Page 51 of She Autumn Be Mine

Mine started a half second later. Harper. Willow. A number I didn’t know. Another.

Jake and I glanced across the cabin. He answered. I heard Jamie’s voice come through, shouting.

“Jake. Turn on Channel five. Right now.”

The old TV took a few seconds to wake up, and only ever got two channels out here in the country. It felt like a year.

When he tuned it, the reporter out of Lewistown said “Allegations surfaced tonight about a decorated Navy SEAL from Forest Grove.” Behind her, on the screen, in a graphic box, was a photograph of my husband—younger, leaner, showing a courthouse in the background, his face half-turned from the camera—under a headline in tall red letters:

LOCAL ‘HERO’? SEAL’S VIOLENT PAST. KNIFE FIGHT RECORDS LEAKED

I didn’t hear the rest over the roar in my ears. Jake stared intently at the screen, jaw gone to granite, phone still open in his hand with his sister’s voice still coming out of it. I zeroed in on the scar along his jaw hidden beneath a beard—the one I’d touched once, the one he’d promised me someday to tell me about. The scar that made him perfectly imperfect, the flaw on his otherwise handsome face. So blinded by the newness of a good life, I never once pushed or questioned it.

Perhaps I should have.

“Tell me everything. Now,” I demanded. Who did I just marry? Who was this man living under the same roof as me and my son?

SIXTEEN

Explained

Jake

"Don't look at me like I'm a killer, Autumn. Far from it." I shut the TV off and slammed the remote down on the table.

She backed up a step. Away from the noise. Away from me. That took every ounce of anger out of me. I put both hands in my pockets and lowered my eyes to the floor.

"I'm sorry. I'm not mad at you, sweetheart. I'm mad at whoever dragged an old story to light." I pulled a breath. “Now please—sit with me. Let me tell you the whole story, and then you can judge."

She hesitantly sat on the far end of the couch, on the edge of the cushion, eyes calculating the steps to the door. Who could blame her, with her past? So I stayed on my end, and gave her what I should have given her long before a stranger in a newsroom got there first.

"We pulled into port at Coronado after a bad mission. The guys were wound tight, so we headed to the Rusty Anchor, a bar we all knew. Renata was working—one of the regular bartenders, a favorite of ours. Easy to talk to over a beer. Just a friend, before you ask. I’d suffered bad acne and scarring back then, my confidence low. I couldn’t talk to women well but she was nice to me." I blew out a breath and paced to the window, looking out like the bar was right there.

"That night you couldn't miss the bruises on her arms, or the ones on her face she'd tried to cover with makeup. She swore her boyfriend was getting help. That they were putting it behind them. But something kept me there till closing anyway, and when I helped her carry the trash out to the alley, he was waiting. Said he didn't like how I made her laugh. Then he grabbed her by the arm, and started dragging her to his car, shoving her, kicking at her—and what was I supposed to do? Watch?"

"No," she whispered.

"He pulled a knife when I jumped him. A little folding blade, but a knife's a knife, if you know how to use it. I shoved him away and he fell to the ground, the knife landing a few feet away. We both scrambled for it. I found a rock and hit him across the face with it, and broke his nose. But his hand found the knife and he sliced my jaw open with it." My thumb found the old groove through my beard. "Renata begged him to stop and to leave with her. They drove away. That asshole filed charges the next morning. Assault with a deadly weapon. The police arrested me off the base, and that charge sat on my record for a week as I sat around a jail cell."

"Mom was beside herself over it. They flew out, trying to make bail for me." And here was the part no news station had, the part I'd never said out loud to a living soul. "The charges were suddenly dropped because Renata made a deal. He'd withdraw everything—if she went back to him."

Autumn's hand came up over her mouth.

"She came to see me the day I got released. Wouldn't hardly look at me. Said, 'Don't hate me, Jake. It was the only thing I had to trade.'" The window glass was cold under my palm. "They moved away. Left no forwarding address. I don't know if she ever got free of him. I don't know if she's okay or even alive." I turned around. "My clean record cost that woman everything, and I never got to save her at all. That's the true story."

Autumn rose off the end of the couch, crossed the distance I'd been careful not to cross, and put her arm through mine, leaning against my side.

"So then you found me, a woman with bruises, running from a man like that. Do you have a savior complex, Jake McCall? A penchant for rescuing us?"

"No." I pulled her hands into mine. "Renata cured me of thinking I could save anybody. You can't force a woman out of it—I learned that the worst way there is and it hurt like hell.” I brought her knuckles up and pressed them to my mouth. "With you, Autumn, you saved yourself. I simply stood by and supported you, helped where I could, and hoped you’d never go back."

Her eyes shone up at me. "You know that's still our story. You've been standing between me and Wyoming for a year."

"The difference is, you walked out of Wyoming yourself. I did what I could to keep you here. I'd do it all again tonight. Both versions."

“I know you would.” She kissed the scar along the length of my jaw, all of it. “I’m not ashamed of you. I want that said out loud in this house. Whatever the news says, whatever this town whispers—I know the truth, that my husband is the guy who stops the knife.”

“The thing is, dismissed charges get sealed. No background check in this country shows that arrest—I know, because I've held security clearances that looked. What the news got was an old clipping from a San Diego paper, the police-blotter piece that ran the morning after, and a booking photo some mugshot site scraped before the DA dropped it. The follow-up never ran. Dismissals aren't news." I turned from the window to face her. "That story didn't dig itself up. Somebody went looking, found it, wrapped it in a bow, and handed it to a newsroom."