Next to Me (23 page)

“Well, let’s see…what time is it now?”

“It’s 12:30 am,” Landon tells me.”

“Aha, but that’s the funny part. It’s not! See, it’s 12:30 am here, but my body thinks it’s 6:30 pm yesterday. So, really, I guess I did start drinking a little early for me.” Landon lets go of my drink and I take a long sip.

“Everyone’s family is jacked up, Jenna,” he says.

“Jacked up is putting it lightly. But what would you know, Mr. All-American, mom stays home and bakes apple pies?” Landon’s police officer of the year father and picture perfect mother could hardly have anything that resembled a jacked up family. I rest my chin in the palm of my hand and wait for Landon to give me some watered down story about what he thinks is jacked up about his family.

“Because I lied to you.”

“Yay! More lies!” I raise my hands like I’m cheering with pom-poms and flop them onto the bar. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

“You know what…you
are
drunk and I don’t want to tell you when you’re like this. I honestly am not sure if you’re going to remember it or not.” I can see Landon almost physically close himself up. I’ve never seen him do that.

I put my drink down and do my best to give him my attention. He’s right…I’m pretty buzzed right now, but not so much so that I can’t have a conversation with him. I’m just super honest when I’ve had a few drinks in me. So, this might be an interesting conversation, but a conversation nonetheless.

“No, I want to know. What was the lie?” I ask with all the seriousness I can gather.

Landon hesitates, not totally sure he wants to do this, but I take his hand

in mine and look into his eyes so he knows that I’m really here.

“Well…my dad
is
a cop and my mom
did
stay home. What I didn’t tell you was that my mom stayed home because she had to. She wasn’t allowed to work. My dad controlled everything she did. Where she went. What she wore. What she ate and drank. When she woke up and went to sleep. How much money she spent, if he even let her spend any. And…” Landon pauses, deciding how straight forward to be about what he’s about to say. “If she messed up…he beat the shit out of her.”

“Oh, my God, Landon, that’s awful. I’m so sorry.” I grab his hand and squeeze it with both of mine.

“Don’t be sorry. It was my life. All I knew. When I got to be 11 or 12, the day after a beating, I would pretend to go to school. I’d walk toward the bus stop but then I’d hide behind Mrs. McGrew’s trees until I saw my dad leave for work. Then I’d go home and take care of my mom. Some days she couldn’t walk. I’m sure he at least cracked her ribs on more than one occasion.” He takes a long drink of his Jack and Coke. I wish I knew what to say. My dad was a selfish liar, but he would never have physically hurt my mom.

“I had so many tardies and absences that eventually the school called my dad. That’s when he beat the shit out of me, and how I got this scar.” He points to the scar above his right eye that I noticed the night of our first date. “He came at me and I was going to fight back. I wasn’t going to cower on the floor like some frail lamb. He gave me one good right hook and I went spinning down, hitting my face on the corner of the coffee table. Mom took me to the doctor to get stitches. She was good at lying about her injuries, so she knew just what to tell them. After that, Mom wouldn’t let me stay home to help her.”

“Did she ever call the police?” I ask. It seems obvious to me, but I’ve never been in that situation before.

“Once, when I was 13. Mom got her worst beating that night for

embarrassing Dad in front of his cop buddies. But, as he said, it was her fault in the first place for making chicken for dinner when what he really wanted was steak.”

“What about the dance studio, and your sister?” I ask.

“Mom used to own a dance studio. My dad convinced her to give it up, but she really did teach me how to dance. My sister…” he sighs. “My sister is married to a dickhead just like my father, and her daughters will probably do the same. So, yeah…”

Landon’s eyes are dark and sad and all I want to do is make that go away. I cup his face with my hand and try to comfort him somehow.

“I don’t need your pity, Jenna. I didn’t tell you that so you would feel sorry for me or so you would think that your family life was great by comparison. I told you so you would know that I understand in some way about feeling like your life was a lie.” He takes the last gulp of his drink and puts the glass back on the bar with a little more force than he has before.

“I don’t pity you, Landon. I love you, and hearing that you had to go through something like that is just about the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” I say to him. “But…I bet your mom is really proud of the man you’ve become.”

“That’s the other thing. What I told you about delivering the letters for my buddies who died was true. Except…I found all of their families without any trouble. It was my family that was the problem. Well, my mom. I got back into town after I had been discharged and went to see my mom. Dad retired not long before I came back and was home, which I wasn’t expecting. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about me or what I had survived. I asked where mom was and he told me he didn’t know. A year prior, he came home from work and she was gone. I hadn’t heard from her in a while, but that wasn’t unusual. It takes months to get written letters to deployed troops, and internet service is spotty, if anything.

“I went to her best friend’s house and asked her where Mom was, but she wouldn’t tell me. All she would say is that my mom loved me and wanted the best for me and that Mom made her promise she wouldn’t tell me where she went. Mom always hated that Amy and I grew up seeing what we did, and she wanted better for us. I went to Amy to try and help her, but she wouldn’t leave. I told her how Mom got up the courage to go and she could too, but it didn’t matter. She’s stuck and he’s beat her down so much that she doesn’t have the will to even try. I’ve spent the last six years looking for my mother. The more jobs I got, the more resources I had to expand my search for her. My dad died last year and all I’ve wanted is to find her so she can know she doesn’t have to hide anymore.”

“I’m so sorry, Landon. I didn’t know…”

“You knew what I wanted you to know. We’re not all that different.” Landon moves my unfinished drink away from me to the back of the bar and motions to the bartender that we’re done. He brings the bill and I sign it without looking. I don’t care how much we just spent. Dellinger has been free with his money thus far, there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t buy me a few glasses of liquid courage.

Landon steadies me as I stand and we walk slowly to the elevator and back up to our room. I can’t walk too fast as the room begins to spin when I do. I’m coming down from my inebriated state and am transitioning into drinker’s remorse, regretting having drunk so much.

“Crap! I left my room key on the nightstand when we laid down. I didn’t think to grab it when I came after you. Where’s yours?” Landon asks when he doesn’t find his room key on him.

“It’s in my back pocket,” I tell him. My body is pressed face-first to the wall. “You’ll have to get it.”

“Well, the night’s not a complete loss. At least I get to grab your ass,” he laughs.

“Such a gentleman,” I tease.

The door opens and Landon helps me inside. I flip the switch on the wall that controls several lights in the room. As soon as the room is illuminated,

the picture of what happened in here while we were gone becomes clear.

Our room has been ransacked.

“What the hell?” Landon exclaims.

“So I’m guessing this isn’t the result of you beating the shit out of my dad,” I say with a little bit of disappointment.

“Uh, no.”

I shake my head, sure of why our room has been completely turned over. “When did my father leave?”

“We shared a few colorful words after you left, and then I kicked him out when I came to find you,” he tells me. “You think your dad did this? Why?”

“Yes,” I tell him with absolute certainty. The fog seems to be clearing from my head. Nothing like a dose of reality to really kill the buzz you’re coming out of. “Because he didn’t believe me when I told him I didn’t bring the V Nickel with me. And he’d be right.”

I pull my purse off my body and sit on the uncovered bed with it. I pull out a small, black velvet sack from my bag, open it, and turn it over. Onto the bed falls the last of five 1913 V Nickels Senator Dellinger has been searching for over the last, at least, ten years. I’ve had it in my possession since I left DC.

“This is worth three million dollars. Wow.” Landon picks up the coin and examines it.

“Yep. They weren’t supposed to put Liberty’s head on it. It was supposed to be the Indian’s head. They made five of them when the mistake was discovered and printing halted.” I stand up and go into the bathroom to get some headache medicine from my toiletry bag.

“Are you ok, Jenna?” Landon calls to me.

“I’m good. Just needed something for my headache,” I tell him when I’m back at the bed. I think about telling him that I’m going to change my flight in the morning, but decide that I won’t tell him at all. I’ll need to put some serious distance between us while I settle exactly what I’m going to do. I need to figure out when I’m going to leave Chicago and where I’m going to go and I won’t be able to do that with Landon near me.

“We’ve got a lot to sort out tomorrow. Let’s get some sleep and approach it when both our heads are clearer.” Landon takes me in his arms and kisses the top of my head. “We’ll figure this out, Jenna. I promise.”

We settle into bed and I find my happy place in Landon’s arms, thinking about how lucky I would be to have him by my side forever. He managed to grow up in an abusive home and break the cycle of violence to become the opposite of everything his father was. He’s kind and caring and generous. He’s done nothing but protect me and promise to never leave me. I take comfort in knowing I’ll be protecting him, Mercy, Spring, and the others, when I leave Chicago. If I’m not near them, Dellinger won’t be able to use them as leverage to make me do his dirty work. I may have the same skills as my father, but I spent the evening discovering that I’m nothing like him. And that makes me strangely sad.

Chapter 14

Landon pulls the curtains open and even with my eyes closed the light shining in is so bright it hurts.

“Oh, my God... did we wake up on the sun?” I whine as I roll over and pull the sheets over my head. I slept hard, which was a combination of jet lag and gin and tonic. I wish I had drunk enough to forget about what happened last night, but I didn’t. I remember everything from opening the door and seeing my father, alive, to coming back to our trashed room after attempting to drown my sorrows.

“Well, the sun is pretty bright at 11:00 am,” Landon says by way of explaining the blazing light coming in through the balcony windows. He sits by me on my side of the bed and brushes the hair out of my face. His fingers trail my jawline until his hand comes around and cups my face as he kisses my forehead. “It’s time to get up, beautiful.”

“I smell coffee,” I whisper, still not able to use my full voice. I stretch and sit myself up in the bed, rubbing my eyes while they get fully adjusted to the light.

“Breakfast! I ordered eggs benedict and French toast, although I’m pretty sure they just call it toast here.” Landon’s light laugh brings a smile to my face and for just the tiniest of moments this feels like something other than it is. It feels like Landon and me being together in the most permanent sense of the word. It feels like a honeymoon in Paris. It feels like forever.

“Thank you. That was very sweet of you.” I pull myself out of bed and run through my morning routine of brushing my teeth and washing my face before I eat. After that, Landon and I enjoy a truly marvelous breakfast in almost complete silence.

This morning, with my headache dissipating and the growl in my stomach being satisfied, my mind is reviewing the events of last night. There’s so much to think about. Aside from deciding when or if I’ll tell Landon that I’m going to change my flight home to today, I’m battling this gnawing feeling that there’s more to what my father told me. His wording, his phrasing, was off. Clearly I don’t know my father like I thought I did, but I still know him well enough and am confident he’s hiding something.

“What it is?” Landon asks after about 30 minutes of silence and what I’m sure was me making odd
I’m in thought
faces. I’ve been replaying everything Dad said last night. Analyzing the tone, the verbage, even the delivery. I don’t think sending me here is all about Dellinger playing a sadistic trick on me.

“What he said last night…the way he said it. Something just isn’t sitting well with me,” I tell him.

“Of course it’s not sitting well with you, Jenna. Your father burst every bubble you had of him last night. Nothing about what he said should be ok with you,” Landon says. He takes another sip of his coffee and a bite of his French toast. It’s hard to avoid the look of elation with each bite. It’s the most heavenly French toast either of us has ever had. It reminds me of the morning Landon was waiting for me outside my apartment and I shared my croissants with him.