Violet Eyes (7 page)

The morning air was crisp. It was forgiving. But it also led her to the place she’d known she would go—the place where sacrifice was made. In this particular case, the sacrifice would not be bloody.

But it would hurt.

Rachel turned the iPod to a Ke$ha mix and pressed the buds into her ears. Pain was always easier to stomach with dance music. There was going to be a lot of pain for a while—she hadn’t been on “the path” in years. But the softness of her belly and the thickness she saw in her thighs said that if she was going to start a new life here…well…it was time to improve the quality of her life. And that meant improving her.

She took a look down the path and steeled herself with a deep breath. And then Rachel began to jog. It had been a long time since she’d worked out, but the thirties were creeping up on her and she couldn’t rely on good genetics anymore. She was gaining weight. From now on, before work, before Eric got up for school, she was coming down here to what everyone seemed to just call Swamp Park. There was a path just three blocks from their house that started near a baseball diamond and wound into the shaded cypress branches of the edge of the Everglades. Rachel could feel the temperature change as she entered the shadows of the thick green forest. It had been crisp enough if the 6 a.m. morning air, just barely hinting at the heat of the day to come. But as soon as she entered the heavy shadows of the dirt path the temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees.

That only played in her favor though, as sweat broke out quickly beneath her arms and under the hair on her neck, quickly dripping in a cold stream down her back. Ke$ha was taunting “D-I-N-A-S-A, U R a Dinosaur” in her ear as she turned down a curve in the path fifteen minutes into her jog and Rachel nodded in time to the beat. “Yeah, I am,” she agreed, and forced her calves to keep pumping.

She’d mapped the route out on her computer; the path ran through a short jetty of Everglade swamp, but then crossed a bridge, angled back and came out a couple blocks away from her house in another open area park near the grade school. It tallied up to a solid two-mile run, and since it had been a long time since she’d run from more than the kitchen to the bathroom, she suspected that two miles would be a solid goal for quite a while. She might be walking home some of it, actually.

Even this early in the morning, the air was pregnant with the humidity of May, but as soon as she entered the dark shadows of the path, Rachel shivered. She ran now to warm up. The path was rough with tiny branches and broken leaves beneath her feet, but she forced herself to keep moving, slapping the balls of her feet again and again on the dark, uneven path. The sun filtered through the trees above her, giving the whole run a strange half-lit feel.

The deeper she got into the rich foliage of the Everglades, the more remote she felt. In her head, Rachel knew she was only a few blocks from home, but the landscape suggested otherwise. She felt disconnected, far away. And with the chill of the atmosphere, she was even able to push herself to run faster, almost afraid that she was moving farther away from home, not on a loop that led her back to very close to the place where she’d begun.

Soon she settled into a rhythm of foot, breath, foot…and the morning felt clean and fresh and new as she jogged through its mist, still-forming amid the trees around her.

And then she felt something catch on her toe.

The world suddenly changed from speckles of green and sun to a splash of brown leaves and dirt. The path slapped her in the face. She’d fallen and taken a mouthful of dirt in the same breath. Rachel pushed herself up on her hands and spit. She’d eaten a lot of things she didn’t want to in her short life, from cock to rhubarb to asparagus, but dirt wasn’t going to be one of them.

Her ankle yelled out a protest that said “I’m hurt” and she rolled to her side, crying out at the unexpected pain. She wasn’t going to be jogging, or even walking back to the house today.

Rachel started to reach for her pocket and realized in her trepidation about her first morning run, she’d forgotten her phone.
Stupid!

Sure, she hadn’t planned on catching her ankle on cypress roots and taking a spill in the middle of alligator land, that was for sure. But she had no business ever leaving the house without having her phone in hand so Eric could reach her if need be. Yet another checkmark against her single mother skills.

Rachel moved and instantly a pain shot up her leg.

Crap
.

She looked down the path in both directions. While this was obviously a used trail, she had no idea how used. She’d not come down this way before. How long would it take for someone to find her if she couldn’t get up and hobble back?

“You are a fuckin’ embarrassment,” she hissed, as she tried to stand. She didn’t complete the act. Instead, the pain shot like a knife through her ankle and calf, and she fell back to the dirt and mulch path. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “You’re going to have to do better than that!”

She didn’t sound convinced by her own scold. Her voice just sounded hurt. Rachel closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she straightened her leg and pushed herself to a sitting position. “This is supposed to be exercise,” she said. “I have to get home to Eric. Bad ankle or no bad ankle!”

But when she tried to push herself up again, she only fell back with a shriek.

“What am I going to do?” she moaned aloud.

“Perhaps you’ll get up and walk again?” a voice answered from behind her.

Rachel jumped. And then groaned at the resulting pain. “Who…”

“Just your friendly neighborhood forestry worker,” the voice returned.

And then a face with two strong blue eyes leaned into her field of view and along with the face, a hand. He reached out, and her fingers were quickly encircled in a strong, gentle grip. “Hello,” he said, holding her hand. “My name’s Terry Brackson. I work here—I’m a forestry ranger for the state. It looks like you’ve got a problem.”

“Yeah,” Rachel said, with a sour snarl. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

He laughed. As he did, she could see the black spots of his beard already poking back through his chin at the earliest point of the morning. Either he got up early, or his beard grew fast!

She took his hand and clenched her teeth, knowing it was going to hurt when he pulled. But he supported her carefully, deftly slipping an arm around her back as he pulled her from the dirt. His hand was broad and strong on her lower back; he almost seemed to lift her one-handed.

But then she automatically moved to put her foot back on the ground. And the pain fired instantly up her ankle to gouge her brain.

“Shit!” she complained, and grabbed on to the forester tighter. “Sorry,” she added.

He laughed. “Hug away,” he said. “Better you than a tree in that regard!”

She smiled, despite the embarrassment. “Well, I’m glad my hugs are better than wood, but I still can’t believe I did this. Thank you so much for picking me up. Literally.”

“You know, the girls never usually say that to me,” he answered. She could see a faint twinkle of humor in his eyes.

“Do you pick a lot of girls up off the jogging path?”

“Well, it’s really more of a walking path,” he said. “Maybe that’s where the problem arose…”

“There were no signs saying
Walk, Don’t Run
,” Rachel pointed out, gasping in pain between words.

“Well, it’s a dirt path through the Everglades with lots of roots and…”

“So you’re…suggesting…” she squeaked in sudden pain “…that I should have had common sense?”

“I never said it was common,” he answered.

“But you think I have no sense?”

At that moment they broke out into the clearing, and Terry pointed to a white pickup truck instead of answering her. “That’s mine,” he said. “I’ll drive you to the hospital if you want.”

Rachel frowned. “I don’t think it’s broken or anything…and I haven’t been in Passanattee long enough for insurance to kick in so…”

Terry looked down at her foot and nodded. “Understood,” he said. “You just moved here? From where?”

“Upstate,” she said. “I wanted to get as far away from my ex as possible and still live in Florida.”

“Well, there still are the Keys,” he said. “But I guess you can’t go
too
much farther.”

He opened the door to his pickup, and slipped two hands under her armpits. “I’m going to lift you up. Don’t try to move that foot.”

“No,” she protested. “I can help…”

He ignored whatever she was about to say and in one fluid motion, she was sitting in the cab. She gasped in a twinge of pain, but then relaxed into the seat.

Terry closed the door and then hopped into the cab on the other side. “I can take you home,” he said. “I have some lineament and sports bandages at my house. If you’re not going to go to the doc for this, I want to wrap that for you before I take you home.”

Rachel opened her mouth to protest, but was stopped by his hand.

“This is not open for debate,” he said. “You don’t leave my care until I’ve made sure you’ve got that ankle taken care of.”

“You’re very demanding,” she complained.

He smiled, and pointed to the door. “You’re welcome to walk home?”

“Okay, okay,” she laughed.

Terry pulled out onto Route 7 and headed towards town. Just before they hit the main drag, he pulled off into a subdivision not far from her own. And just a couple blocks in, he pulled into the carport of a small, light blue frame house. As he killed the engine, he apologized. “It ain’t much, but it has a roof, and bandages.”

He helped her out of the cab and into the house, seating her on an old brown couch in a small living room.

“Wait here,” he asked and disappeared down a dark hallway. She could hear drawers opening and closing, and then he was back, kneeling down at her feet. She gritted her teeth as he took her foot in his hands and carefully undid the laces of her shoe. Not because it hurt, but because she hated someone else touching her feet. And she hated relying on anyone, especially a stranger, to help her. Although, if a guy was going to touch her feet, she could do worse than Terry Brackson, she considered. His shoulders looked broad and strong as he crouched on one knee before her. His hands were cool as he slipped off her shoe, and gently fingered the red lump that was her ankle. It had already swollen to twice its normal size.

“Can you move your toes?”

She did.

“How about your whole foot?”

“Ow,” she complained, but she did.

He nodded. “I’m not a doctor, but I’ve played one in the forest. And I think you’re going to be all right. A little liniment and a couple days off this foot on the couch at home and…”

“I can’t skip work!” she said. “I just started there, they’ll can me!”

“Well, you aren’t going to be driving this week,” he said. “And you sure aren’t going to be walking much, unless you want to mess this up some more.”

She shook her head. “No, but I have to go. And I need to get home first. My son is probably up by now, and wondering where I am.”

He shook his head. “You’re not going anywhere until I apply Terry Brackson’s patented miracle cure for jolted joints and aching ankles. This will just take a minute.”

Terry squeezed a tube and a menthol smell filled the air. Then a cool splash enveloped the heat of her ankle, and he was massaging in the pain-killing ointment.

“Don’t be surprised if people ask you about your new perfume today,” he warned.

“Yeah, right,” she said. “I’ll just send them your way.”

Terry stretched out an almond-colored elastic bandage, and then began to wrap the ankle. The tightness of the hold felt good against the ache. When he was done, he took the ointment back to the bathroom, and she heard the faucet running as he washed his hands.

“All right, let’s get you home,” he said when he returned. He helped her off the couch and like a three-legged race contestant, they hobbled back out of his small house to the truck. Five minutes later, they were in her driveway.

“If you want, I can hang around for a little while and give you a ride to work,” he offered.

Rachel hesitated. “That would be amazing of you. But don’t you have to get back to work yourself?”

“I figure… I’m just helping one of our park users to get out of the Everglades safely,” he said. He smiled, and Rachel melted at the warmth in his face. His eyes were filled with a kindness she hadn’t seen in a man in…she didn’t know how long.

“It will take me twenty minutes or so to get ready and to get Eric off to school,” she said.

“Take thirty,” he said. “Especially if you have a coffee maker.”

She laughed. “I can help there.”

Eric opened the door before they reached it. Feral was barking fast and furious somewhere inside. His eyes widened when he saw Terry helping her walk.

“What happened, Mom?” he asked.

“I’m a klutz,” she answered, and pulled the screen door open to allow them to step inside. After introducing Eric and Terry, she nodded towards the hallway. “I’m going to go clean up a little and change. If you could just get me to the wall…”

“I can help?” Terry offered. But she declined.

“I can do this. The wrap is helping a lot. If I can just lean on that wall…I’ll be able to manage.”

She directed Eric to get ready for school, and pointed Terry towards the coffee maker in the kitchen, and told him what cabinet to find the coffee in. Then she hobbled back to the bedroom, blushing with both exertion and embarrassment. Nice way to start her new life. Although, as she stripped off her T-shirt and sponged herself fresh with a damp washcloth, she had to admit the accident had yielded benefits. Terry had totally gone beyond the call to help her; she had to think he was interested in her beyond just “doing his duty” to help someone who’d fallen in the parkland he managed. And she definitely wanted to see him again…preferably when she could walk on her own two feet. She found that she was acutely aware that she was standing in her bathroom in her bra while Terry was just a few yards away, probably in her kitchen.

The thought made her feel warm.

“All right, you horny hussy,” she whispered to her reflection. “Just get your shit together, and worry about shacking up later.”