CHAPTER 11: BRETT
I rolled over and it took me a moment to remember where I was, and why I felt so wonderful. I felt warmth and then remembered. I opened my eyes.
She was lying on her side, the light from the window making her hair into flame. I sat up a little, trying not to wake her. She was asleep, her breath regular and even. She was naked, though at some point she must have put a cover over us, because it was around her body, covering the lower part.
I looked at her. I let my eyes rest on her pale skin, the full curve of her breast, the outline of her forearm and that long, muscled upper arm. She was so lovely and I had to make myself resist touching her. I didn’t want to disturb that sweet, deep sleep.
I sighed. I felt so wonderful, inside and out. As I looked at her, I realized how much I felt for her. How much I loved her and always had.
“Kerry.”
She must have heard me, for her breath-pattern changed, a little gasp breaking the even regularity. I moved back a little as she stirred, and then settled.
She sighed and shifted and I felt my heart ache with tender care. I love her so much.
It was a remarkable thought, and a simple realization. It was a fact. I loved Kerry.
I always had.
How was it that I could only have realized that now? I had been so foolish!
She rolled over then, drawing a sharp breath in and her lids moved. She opened them, then shut them again, then opened. She looked at me. I saw her come slowly to wakefulness and the empty look focused into one of realization.
“Brett.”
I leaned down and met my lips to hers. She sighed and cuddled up to me and I wrapped my arms around her, my shoulder burning.
“Hi,” I whispered. She giggled.
“Mm. Hello, Brett.”
I stroked my hand over her body and she sighed and stretched.
“What time is it?”
I shrugged. “I’ll check.”
I reached over to where, by some astonishing feat of habit, I’d left my watch on her bedside bookshelf. I lifted it to my eyes. It said eight.
“It’s just before eight o’ clock,” I told her.
She sat up.
“I should get up,” she said.
I sighed. “You have to get up?”
She giggled. “Brett, you shall make me late for work,” she said formally. “Yes, I need to.”
I laughed and reached up to stroke a hand down that pale throat. I shivered as I felt the softness of her skin under my fingers. I wanted her so much. I could have spent the whole day here.
She slid to the end of the bed and stood up. Her hair swayed round her shoulders and she turned and looked over at me, a look of such mischief in her eyes that my body ached.
“Brett,” she scolded.
I laughed.
“I’ll go and shower,” she said, still with that mischievous quality in her voice that was making my loins ache. I could smell the scent of her and see her beautiful nakedness and I longed to hold her.
“Okay,” I said.
“Then it’s your turn,” she said.
I nodded. I twisted my head round to the bandage on my arm, feeling a sudden fear. What was I going to do when I showered?
I saw her frown and nod.
“I’m going to help with that,” she said. “It needs a bandage. And if it looks bad, I am taking you to see my doctor—no question.”
I sighed. “Thanks, Kerry.”
She grinned at me. “Not sure you’ll be saying that later.”
I smiled. “I trust you.”
She stared at me. Her big brown eyes softened. “I’m so glad,” she said. Her voice was melting-soft and it washed through me, making my entire body melt like candy in the sunlight.
“Of course I do,” I said thickly. “I love you, Kerry.”
She stared. “Brett?”
I swallowed hard. But I wasn’t going back on it. Not now that I knew how true that was.
“I love you,” I repeated. “I always have.” I kissed her hand. “Now,” I said lightly, “go and have a shower.”
She blinked. I could see she was moved to tears. I wanted to cry myself, seeing that. She was still holding my hand.
“I…Brett?”
“What?” I asked gently.
“I love you too,” she said.
Then, before she could say anything, or I could answer with the utter wonder and disbelief that was growing and building and flowing inside me, she sat up and walked briskly to the shower.
I lay there feeling as if I was in a new world. I felt like the confines of my life had blurred and suddenly I had stepped into another realm, a place where everything felt wonderful.
I had never thought that Kerry loved me. Knowing that was so remarkable, so life changing, that I wasn’t sure what to do after that.
I was still lying on the bed, stunned, when the water switched off and she appeared, wet and scented with soapy cleanness.
I smiled at her and she smiled back.
“What?” she asked, teasingly.
“I…” I shook my head. “I’m just surprised,” I said.
“What?” she laughed, “Why?”
I blushed. Looked at my hands. I had no idea what to say.
She sat down on the bed. Gently, carefully, she kissed my lips, pushing me back against the wall. I sighed and let my lips part under her tongue, shivering as she let her wet, pale tongue explore my mouth. It was such a wonderful feeling that I could have lain there all day, with her chest pressed against me and her lips on my mouth and her body in my arms.
She moved back after a long, intense kiss.
“Okay,” she said. “Your turn.”
I felt myself tense. I was nervous, I realized. I hadn’t looked at the wound since we dressed it, and even then I had tried to avoid it. I had no idea how bad it actually was underneath there.
“Okay,” I said. I sat up.
“Here goes,” she said. Still naked, but dry now, she moved so that she stood before me and I was sitting on the edge of the bed. She carefully unwound the bandage.
I growled as she pulled the bandage loose, the dried blood sticking it to the edge of the wound. It burned and tore and I wanted to scream as she finally pulled it loose.
“I…it’s not as bad as I recalled,” she said. Her voice was trembling, though, and she didn’t sound confident. I breathed in. I could smell it. The bandage was a twisted mass of blackened cotton, stiff with dried blood. I felt sick.
“Can I see?” I asked.
She frowned, her brow wrinkling with doubt. “I would like it if you did,” she ventured. “I need a second opinion about this.”
I made a face. “I’ll look in the mirror,” I said. I could see the side of it right now, the way the edge of the wound was black with dry blood, an unpleasant smell drifting up on the air from over it.
“Good idea,” she said.
She stood and followed me into the bathroom. Looked as I did.
I felt ill. In the mirror I could see a gouge out of my left bicep, the edges dark and the inner section pink and red and raw. I turned away. I was grateful, then that my muscle was quite dense, or it might have actually gone down to the bone.
“It’s quite worrying,” I said, putting it as mildly as I could. I could feel a new, aching sensation in it and I had the thought that if we left it like it was, it might get infected. Blood poisoning, by all accounts, was not a nice thing.
“It is,” Kerry agreed. “You know what?”
“What?”
“You are going to shower—don’t get it wet—and then I am going to take you to the doctor. No arguments! Yes?”
I sighed. “What about breakfast?” I suggested.
“I’ll eat at work. Or we can get something on the way there.”
“Good idea,” I said.
I tried to shower without getting water on my right arm. That was tricky, but I managed it. It was burning in a very unpleasant way by the time I finished.
Out of the shower, I dressed and watched Kerry dress, walking casually around the room, picking things up, tidying the place, setting the bedcovers in a tidier manner.
When she was dressed—in her smart black uniform—she put on stockings and I tried not to watch for fear of being aroused all day. I focused on myself.
Fumbling with the sleeve of my shirt, I tried to get it on without having to lift my arm too high—I had discovered when I undressed that it really hurt, and the pain was worse this morning.
When I was dressed, Kerry looked at me.
“We have time for coffee before we go,” she said.
“Thanks,” I sighed.
We went to the car after a quick coffee. I sat beside her, feeling the first twinge of guilt. Here she was, making sure I got medical care, when it was risking making her late for work, and she didn’t even know my story.
“Now, my doctor lives nice and close,” she was saying. “He’s a good sort and he doesn’t charge too much. And he won’t ask any questions if we ask him not to. But that thing needs treatment.”
“I agree,” I said. “Kerry?”
“Brett?”
I smiled to hear my name on her lips, even now. “Sorry,” I said, still smiling. “Just wanted to say thanks.”
She smiled. “It’s the least I can do,” she said. “I couldn’t very well let you sit here and get blood poisoning, now, could I? Imagine what I’d think if you died in my bed!”
She laughed, and I laughed too, but it wasn’t a relaxed laughter. There was still the deep, sinister worry that someone had tried to end my life. I was scared. I needed to do something about that soon. I didn’t need them coming back to get the job done.
“Here we are.”
Kerry went in with me to talk to the secretary, then left me there.
“Call me when you’re done. I want to know you’re okay. Please?”
I kissed her hand. “I promise.”
She beamed and left. Her doctor turned out to be a solidly built, white-haired gentleman in his sixties. I instantly liked him. When we shook hands his dark eyes—almost black, they were so dark—lit up.
“You must have had a sporting career.”
“Yes,” I said, impressed.
He examined my arm without question, then looked up. “So,” he said as he looked at the arm. “I won’t ask how you got this, but I will ask how long ago it happened.”
“Yesterday, doctor.”
“Mm.”
He didn’t look at me. I could see on his face that he was trying to figure out whether or not to ask me anymore about why and how. He also looked worried.
“You need some stitches in this,” he said after a moment. “And antibiotic. The last thing you need is infection in here, right?”
“Right,” I nodded firmly.
He swabbed my arm, gave me a local injection, and then started stitching. I looked away while he did it. I really can’t take medical stuff. I couldn’t feel what he was doing—not really—but the thought of seeing it made me feel sick.
“Okay,” he said as he worked. “Now, I’m going to give an injection of penicillin into the site, but if you get any heat or burning, and there’s redness around it, come back immediately. You need to keep the site clean and bandaged at all times. I’m going to prescribe you a painkiller, just in case you can’t sleep. You need sleep if that’s going to heal up quickly.”
“Thanks, Doctor.” I nodded.
“Come back to me next week,” he said. “I need to see that and check how it’s going. And, son?”
“Yes?” I asked as I took the prescription, “and thanks, by the way,” I added. “I appreciate it.”
“Well, be that as it may,” he said stiffly. “Stay out of fights, okay? Let the policemen do that.”
I sighed. “Yes, doctor.”
I texted Kerry, settled the bill—even though he wasn’t the most expensive doctor I’d ever had, I still almost passed out at the bill, though I could luckily pay it on the day—and left.
I was just planning a route home—take the bus to the end of my street, walk back—when I had the horrible thought that the guy who did this might still be there.
“Come on, Brett,” I sighed. Think of something.” Not that there was, I reflected grimly, much I could do about that. Either he was or he wasn’t. Either he shot me, or he didn’t. I still wasn’t sure what would happen if I did as the doctor suggested and risked the police.
“I’ve got to just risk it.”
I got on the bus, my heart thumping like a locomotive engine. I had no idea what to do. I might be walking into certain death.
Call the police, my reasonable brain said.
I sighed. I would just walk to the end of my street and see if I could spot him. I knew where he must have been standing—on the edge of the yard round the apartment block, aiming over the fence—when he fired. I would just check if there was anyone odd round there and if there was I’d walk to the park and regroup.
The name of my street flashed up on the bus’s lit-up sign. I pressed the button and swung off into the street when it stopped.
My mouth was dry. My heart thumped. I felt frozen to the sidewalk.
“Brett, go,” I told myself firmly. “One step, then another. Then another.”
I felt my body move one slow pace at a time up the street toward my building.
I stopped dead about twenty paces along. I was standing by a particularly nice garden, the smell of damp soil rich and warm in my nostrils from the rain yesterday. I concealed myself by the wall and sighted down the street. Nothing.
There was no one by the fence. No one where the sniper had been.
I made myself walk forward, trying to convince myself that, if anyone was there, they would be in the same place.
I went at a slow pace. My back was straight and tall and every step I waited to feel the inevitable punch of a bullet in the back.
I felt strangely lightheaded. I thought that I might die at any moment, and that thought brought with it a strange abandon. I had found Kerry and we knew we loved each other. It was a beautiful morning, the street shining under a slate-dark sky, the sun striking silver off the rain-puddles in the street.
If I died now, I would die happy. My soul would go up into the cloudy, painted sky, merging with the rain mist, and I would have no regrets.
I walked, step by slow step.
No one shot me.
I reached my apartment block feeling a sort of wild amazement. I turned the key in the lock, raced inside, slammed the door and leaned against the wall.
I was still leaning there, when Mrs. Schulz, my next-door neighbor, came past. She raised a pale brow at me, merging with her curly white hair.
“You are okay, son?”
I let out a long breath, shooting her an adrenalin-heady smile.
“Sure, Mrs. Schulz. Just fine.”
“Good,” she said. She frowned. “Have a nice day, then.”
“You too, Mrs. Schulz. A good day.”
She was still looking very concerned as she went out and I had to hide a smile, sure she thought I was completely mad. I laughed as I went up to the stairs.
I probably was completely mad.
What were the chances, I thought, laughing, that they would really have shot me? Maybe this whole thing was some kind of misunderstanding.
I went into my apartment and looked around. Nothing had moved or shifted. The windows were shut as I had left them. There was nothing out of place.
I sighed and collapsed onto my seat. I was being too paranoid.
I let out a long shaky breath and looked up at the ceiling. Whew.
The rest of the day I divided between setting my place into some semblance of tidiness, packing a case—I might need to leave in some haste—texting Kerry and my agent.
I was going to sell that old beach house.
By the late afternoon, after a good meal and a chat with Kerry, I was feeling better.
I decided it would be no bad thing to go for a walk. I was going to risk it.
“Damn these people and making me feel constrained.”
I went downstairs and out onto the street.
A brisk walk in the park lifted my spirits and I was smiling by the time I came back. I unlocked the door and went in. Sat down.
It was then that I noticed that someone had broken the window.