But I had never dreamed of this.
I wedged a hand between our bodies and shoved. “Get off!”
He did. He drew back all the way, freeing me to squirm out from under him. “Jill—” Daniel sank back into his corner of the couch, flung his head back and swore. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
I was breathing like I’d just run ten miles with Claire. Hot tears pricked my eyes. I opened my mouth. Then shut it.
Daniel’s eyes were closed. His breathing, unlike mine, was even.
Beer and vomit. I could still taste him on my lips, smell him on my clothes when I left him passed out on his couch.
CHAPTER 24
Showering the next morning was an exercise in self-torture. The water spit like buckshot onto my skin, which had bloomed overnight into an angry blotchy red. The tightness had constricted so that every movement felt like my skin was going to split open.
Inside hurt too, for reasons that had nothing to do with sunburn.
I stayed in the shower until the water started spraying out frozen needles, until it was hard to focus on anything else. In my closet I found my lightest, thinnest summer dress and hissed when I slipped it on, before hurrying outside.
Leaving Dad’s truck in the driveway last night instead of pulling into the garage had been a mistake, one I paid for by burning both my hand and my hip on the molten hot seat-belt buckle. I said something I really shouldn’t have, especially not while heading to church. The steering wheel felt sticky when I gripped it, almost like it had started to melt along with the rest of the truck.
And then I cried like such a little girl when the AC refused to turn on.
I hit the stupid sticky steering wheel with my palms until they hurt worse than the rest of me.
I was a two-year-old having a temper tantrum and I couldn’t stand the sight I caught of myself in the rearview mirror. I whacked it away and jerked into Reverse.
Down the driveway.
Onto the street.
Into the car pulling up to the curb.
I didn’t swear when I heard the crunch of metal. Not out loud. Out loud I was focused on one tiny word: “No. No no. No-no-no-no-no-no.”
I had never been in a car accident. Not even a fender bender. Dad had been teaching me defensive driving skills when other parents were trying to get their kids to ride a bike.
I’d hit a car.
My hands fumbled over the still lava-hot buckle as I hopped down from the truck and went to survey the damage and face the woman standing next to the vehicle I’d hit.
I heard myself saying the same asinine excuses that people told us when they brought their smashed cars in. What else could I say? I absolutely saw your car but I decided to back into it anyway? I think I gave her a card and I mentioned that I was a mechanic and could fix the—thankfully—minor damage, but I hadn’t yet gotten past the fact that I’d just zipped down my driveway and plowed right into the car parking in front of Daniel’s house.
I broke off midthought and stared.
The woman looked to be in her mid-to late-forties, slim and several inches shorter than me, with dark hair pulled back into a tight bun revealing a scar along her temple that disappeared into her hairline. The same eyes. The same coloring.
“You’re Daniel’s mom.”
I’d been picturing a different woman, hollow but imposing. Ugly in a way that fit the kind of mother she was. The way my mom should have looked but didn’t. Daniel’s mom was all wrong too. She was slight, with delicate features and skin that might have been beautiful underneath all the heavy makeup she wore. I thought of Daniel’s scars; Daniel who was big enough to avoid getting hit in the face, and the petite woman in front of me.
My insides cramped with the emotions pulling at me. I had noticed how stiffly she was moving, the bulky shape to her clothes, like she might be wearing a brace underneath. And all that heavy, concealing makeup.
But sharper than the almost overwhelming pity I felt for her was the cold knowledge that she hadn’t protected her son. The memories of scars, deep and old, the ones that stretched as he grew from a little boy to a man, bombarded me. Savage, vicious, relentless. How do you survive something like that? How do you survive being rejected over and over again by the person you tried to protect? Were still trying to protect?
I had to get away before I got back in my truck and flattened her car to the ground.
“You know Daniel?”
