Reckless Radiance (2 page)

He turned on the faucet and let the water grow warm as it ran over his hands. He splashed a bit over his face and ran his damp fingers down his jaw. A moan came from the back of his throat feeling the lukewarm water on his lips and cheeks for a moment. It had been some time since he allowed himself to stop and enjoy a moment as mundane as rinsing his weary face. The red, childproof cap of the medicine bottle flipped off with an audible snap and he popped two pills in his mouth before taking a swig of water from his open hand.

Swallowing the pills and palm full of water, he caught his own eyes in the mirror again. He couldn’t help but think of her. She was a shadow of the young woman he’d seen nearly a year prior. A few pounds lighter, face thinned out—almost gaunt.

Out in the main living space of the hotel room he took a seat on the edge of the bed. He imagined how she’d gotten that way and his chest stung as it had so many times before. Maybe she wasn’t sleeping. Maybe she’d lost her appetite or taken up some bad habit that left her weak and sickly. He’d been on the road for months looking for her. If only he’d thought of Somerset as his first stop. He might have found her before whatever fool had given her the bruises on her arms. There was much he could blame himself for and now yet another instance of her pain was added to the list.

A sinking feeling was churning in his abdomen and he shook his head trying to will it away. His body refused to listen to the commands of his superior mind. He was out of control of his physical form. That was made perfectly clear to him in the diner at the sight of the passing gleam of light caused by her touch.

Touching her had been foolish and he knew it but it was a risk he couldn’t avoid. Simply having her eyes on him made him feel as though he could burst into flames. It was exactly like the first time. The first time he really looked at her. Only this time she was looking at him, not through him. He tried to push her from his mind for the night. He’d have to get a handle on his emotions if he wanted to see her again. And there was no question of whether or not he would go back to Penny’s Pie Diner.

He had to speak to her again. He had to be near her. He had to look after her.

Chapter Three

That night Valerie lie awake staring at the brown, water-stained ceiling from the twin-sized bed that came furnished with her tiny apartment. She couldn’t get Russell out of her head. It could’ve been the way he spoke to her. It might’ve been the look in his eyes—almost like he knew her but more like he wanted to.  

Her breath huffed out and she flopped over onto her side. One mildly thrilling moment with a stranger and it felt like it was all boiling back to the surface. Valerie felt the story of her life trying to push free from the depths of her mind. How had she gotten here? Why was the mystery man the one to cause her to ask such a question? How had she been able to keep the memories away for this long? It had been months since she let her mind go any further than her parents’ text messages but she felt herself slipping into the memories of what brought her to Somerset.

Her senior year of high school, though it seemed like a lifetime ago, had only been three years back. Back then, Valerie had an envious life. Good grades and good looks, a pair of amazing parents who raised her and her younger brother to be sweet as sugar. And of course, she had Gabriel.

As far as boyfriends went, Gabriel was beyond wonderful and the perfect first. It was third grade when they first took notice of each other. He was being bullied on the school yard on some foggy afternoon and Valerie could still clearly remember marching up to those bigger boys and shoving one in the dirt. Gabriel told them if they tried messing with him again, they could deal with her. From the minute she saved him they were inseparable. The words
best friends
didn’t come close to describing what they were to each other.

If Valerie was hurt, Gabriel felt it. If Gabriel was sad, Valerie cried. They were soul mates. Made for each other. By freshman year she was absently scribbling
Mrs. Gabriel Jarrett
all over her notebooks in curly letters with pink pen. Then a perfectly fluid transition happened. Without drama or even discussion, her best friend became her boyfriend and neither ever looked back.

They were the quintessential couple of John F. Kennedy High School in the tiny town of Greensburg, just an hour and half outside Somerset. They went to every football game and every dance. Valerie’s parents loved Gabe and his mother loved her. George, Valerie’s father, even hired Gabe to work on the family farm during the summers, teaching him everything he knew. She could tell her dad hoped Gabe would come to work for him after high school or college. It seemed like the entire town knew Gabriel and Valerie were destined to be together and they were just waiting for the fairy tale wedding at the same chapel Valerie’s parents were married in. A happy ending to their childhood and a glorious beginning to the rest of their lives.

Horse shit,
Valerie thought. Their childhood met its end all right, but it wasn’t a fairy tale and the rest of their lives suddenly became a ticking clock rather than a sweet notion of what could be.

Unlike the majority of their classmates, Gabriel and Valerie had made a clear point to abstain from sex. It was shocking to their friends since they were the couple that had dated the longest. Sure they kissed—even messed around. But the ultimate act had been wordlessly placed in an off-limits territory by both of them.

Until one day when Valerie couldn’t get her mind off of
it.
A few days before graduation the thought refused to leave her mind and she instinctively knew she was ready. She hadn’t been waiting for her wedding night or prom night or any other kind of milestone date to finally do
it
. She just wanted to be ready, wanted to be sure, and on one random day, she suddenly was.

Gabriel was stretched out across her bed reading one of his comic books and she was curled up at his side listening to his heartbeat. Valerie’s thoughts were racing.
Today’s the day,
she thought. She wasn’t nervous at first, especially cuddled up against him feeling the rise and fall of his breath. It felt as if nuclear war were to break out in that moment, she would be safe just tucked under his arm.

There were so many things about Gabe that were beautiful to her. He had a rugged farm boy body—not too bulky but certainly well built. He had a gentle face with crystal blue eyes that never seemed to wear a grimace. And she would never forget how smooth his hands were. How he managed to do that, she’d never know. He worked so hard and so often on her family's farm she found it to be some sort of magic that each time he touched her, she never felt a callus or a hint of roughness.

Out of nowhere, as if he knew she was counting the ways she loved him in her mind, he kissed the top of her head stopping a moment to smell her hair. Valerie craned her head to glance up at him with a serious look on her face. It was time for the conversation she’d been practicing over and over in her head. Trying not to blush, she thought of her intro.

"Gabe, I want ..." She already felt stupid. He looked at her suspiciously trying to figure her out. "It's just that I--”

Why was she being such a coward? The only way to explain to him what she was thinking of was to just get to it. She reached up looking intently into his eyes and began unbuttoning his shirt. Gabriel’s brow lifted but he didn't stop her. He watched closely as she pulled her white t-shirt over her head letting her hair trickle over her shoulders like strands of silk. He breathed in a slow, ragged breath as she pulled him down on top of her. The bare flesh of their abdomens pressed together bringing forth a sigh from her lips. His hands clasped the sides of her face as he bent in to kiss her.

His eyebrows pulled together in concern. "Are you sure?" he whispered.

A tender smile painted her mouth. "Yes.”

He touched her with hesitancy as though she would break. He’d always treated her like a flower. As he kissed every inch of her just as delicately as he always had, it was all Valerie could do not to plead him to finally take her.

A shiver rolled through her when it happened. She was expecting the pain but was surprised by the small amount of pleasure she felt course through her after only a few of Gabriel’s motions. Shifting under him to ease the discomfort, she gave him a weak smile to relieve the worry in his eyes. Their bodies moved as one and the sting was nearly gone. Another sensation started building in her. Her breath came out in irregular gasps. He stared at her with apprehension but she urged him to continue. She begged him not to stop, kissing him desperately. Goose bumps rose along her flesh and she thought nothing could ever feel as amazing as that moment.

He stopped suddenly. Valerie brushed the damp hair from her eyes and moved to look at his face. Gabriel’s sky blue eyes rolled back in his head and his lashes fluttered. His hand jerked away from her body forcefully and he clutched the side of his head as he winced. She was paralyzed with fear. Gabriel’s body shook like electric volts were running through him. His head wrenched back and forth, possessed by some unknown force that owned him. Then he was still. His body went slack and he slumped off the bed to the hardwood floor below. His eyes closed and his hands clenched into fists.

She leapt off the bed and to his side in a moment she seemed to miss all together. "Gabe!" she screamed an inch from his face. "Gabriel, baby? Listen to me! Wake up.” Her voice cracked. He didn't budge.

Valerie could barely remember the minutes that followed. Flashes of memory from that day still haunted her. A frantic call. A ride in a screaming ambulance. Waiting in the starkly lit hospital for what felt like hours. The nurses kept saying they couldn’t tell her anything because she wasn’t family. That stung—she remembered that.

She played it all over in her head while she waited to see him. His eyes slamming shut in pain. The horror her face must have shown. She went through a million different scenarios for different outcomes. What if she hadn't seduced him? What if she hadn't pushed him to please her? What if she’d just acted like a good girl and waited for him to marry her before turning into such a Jezebel?

When Gabriel’s mother, Alicia, arrived she gave Valerie a wide-eyed look before she was ushered into his room. Though Valerie’s eyes were glued to the black and white clock on the wall she never managed to notice it ticking. Time was stopped for her. When Alicia told her Gabe was asking to see her, she gulped. The florescent lights had her on edge. She walked into his room and saw him lying in the hospital bed and it almost sent her into hysterics.

"Hello, gorgeous," he said in a hoarse voice.

She made her way over to him nearly collapsing on the bed as she reached out to hug him tight. He pulled her into the bed with him, rocking her as she let her tears begin to fall. Gabriel spoke in her ear like a lullaby, calming her. He told her again and again that he loved her. She simply nodded, unable to say it back through her sobs.

“I'm so sorry you had to see that," he said.

She sniffed and shook her head. She didn't understand. He said it like he knew it was going to happen.

"What do you mean? What happened? What did the doctors say?" She stared at him blankly waiting for his response. He looked down from her eyes to her hands. Lacing his fingers with hers, he sighed.

"I was gonna tell you in a few days."

Valerie’s stomach pitched as he continued. "About a month ago I was getting these awful headaches. It's a tumor. I start treatment in a few weeks. I wanted to wait until we graduated. I'm so sorry, Valerie. I shouldn't have kept you in the dark like that. I just wanted to protect you from this. I love you.”

So that was it. The day she lost her virginity to the boy she loved wasn’t supposed to have any other kind of memory attached to it but it did. It was the day she realized she might lose him. And that was only the beginning. So much more had happened since that horrible day …

Valerie sucked in a sharp breath and rolled over, stirred by the sound of her cell phone receiving a text message.

You awake?

It was Henry. The obligatory after-dark text always meant the same thing. It seemed fitting that after she drifted away into a long lost memory of Gabriel that Henry made his presence known soon after. For months her pattern had been painfully consistent. She would let Henry in to keep Gabriel out.

With her thumb on the screen she was about to respond when the face of a third man came to her mind.
Russell.
What if all she needed to move on was a little bit of happiness instead of a whole lot of despair?

She sat the phone back down on the floor beside the bed, ignoring one of Henry’s texts for the first time since she’d met him.

Chapter Four

She awoke with a start and got ready as quickly as she could before bolting to work, high on adrenaline. The bell above the door rang as she shoved through it. The sound of the bell sent her mind back to the day before and she pictured Russell’s face as he took the pen from behind her ear. Shaking the thought, she rushed into the back, tied on her apron and pinned on her name tag.

“Penny, I’m so sorry. I overslept. You know I never do that. I’ll stay an extra hour to make up for it,” Valerie said in a panic.

Penny’s hands waved her off. “It’s a slow morning. There’s only one person sitting in your section and he said he didn’t mind waiting for you.”

She shot Penny a look and saw her smirk looking out into the diner. Valerie followed her gaze and her breath caught. The only person sitting in her section was Russell, looking just as handsome as the day before. He caught her eye and smiled. She stifled a grin and rolled her eyes.

“Good morning, Valerie,” he said as she approached.

She flipped open her notepad and tried not to let him see her blush. “Morning, sir. What can I do for ya?”

“You can call me Russell,” he said. She felt her mouth turning up at the corners, betraying her brain, which willed her to keep some composure. She breathed a little laugh and averted her eyes, focusing on the blank page.