"Jack!" she screamed, the sound almost consumed by the roar of the fire. "Damn you Jack, don't die on me now!"
She pulled at him, gritted her teeth, and threw all her strength into dragging him toward the door, shouting every inch of the way. Her curses and pleas penetrated the fog of Jack's consciousness. Her determination made him move his legs when he wasn't sure he could remember how. He latched onto the sound of her voice and the feel of her hand and the incredible power of her will, and used it all to propel himself forward. At the door, he caught hold of the splintered frame and got his feet under himself.
"Hurry!" Laurel shouted, wrapping an arm around his waist and trying to take his weight against her as they stumbled down the steps and started toward the bayou.
The rain was still falling, but it was no match for the old dried wood of the shack. The cabin lit up the night sky like a torch. The fire devoured it as if hell had opened up to consume all evidence of the atrocities that had been practiced there, devouring the perpetrator, as well, condemning him to a justice that was absolute.
Weak, choking from the smoke, staggering under Jack's weight, Laurel fell to her knees on the muddy bank, and Jack went down like a ton of bricks beside her.
"Oh, God, Jack! Don't die!" she demanded, bending over him. "Don't be dead! Please don't be dead!"
She bent over him, bawling, her tears combining with the rain to splash down onto his face. With hands shaking violently, she touched his soot-covered cheek, his lips-trying to feel his breath, fumbled to find a pulse in his throat. Was it weak and thready, or was that her own?
His lashes fluttered upward, and he looked at her. Tried to smile. Tried to catch more than a teaspoon of air. "Hey, angel," he whispered, then had to try to breathe again. "Mebbe I'm one of the good guys after all."
Then darkness swept over him like a velvet blanket, and he surrendered to the pain.
Chapter Thirty-One
He remembered in dreamlike bits and pieces. A force of will pushing, prodding, begging, swearing, goading him to move his feet. Take a step and another. The pain was blocked out, but not the weakness or the sense of disconnection between his mind and his body. He remembered feeling as if the essence of him were floating free, connected to his physical shell by the finest of threads. He remembered the powerful temptation to sever that tie and just drift away, but Laurel kept yanking him back. He remembered wondering vaguely how she could be so little and be so strong.
There was a boat in the fragments of memory. And rain. Rain and tears. Laurel crying over him. He wanted to tell her not to. He couldn't stand the thought of making her cry, even though he knew he had done it more than once, bastard that he was. There were many things he wanted to tell her, but he couldn't gather more than the urgency. The words bounced around in his head like bubbles. He had forgotten how to use his voice. The frustration exhausted him.
Darkness, light. The murmured voices of men and women in white clothes. Couldn't be heaven; he never would have gotten in the gate. Had to be a hospital.
Cool hands touching his arm, his cheek. Soft lips and whispers of love. Laurel.
Laurel had stayed with him, Nurse Washington had told him as she shuffled around his room, fussing and checking things. She was a short, squat, cube of a woman with mahogany skin and little sausage fingers that read his pulse with the feather-light touch of expertise. Miz Chandler had visited during the days he had spent in deep, drugged sleep. But didn't she have a lot on her plate, the poor little thing, what with her sister being killed and the sheriff's investigation and all? And weren't they lucky to have escaped with their lives? Mr. Danjermond a killer-Lord have mercy!
Jack tuned out the memory of her chatter now as he stood on his front step and watched Leonce drive away. As the Monte Carlo rolled out of sight, his gaze was drawn inexorably to Belle Rivière. At the core of his pounding head were thoughts of Laurel. She had sat with him, kissed his cheek, whispered that she loved him. He didn't deserve her love, but he knew without a doubt it was what had made him hang on to life when he could have easily let go. Laurel's voice coming to him through the mists, begging him to live, bribing him with her love.
Huey crawled out from under a tangle of long-neglected azalea bushes and climbed up on the step to give Jack's hand a sniff and a lick of welcome. Jack stared down at the hound, meeting the pair of weirdly mismatched eyes, and grudgingly scratched the dog's ear. Huey groaned and thumped his tail against the bricks.
"You're all the welcome I get, eh, Huey? That's what I get for breaking out."
He pushed the door open and wandered into the house, letting the dog trail after him. Huey abandoned him to nose around the old draped furniture in search of mice. Jack took as deep a breath as he could manage and climbed the stairs one excruciating step at a time.
Somehow, he had expected to feel at home once he made it to his bedroom, but as he looked around, he realized this wasn't his home at all. It was still Madame Deveraux's boudoir. He was just marking time here. He hadn't done much more than change the sheets on the bed. He hadn't made this house his home, he admitted as he sank down on the mattress, wincing at the bite of his broken rib and the stab wound that sliced the tissue around it. It was his prison, the place where he turned on himself and endlessly cracked the whips of self-flagellation. The one thing he had done to make the place his own was hanging all his neckties in the live oak out front, and that had been more a sign of shame than of freedom. Like a flag on the door of a plague victim, it was a warning to those who would venture near that he couldn't handle a life that required ties of any kind.
That life had blown up in his face, and he had had to live with the fact that he'd been the one to lay the powder and light the fuse. What he had rebuilt for himself in the aftermath of the debacle was simple and safe for all concerned, he reminded himself as he stared up at the intricate plaster medallion on the ceiling. He had his writing, his pals at Frenchie's, enough willing lady friends to warm his bed when he wanted.
He had an empty house and an empty heart and no one to share them with save the ghosts of his past and a dog that wasn't his.
Jack shoved the thought away with an effort that had him squinting against the pain. His life swung on a pendulum between penance and parties, and it suited him fine. He was accountable to no one, responsible for nothing.
And still Laurel Chandler had managed to fall in love with him. The irony of it was too much-Laurel, the champion for justice, upholder of the law, in love with a man who had broken so many so carelessly, a man for whom justice was a sentence to emotional exile. She offered him everything he had ever wanted, everything he'd told himself he could never have.
If he had a shred of honor, he would walk away and leave her to fall in love with a better man than he could ever be.
The service was private. A blessing and a curse, Laurel thought. The pain went too deep for her to share it with people she hardly knew, but some of the deepest wounds had been inflicted by the only people present.
She sat with Caroline and Mama Pearl on one side of the chapel. Vivian and Ross sat on the other side, in the same pew but not together. Separated by an invisible wall of hate, together only out of Vivian's automatic attempt to put a "normal" face on ugly family secrets. She would never confirm or deny the rumors once they began to spread-a lady didn't lower herself to airing the dirty laundry in public. She would most likely divorce Ross quietly and go on with her life as if he had never been a part of it, leaving him hanging alone on the gallows of public opinion.
Ross stared dully at the casket with its blanket of pink tea roses and baby's breath. Laurel wondered if he felt remorse or just regret for being exposed after all this time. She wouldn't have allowed him to come, regardless, but the choice hadn't been hers to make.
She wondered how he would weather the storm of accusation and condemnation once the story of the abuse became common knowledge-and she would damn well make certain it became common knowledge. Caroline had told her once that Ross was a weak man. If there was a God in heaven, the shame of the truth would crush him.