Knight In Black Leather by Gail Dayton (ebook reader ink .txt) 📕

in closer, laying her hand flat on Eli's chest. Was the storm over? God, he hoped so.

"Do I need to be finding someplace else to stay?" he said.

She shook her head.

"Do you want to go back to your apartment? I can pay you rent for this place."

She shook her head again.

"Be sure, Marilyn." Eli kissed her forehead. "I want to be with you, but it's not good for either you or Pete if you're going to come apart every time you're around him."

"You know what wasn't good for me? Pretending I didn't have a son. Avoiding children his age because I wasn't that good at pretending. I just--" She broke off as tears threatened again. "Maybe I can't do it. But I want to try. I'm sick of being a coward. I'm tired of being so weak I have to hide from the truth. Yes, I loved Bill, but I was mad as hell at him when he died. And I had a son. I had a son and I loved him very much and--and I don't think I ever got to mourn him."

She sniffled. "Do you think it would scare Pete too much if I cried a little, every now and then?"

"I don't know. Maybe if you explained why you were crying... We can give it a try if you want to." Eli wanted it so much, it would probably never work.

"I want to." Marilyn leaned back against his good arm and stretched. "God, what a day. I feel wrung out, strung out, and just plain pooped." She rubbed her eyes, wiping away the last of the tears. "And I really hate to cry."

"Me too. I mean, I hate it when you do." He dared to hope this episode was over.

She chuckled and patted his shoulder, swinging her feet to the floor. "Poor Eli. I bet you've never been cried on so much in your life as you have since you've been with me." She stood.

"You'd lose that bet. Big time. Starting with my mom when my dad died. That's why I don't do tears." He took her hand and her help in pulling himself to his feet.

"How old were you when Pete was born? Sixteen?"

He draped his good arm over her shoulders and walked with her to the stairs. "Barely. Sixteen and a couple months. I was pretty much living with Tee then. She was nineteen." He grinned. "I guess I always had a thing about older women."

Marilyn punched him lightly in the side. "Fourteen years is not the same as three."

"It's better." He kissed her neck as they entered the bedroom with the big bed, and balked. "Hey, it's not going to bother you, is it? Sleeping in here with me? I mean--" Eli gestured at the bed, the one where she'd slept with her husband.

She paused, considered, then shook her head. "No, I don't think so. I've been sleeping here alone for four years. It's just my bed now. Why? Does it bother you?"

Did it? Eli thought for about two seconds. "Nope. Long as you're there with me, I don't much care where it is."

She rummaged in a wide dresser, looking through several drawers before pulling out a long nylon gown. Then she went still in her own turn. "Do you mind if--if we just sleep?"

"Sure, babe." He struggled out of his T-shirt. He almost had the process down now. "If that's what you want."

He got in bed beside her, resigned to a lonely night in the wide bed when she surprised him by sliding over next to him.

"Hold me?" She lifted her head so he could slide his arm beneath it.

"Any time, babe. Any time."

Eli came awake fast, blinking in the bar of light that fell across his eyes as he sat up. He heard noises. Downstairs.

He slid out of bed, managing to keep from waking Marilyn, and hitched up his shorts--first time he'd worn them to bed in a week. He wondered where his crutch was as he headed downstairs to investigate. He'd brought it inside, he was sure. Left it by the front door, maybe. The crutch wouldn't work as well as a baseball bat, but it would do, provided he could get to it. He picked it up on his way through the foyer to the kitchen, and found Pete rummaging in the cabinets for breakfast.

"Man, there's nothin' to eat. What kind of girlfriend you got, doesn't have food?" Pete demanded.

He still wore only his long-sleeved T-shirt and plain white briefs. He'd insisted on the switch from Spiderman Underoos when he started first grade, because all the other boys had plain whitietighties. Eli had mailed a package of six from Boise after that phone call.

"Let me see." Eli started opening cabinets at random, finding a smattering of soup and vegetable cans, a box of very stale cereal and little else. "We haven't been staying here," he said. "All the food's at the apartment."

"She has a house and an apartment?" Pete said, sounding awed.

"Well...yeah." It was pretty impressive now he thought about it. He opened the freezer. "There's a box of frozen waffles. Didn't I see some syrup?"

"Yeah, great!" Pete climbed up on the counter top to get the syrup from an upper shelf, too eager to wait for Eli.

Eli started opening cabinets looking for a toaster when the doorbell rang. "You find the toaster," he said. "I'll go see who's at the door at--" he checked the clock on the stove, "at nine o'clock on a Thursday morning."

Before he could reach the door, just as he walked into the foyer, a key turned in the lock and the front door started to open.

"Yoo-hoo, Marilyn!" The call came through the first crack of the door.

Eli froze in place. He knew that voice. And here he stood in the foyer wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts and two plaster casts. Half-panicked, he looked over his shoulder at Marilyn coming down the stairs just pulling on a robe. Should he stay? Go?