Make Me Sin

by J. T. Geissinger

  A.J.’s eyes are so soft it breaks my heart. “You remember the famous saying from Jacques Cousteau?”

  I nod, sniffling.

  “That’s why. Because for a man like me, the most beautiful, dangerous creature of all is love. I fell in love with you sight unseen, just from the sound of your voice, and I knew if I didn’t make you hate me, I’d do the most selfish thing in the world and try to make you mine.”

  I’m kissing him again; I can’t help myself. Like breathing, it’s an automatic reflex. I need to taste him, to feel him, to communicate without words what he does to me. How much I care.

  “Angel. Angel.” He murmurs it over and over as I kiss his face, his eyelids, his lips. I’m not particularly religious, but I feel like this is a form of communion. This moment is sacred, and I don’t want it to ever end.

  It does, though. A.J. takes hold of my shoulders, gently pushing me away. “You need to get back in bed.”

  I nod enthusiastically. “Yes, I do. We do.”

  His chuckle is soft and indulgent. He swipes the moisture from my cheeks with his fingers. “Easy, killer. One thing at a time. Sleep, eat, sleep more, then we’ll talk. And then . . . we’ll see.”

  “I just woke up from twelve hours of sleeping!”

  He presses his thumb against the frown lines between my brows, smoothing them out. “Which was instruction number one. Instruction number two was eat.”

  As if on cue, my stomach growls.

  A.J. grins triumphantly. “You like pancakes?”

  “Pancakes? It’s dinnertime!”

  He shakes his head, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Yeah, but that’s all I know how to cook, so that’s what you’re getting.”

  I roll my eyes. “Okay. Pancakes. Then sleep again, then the other thing. Deal?”

  “The other thing?” He smirks at me.

  I say innocently, “Yeah, talking. That was instruction number four, right?”

  He gathers me into his massive arms. I gaze up at him, falling, falling, falling.

  His voice husky, A.J. asks, “Are you going to follow all my instructions from now on, Princess?”

  “I would say yes, but we both know I’d be lying.”

  He nuzzles my neck. “How about just for one week?”

  There’s something in his voice, some kind of dark need that makes me go still. “You want me to do whatever you say for a week?”

  He lifts his head and stares at me. The desire in his eyes tells me the answer is yes.

  “Why?”

  He struggles to find the words. “Because I need to be in control of this.”

  “Me, you mean?”

  “No, baby. This. What’s happening here. I have to be in control of it, so that when the week is up and you’re gone . . .”

  He doesn’t finish his thought, but I think I understand. This has to be on his terms. So that when we both go back to real life, he can go on without me.

  My heart takes a flying leap out of my chest. I stare into his eyes, finally comprehending why he’s revealing all this, why he brought me here in the first place. “This is all I’m going to get, isn’t it? This one week with you. That’s all there will ever be.”

  He swallows, hard.

  “Answer me, A.J. Is that what you mean? Is that what you want?”

  “What I want is to wake up next to you every day for the rest of my life, angel. But I already told you this wouldn’t end well. I already told you I’d hurt you. And you said you’d be willing to only take one night, so I’m thinking six more days is a good compromise.”

  Oh, God, the pain. It’s like fire. It’s like I’m being burned alive, from the inside out.

  I shove him away. Red faced, I shout, “You just told me you were in love with me! You just told me you were happy! You said I’d never have to be alone again! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Everything, baby. Everything is wrong with me.”

  The look he gives me freezes all my rage. There’s something so dead about his eyes right now, something so unbearably bleak. Whatever he isn’t telling me about himself—which is pretty much everything—it’s bad.

  “What does that mean?”

  Silence.

  “What are you hiding? What’s your big secret, A.J.? Why won’t you let me all the way in? Don’t you trust me?”

  “I trust you. It’s myself I don’t trust.”

  A nonanswer if there ever was one. Now I’m angry again. “Are you a serial killer?”

  “No.”

  “An undercover FBI agent?”

  “No.”

  “A drug dealer? A cartel leader? The head of an international prostitution ring?”

  He winces. “No.”

  “What, then? Why do you hide from cameras, A.J.? Why do you live up here alone like this? Why would you bring me here and make me hope that you’re going to give me everything I want you to give, and then pull the rug out from under me?”

  In a voice that sounds like gravel, he says, “I hide because I’m ashamed. I’m alone because I have to be. And I brought you here because I was going crazy without you, and I might not be selfish enough to try to make you mine permanently, but I’m not strong enough to stay away from you, either. So we can have a week, or we can have nothing. The decision is yours.”

  That’s all he gives me. He stares at me, his face closed off. I can’t read anything in his eyes. Instinctively, I know we could go on like this for hours. Back and forth, questions that lead nowhere, uselessly spinning my wheels. I need to decide right now if I’m leaving or going, if I’m willing to accept all this on his terms.

  I draw a deep breath, close my eyes, count to ten to try to get control of my ragged breathing. “And what do I get out of all this, A.J.? What’s in it for me except heartbreak?”

  The mask of hardness melts away from his face, and his eyes blaze with emotion. He pulls me against his chest. He cradles my face in his hands. He kisses me, deeply, with everything he’s got. When he pulls away I’m breathless, clinging to his arms so I don’t collapse at his feet.

  Looking into my eyes, he says softly, “Let me love you, Chloe. Let me love you like you need to be loved. It won’t be for forever, but it will be the best thing either one of us has ever had. I know it. It’ll be enough to last us the rest of our lives.”

  I swallow a sob. I’d told Kat and Grace almost the same thing, that what he’d given me so far would be enough to last me the next fifty years. And I meant it. And I’d told him earlier I’d be happy with just one night, and meant that, too.

  But I want so much more. I want all of him. Without limits, without secrets, without lies. If I can’t have that, will seven days with zero answers satisfy me?

  No. It won’t satisfy me. But as I stare at him, as I see all the emotion and need and longing reflected in his eyes, I realize it will be enough.

  He’s enough for me. For one night or one week or any other measure of time, he’s enough. I feel it to the marrow of my bones. And though it’s crazy, I feel lucky. In entire lifetimes, some people never even get this. Some people will never know the joy of this small, enormous, effortlessly simple, ridiculously complicated thing:

  Love.

  I rest my head on his chest. I heave a deep, resigned sigh. I make a conscious decision to let go of everything, all the expectations, all the frustrations, all the questions I’ve been so desperate to ask. I let everything slide through my fingers and vanish.

  In the steadiest voice I can manage, I say, “If I’m going to be eating pancakes for the next week, boyfriend, they better be awesome or I’m seriously going to kick your ass.”

  All the tension drains from A.J.’s body. He hugs me so hard I have trouble catching my breath. He says, “Honestly, baby, they’re shit.”

  He laughs. It’s like a sound a mourner makes at a funeral.

  God, this is gonna hurt.

  I’ve seen hundreds of women sleep. Alone or in twos or threes or dozens, pillowed in satin or custom lin
ens, shivering in freezing rooms under torn, filthy rags.

  No one has ever looked like Chloe. Nothing on this earth is more beautiful than her.

  She sleeps on her stomach like a child, arms flung out to the sides, legs splayed, face buried in the pillow. Lit by a moonbeam from the window, her hair is a shimmering spill of platinum and gold, messy around her shoulders, and I’m going insane with want and self-hatred.

  What the fuck am I doing? This was so not the plan. But I had to have her with me. I had to keep her safe. Even when all this ends, I’ll make sure she’s safe forever.

  I shut my eyes and press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. Crying, something I haven’t done since I was ten years old, is as easy as breathing now. All these stored up tears, now so eager to fall. I have to fight to keep them from coming. Every time she looks at me with those eyes of hers, I have to fight not to break down and tell her everything.

  If I did, she’d run away as fast as she could. So I keep my mouth shut. And I keep her.

  I told her I wasn’t selfish, but I lied. I’m the most selfish bastard who ever lived. She’ll find out soon enough. And then she’ll hate me, like I deserve.

  My angel murmurs incoherently in her sleep. I stroke her back and she settles, sighing, burrowing farther into the pillow. When I press a kiss to her temple, she murmurs my name. It’s like a thousand spear points piercing my heart.

  Who knew love would be such utter, fucking misery?

  We spend the first evening together in almost total silence.

  After I decided to stay, A.J. made me those pancakes. They weren’t “shit,” as he so eloquently described them; they were amazing. Even more amazing was his insistence on feeding them to me, forkful by fluffy forkful. It seemed really odd at first, but, in the spirit of “thou shalt follow my commandments” that we’d agreed on, I let him. Then I let him run me a hot bath in the giant claw-foot bathtub, put me in it, and wash my hair, along with every other part of my body. He was serious as he did it, a little detached, his hands gentle, missing nothing, yet I could tell his touch wasn’t meant to be arousing.

  Of course it was arousing, but I didn’t let on. Well, there was that one little groan that slipped out when he ran the bar of soap between my legs, but we both pretended I hadn’t made it. We also pretended not to notice the enormous bulge straining the fly in his jeans.

  He dried me. He dressed me in one of his T-shirts and a pair of his sweats, rolled up at the ankles. He combed out my hair and put Neosporin on my cheek, then he kissed me softly and put me back into bed. When he went to the kitchen to make me tea, I took off the clothes he’d just put on and acted innocent when he came back and stopped short, frowning.

  My ploy didn’t work. He ignored my nudity, ordered me to drink the tea, and got in bed beside me without taking off his jeans.

  Apparently if and when we finally had sex was his decision as well. We fell asleep in our usual spooned embrace.

  In the morning, there were more pancakes. After an inspection of the stitches, there was more Neosporin for my cheek. Then, because I was feeling a little more secure and thought I could be alone, A.J. went to my place to get my clothes and a few other things I’d asked for, and went shopping for food, while I busied myself snooping around his room, trying to find anything that would give me a clue about him.

  Here’s what I found: zilch.

  His closet holds only identical pairs of jeans, boots, jackets, and hoodies, most of the items are black except for the jeans and a brown leather bomber. His dresser contains socks, underwear, and T-shirts, folded neatly in stacks. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom is like anyone else’s. There is no junk drawer in the kitchenette, no photo albums in a bookcase, no mementos from trips taken, no receipts, no mail, no phone book, and of course no telephone or computer for me to try to hack into.

  He could be anyone, or no one. It’s as if he’s a ghost.

  The only thing of any interest is his CD collection. He has every genre of music, from opera to reggae, country to jazz, classic rock to punk and heavy metal, organized in sections and alphabetized by artist. Opera is by far the biggest section, followed by jazz. Bands and musicians I’ve never heard of make up a good chunk. I think about introducing him to an iPod so he can take his music on the go, but then wonder if he even has a credit card to buy music with. I doubt he’d be interested in anything that tracks his spending and purchase history.

  I’m totally off the grid, he told my father. Looking around his place really drives that point home.

  My detective work abruptly ends when he returns, arms full with my suitcase, a bag of groceries, and a bouquet of store-bought red roses wrapped in cellophane. He leaves my suitcase next to the bed, drops the grocery bag on the kitchenette counter, and, after kissing me lightly on the lips, presents me with the bouquet of roses.

  I’m shocked, and pleased. I can’t remember the last time a man brought me flowers. Eric once told me that buying a florist flowers would be like buying a jeweler a diamond ring, or a winemaker a bottle of someone else’s wine. He thought it was bad manners.

  “No one ever buys me flowers!”

  “That’s what I figured. Which is exactly why I did.” A.J. smiles at me, and my heart melts. He seems happy, almost carefree, which makes me happy, too.

  “Do you have a vase?” I look around the kitchenette, but see nothing that would be a likely candidate.

  “Oh. No.” He’s momentarily crestfallen, but then brightens. “Maybe in the downstairs kitchens, though. There are all sorts of containers there. Or in the concierge closet, or one of the storage rooms. This place is full of stuff the prior owners left behind.”

  Whistling to himself, he starts to unpack the bag of groceries. It’s a little thrilling, and a lot scary, how this domestic side of him turns me on. Though it’s weird, it’s also comforting, and comfortable. We could be just any other couple in their apartment on a Saturday morning, looking forward to spending the rest of their lives together.

  And not just their final week.

  I push that nasty thought aside, and busy myself with filling the small sink with water. I submerge the stems of the roses so they can drink until we can find a more appropriate container. I want desperately to ask questions, but know I can’t, so instead I mount what I hope is a subtle fishing expedition.

  “Speaking of this place, did you ever see The Grand Budapest Hotel? It totally reminds me of that.”

  “Hmm.”

  Okay, not exactly the explanation of how he’d come to live here that I hoped for. I try again. “Was it empty a long time before you bought it?”

  “Years. It was originally built as a resort hotel but never made it. Too far from the beach I guess. Then it was bought by some religious sect. They had it for a few decades before the leader committed suicide and it went on the market again. Then a corporation bought it, tried to make it into an exclusive rehab center for rich drug addicts. Don’t know what happened there, but it wasn’t successful, so a private investor bought it, tried to fix it up and flip it, but the economy took a shit and he lost everything. The IRS repossessed it to cover his unpaid taxes. Then some old eccentric guy bought it at auction and lived here with his nurse until he died. It’s been empty ever since.”

  That this poor, abandoned hotel that A.J. bought, because it looks like he feels, has had such a string of failures in its past makes me unreasonably depressed. I try not to think it might be jinxed, but of course I start to obsess over exactly that.

  “Weird that it has such a checkered past,” I mutter, staring out the window to the view of the hills.

  From behind, A.J. snakes his arms around my waist. He kisses the back of my neck, nosing aside my hair to gain access. “That’s one of the reasons it makes me feel at home.”

  His confession is so unexpected I blurt, “Because you have a checkered past, too?”

  He doesn’t growl or freeze me out, as I expect him to. He simply rests his chin on my shoulder and stares out t
he window. “Exactly, Princess. Birds of a feather.”

  He kills me when he’s like this. His self-loathing is so deep. I wish I could take it away.

  Without turning, I softly say, “If I found a magic lamp and a genie came out and said he’d grant me three wishes, they’d all be for you to be able to forget whatever bad things happened to you, and for you to be happy forever.”

  I can tell he’s moved by my words, because a little tremor goes through him. He turns his face to my neck. “Not everything bad in my past happened to me, angel. Some of them were bad things I did to other people.”

  My heart beats faster. “Whatever you did, I know it was because you had to. I know it was because you didn’t have a choice. You’re a good man, A.J. I know that.”

  His arms tighten around me. “You believe that because you’re good. You see the best in people. But we always have choices, angel. Even if they’re hard, or shitty, every decision we make involves a choice.” His voice drops even lower. “And you’re wrong about me being a good man. I made every bad choice with my eyes wide open . . . even the ones that hurt other people. I always knew exactly what I was doing. There’s no excuse for the things I’ve done.”

  Without hesitating, and with a vehemence I wasn’t intending, I say, “I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t care if you’re Jesus or Hitler or something in between. None of that matters to me.”

  With his hands on my shoulders, A.J. turns me around. He stares down at me, his eyes devouring. “It should.”

  I shake my head. “It doesn’t. And it never will, no matter what happens. No matter what you say to try to convince me, no matter what I find out.”

  “You can’t mean that. Not if you don’t know the facts.”

  I don’t know how we got here so quickly, when all I was trying for was a few random tidbits to fill in my knowledge about how he came to own the hotel, but here we are. I’m not missing the opportunity. “Tell me then. Try me out.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  His lips part. His eyes burn. “Because I’m not ready to lose you just yet.”