Page 106 of Avenged

All week, Jada had been driving me to and from work. She’d offered for me to use one of the many cars in her parents’ multi-car garage, but it hadn’t felt right to borrow them without them being here to approve of it. When I refused, she said she didn’t mind driving me either, but I knew it was getting old. I just didn’t know how to get a car to replace the one we’d lost. It wasn’t like I had four thousand dollars just laying around. Maybe I needed to buy a lottery ticket.

On Friday, Violet showed up at around three to take over the closing shift so I could head over to Mandy and Leena’s to meet with Randy. Violet was mostly back to her normal self, and while the wrist cast was driving her crazy, it wasn’t stopping her from anything. She was sporting two black eyes from the broken nose, but today, Jada had helped her pretty much cover it up with more makeup than Violet had ever worn. Jada came in with Violet to the store, and it made me feel bad all over again that she’d somehow become our personal chauffeur.

Jada wanted to drive me out to Mandy’s place, but I insisted on taking the bus. I could get that far without her. If I had to, I could walk it, but it would take me longer than I thought I had. I got off the bus two blocks from Leena’s and hiked up the small hill to the house.

When I arrived, it looked quiet, with only a gray SUV parked in the driveway instead of the fleet of construction trucks and vehicles that had been in and out of the house over the last month. I was ready to return to the house. It felt like everything had gone haywire since we’d left. No…since Mandy and Leena had left. Maybe when they came back, life would return to some kind of normalcy where there weren’t sexy men and fake marriages and car crashes. Where there would be just us four women living in a house and taking care of each other.

I turned the knob on the front door and found, to my surprise, that it was locked. I had to use my key to let myself in. It was so quiet inside I could hear the clicking of the grandfather clock in the entryway as the seconds went around.

“Randy?” I called out.

There was no answer.

The kitchen looked back to normal. No hole in the floor. Everything was clean and sparkling, as if a cleaning crew had been brought in after the work was done. The house looked like it always did with Leena’s progressive art on the wall and Mandy’s piles of books on almost every surface.

I’d missed Randy somehow. Mandy would be disappointed, and I rubbed my forehead in frustration. Then, I heard a noise down the hall in the library and followed it, thinking it was him.

“Hey, Randy,” I said as I opened the door and then stopped, stunned into silence. The room was full of flowers. Thousands of flowers of all different kinds and colors. There was no sign of Randy or anyone. I didn’t know if Randy had done this as some kind of welcome-home-thank-you-for-not-suing-me kind of thing or what. The fragrance of the flowers filled the air, and it was so strong it almost made me dizzy. I moved to the window with its stained-glass arch, pushing the antique handle and opening it.

When I turned back around, I gasped because the empty space had materialized into Truck.

I hadn’t seen him in almost a week. It was the longest we’d gone without seeing each other since he’d first moved out of the house. And somehow, impossibly, he seemed even more handsome than before. My drawings, which had been the only way I’d seen him, hadn’t come close to doing him justice. Today, he seemed to be encapsulated in a glow. Maybe it was the flowers, or maybe it was the way the sun was hitting the stained glass, but he looked like the Flash or the Human Torch. Beautiful. Strong. Alive.

I absorbed every piece of him I could. The way the tiny strands of hair on his head—that still needed a cut—were standing straight up. The way his amber eyes, which were often squinted together with a smile, were serious, almost somber, today instead of smiling. The way his muscled frame, dressed in jeans and a button-down like he’d worn the night of the dinner cruise, showed off the contours I’d been able to kiss with abandon for one glorious day.

My heart stopped and then started at a furious beat. My reaction to him seemed to have only increased since we’d made love. What once would have been a tickle of awareness when he was in the room, had become an all-out ache. A craving begging to be fulfilled. As if, now that my body knew what it felt like to have his hands and his lips on my skin, it required the touch that much more.

“What are you doing here?” I finally breathed out, fiddling with my ring and looking away from him. It hurt too much. It hurt to have him there but not be able to have him, but he’d never really been mine. I’d just borrowed him for a short time.

When he didn’t answer right away, I let my eyes journey back to him, and he gave me a slow grin that caused my body to melt steadily further into the pool of desire which was filling me.

“I had some paperwork to take care of,” he said, sticking his hands into his front pockets and drawing my eyes to what lie between them. I flicked my eyes away as quick as they’d gone there, but he’d seen it anyway, and it made his lips quirk ever so slightly. I flushed and crossed my hands over my chest to hide my reaction to him.

“I’m supposed to be meeting Randy. He had papers for me to sign. Have you seen him?” I asked.

“I believe you’ll find the documents Mandy was talking about on the desk,” he said, eyes flitting to the paper which rested there amongst the flowers. Something was off. Something I couldn’t put my finger on because I was focusing too hard on controlling my body.

I moved from the window to the desk, and he followed me with his eyes like he had since the moment I met him. In that way that made me feel seen and no longer invisible. I wanted to ask what the deal was with the flowers, but my heart was already beating out an answer I knew couldn’t be true. That I didn’t dare put words to.

I picked up the paper and immediately put it back down.

It was our contract. Our marriage contract. But when I looked again, I could see it was different. It had been altered. There were red pen marks all over it.

I scanned it, heart beating furiously and trying not to let the blossom of hope fill my belly.

“What is this?” I asked so quietly I could barely hear myself.

He came closer, slowly, as if he was afraid of startling a deer, until he stood directly across the desk from me. “I’d like to revise the terms of our marriage agreement.”

“You can’t just change things without my consent.”

He nodded. “I know, but I was sort of hoping you’d like the way I changed them.”

My eyes filled with tears because I knew what he was asking. He was asking for us to be a real couple. A real partnership. A real marriage. He wanted to keep me, and that thought banged its way across my heart and soul. I wanted so badly to say yes. I wanted to run into his arms, kiss him, and never stop. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t as simple as the words on the page made it sound. If I agreed to the terms, it would mean that when I had to make the hard choices, there was a chance Violet wouldn’t be first. What if we had kids? I wouldn’t be able to put Violet ahead of them; it was what my dad had done, put others first, and I wouldn’t be like that.

Or worse, what if I couldn’t have kids after all my body was going through? What if I couldn’t, and he wanted them? There were so many things we hadn’t ever discussed. So many things needed to be said before anyone said yes to the rest of their lives.

He read the hesitation in my face, and I saw the flicker of hurt and something akin to fear that crossed his before determination settled there. He came around the desk, and I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I was still frozen.

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