The Righteous and The Wicked (15 page)

Emma looks down at her fuzzy-slipper-covered feet.

“Wait. Hold on, is this a bum-out? What happened? Was it Aaron? Or your mother? Did one of them call you?”

“No. No, nothing like that.” Emma looks out the window at Eric’s house, and Abby sees her do it.

“Wait. Is this Sexy-Neighbor-Guy drama? You better tell me, Emma.”

“No. It’s nothing , Abby. It’s just a cold. I’ll survive.”

He’s cold. Something sticky is clinging to his eye, gluing it shut. Eric tries to lift his head, and then the searing, throbbing ache in his skull bombards him. It smells like burnt rubber and antifreeze. He licks his lips and tastes blood. He forces his one good eye open. The front of his Jeep is crumpled around an elm tree. The force of the impact broke the bark off the trunk, and the morning sun makes the pale pink of the lumber look like flesh. He’s disoriented, and has been unconscious for hours. The collision caused his unbuckled body to collide with the windshield. The cracked glass looks like spider webs.

With hesitance, he touches the stickiness on his face. His eye is swollen shut and he struggles to sit up. He has no broken bones, just some blood and bruises. Some would say he was lucky. The car door squeaks and screeches as he forces it open. He never even made it to the end of the street. He stands, causing everything to spin, and he leans back against his damaged Jeep for stability. The recollection of how he got here hurts him far more than the physical pain of the accident. The roof of her house pokes up through the trees. Once a place of respite from his darkness, now a source of shame. He can never look at her again.

Eric grits his teeth and tinkers with the ignition. To his surprise, the Jeep sputters and whines. He didn’t even think it would start. He drives the debilitated machine over to the best mechanic he knows: Sean.

“What the fuck happened to your car, bro? Oh, shit. Look at your face! Damn. Did you wreck? I don’t even know how you drove this over here, it’s mangled!”

Danielle comes out onto their driveway. She stands with arms folded and Eric feels his starved hunger flare inside him when he sees her.

“Danni, I’m gonna take this down to the garage. You want to keep Eric company?”

Over her future husband’s shoulder, Danielle feels sick when she sees the lewd look that’s creeping onto Eric’s battered face. “No. I mean, I can’t. I’m meeting Abby and Emma.”

Eric freezes. His perverse thoughts of the blonde disappear when he hears Emma’s name. It has to be a coincidence. There must be more than one Emma in this town, but hearing her name makes something inside him cringe. He regrets rejecting her, but he knows she’s not likely to forgive him. His behavior was reprehensible as usual.

“Sean, can you just drop me at home?”

Days pass and Eric occupies himself with what he knows best. He treads on the beams and shouts at his workers. His unquenched thirst, his shame, and the physical pain he feels are causing his crude behavior, and he won’t apologize for it. Self-loathing seethes through him and he projects it onto anyone who crosses his path. He’s angry at whatever it is that makes him this way. He hates himself for being an addict, and for pushing away the first person to accept him. He curses whatever force brought him to this street. What happened with Camila in Santa Catarina pales in comparison to this. A jealous husband trying to kill him—that he can handle—but breaking a sweet angel’s spirit, that’s something he can’t live with. He looks toward the old white house. It taunts him. He hears her car go by and retreats inside his silver cage. He can’t even look at himself in the mirror.

Weeks pass and every day without Eric is bleak and pointless. Resembling a zombie, Emma stands in front of the kitchen sink, washing and peeling potatoes. She looks in the fridge, and takes out the tub of butter. It’s empty. She’s in a slip dress, not fit for the grocery store, but she doesn’t care. She grabs her coat, her keys, and walks out onto the porch. The wind chime clinks and the anger she has been ignoring for weeks rises up inside her. Now it has a target. She wants to smash the object that brought that man to her.

She stomps over to it, forgetting the usual tenderfooted path that’s necessary to navigate the old porch, and the sound of cracking wood replaces the sound of the chime. She falls and hits the floor with a thud, a burning pain shooting into her leg. The rotten wood has given way and her right foot is stuck in a hole where the wood of the porch has collapsed. She’s submerged up to her calf in a splintered cavern. She tries to lift her leg out, and the pain becomes worse. The wood is pinching her flesh, and rusted nails are threatening to puncture her. She reaches into the pocket of her cotton coat, but it’s empty. No cell phone. She rubs her hand over her leg and looks toward the wooded path.

He gets out of the shower; his black clothes are laid out on the bed, waiting for him. No sense in fighting it any longer. This is what he is and, without Emma, he doesn’t have the strength to try to be different. He towels off his wet and bruised body and gets dressed. His black eye and split lip have healed, but he still looks like he got the worst end of a bar brawl. It doesn’t matter, because he knows whomever he finds tonight will like it. A wounded man is like heroin to women. He looks in the mirror and everything is just right.

Something on the floor catches his eye and he stops. By the bed is the stick from Emma’s lollipop. He picks it up, sits down, and touches his lips, thinking of her kiss and her strawberry taste. The look in her eyes when she told him that she knew of his sickness. She saw his darkest self and wanted him anyway. She reached her hand out to him and he didn’t take it. He pushed it away, and ran. She’ll never forgive him, and she’s better off this way. He is a poison. He thought he could get better if he had her in his life. Her sweet purity and simple goodness were helping him to keep his demon at bay, but now he has lost his grip.

He was deceived by her innocence. She
watched
him, and she
liked
it. If the only good person he has known is twisted like him, there’s no point in pretending to be someone else. He made a mistake in thinking he could ever be more than a monster. Feeling hopeless, he tosses the stick in the trash and grabs his keys. The Jeep waits for him in the driveway. To him it looks like a hearse. His hand is on the ignition when he hears it. Someone is screaming.

“Help! Someone help me!” The pressure on her leg is causing pins and needles as she loses circulation. She knows there’s just one person who can hear her on this isolated street, and the thought is devastating. Even if Eric does hear her, his help is the last thing she wants to receive. To have to see him again will bring unbearable pain. The futility of her situation makes her desperate, and she calls out again, louder this time.

“Please! Help! Someone please help me! Eric . . .” The pinching pressure of the cracked and splintered wood against her leg makes her wince. Her eyes fill with tears, half out of pain and half out of frustration. She looks toward the path again, and this time she sees him.

He emerges from the woods in a sprint, her vile guardian, her sordid savior. He’s dressed in all black. The delicious devil. The human storm. Aroused and repulsed, filled with rage and relief, she watches as he climbs the steps, and kneels, panting, before her.

“Jesus, Emma, you scared me.” He takes deep, gasping breaths; his face is distressed. “Are you hurt?”

“The porch gave way. My leg is stuck. It hurts to try to move it.” She notices his black eye and scabbed lip. “What happened to you?”

“Don’t worry about me.” He slips his fingers between the fractured wood and Emma’s skin. Seeing her in pain is more than he can take. Somewhere inside his black heart, there is a light for Emma.

His muscles flex and the veins in his arm bulge as he grunts and rips the shattered slats away with his bare hands. He pulls again, removes another chunk of the decayed wood, and guides her injured leg out of the opening. She slides back, relieved to be free, and rubs her scraped skin.

Eric leans back against the railing of the porch. “Let me see your leg.”

She can’t look in his eyes. She’ll get lost there. She
wants
to get lost there, and that terrifies her. He’s dressed in black and she knows that he was on his way out . . . or on his way back from someone.

“I’m fine, Eric. You can leave now.”

“Emma . . .” Eric’s sweet voice comes out of Stormy’s mouth.

“Just go.” She won’t let him hurt her again. The anguish she feels over the way he treated her is still a fresh wound on her heart, in spite of the time that has passed.

She stands up, and so does he. He moves toward her and she steps back. “Eric, please. Just leave.”

“No.” He answers her with direct defiance and steps closer.

She wants to fight back, but she also wants to just give in. He reaches up to touch her, and she pushes him away.

“Don’t.”

She looks in his eyes and her fear is realized. She gets lost in the storm and it feels so good. She feels the fiery pull to him.

“I think you were very clear about how you feel, Eric. What else is there to say?”

He reaches to touch her again, and against her better judgment, she lets him. “I want to say that I’m sorry.”

“Well, you are not forgiven,” she says with halfhearted ferocity, and turns to unlock the front door.

He grabs her shoulders, turning her around. “Emma, do you understand that I don’t
want
to be this way?”