by CD Reiss
“Let me go!”
I leaned close to her face. “I’ll untie you when I close the door. Then you’re going to eat and you’re going to finish this so I can have my wife back. Do you understand?”
“You’re going to bring her back?” Her face was lit up with hope.
“Yes.” I stood. Her body was relaxed, and her face had the beginnings of a smile. “But I want to be the one to do it.”
“Thank you.” She blinked, and tears fell on each side of her face.
I put my finger to my lips, and she nodded.
That was as good as it was going to get.
I answered the door, assuming it was Ronin. Who else would it be at this hour?
“Asshole Eyes,” DeLeon hissed. “What the—”
I stepped out and shut the door behind me. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your fucking apologies. You’re fucking AWOL, and I can’t cover for you.”
“I know. Don’t cover for me. It’s not worth it.”
She crossed her arms and leaned on the railing, looking me up and down as if taking inventory. There must have been a lot to see. I could only guess what I looked like to her. No sleep meant bloodshot eyes, periorbital swelling, and hyperpigmentation, skin that looked as if it was coming detached. I hadn’t shaved. Had showered so quickly I hadn’t washed my hair.
“You look like shit.” She confirmed my thoughts. “Are you sick? If you’re sick, they won’t court-martial you.”
“I’m not sick.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem.”
I didn’t say more because the problem was too deep, too wide, too complex to explain on a doorstep.
The problem was I couldn’t leave Respite alone for too long or I’d walk in on Greysen, or more accurately, Greysen would burst out the door running.
The problem was, if I told her the problem, she’d order me to bring my wife into the hospital and I’d lose control of the situation entirely.
The problem was I needed to get back inside before Respite got to the beginning of the story. I needed to hear it in fine detail so we could recreate it, have her face it, conquer it, and walk away. It was the only known cure, and I wasn’t getting talked out of it or distracted away from it.
“Is it her brother?” she asked. “She’s upset?”
“She’s upset.” I hadn’t even told Greysen about Jake, but I was telling DeLeon the truth. Like an upturned apple cart, Greysen was upset. “Have they found him? Dead or alive?”
“No.”
“Shit. No clues? No leads?”
“Not that I’ve heard. And every day that goes by? Gets less likely they will.” She put her arms down. “I didn’t take her for someone who’d collapse about this.”
“You never know a person until they’re in crisis.”
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Okay.” She dropped her hands, letting them slap against her thighs. “I owe you, Asshole, and I like Wifey. But my debt’s paid once we go from AWOL to desertion.”
“I’m not deserting.”
“After a certain point, you don’t get to decide that. And I’m sorry, I know you want to be with her and you have control issues, but you’re going to have to give it up. You’re getting court-martialed either way. You can either turn yourself in by oh eight hundred, or I have to call the MPs on you.”
With a dull, flat cadence and a volume barely enough to be heard through the door, my wife’s voice came from inside the apartment. She was remembering again.
“Thanks for the warning,” I said, putting my hand on the knob. DeLeon was supposed to dismiss me, but we were past formality.
She raised an eyebrow as if I’d made a threat. Or maybe she’d heard Respite’s voice from inside as she started reciting her memory again.
“If you run, they’ll find you. They’ll lock you away and shove the key up your ass.”
“I understand.”
She jerked her chin at the door, indicating Wifey, who needed me and whom I needed. “There are no conjugal visits in Leavenworth. Leave her alone now for a little while, or be separated for fifteen to twenty. Your call.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I mean it. I owe you one.”
“See you in the morning?”
The evening prayers began, echoing over the walls of the city, an underlayer to Respite’s recital. Because of language or physics, I couldn’t understand either.
“Yes.”
“Okay. Good.” DeLeon started down the steps.
I watched her go, unwilling to open the door while she could hear my wife’s voice relay a story about a boy on a club rooftop. She waved to me at the bottom. I waved back, turning my hand into a thumbs-up, promising I’d be there in the morning and almost believing it. She strode out of the courtyard, leaving the morning birds, the Arabic prayer chant, and the muffled tale of a young girl in trouble behind.
Chapter Eighty-Six
RESPITE
This part was too long. It started too early, on the roof with Plimsouls and plimsolls. The tension of going forward was stretching me thin. I felt as if I’d break in the middle. At the chest. The way a rubber band got translucent before a tiny heart-shaped hole appeared at the center of the thinnest point. It would snap sometime after I started anticipating it and before I expected it, stinging skin where the kinetic energy clapped against nerve endings.
But still, I pulled the rubber band because I had to. Forward was backward. If I stopped, I didn’t know if I’d go back further to begin again. So, I had to tell the story even after sunlight blasted my face and the sounds of a prayer chant on the mosque’s loudspeaker stopped being muffled by the door. I told the story through the folded darkness of the door closing and the click-clack of locks.
“I’m back,” he said, sitting on the short table in front of me.
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. He was kissing you.”
“There’s a lot.”
“Take your time.”
* * *
SAN DIEGO
JULY - 1992
Then he kissed me. He was sloppy, mouth too wide, tongue a whirligig around mine.
The music had stopped.
His hands were up my shirt.
All the people were gone.
I couldn’t actually taste his tongue, and I was pretty sure he couldn’t taste anything either.
How was I getting back to Lia’s? Or was it Anna’s? Dina, maybe? I’d lost track of the lies I’d had to tell my parents to stay out past midnight.
His hands were under my bra before I could say no. It was fine. It felt okay. I put my hands on his body. Under the chambray shirt, he was tight and muscular. This was okay.
I didn’t go for a guy like this. He wasn’t the right type, but the heaviness that settled between my legs was more demanding than my taste in men.
We rolled onto the surface of the roof. Drunk. Not caring about the dead leaves and dirt. The grit of tarpaper and the jutting roofing nails. Just doing the thing. His penis was rock hard under his jeans. That wasn’t new to me. There had already been copped feels through pants and grinding in cars. But no one had ever done what he did next.
He unzipped his pants and pulled it out, then taking me by the wrist, he put my hand on it. I was too shocked to pull back and too drunk to consider the consequences.
“Stroke it nice.”
His mouth was a sloppy whirligig again. The skin of his dick was soft and paper-thin, stretched over a hard core. He rolled on top, pinning my thighs under hard knees.
“Wait.”
When I took my hand away, he put it back, pressing it against the head. “Wait for what? You feel so good.”
“Just wait.” It was all too fast. The world was spinning.
“Don’t be like that.”
Twisting. Trying to get up past the sickening, drunken spin of the earth. He pushed me back down, immobilizing my struggling body under him.
“Stop
! Let me go!”
He reached under my skirt and, with a hard grab, ripped a hole in my hot pink tights. He was bigger and stronger. His dick was already out, and with two fingers that didn’t tease or cajole, he wove past my underwear, and with two fingers—
Knock-knock.
Chapter Eighty-Seven
CADEN
She sat on the edge of a worn chair, looking into the space between the imaginary horizon and the deepest part of her soul, filtering details through a wider and wider net. Her timeline jostled, putting the wrong dialogue in the wrong scene, moving events around like puzzle pieces that wouldn’t fit right until everything landed in its place. She took hours to describe minutes with a young man who scared the shit out of me, but I listened carefully as the moon ran her course over the sky.
When my attention wavered, it went to remembering Ronin’s schoolboy glances. I knew when a man wanted my wife, and though I’d been jealous and possessive when Ronin was around in the army, once we were civilians, he’d never made a sign that he had any interest in her.
Until she was this sweet, vulnerable version of herself that I didn’t recognize. Now his interest burned so hot I could feel it on me. He hadn’t been interested in Greysen until she’d become this woman describing a boy’s chambray shirt, the white buttons, the upturned collar.
Respite, to me, never seemed like Greysen. She seemed defenseless. She was talking about this guy on the roof with questions in her voice, and I knew he was going to take advantage of her. I knew he was going to do something she didn’t want and my wife would come at him like a lion. This girl would describe it as if it was happening to someone else, which it was.
He ripped a hole in the crotch of her tights a dozen times before she put all the details in their slots. I was girded for a violation I wouldn’t be able to avenge. I wouldn’t even be able to get angry because it would scare her, and she needed me to keep my emotions in check.
I could do it only when I reminded myself that this girl was getting sent back where she’d come from. Respite was going to be reabsorbed, and Greysen was going to come back.
Again, her tights were ripped. Again, he pinned her and reached under her underwear with two fingers. She’d gotten this far so many times before finding a new detail to backtrack. My anger over his fingers was just as heavy, but it had been dulled smooth.
Knock-knock.
Her mouth went tight, and though her attention stayed inside herself, she was aware enough to stop talking.
“Wait here,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to tie you up.”
Her eyes met mine. I couldn’t tell if she was surprised or if she wanted to be bound, but after the implication that she deserved pain, I was reluctant to do anything she might see as punishment.
“Just…” I stood. “Just don’t bring Greysen back yet. We don’t have time.”
“Yes. I agree.”
Why did she agree? When she was remembering, she didn’t seem aware of time. I doubted she’d heard DeLeon’s warnings.
“Good,” I said, putting my finger to my lips.
I opened the door as far as the chain would let me, letting in the sound of crickets and the whoosh of pre-curfew traffic. The knocker was backlit by the building’s floodlights.
It was Ronin with a box under his arm. He had a puppy dog look on his face, and even though I had never been a fan of the sneaky bastard, at least I’d always known exactly what kind of sneaky bastard I was dealing with.
I closed the door behind me and reached for the box.
He stepped back. “No.”
“No? What the fuck did you come here for then?”
“We should talk. All of us.”
“All five of us?” I went for the box, but he twisted away.
“I want to see her.”
“Why?”
“I want to make sure she’s all right.” He swallowed hard, glancing at the door, then back at me. “This stuff, it fucks with you.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Just one second,” he said expectantly. “Then I’ll go.”
“Jesus,” I said, “I bet you were a nice kid before the army fucked you up.”
Her shriek came from the other side of the door. “Let me go!”
I should have gagged her. That was my first thought as Ronin’s eyes met mine. Behind him, the two Blackthorne contractors at the café table shot up and ran around the linked verandas to get to us.
“Ro—” I started to explain, but he shoved the box into me, sending me off balance enough to push me out of the way so he could open the door.
We spilled in. Me. Ronin. The two Blackthorne agents.
My wife was twisting on the floor. “Caden! Help.”
Ronin was ahead of me. He leaned down to her, and there was a moment of them truly seeing each other before she spoke.
“Only Caden.”
I pushed him out of the way to kneel by her. “What happened?”
“I got out,” she said to me in a quivering voice. “It was terrible. So bad.”
“It’s okay. I’m here now.”
Arms free, she wrapped them around me as we crouched on the floor. Ronin and the agents cast a shadow over us as I rocked her. His posture was wider, and his face was harder. He’d flipped like a coin. The sincere boy had left, leaving behind the sneaky bastard I’d always known. Except… not. Without that sincerity or that deep well of caring for his friends, he was just plain untrustworthy.
Ronin turned to the two contractors. “Close the door on your way out.”
They left, and Ronin put his attention back on us.
“Leave,” I said. My wife was shaking in my arms, and he didn’t need to see it. Her weakness wasn’t his business.
“I’m going to our facility in Saudi,” he said. “We’re close—really close—to making this reversible. I want her to come.”
“You’re not separating us.”
“Either I will, or the army will. You’re AWOL. At least if she comes with me, she’s in the hands of people who know what this is.”
As soon as he left, I was getting her out of here. We were sitting ducks here, waiting to get picked off and pulled apart.
“She’s in my hands,” I said. “Just go.”
“They’re getting a warrant.”
So this was how it was ending. With military police and a forced separation. And when they found her, what would they do? Nothing? Or would they deliver her to a black site run by her employer? We’d be at square one with the memory unfinished.
Greysen was in full Respite mode, staring in the half distance between herself and the floor, brushing her thumb against her lip, watching her life flash before her eyes. I didn’t want to leave her, but I wasn’t sure I had a choice. Surrendering meant separating. Going with Ronin meant we could both be trapped.
I could make a decision one way or the other. Six of one or half a dozen of the other. But I wouldn’t decide alone. I wouldn’t decide this for her or without her. She wasn’t a child, and she wasn’t my charge.
“Do I have until morning?” I asked.
“Maybe. We’re arranging transport, but I don’t know how long the army’s going to take getting it together.”
“Give us until then.”
I’d let him think we were going with him, but that hadn’t been decided. He’d leave his people at the door no matter what I said. Crouching in front of my wife, I tried to break her stare, but I didn’t. She kept on seeing what she was seeing.
“Oh seven hundred,” Ronin said. When he opened the door, blue floodlights blasted half of Greysen’s face, narrowing the pupil. “You’re doing the right thing. For her.”
I ignored him. We had a few hours and no more. Maybe our last hours together.
“What you have,” he said. “Between you two? I admire it. It’s what we all wish for… that one perfect partner.” He stood, unmoving in the doorway until I looked at him. He spoke before I had a chance t
o chase him out. “She made the right choice. You were the right choice.”
“I know.”
He nodded and left, cutting the light with a click. Her pupils dilated again, but she didn’t move.
I needed Greysen back. She was hard to deal with, but she was the side I could make a decision with.
Watching Respite think, I couldn’t flip her yet. She was close to her moment.
“Respite,” I whispered, “what’s happening?”
Her head jerked once, slightly and sharply to say no.
Kneeling in front of her, I took her hands. “Tell me.”
Her brows knit.
“Please.” I had nothing else. No demands. No strategies. No manipulations. I could only submit to the will of my wife’s frailer half.
“He says…” She stopped, and I waited. And waited. “He says, ‘You’re wet.’”
The last thing I’d heard was her shout, “Let me go.” It had progressed with whoever this guy was. Bryan Adams. Plimsolls. Chambray Shirt. I had to catch up without speaking or making assumptions, but God damn, it was hard when my heart was pounding with rage and the only person around to hurt was the one who had already suffered.
“He puts his fingers in deeper. All the way. I’m not prepared. It hurts.”
I am not angry. Do not get angry.
“He does it hard. It hurts and…” Swallow. “Something breaks. I’m bleeding.”
“Grey…” I wanted her to stop. She was going too fast. I wasn’t ready.
“He says I’m wet. He… he says I want it. I say no.” She was hopping between pieces of dialogue, one after the other, speeding up. “He hears me. I’m sure he hears me. But he pushes inside me and…”
Her face exploded into messy, open-mouthed, saliva-string sobs. I took her hand. She could stop now. She could leave it for tomorrow. The next day. Never.
“I come,” she says around the sobs. “He makes me come. It happens so fast, and he calls me a… a slut.”
I’d told myself I was ready, but I wasn’t ready for shit.
