One second the tenuous hold I have on my emotions is intact, the next it’s gone. And the damn breaks.
With a scream that echoes through my head like a coyote’s cry echoes through a canyon, it is torn from my lungs, from my chest, from my lips in one long, agonizing wail. The rain steals the sound and carries it to the ground, where it’s as dead as my father. And I’m once again all alone in the deafening silence.
Turning from the house, I take off at a run for the gate, for the orchard that took my father’s life. If I had a knife, I would cut the bark of every tree I pass until they bleed their life in thick, sticky rivulets. Penance for the life they stole.
I can’t see past the tears, past the rain. Past the pain. My foot finds a hole and my balance is lost. I see the ground coming toward my face with alarming speed. My knees hit first, the impact jarring my teeth. I close my eyes and throw out my arms to brace myself. But before I make contact with the ground, strong fingers are winding around my upper arms, stopping my descent.
One heartbeat brings confusion. The next, recognition. I don’t have to look back to know who’s got me. Who caught me. Who saved me.
Rusty turns me toward him. I stare up into his eyes. They’re deeply pained at the moment, as though they’re a reflection of my own.
“Jenna,” he whispers softly.
“What are you doing here?”
His eyes search mine. “I came for you.”
“But why?” I ask, unwilling to give in to the hope that has left me so devastated so many times before.
“In case you need me,” he responds simply.
Bitterness rises to the surface to mix with the pain. It blurs the lines of my feelings. “You shouldn’t have,” I spit. “I don’t need you.”
I see hurt flash through his eyes. “What if I need you?”
“But you don’t. You made that all too clear.”
“I was an idiot, Jenna. I was a proud, arrogant idiot. But I’m here now. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“No, it doesn’t. It can’t. It can’t,” I hiss, my voice getting louder and louder as my emotions churn. “I can’t wait for you anymore, Rusty. I can’t lose anyone else. My heart can’t take it. You had your chance and you blew it. Now let me go and get the hell off my land.”
I twist my body, trying to wrench free of his iron grip, all to no avail. Despite the fact that one arm is in a cast, Rusty is still stronger than me.
“I can’t,” he growls down into my face.
“What are you even doing here?” I scream, channeling my rage at the world, my rage at life into fury at Rusty. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the hospital, forgetting about me?”
“I was, but I left.”
“Then go back. I don’t want you here.”
“I can’t,” he says again.
“Why not?”
“Because I came here for you, Jenna.”
“Why? I didn’t ask you to come here. I never asked you for one thing. But now I am. I’m asking you to leave. Just leave. Leave me alone!”
“I can’t!” he repeats angrily, his face the twisted mask of a tortured soul.
“Why?” I rail back.
“Because I can’t let you go. I love you too much!”
My heart stops for just an instant, torn between elation and devastation. But I can’t afford to hang on to the elation. The devastation to follow might well be the end of me.
“You can’t tell me that today. You don’t get to do this to me today. I’ve lost everything. Everything. You can’t come back into my life and then leave me again, you bastard,” I cry, thumping my fists against his chest. “You don’t get to do this to me today. You don’t get to…do…this…” My words are choked out by the sobs I can no longer contain. Suddenly devoid of the ability to stay upright, I crumble into the mud, held vertical only by the grip of Rusty’s hands on my upper arms.
“Jenna, please,” he whispers, trying once more to pull me to his chest with his good arm. This time I let him, the will to fight having drained right out of me with the first few sobs. “Let me help you. Just give me this one day and I’ll go. Just this one. Please, Jenna.” In his pause, I feel a sigh expand his lungs. “Please.”
Finally, exhausted, I melt into Rusty. On our knees, in the rain, in the mud, I bury my face in his neck and I cry. From my soul, I cry. Every sob feels as though it’s torn from me, ripped viciously from a place that should never be touched so cruelly. And I’m left, alive but only physically, with nothing but gaping wounds and gushing blood that no one else can see.
When I’m so hoarse my sobs are nothing more than croaks and I’m so spent my tears give way to the rain, somehow, with only one fully-functional arm, Rusty gently cradles me against him, stands to his feet and carries me away from the orchard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - Rusty
I carry Jenna toward the front door of her house, thinking only of getting her out of the rain. I barely hear it when she speaks softly into my ear. “Anywhere but there. I can’t go back in there.”
“Okay,” I tell her, detouring toward my mother’s car. I manage to get her into the passenger seat and start the engine, but then I draw a blank. Where can I take her?
Only one place comes to mind. The one place she’d feel best, I think.
Cami’s.
I drive cautiously. It’s a little unnerving for my first time back behind the wheel of a car to be in the rain, in an unfamiliar car, with a grieving Jenna in the seat beside me. Oh, and with my right arm in a cast. Hell, I don’t think conditions could be much worse.
We finally make it to Cami’s. I park and walk around to the passenger side door. I open it and lean down to scoop up Jenna, not giving her any choice other than to let me carry her again. I feel like I need to carry her. Maybe more than she needs for me to.
Once she’s in my arms, I realize she wouldn’t have argued anyway. She’s asleep. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
I hurry to the door and ring the bell. Trick answers within a few seconds. “What the—” He frowns in confusion as he looks from me to Jenna, to her legs folded over my casted arm and then back again.
“Can I borrow your bedroom downstairs?” I ask quietly.
“Sure,” he says without hesitation, opening the door wider so we can pass.