He gives me a sour look, then smirks. “I guess I deserve that.”
“Amy didn’t deserve any of what happened to her.”
He sighs and stares out the window. “No. She didn’t. None of the victims did.” Turning in his seat, he faces me, his hands warm on my shoulders. “Are you experiencing survivor’s guilt?”
“What?”
“It’s typical, Carrie,” he says with the compassion of someone who’s been there, done that. “When you make it through a trauma and your friend doesn’t, it’s human nature to feel guilt. To feel all the what ifs. To think that maybe you shouldn’t be okay while your friend is suffering. Or worse.” His eyes go loose and unfocused, like he’s a million miles away.
He’s remembering something.
And now his hands are ice cold, too.
“Hey,” I whisper, trying to stay quiet and gentle, even as my heart speeds up. Something about the way he’s lost in his own memory makes me wary. “Mark? I don’t think we’re talking about Amy now.”
“Huh?” He shakes his head like a dog after it comes out of a lake. “Oh. Sorry. Haven’t done that for a while.” He gives me an aw shucks grin.
I look at him. Really look. Worry lines crease his face. I haven’t seen that before. There is a little more beard growth and scruff, and his hair’s grown out slightly. He’s rumpled and gorgeous, but definitely preoccupied.
The past few weeks have taken their toll on him, too.
Emotion floods my soul. I’ve been so focused on me that I’ve forgotten his suffering.
“I’m so sorry,” I say with a sigh. “This has been rough on you, too. It must be triggering so much for you.”
He frowns and tenses. “I’m fine.”
“I know you’re fine,” I say. “But with me you don’t have to be fine. You can just be Mark.”
His eyes flicker with something so primal. “Sometimes I’m not sure what that means,” he confesses.
I move closer to him and pull him to me for an embrace. I only have one good arm, so it’s awkward at best. “We have the rest of our lives to figure that out. Together,” I whisper.
“That’s my line,” he jokes. But his body relaxes and he rests his chin on my neck.
We both just breathe for a while.
“You ready?” he mutters into my neck. Hot breath warms me up. I feel myself rallying.
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
I grin into his ear. “You know me so well.”
“Not half as well as I’ll know you in fifty years.” He plants a butterfly kiss on the one part of my face that doesn’t have a bruise or a scrape.
A girl could get very, very used to this.
We exit the car and walk, hand in hand, to the main reception desk at the wing where Amy’s being treated. As agreed, Mark leaves me alone. I don’t know where he’s going, but he’ll be back in an hour. There’s a flank of guards in the hallway outside her room. A nurse ushers me in through a back way. I can hear the crowd of media people in the distance.
Amy’s guards look suspiciously like mine.
Hey. Wait a minute.
“Silas?” I whisper as I walk into Amy’s hospital room. She’s hooked up to a ton of machines, still, but she has the faded bruises on her remaining arm and on her face like I do.
Silas looks at me and smiles. “Ms. Myerson.”
I shake my head. “Drew?”
He shrugs.
Mark’s been taking care of Amy this whole time, too.
Oh, my sweet man carries so many burdens on those strong shoulders.
Amy stirs, her eyes fluttering open. They are glassy. She rolls slightly to the side without an arm, then flops back.
“Damn it,” she groans. “Fucking missing arm. I keep forgetting.”
I see her personality hasn’t changed.
“Amy?” I say, quiet as can be.
Her eyes widen and shift toward me. “Carrie? Is that you?”
My throat swells with emotion, but I choke out a “yes.”
“Get over here, you savior!” she gasps.
I rush to give her the best hug I can, given she’s missing an arm and one of mine is in a sling and cast.
“We’re gimps, aren’t we?” she chuckles as we hug.
“Amy!” I say, shocked by her tone.
“Jesus, Carrie, if I can’t joke about everything we went through, I might as well be dead.”
Dead.
She came so close.
We came so close.
A sudden flash of Frenchie’s dead body, brains half splattered, invades my mind. It’s like someone shoved an ice pick between my eyes and implanted the image.
I pitch backward with surprise. Strong arms catch my elbows.
“Ms. Myerson?” Silas’ deep voice is right behind me. He’s holding me up. “You need some help?”
“I’m fine,” I whisper.
Amy snorts.
“Yeah. Fine. We’re all just fine. Peachy keen.” But she’s not angry. And she’s right.
We’re fine.
But really? We’re so far away from fine it’s not funny.
Silas helps me sit on the edge of Amy’s bed so I’m stable. Reluctantly, he pulls away, settling into a chair just a few feet away. He pulls on his impassive mask, pretending to watch the door or the window.
His presence is deeply comforting.
“I’m not fine,” I say to Amy. “And I’m so sorry about your arm.”
“You saved my life, Carrie. I can’t believe it. You did what no one else could do.”
“I didn’t do anything. I just thought of something at the wrong time and got trapped with you.”
“Didn’t do anything? Didn’t do anything? From what Mark told me when he came here yesterday, you did everything, Carrie!” She’s openly sobbing now, her words coming out in fits and starts.
I’m crying, too.
Wordlessly, Silas produces two neatly ironed white handkerchiefs and hands one to each of us.
“I was half out of it, sick as a fucking dog, and they’d had me in there for at least a day. Before that, all I know is they had me in some weird underground tunnel system thing. I woke up in one of those giant bags of coffee. In the bag,” she explains. My mind reverts to the coffee bean bag with the big red stain and I shudder.
“I crawled out of it and was just feeling my way around in the dark. Claudia’s dad came down there one time and told me how beautiful I was going to be. How I was a chrysalis and he would make me a butterfly.”
My stomach folds in on itself. I stop breathing. I need to hear this but oh, God, I really don’t want to hear this.
“But a butterfly without wings. He said those were so much more precious, because then you could admire them. He went on and on about someone named Nora. Mark told me that was Claudia’s mom?” Amy’s voice goes up in a question. She blows her nose and takes a deep breath.
She waits.
Like I have all the answers.
I look at Silas. He’s pretending not to listen.
“Uh, from what I know from people, the dean—El Brujo—had a wife named Nora. She was born without arms and had little legs. She was one of the thalidomide babies. She was born in Spain.”
Amy gives me a perplexed look.
“I guess in the 1960s in Europe or something, some pregnant women took a drug called thalidomide to help with nausea? I don’t really understand it all,” I confess. “But it made a lot of those babies come out with limb problems. Missing arms and legs, or unformed parts of their limbs. Even the nurses here—the older ones—know what I’m describing.”
“Oh,” Amy gasps.
“And Claudia’s mom was one of those babies. She was smart and the rest of her body was fine. She was able to have Claudia. She and the dean met in college. Nora Landau had a full life. According to Mark’s research, she died of the flu. Just one of those things. And I guess El Brujo—er, Dean Landau—loved her.”
Amy snorts. “Worshipped her.”
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“Fetishized her,” I add, using the word Mark carefully explained to me. “He loved the fact that she was missing most of her limbs. Loved it so much he sought to replicate it in his victims.”
Amy gags. I grab the pink puke bin in case she needs it. She shakes her head and motions for a cup of water with a straw poking out. I help her take a sip and she relaxes.
“So that’s why he did this to me. To the others.” She pauses. “Are any of the others alive?”
The word sticks in my throat but I have to say it. “The ones who had limbs amputated?”
“Right.”
“No. I’m sorry, Amy. No. You’re the only one who survived.”
She blinks. Over and over, until it becomes a bit absurd.
“Because of you.”
“Because of luck.”
“Because of luck and Mikey being an asshole.”
I weigh that one out for a moment. “Okay. Luck, me, and Mikey being an asshole works.”
We laugh.
It’s not a pleasant sound.
I reach over and squeeze her good hand. She looks at me. Her head is bandaged and her eyes have deep, dark circles under them. The little nose stud she had has been ripped out, viciously. There’s a line in the skin of her nostril where the tear is scabbing. I look at her ears. Same thing.
Those bastards really tortured her.
I can’t help but look at the space where her arm used to be.
“Carrie, you look like total shit without hair,” she declares.
“Well,” I laugh, “you look pretty fucking good without an arm.”
“Trade you.”
I wince. “I would if I could.”
She reaches for my knee and pats it. “I know you would. And that is why you are my best friend. Through everything.”
We give each other shaky smiles.
“And now that I have to learn how to have sex with only one arm—”
Silas makes a slight choking sound, then coughs as if to cover it up.
Amy rolls her tongue against her cheek and gives me an evil grin.
“And,” she says a little louder, on purpose, “I’ll need to relearn how to do everything. I mean, I’ve heard of doing certain things one-handed, but this is a whole new level.”
He remains impassive.
“You’re going to just have to come in here and tell me every dirty little detail about sleeping with Mark.”
Silas makes that sound again.
Poor Silas.
I turn and look at him. Our eyes meet.
His practically beg me to make her stop talking like this.
“How about we just watch Sons of Anarchy instead?” I offer, reaching for the remote. “This hospital have Netflix?”
“Oooooo, more of Charlie Hunnam’s ass? I’m in.”
Silas closes his eyes in defeat.
And then Amy and I spend the rest of the hour being as normal as we can.
Armless and hairless.
Chapter Seventy-Eight
We walk up to a simple apartment building. Mark pushes the buzzer just as an enormous redheaded guy walks up the stairs and stands directly behind us. I turn around and can’t stop staring.
Because he’s covered in oil and is wearing no shirt, a Scottish kilt, and some weird boots with thick socks.
Nothing else.
Mark follows my line of vision and does a doubletake.
The guy is counting a thick stack of money, a mixture of ones, fives, tens, and a few twenties. As he separates and rotates the bills, he mutters a tally under his breath.
When he hits “three hundred” I see Mark scowl.
I clear my throat.
The guy looks up.
“Hey,” he says in that not-quite-rude, not-quite-friendly way guys have when they need to say something.
“You a drug dealer?” I ask, joking.
“You meet a lot of highlanders dealing meth in Los Angeles?” he jokes back.
Mark’s scowl deepens until I think his face is about to crack in half.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the guys says as he pockets the stack of money and realizes Mark’s glaring at him. “And yes, the outfit’s authentic.”
“Authentic?” Mark asks, his eyebrow arching.
Uh oh. Mark’s hands are in fists and what was it Allie said a while ago about overprotective men running in the family?
The oiled-up highlander grins at me, his eyes twinkling. He ignores Mark. “Yeah. Authentic. You know. What’s under the kilt and all that? Chicks love asking that question.”
Mark’s face turns murderous just as the door clicks open and Chase appears.
“I see you’ve met your new roommate,” he says. Chase is no dummy. He takes one look at Mark, then at me, and mouths, What’s up?
“And yes,” the redheaded Highlander stage whispers. “There’s nothing under the kilt.”
Chase rolls his eyes. “Shut the fuck up about your cock and balls, Morty. We get it. You’re commando under the fucking kilt.”
“Roommate?” Mark’s still stuck on that little detail.
Chase’s lips twitch with a smile. “Yeah. Roommate. Mark and Carrie, meet Morty. Morty, meet Mark and Carrie.”
Morty’s face turns beet red. “Oh, shit. Sorry, man,” he says to Mark as he offers an oily hand. “I didn’t mean—”
Mark pushes past Chase, dragging me behind him.
“Dude. Morty. That was gross,” Chase chides him from the doorway. “Joking about your junk with some other guy’s woman?”
“What? It was a joke. I was just—”
Their argument becomes unintelligible over the squeals Allie’s making as she sees us in the hallway.
“Carrie! OMIGOD, you are a sight for sore eyes!” she squees as she hugs me carefully. She is brimming with excitement, her hair pulled back in a ponytail that flops all over the place.
“The sight of me causes sore eyes,” I joke. I can tell I’m sensitive about my appearance. As Mark wraps his arm around my waist, he assures me it’s okay.
Chase and Morty come up the hallway, bickering like an old married couple.
Morty stops in front of us.
“I’m very, truly sorry for being inappropriate with you, Carrie, and I hope you’ll accept my apologies,” he says formally.
Just then, a tall woman a little older than me appears behind Allie.
“What did you do now, Morty?” she says with a sigh. Her eyes take him in. She turns to me, laughing. “He made a kilt joke, didn’t he?”
“This is my sister, Marissa,” Allie says. We shake hands, though I have no grip these days. Mark does the same, finally moving his face muscles from anger to politeness with a small smile.
“I was just trying to—”
Marissa reaches past us and grabs the giant redhead’s arm. She has to try three times because her hand slips on the oil. “Get in the shower,” she orders, “and make yourself decent. Then come out here and have some coffee.”
“Coffee?” he groans. “What time is it?”
“Nine a.m.”
“I was out that long?” Morty grouses as he disappears into the apartment. “And I’m claiming the bathroom for a shower!” Within seconds, the sound of running water fills the hallway. Then the bathroom door closes.
Allie looks at me and Mark. “He went to some stripper convention thing. This is his second shift. He’s making a pile of money this weekend.”
“Literally,” Mark growls. “We saw it. I figured he was dealing drugs.”
“Shirtless and in a kilt?” Marissa asks skeptically.
“I’ve seen weirder,” Mark shoots back.
“Bet you have, bro,” Chase says, ushering us all into the apartment. This is a big place but not huge. Furnished in thrift shop cast offs. It’s the kind of place most people my age have.
Best of all, it’s in Los Angeles, relatively close to the ocean, and it’s not anywhere near the media frenzy.
It’s perfect.
; Marissa and Allie busy themselves with getting coffee for everyone. As they bustle around, Mark gets me settled on a low couch, propping my arm in a sling up on some throw pillows. I feel uncomfortable being fussed over like this. It feels too domestic. Too patient-like. I’m sick of that. I want to go back to just being a real person.
Then again, it’s been three years since I could just be. Maybe I have some re-learning to do.
Allie hands me a nice mug of coffee the perfect shade of beige that I like. It has cinnamon sprinkled on top.
“You remembered,” I whisper.
And promptly burst into tears.
“Oh, honey,” she says, scrambling to put the coffee down. Mark jumps up, having just started to sit across from me. I’m in Allie’s arms before he can get to me.
“Our coffee’s not that bad,” Morty says, reappearing in sweat pants, a tank top, and with wet ringlet framing a wide face. The guy is like a giant, red bear.
“Shut up, Morty,” say a bunch of voices in unison, including Allie’s.
“Sorry,” he says. I hear him running the kitchen faucet as I sniffle.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Quit saying that,” Mark argues. He’s patting my knee. It’s the only part of me not enveloped by Allie.
“I don’t know what else to say!” I protest.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Allie croons. “Just know you’re safe and at home here.”
Home.
A coffee machine gurgles in the distance. Now I know what Morty was doing. I sniffle and nod. Allie lets go of me. Mark moves next to me on the couch and replaces her warmth.
“I’m okay,” I protest.
“Quit saying that.”
“I didn’t say I’m fine. I said I’m okay.”
He chuckles and hands me my coffee. I take a sip. It tastes so good.
“So our roommate’s gone, and your giant crazy mess couldn’t have happened at a better time,” Morty announces as he stomps into the living room, a kitchen chair in hand. He turns it backwards and straddles it, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand.
Marissa gives him a WTF? glare. “Did you seriously just say that Carrie’s near death experience is a good thing?”
“What? No! I just mean that we have a spare room, and if they want to move in and share the rent, the timing’s great,” Morty sputters. He gives me a really sympathetic look. “You know. If you have to be kidnapped by a sex slave trafficker who has a thing for cutting off arms and then need a place to stay, your timing was impeccable. Our roommate bailed on us and the room’s free. That’s all.”
Dangerous To Love Page 203
