Not for Sale

by Eden Rayna

  I grip the handrail so I won’t tumble down on shaky limbs. He moves from the kitchen to the base of the stairs, where I can see the same conflict play out on his face. Where he can watch me deliberate on each step.

  “Do up your shoelaces.”

  I ponder the logistics of following through with his demand while perched on an eleven-inch wide platform in what basically amounts to a short skirt. Isn’t it enough that I put the shoes on?

  “Why don’t you come rescue me, dark knight?” I huff under my breath.

  The acoustics in here are incredible, and before I’ve completed my contemptuous look, he’s taken the six steps to meet me.

  “No! No! No!” I wave my hand back and forth furiously between us. It doesn’t make a difference. He scoops me around my bare thighs, his rough hands on my bed-warmed skin, and pivots like we’re twirling around a dance floor. I keep one hand on my ass to ensure my shirt doesn’t ride up and use the other to beat his back in time with my chant of, “Put me down!”

  He does put me down, dropping me on the couch so my legs slap against the leather. I scramble to pull my shirt over my legs, hoping I don’t make it worse as my vision swirls in psychedelic loops.

  “Stay here or tie your laces.” His bark holds more bite than the first time he asked.

  Owen throws his jacket over me to cover my legs.

  I toss his jacket off and let my legs trail out the bottom of his shirt, then I kick my shoes off and drag my bare toes across the floor, taunting him. My heart against the walls of my chest, furious with his actions and excited with my rebellion.

  “What fucking era do you think we live in that you can talk to me that way? Women aren’t porcelain vases that need to be kept on shelves behind locked glass doors. I am capable of walking stairs on my own, even with my shoes untied. I can find my own way home at night. Hell, I can reno my own fucking house, you chauvinist pig!”

  I don’t know how a second ago I let myself think he was looking at me with anything other than misogynistic arrogance.

  “Chauvinist?” he yells. “You think I’m chauvinist?” Owen throws his arms in the air, then settles them on top of his head. Head tilted to the ceiling, he spins in a circle. “When did injury prevention become a gender issue?”

  I stand because I’m feeling oddly like a student in detention with him hovering above me. I’m pretty sure I can manage it without a wobble, proving my point further that I don’t require a babysitter.

  “It became a gender issue when you made it one. Why did you order me off the roof? Why wouldn’t you let me catch an Uber home tonight?”

  “Because I c—” He doesn’t finish his sentence, seeming to be shocked at what he was about to say. His face hardens and with a quirk of his head he says, “You know what? Fine. I’m an asshole.” He walks into the kitchen and rests his hands on the countertop, his back to me. Conversation done.

  What was he going to say? “C” could be the beginning of so many words: can’t, calculate, criticise . . .

  “Cop out,” I mumble to his back. I’ll achieve nothing from this, but there’s no way I’m going to let him get away without acknowledging that how he treats women is antiquated.

  He bounces on the balls of his feet several times before facing off for round two.

  “You drive me crazy, you know that?”

  “The feeling is mutual.” I narrow my eyes.

  “You want to know what’s wrong with me?” His choice of words burn when they slap me in the face, calling me out on my accusation that he’s deeply flawed.

  “It would be nice to understand why you don’t think you need to play by society’s rules like everyone else.” I sidestep his allegation.

  He stares at me as if contemplating this. Like no one has ever told him he doesn’t conform. I stare right back. I may be sentimental, but I’m not a pushover.

  After some time, he bobs his head tightly.

  “You tell me something and I’ll tell you something.”

  My eyebrows rise in confusion, then drop in frustration. Why does he need something from me first? Does he want leverage in exchange for honesty?

  “Why?”

  “Then we’re even.”

  He’s worried I want leverage, strangely, since he has nothing I want.

  “Yes or no, Princess?”

  He heads to the couch and I look at it, knowing that if I sit, I’m giving in. I’ll be showing my hand to the shark at the table. Gran would be so disappointed. Then again, no one in the family ever expected me to be the holdout. I’m the emotional one.

  Owen notices my hesitation and lets me dwell on it. He sits in the couch's corner, leaving two-thirds for me. He waits, taunting me with his silence while I run the options in my mind.

  He already knows the house is special to me; what could he gain if he knows something personal? If anything, I’m the one who stands to gain something: peace. Getting this anger out may be the thing to chill him out.

  I meet him on the couch, sitting demurely with my legs pressed together, pulling the shirt as far as it will go. He gently hands me his jacket to cover myself again, and I accept it, crossing my legs underneath me in a more relaxed position. It’s then that I notice there’s no blanket here. Owen offered to sleep on the couch in his clothes, using his jacket as a blanket so I could use his bed.

  Is he nicer than I give him credit for?

  He scrubs his hand through his beard a few times, then folds one leg under the other, relaxing into the idea of sitting across from me. Settling into the possibility that he wants something off his chest.

  He doesn’t order me to go first. I volunteer.

  “When I went to university, my parents quit their teaching jobs to work with an international developmental agency aimed at helping young girls get an education. Right before a stint overseas, they came to visit me and left me with boxes full of their belongings. More than the usual handful of mementos they’d offload. It was like they somehow knew they would never need them again. Over the years, they became less and less attached to possessions, telling me how easy it was to live with very little.” I consider Owen’s room, and I know he understands.

  “That’s what made their story so ironic. About a month into their contract, their house was broken into in the middle of the night, and they were killed for a few picture frames and an old CD player.”

  My eyes brim with tears, as they always do when I speak of my parents. I turn my head to avoid Owen’s pity. I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand and erase my emotions like I have so many times tonight.

  I’m not asking for his pity. He already thinks I’m weak.

  Silence hangs between us for a moment before Owen asks, “Your parents were murdered?”

  When I look up, I see his fingers dragging across the tattoo of the stick family.

  Does my situation remind him of his own?

  “That’s why you’re so independent.” He nods at his assessment. Of all the ways Owen could describe me, that’s not one I expected to hear. This whole time he’s been calling me a failure. Waiting for me to quit because the job is too big. How can he call me independent with a reverent tone and simultaneously think me unqualified?

  “You didn’t have your parents to lean on.” He continues his assessment of me.

  I’d hardly say I had no one to lean on growing up. My parents didn’t go overseas until I was a young adult attending university in another province. I had them during my formative years, then I had Gran and Kelsey’s parents after that.

  Did their sudden departure from my life wreak havoc on me? Of course. I still had much to learn from them. Although, I learned something from their death as well. Don’t let anyone take advantage of me, make the most of every day, do what makes me happy.

  “But you’re not scared to sleep in the backyard. Unprotected.”

  There’s a question in there, even though it doesn’t sound like it.

  “Seems like someone was looking out for me,” I say.

&n
bsp; “I’m scared,” he says, taking his turn to stare at his lap. Why is it so hard to look someone in the eye when being honest and so easy when being mean? “I’m scared of meeting the same fate as my dad.”

  Owen drops his tucked foot to the floor and props his elbows on his knees, gripping the back of his head. He stares between his feet, speaking to the ground rather than to me.

  “My mum is dead, and Pops might as well be. If he understood how he was living, he’d wish he were dead.” The deep inhale between thoughts fills the silence between us. “He’s got Alzheimer’s. It’s so bad he doesn’t remember me most days.”

  That’s terrible. To watch a loved-one slowly disappear and forget the things you shared. For his dad to not recall the life he lived and the things he experienced.

  “How long has he been this way?”

  He answers, knowing why I ask. “Just over two years.”

  That’s a long time to watch someone suffer and worry about them.

  “I had to put him in assisted living. It was too much for me to worry about. I didn’t want to take Black Ladder away from him, but he was inadvertently reckless. Showing up at houses that we finished, calling vendors and placing orders we didn’t need.”

  Visiting my grandmother’s house.

  Bile burns my chest. I bet Owen had no idea Iain had been knocking on Gran’s door until I blindsided him with the news tonight.

  I blamed Black Ladder and Owen for events beyond anyone’s control. I’m as guilty as he is for making snap judgements.

  “He waits every day by the door of his room at the nursing home for his Livy—my mum—to visit. Mum was the love of his life—still is, I guess. Pops lived every moment to please her. At least, that’s what I figured he was like when she was alive. I was five when she died. She fell off a ladder and hit her head while renovating a house with Pops.” The words tumble out of him like he wakes every day, hoping someone will ask him about his family.

  A lump the size of a golf ball grows in my throat.

  If I had known.

  If I had a clue, I wouldn’t have been intentionally careless on the roof, walking backwards and refusing to get down purely to watch his blood boil. I wouldn’t have blamed him when I got hit in the head with the rake, then made a joke about it.

  At this point, I don’t care that he sees me cry because these aren’t my tears. These are his. I’m shedding the pain that he carries around silently, stoically. I’m showing him there’s a way to let the suffering go that isn’t expressed as anger.

  “They bought an old house and were fixing it. It was supposed to be their forever home. Mum was so excited to own something finally. Pops said the day they took possession of the place, she planted a rosebush in the middle of the yard and said the rest of the garden would grow around it. She was planting her flag, declaring the property hers.”

  I stare at his arms. The wobbly house, the rosebush, the family. Those are his memories of his mom.

  It isn’t just his tattoos that I pay attention to. His posture, his facial expressions, his hand gestures are all pieces to his puzzle, clues to what makes Owen MacLeod the person he is. Detached, deliberate, restrained. Normally, those qualities make me angry with him. Today, they make me heartsick. There is no pain compared to losing a parent.

  “I don’t remember her much. I recall an old Scottish song she used to sing to me, but I’m sure it’s because Pops told me she’d sing it at bedtime. With his memory failing, I’m losing more than him; I’m losing her all over again.”

  Owen stands brusquely and puts his back to me. His right hand goes to his face to stroke his dark beard and his left hand hangs lifelessly by his side.

  It all makes so much sense. No furniture, no photos, no roots. With his father’s declining health, he has nothing left to ground him to the idea of family. Of love. Owen is untethered and, despite building beautiful homes for people to create their own memories in, he’s never created his own.

  Now I understand why he’s so adamant that I pay attention to my safety. The “c” word he almost said was cares. It never crossed my mind that his intentions were honest and came from a place of pain rather than animosity or selfishness.

  We both remain silent, conflicted in the aftermath of our confessions and how we understand each other more than we ever thought possible. Finally, I stand. Remaining by the couch, I give myself a few more seconds to think my move through, thankful I can’t see his eyes. Normally the brightest thing about him, they’re surely dulled with sadness. I shuffle the two steps between the couch and him and extend my shaking arms the width of his body. I notice how far they have to reach to snake around his sides and how he uses his physical strength to hide his emotional weakness. My new awareness picks up on his slumped shoulders and the lacking tough guy exterior.

  Of all the attractive things about Owen, this exposure is by far the sexiest. The crumbling façade that shows his true motives and the rawest form of himself is my justification for wrapping my arms around him. He saved me once with his large embrace and a second time with his warm touch. Perhaps this is how I can save him.

  Sometimes when I’m missing my parents or Gran, the one thing that makes the ache go away is a hug. I don’t want people’s words or sympathy. I want connection. I want something physical to anchor me to this earth, so I don’t dare float away into the sky to meet them.

  I don’t know how Owen copes with his grief. My guess is he doesn’t.

  I knew nothing about him until he spilled his deepest secret to me. Hell, I didn’t realise he could speak full sentences until right now. But I know that sometimes we don’t recognise what we need until someone offers it to us. Right now, I believe Owen needs contact. He needs to be touched to understand that he’s still required and wanted right here. That his goals and dreams aren’t misguided, they’re misstated.

  I inhale again and pull his now familiar scent into my body, drawing me several inches closer to him. At first, I rest my hands around his waist loosely, barely attaching my body to his. Then I lay my cheek on his between his shoulder blades. Owen stiffens, his abs tighten and his back muscles contract. His exhale is strained, like it pains him to be touched. Tension runs deep within him. The desire to get angry at me for seeing him at his weakest—because that’s the one way he knows how to react—is palpable. But he doesn’t step away or ask me to stop.

  There’s a shift. A surrender. A desire to tame the beast and feel another kind of emotion. Any other emotion.

  I slide my hands towards each other, attempting to clasp my fingers together and secure him within my hold. His hand comes off his face, and he places both of his overtop mine, locking my arms in with his strong limbs, embracing the closeness. Millimetre by millimetre his hands glide until our fingers tangle together. Millimetre by millimetre I squeeze him tighter. We stand there in his usual silence, with his heart beating into my cheek for what feels like a long time. The air surrounding us is so still, so calm, the dust doesn’t dare settle. Everything is at peace.

  Chapter 24

  Owen

  “Yes!” A deep voice rattles through the house from downstairs. It’s followed by a thump and a female scream. A get the shotgun, there’s a home invader battle cry.

  I jump off the ladder and fly down the stairs, hammer swinging.

  Izzy is standing by the couch, hopping on one bare foot, holding her head in one hand and her heart in the other, while Brett holds the front door wide open.

  Being woken this way must be her worst nightmare. On so many levels.

  Brett wears a shit-eating grin, staring at what looks like the end of a messy, drunken hook-up. Izzy at my place, wearing my t-shirt and nothing else.

  Fuck.

  “Brett, no.” I warn his mind not to wander.

  “Like hell, no. It’s about time you two fucked it out of your systems. We’re all good now? You two ready to act like adults around each other?”

  “It’s not what you think.” Izzy says.

  She�
��s right. What we did last night is way worse than anything Brett could possibly imagine.

  A purple bruise is forming on her shin—the thump I heard obviously coming from her kicking the coffee table at the sound of an intruder.

  The thing about having a lockbox is that anyone with the code can enter at any hour. Until this very moment, it’s never been an issue because I never bring women home. The guys know that.

  Of course, of all the people in the world I’d let in, it’s Princess. And of all the guys to walk in, it’s Brett.

  My reasons for keeping women away are simple. I don’t want the questions. I don’t need the curiosity about the way I live. The interest in my tattoos. The pity that would follow from learning about my family.

  Although . . . I did that very thing last night and I didn’t get pity. Instead of fielding a thousand questions or listening to Princess lament her sorrows of my motherless childhood, I got empathy. She rewarded my honesty by wrapping her arms around me, allowing me to appreciate the softness of her breasts, and the warmth of her cheek pressed against my back. She gave me her trust, and despite the worried anticipation of my reaction, she sank further into me.

  She understood me.

  I wasn’t treated like a wounded animal, inferior to others who were raised by two loving parents. At that moment, I felt like I wasn’t alone.

  It’s been a long time since I haven’t felt alone.

  I position myself between Brett and Izzy, trying to act as a screen. She’s sitting now with my jacket draped across her bare legs, staring straight ahead, frozen. Hiding the sheer terror of what the guys are going to think of this. She’s waiting for Brett to leave so she can scurry up the stairs and grab her clothing, then run off the premises.

  “Out,” I say sharply, telling Brett that he needs to back himself up until he’s on the far side of the closed door and act like he saw nothing.