Chapter 26

She awoke to the sound of banging. It had been a few days now that they were at Colt’s childhood home. He was feeling better from his rib injury, but his toe was still quite sore.

Chelsea sat up on the sofa where she fell asleep during the night. Looking around, she noticed the front door of Colt’s old home was slightly ajar. He’d swept the living room, removing the sheets that covered the furniture. It was a dainty little room with a homey feel.

She put on her shoes and walked toward the sound. The closer she got, she made out the noise to be metal on metal. To get to where she figured Colt to be, she had to go through the front door and around the side of the house. There he was with an iron bar banging against the old truck she’d seen the day before. The sheen of sweat on his back glistened in the early morning sun. Her cheeks flushed at seeing him without a shirt while her heart double flicked and took off gallantly down the path as their partial love making resurfaced.

For a few minutes, she stood silently watching the muscles in his back ripple each time he smacked the truck with the piece of iron bar. As if sensing her, he stopped while the metal bar hung midair, turned, and looked at her. Her heart ached as she observed the pain in his eyes and the twisted look on his face.

Without a word, he turned back to his task, slamming the bar into the already shattered hood of the truck. A few pieces of rusty tin flew about. The shell of the old vehicle had already fallen apart leaving the sturdier parts. Chelsea was of two minds, should she leave him to vent, or should she stop him from falling apart? Because that’s what she saw. Colt was falling apart like the old truck, and she did not know how to help him put the pieces back together. His story was painful, and she wasn’t sure how he would get over it.

His mood, attitude, and dark moments were all a result of the pain he carried around for the past twenty years. She went back inside, leaving him to vent some of the pain and anger he was feeling. She would not allow him to shatter. Fifteen more minutes, and she would go get him if he was unable to calm himself by then.

Five minutes, and the clanging became consistent. She detected that he was near the peak of whatever was emitting from him. At eight minutes, she detected a rhythm to his trashing of the old truck. It was strange; she swore it sounded like he was making music.

Eleven minutes and the banging began to slow to a sporadic clang before it stopped at the twelve-minute mark. The iron bar hit the ground with a loud clang, and there was silence. Colt returned to the living room with beads of sweat glistening on his bare chest. His hair curled from the sweat and hung loosely around his shoulders.

“Are you okay?” Chelsea asked. Her anxiety registered in her voice.

He nodded and answered in a gruff tone, “Yeah, I’m fine. Did I wake you?”

“No,” she replied with a smile, walking over to him. “We’ve got to get back. Reid must be out of his mind.”

“Yeah, he’s throwing a fit. There’s a press meeting this morning,” he added.

His face got serious as he strode past her into the room. She watched him pick up a towel thrown over a chair and begin to rub the sweat from his skin. He wasn’t ready to face anyone. It was evident in his body language. It was better to let him decide when they should return. Things were already bad as they were; one more day couldn’t hurt.

* * * *

As they drove back to town the following morning, he was feeling better than he’d felt in the last twenty years. Talking to Chelsea was all the therapy he needed. He saw where he could make peace with the past. Her understanding of what happened was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He never imagined in a million years that he would meet someone who would not judge or condemn him based on his past.

Now that he remembered everything, all the memories he’d buried, he must free his mother. He knew it would perhaps ruin him, but he needed to do what was right. The past must be rectified. What his mother must have gone through, sacrificing her life for his. He closed his eyes, and the past came crashing back, the night of the accident.

“Leave from here,” she’d urged.

He stared at the blood on his hands and widened his eyes. His mother quickly ran to the kitchen counter and pulled an old tin can from behind the cookie jar. From it, she extracted a roll of paper money, shoving it into his bloody hands.

“Go now, I’ll be fine, and don’t ever come back,” she said, kissing his cheek.

“I can’t,” his voice squeaked. “I can’t leave you. What if he’s dead?”

She shook her head vigorously. “You don’t worry about that, my son.”

He left but hadn’t gone far. By dawn, he could hear the sirens blaring as they approached the little house sitting on the three acres of land his father left them. He’d hidden in the bushes, waiting until morning to leave, but his heart broke when he saw the deputy sheriff handcuff his mother and shove her into the patrol car. An ambulance had taken away the body of his stepfather while Jason stood aside watching with a smirk. Colt never forgot the look on his stepbrother’s face.

He went into town to plead with the sheriff, but no one listened to him. Of course no one listened, he was only a child, and his mother had already given a confession. When he finally got to see his mother, she made him promise to do something with his life and never breathe a word of what happened.

“Promise me, on your father’s grave you make that promise!” she insisted.

“Ma,” he tried to beg her, his heart was thumping fiercely behind his ribs.

“Promise me!”

His shoulders sagged, and his voice lowered. “I promise Ma, if that’s what you want.”

“Yes, now go, and don’t come back. If you break your promise, I’ll never forgive you.”

His heart ached terribly as he looked at her through the metal bars that separated them. “Ma.” He winced as the pain ripped through him and a tear rolled down his cheek

The officer standing by touched him on his shoulder and told him his time was up. He glanced at the female police officer and saw the sympathy in her eyes. He turned back to his mother, reached through the bars and grabbed her hand. She squeezed it and nodded, then detangled herself.

“Now go, your time is up,” she whispered.

He saw the pain in her eyes and heard the thickness of her voice as she tried to hold back her tears. She mouthed the words that made his knees buckle and the sob erupt from deep within his belly. “I love you,” her mouth formed the words.

His knees gave out, and a shrill cry wrenched from his gut. The guard grabbed his shoulder to keep him from falling. He tried to wrangle himself free, but she was strong and held fast. She held him tightly and half dragged him out. His mother turned her back and faced the jail wall, her shoulders hunched as she shuddered. He knew she was crying but trying to hide it from him. His own screams turned into sad moans and whimpers as the guard dragged him from the jail cell toward the main area.

As he walked out into the bright California sunshine that day, he heard the guard speak, but her voice was a distant echo in his mind. He was dazed and numb from the pain of seeing his mother behind bars and her telling him never to see her again.

The pain of the last time he saw her lasted several years. When he could stand it no longer, he went back to the jailhouse to visit her and was told that she was in state prison for the murder of her husband. He tried seeing her, but she refused him. Eventually, the guards at the prison gate would not let him through and told him if he continued coming by they would have to lock him up as well.

His world as he knew it shattered around him. For him to live, he had to start building a wall around himself, buried in darkness. He spent the next twenty years burying the past. Now it came back with a bang and the guilt of his mother rotting in jail for a crime he committed.

A groan escaped his lips as the car neared the hotel. Chelsea turned to him questioningly. He tried a smile, but it turned into a grimace instead. He gripped her hand and squeezed the way his mother had done the day she told him never to visit her in jail.

As he held on to Chelsea, he did not want to let go. Another dark cloud was lurking. He knew the feeling well. Every time something good happened, a bad one penciled it out. It was becoming tiring. Jason crossed his mind, and he wondered if perhaps he would show up again. He would be stupid if he did, but Jason wasn’t known to be very wise thinking.