Olivia
For the record, spending the night with an entire kennel full of dogs is never a wise idea. I barely have ten minutes of sleep before one dog barks, and then another, and then a whole chain of barking starts up, and Betty squeals, and the sound is so loud that my ears ring. It’s only temporary, I keep reminding myself, though I can’t be sure if that is true until I’m holding a new set of keys in my hands.
Now, I pack up my sleeping quarters and move the cot back to my office, and then I head to the bathroom. There’s a working toilet, thank the good Lord, and a mirror with a basin and fresh water. If I want to shower, I’ll have to use one of the doggy baths, which is so not happening. So I pull a little antiperspirant out of my purse and spray myself from head to toe. I tie a bandana around my throat, wincing at the pressure of the scratchy cloth against my wound, and I slick on some gloss and face powder, only because I need to look halfway presentable.
Yesterday, after I left Tanglewood, I called Georgia. She still had nothing for me, though this time, I think she actually looked. That meant there was one place I was headed, and I didn’t love the idea, but I knew if I wanted to wash in a shower that wasn’t intended for pooches, I was going to have to grovel.
I lock up and leave the shelter, and then I drive to Jude’s doorstep, where I’m hoping to catch him before he goes into consults or surgery. With Betty under one arm, I push the buzzer, and a voice comes over the intercom. “Hello?”
“Jude?”
There’s a brief pause, and an edge to his tone when he says, “Olivia?”
“Hi,” I say with a little wave of my hand. I don’t know if there’s a camera and if he can see me or not, but I guess it’s just reflex.
“Hi,” he says. Definitely an edge to his tone.
“So, I was kind of hoping we could talk,” I say, attempting to keep the desperation from my voice and failing miserably.
“About Betty?”
“Not exactly.”
“Hold on.” Jude’s footsteps echo up the hallway, and after pausing to fiddle with the lock, he opens the door.
“Hi,” I say quietly.
“Hi.” His gaze rolls over me. I probably look like death on a cracker, but he’s too polite to say as much, and I could kiss him for it. Jude moves aside, motioning for me to go first. “Come on in. You want some coffee?”
“Oh, Lord, you are an angel,” I blurt out. “Wait, I’m not keeping you from another date, am I?”
“Only the anal gland squeezing of a Great Dane at eight thirty, but she won’t mind being kept waiting.”
“Well, I hope you buy her dinner first,” I say.
“She’d likely eat me for dinner.” He closes the door and leads the way through the clinic to the house. Once in the kitchen, I set Betty on the ground and take a seat at the breakfast bar across from him. Jude pours us both a coffee, and I lean over the counter and inhale the rich, earthy scent, and sigh. I take a sip and feel the bandana bob against my throat.
“Kind of warm for scarves, ain’t it?” Jude says, glaring at the offending piece of fabric.
I swallow hard. “I hear it’s what all the kids are wearing these days.”
“Right, except it’s a hundred degrees out. And the dark circles under your eyes, are they fashionable too?” Jude’s gaze is full of challenge, of knowing, and I shift uneasily in my seat. “Why do I get the feeling you ain’t sleepin’ too well?”
“Because I spent the night with six dogs and a squealing piglet for company.” As if she could understand every word from my mouth Betty snorts loudly and hobbles excitedly around the rug in Jude’s lounge room, rubbing her face and snout all over the plush carpet. If she didn’t have on that cast, she’d likely be tearing around the room. It seems my little piglet loves to run.
“Why?”
“August and I are—”
“A big mistake?”
“I love him, Jude,” I whisper. I don’t mean to; it just comes tumbling out. He winces, clears his throat, and takes a sip of his coffee.
“You hear about what happened to the last girl that loved him?” I give him a puzzled expression, and he continues, “It killed her. I don’t know, I guess we killed her.”
“What?”
“After he . . . walked in on us, beat the shit outta me, and rearranged my face, he wouldn’t see her. Wouldn’t talk to her. He went back to Lackland that weekend and was deployed immediately after his training was done. He wouldn’t call her, wouldn’t write her back. Hell, I don’t even know if he got her letters. All I know is, she wasn’t right after he found out about us, and she died tryin’ to win him back.” He scrubs a hand down over his cleanly shaven jaw. There’s so much pain in his eyes, so much torment. “I don’t think she ever planned on killing herself. I think she just wanted to get his attention. She got it, but by then it was too late.”
“Oh, Jude,” I reach out and place my hand on top of his on the counter, giving him a reassuring squeeze. “I’m so sorry.”
“I loved her too. I know he can’t see that; I don’t even think she knew how crushed I was when she wouldn’t see or talk to me, but I loved her.” He shakes his head, draws his hand out from under mine. “What is it about him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play with me, Olivia.”
“I don’t know, maybe I just have a thing for the strong, sullen type.” Tears prick my eyes, and I blow out a huge breath.
“He hurt you?” he asks glancing again at my throat. I unfasten the scarf and expose the angry cut August’s blade left on my skin, and the bruises that I know are a hideous purple blue. He sucks in a sharp breath. “I’m gonna kill him. I’m gonna fucking kill him.”
“It isn’t his fault.”
“Jesus, really?” he snaps, looking horrified. “Whose fault is it, yours?”
“He’s suffering from PTSD blackouts, which is ironic because if it were anyone else, I’d know exactly what to do, what to say. I know how to fix men like August, but I don’t think I can fix him. I can’t make it better, Jude.”
The dam breaks, my tears spill over, and those words replay on a loop inside my head. I can’t fix the man I love, but I can’t quit him either, and I don’t know where that leaves me. Right now, it’s seeking refuge in a place where he can’t hurt me. At least not physically, anyway.
I feed the dogs, give them water, and lock up for the night. I would have finished much sooner, but Dalton didn’t come in today, for the second day in a row. I need to go see him, I need to make sure he is okay, but Josiah, Beau and I were swamped with adoptions all day. I let the boys go early. They have a party they want to go to, and I don’t want Josiah seeing Jude show up here. I don’t know why; August will find out soon enough that I’m going to be living in Jude’s cabin—the whole town will know soon enough. The Cottons and I will be neighbors. Our cars will drive down the same road every day. We’ll dodge the same potholes and slow down for the same bends. He’s bound to find out, and while I have no interest in Jude as anything more than a friend, it still feels like a betrayal.
Doc’s waiting in the lot, and I climb in my car with Betty and follow him. Ten minutes later, he pulls in the drive of a huge log cabin, and I do a double take.
“This is it,” he says, holding his hands out in a gesture that says, “this is all there is.” I think the man may actually be crazy.
“It’s a little bigger than I imagined,” I say, setting Betty down to explore. “Why don’t you live here?”
“I don’t know. It just always felt like my parents’ place,” he says. “When I was fifteen, my mamma and daddy got divorced, and I moved here with her. It just never felt like home. I only ever come out here when I want to clear my head.”
“Why haven’t you sold it?”
“I can’t,” he says, matter-of-factly. “It’s the only thing I have left of her—the only place in the world I can go and feel like someone still cares about me, even though she ain’t here.”
“Listen, I can find somewhere else. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t escape to this place anymore because I’m here.”
“No, I want you to stay here, as long as you need. Besides, it’s about time someone used this old house.”
“Well, at least now you’ll know that there’s definitely someone other than your mamma who cares about you here.”
“That’d be nice,” he says and tilts his head toward the huge house. “You ready to come on inside?”
“Sure.”
He walks up the stairs and pulls a set of keys from out of his pocket, handing them to me before using a key on his own ring to open the door. “It’s fully furnished. I was just here on the weekend so some of the dust will be moved already, but it might take a little extra cleaning. I try and get out here at least twice a season to do repairs, but since I ain’t stayed here in years, I don’t know if everything works the way it should, but you just give me a call if anythin’ gives you trouble, and I’ll come fix it.”
“Okay.” I let him lead me inside. The house is pristine with a big wrought-iron chandelier and a bunch of furniture that looks like it belongs in a Cracker Barrel catalog. It’s definitely not how I pictured it when Doc said he had a cabin; it’s so much more beautiful and bigger, definitely bigger.
“Bedrooms are upstairs. There are three bathrooms and a full kitchen with a deck out the back. Linens are in the closet,” he says. “Electric is on—water, too. I keep thinking one day I’ll come out here and stay, but I never do.”
“I can’t tell you what this means to me.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’ll be good to see this place have a little life again,” Jude says. “Well, I’ll leave you to get settled in, if you need anything you just holler at me.”
“I will.” I nod and see him out, collect my bags, and then I lean against the door and stare at my new surroundings. It’s quiet as hell. I walk over to the sheet-covered couch and fall into it. As I pick up Betty from the floor, I try to ignore the ache in my chest and the pit of grief in my stomach. I fell in love with a man who’s broken. And this is the price I pay for that.
In all the years since I tried to end my own life, I’ve never felt this alone. I’ve never felt this despair, and this desperate to hold onto something that could destroy me. In the beginning, August had been a project I could sink my teeth into. I’d treated him the same as I would any other Marine suffering with the weight of returning from war, but I never planned on falling. I never planned on being something his PTSD could sink its teeth into. I should have known from the start that I was too close to this, and if I didn’t already know, now I have the marks to remind me.
Stupid. So stupid. How could I have done this? How could I have fallen in love with him? My heart’s in tatters, my head filled with all of the sweetness we could have had, and it tastes like poison in my mouth. I’m miserable, alone, and broken because I climbed my way to the top of his high walls, I scaled the tower, cut myself on the iron thorns, and I fell all the way to the ground.
And there is nothing to be done for it now.