Rain Shadow(9)

My throat felt dry. Losing Luke would be unbearable, but leaving here was close to impossible. “I wish it was that simple. My grandfather wouldn’t just let me walk out of here with a ‘come back and see us soon’. It would be dangerous for both of us.”

“I’d keep you safe. I’d never let anything happen to you.”

“My grandfather has a lot of enemies out there.” Whenever I talked out loud about my situation, about the ugly lot in life I’d been handed, it sounded worse than ever.

“I’m not talking about leaving here and then coming back to visit—” His words dropped off. They’d been cryptic at first and then he laid it out bare. “If you leave with me, you won’t ever see him again. I never want to lose you, Angel. But I won’t give up my freedom, and I won’t be a part of his world.”

I lifted his arm up off of me. I could feel his body tense as I sat up on the edge of the bed. My eyes ached with tears. The harsh quiet in the room made my head hurt. But the funny thing about it all was that I’d gone through this same scenario in my mind at least a dozen times.

“Aunt Gracie wanted to bake some apple pies,” I said lightly as if both of us weren’t wearing the weight of this around our hearts. “I told her I’d help.”

He didn’t say a word. I couldn’t look at him. I needed to think this out without seeing his face, that face that had already been etched into my memory. I pulled on my shorts. My fingers trembled as I put on my bra, knowing full well that he watched every move. But I couldn’t stop the shaking. My grandfather was evil, he was twisted, but he and Gracie were all I had. I’d been in his care since I was a baby. With the exception of a few years with my grandmother and my unstable mom, it had always been him. The man on the bed, the man who’d taken hold of my soul almost immediately, was still very much a stranger. He’d told me scattered details of his life, but I really didn’t know much else about him. Except that he stirred every emotion inside of me. Except that since I’d met him I couldn’t stand to be without him. Except that I spent every waking minute and even minutes asleep thinking about him.



I could still feel his gaze on me as I slid on my shoes. In the distance some motorcycles rumbled into the compound, and Ripper barked at something. But my cabin was as still as a winter night on the tundra. I’d gone through this in my head. And more than once. I hadn’t expected him to ask it yet, but I’d gone through this. It had caught me off guard, but, deep down, I knew the answer was already there.

I reached for the doorknob and turned it. Then I looked over at him. His gray eyes were flat with anguish again, and my chest ached at the sight. “I choose you,” I said quietly, and walked out the door.

***

Aunt Gracie’s face was scrunched up as she rolled out the pie dough. It wasn’t out of concentration, and it was a look I’d seen far too often lately.

“Aunt Gracie, does your head hurt again?”

“Bad headache, Angel. But I promised Dad some pie.” She swiped a finger across her forehead to push back a strand of hair and left a white streak of flour on her skin. Aunt Gracie had difficulty with most things, even communicating, but when it came to cooking and baking she was pure genius. There were other people like her in the world, people who could barely function in society but who excelled at one thing, as if all the switches in their brains had been dimmed except one. And that one switch had received all of the power. She loved to cook and spent most of her day in the kitchen.

I walked into the back room and grabbed the blood pressure monitor from the cabinet. Gracie’s headaches had become more intense and more frequent, and it worried me.

“Aunt Gracie, let me take your blood pressure.”

She cringed when she saw the cuff. “That thing squeezes too hard. I hate that thing.”

“I know, Gracie, but it only squeezes hard for a little while. I want to make sure you’re feeling all right. Please?”

She let go of the rolling pin. “I guess, but I don’t like that thing.” I pushed up her sleeve and wrapped the cuff around her arm. The buzz of the motor made Aunt Gracie tense.

“Relax, it won’t hurt you.” I wondered if I should take my own blood pressure. Those last moments in the cabin still had hold of me. Coward that I was, I hadn’t stuck around for Luke’s reaction.

And then as if he’d felt me thinking about him, the door to the kitchen opened and he walked in. He was as striking dressed as he was naked. The thrift store jeans and t-shirts I’d bought him had fit perfectly. I’d touched and held him enough to know exactly the sizes he needed. I had everything about Luke memorized.