The word dripped with a vehemence so thick Gilly could practically see it. She found herself apologizing to him again for remarks she’d made about his upbringing. “Sorry.”
The set of his shoulders said the apology hadn’t been accepted. Gilly told herself she didn’t care. It was nothing to her if she hurt his feelings. Situation and circumstance should have given her the perfect reason to forget the sort of fake politeness she’d always hated and never been able to stop herself from offering.
Todd shook himself slightly, then set the eggs on the table. “Eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” Gilly repeated. “What are you going to do, force me?”
He cocked his head. “Uncle Bill always said if you had to force someone to do something it probably wasn’t worth making them do it.”
More words of wisdom from Uncle Bill. Gilly sat back in her chair and fixed him with a glare. “Oh, really?”
He stabbed a pile of yellow fluff with his fork. Before he brought it to his lips, he paused. Searched her gaze with his own in a manner so forthright it brought heat to stain Gilly’s cheeks.
Todd pointed with his fork to the snow-laden window. A drift had formed outside, one large enough to nearly cover the glass. “Even if I wanted to let you go, I couldn’t.”
“But you don’t want to.” She teased out this truth between them as though he’d tried to deny it.
Todd set down the utensil with its uneaten clump of egg still clinging to it. His eyes glinted but his voice remained soft when he answered her. “I can’t go back to jail, Gilly. I just can’t. Don’t you get it?”
“I get it.”
Todd paused, gaze not shifting from hers. Serious. “And if I get caught for this, that’s what would happen. They’d put me back in jail. I’d rather die.”
Her fingers tapped a random pattern on the faded tabletop before she stopped them. Her voice went tight and hard, unsympathetic. “You should have thought about that before you kidnapped me.”
His sigh was so full of disgust it made her flinch. “I didn’t kidnap you.”
Gilly shoved away from the table and went to the sink. Nothing outside but white. She gripped the edge of the counter, forced herself to lower her voice. “Don’t act like you picked me up in a bar during fifty cent draft night.”
She’d had moments like this before, days when every little thing worked at her like a grain of sand against an eyeball. One minute close to tears, the next ready to scream until her throat tore itself to bloody shreds. Seth knew to stay out of her way when she was like this, blaming it on her hormones or menstrual cycle with a man’s bland acceptance that the mysteries of a woman’s body could be blamed for everything. Her temper was hot but brief, and Gilly had learned to hold it in as best she could. She had to.
Her mother had screamed a lot, when she wasn’t facing Gilly with cold silence that was somehow worse than the shrieking accusations. Her mother had alternated between rage and despair with such little effort Gilly hadn’t known until adulthood there could be a difference in the emotions.
Counting to ten. Counting to twenty. Biting her tongue until it bled. Sometimes, most times, those tactics worked. It hurt, holding in all that anger, but she wasn’t going to put her kids through what she’d gone through as a child. Some days that had meant hiding in the pantry, clinging to the very last shreds of her patience with everything she had, just to keep herself from flying apart.
She wasn’t feeling very patient now. Not even counting to a hundred was going to work. Angry words wanted to fly from her lips, to strike him, to wound. She bit the inside of her cheek. Pain helped her focus. Fury wouldn’t help her. Todd was right about the snow and their situation. He couldn’t let her go, and she couldn’t realistically, practically or logically escape. It was keep her temper or lose her mind.
“You should just kill me,” she said through clenched jaws, knowing even as she said it she was poking him too hard.
Todd shook his head, facing away from her. He hunched over the table, stabbing at his plate with the tines of his fork. “Shut up.”
But she couldn’t. The words tumbled out, bitter and nasty. Harsh. “You could’ve let me freeze to death out there. You wouldn’t have to worry about me, then. You should’ve left me in the truck. Then I’d be dead and you’d have nothing to worry about.”
“I said,” Todd muttered tightly, “shut up.”
She’d never pulled the legs off daddy longlegs, never tied a can to a puppy’s tail. Gilly had never been the sort to tease and torture. But now she found a hard, perverse and distinct pleasure in watching Todd squirm.
“The only way you’ll ever be safe is if I’m dead,” she continued, gleeful, voice like a stick stabbing him in tender places. “So you should just do it. Get it over with. Save us both the hassle—”
“Shut up, Gilly.”
She slapped the counter hard enough to make some dishes jump. “Do it or say you’ll let me go!”
He stood and whirled on her, sending her stumbling back against the sink. The chair clattered to the floor. The cold metal pressed against her spine; her elbow cracked painfully on the counter’s edge.
“I only wanted the truck. I told you that. I was going to dump you off by the side of the road, but then you had the kids in the back. I didn’t want to hurt the kids. I just wanted to come up here and stay away from people, to get away! I didn’t want to keep you, for fuck’s sake! But now here you are, right? Right up in my fucking face. Yeah, I could’ve left you out there to freeze, but I didn’t. But that doesn’t make me a hero, right? Just makes me an asshole. I’m fucked no matter what. So why don’t I just kill you, Gilly? Why don’t I? Because I don’t. Fucking. Want to.”
She’d thrown her hands up in a warding-off gesture, but Todd didn’t touch her. He raked one hand through his hair instead and backed off. It would’ve been easier if he’d hit her. She was waiting for it. She was pushing him to do it. She wanted him to hit her, she realized with sickness thick in her throat.
“Uncle Bill died. He left me this place, and the money. Five grand,” Todd said in a low, hoarse voice. A broken voice. “Not a whole lot of money, but nice. I was doing okay without it. I was making it. Doing whatever I had to, to get by. Working shit jobs, never doing anything but work and sleep. Shitty apartment, piece-of-shit car, mac-and-cheese for dinner four times a week. And not the good kind,” he added, this affront clear. “The four-for-a-dollar crap from the dollar store.”
Gilly remembered the flavor of that kind, made with water instead of milk when her bank account had run low. She could taste it now, the flavor nostalgic and gritty on her tongue. It wasn’t necessarily a bad memory.
“The money was going to make a difference, pay some bills, so that was good. I thought I might actually get ahead for once instead of always being behind. But it didn’t get released right away. Some bunch of legal shit I had to sift through and I didn’t know how. But I was doing okay.”
He shot her a narrow-eyed look, emphasizing it. “I was doing okay. Then they fired me at the diner for being late. I was late because my car broke down. My buddy Joey Di Salvo was going to sell me a car, real cheap, but he needed a thousand bucks. It was everything I had. I mean everything. Rent, food, everything. But no car, no job. That son-of-a-bitch took my money and ran off….”
The words tumbled out of him in a rush, breathless, but with the same precise manner she’d noted about him before. As though every word he spoke had been carefully thought out before he pronounced it.
Todd paced the worn linoleum. There wasn’t really enough room for him to do that, not without bumping against her, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. He stalked to the pantry door and slipped a crumpled pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket. Without pause, he lit a cigarette from the stuttering flame from his lighter and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. It streamed forth from his nostrils as he paced. Her eyes watered at the acrid stench as he passed.
He talked and smoked, the cigarette tipping against his lip
but never falling out of his mouth. “They fired me because I was late,” he repeated. “One time. One fucking time. They wouldn’t give me a second fucking chance, you know?”
“Because you’d been in jail.” The sight of him fascinated her. She was no less angry than she’d been a few moments before, but Todd had a way of defusing her fury that Seth, despite their years together, had never mastered.
Todd slammed his fist against the cupboard, rattling the dishes inside. Gilly jumped. “Yeah. Because of that. You want to know what I did? I robbed a liquor store because I owed some guys some money. I thought it would be an easy gig, right? Bust in, get the cash, get the fuck out. The state doesn’t need that money, why the fuck do we pay all those taxes, right? Old man doing inventory wasn’t supposed to be there. But he was. Shit, Gilly, my fucking gun wasn’t even real. I bought it at a garage sale. It was a fucking lighter.”
“You robbed a store. Did you think that was someone else’s fault, too, like it was my fault I have kids?”
Todd’s lip curled, his dark eyes glinting. “You don’t know shit about a damn thing.”
“I’ve never robbed a liquor store, I know that.” Gilly pointedly waved a hand in front of her face to disperse the smoke stinging her eyes and coughed, though she doubted Todd would care.
His gaze through the wafting smoke became assessing. “You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. That’s what I know.”
She thought of college, living on ramen noodles and dollar-store macaroni-and-cheese to make ends meet, but always knowing she could go home if she really needed to. And of how living in near poverty was often better than going home. “There are plenty of disadvantaged people who don’t turn to crime.”
He sneered again, taking another drag on the cigarette. This time instead of letting the smoke seep from his nostrils he held it in his mouth and let it drift out one side. “I wasn’t disadvantaged.”
“No?”
“I was royally screwed, that’s what I was.”
She raised her eyebrows at him. “What happened? Kids make fun of you at school because you didn’t have the right clothes?”
“Sometimes.” Todd’s gaze went flat. “Sometimes for other things.”
It was her turn for a curled lip. “Poor baby.”
“You don’t know anything about what my life was like. Don’t even try. You can’t even guess.” Now his voice shook, just barely, and he swallowed hard before turning away.
She couldn’t, actually. She had no experience with people who thought living on the other side of the law was fair compensation for the slights society had made against them. Her voice was hard and humorless, though not quite as poking as it had been before.
“Everybody thinks their lives are hard, Todd. It’s human nature to think you’re special. Especially when you’re not.”
She’d meant that to hurt him, but it seemed to miss the mark, because Todd didn’t even flinch. He leaned toward her much as she had done to him earlier. Smoke laced the hot breath caressing her cheek. Gilly forced herself to stand still, to meet his eyes. To not turn away. She’d put herself in this place. She had to face it.
“Your life didn’t seem too hard. Nice car. Wallet full of money.” He reached out and flicked the pendant dangling from her neck. “Nice husband to buy you pretty jewelry. Nice kids. You had it real hard, Gilly. Poor fucking you. Poor little rich girl.”
Guilt raged through her, because what he said was true. She couldn’t deny it. She’d let him steal her from that good life, the good man and the children who were her reason for everything. Gilly slapped his hand away.
“Don’t touch me.”
Todd drew back. He threw the remains of the cigarette on the floor and ground it out with the toe of his boot. He rested for a minute, sagging against the counter, and slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “It was the first time I’d ever robbed a place. But I got into a lot of trouble as a kid. He…the judge said…maybe some time behind bars would change my attitude.”
“Did it?” The question was rude, but Gilly couldn’t take it back.
“Hell if I know.” Todd shot her a grin then, shocking in its unpredictability. “Guess not.”
Gilly shook her head, unbalanced by his shift in attitude. “Stealing my truck wasn’t too smart.”
“You got stupid people and smart people,” Todd said with another of his dangerously charming and artless shrugs. “I’m just not smart.”
He was no genius, she knew that. Yet something about his reply told her that he’d been told he was stupid so many times that it had become the truth, rather than the other way around. He’d been told it, and he believed it. He had become it.
“Didn’t you think they’d trace the truck?”
He snorted. “Trucks get stolen all the time. I had a buddy who was going to take care of it for me. Not DiSalvo, that piece of shit. Some other dude. Said he’d give me a good deal on a trade-in. I’d have been out of it and into something else before anyone even knew where to start looking for it. It would’ve been in a hundred pieces, sold for parts.”
He sounded so confident and made it sound so plausible, she thought he might be right. Not that it mattered, now, with her Suburban probably in a hundred pieces at the bottom of a mountain ravine instead of a junkyard. “Forgive me if I don’t feel bad for you.”
Todd lit another cigarette and puffed the smoke at her. He cocked his head again, the puppyish tilt of it at odds with the harshness of the smoke curling from his nostrils. “C’mon, Gilly. I haven’t been such a prick to you, have I?”
“You’ve been a real Prince Charming,” Gilly muttered. She had a headache, and her stomach had begun its incessant churning again. She was frustrated and annoyed, but no longer in a raging fury. She only wanted to lie down and go back to sleep.
Todd reached out as casually as if he were plucking a flower and grabbed a handful of hair at the back of her head. Faster than a moment, he’d pressed her against him. Todd’s fingers twisted in her hair, the pressure just on the edge of becoming pain.
“I could have hurt you. Could’ve pulled over the side of the road and gutted you like a deer.” Todd nuzzled his cheek against her neck in the sensitive part just below her ear, though there was nothing sensual about the caress. Nothing sexy. Beneath the harsh smell of tobacco smoke, she caught the scent of soap and flannel. His lips brushed her ear when he whispered, “But I didn’t, did I?”
“Don’t.” Unable to move away from him with his hand fixed in her hair, Gilly stiffened her spine against a shiver.
“Even though you act like that’s what you want me to do.” His fingers curled tighter, knuckles pressed to the back of her skull. Her scalp protested, skin smarting. “Is that really what you want?”
Gilly closed her eyes.
“Answer my question,” he said without letting go. When she didn’t answer, he tugged sharply until she looked at him. “Haven’t I been good to you, Gilly?”
“No, you haven’t,” Gilly muttered, bracing herself for more pain that didn’t come.
“I didn’t want you here.” He put his forehead on hers. His deep brown eyes bored into hers, hardly even blinking. “I even tried to let you escape. But you didn’t go.”
She twisted her head, fighting him. He was too big, too strong. She felt the strength of him in every movement. She could not wriggle free. He was violating her more surely than if he’d forced his tongue into her mouth or his hand between her legs.
“Why didn’t you go when you had the chance, huh? Why not just run away to the hubby and the kiddies and the nice, white house with the yard and the dog—”
“Fuck you!” The words tore out of her.
“Don’t feel good, does it? Being judged? Seems to me like you should be thanking me, not treating me like I’m something gross you stepped in.”
“You don’t know me.” Gilly ground the words from between clenched jaws.
“You know what I think? I think,” Todd said slowly, delibe
rately, his gaze pinning her like a beetle to a board, “I’m the best thing that ever happened to you.”
Gilly stopped struggling.
He let her go. Gilly stumbled back, whacking her elbow on the counter again. More pain. She forced back a gag.
“I want to be nice to you,” Todd told her. He sat at the table with his back to her. He stubbed out his smoke, then began to eat his eggs. “But you make it really fucking hard.”
Gilly left the kitchen and walked to the front door. The back of her head still smarted, but her cheek fairly burned from the caress he’d put on it. She scrubbed at the flesh with her hand, the long sleeve of the sweatshirt he’d bought her fleecy-soft against the skin.
She paused by the scarred wooden table, staring without really seeing the faded plastic flowers. Roses. They were roses, faded and plastic and not real. As she wished none of this was real.
Slowly, methodically, she pulled the sweatshirt over her head. She folded it carefully, one arm over the other, then into a bulky square. She set it on the table.
Her hands went to the waist of her sweatpants. She’d had to tie the string in a double tight knot to prevent the large pants from falling off her hips. From the kitchen came the clatter of dishes in the sink. Gilly didn’t pause. Her fingers worked the string, and all the while she stared at the flowers.
Roses needed lots of care. A lot of responsibility. Love wasn’t enough, you had to trim them, water and fertilize them. Roses were precious and fragile things that took a lot of time and effort to grow and sometimes, no matter how much time you gave them, they still failed.
Gilly wore no shoes, only a thick pair of white athletic socks. She slid her sweatpants down over her thighs, her ankles, and over the socks, which came off with a small twist of each foot. Goose bumps rose on her skin, though with the woodstove going the room was quite warm. She was left in her panties and bra, her own that she’d been wearing the day he took her, and a cotton T-shirt that had Princess on the front in tacky rhinestone letters.
She folded the sweatpants and put them with the sweatshirt, then added the socks to the pile. She slipped the T-shirt over her head and stood nearly naked. Still staring at the flowers. Thinking about roses.