The Space Between (The Book of Phoenix) (18 page)

“Relax,” Leni signed. “I put it away as soon as you left. I didn’t want to be tempted to read ahead.” Her eyes widened. “You think it was the book they were looking for? They kept talking about the brand, too.”

My brows lifted. “The brand?”

She tapped her finger on her bracelets that hung together like a band, hiding the flame on her arm. Did she ever take them off?

“These?” she asked.

“But they were searching our heads and necks.”

“One said, ‘It’s always on the torso.’ He thought maybe we weren’t the ones they were looking for.”

“Then maybe we’re not. Maybe it’s a coincidence.”

We stared at each other for a moment, neither of us really believing it.

Then Leni nodded and put on her fake grin. “Yeah. We’re probably just being paranoid, with everything going on. So you going to tell me your long story or what?”

Before taking my seat again, I stepped inside to my bag and fished out my half-full bottle of whiskey. This could be a long night, and I needed something to take the edge off. I easily found two cups in the kitchenette, brought it all outside and set them on the table between us. Leni shook her head, but I poured her some anyway in case she changed her mind, which could be very likely. I picked up my own glass and threw the liquid to the back of my throat.

“So, I wasn’t always deaf,” I began, and Leni nodded because I’d told her this already. “When I was fourteen, I had an awesome life. I was the lead singer and guitarist in a band, and we were pretty damn good. Everyone thought we were so cool, coming to our gigs at local bars and everything. School was no problem for me—was easy, even the advanced classes—and teachers loved me. Life was good. Perfect. Then there was the accident, and I woke up from a coma with no family and no hearing.”

Leni interrupted me. “Wait—you can sing?”

I gave her a sad smile. “I used to.”

The smile she returned was as sad as mine. “It must be horrible to lose that.”

“You have no idea.” Hell if I didn’t miss singing and music more than anything else, even more than hearing girls scream my name at the shows. Except for one girl . . . I scrubbed my hand over my face, then continued. “So when I finally got to go to school—I was held back a year because I’d missed so much—I wasn’t so cool anymore. The rumor mill kicked up and for some, I was the poor orphan who lost his family, and others blamed me. Nobody knew how to act around me. My ex-band mates, my best friends, became the biggest dicks, and I went from being the cool kid to being a loner and the weird deaf guy. My home life sucked, and kids picked on me all the time. I tried to fight back, but I’d always been a music geek, not an athlete. I got my ass kicked I don’t know how many times.”

“Why didn’t you just run from them?”

I gave her a look. “I. Don’t. Run. But I did get tired of the bruises and the nosebleeds, and my grandparents calling the bullies’ parents and embarrassing me even more. Their parents never did a damn thing except fuel the fire. So I decided to do something about it.” I took another swallow of whiskey before continuing. “I began lifting weights, bulking up and learning how to fight. I got pretty good at it, to the point where parents were now calling my house to whine about how I’d broken their kid’s arm or nose. So my grandparents took me on a Sunday drive in the country, where we conveniently ended up at the state’s deaf school. My grandparents said being around people like me would help, but they were trying to get rid of me, the reminder of all they’d lost. They dropped me off and never came back.”

I poured more of the amber liquid into my cup and took another drink. “I didn’t belong there, either. I’d been taught Signed English after losing my hearing, which had been hard enough. The school wanted me to learn ASL, but I refused. The kids and teachers never did accept me.”

“I thought the deaf community was close-knit and very accepting, though.”

“Close-knit, yes. Accepting, no. Not when you don’t want to be like them. Hell, I was 17 by then, pissed off at life and the world because I’d lost everything. But most of them didn’t see deafness as a loss because they’d never had hearing to begin with. They didn’t understand me, and I didn’t want to understand them. I just wanted out of there. As soon as I could leave on my own, I did. Street fighting—kind of like that movie Fight Club?—was how I supported myself for a while, then I got involved with MMA and the UFC.”

Leni looked at me for a long moment, and I was glad to see no pity in her eyes. Empathy maybe, but not pathetic pity. She reached for her cup and took a swig, then kindly moved the conversation along without harping on the painful parts. This. This was what I liked about her. This was what made her different than other girls who’d be all teary and “poor baby this and poor baby that.” She was so laid back, accepting and non-judgmental. This was why I told her when I’d never told anyone the full story.

“Do you still fight?”

I shook my head. “The further I went in the UFC, the harder the poundings and the less fun it was. And there’s no purpose except for bragging rights. Not the same as defending yourself or someone else who can’t.” I shrugged. “Something else with a lot better money and much less pain came along, so I took it.”

“Modeling?” she asked.

I peered at her knowing smile. “How’d you find out?”

“I saw an ad in a French magazine on the plane the same day I first met you.”

“Must have been an old magazine. I haven’t modeled in over a year.”

“And it happened to be in the hands of the lady sitting next to me. Isn’t that a . . . coincidence?” She rolled her eyes as she signed the word. “So what have you been doing for the last year?”

“When I had enough money put aside, I began the search for my mother.”

“But . . . I thought your mother died?” She lifted her eyebrows with the question.

I tried not to cringe and fought the urge to change the subject as I normally would do. Leni was right—we needed to get the truth out there. “My adopted mother and father died in the accident. That’s why it was so easy for her parents to blame me and then forget I ever existed. I don’t think they ever truly accepted me as one of their own. Especially my grandfather.”

She reached out and placed a hand over mine.

“I’m sorry, Jeric,” she mouthed, and she had no idea what that meant to me. It wasn’t the pitiful, poor-baby kind of look she gave me or an insincere touch to get my attention. She was genuinely sorry I was the toilet life shit in. Nobody had ever given a damn about me before. Not like this.

I about drowned in the sea of her eyes again, but then she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and now all I could think about was kissing her. I wanted to suck on that lip myself. Know what she tasted like, every bit of her.

Her hand retreated to her lap. “Your birth mother?”

I told her about how my grandmother had kept in touch with me as long as her husband didn’t find out she was aiding and abetting the delinquent who had killed his daughter. I’d thought at first leaving me at the deaf school had been her idea, but then she’d sent me a birthday card and another at Christmas, each of them containing a little cash. Not much, but every bit helped. When I got out of the deaf school, she wouldn’t let me come see her, but she’d give me little hints about the adoption. Maybe she thought if I went looking for my birth mother, I’d leave them alone.

Her little clues had planted a seed that grew into an obsession. I honestly didn’t understand why I was so determined to find my biological mother. She gave me up. Why would I possibly want to know her? But something inside me told me I needed to do this, so I did. I went up to New England, to California and Louisiana, even to Alaska, and I was about to give in and come here, had even posted about it on Facebook for the few people who cared. Then I got an email advertising trips to Italy, and I remembered Grams once mentioning something about the Italian countryside. And I
knew
I had to go.

I paused to take another drink while thinking about how to explain to Leni this intense pull I’d been feeling all of this time without sounding like a damn lunatic who needed to be locked up. A sudden realization caught my breath and nearly choked me.
Oh, shit.
The draw hadn’t been to my mother after all. I hadn’t been “feeling” her only to reach dead end after dead end. I’d thought my gut had failed me, but it hadn’t. All this time, it had been leading me to Leni.

And that was all sorts of fucked up.

Chapter 14

  THUNK . . . THUNK . . . THUNK . . .

The sound of wood chopping greeted me as I opened my eyes to a gray light filtering through the blue and green tie-dyed curtains of my camper’s bedroom. My groggy mind refused to clear as the thud, long pause, thud, long pause, thud, played in the background, and my heart felt thick and heavy in my chest. My life had completely changed yesterday. Well, it had started before then, of course, but yesterday it really spun topsy-turvy and flipped over a few times, landing upside-down.

I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Everything I’d ever known and understood had been destroyed, and new ideas, thoughts, and beliefs took their places. I would have never brought a guy I’d only known a couple of days to the isolated camper with me in that past life, but here he was, outside chopping wood. I hadn’t been able to watch him go when he left the Denny’s yesterday morning, feeling what Jacey had when Micah had left her after their trip to the lumberyard. Like a piece of me had gone with him. I’d chased after him, and as bad as it sounds, had been secretly glad when I saw his car going up in smoke. Jeric and I had a connection that went deeper than I could possibly understand.

And his story . . . my heart had broken for him several times last night as he told it, though I tried not to let him see. I’d wanted to know more, especially about the accident, but I could tell he’d been avoiding the details for a reason. He’d had a hard enough time telling me as much as he did, which I had a feeling he’d never shared before—nobody knew the real Jeric Winters except for me. The image he projected wasn’t a front. He was the real deal, every bit of it justified.

I wanted to tell him everything would be okay now, but really, we were both worse off than ever. Still, it had taken nearly every ounce of control I had to keep from crawling into his lap and wrapping my arms around him.

He must have sensed my desire right before I asked him about his birth mother. He’d paused, and I was scared he was going to clam up completely, maybe even leave, so I had prodded him to go on. He didn’t have much to say about her, though, explaining he only wanted to know who she was. I had a feeling he’d been looking for her acceptance after his adopted family had rejected him so harshly. Maybe that’s what he needed to accept himself and to allow other people into his life. Like, perhaps, a girlfriend.

I chuckled darkly at myself. I shouldn’t have been thinking about such a thing. There were too many other problems to worry about. Besides, although I felt like I did about him—more than I should have—I knew better about his type. Trying to be the one who could change the bad boy was futile. My brain knew this, but my heart and body wanted to ignore it. Especially when I sat up and peeked out the window to find his god-like body down by the lakeshore, clad in only black workout pants hanging low on his hips and white running shoes. Even my mind faltered then, going to one fun but naughty place. His back muscles rippled and his biceps bulged as he swung the ax down.

I needed a cold shower.

No, I needed music. I needed to dance, to work this tension off before we continued our quest for answers. We had lots more of the journal to read, and, of course, I still had to tell him my story. It was pretty boring compared to his . . . at least, up until three days ago. I still hadn’t told him about Uncle Theo and the phone calls with my parents. My so-called “parents” . . .

Music. I needed music. Loud enough to drown out the phone conversations trying to replay in my mind.

I jumped up from the bed, took the one step to the bathroom to pee, then the two steps to the living area where the iPod docking station was. I selected my favorite dance playlist and turned the volume up. My body responded immediately.

The music took control, and I moved to it in the tiny space, dancing on the futon mattress up front where Jeric had slept, spinning in the kitchenette, using the table as a prop. My muscles loosened. My mind went blank. My soul lost itself in the music and the movement. This was exactly the release I needed. Jeric ran to relieve stress; I danced. The space wasn’t big enough, though. After a luscious move with my legs and hips I’d used often in the club, I did a half-pirouette to the door to find more space outside.