Healing Hearts (The Challenge Series) Read Free Page A

answer. “Hello. Can I help you with something?” He winced, realizing how stilted and asshole-ish he sounded. “I mean….”
    “No, no, it’s okay. I’m actually calling to see if you need anything. My friend Lynn and her sister Jane—they own the coffee shop—they also do small catering jobs and um, meals for people who are housebound and stuff. And we thought, maybe you could use…a sandwich or something?”
    Jay put a shaking hand to his eyes, trying to banish the memory of the woman’s exotic features from his brain. He was not that guy. Not the man who lost his wife and reached out for the first available woman for company. No way. He loved Christy with every ounce of his being and would never feel the same way about another female again.
    “Jay!” Her phantom scream tore through him, making him push up off the railing and pace the small deck. “Jay….” He saw her then. His Christy—the woman he’d met and fallen for in grad school, pursued, been rejected by then finally convinced to marry him. Her face was a mess of blood, and her whole body jerked and thumped against the hardwood kitchen floor while he lay paralyzed from the waist down from a blow to the spine.
    “Listen,” he said, his voice tight. “I’m fine. I mean, I thank you for the save at the coffee shop, but you guys don’t have to ….” He gave up and sank into a chair, letting the memories fill every recessed corner of his tired brain like poisonous gas. Christy, screaming his name while she was raped, three times, then had her throat cut. Jason, lying in a bloody heap near the door, his little boy’s effort to save his mother ended with a single blow to the temple. “I gotta go,” he whispered.
    “Jay.” He heard another female voice say his name, coming from the phone handset. He stopped. “Jay, you need food. Real food. I don’t know what your deal is but…you gotta eat.” Her firm voice soothed him. He leaned over on his knees and willed himself not to puke.
    “Sure, fine. But I’m leaving day after tomorrow and won’t be back for a few days.”
    “Where are you going?”
    He took a breath and leaned back, relishing for a half second something resembling a normal conversation between him and a woman not his sister or one of his therapists. While part of him wanted to resist it, a bigger one allowed him a small measure of comfort at the sound of her voice. “Back to Ann Arbor. For a…um, business thing.”
    “Oh, okay. Why don’t I drop off a few dishes then. You can put them all in your freezer. Then you can pop them in the microwave when you get back.”
    “Uh, sure.” He looked into the tiny kitchen, unsure if there even was a microwave in there. A sudden wave of ravenous hunger roiled through him. He gulped and acknowledged the first true physical sensation other than pain or sorrow he’d experienced in months. Including getting an ill-timed hard-on yesterday like some middle school kid called to the chalkboard after the prettiest girl in the room smiled at him. He groaned.
    “You okay?”
    “Yeah. Sorry. I’m… anyway, I’m home. My place is at—”
    “I know already. My cousin cleans your cabin once a week.”
    “Oh.” He looked down at the deck’s rotting boards, his mind awash with unbidden images. Abby’s gorgeous dark skin, tumultuous curly hair. He stood, cursing himself.
    “Yeah, I know, small town and all. Sorry. Anyway, will you be there or should I leave the cooler by the door?”
    “I’ll be here.” His voice was barely a whisper. He could not square what his body was telling him versus what his poor, aching brain kept spewing into his vision—his beloved wife, his son, and the horrific screams of his daughter upstairs. “Gotta go,” he croaked before tossing the phone down and heading to meet the toilet once again, their ritual, daily dance not through until he’d lost everything he’d eaten. Even after a year, he could not erase it—the sounds, sights, and smells of his