Unraveling

by Elizabeth Norris

  Then I notice his mouth moving. I look closer, focus on what he’s trying to tell me. And I realize this can’t be a dream. Because the Ben of my imagination wouldn’t be standing in the rain outside my dining room with red-rimmed eyes like he’d been crying, asking if he can come inside.

  When I open the back door, he’s there in front of me. But the dreamlike illusion is gone because he’s shivering so hard his whole body shakes, and I can see now the rain only managed to wash away some of his tears. I suddenly feel so cold, I start to shiver too, and I have to clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.

  “What happened?” I ask as I pull him inside and shut the door.

  His head drops. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t have anywhere to go.”

  “You can always come here,” I say as I reach my arms around him, pulling him to me. Water soaks the front of my clothes, but I don’t care because this is Ben, and we’re both freezing, and despite the secrets between us, I would do anything for him.

  His arms hesitate at first, but then he presses his cheek against mine, and as his body sags, his resistance fades. His arms encircle me, his hands entwining in my hair.

  “It’s okay,” I whisper into his ear, even though I don’t really know that. I know this is bad. Whatever drove him to come to my house has to be bad.

  We stand like that for a while, just clutching each other. And the heat from his body contrasts with the chill of our wet clothes. Our breathing and heartbeats speed up in sync until the pounding of my pulse and the rise and fall of my chest are loud enough they drown out even the sound of the rain.

  There’s a fierce tension in our bodies, as if any movement, any shift would release the coiled springs of our bodies.

  I break away despite the physical ache that sets in. “Come on. Let’s get you into different clothes.” I try to ignore how ragged my voice sounds, and hope he doesn’t pick up on it.

  Focusing on the task at hand, I grab the zipper of his hoodie and start sliding it downward. But before I can get to the bottom, Ben steps into me again. His hand touches my neck, and his forehead leans against mine. His face feels feverish, and he’s breathing hard—a fluttering goes through my chest. Because I want him. More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life—I want Ben.

  His hand tilts my chin up. I close my eyes. His breath is warm against my skin. Our noses brush against each other. I hold my breath. Before he kisses me, I can feel how close we are, like the nerve endings in my body are so sensitive they’ve extended inches outward, and the electricity between us charges the space between. Ben hesitates, and I wonder if he’s changed his mind. I open my eyes to check.

  And then his lips touch mine.

  They’re soft and smooth, and they taste salty from his tears. And then he opens his mouth, our tongues touch, I taste mint, and his other hand slides around my waist, settling on my back. My mouth opens wider, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get enough of him.

  And his hand at my back pushes me into him. Hard.

  There’s no space between our bodies anymore, and all thought turns to frenzy.

  Our lips are pressed together, our tongues moving, exploring. There’s biting and sucking, and I don’t have time to think about what I’m doing. Our hands are all over each other, gripping and pulling as if we can get any closer without merging into the same person.

  When I back into the dryer, I realize he’s been slowly pushing me. And then his hands slide down my back and he grabs my ass and lifts me up so I’m sitting on top of the dryer, the steady hum of vibration underneath me.

  Out of surprise, our lips break, and Ben kisses his way across my jawline. He stands between my legs, and without thinking, I wrap them around him and pull him closer. His kisses trail from my ear down my neck, and a moaning sigh escapes my lips, mingling with my panting breaths.

  I reach down for that zipper again because I need to put my hands on his skin, and his kisses move back up my neck.

  When the zipper snaps open, Ben pauses, his breath hot in my ear. “Janelle Tenner,” he whispers. “I fucking love you.”

  A smile breaks over my face, because even though it’s not the romantic declaration of most girls’ dreams, it’s so Ben to remember something meaningful I said, even if it was in front of Alex and forty of our classmates on a day that feels like forever ago—it’s so perfectly Ben.

  I can’t help it. I grab his face and cover his lips with mine. And then I slip my hands under the hoodie and over his shoulders, down his arms, pulling it off. He shrugs out of it without resistance.

  “Janelle—”

  I kiss him harder this time, and he sighs into my mouth.

  His hands slip under my shirt and touch skin, and my heart hammers a mile a minute, like it might just start beating so hard it will break from my chest and exist outside my body.

  I reach between us and press my palm against his chest to feel his heartbeat—to see if it’s beating as hard as mine.

  And it is.

  But my hand—

  My hand sticks awkwardly to his shirt.

  That’s when I open my eyes, look down. And see all the blood.

  02:14:35:02

  “Oh my God.” My hands are all over him. Only this time the franticness is completely different. Because now that I’ve noticed it, I can see the blood is everywhere. And with this much blood, his injuries have to be extensive.

  When did I become such a hormone-crazed psycho? Ben comes to my house in the middle of the night, obviously upset, and I practically jump him. And in his weakened-by-blood-loss state, he doesn’t fight me. If he ends up dying because I was turned on, I might shoot myself.

  Something grabs my head and tilts my face upward, and I realize it’s Ben’s hands. He’s forcing me to look at him and saying my name.

  “Janelle, it’s not my blood.”

  And I’m not sure how that’s supposed to make this any better.

  Okay, actually that does make it better. If someone had to lose this much blood I’d rather it not be Ben, but of course it begs the question, “Then whose blood is it?”

  He doesn’t answer right away, and that crazy, heart-pounding fear I had just moments ago morphs into the kind of fury that makes people do things so regretful and so rash that their mind makes them forget. If he doesn’t tell me in the next ten seconds, I might strangle him.

  I back up to avoid throttling him. I can’t possibly keep my voice from shaking. “Whose. Blood. Is. It?”

  Ben refuses to meet my eyes. “Elijah’s.”

  “And?!” I’ve never been Elijah’s biggest fan, but the fact that Ben isn’t jumping in to offer an explanation or at least some information freaks me out. “Is he okay? What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben says. He looks down at the blood, and for a second I wonder if Elijah is the bad guy, and if Ben found out and did this to him. But when he looks up at me, I know the guilt on his face would look different than it does. “I tried to heal him. But whatever I can do, it’s like it didn’t work on him, it’s like he was immune.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I called 911. Waited for the ambulance.”

  I take a deep breath. If Elijah is in the hospital, there’s nothing we can do for him. He’s already got people helping him.

  I turn on the light. “Take off your shirt,” I say, grabbing one of my dad’s old clean T-shirts from the to-donate pile. “Put this on.”

  He hesitates for a second, and the anger I feel melts away. I’m not sure why he came to my house. I’m not sure what possessed him to make out with me while his clothes were still stained with his best friend’s blood. But he’s here. And from the look on his face, he needs me. Yet he’s still thinking of me and of everything I’m going through.

  I nod, and he switches shirts, and I feel like something’s wrong with me because I can’t keep myself from thinking of the way his arms felt around me just a moment ago.

  I throw his bloody shirt and his ho
odie into the wash and bring him into the kitchen.

  “All right, tell me what happened, and try to tell me fast, because I don’t exactly have the most patience in the world.”

  “All three of us were at the Staybridge watching Suspect Zero. He finally left a couple hours ago, and we used a card to break into the room. That part was easy.

  “This time we tossed the whole room, and we didn’t really bother to be careful. It’s just gotten to the point where we need to find something we can use, and I don’t care whether he knew we’d been there or not.”

  I have to interrupt at this point, because I need to know.

  “Did you find anything?” I don’t say what else I’m thinking, which is Please don’t let this be an enormous waste of time and a mission that ended with Elijah in the hospital.

  Ben nods and reaches into his back pocket. “From what we found, it looks like his real name is Eric Brandt.” The wallet he retrieves looks reminiscent of the one my dad carried with his FBI credentials in it.

  I grab it and flip it open, examining the ID. The picture definitely identifies him as alias Mike Cooper/Suspect Zero or whatever we want to call him. And sure enough, the name under the ID reads ERIC BRANDT, INTERVERSE AGENCY, #340578.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I have no idea,” Ben says. “I was hoping maybe you’d heard of that agency.”

  I shake my head. Not that I know all of the different agencies in the intelligence community, but this doesn’t ring any bells to me. “I’ll ask Struz.”

  Ben groans, leans back in his chair, balancing on its back two legs, and folds his hands behind his head. “We found that in the hotel safe. I managed to … manipulate it open. Most of the other stuff in the room just made him look like a guy who’s been living out of the Staybridge for the past several months.”

  “How’d Elijah’s blood get all over you?” I ask, since that’s one of the most important things going on here.

  “Eric Brandt came home,” Ben says, leaning forward so all four legs of the chair land back on the ground. “Reid was supposed to be looking out for him, and I don’t know what he was doing, but he was doing a shitty job. Brandt came back and found us in his room. He took aim at me because I was the one with his ID.” Ben hesitates and shakes his head, and when his voice comes out this time, I can see that he’s fighting to keep it even. “Elijah tried to grab me and pull me out of the way, but he got shot. Then Reid came back into the room, and he and I both went after Brandt. I wasn’t worried about Elijah, because I figured I’d just heal him. I’ve done it before....”

  “How did you guys get away?”

  “Elijah got up and got himself out of there, and between Reid and me, it was two on one....”

  My mouth dries out, and I fight the urge to take a step back. For a second I remember Reid saying, Ben had Sam Hines within an inch of his life. If the cops hadn’t showed up, Ben probably would have killed him, and I’m worried they killed our only lead.

  “Brandt was beat up enough that he wasn’t about to come after us,” Ben says instead, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Elijah got us into a neighborhood cul-de-sac before he had to pull over. We were going to ditch Reid’s car and call it in as stolen, just in case the guy had spotted it, and that’s when I tried to heal Elijah.”

  He shakes his head and leans over so I can’t see his eyes. “But I couldn’t. I tried everything and it just didn’t work. And I could feel whatever it is inside me, it was working on my end, but it just didn’t do anything.”

  “You couldn’t heal him?” I ask.

  “No, it’s like I couldn’t sense those molecules at all.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I say, because what else do you tell someone whose superhero powers suddenly stop working?

  “So I called 911 and stayed with him while Reid took the car and was going to ditch it somewhere, and then when the ambulance was around the corner, I left and came here.” He looks up. “I figured they’d ask questions.”

  I nod because he’s right, and then I do what I’ve been doing all week. I try to think of what all this means. And I just don’t know. “What about the chemicals?”

  Ben shakes his head. “We couldn’t find them anywhere.”

  I feel cold all over, because that could mean there is a bomb somewhere, or it could mean anything. Maybe he was just some undercover operative posing as a guy starting his own dry-cleaning business. Though something makes me doubt that.

  Ben shivers next to me, and I realize his jeans are still wet from the rain outside. Whatever’s going on, we’re not actually going to solve this right now, this minute. “Come on,” I say, standing up and pulling him with me. “You should get cleaned up. I’ll get you some dry pants, and you can spend the night here. We’ll figure it out in the morning.”

  I don’t add the “or we’ll die trying” part, since that’s pretty much understood.

  02:14:04:13

  I put Ben in my dad’s bedroom with a pile of fresh sheets, and when I’m safely back in my own room, I call Struz.

  And get voice mail.

  I’m tempted to leave a message, except I’m worried he’ll take it the wrong way. He’s working on something that’s obviously got his mind wrapped in a knot, and I don’t want him to freak out. He’ll see that I called, and he’ll call me back.

  When I hang up the phone, I get into bed—I’m going to have to will myself to get any sleep tonight, and I’ll probably have bad dreams. The house, my dad, earthquakes, getting hit by that truck, Ben—they all sort of meld together in my nightmares. Might as well add Elijah getting shot to them.

  I’m reaching over to turn off the light when there’s a knock on the door.

  I don’t move right away. It’s either Ben or Jared. And I’m not sure which one I’d rather it be.

  Normally, I’d easily say I’d rather it be Ben knocking on my bedroom door than my brother—except I’m mortified about how desperate I must have seemed when he got here.

  I slide out of bed and go to the door.

  It’s Ben.

  “Hey,” he says, not meeting my eyes.

  “You okay?” I ask, opening the door wider, so he can come inside rather than loiter in my hallway.

  He does. And then he looks around as I shut the door. Obviously taking in the details of my room. It’s standard—posters of indie bands on the wall, a few pictures of me and Alex and me and Jared, a stuffed bear, two bookshelves overflowing with books, a dresser with some clothes piled on top of it.

  Finally his eyes come back to me. “I made a mistake,” Ben says.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “With you—I mean, with us,” he whispers, and I swear for a second my heart stops beating. “I made a mistake.”

  I force myself to breathe normally, but I feel dizzy and light-headed and I want to just throw my arms around him. “What do you mean?”

  He runs a hand through his floppy hair. “It’s just you—you’re perfect.”

  I can’t help but laugh at that. “Not quite.”

  “No, you are,” he says, reaching out to grab one of my hands. Our fingers intertwine, and those dark, deep-set eyes look straight into mine. “You’re strong and smart, and you never put yourself first. You don’t let anything get in your way, and you’re beautiful.”

  My breath catches, because there isn’t a single thing I could have wanted to hear more than that.

  He shakes his head. “When you didn’t know me, it was easy to just focus on getting home, but now we’re running out of time. We’ve got less than three days, and you’re right here and even more perfect than I imagined.”

  “I haven’t tumbled short of your dreams?” I ask with a laugh.

  He gives me a half smile, recognizing the Gatsby reference. “Not at all.”

  But I still don’t know what that means for us. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “What if we do solve this? I’ll have to leave,” he says, squeezing
my hand. “I’ll have to go home. My family, I haven’t seen them in ten years, and everything I’ve done since then has been aimed at getting back to them.”

  I nod. Because I know this. But he’s thinking too far ahead. Even if we live through these next two days, who knows if he ever will get home? And who knows if something else wouldn’t tear us apart anyway? But I can’t say either of those things out loud.

  “I’m not going to make you choose,” I say, the words sticking in my throat because I know he’d have to. And I know I’d lose.

  “But if we’re together,” Ben whispers, as if he’s afraid to say it out loud, “how will I ever leave you?”

  “If it ever comes to that—I won’t ask you to stay.”

  He nods and pulls me into him, wrapping his arms around me and burying his face in my hair. “God, you smell so good.”

  “I just don’t want to always regret this—that I felt this way about you and you felt this way about me, and we just lost it because we were afraid of the future,” I say into his chest.

  I feel him nodding into me. “I know.”

  We hold on to each other, and I feel the steady pounding of his heart against my body. I don’t know if this is what love feels like, but I know I would do anything for him. Anything.

  Ben pulls back and puts his hands on the sides of my face, and kisses me. Lightly. Quickly. Just once, and I feel empty and hollow and a little like I want to scream, because that kiss feels like good-bye.

  But then he sucks in a breath and closes his eyes. And with only an inch separating our lips, he says, “There are only two things I can remember wanting. To go home. And you.”

  “Ben,” I whisper against his lips. “I’m here now. Right now. And right now, I want you too.”

  02:09:55:46

  “Janelle?” There’s a knock at the door. “Did you oversleep or are we cutting again?”

  Jared.

  I open my eyes and remember Ben’s arms are around me.

  “Janelle?”

  And Jared is right outside my room. Extricating myself from Ben’s arms, I glance over at the clock and see that it’s 7:05. School starts in less than a half hour.