Author's note:
As we approach the end of this book, I urge you (if you've been enjoying it) to read my other 3 books - Messy, 3 Weeks On The Road, and Jessie - in that order. They will explain a lot of necessary information about the characters and the scenes that are occurring.
Once again, thank you for your views and votes, your public and private comments. I really appreciate it.
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Jessie and I stood hand in hand at The Curve. It looked a little different now - the guardrail replaced, the bodies cleaned up. I could still see the scars on the trees though, broken limbs and shattered stumps, and occasionally, a healing bullet hole in a trunk.
"This is it?" My black-haired lover asked.
"Yeah. First my parents... Then me."
She squeezed my hand. "Why did you bring me here?"
"I wanted you to see it...once. I'm never coming back. Business is settled in Minnesota. It's...it's time for me to go."
I walked back to the truck, my teeth gritted and my throat full of back emotion. I retrieved the bouquet from the backseat, returned, propped it up against the rail.
"Dad. Mom. This is Jessie Rigg. She's mine. I wanted to introduce her to you before we go. I'm not, we're not gonna be coming back here anymore. Moving to Wisconsin. We've said goodbye here a couple times now, and I guess this is the last one.
Miss you guys."
Jessie didn't try to approach or touch me as I walked back to the drivers side door. She got in on the passenger side a few moments later, and shut the door with a soft thump. I felt myself breathing hard and fast in the closeness of the Suburban and the world felt too small and hot to contain the ache in my arm, my head, my heart.
I hung my head and sobbed, and Jessie put her hand on my leg.
Dammit.
###
"For a designer and marketer, you are very much lacking imagination," I admonished Jessie as we walked through the house.
"I imagine that's so."
Behind us, the realtor snickered at our banter.
"Try and imagine what it could be, look past what it is now." I tried to sound convincing.
"What's that?" Jessie asked, disgust evident in her voice.
"Our home. Our fortress. Our refuge away from the world. Freedom from all the stupid of work and life outside."
"No, I mean what's THAT?"
I kicked at the pile of brush with the toe of my boot. "Oh. Something must've been living in here."
I stood in the living room, looked around at the trashed building. A three-story saltbox at the end of a culdesac in a neighborhood that could best be described as a ghetto, it didn't inspire confidence, not with the smashed drywall and broken windows and electrical and plumbing that needed to be replaced and the growing assumption that hobos had been camping here.
I could picture it though. Gray wood tile and dark heavy fixtures, the TV would go on THAT wall...
Pain shot through my head, down my arm, and the world fuzzed black and white. Fucking weather changes and the migraines they brought. Spring should be a time to get outside, not hide in the dark from the temperature changes wreaking havoc on my head.
I looked around the room again, saw my vision of how it looked overlays with the ugliness it was now, bullet holes punched in the brick and drywall. Why did it look like that?
I shook away the pain in my skull and sniffed.
Damn weather changes.
###
My arm ached as I muscled the snowblower down the sidewalk. Ten degrees, blowing snow, and this fucking thing weighed a ton.
Better than Jessie being out here though.
I shivered in my coat as a gust of snow blew across the yard and sprayed my face with ice crystals. I'd need to come back out in two hours and do the whole fucking thing again, but right now I could go inside.
The big machine chewed a thin path through the snow into the dilapidated garage, and I pulled down the door and locked it, hurried through the cold wind to the side door. I stomped my boots off, then stepped inside. The kitchen was dimly lit by a few strings of white Christmas lights strung between the upper cabinets.
I pulled my boots off, hung up my coat, and stepped into the dining room. Jessie sat cross-legged on the floor, smothering the back of a piece of tile with adhesive. She set it down, positioned it, looked up at me. "You look frozen."
"I am."
"I know that hurts your arm, let me do it."
"Nope, not your job."
She rolled her eyes. "Why do you insist on doing the hard, ugly work when you know I could do it just as well?"
Maybe it was the warmth and closeness of the room. Maybe it was the festive atmosphere caused by the strings of lights. Maybe it was... The words rolled flippantly off my tongue before I could stop them. "Cuz I love you."
Her eyes flicked back to me from the tile, sharply.