Meanwhile, Charles Wesley Donner had gotten away, but his boss had been helpful, and with a little prompting gave them everything but Chip’s underwear size. The twenty-four-year-old had been working at the Pink Kitty for just under a year. He drove a 1980 Chevy Nova and lived in a flophouse on Cromwell Road down in Avondale. Jeffrey had already called Donner’s parole officer, who had been less than pleased to be awakened by a ringing phone in the middle of the night. She confirmed the address and Jeffrey had dispatched a cruiser to sit on it. An APB had gone out, but Donner had been in prison for six years on drug-trafficking charges. He knew how to hide from the police.
Jeffrey eased open Sara’s front door as gently as he could, trying not to wake her up. Chip wasn’t strong, but he had landed his fist in the exact right place to bring Jeffrey down: under his left eye, just grazing the bridge of his nose. Jeffrey knew from experience the bruising would only get worse, and the swelling already made it hard to breathe. As usual, his nose had bled profusely, making it look a hell of a lot worse than it was. He had always bled like a faucet whenever he was hit on the bridge of his nose.
He turned on the under-counter lights in the kitchen, holding his breath, waiting for Sara to call out to him. When she didn’t, he pried open the refrigerator and took out a bag of frozen peas. As quietly as he could, he broke up the freezer burn, separating the peas with his fingers. He clamped his teeth together and hissed out some air as he pressed the bag against his face, wondering again why it never hurt as much when you got injured as it did when you tried to fix it.
“Jeff?”
He jumped, dropping the peas.
Sara turned on the lights, the fluorescent tubes flickering above them. His head seemed to explode with it, a dull throbbing matching the flicker.
She frowned, taking in the shiner under his eye. “Where’d you get that?”
Jeffrey bent over to pick up the peas, all the blood rushing to his head. “The gettin’ place.”
“You have blood all over you.” It sounded more like an accusation.
He looked down at his shirt, which was a lot easier to see in the bright lights of her kitchen than in the bathroom at the Pink Kitty.
“It’s your blood?” she asked.
He shrugged, knowing where she was going with the question. She seemed to care more about the possibility of a stranger getting hepatitis from him than the fact that some stupid punk had nearly broken his nose.
He asked, “Where’s the aspirin?”
“All I have is Tylenol, and you shouldn’t take that until you know the results from your blood test.”
“I’ve got a headache.”
“You shouldn’t be drinking, either.”
The remark only served to annoy him. Jeffrey wasn’t his father. He could certainly hold his liquor and one sip of a watered-down beer didn’t qualify as drinking.
“Jeff.”
“Just drop it, Sara.”
She crossed her arms like an angry schoolteacher. “Why aren’t you taking this seriously?”
The words came out before he anticipated the shitstorm they would kick up. “Why are you treating me like a fucking leper?”
“You could be carrying a dangerous disease. Do you know what that means?”
“Of course I know what it means,” he insisted, his body feeling slack all of a sudden, like he couldn’t take one more thing. How many times had they done this? How many arguments had they had in this same kitchen, both of them pushed to the edge? Jeffrey was always the one who brought them back, always the one to apologize, to make things better. He had been doing this all his life, from smoothing down his mother’s drunken tempers to stepping in front of his father’s fists. As a cop, he put himself in people’s business every day, absorbing their pain and their rage, their apprehension and fear. He couldn’t keep doing it. There had to be a time in his life when he got some peace.
Sara kept lecturing him. “You have to be cautious until we get the results from the lab.”
“This is just another excuse, Sara.”
“An excuse for what?”
“To push me away,” he told her, his voice rising. He knew he should take a step back and calm down, but he was unable to see past this moment. “It’s just another thing you’re using to keep me at arm’s length.”
“I can’t believe you really think that.”
“What if I have it?” he asked. Again, he said the first thing that came to his mind. “Are you never going to touch me again? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“We don’t know-”
“My blood, my saliva. Everything will be contaminated.” He could hear himself yelling and didn’t care.
“There are ways around-”
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you pulling away.”
“Pulling away?”
He gave a humorless laugh, so damn tired of this he didn’t even have the energy to raise his voice again. “You won’t even fucking tell me you love me. How do you think that makes me feel? How many times do I have to keep walking out on that tightrope before you let me come back in?”
She wrapped her arms around her waist.
“I know, Sara. And it’s not that many more times.” He looked out the window over the sink, his reflection staring back at him.
At least a full minute passed before she spoke. “Is that really how you feel?”
“It’s how I feel,” he told her, and he knew it was true. “I can’t keep spending all my time wondering whether or not you’re mad at me. I need to know…” He tried to finish, but found he didn’t have the energy. What was the point?
It took some time, but her reflection joined his in the window. “You need to know what?”
“I need to know you’re not going to leave me.”
She turned on the faucet and took a paper towel off the roll. She said, “Take off your shirt.”
“What?”
She wet the towel. “You’ve got blood on your neck.”
“You want me to get you some gloves?”
She ignored the barb, lifting his shirt over his head, taking particular care not to bump his nose.
“I don’t need your help,” he told her.
“I know.” She rubbed his neck with the paper towel, scrubbing at the dried blood. He looked at the top of her head as she cleaned him. Blood had dried in a trail down to his sternum, and she wiped this up before tossing the towel into the trash can.
She picked up the bottle of lotion she always kept by the sink and pumped some into the palm of her hand. “Your skin’s dry.”
Her hands were cold when she touched him and he made a noise that sounded like a yelp.
“Sorry,” she apologized, rubbing her hands together to warm them. She tentatively placed her fingers on his chest. “Okay?”
He nodded, feeling better and wishing that she wasn’t the reason why. It was the same old back-and-forth, and he was letting himself get pulled back in.
She continued to rub in the lotion in small circles, working her way out. She softened her touch, lingering around the pink scar on his shoulder. The wound had not completely healed yet, and he felt little electric tingles in the damaged skin.
“I didn’t think you would make it,” she said, and he knew she was thinking back to the day he had been shot. “I put my hands inside of you, but I didn’t know if I could stop the bleeding.”
“You saved my life.”
“I could have lost you.”
She kissed the scar, murmuring something he couldn’t hear. She kept kissing him, her eyes closing. He felt his own eyes close as she kissed a slow pattern across his chest. After a while, she started to work her way down, unzipping his jeans. Jeffrey leaned back against the sink as she knelt in front of him. Her tongue was warm and firm as it traced the length of him, and he braced his hands on the countertop to keep his knees from buckling.
His whole body shook from wanting her, but he forced himself to put his hands on her shoulders and pull her back to standing. “No,” he told her, thinking he’d rather die than risk giving her some awful disease. “No,” he repeated, even though he wanted nothing more than to bury himself inside her.