Chapter 359: Cecile XXXI—A Real Thing to Fear
“Oh that’s cool, look it this.”
Cecile swallowed the bite of buttered blueberry scone in her mouth and instantly regretted it. The flaky, crumbling pastry stuck to her tongue and palate and teeth and before she could even look at what Danny had, she had to gulp down a swallow of almost scalding hot coffee. She squeaked and pressed her napkin to her lips. “What do ya got there?” She muttered through the paper.
Danny slid the oversized coffee table book he had been flipping through and pointed to the photograph of a man, looking like a diminutive fool clinging to the side of a breathtakingly blue icy cliff side with only clawed shoes and a dull pick axe to hold him from a plunging death. She wrinkled her nose, “Well that’s silly.”
“You think?” Danny asked and he pulled the book back to his place, and he took a sip from his coffee. “I think it looks pretty cool.” A few drops from the coffee spattered onto the pristine cold sky of the photograph and Danny gasped and flicked them off but not before the paper was left with a few dull, brown wrinkled spots. “Well I guess I’m buying this one.”
Cecile rolled her eyes. Of course she loved Dan’s silliness but taking a gorgeous coffee table book like that to the in-bookstore café before even paying for it, of course was asking for disaster. “How much is it?”
Danny grinned and picked it up, looking for the price. His eyes widened. “Hoo boy, yeah, that’s like sixty bucks.”
“For a book?” Cecile exclaimed. “It’s not even a novel or an antique!” She then thought of all the beautiful books on her mother’s tables at home, well, what used to be her home. She had never thought about checking the prices on them, it had never occurred to her.
“Hey we should get married like that,” Danny said with a mischievous grin. “Hanging on the edge of an ice cliff.”
“Oh you’re being silly,” Cecile replied, annoyed that now she had spattered some of her own coffee on her sleeve. The liquid burned for only a moment but the stain it left was bad enough. The sweater wouldn’t be at all possible for her to replace if she wanted to be good with her money, she had hoped to make this one last awhile.
“Why not, it’s kinda what we’ve been doing for the past few years.”
“Do what?” Cecile asked looking at him and dabbing at her sleeve.
“Hanging off an ice cliff.”
Cecile blinked rapidly, shaking off the statement, letting it roll off her back. Maybe he was just annoyed with having to buy the book, or looking for a fight or something. She knew well enough the suggestive implications of the words “ice” and “marriage” in the same context and she wouldn’t pick a bone with him here and now. “Who would wanna do that anyway? I mean, expending so much energy for a precipice like that only to be unsatisfied and look for another. I bet guys like that, I bet they’re never satisfied with anything in life, I doubt they’re ever really that happy.”
“Oh I don’t know,” Dan said with a sigh and he looked at the picture, “It’s the climbing part they like the best, that’s why they do it.”
Cecile smiled. “Can you imagine? I bet they’re so happy climbing to the top, hoping that there’ll be a real payoff up there and once they do that last surge of energy, and get there they take a deep breath, look at the scenery and then look down and go, oh crud I have to get down now. Well that was fun.”
Danny laughed. “I think they probably say stronger things than crud, hm?”
Cecile grimaced. “Well you know my point? I don’t know why someone would want to climb something when they have to get down, if I were climbing I’d want a purpose to it, like I was climbing up there to live or die or something.”
Danny lifted his eyebrows. “So you play for keeps you say?”
“Of course, aren’t you?”
Dan’s eyes were soft but somehow they seemed a little sad and he touched her cheek and pushed some hair off it with his thumb. “Sure I am we’re playing for keeps babe.” Cecile touched his hand and he leaned in for what seemed like a kiss but at the last moment he pressed his forehead against hers, his eyes closed. “You’ve never once regretted choosing me, leaving everything like that, have you? Has there ever been a moment like that?” What seemed odd to Cecile was that his voice didn’t sound worried as to her answer, but almost a little curious.
Cecile sighed and touched his cheeks, “The only thing I’ve regretted is circumstances that made things so hard, including my own stubbornness, sometimes. But you, no I don’t feel wrong about you, never. Is there something wrong? Have you been thinking about things or something?”
Danny kissed her, a soft quick almost impersonal closed mouth kiss as if kissing were an after thought. He sat back and intertwined his fingers in his lap. “No, just, well you’re so young Cecile and sometimes I worry that I’ve just kidnapped you from something you could have done different, that maybe you’ll regret someday. I don’t think I ever gave you a real chance to choose.” His lips tightened in a closed mouth frown as if he pondered a serious question pertaining to universal facts.
Cecile felt her forehead tighten. “What? Choose? Danny jeez it’s not like I was some dumb kid who didn’t know what was going on, I knew what I wanted just as much as you did.”
“But the point is you were a kid Cecile, and really, you still kinda are, I mean you’re just…”
“Nineteen, sure,” Cecile snapped, “And suddenly that’s an issue for you? I mean if you thought I was a clueless kid then, if you’re saying you think I’m a kid now, if you’re saying you feel guilty because you thought I couldn’t really understand the consequences of my choices then what does that say about your integrity in pursuing me? Think about that one Mr. Hinote.” Her heart pounded angrily and the ring on her finger suddenly became so cold and tight. She couldn’t fathom why he would be talking like this all of a sudden unless some teammate of his or someone had gotten to him about something. “So in essence you’re calling yourself some weird perverted predator? Ew!”
Dan’s face suddenly cracked into his smile, that smile that could blow open the coldest door of any heart and smash the defenses of any girl, a smile that could stab her through the breast and leave her helpless and cold. Oh yes, she knew that feeling. “Hey now that’s why I love ya! God you amaze me, how does that brain of yours work so fast? Just when I’m beginning to regr… think…” His face went cold, as if in shock and Cecile felt the pain of what he’d almost said sharply enough.
“You have regrets sometimes?” She asked, and the cold in her breast was pain.
“No not like you think!” Danny said quickly and he sat up and grabbed her hands in his soft warm ones. “No I don’t regret ever loving you but sometimes, I just wonder if you do, that’s all. I worry that I haven…” Instead of finishing his words though, and Cecile knew if he spoke anymore she would cry, he kissed her and this time it was warm and passionate and she felt only a couple of tears fall as she ran her fingers through his hair. She pressed her cheek into his neck and let him hold her, his touch fixing what a million words couldn’t. “We’re almost at the top of that mountain, and I’m not about to attempt a climb back down. I’m gonna have to be thrown off it if I’m gonna fail cause I sure as hell ain’t gonna go willingly.”
When Danny
dropped Cecile off at the
“Yup,” Jana giggled. “It’s my second today.”
“What?” Cecile exclaimed. “What happened?”
Jana put her finger to her chin. “Well first I got really muddy outside cause of the flying monkeys,” And Cecile didn’t ask about the monkeys because she knew that meant a long foray into the mind of the girl’s imagination that would take them both way off the original subject. “And I took a bath and then Mom said that we shouldn’t go outside anymore so we started baking and then I got the batter spilled on me cause Jonathan scared me because…”
“Oh wow,” Cecile said patting Jana on her bony shoulder. “That’s quite a day; sounds like you had some experiences there.”
Jana nodded solemnly, “Yup and flying monkeys don’t taste good either.”
“Oh I… I wouldn’t think so…”
Since Elena was spending the night Jana seemed content to share her bedroom with her which heartened Cecile because she really wanted to see Jana making some progress after that horrible day of the attack. That meant Cecile would be sleeping alone in the basement. At first Cecile felt relieved to have the room all to herself again but when she went down for bed, her aloneness hit her. She took a shower, she rolled herself in the down comforter and turned off the lights and closed her eyes but a sleep didn’t come.
Instead she thought about the dinner she had eaten with the family just upstairs in the kitchen. Michele had made a simple meal of basic roast, and vegetables and crusty bread with butter and thankfully, nothing seemed as rich and gastro intestinally creamy fatty dangerous as some of her other delicious meals. Cecile had been thankful for that and she sat next to the boys, grinned to Jana across the table and watched with some interest the puppy dog looks Elena and Jonathan gave to each other.
The thing that had initially made her nervous was the prospect of seeing or interacting in anyway with Mr. Roy. Surprisingly, he didn’t once glance her way out of turn and when he did speak with her it was brief and about something simple and concerning children. His eyes although not dull, seemed sleepy, and without flame, and certainly without any interest in her. How different they were from the last time he had spoken with her declaring undying love, passion, and trying to justify it.
Of course Cecile wasn’t disappointed but she was confused. Whenever he did declare his love, as he put it, he seemed so deathly sincere in an almost breathtakingly simple and obvious way and then suddenly he seemed so cold and superior as if she were a gnat to be ignored. One reason not to trust his sincerity, she supposed but what sort of game did it mean he was trying with her? How much should she fear him?
Well obviously he wouldn’t harm the girl responsible for his daughter’s life, right? Cecile had to believe in that, but she couldn’t understand how he could act as if she were so important to him emotionally and then shut himself off. It was like seeing a storm cloud brewing over the mountain tops and then not knowing which way it would head.
He had dared to cross a line once before, he had come down here and tried to have his way. She still acutely felt the touch of his breath and more potently remembered that wild look in his eyes and she feared that. She had chased him off once but with words, physically she could never match him.
So Jana wasn’t here now, she lay alone in bed and she ran her hand over her breast, although only slightly bruised now, still a little sore. She wrinkled her cheek and cringed underneath the stitches itching on her face. Not thinking about that curiosity of Patrick, made her more aware of her uncomfortable body, and her lungs still ached from the memory of drowning.
That man had had black eyes, black eyes that emptied of hate and life when the bullet shattered his brain. Now there was something who had wanted to slice her open, kill her, end her, and then do the same, if not worse to Jana. Now there was a man to fear, a man without compassion sanity or love. Cecile sat up and kicked off the blanket. She gasped with tears and the memory of her fingers cutting into his flesh. Lying at the side of the bed was her duffel and she grabbed that, fumbled through it until she found the bottle of pain pills.
Physically she didn’t really need them anymore, and she was running low, and she hadn’t had one in a few days, but just to sleep. One would put her to sleep and she plucked a pill from the bottle, found the glass of water on the nightstand gulped the pill down and closing her eyes tightly she curled back into her blankets. Soon she would sleep and care about nothing.
That man’s black eyes burned as soon as she drifted and she sat up, gasping and pressing her fingers over her forehead. Now there was a man to fear; now there had been something to fear. Worrying about Danny’s feelings for her when she was assured of him, worrying about Patrick’s actions to her when he couldn’t possibly be so evil as to murder her or rape her, seemed so silly all of a sudden. There were worse things in this world, and she had already faced them.
Worrying
now about anything else was weak, and wasteful. But again Cecile’s skin felt
damp and ravaged and fear darted through her veins before the prickly warmth of
the pain medication began to throb in her blood. She yawned and before long,
she fell asleep.