“Yeah. Except he’s your baby, and you’re crazy about him.”
“I am.” After a few minutes of silent sipping, Jessie spoke again, her eyes wide on George’s. “You got any family?”
“No,” George said, then felt guilty enough to change her answer. “Well, kind of. I’m still close with my in-laws.”
“Yeah?” Jessie’s expression told her just how weird that sounded, and George didn’t bother to add that her husband had died and left her—left them—alone. With each other.
“I’m not very social, I suppose.”
“That probably explains how we’ve managed to not run into each other more often.” After a pause, Jessie went on. “I get it, though. All the fear and the crap I go through as a single mother. It’s hard, but I know one thing for sure: I’ve got a family. Forever, unless something goes wrong.” Her knuckles knocked on the hollow-sounding coffee table.
“God forbid.”
“Yeah.”
George nodded, looking away. “I want that too.”
“Wow, George, I guess we really do need to get you laid, then. ’Cause that’s got to be more fun than a turkey baster.”
* * *
A sound drew Clay’s eyes to the left, where what looked like a pile of dark bushes hid another house, smaller than Doctor Hadley’s. Voices, a door slamming, and he stepped deeper into the woods, his feet crunching on dry leaves and sticks. A vine or a root nearly tripped him in the process, but he wouldn’t look down, couldn’t, because there she was. Oh God, she was twenty feet away, fifteen, walking slowly and humming to herself in the middle of the dead-end road. His pulse went wild, working hard to drown out the night sounds.
From somewhere close by—maybe her yard—a small, dark shadow slithered out, its movements slightly off, and met her, wrapping itself around her legs; she cooed. The woman actually cooed, the sound high and sweet and almost as singsongy as her humming had been. She bent and grabbed the animal—a cat, he surmised, from the noises it made—and cuddled it close. They gave each other a head butt, and in the most unnatural reaction of all time, his dick hardened, just a little. The sensation was so unfamiliar he was tempted to reach down to check.
He wanted to step forward, to wrap himself around them both, or maybe to let himself be wrapped up in her, the way she’d enveloped that lucky little cat. Instead, he took a deep, painful breath and watched, eyes big and dry and incapable of blinking. If she glanced into the woods now, she’d see the dull shine of his eyeballs, fixed on her like his life depended on it. Like that creepy dude from The Lord of the Rings, obsessed with his Precious. Only Clay wasn’t doing it to have her, but rather to save her.
Or to save himself. It was all mixed-up inside.
She didn’t look his way. She turned to the house, walking and humming again, her hips as fluid as water, and he wanted to feel the coolness of her hands on his skin again, wanted to grab those hips and change the tide of their sway. Oh, he wanted to dive into her, to sink in, to lose himself in her pale, soft efficiency.
Oh, fuck. He stumbled back, stilled awkwardly with one hand on a trunk, a fuzzy vine prickling his palm. He wanted to take his hand away, but he couldn’t. She’d turned at the sound, and though her eyes were in shadow, the cat’s weren’t. They were two bright diamonds in the night, fixed right on him, pointing out his location like a beacon. His breath was fast and heavy in his ears, and for once, he was glad for the goddamned incessant drone of the insects.
The few seconds she searched the woods were unbearably long, but finally she turned to slip through the open gate—even that she didn’t fucking close—up the sweet, overgrown flagstones of her walkway, then onto her porch and through the front door, without even a hint of the jingle of keys. He stood unmoving as she made her way down the hall to the back room. She didn’t lock the front door behind her and still hadn’t done so by the time he watched her turn off lights and disappear up the big staircase.
Guiltily, he took in the upstairs lights switching on, her shadow moving through an interior door, another light on, in the front of the house—the bathroom, wide open, like the rest of the place. He stared, hating himself, as she pulled off her skirt, too low for him to see, which was both a disappointment and a relief. She reached for the bottom hem of her shirt and paused, turned her head, and took two steps to close a set of wooden shutters, which masked the lower half of the window entirely and, therefore, his view.
Good, he thought with a sigh. Good, she’d cut him loose, absolved him of guilt by removing the element of choice, which was good, because he couldn’t have looked away, even if he’d wanted to. Which he hadn’t. No, he’d wanted to—
Something bumped his leg, and he almost shouted with surprise until he saw what it was: the cat. The darned thing was back outside. It had come to find him, to chase him off, or… No, not chase him, apparently, because it rubbed him in the same way it had rubbed her. Pushy figure eights around his legs, designed to influence. He bent and picked the creature up, pulling it into his chest the way she’d done just minutes before.
With a jolt of surprise, he felt the odd space where one of the animal’s legs was missing. It didn’t seem too hampered by the shortage as it clawed its way up to his face, embracing him with its one remaining front paw, and sniffed his mouth with its tiny, cold, wet nose.
Awkwardly, Clay stood for long minutes, holding this purring creature, waiting to see what it wanted. After a while, it settled deeper into his arms, with apparently no intention of taking off. With a sigh and a look around, Clay made his way to what appeared to be a downed log and sat, leaning against a tree, letting the animal’s warmth and engine-like rumble cover up the buzzing in his brain.
It was strangely comfortable, despite the heat and humidity and the prick of mosquitoes eating at his skin. Possibly because, for once, he didn’t feel quite so alone.
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8
Clay awoke the next day a hot, shivering mess on the motel room floor.
Immediately, he remembered what he’d done the night before: stalking Dr. Hadley. Shame weighted his gut, deep and heavy. Man, he was a creepy fucker, watching a woman in her home like that, no matter how good his excuses.
The problem was that he’d liked feeling useful. You weren’t supposed to like a stakeout. You were supposed to be miserable and uncomfortable, not content, the way he’d been—not relieved to have a purpose beyond waiting around for a court date that was still months off.
And, fuck, he was a sick bastard, because he wanted to do it all over again. He wanted to be out there, watching over her. Keeping her safe in a way that he knew was wrong, wrong, wrong.
