courage.
The truth is, I don’t want to.
Four
Jami
Two Weeks Later
The alarm goes off at five-thirty, but the truth is, I’m already awake.
I always am. Sleep is this ghost that dances around me but never close enough for me to feel it’s embrace.
I used to think mornings would get easier the further I got away from my old life—the hangovers, the crashes, the haze. But even now, three years clean, my body still wakes up like it’s waiting for something bad. Like there’s a ghost alarm that buzzes in my veins no matter what. The craving is always present simply lying in wait just under my skin.
It doesn’t matter. I roll with it. Recovery is a lifelong battle in my mind.
Besides, it’s not all bad. I wake up to the smell of coffee every day. That’s Tommy. He’s been up since five, maybe earlier. He’s one of those people who can go from dead asleep to working boots in sixty seconds. He claims it’s from growing up Oleander, basically in a house where being late meant less breakfast. Having three older brothers, it was every man for himself at the table. Really, I think it’s because he just can’t stand still. If he isn’t working, he’s fixing something. If he isn’t fixing something, he’s cooking.
That’s the man I share a bed with. The man who’s been my anchor and my pain in the ass since starting over in Haywood’s Landing.
I stretch, rub the sleep from my eyes, and shuffle into the kitchen. The sight in front of me is better than any high I’ve ever experienced.
He’s there, spatula in hand, strawberry blonde hair sticking up wildly like a rooster, barefoot on the tile, in some low slung shorts. He looks up and grins, and I swear he’s been smiling at me that same way since the day he carried me into this house after I finished healing in the duplex from my gunshot wound. Every morning he’s home, it begins with this look. The one that says I’m the best thing he has ever seen, even when I’ve got pillow creases on my face and breath that could knock a man flat on his ass.
“Morning, Tiny,” he says, leaning in to kiss my forehead. He smells like coffee and toothpaste.
“Morning,” I mumble, taking the mug he slides across the counter toward me.
The kitchen smells like bacon, and I see the pan of eggs with toast sitting in the toaster waiting to be plopped down. My stomach growls.
