“That’s because I was baking all morning. They’re Nutella cheesecake.”
He looked at her blankly.
“Your favorite.” She had yet to focus on his face.
Jack couldn’t remember what his favorite was, but if she said it was, he’d believe her. He hadn’t been able to taste anything but ash, or remember anything before the char consumed his nose, his mouth and his lungs. She pulled farther away from him slowly, and he let her go.
It occurred to him that she was as beautiful as he was ugly. No, that wasn’t even the right word. She was like the sun, warm and bright, but she would scald him through to the bone if he let himself bask in her rays for too long. He needed to take cover, and in this case, distance and darkness would be his shield.
“Thanks.” He held up the box in his hand. “I guess we should settle up.”
“What do you mean?” She looked at a point past his cheek, not focusing on his face.
“I owe you. For taking care of the house. My parents.” He swallowed hard. “Being there to take the call when I was injured.”
“Oh Jack. You don’t owe me for anything.” She looked down and smoothed her hands on her dress to straighten an imaginary wrinkle. “You came home. That’s all I wanted.”
Before this moment, he hadn’t been able to admit he wanted Betsy to look at him the same way she had done those years ago when he left. She wasn’t that girl anymore and he certainly wasn’t that boy. “My parents left you something in their will. I wouldn’t feel right if you didn’t get it.” That was a damn lie, but it had to be done. After everything she’d done for him, he owed her. Jack was a man who paid his debts.
“Come by tonight after you close the bakery.” It would be dark then and she wouldn’t have to see his face. He didn’t wait for her to respond but abandoned her there by the stage. Jack didn’t want to hear her say no.
Hours later, with a bottle of whiskey in hand, Jack was wishing he’d stayed to hear her refusal. Then he wouldn’t have been sitting there rotten with hope for just one more look at a woman who wasn’t coming.
What the hell had he been thinking anyway? He could have the papers to the account drawn up and have them delivered. Jack didn’t have to be here. He could leave her the house, too. He took a long pull, finding comfort in the fact that oblivion was only a bottle away.
He was almost all the way through the amber bliss when the front bell rang. Jack didn’t jump half out of his skin this time, because he’d reached that plateau where his constant fight-or-flight reaction was a distant discomfort. Jack would’ve just let the bell ring, but there was still the faint hope it could be her.
She smiled at him when he opened the door, another purple box in her hands. “Sorry it’s so late. I’ve got Halloween orders to fill, so I’ve been working late.”
He held the door open to allow her inside. She was wearing a different dress. This one was vintage as well, yellow-checked gingham with pockets in the front and a neckline that had to be illegal.
The sound of an old engine backfiring on the street outside elicited an immediate response: take cover. He hit the floor, dragging Betsy with him and shielding her with his body before he could process that it was just another shitty car in a small American town. He wasn’t in Iraq anymore.
A cool hand on his cheek brought him into the present. “It’s okay. We’re safe,” she whispered to him.
Shame, hot and putrid, washed over him. “I’m sorry.”
“You were protecting me. There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
He recoiled from her, pulling himself off her and leaning his back against the wall. “I, uh, what my parents wanted you to have, it’s on the table.”
“Jack,” she began. Her presence was overwhelming, smothering. She seemed to burn up all the oxygen in the room.
“Just take it and go.” He struggled to get up, but he couldn’t get his balance with nothing stationary to which he could anchor himself. The prosthesis bent at an awkward angle and he crashed back to the floor. Jack cursed, more determined than ever to get up now. He had to. She couldn’t see him like this.
At least at the ceremony he’d been upright and in his uniform. Wearing a symbol of something that mattered. Now he was just Jack.
Broken.
Useless.
He tried again to stand but failed. Rage filled him and he didn’t care if he broke the thing, he would stand. Jack attempted to claw his way up.
“Jack,” she said again, horror shading her voice.
“I don’t want your damn pity,” he roared.
She reached for the crushed purple box and put it up on a nearby table and then moved next to him, pulling his head down into her lap.
Even as it was happening, Jack knew it was wrong. He wanted to tell her to leave. No, now he was lying to himself. He didn’t want to tell her to leave, but he knew he needed to. Her touch was tender and sweet, stroking over the good side of his face. “Pity and empathy are two different things.”
She still smelled so good—of all things sweet and wholesome. While he stank of Old North Bend whiskey.
“You should go, Bets.” His actions betrayed his words because he’d wrapped an arm around her thighs.
“Not a chance. It’s not you who owes me, but the other way around. Did you forget that you saved my life?”
“That was a hundred years ago and another life.”
“Maybe. But men aren’t the only ones allowed to have their honor. I pay my debts, too.”
“There’s no debt. Your life is yours, free and clear.” He didn’t want her to be here because of some imaginary debt.
“I’ll never forget opening my eyes and seeing you leaning over me.” She stroked her fingers through his hair. “The streetlight made a halo around your head and I thought you were some kind of angel.”
“What utter tripe,” he said without conviction.
“I have never been so terrified. When I realized I wasn’t going to make it back up to the surface, I was so angry. I wasn’t ready for my life to be over. Especially not for some stupid childhood prank. I didn’t want to die. And it hurt, it was like my lungs were on fire while being pressed under a million pounds of solid rock.”
He didn’t speak but pulled away from her and the intimacy of the position.
“Then there you were, Jack. While everyone else watched and did nothing, it was you who saved me. You gave me everything I have. So if you think for a minute I wouldn’t do the same for you, you’ve got another think coming.”
“I’m not drowning, Betsy.”
“Yes, you are. You’re drowning yourself in whiskey. I smelled it on you at the ceremony, and your house reeks of it.”
“I’m already dead, sweetheart. It’s a wasted effort. So take what my parents left you and go.”
“Shall we see about that, Jack?” She pulled away from him and stood.
“What?”
“Get up.”
“I can’t.” He might have expected this from someone else, but never Betsy.
“I said get up, soldier. You made me a promise. You said you’d come back, but this isn’t you. This isn’t Jack McConnell.”
“You’re right.