Winter's Dream (The Hemlock Bay Series) (3 page)

From the very edge of my blurred vision I saw another man step forward. His matted hair swung over his shoulders as he jerked to a stop at Jordan’s words. “No, none of that stuff, just leave us be,” he snapped.

My confusion and pain warred and suddenly I found myself on the point of violent nausea.

I tried to roll out of bed, making my mouth the lowest point of my body, but he held me in place, dragging a foul smelling rag over my mouth. “Breathe,” he commanded, and when I had no choice, I finally did. The relief wasn’t immediate, but it did work, and when my head cleared again, I found myself looking up into his face. His name was Jordan and I knew him but I couldn’t pull up any memories of him, just a feeling of love and danger.

“Please say that you’re all right,” he was begging, still holding the offensive rag.

“Okay,” I croaked.

He grinned a funny half grin and pushed my hair from my forehead.

Even that was painful and I winced, praying he wouldn’t touch me again.

“Bixby,” he said softly. “I’m so sorry. I’m going to help you but it’s going to hurt a little.”

I tried to laugh but it came out an ugly snort. Embarrassed, I tenderly touched my nose and was horrified to feel it was twice the size it normally was.

“Just relax,” Jordan said, taking my face in his hands. Even up close everything seemed fuzzy and my mind still wouldn’t work right. Gently he stroked a finger down the bridge of my nose. The blood that had been dripping from it suddenly stopped. He ran his finger down again more firmly, pinching the bridge between his forefinger and thumb. I tried to pull my face away and he didn’t even notice. My surging anger was struck cold when I realized I could suddenly breathe through my nose. He ran his fingers down the sides of my face, gently hooking them around my jaw. It slowly unlocked and I was finally able to move it without pain.

Jordan turned my head from side to side, inspecting his handiwork. “It wasn’t broken but close enough,” he muttered angrily. His eyes finally met mine but only for a second. Slowly his hands traced up into my hair and gently fingered my scalp. Sharp pain made me cry out but he ignored me, pushing my skin together. Unbelievably he smiled. “No brain injury, just a laceration.” His eyes dipped down to mine and tightened. “But I think you’re in shock. And I have to fix your ribs.”

Mesmerized by his healing touch I nodded my consent, still trying to grasp everything that was going on.

He gently pulled up the hem of my ugly scrub top and hissed at what he saw. Confused, I looked down to see a swollen, purple mass where my rib cage had once been. A shoe imprint stood out clearly. I guess that explained at least some of the pain.

Jordan looked at me with tears in his eyes. “This is going to hurt.” His warm gentle face seemed so familiar and so wrong at the same time.

He pressed his warm hands against, and then somehow into, my side. I could feel his fingers scrape against broken bones, pushing them into place and smoothing out bone shards.

The pain took my breath so I couldn’t scream, only grit my teeth as his fingers swept through my ribs. It went on forever but when he finally stopped I was able to pull in a deep, sweet breath of air. Sweat had sprung from every pore on my body but as I leaned back against the pillows I was able to fill my lungs again and again with air I hadn’t known I was missing.

Jordan gently wiped a cloth over my forehead. “Your ribs were badly broken and they collapsed a lung,” he said apologetically.

I didn’t respond, just kept sucking in air. I hoped the intake of oxygen and freedom from pain would clear my mind but it didn’t.

“There is one last thing,” Jordan said firmly and without warning he grabbed my right arm. Before I could jerk it back he yanked it out, pushed it back and then in. I opened my mouth to shriek with pain—but that was curiously gone too. I wiggled my fingers in awe, beyond grateful for the warm tingles that had replaced the terrible pain.

“I think that’s all,” he said. I tried to focus on his face but it blurred in and out with the rest of the room.

From a little table next to the bed he lifted up a heavy mug. “Drink this,” he said, pressing it to my lips. It smelled of licorice and freshly cut grass. I tried to jerk my head away but he held the back of my neck with his warm hand and tipped the mug. “It will give you strength,” he told me as I struggled against him.

The liquid burned against my lips and then my teeth and then my tongue. I swallowed it to avoid choking and was racked by a new pain as it lit my body on fire. He poured almost all of it down my throat as I struggled against him. Finally I was able to push him away.

Curled in a ball, I prayed for the heat to dissipate. Slowly it did and left wellness and clarity in its wake. My vision cleared and all of my remaining aches disappeared.

Worst of all, my memory had returned.

Chapter Three

A
ll of the weeks in
juvie and every event leading up to this moment came back crystal clear. Jordan had betrayed me—again. He had ruined my life, gotten me and my grandma locked up and stolen my brother—again.

Hatred filled my heart as I watched him wring out a cloth over a marble basin and gently place it on my forehead.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

I nodded, not trusting mine.

He sighed and gave a tiny smile. “You just rest,” he said, patting my hand. “I’m right here.”

Jordan got off the bed and began picking bloody bandages and linens off the floor. I inched my hand towards the marble basin he had stupidly left within my reach, praying he wouldn’t notice. The second he turned his back I jumped up, snatched the bowl and flung it at his head. I missed by an inch and it shattered against the wall behind him.

Astonished, he turned towards me. I had never seen his eyes so large. “What are you doing?” he asked.

My response was to pick up another bowl off the table and fling it at his head. My aim was perfect but he ducked out of the way with inhuman speed and was looking at the little bowl as it crashed into the wall.

“Bixby,” he chastised, “what’s the matter?”

“You can move faster than I can,” I accused.

I grabbed for the next thing to throw and he was instantly in my face. “Stop,” he growled.

I reached up to slap him and he grabbed my wrist. I tried to sneak my other hand in for an upper cut to the jaw and he grabbed that one too.

“Get off,” I shrieked, trying to pull away from him. He pulled me in closer and wrapped his arms around me.

“I said stop.” His breath was hot in my ear and caused an unwelcome shiver down my previously injured spine.

Furious, I fought harder but only managed to get sucked tighter into his embrace. Each move I made he used to clamp me tighter to his body. “You stop,” I finally cried. Tears began to run from my eyes as my mind caught up with everything that had happened.

“Bixby,” Jordan said softly. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

He let me push myself away from him. I scrubbed my cheeks roughly and folded my arms over my chest. “Where’s my brother?”

“Lincoln? I don’t know. What—”

“I don’t believe you. Where is he?” I prayed the anger would dry my tears up.

He held his hands up in supplication. “Bixby, I swear, I don’t know where your brother is. I haven’t seen him since … Well, you know. Bixby, who was that boy attacking you?”

Anger filled me to the brim and I could feel my cheeks turning an ugly shade of scarlet. “That,” I snapped, “was the resident rapist of the lovely juvenile detention facility you sent me to.”

Jordan’s face paled. “I didn’t send you there. How could you think that?”

I barked out a sharp, ugly laugh. “Really? After everything you’ve done you really have the nerve to say that to me?”

His face was smoothly apologetic. “Bixby, I love you.” He paused, taking in my expression. He bit his lip and tried again. “I made a mistake when I took your brother. I’ve been tortured this last month trying to think of how I can make it up to you, how I can prove to you how I really feel.”

I shook my head and pulled my arms tighter around my healed ribs. I was grateful for the strength my anger gave me. “I don’t believe it. All you do is lie. Where is my brother?”

He held his hands wide. “I don’t know. I swear, I didn’t touch him. I don’t know where he is.”

He was murdering all the fuzzy yet happy feelings I had felt only moments before. “Jordan,” I said evenly, “you are a liar and a manipulator and have no morals. I have been wrongly imprisoned in a horrible jail for children for the last month, my grandmother has been put in a nursing home and my brother is missing again. You really think I’m going to believe you had nothing to do with anything of that because you say you’re sorry?” My voice was on the verge of betraying me but I met his eyes and they were wild with panic and fear.

“I swear, I promise, I didn’t do any of that. I didn’t know where you were, or that your grandma was … a nurse or that your brother was missing again. I thought you were home, with your family. I thought,” his voice dropped off at that.

“You thought what?” I asked coldly.

“I thought I could make it up to you,” he whispered. “I thought if I could help your grandma and win your brother over you would give me a chance to show you how human I can be for you.”

My anger faltered at that. “You really don’t have Linc?”

“No.” “Really?” I asked again with a broken voice. He shook his head. But that wasn’t what pushed me over. It was the pity on his face and his painfully hunched shoulders.

I squeezed my burning eyes shut but my tears started flowing again because I believed him. I didn’t want to but his selfish truth was right there. He wanted me and would do anything to have me. He would do anything to win me back but now knew stealing my brother wasn’t the way to do it. So that meant—“Then he’s really gone. Just gone.”

“Please, tell me what happened,” Jordan pleaded. I let him lead me back to the edge of the bed and sat down.

I took a steadying breath then said, “After the last time we saw each other, things went so badly. I thought you did it, I thought you were punishing me.” He shook his head violently but I ignored him. “There was … something outside, something that made her remember. She just wanted to keep me safe and so she ran away, knowing I would follow her. When the police came she thought they were one of you trying to trick her again. She fought and they arrested us.” I had to pause to wipe my nose on a rag he kindly placed in my hand. “She was so sick and I didn’t know it. Now she’s stuck in a nursing home and I’m stuck in juvie. And Linc—” my voice broke again. “He knows, he knows about everything. I told him about you and about me and everything.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “He hates me. He left after I told him and didn’t come back. He wasn’t there when it happened and no one has seen him since. I thought you took him, that you were punishing me.”

Jordan shook his head again, his mouth gaping open. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

I glared at him, my tears momentarily forgotten. “Again? You wouldn’t do that to me again?”

He flushed and looked down. “I told you before, I’m not human. I don’t see things the same way you do. But I want to be with you and I don’t ever want you hurt again, so I’ll play by your rules. I didn’t touch your brother but I will help you get him back.”

Faster than I could see, he moved to kneel in front of me and took my hand. “Bixby, I swear to you I will find out what happened and fix
everything
.”

The beautiful glowing eyes I had once loved so much momentarily distracted me. “Wait, what? No, oh no, you’re not fixing anything. Whether you pulled this latest round of crap or not, this is all still pretty much your fault for interfering in the first place.” He tried to interrupt but I held up the hand he wasn’t holding. “No. No ‘helping’.”

I could see his temper rising. He squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. I was a little impressed. “Bixby, it will be fine. I will just send you and your grandma back home, then find your brother and send him back home as well. Easy.”

I managed to pull my hand out of his and folded my arms over my chest again. “Uh huh. And when the nursing home realizes they have a missing person? When the juvie people realize they have a missing kid? Easy—they call the police and come looking for us and when they find us, I’m in even deeper crap than I am in now.”

Jordan frowned. “Then you can come here instead of going back home.”

“And what about my grandma? She already can’t handle reality. And what about the next time she gets sick? She needs doctors, hospitals, medicine and laboratories. Not to mention I really don’t think Linc would be cool with being roommates with you.”

Jordan gave a tiny smile. “But there doesn’t seem to any problem for you coming here?”

“Not happening,” I snapped, wiping the smile off his face.

“You’re not going back there.” He was having a harder time keeping his temper.

“Yes. I am.”

“No. You’re not. That maniac was going to … he was going to do something awful, besides what he had already done. And I’m going to guess you didn’t exactly choose that hairstyle yourself.”

Shame flashed white hot over me and my hands flew up to cover my scalp. I slammed my eyes shut in embarrassment as if he hadn’t been looking at me for the last ten minutes. I had forgotten about my horrible haircut, or at least gotten used to it.

Jordan pulled me up and stepped in close. I didn’t open my eyes and so jerked back when he wiped a tear away. “Don’t cry.” His voice was soothing and he ran his hands through my dull, sheared hair. In some places it only stuck up an inch. Over and over he ran his hands over my scalp and through my ugly locks, gently tugging each strand. His hands flowed to the nape of my neck, then to my shoulders, then down my back. Curious, I peeked one eye open to see him totally focused on my hair.

He gently grabbed my shoulders and spun me around. “Pretty good,” he mused. “But I think I made it a little curlier.”

A mirror across from the bed showed a young woman with long, bright curls. I put my hand up to my head and when she did the same I gasped. Soft, silken strands flowed from my scalp. Watching my reflection, I gathered my hair up and pulled it over my shoulder, noting it was just a bit longer and curlier. The color was back to the shiny copper it had been when I was visiting him every night. With a sigh I put it back over my shoulder and looked him in the eyes through the mirror. “It’s beautiful. Now undo it.”

“Undo it?” he repeated, spinning me back to face him.

“I’m pretty sure people would notice. How am I supposed to explain that?”

“You’re not,” he said, rubbing his palm over my cheek.

“What are you doing?” I gasped, trying pull my face back but I couldn’t break from his iron grasp. “I am
not
going to kiss you.”

A little flare of pain flashed in his eyes. “I know that. I’m just fixing how you look.”

Anger seared through me again and I broke his grasp. “Fixing how I look? Like you did before? Because I’m so ugly you have to touch my face up just to be able to look at me?” Tears sprang up in the corners of my eyes, infuriating me. I was not going to cry again.