Once he’d left, it hit her how quiet the place was, and the stillness was unnerving. She didn’t dare look back at the house and instead kept her eyes trained down the road, and though she couldn’t think of what to say, she put her arms around Cody’s waist and held him close, squeezed him as tight as she could, her face pressed against his chest. He hadn’t moved his arm from around her shoulders, so he pulled her against him and stroked up and down her back in slow, soothing motions, planting soft kisses against her head.
“Do you want to go to the hospital?” he asked, his voice sounding muffled from her head being buried in his chest.
She looked up then, before she could stop herself, and rather than the disgust or censure she’d thought she’d see, there was only question and concern. Not an ounce of the judgment that she was expert at rooting out.
“I should,” she said finally, though she could think of little she’d rather do less.
When she glanced back up at him, he smiled at her and then reached down to link his fingers with hers. He started walking, not quite pulling her behind him, but damn close. She was so lost in thought that the walk passed without notice and, still dazed, she went to the driver’s side.
“I’ll drop you—”
“No. Let’s go,” he said firmly.
She didn’t argue, and set off toward the hospital, this ride silent as well. She drove across town to the medical center, and as they got closer, the tension that had ebbed just the slightest came back full force. This wasn’t her fault, but the guilt racked her all the same and wimp that she was, she hoped that Cyrus had broken the news about Adult Protective Services to her mother, spared her from that at least. She parked, but before she opened the door, Cody touched her hand, and when she looked at him, he squeezed it and gave her a bright smile. It didn’t help, but she appreciated the sentiment nonetheless.
A quick walk across the parking lot, a stop at the receptionist’s desk, and they were off, headed to the third floor. Blakely spotted her mother the moment the doors opened but if the other woman saw her, and Blakely suspected she had, she didn’t give any indication.
“Mama?” she said, and after a beat, she looked up. “How’s Daddy?”
“They say he’s good. Like I said he was all along.”
Blakely moved closer, lifted a hand that she promptly dropped when she saw the expression on her mother’s face.
“Did Cyrus Thornehill tell you about Adult Protective Services?” she asked, scorn marring her tone.
The relief Blakely felt was strong, the guilt that followed it stronger.
“He did. He said you could go to Charity’s Wings for a while if you need to,” she said, her voice timid, tentative, and revealing every inch of shame she felt.
“That he did,” her mother replied, her face quirked in the way it would be if she swallowed something distasteful but her eyes shimmering with disbelief, like she couldn’t quite grasp what had happened today or what it meant for tomorrow and the days after.
Blake understood the feeling. This needed to happen, had needed to happen for many years, but it was still a shock. And with the shock came the guilt and shame, feelings that she should have been used to by now but that still had the ability to choke the breath out of her. She stood awkwardly, the feel of Cody next to her the only thing keeping her on her feet. Then he put a big hand on her neck. She wanted to melt into his touch, let it soothe everything away, but the realization of what he’d seen, what he must think, kept her still. Maybe he could look past the house, wouldn’t be like all the others who thought that her parents’ problems reflected on her. But he’d never be able to look past the fact that she’d just abandoned them, that she’d let them go to a shelter before she took them in.
She stepped away, breaking the contact between them. The weight of his questioning stare felt heavy on her skin, but she didn’t dare look at him.
“Why don’t you sit and talk? I’ll go grab some water,” he finally said.
Don’t leave me!
she wanted to scream, but she wouldn’t ask that of him, didn’t have a right to, so she bit her tongue and nodded, stopping herself from whimpering when she heard his retreat.
She blew out a deep sigh and then sat next to her mother.
“We can work on this, Mama. I’ll help,” she said.
“I think you’ve done enough.” The disbelief had fled her eyes and now her face was flat, closed off.
It wasn’t fair, she knew that, but the words and that distant expression hit their mark. Cody returned a few minutes later, tossing her a questioning glance. But she didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.
••••
It was full dark by the time Cody pulled into Blakely’s driveway and he was exhausted. Those last hours at the hospital had been tense, nearly silent, but the ride to her house had been funereal, Blakely getting more and more distant with each passing second. She hadn’t even protested when he’d taken the keys from her hands, something that was only one of many clues as to her state of mind. That she seemed to be pretending that he wasn’t even there, was shutting him out, was another. But he wouldn’t let her, not if he could help it.
He would have pushed sooner had he not been somewhat preoccupied by his own thoughts. This morning had started out so promisingly, and not even Blake’s cryptic warnings had prepared him. But beyond the absolute disaster that was the Bishop homestead, and disaster was an understatement, the heavy emotions of the day had gotten to him. The Bishops weren’t bad people. They were sick, but seemed fundamentally decent, and some part of his heart went out to Mr. Bishop especially. Cody could only imagine the humiliation the man must have felt today. But he was angry for Blake, for what she’d had to endure, and he didn’t think there was any way he could accept their unwillingness to acknowledge the toll all this took on her.
And he was man enough to admit that he was afraid. They’d promised each other casual fun, but he’d come to care for Blakely deeply. He knew that her upbringing had left scars, but what if they were deeper than he’d seen? What if they made something more than casual fun impossible?
When he parked in her driveway, pulled the keys from the ignition, and handed them to her, she turned to him.
“Thank you. I’ll call you later,” she said mechanically.
“You shouldn’t be alone,” he responded, reaching out to grasp her chin.
She didn’t pull away, but he could tell she wanted to. “That won’t be necessary,” she said stiffly. “I’ll be fine.”
Clutching the keys tight as if they were a talisman, she got out of the car and headed into her house without saying another word. He followed, keeping close to her, and just managed to slip in before she slammed the door. She started and turned to him, lobbing a look of pure scorn at him.
“Leave,” she said, her voice flat but her eyes sparking with anger that animated her entire body. He stood tall in front of the door, and she clenched her teeth, giving him her most withering gaze. “Now,” she said, voice low in her throat.
“No,” he said.
“Please…” she said, pleading with her eyes and her voice.
“Blakely, what’s…?”
He trailed off as he looked up and processed what he was seeing. At some point during the day, his mind had started spinning with connections that hadn’t occurred to him before. She never let him into her house, and he’d prepared himself for the worst. After today, he understood all of her offhanded comments about the town and being a Bishop, and in a lot of ways, her secretiveness made sense. Hell, he still stacked his canned goods alphabetically because that was the way his sisters did it, so it was perfectly reasonable, even expected, that Blake might have picked up some of her parents’ habits, no matter how hard she tried to fight them.
When they’d been waiting at the hospital, he’d let his mind wander, had pictured how he’d enter her house and find her living room eerily reminiscent of her parents’. In his mind, the space wouldn’t yet have descended into utter madness, wouldn’t be filthy and packed to the roof, not yet anyway, but it wouldn’t be normal, not by a long shot. Maybe she’d have some junk mail or, given how varied and particular she was about her clothing, she’d have a problem with that, leave the laundry strewn about or whatever. But Blake was a fighter, so through the disorganization, he’d be able to see the struggle, see how she tried to keep the chaos at bay even if she wasn’t always entirely successful.
But there was none of what he’d imagined.
The hardwood floors gleamed in the moonlight. The rugs that lay atop them still had faint indentations where they had been crisscrossed with a vacuum. Next to the door stood a wooden desk, and when he examined it more closely, he noted assorted mail that lay on top, neatly organized. There wasn’t a scrap of paper on the desk, and even office supplies were arranged with precision, paper clips stacked in three rows of equal height, stapler angled in a way that couldn’t possibly be random.
And so it continued throughout the room, everything in place, not a dust bunny in sight. The flat-screen TV was so shiny that he could clearly see his reflection when he moved to stand in front of it, and when he looked back at the front door, he saw that the crystal doorknob and brass door kick plate shone equally bright. The tall bookcase was pristinely clean and organized, the books arranged by height, color, and thickness. Just looking at it exhausted him.
This room was an emotional battlefield, Blake’s fear of what she might become and her resolve to never let that happen living together side by side in perpetual struggle, neither strong enough to vanquish the other. This was Blakely, the clearest snapshot of her he could have gotten. And it suddenly made sense why she seemed to run hot and then cold, why she’d never let him in literally and metaphorically. How could she when so much of her went into staving off what, if the vigilance with which she kept her house was anything to go by, she thought was her inevitable fate?
When she looked at him again, the terror in her eyes took his breath away. He heard a faint whimper, but then she went silent, the effort she expended to clamp down her emotions visible. Then she stomped down the hall toward what he presumed was her bedroom and turned inside the last door at the end of the hall. He stared after her and listened to the opening and closing of drawers and then a moment later, the rush of water from the shower.
The weight of the day pressed down on him, but Cody tried to get himself to relax, took deep, calming breaths and tried to focus. She needed help, and she needed
him.
The state of her parents’ home, what she’d undoubtedly had to endure, the state of things now proved that. But she’d never admit it; the pride that always glinted in her eyes wouldn’t allow her to. Good thing he didn’t plan to ask for permission. He walked down the hall and sat next to her bedroom door, legs extended in front of him, his posture relaxed. He wasn’t content and he was tired as all hell but he was not willing to leave her like this.
He tugged off his boots and then stood and lined them up next to the door, momentarily distracted by how out of place they looked and wondered how Blakely would react to having them disrupt the immaculate cleanliness and order of her hallway. He shrugged. She’d just have to deal with it. Then he tugged off his T-shirt, pants, and then underwear, all neatly folded and stacked on top of his boots. Long minutes had passed, but the sound of water continued. On an exhalation, he grabbed her doorknob, this one also polished to a shine, and turned it, breath bated at what might confront him on the other side, but his resolve didn’t dampen.
The room was also pristine, the bed neatly made with mitered corners so perfect they would have made an Army man cry. He glanced to the left. The closet took the cake. From what he could see from his quick glance, the clothing was separated into pants and skirts and then tops, separated by color and then length, all the hangers equally spaced, shoes packed in clear plastic boxes and stacked in groups of three.
He set his lips in a grim line as he stared at the closet. An image of Blake standing in front of it, spending what had to be a not insignificant amount of time making sure everything was just right and then moving on to do the same in what he guessed was every other room of the two-thousand-square-foot house, floated through his mind, and his chest constricted with pain for her and a fresh stab of anger at her parents. What she did wasn’t probably too different from the regs that governed him in Navy life, but he’d chosen them, accepted them willingly. She was driven by fear. That awareness pissed him off so deeply that it almost took his breath away.
“Blakely!” he barked, his tone sharpened by the emotions that roiled through him.
He took two long strides forward and when she didn’t respond, and the water didn’t stop, he continued his pursuit into the bathroom. The steam from the shower filled the small room and the air smelled of her, clean, almost astringent, but with an underlying sexiness that still spoke to him even after all that had happened today. He pulled back the curtain, momentarily distracted by the sight of water gliding over the soft curves of her body before he turned his attention back to the task at hand. She gave no indication that she noticed him, the goose bumps that sprang up on her skin as the colder air rushed in the one break in her distant facade, one that wasn’t even something she could control.
Nor did she do anything when he stepped into the shower or when he crowded behind her, filling the space in the stall that was most definitely not built for two, even when one of the occupants was the small Blakely. He took the sponge she held from her hands and used it to clean her, hoping that his touch showed her that he would be here, no matter what. When he finished with her, he quickly washed himself, happy to rid himself of the grime of the day.