Behold the Stars (10 page)

~oOo~

Isaac stood in the shower and let the water stream over his aching body. The nearly-scalding water soothed him. He braced his hands on the tile wall and let his head drop.

He heard the shower curtain rustle, the rings jingle, and then Lilli’s body replaced the shower stream on his back. Her arms encircled his waist, and she took his balls and cock in her hands. He was soft at first, but the feel of her talented, beautiful hands on him turned him to steel, despite the pain and loss flowing through his veins. Not changing his position, he opened his eyes to watch her hands on him. She laid her head on his back and jacked him off expertly, milking and pulsing, squeezing and teasing, her fingers stroking the underside of his balls in exactly the way she knew he liked. He came fast, hard, and explosively, his semen painting spikes on the aqua tiles. When he was done, he rested his forehead on the wall. Lilli pressed a sweet, lingering kiss to his back and left the shower. Neither of them had said a word.

She was waiting for him in bed when he came into the room. She’d turned the covers down for him, and he dropped his towel to the floor and slid in, naked, next to her. She rolled to her side, and he pulled her close to his chest. She was also naked, but he made no move to start something, and neither did she. When he kissed her shoulder, she put her hand up and laid it on his head. Then he put his head on his pillow and closed his eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lilli woke with a start, sitting bolt upright, her heart pounding. The dream evaporated quickly, as it always did. She looked over, expecting to see Isaac watching her, as he always was when she woke like this. But she was alone in the bed. She sat still for a second and listened, trying to hear if he was in the bathroom or the kitchen. The house was silent. Even the kittens were quiet.

She got up and pulled a pair of sweats and a t-shirt out of her dresser. She went through the house and checked. Isaac wasn’t inside. She opened the front door—oh, shit it was cold—and went back to slide into her sneakers and grab a jacket. When she went onto the porch, she saw the lights on in Isaac’s woodshop. She stepped off the porch and crossed the yard.

She could hear that he was working with one of his power tools: the specific high scream of metal penetrating wood. But it was deep dark, hours before dawn. He almost never left her alone in bed, and he never worked in the middle of the night. She opened the door.

He was standing at his lathe, turning a piece of dark wood. Bare-chested, in jeans, goggles on his face. Lilli knew better than to come up on him unawares, so she walked to the corner of his worktable and waited for him to see her. She’d often watched him work since she’d moved in. Isaac enjoyed her company in his shop, but he tended to turn deeply inward as he worked. If she asked a question, he would answer it—or, more often, he would begin to answer, then fade out as his focus on his work overtook his attention to her question. So she still didn’t know much about what he did, but she loved to watch nonetheless. It was fascinating, and she was in awe of the beauty those big, rough hands could create.

He saw her when he paused the lathe and looked up to select a different tool. He turned off the lathe and pulled off the goggles, setting them on the table. “Hey, Sport. What’re you doing awake?” As she walked to him and he put his hands on her waist, he asked, “Did you dream?”

“Yeah, but I’m out here checking on you.” She brushed wood shavings from the hair on his chest. “Kinda weird time to be working, isn’t it?” When he only shrugged, she asked, “What ya makin’?”

He turned his head and regarded the wood in the lathe. It was a long piece, maybe four feet, about three inches in diameter at its widest point. Isaac had turned several distinct and seemingly unrelated shapes into it. “I have no idea. I’m just turning. No plan.” Setting her away, he removed the wood from the lathe and held it in his hands, looking down at it like he didn’t know what it was or where it had come from. Lilli was worried.

“You want to talk, love? Maybe go back to the house and start some coffee?” Still looking at the wood, he shook his head. Then, when she reached out to put her hand on his arm, he jerked from her touch. That surprised her—in fact, it scared her. “Isaac?”

“Go back inside.” His voice was low, and still he had not looked up. Lilli saw the wooden dowel in his hands begin to shake, just slightly. She’d been around enough freaked out soldiers in her day to have a damn good idea what was going on. She squared her shoulders and cast a studied glance around the room, making sure she knew where things were. Things she might need.

She spoke steadily, keeping an even pitch. “If you don’t want to talk, that’s cool, love. I’ll just sit and watch you. I love to watch you work. But I’m not leaving you, Isaac. I’m staying put.”

His head came up then, fast. He glared at her, his eyes red and wet—and angry. He laughed, and the sound was fearsome. “You’re not leaving me? You were leaving me
yesterday
, Sport. YESTERDAY. You were out the fuckin’ door, remember?” He raised the heavy dowel in one hand and brandished it like a club. Lilli darted a quick glance to his rack of gouges and took a small step back. “Do you know what I came in here to do? To start making you furniture. The furniture you need so you’ll stay. I was going to make you a couch.” He stopped waving the dowel and took a long look at it. Then he laughed again, bitterly. “I don’t know what part of any couch this piece of shit would be. Fucked that up, too.”

Grasping the wood in both hands again, he turned and swung, his hair flying and his muscles rippling with the effort. He brought it down, full force, on the worktable, about two feet from where Lilli stood. She twitched, but stood her ground, tensed to defend herself if she had to. He slammed the piece—his club, now—down again, and again, until chunks of wood began to shave off. Then, the need that was clearly consuming him still unsatisfied, he roared and spun. Charging at the shelves on which he stored his art show inventory, and roaring incoherently, he bludgeoned the vases, boxes, animals, and flowers that were his meal ticket. Lilli did not intervene. He would soon regret this, but he needed to do it. When he had not slowed after more than a full minute of destruction, she leaned over to his tool rack and pulled out a long, straight blade with a sharp, beveled point. In case she needed to disable him. Otherwise, she stood and waited.

Finally he stopped and, his chest heaving, soaked in sweat, he turned to her again. “You
should
leave me. You should get out. Get away. Because this place is dead. It’s not even dying. It’s just fuckin’ dead. People keep looking to me to save it, but I’m the one pulled the goddamn plug. I’m the one that decided to help the fuckin’ cookers instead of running ‘em out on a rail. That was
my
idea. Took forever to get everybody on board, too. I brought it to the table, I leaned on my brothers to get it to pass. Meth put us on Ellis’s radar. Meth got Will killed. It’s all on my head. And here I stand. None of it’s fuckin’ touched me.” He dropped the splintered wood. “Jesus Christ, Sport, we were in a fucking
paint store
while somebody was putting a bullet in Will’s head and setting his whole fucking history on fire! We were
shopping
.” He slid to the floor against a tall metal shelving unit. It rattled at first, threatening to topple on him, but then settled. He drew up his knees and rested his head on his arms. Lilli put the blade down and went to him.

She kicked the club away and knelt in front of him, laying her hands on his arms. “Isaac.” She said nothing but his name. When he didn’t respond, she said it again. He looked up. She knew the look. Haunted.

“I love you. I’m not going anywhere. I’m in. I’m here. Because we talked. You talked to me, and we worked things through. I’m not going to say we need to do the same for you right now. You’ll talk when you’re ready. For now, you can listen. Because I am here. You’re not on your own. Not in this house, not in this town, not in this fight.” She brushed his hair back from his face; he was soaking wet. “You didn’t bring crystal to town, Isaac. You just figured out a way to make it do some good, balance out all the bad it does. You kept the people in town, people working at Marie’s and at the feed store, and the hardware store. You did something good with something bad.”

His expression had eased some as she spoke, and she turned and sat at his side, hooking her arm around his. “What happened to Will is not your fault.” He flinched and huffed, but she held onto him and pressed her point. “It’s not. It’s Ellis. It’s the scum he hired to get it done. You were right to pressure Will not to sell—and he knew you were. Otherwise, he would have sold anyway.”

They sat quietly side by side on the floor of Isaac’s woodshop. Lilli looked around. He’d done a lot of damage in those few minutes. She thought the damage he was doing to himself, inside, was worse. But she knew he would be deaf to anything more she said. So she sat with him and waited.

The sky outside the windows was just beginning to lighten from deep black to smoky grey before he spoke. “I can’t do it, Lilli. I can’t. I’m not good enough. Not strong enough. Not smart enough. I’m nobody special. I can’t fight this guy. I’m gonna get people killed. Already have.”

She hadn’t been sleeping, but she had been deep in thought, thinking about the fire, and Ellis, and Isaac. And her dad, strangely enough. Shooting Comet had called to mind the one and only time she’d killed a deer. That time, she had not shot cleanly with her first shot, and the buck, like Comet, had been screaming and struggling. Her second shot had been true, but the experience had upset her very much. She loved her father, and she’d loved the way he’d been patient with her, had trusted her to make it right, but she’d never wanted to hunt again after that. Her father had taught her well that a gun’s only purpose was death. Lilli found no joy in pulling a trigger—ironic, then, that she’d chosen a career as a soldier.

She stirred and sat straight when Isaac spoke. Now, she swung around to face him. He was staring at the floor in front of him. “Isaac. Enough. Look at me.” She grabbed his beard and lifted his head. “You keep saying
I
. You really are an arrogant bastard, you know that?” He jerked his head, but she kept hold of him. “What about Show, and Len, and all the other guys you call brother? What about them? They’re lined up to fight with you. They all agreed to run the town with you. They agreed to the meth. They are there to fight Ellis with you. It’s their town, too. You’re not a monarch, Isaac. You’re the guy at the head of the table, but the rest of the chairs are filled, too. You are not alone.”

Isaac stared at her. Lilli stared back. She let go of his chin and traced the line of the scar running up his left cheek. That scar, from just below his nose all the way to his temple, was something she’d never asked about. She’d simply accepted it as a part of him. She loved it, in fact. “How’d you get this, love?”

Blinking at the change of subject, Isaac took her hand away from his cheek and kissed it. “Long story.”

She wouldn’t push. Not her style. “Okay. You think you’re ready to go in now?” She started to stand, but Isaac kept hold of her hand.

“My dad.”

Lilli sat back down. “What?”

“My dad did it. He was a big drinker. A drunk. And, you know—a nasty son of a bitch. I was…twenty-two. I’d gotten a lot bigger than him by then, and he hated it. I’d had my top rocker about a year, and I voted against him at the table. First time. Swung the vote against him. Didn’t do it to piss him off. Did it because he was wrong. That pissed him off worse, I guess.”

He cleared his throat and blew out a stilted laugh. Staring at his hands, he continued. “It’s weird. I’ve never told this story. Anybody else who’d care was already there. I’m sitting at the bar, drinking with the guys, starting to think about grabbing a girl. My old man’s at the other end of the bar, watching me. All of a sudden, he’s off the stool, charging me, yelling
fucking pussy pretty boy!
, and he’s on me, yanking me off my stool onto the floor—catches me off guard and off balance, and I just fall right down—and he’s got his switchblade. He just…slices me. Never manage to put up any kind of fight. Doesn’t hurt at first—shock, I guess—but blood’s gushing like somebody turned on a faucet in my face. The guys pull him away, and he shakes them off. He stands over me, says,
see how they like you now
.” Isaac laughed again. “Then he just went back to his Wild Turkey, left me lying there, holding my face together with my hands.”

Lilli was speechless. She rose up on her knees and kissed the scar. But Isaac wasn’t done. “Show took me to get stitched up. I was staying at the clubhouse then, and when I got back my old man was sitting at the bar reading the morning paper. He gave me a look, then went back to the sports page, like nothing. I grabbed his fucking bald head in my hands and slammed it into the bar until he was unconscious. Nobody stopped me. Fucker never touched me again.”

Because there was simply nothing to say, Lilli didn’t try. Instead, she pulled on Isaac’s legs, straightening them along the floor, and she opened his arms. She climbed onto his lap and held him close. After a moment where he was completely passive, as though he were not entirely in his body, his arms came around her, and he laid his head on her shoulder. They sat like that until dawn broke. Finally, Lilli got him to come back into the house. She took him to bed and held him while he slept.

~oOo~

Exhaustion had finally really claimed him, and Isaac slept hard that morning. Lilli lay with him as long as she could, but when she heard one of the horses—she thought it might be Gertie—raising a fuss, she slid out of bed and got dressed. Leaving a note on her pillow to let him know where she’d gone, she pulled on her boots and jacket and hurried to the barn.

It was Gertie yelling, but as soon as Lilli opened the doors and came in, she settled and dropped her head over the door, making a series of chuffing noises. Lilli went to her and rubbed her neck. She knew nothing about horses. They didn’t scare her, but she wasn’t comfortable not knowing things. She would have preferred to be out here with Isaac, so she could ask questions about what to do. When and how much to feed them. When to put them outside.
Where
to put them outside. The back door of the barn opened to a small enclosure which itself opened to a larger grassy area. Isaac had called it a paddock. She assumed that was the horse yard. But she didn’t like to make assumptions about thousand pound animals.