CHERISH (70 page)

My stomach rushes in with an insanely loud and obnoxious growl, cutting off whatever it was that Beckett was about to say. I push my face even harder into him as it starts to heat with my embarrassment.

We are both laughing against each other, and the way our bodies are connected at that moment feels closer than I’ve ever felt to anyone.

“Guess it’s time to tell you something about me.” Beckett’s voice is slow and serious.

“What?”

“I . . .” He takes a dramatic pause, and I wince, waiting for the ending of whatever this magic has been. I’m always waiting, it seems. “I don’t want to tell you, but . . .”

Spit it out, I know something bad is coming.

“
I can cook
. . .” He throws an arm over his face in feigned shame, “
and
I have food.
Right here
. In my kitchen. I’m so embarrassed.”

He roars with a fake sob, and in a flash, his massive arms come around me, flipping me up and over the hardness of his body to pin me under him face-to-face.

I let out a squeal like a schoolgirl as his lips engulf mine, and as quickly as he’s on top of me, he’s off, striding across the open space of the loft to the kitchen, whistling and naked, the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

Seeing him is one thing. Feeling this way is another. As much as I want to just lay here and be wrapped in the strange sense of peace that he brings me, the anxiety that my life is teetering on the edge of a precipice nags at me like a mosquito buzzing in my ear.

I push away the thoughts of Jeremy. Of Jordan.

God, Jordan, what are you doing right now? Are you okay?

All the joy is sucked out of me in that second, remembering my conversation with Jordan as we worked on our painting together in my bedroom yesterday.

“You’ve lost weight.” I’d looked at Jordan’s pale, drawn face as he’d tugged a shoulder towards his ear.

I lightly touched where there was a healing scratch over his left eye, and he’d tossed his head away from me.

“Yeah. The Martin’s don’t
believe
in breakfast. Like breakfast is something you have to
believe
in. They’re weird. I get a dollar for reduced school lunch, and dinner’s not much to look forward to either. I snuck a snack bag of Cheetos one day, but when she found the empty bag in my trash, they made me run the stairs up and down
twenty
times.”

After biting my lip trying not to burst into tears, I’d walked to my bedside table where I usually stow away my own illicit Snickers, Twix, and Kit-Kat bars. There had been only one Snickers left, but I gave it to him forcing a smile.

My heart was in my throat, and I couldn't breathe or swallow or imagine living another day without him.

“I’m sorry.” It had been all I could muster without breaking into a full on sob.

“Oh, it’s okay. I’m developing some mad cardio skills.” He’d chuckled, and I’d felt like I was going to throw up. “I can’t take this with me. If they find it . . .”

“Just eat it then. Before you go. I could send you home with some other food. Apples? Would they care if you had apples?”

He’d shaken his head. Not in the negative but in resignation, and the bitter bile of the moment had coated my tongue. I'd had to breathe in for ten seconds, trying to calm myself.

He’d dotted some white paint into the sky of our portrait, making tiny stars on the black background.

Lying here now, listening to the sound of Beckett’s joyful whistle and the clank of pots and pans echoing from his well-stocked kitchen, I know Jordan is there, hungry, and I can’t do anything about it.

Not from here.

I feel so heavy, weighted down, staring up at the tall metal beams of the ceiling. I still need money for the lawyer. I trust Jeremy is helping me, but I need a backup, and I’m running out of time.

Now without my evening job, there is no way I can come up with the five thousand dollars in time. I sit up on the edge of the bed because I have to do something. Any joy produced in the last hour with Beckett seems to be slipping out the tips of my toes and dripping into a puddle of helplessness around my feet as I press them onto the cool cement floor and figure out how to piece together a miracle for my brother.

I knew I should give up the job at Club Paradise even before today. It was a risk to my case, and it always nagged at me that Jeremy would support it. I’m relieved because it always felt wrong for me.

“You like sunny-side up, scrambled or what? I love breakfast during the day, don’t you?”

“Whatever you want is fine. I like them all.”

I have no appetite. Just the mention of breakfast has my eyes burning, thinking of how hungry Jordan must be by now. He feels so far away like the distance between us grows every day.

Around Beckett, I feel stronger. Encased in his own seemingly endless well of good humor and protectiveness.

I let out a sad chuckle, thinking of all the things Beckett doesn’t know about me. All the things that he doesn’t want to know.

“Here you go.” He’s suddenly right here, handing me a plate heaped with steaming eggs and warm, brown toast, and I feel my stomach turn.

“Thanks.” I muster a smile as he holds a fork full of eggs to my lips.

“Lunch for breakfast in bed. How’s that? I didn’t turn out so bad after all, huh? All those years the State of Ohio tried to ruin me. Ha! I will not be defeated by your evil forces, oh unholy CPS.”

He bellows with a comical, dramatic laugh before settling back naked on the bed and patting the spot next to him. I scoot up next to him trying to swallow.

Just as I try to muster up some excuse why I cannot eat this beautiful plate of food, my phone rings. The ringtone is specific to the one person I do not want to talk to right now but whom I also cannot avoid.

“Sorry.” I set the plate on the bed, scoot back off the bed and take the few steps to where my purse sits on the long table with the notebooks.

“Hello?”

“You are making some very bad decisions.”

Jeremy’s voice tightens every muscle in my body, and I can’t even swallow the spit that has formed in my mouth.

“I . . .” A single word made out of a single letter. I can’t seem to get anything else out.

I spin around to see Beckett staring intently at me. My eyes tell him more than I would like, so I quickly glance down at a notebook, playing with the page and trying to remember to breathe.

“I know you’re with him. I told you that was not a good idea, but I guess you think you know better? If you want any chance to get your brother back, you will be downstairs in five minutes. I’m sitting outside. Get down here and get in this car, and I won’t report it to Lydia. Any new relationship has to be reported; you know that. I thought you were smarter than this, Promise. I really did.”

The loathing in his voice sinks me deeper into something cold and wet, and I’m drowning between Jeremy’s words and Beckett’s eyes.

“Okay.”

“
Five minutes
. And, I have something to tell you about
Beckett
, too. Something you should know.” The way he says Beckett’s name makes me shiver as the phone goes dead.

My hand is shaking. I stare down at the pencil sketch of a girl about six years old. The words that line her silhouette read,
“She wasn’t his, so he wouldn’t let me feed her for days. Told me it wasn’t his job to put food in her mouth. I didn’t protect her. I didn’t stand up for her. No one did. I can’t imagine how hungry she must have been after a week. I will never forgive myself for not standing up to him. For not doing something, anything, everything I could to help her.”

“I need to go.” I refuse to look at Beckett. I set my phone down and begin to scamper around, trying to locate the pieces of my clothing scattered from where we started our kiss to where we ended with my body over his legs and then under him.

“Whoa, what the hell was that? You’re not leaving.” He’s on his feet like a rocket as I step into my panties and fight to get my arms into my dress before he reaches me. I can’t immediately locate my bra, so I hope like heck my jacket will hide that fact on the drive from here to wherever I will be going with Jeremy.

“Please, I have to go. I have to.”

His eyes flash something that I don’t want to see.

“Who was that?” I can hear in his tone that he’s already fairly sure of the answer.

I don’t respond. My coat is next, purse . . . my hair is a dead giveaway as to my activities over the last hour, but I don’t have time to worry about it. Beckett is on me, and I spin around, trying not to have to look at him . . . or smell him . . . or anything him.

“Please, if you care about me, just let me go right now. I have no choice.”

“
If
I care about you? You’re all I fucking care about.”

The pain in his words is more than I expected.

The sound of a car horn from below the loft window makes me wince.

“He’s fucking here? Jeremy, right?”

“Beckett, I have to go. I have to talk to him. You don’t understand; I’m sorry. I’m not trying to hurt you, but I have to do what he says.”

That little flash of something behind Beckett’s eyes turns into an inferno. I can see something building as his hands move to the back of my neck.

He looks even larger now, the scars on his face twisting. I can see him fighting to figure out what words will make this moment go away.

“You have to do what
he
says?” Beckett’s voice loses all life.

His hands turn to steel, and I feel something shut off inside me. I’ve felt it before, more than I care to remember.

“Right now, yes. I do. So take your hands off of me because I’m leaving.” The words that leave my mouth form without emotion. They are flat, icy, and I wrench my shoulders sideways to break his grasp. “This was a mistake.”

The last thing I see when I give Beckett a backward glance is his neck jerking to the side, and I hear his breaths fighting their way between his clenched teeth. The blue life in his eyes is gone as I shut the massive metal door and make my way down the stairs.

Was I really so stupid thinking someone like me could have someone like him? Like some stupid happily-ever-after romance novel?

Even as my hand clicks the door handle on Jeremy’s running car, I can’t help but swivel my head, hoping to catch a glimpse of that Monet blue coming behind me.

I hate the part of me that is disappointed that he isn’t following.

“Let’s go,” I mutter, clicking the seat belt in place and staring straight ahead.

Beckett

I’m taking a fucking moment because I know when I’m about to go dark.

She has no idea what I would do to keep her safe. That little incident yesterday with the sorry-ass forms of life that tried to drag her away was nothing.

One of the things you have to learn to do in my line of work is to compartmentalize. Build little boxes where you put away certain thoughts and memories. Otherwise, you would be a diaper-wearing heap-of-crazy in a hospital corner where people need a five digit code to get in and out.

Promise has no idea what kind of hell she is going to erupt in me. I let her go for one reason—sometimes those little boxes open when they shouldn’t . . . and the darkness seeps out.

That’s what was about to happen when I heard her tell me she has to do what
he
says.

That this was a fucking mistake.

Those words were like needles tipped with a hundred kinds of poison, stabbing straight into all the parts of me where she lives.

I know my own darkness. Sure, I put it away, but it has a mind of its own when it chooses.

That’s when people get hurt, sometimes, people I don’t want to hurt. But, they have a way of getting caught in the crossfire.

Fuck if this is over.
I jerk on a pair of jeans, commando style, and a t-shirt. I slam my fists into the hanging heavy bag in the weight area until my knuckles are sending jolts of pain to my shoulders. Then, I hit the door, spitting fire. Her ass is mine.

Promise

I am too angry at Jeremy to even speak for the first twenty minutes of the ride to my apartment.

And, his Corolla smells like mildew and stale burritos.