by Finn, Emilia
It bothers me that I shave my legs specially for Jay. That I lather on sweet-scented soaps and wash my long hair because I want him to look at me the way he does. I want him to adore me, to want me, to continue thinking I hung the moon and the stars.
He’s the guy who gets attached to so few. His world revolves around one or two people, and for them, he’d walk toward bullets if they needed him to. He’d do whatever it takes to make their worlds better, to take away their pain, or to make them laugh. But for anyone else, he can shrug it off and walk away like they’re not a big deal.
I want to be one of the few.
I guess I kind of already am, but now that I’ve had a taste, I want more. Ironically, Jay Bishop is my cocaine, and I’m addicted.
Stepping out of the shower and snagging a towel from the rack, I slide it over my sensitive skin and smile while I think of the overprotective bear. Like he thinks I’ll pack up and leave just because he snapped his fingers and told me to.
I mean, I will, but he doesn’t have to know the power he has over me.
For men like Jay to have that power and know it would only lead me down a path of exasperation and wanting to smack him down a peg on a daily basis. So I let my heart sigh for him, but I don’t tell him so, or my life would be full of I told you so’s, and I’m just not sure I’m ready for all that.
Drying off and whipping my hair up into the towel to absorb the water, I step out of the bathroom and stop by my bed to collect fresh clothes for the day.
I don’t intend to move my ass from my desk chair while I search Trenton Neal’s data and work my way up another step of CAB’s empire, so I pull on clean panties and a pair of sweatpants, then I snag a bra and shrug into one of Jay’s sweatshirts he’s so conveniently left around in the last week or so.
I think, without getting my permission, he moved in and made himself at home.
That’s just who he is, right? He’s a bull. Or a bear. He barges in and makes his presence known.
Snagging a protein bar from my bedside drawer, I rip the foil open when my stomach protests the lack of food, then I make my way toward my desk and pick up the phone we took from Trenton last night.
The phone we subsequently broke during our escape.
A broken screen won’t hinder me in the least, but a broken hard drive will piss me off.
Dropping the phone onto my desk, I open the heavy bottom drawer and take out my laptop bag. I work on the desktop when I’m home, and have all of my files saved to clouds I created and maintain all on my own. These clouds aren’t accessible by Google, or Mac, or anyone else who wants to stick their fingers into my pies. These clouds are invisible to everyone but me, accessible to no one but me, and remotely destroyable by me if I hit a panic button and need my files wiped.
I have backups of my backups, and firewalls shielding firewalls.
The Feds think their security is impenetrable, but my folks never sent me to fancy schools just because I had a unique brain. I wanted to dance, so they let me dance, but they knew I had skills beyond that of a typical person.
I was coding websites when I was five and designing software when I was seven. I was creating macros in my spare time and playing games I created when I was ten and sprained my ankle.
I had a whole summer off dance, and too much going on in my brain to sit still and do nothing, so I created software that would help my public school with their administration, but I let my daddy add his name to the licensing so I wouldn’t have to answer questions I didn’t want to answer.
A forty-year-old man creates software? Cool, thanks.
A child creates that software? They’re going to put it in the local papers. And that was the last thing I wanted. I was the ghost, the creator, and my daddy was my protector and shield so I could do what I enjoyed without people getting weird and throwing words like genius and eidetic memory around.
Dropping my bag onto my desk and unzipping it, my elbow bumps the mouse of my desktop and fires up the sleeping screens. Jay’s apartment comes up and makes me smile. He knows I’ve been watching him, but instead of getting mad at the clear invasion of privacy, he asked if I watched him touch himself.
Yes, the answer is yes.
I watched him talk to me through the ceiling. I watched him shower while his eyes remained on the ceiling. And I watched him touch his cock and murmur my name.
My fight against the pull that is Jay Bishop was over the day he sat next to me in Ginnie’s and introduced himself.
Bastard.
Glancing back to my bag, I pull my laptop halfway out, only to freeze when something catches my attention in my peripherals. Looking back to my screen, I narrow my eyes and study the squares of footage that make up almost every nook of his apartment. The far corners are protected, but most of the apartment is in front of me right now, and though it all looks normal, something still makes my stomach jump.
Jay’s a fairly tidy guy, but that might be from lack of “stuff” and not necessarily because he likes a clean home. There’s not much hanging around that isn’t where it’s supposed to be. He leaves his coat lying around my apartment all the time, but I suspect he does that to annoy me. He leaves his shoes by my door, and his bag of guns and passports in the back of my closet. He thinks he’s slick and got them past me without my knowledge, but nothing gets past me. I see everything. I remember everything. And the things I don’t see – like the abuse Ellie would have suffered before she died – I’m able to conjure with my imagination, and then I can’t forget those thoughts and consider them factual memories.
I can’t stop hearing her scream in my mind, though I know I never actually heard her scream. I can’t stop picturing her bruised skin… and worse.
I need to find CAB, and I need to replace my sister’s suffering with his. That’s the only way I can let this go. It’s the only way I can lay her to rest and promise that I avenged her murder. And maybe then, maybe after all that, I’ll be able to dance again without feeling like my heart might literally crumble in my chest.
Movement catches my eye again through Jay’s cameras, but this time, I catch it. “Shit!” I shove my laptop and Trenton’s phone in my backpack and tear the zipper up. My heart races in my chest as I push my still sore feet into my sneakers, skid across smooth floors, and stop by my closet to grab Jay’s bag just as the sounds of glass blowing out downstairs register both in the monitor and with my own ears.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” I grab Jay’s satchel and spring to my feet as a second explosion rocks the floor beneath me. This is an old building with single layer bricks and no insulation but for the stuff I had brought in specifically for my comfort.
One more Molotov cocktail, and my floor will collapse in and bury me among thousands of bricks.
Spinning, my towel flings from my hair and lands on the floor as the concrete literally cracks beneath my feet. A hairline crack, then another, then it spreads like a spiderweb until my floor sags and I throw myself toward my front door.
I’m running straight into the hall, straight toward my enemy, but I have no choice. There are no emergency stairs, no emergency exits except the staircase that crumbles beneath my feet as I run.
Black smoke fills the halls, and disintegrating concrete sizzles in the air as I hold my breath and sprint past Jay’s door. He’s not in there, and there’s nothing in there worth risking my life for. I slam my hands against level three’s door, just in case they’re deaf and missed the fucking explosion, then I slide down the next flight when I lose my footing and move faster than my feet can handle.
“Don’t come back here, Jay. Don’t come back; don’t come back.” They’re looking for him, not me. I’m still invisible, and if they wanted me, they would have come to apartment five.
I’m just a regular resident of a building that caught fire. I’m not suspicious; I’m just a waifish girl with her backpack and wet hair as I bound to my feet and turn at the last staircase. My breath catches and comes out on a squeal when three large m
en wearing leather coats, leather gloves, and black ski masks stand at the bottom and jump when I come around the bend.
I have a single moment to get away while they process the fact I’m not Jay, then one final second when they realize Jay was with a dancer last night, and just maybe I’m her.
Bullets ping off the metal fire hose reel barely two feet from my head as I round the corner. Another bullet pierces the plastic trash can positioned by the overflowing mailboxes, exploding it so flyers shoot into the air and blind me as I run. Heat pools in my shoes, blood from my cut feet, and more heat slices through my arm as I push out the front doors and slam straight into Jay’s broad chest.
“Sophia!”
“Run.” I grab his coat and try to drag him. “Jay, run!”
He turns back to the front door and meets the eyes of the men shooting at me. One beat. Two. Their guns come up. Then he breaks. “Fuck!” He runs, dragging me along so my feet barely touch the ground. My bags drag down my arms; they fly through the air but follow us, because I refuse to let them go.
Jay drags me around one corner, then a second. The sounds of stomping boots chasing us are loud, insistent, and scare the shit out of me as another round of bullets ping off the corners of the building we turn past.
“In here, Soph.” He slingshots me ahead and into a gym, past the weights area, and around the ellipticals. The gym-goers watch us for a beat like they’ve never seen something so strange, but then gunshots boom in the echoing room, and they drop to the floor for cover.
Jay and I sprint through a hall of lockers, then a second hall until we hit the emergency exit and telegraph our movements when the alarms wail. The men following us are still far enough back that I don’t see them, but I hear them; I hear their slamming boots and roared swear words when they push to catch up.
Jay slams the door closed at my back and races behind a massive dumpster half-full of cardboard boxes. He throws his shoulder behind it and inches it closer to the door.
Catching on, I race to his side and try to help him push. Grunting, panting, and maybe a little crying from me, we get the steel box in front of the emergency doors just as it opens. “Fuck!”
“Soph, let’s go.” Jay drags me at a jog and barely flinches when a gun squeezes through the two-inch gap between the emergency door and the dumpster. “Don’t look back, babe.” He pulls me forward, around another corner, and into a Chinese restaurant. Like he owns the place, he drags me through the seating area, through the kitchen past staff setting up for their day, and out the back door until we run headfirst into a crowd that Jay loses us in.
I blend. I learned a long time ago how to blend, so I pull my backpack on like it’s my schoolbag, and my hair back into a bun with the hair tie on my wrist. Glancing to my left, I choke at the sight of blood on my arm, but I say nothing as I clap a hand over the open wound and allow Jay to lead me through the crowd at a fast walk.
“They were in your apartment.” My teeth chatter from shock as Jay leads us further and further away from our apartment building until the crowds thin and his breathing begins to slow.
“How’d you get out?”
“I saw them through the monitors on my computer.” I can’t stop looking back over my shoulder, can’t stop feeling like guns are pointed right at our heads as we walk. “I was going to work on Trenton’s phone, so I went to my desk and grabbed my laptop out to work. My main screens came on, and I saw them in your apartment.”
“You’re okay, Soph?” We turn one last corner and stop on a residential street when he slams me against a brick fence and leans in so his body is flush with mine. His large hand wraps around my uninjured arm, his nose basically touching mine as his eyes scour my face. “Jesus, Sophia. I nearly died when I saw the place go up.”
“I’m okay.” My teeth continue to chatter. “Nobody actually touched me. I saw them, so I grabbed my laptop. Oh!” I tug his bag from my back and press it to his chest. “I grabbed this. Dunno if you actually wanted it, but I had time to grab it.”
He peeks inside the satchel and nods. “Thanks.” Fisting the bag in one hand, he brings the other up to my jaw while his eyes jump between mine. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m cold.”
He nods and leans in closer to lend his body warmth. “You’re in shock. Injuries? Scan your body, Soph. Feel it. Where does it hurt?”
“My feet.”
His eyes drop. “New injuries?”
I lick my lips and shake my head. “No, same from last night. But I think they opened up again.”
“Okay. What else?”
“My arm?” It comes out as a question, like, though I can feel the burn, I still don’t know if it’s true. Jay’s brow comes up in question, but he leans back and looks. It takes him only a second to tear the sleeve from the sweatshirt I’m wearing and lose his mind. “Sophia! They shot you.”
“They… what?” I cast a slow glance down to my left. It’s like I’m living in a world of molasses. My brain is foggy, my movements sluggish. Jay roars his curses and bumps my arm every time he draws breath into his broad chest, but I only swim with the Jello, sliding into the warmth, then I sleep.
* * *
“Sophia?” It’s so dark, and warm, and my dreams are pleasant for a change. “Wake up, Sophia. You in there?”
“Sleepy.” I turn to my right and snuggle in. “Not time.”
My bed compresses as Jay sits by my hip and drags me back over. “Wake up, sleeping beauty. Just wake up, tell me your name, take some medicine, then you can sleep again.”
“Shhhh. My name’s Sophia, dummy.”
Chuckling, his fingers slide over my forehead and drag my hair back. “You’re in there. Have a couple pills, baby, then you can sleep again.”
“Time is it?” I mumble. “Not time to get up yet.”
“It’s actually dinnertime. Are you hurting anywhere?”
The fog in my brain slowly begins to recede. I was warm and cozy a moment ago, but I was alone. I’m not alone anymore, but as payment, my body throbs like it hasn’t in so long. My feet ache; my ribs ache. My head throbs, and the fire in my arm builds in strength until tears form in my eyes and I turn back to face Jay.
“What did you do?” I bring my hand up to touch the fire. “Why is my arm so sore?”
“You don’t remember what happened?” He helps me sit up and lean against the cushioned headboard. “Did you bonk your head, too?”
“I have a headache.” Blindly reaching toward the lamp that glares in my peripherals, I try to switch it off, only to knock it to the floor and smash the globe. Same results. “My head hurts.”
“Have a little water.” Jay places a glass tumbler between my hands, fastens my fingers around it, then helps me lift it. “Have a little, then I have some Advil here for you, too.”
The fire flares in my arm when he forces my hands up with the glass. I take a sip but lower it again as fire ants sting beneath my skin and make me weep. “Shit, Jay. What did you do?”
“You took a bullet in your arm, babe.”
“A bu– a bullet?!” I shoot my head around and stare down at my pale arm covered in snow-white bandaging. “What?”
“It’s just a graze,” he murmurs. Lifting his hand to my lips, he places a pill on my tongue when I open my mouth, then a second pill right beside it and pushes my hand up again. “Took a chunk out of your arm, but there’s no hole, no internal damage. I stitched it up while you slept.”
“You stitched me up?” My stomach revolts until I clamp my lips shut and close my eyes.
“Relax, Sophia. Relax, baby.” He strokes my temple and blows warm breath over my sensitive skin. His dark stubble is right in my vision when I open my eyes; his pearly white teeth sparkle as he speaks. “I let you sleep so you wouldn’t have to remember. I used a little numbing ointment I picked up from the drugstore.”
“When did you go to the drugstore?”
“While you slept.”
My heart races with panic.
“You left me?”
His eyes glitter with pain. “Swear to God, it was a hard choice. The drugstore is just a couple doors down. I didn’t want to leave you, but you needed antiseptic and antibiotic. I made my choice, and I ran, I swear. I was gone less than five minutes. You were in the exact same place I left you, so I rolled with it and cleaned you up while you were out.”
I look across the shadowed room and frown at the dated prints on the walls, the small television on the desk, and the mini fridge beneath that. “Where are we?”
“Hotel on the side of the freeway. The…” He leans back as though there’s a sign on the wall. “The Cherry Drop Inn. You’ve been asleep for a few hours.” He runs a frustrated hand over his forehead and knocks his beanie free. “You dropped in the fuckin’ street, Soph, so I had to get you somewhere fast. Caught a cab to the garage where we keep the car, told the dude you were sleeping off a wicked hangover. He didn’t believe me, but he still drove us where we needed to go and took my money. I drove us here in the Enclave and let you sleep in the back while I checked in. Babe?” His hand comes under my jaw and pulls my face up. “Look into my eyes. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m okay.” I blink, trying to clear the stars.
“You’re not okay,” he laughs humorlessly. “You’re all spaced out. I’ve never known you not to be sharp.”
“You hardly know me at all.” I frown. “How could you possibly know how I act after I’ve been shot and firebombed?”
His grin helps clear the dots from my vision, like his smile helps me zoom in and focus “You’ve still got that attitude problem, I see.” Leaning forward, he drops a gentle kiss on my lips, then a second. Then a third on my jaw. “You cost me about ten years of my life today, Soph. Fuck me.” He blows out a gusty breath. “When I heard that first explosion, I thought I was back at Infernos again, and I was going to lose you. I thought I was going in to recover your body, but then you come tearing out of the building with these assholes right behind you. You’re always so cool, so unaffected, then you drop in the street and nearly finish me off.”
