J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [116]
“So when the priest finished his infomercial on how great God was, and how Hannah was all lucky to be with Him and yadda, yadda, yadda, the organ lit off. The vibration of those bass pipes rose up from the floor through my seat and hit just the right frequency. Or the wrong one, I suppose. I threw up that oatmeal all over my father.”
Fuck it, V thought. He reached out and took her hand. “Goddamn…”
“Yeah. So my mother stands up to take me away, but my father tells her to stay put. He walked me over to one of the church ladies, told her to take me to the bathroom, then went into the men’s room. I got left alone in a stall for about ten minutes, then the church lady came back, put me in her car, and drove me home. I missed the burial.” She sucked in a breath. “When my parents came home, neither of them checked on me. I kept expecting one of them to come in. I could hear them moving around the house until it was all silent. Eventually, I went down, got something out of the fridge, and ate standing up at the counter, because we weren’t allowed to take food upstairs. I didn’t cry then either, even though it was a windy night, which always scared me, and the house was mostly dark and I felt like I’d ruined my sister’s funeral.”
“I’m sure you were in shock.”
“Yeah. Funny…I was worried she’d be cold. You know, cold autumn night. Cold ground.” Jane batted her hand around. “Anyway, next morning my father left before I got up, and he didn’t come home for two weeks. He kept calling and telling my mother he was going to consult on another complex case somewhere else in the country. Meanwhile, Mother woke up every day and got dressed and took me to school, but she wasn’t really there. She became like a newspaper. The only things she talked about were the weather and what had gone wrong with the house or the staff while I was at school. My father came back eventually, and you know how I knew his arrival was imminent? Hannah’s room. Every night I went into Hannah’s room and sat with her stuff. The thing I couldn’t get was how her clothes and her books and her drawings were still there, but she wasn’t. It just didn’t compute. Her room was like a car without an engine, everything where it should be, except all it was was potential. None of it was going to get used again.
“The night before Father returned, I opened that bedroom door and…everything was gone. Mother had had it all cleaned out and the bedspread changed and the draperies switched. It went from being Hannah’s room to a guest room. That was how I knew my father was coming home.”
V rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “Jesus…Jane…”
“So that’s my revelation. I threw up oatmeal instead of crying.”
He could tell she was jumpy and wishing she’d throttled back, and he knew how she felt, because he did the same thing on those few occasions he got personal. He kept up with the petting of her hand until she looked over at him. As silence stretched out, he knew what she was waiting for.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “They held me down.”
“And you were conscious through the whole thing, weren’t you.”
His voice got reedy. “Yeah.”
She touched his face, running her palm down his now bearded cheek. “Did you kill them for it?”
He lifted up his gloved palm. “This took over. Glow flashed throughout my body. They all had their hands on me, so they went down like stones.”
“Good.”
Shit… He so totally loved her. “You would have made a fine warrior, you know that?”
“I am one. Death is my enemy.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it.” God, it made such sense that he’d bonded with her. She was a fighter…like him. “Your scalpel’s your dagger.”
“Yup.”
They stayed like that, linked by their hands and their eyes. Until, without warning, she brushed his lower lip with her thumb.
As he inhaled with a hiss, she whispered, “I don’t have to be asleep, you