by Jaime Loren
She turned her head again to look up at me as I stared at the canvas. “What if all I want to see is the subject?”
I fought the urge to look into her eyes. All I wanted was her mouth on mine. Her tongue. To surrender to her, and be enveloped by her. But this was 1798, not 1729. We weren’t a couple of farm kids in love. Our parents hadn’t been hoping for a match since we were born. My parents were dead; her parents were high society. I had to consider her reputation. We didn’t have the seclusion of long grass fields and wooded creeks this time. She had the finest ball gowns and elite social circles—inside of which there were no secrets, no matter how sealed the two parties’ lips were.
Despite this, I couldn’t keep my eyes from wandering from the speck of cobalt blue paint on her cheek, to her perfect, cherry-colored mouth.
She dropped her paintbrush, her chest rising and falling as she closed her other hand over mine, smoothing it against her waist. I was about to raise my fingers to her cheek when footsteps echoed down the hall in approach.
We quickly broke apart, April crossing the room to the table to mix more paint as I bent down to pick up her brush.
Her handmaid, Mary, pushed the double doors open. “Mr. Parker, I’m afraid Miss April will have to finish her lesson early today. Her mother has requested her company immediately.”
I nodded, and we both turned toward April when we heard a slap.
April lifted her hand from her neck to examine it, then frowned and brushed her palm off.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
She looked up, a reassuring smile gracing her face. “Oh, yes. It was just a mosquito.”
April’s smile faded; the adoration disappeared from her eyes before she turned back to Henry.
Once again she was the girl who didn’t remember me.
Chapter 18
(April)
A low grumble woke me. At first I thought it was my alarm clock, but when I opened my eyes to a dark room I remembered I was in unfamiliar surroundings. My heart skipped a beat. The grumble grew louder before turning into a full-blown snarl, standing all my hairs on end.
Duke’s ferocious bark made me jump, but not as much as Scott’s entrance a second later, almost knocking my door off its hinges as he burst into the room. I shot up, scrambling back against the bedhead with my quilt fisted tight against my chest, my heart crashing against my ribs. “Scott?”
The light was on, blinding me before I could register what was happening.
“Are you okay?” he asked, scanning the room.
Duke continued to growl and snap, his hackles raised as he stood at the window.
I nodded, my chest filled with dread. “What’s happening?”
Before he answered, Scott joined Duke at the window, pressing his hands against it to look outside. “Wait here.”
My heart leapt into my throat. “What?”
“I’ll be back soon.” He ran for the door, Duke in hot pursuit, barking.
“Scott!”
I threw the quilt off, my legs pounding with adrenaline as I clambered off the edge of the bed. By the time I’d stumbled down the passageway, Scott had pulled two shotguns from who knows where, and he and Henry were loading them up in the living room. Scott caught sight of me at the top of the stairs. He didn’t smile any reassurances at me, and I shook as I lowered myself onto the top step and gripped the rails in front of me for support, watching them.
“I’ll do a sweep,” Scott said to Henry. “Lock the door behind me and turn off the lights, okay?”
Henry nodded and cocked his shotgun. The sound of it hit me like a punch. “Got it.”
Scott glanced at me again on his way outside with Duke, who was barking savagely, turning my stomach to knots. Henry bolted the door and switched the light off, casting us both into darkness.
“Henry?” I said softly. My eyes adjusted quickly, the glow from the fire providing enough light to make out his form by the window.
“It’ll be all right, Shortcake.”
My every limb ached with the need to move, yet I was paralyzed with fear. “Will Scott be okay?”
A soft chuckle drifted up the stairs. “You’re worried about the invulnerable guy?”
Something about this seemed so familiar, and that terrified me even more.
I had to at least know where Scott was. Rising quietly, I crawled over to the wall of windows overlooking the lake, trying to detect movement in the moonlight. Scott’s silhouette moved quickly into view just in front of the cabin, the shotgun pulled to his shoulder. He moved sideways and crouched, then turned, his upper body moving as a rigid half—as if the shotgun was an extension of him. After a few seconds he darted forward, moving fluidly, his soldier-like actions reminding me of a movie scene. It was then that I saw Duke close behind him, moving as if by command. He’d stopped barking, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
“April?” Henry’s voice carried an edge to it.
“Up here. I’m okay.”
When he didn’t reply, fear iced my veins. I turned around. “Are you okay?”
His answer was drowned out by Duke’s sudden, vicious barking and the deafening crack of a shotgun, followed by the raucous squawking of a hundred birds as they took to the night sky.
“Henry!” I squealed, and within seconds he was beside me, panting as he pulled me to my feet with one hand, his shotgun in the other.
“Into the bedroom! Go!” He forced me down the passageway and through the doorway. “Lock your door!” he urged, closing it to leave me alone in the room.
I did as instructed, and stumbled backward, too frightened to go to the window, too full of adrenaline to sit on the bed. So I stood in the middle of the room, trembling, desperately needing to pee, irrationally hoping I’d never done so during my previous deaths.
Once the birds had resettled, the cabin was quiet.
Duke was silent.
Everything was dark. Not even the clock on the bedside table offered enough light to see the furniture in my room.
My breath fell in short, terrified bursts. I tried to hold them in so I could listen more carefully, but it didn’t really matter, considering the sound of my heart was thumping in my ears.
“He-Henry,” I whispered. I could barely hear my own voice. “Henry?”
Nothing. No movement in the passageway. No creaking of stairs. I was completely alone. Where was Scott? Was he okay? Was he coming back?
Clunk-clunk!
The front door.
I sucked in a breath and held it.
There was the sound of footsteps on the staircase. I quickly reached out, fumbling along the edge of the bed until I reached the side table and found the lamp. I groped my way down the cord and yanked it from the wall, clutching the neck of the lamp hard as I maneuvered back to face the bedroom door.
It wasn’t the bedroom door that opened, though, it was the bathroom door behind me.
As soon as the light spilled into the room, I turned and swung upwards with all the force I could muster, ramming the base of the lamp right into the guy’s chin. His feet came off the ground as he flew back into the bathroom, landed on his back, and smacked his head against the tiles.
I was pulling the lamp up for blow number two when Henry appeared, seemingly nonchalant. He looked at me, the lamp raised above my head, then down at the guy I’d … just …
“Oh my God! Scott?” I gasped, then tossed the lamp to straddle him, taking his head in my hands to examine it for bumps. “I’m so sorry!”
“Glad it was you and not me!” Henry said to Scott.
Scott looked up at me. “Jesus, not wrong. Who knew she’d go all kickass on us?”
Henry laughed. “Perhaps I’ll just give you the shotgun next time, eh?” Henry said to me, his shoulders still bouncing with laughter as he turned and walked out, his footsteps creaking down the passageway.
I looked back down at Scott, his head still in my hands. His hair felt really good between my fingers. I found my
self wondering when the last time he cut it was.
“You won’t find any injuries,” he said.
“Huh?”
“I’m invulnerable, remember?”
I froze, dropping his head like a hot potato. It almost hit the tiles again. The sudden realization I’d basically mounted him—in front of Henry, no less!—sent all my blood rushing to my head. Jesus! My sweatshirt was gaping and I wasn’t wearing a bra. I scurried back, only to sit directly on his crotch, which made me gasp.
The corner of his mouth turned up as he propped himself on his elbows, apparently finding my awkwardness amusing. I pushed off of him and shuffled back on the tiles. Scott stood up and offered me his hand.
I didn’t take it, burying my embarrassment with the residual adrenaline still thrumming through my veins as I got to my feet. “I thought something had happened to you and Henry,” I said, brushing past him into my room, turning on my surviving bedside lamp.
He opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.
“First Duke is going nuts, then you come bursting in here scaring the shit out of me.”
He squeezed his eyes closed, his brow furrowed. “I’m sorry—”
“Then you grab a shotgun and disappear? I thought I was going to die, Scott! You went all fucking commando out there!”
“I’m sorry!” He struggled to make his voice heard over my climbing volume.
“Then you waltz back in as if it was nothing? I could’ve killed Henry if he’d been the first one through that door!”
“April! Would you just—”
“So what was it? What was so fucking diabolical that you had to shoot it in the middle of the night and give me a goddamn heart attack in the process?”
“It was a beaver!” he roared.
My face dropped. Pulling my head back, I choked on my next words. “A … a what?”
“A beaver,” he said, quieter, his eyes shining.
“A beaver?”
He fought hard to keep it together. “A diabolical beaver.”
And that did it.
I lost it.
Scott doubled over with laughter, too, both of us struggling to breathe. It took a couple of minutes to control ourselves, the two of us on the floor wiping our tears of laughter away by the time we could talk. I sat up and leaned back against the end of the bed while Scott leaned against the wall around six feet away, facing me.
Scott exhaled. “What a night, huh?”
“I could’ve done without the drama.”
He nodded, some of the humor falling from his face. “I overreacted. I’m sorry, April.”
“No. You were acting in my best interests.” I fiddled with the hem of my sweatshirt.
I stared at him, remembering the uneasy sense of déjà vu I’d felt earlier. I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “Have I died like that before?”
Scott’s face fell. He rested the back of his head against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “Yeah,” he replied, softly.
I had no energy left to devote to a singular emotion. I couldn’t muster up any feeling of shock, or horror. Aside from the awkward moment in the bathroom, the only thing running through my mind was the way he’d jumped into action when he’d needed to.
“You looked good out there. Like you knew what you were doing.”
His head dropped down so he could meet my eyes. “You saw me?”
“You were like a SWAT guy.”
A smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “You did all right yourself.”
Heat seeped into my cheeks with his compliment as we both glanced at the lamp on the floor.
“Do you think it would’ve done some real damage if you’d been vulnerable?”
“I do,” he replied. “That was quite a swing.”
I nodded, the room falling silent for a minute. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, but the air was thick with a tension I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps it was merely the fact that tonight’s events had reminded us my time was limited. We’d been so caught up in talking about the past, we’d ignored my future.
I wanted to ask if I’d ever defended myself before. If there’d ever been times in the past where I’d escaped death—like with the SUV in Millinocket a couple of days ago—only to die not long after to a different cause.
“Scott,” I started, wondering if I could go through with the new question forming in my head.
He waited.
“If it hadn’t been a … beaver … I mean, if it’d been a person out there …” I played with my sweatshirt hem again. He was looking directly at me, and I could tell by the expression on his face that he knew exactly what I was going to ask. I wondered if he would answer truthfully. “Would you still have fired?”
The color seemed to drain from his cheeks as he responded. “I guess we’ll never know.”
It was an honest answer, I supposed, in that we never would know. But the fact was an invulnerable man had taken a loaded weapon out there with him. I wasn’t entirely sure how that sat with me, whether it was in my best interests or not.
He got to his feet and offered me his hand. After a second’s hesitation I took it, and he pulled me up. “I should let you get back to sleep,” he said, his body close to mine. I could feel the warmth rolling off him.
“I don’t think I could sleep if I tried.”
He stepped back. “Do you have your pills?”
My pills? I’d forgotten about them. I wasn’t sure I even wanted them now, though. Knowing now that the nightmares I’d been plagued with for years were memories could be helpful to Scott, even if they were terrifying for me. I could give him details of the deaths he wasn’t present at.
I shook my head. “No, thank you.”
He took a deep breath, and nodded. “Okay. Well, I’ll be downstairs for the rest of the night if you need anything at all.”
“Thanks.”
Even though I’d claimed I wouldn’t be able to sleep, I think I was unconscious before my head hit the pillow.
By mid-morning, the day was already stifling hot. Scott had collected two buckets of water from the pump and was boiling them when he looked across at me and smiled.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“It’s never nothing when you look at me like that. I’m learning you, Mr. Parker.”
He raised his brow. “And how was I looking at you?”
“Like you want to do something you know I won’t approve of.” Grinning, I looked down at my dress and pulled another stitch.
“Oh?” He moved to pull up a chair beside me. “Such as?”
The needle pierced my finger when the door was kicked in. Scott was first to his feet, pulling me behind him.
This was exactly how my parents had died. This was exactly what Scott had rescued me from two months earlier.
It couldn’t be happening again.
“Take whatever you want,” he told them.
There were four. No, five.
“How about we take the girl?”
“Anything but her,” Scott stressed, edging me toward the back window. “She’s been through enough already.”
“She looks all right to me,” one of them replied, peering over Scott’s shoulder. “Are you all right, Miss?”
I ducked my head. Scott’s hand closed over mine, my other fist clutching his shirt.
“She’s mute,” Scott said.
“Even better.” The man laughed. “She won’t be able to scream.”
And then he lunged for me. Scott brought a fist to the man’s stomach, and he doubled over, but then another came, and another, all of their fists connecting with Scott’s face, his sides, his stomach. He still managed to yell for me to run before two of his teeth were knocked out, and even then, he was trying to hold them off.
I ran for the water boiling in the kitchen and burned my hands throwing it in the direction of the two men advancing. Both of them shrank back in fits of pain and anger, which boug
ht me some time to pick up an iron poker and swing it at the men who were still striking Scott.
“April, run!” he urged.
But we both knew it was already too late.
One of the men I’d burned grabbed me from behind and picked me up, while the other one grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled my head back. I kicked and screamed but as soon as I felt the blade, I stopped struggling, and cried.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll go with you. But leave Scott. Leave him be. He’s done nothing wrong.”
I knew it was a ridiculous statement, because neither had I. But I was desperate. Scott was barely conscious. His face unrecognizable. His blood everywhere.
The man holding me put me down, and the other one dragged me outside by the hair, where four more Confederates were waiting. My heart gave up any hope we’d both get out of this right then and there.
“Please, spare him,” I begged. “Promise me.”
One of the burned soldiers came to stand in front of me, his mouth turning up as he looked me up and down.
I knew that look. I’d seen another Confederate give my mother that look two months ago.
No. No way.
I lashed out, yanked back by the soldier already holding me. The one in front leered at the sight of my bare leg, my dress tangling at my knees. An already-satisfied snigger resonated in his throat as he moved forward and untied his breeches, then grabbed a hold of my leg as the other soldiers held me down.
All the while, Scott’s yells rang in my ears, begging them to leave me alone. He pleaded for them to kill him instead. From the corner of my eye, I saw him fight with all he had to break free of the five men holding him back. He collected more kicks to the ribs, and fists to his head for his effort, swelling his eyes almost completely shut.
I fought with all I had, too, landing a foot to the soldier’s chest as he fiddled with his breeches. He fell back, winded, before picking himself up again to strike me across the cheek.
Scott cried out.
I pressed my lips tightly together, refusing to give him the pleasure of my pain. I didn’t cry out. Not once. Not even when he attempted to force my knees apart again. Not even when he’d torn my dress and climbed on top of me.
