by Amber Bardan
I approached him slowly. “Hey.”
Haithem drank deeply from the water, the plastic walls of the bottle crinkling and concaving under the pressure of his gulps. A rivulet of sweat ran down his neck and over his shoulder. My mouth went wet yet somehow sticky. His scent reached me. Damn you, you’re supposed to stink when you’re sweaty. On him, of course, sweat only amplified the sexy, added a layer of something dirtier and muskier to his usual masculinity. Made me imagine this was how he’d smell after sex.
“What can I do for you?”
He didn’t look at me when he asked the question. What can I do for you? As though we were strangers. But then, Haithem had a reserved way of speaking.
I frowned.
On second thought, he also had intimate ways of speaking—ways I’d become used to him using with me.
“I wanted to see if you were coming up for dinner?”
He put the top back on the bottle. “I’m busy today.”
I resisted the frown tweaking my mouth. “I thought you said you were finished with your work?”
“You know nothing about my work.”
Our gazes locked. A steely veil slammed over his expression. Still that wariness was there. One he had no right to be feeling.
I should be the one who was shitty. Well. He’d better get to girding his loins because right now I planned to stealth-seduce him so hard, he’d be choppering me home before he could finish his next stupidly suspicious thought.
“You’re right, I don’t.” I stepped closer, rested the fingers of my right hand on the ridges of his shoulder. “But I haven’t seen you today.” I let my voice sink lower. “And I’m bored...”
His expression was all off. Vacant and detached.
“I spent yesterday entertaining you.” He brushed my hand off his chest and leaned down. “I didn’t realize you were going to be so needy.”
I stumbled backward.
My cheeks went hot, then burning hot. A sinking sensation plunged from my throat to my belly. He could have said anything to me, hurled any insult, and I’d have taken it. But that one grated against open wounds. How many times had I heard those words in my life?
Don’t be needy, Angelina.
When I’d tried to show my parents one of my plays, a report card, told them I’d had a nightmare.
Can’t you see we’re busy...tired...upset. Don’t be so needy.
My eyes stung. And I’d learned not to be. Learned how useless it was to need things from other people. Until Haithem came along with his promises—until he invited me to ask him for things.
I pulled my jaw out of its sag. “Geez, Haithem, what happened to—” I held out my hand and put on my best Haithem voice “—’ask me for anything’...”
Okay, so the accent I affected was two parts Dracula, one part Gru from Despicable Me, but at least it added to the theatrical flair.
He scowled.
I tried not to flinch. He had a mean-ass scowl. I kept going, anger the perfect antidote to the hurt. “I will listen to you talk for—” I paused, my eyes widening.
“Do you need someone to hear you? I will listen to you talk for days.”
Fuck me. The beach. He’d played me just as I’d known he would.
“You goddamn bastard.” I pressed my hands to my cheeks and shook my head. How could I be so stupid? So pathetic. I’d fallen right into his sadistic hands. “That’s what it was yesterday?”
He could be a poker champion. While my lips shook like two windblown leaves, the only thing that moved on his face was another bead of sweat rolling from his temple.
“You playing me into this warped little fantasy you think will stop me from telling anyone about you?”
His cheek twitched.
My heartbeat rioted painfully.
“Well, you can stop.” My throat scratched. “I don’t work for anyone, and I’m not going to tell anyone about you.” I looked away from him. If I had to see his satisfaction, this time I’d vomit on his bare feet. “Not for your sake, though. I’m not so stupid that I can’t recognize you’re poison. That breathing a word about you would only make my life that much more difficult.” I tugged at my dress and stretched straighter. “So you can relax, stop feeling the need to fuck with me. My only agenda right now is to get the hell away from you.”
I waited for him to say something. Prove me right, say I’m so glad you understand or some other patronizing bullshit. But he held his silence.
From now on, I’d go back to holding mine.
I’d like to say I could go back to holding everything the way I had before, but the emotions spilled from me, and I left before he could see me cry.
EIGHTEEN
I SNAPPED THE origami fortune teller game back and forth between my fingers, then shut my eyes. Will this horror ever end? I pried up a panel, then opened my eyes.
Highly doubtful.
The answer to the question blazed boldly in my own rounded lettering. I blew air between my lips and tossed the stupid game onto the top of the pile of chatterboxes I’d painstakingly folded, filled in, but not actually played until now.
I fell back onto the bed, legs still crossed. In two days I hadn’t left this room. Not once. Hadn’t so much as opened the door for a breeze. Cabin fever be damned. I’d rather go bat-shit-stir-crazy than suffer one more second of Haithem’s hateful presence. I’d filled half of one of the notebooks I’d stolen from his drawer with journal-like rambles, and the other with something actually productive—less personal yet in some ways more so.
I kicked out my legs and the origami games, the same kind I’d learned to make to entertain Josh during the long hours he’d spent in waiting rooms, corridors and sickbeds, fell to the floor.
I wouldn’t think about Haithem. Nope. Wouldn’t cry again. Done with that.
Blinding rage was better company, and the only Haithem-induced emotion I’d tolerate at the moment. Except when I succumbed to sleep. Then everything was him—Haithem kissing. Haithem touching. Haithem holding. Haithem listening.
In my dreams he’d say again, “there’s nothing you can keep from me,” and in my dreams there wasn’t. I’d tell him everything.
I’d say all the weak-willed sappy things my sleeping mind wouldn’t deny. Why didn’t you want me? Stupid things I should have evolved beyond. Why aren’t I enough?
My subconscious and I weren’t on the same page. We weren’t in the same notebook, drawer, or even yacht when it came to Haithem.
The door handle creaked. I scrambled to sitting, but didn’t look—didn’t let my traitorous wanting gaze stray to him. I worried the red polish on my thumb with my index fingernail.
“What are you doing in here?” His voice rolled softly over me. A gentle enquiry.
Like he didn’t know exactly what I was doing. I wouldn’t dignify a response until he started asking better questions—such as, could I ever forgive him for being an unbearable douche-bucket? Except with more groveling. A chunk of red flicked off my thumbnail. The answer would be never, but I’d still enjoy the hell out of hearing it.
“The kitchen told me you haven’t ordered any food since yesterday.”
I ignored him. Pretended he was a big, annoying, asshole of a lump in the room. He touched my shoulder and sat on the edge of the bed. I clenched my teeth. Were my eyes still puffy? He shouldn’t be allowed to see that.
“If you’re doing this to punish me, you’re only hurting yourself.”
My gaze snapped to his. “Not everything is about you.”
“Then stop being stubborn, and tell me what you’d like to eat.” He leveled his do-as-I-command glare at me.
“Fine, I’d like some freshly caught squid.” My voice could have cut glass.
He froze, and for a moment, I caught it—the briefest flash o
f emotion flickering across his face. I couldn’t know if it was guilt or if he’d actually felt something when we’d been in that boat and he’d coaxed my life story out of me, but—stupid me—my heart lifted at the hint that maybe it’d been real.
My anger slipped, leaving me soft and hurting again.
He shifted and paper crunched, and he tugged a ruined chatterbox from under his thigh. “What’s this?”
I stared at him for a long time. Stared at his duplicitous face. Warm and cold. Intimate and distant. My insides braced pain and a spark of anger still buried there. He sighed and lowered his hand.
I caught him by the sleeve. “It’s a game.”
His long eyelashes fanned tight around the dark of his eyes. “Is it now?”
My throat thickened. Haithem liked games. Games were his domain, but this time, all the games scattered around us were ones I’d made.
“Don’t you want to play with me?”
Haithem
PLAY WITH HER—had we ever ceased? Challenge lit her eyes. A flash that crossed the hurt written over her.
Hurt I’d put there. If I could, I’d take it away. “I’ll always play with you, Angel.”
She released my cuff, slid to the ground, then rummaged through what I’d thought was litter, coming back up with one of her little paper contraptions. “This one I think.”
“The rules?”
She smiled, kind of lopsided and not in her eyes. Did she find the idea I’d ask for rules ironic? I had rules. Many rules.
“The player picks a color.” She indicated the colors on the four outer squares. “The dealer shuffles the chatterbox once for every letter.” She opened the game back and forth. “Then the player chooses a number from inside.”
I peered into the mouth of her chatterbox and at the numbers penned inside. “And then?”
“Then you open a flap and get your truth or dare.”
I studied this pretty girl who’d somehow wormed her way under my skin and bored into my blood. This girl who’d caused every breath I’d avoided her with these two terrible days to die stale in my lungs. A girl whose motives were yet unproven.
Would this girl be the end of me?
With her tricks, her games and now this device to dare me with... My top teeth clashed on bottom teeth. Did she intend to steal my deadliest secrets with a child’s toy?
I took the chatterbox from her hand as delicately as if it were an open rose. “And you wrote these truth or dares?”
Did she think she could dare me to let her go?
“I did.” She blinked, one time only. Always so innocent with those eyes.
I looked into them, searched for a spark of deceit. “That all feels a little premeditated to me.”
“Look around you.” Her nose scrunched. “There’s more than a dozen of these, and none of them were intended for you.” She reached for the game. “But if you don’t trust me pick another and I’ll go first.”
“Except you know what’s under every number.” I shifted the chatterbox out of her reach. “I’d call that an advantage, and I’m not inclined to give you one unless I know exactly what we’re playing for.”
Her lips tightened and she drew back. “Have you always been so suspicious?”
“Not always.” I spat the words, English a clunky foreign mouthful for a strange instant.
She frowned, then her expression softened. “Look, it’s just a kids’ game. You don’t have to play.”
“I’ll play, but I want to know, Angelina.” I slid my fingers under the squares the way she had. “What do you think we’re playing for?”
“The same thing kids do—amusement.” She rested her palm on the bed between us and swayed toward me. “So we’ll play by kids’ rules, too. A dare must be fulfilled immediately. It can’t be saved for later or prolonged. Truths are truths you would comfortably ask a child.” She leaned in and the way her voice dripped could be sweet or it could be poison. “So there’s no need to be afraid of me.”
I laughed. But her poison struck. Perhaps I was afraid of her. She had weapons I could not armor against. “Pick a color.”
“Red.”
I knocked the chatterbox back and forth three times then opened it wide. “Choose.”
Her eyelids fluttered. “You pick for me, just to be sure I’m not cheating.”
“I’d have trusted you.” A tick snapped in my neck. “But, I’ll give you number three.”
I pried open the flap and the title read dare. For a moment, a knot formed in my chest, and I wished for truth—if she were playing fair.
“Read it out.”
“Angelina.” My gaze locked on her. The rules, would she bend them? “I dare you to show me something you’ve never shown anyone.”
She smiled, and brushed her hair over her shoulder. “Easy peasy, you saw my scars and I’d never shown them to anyone before. Other than doctors and that doesn’t count.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t show me. I saw.” Did she think the sympathy of that moment would earn her a free pass? “Show me something you’ve never shown anyone.”
Her entire forehead wrinkled.
“The dare must be able to be fulfilled immediately.” I dropped the chatterbox between us and hovered over it. “Again, Angelina, show me something you’ve never shown someone.”
Her throat moved. “Seriously, what do I have to show you imprisoned in your cabin besides my physical body?”
Now I smiled, real, and wide. “Show me what’s written in that notebook right there.”
Her head turned in a jerk toward the side table. “That’s not what the dare says. You don’t get to choose. I decide what to show you.”
“Then choose something.”
She glanced back to me and gripped the bedspread.
“I thought you said you weren’t cheating.” I had her. In whatever she’d tried to score from me in this silly game, I’d pushed, and I’d almost won. I should be content. As always what should satisfy me with her never seemed to be enough. There was always more. More I wanted. More I sensed. And the ruthless hunger to possess it. “Show me the notebook now.”
She grabbed the notebook from the top of the bedside table and shoved it into the drawer, then took the other thicker one from underneath. “Fine, you can see one page from this one.”
My gaze didn’t stray to the thing she’d hidden. The thing I now wanted.
“Thank you.” I took the notebook. “Preference for a page?”
“Whichever.” Her arms linked under her breasts, and I didn’t look there obviously, either.
“This was your game.” I flipped open to a page of writing. “Remember, you wanted to play.”
I scanned the words. Twice. Because this was structured. Scene III. A play. I glanced up. Her university transcripts. I’d thought she wanted to be an actress. But was this what it’d all been about. Did she want storytelling?
I read the lines, each one slowly. Until the words slunk into my mind, flowing like liquid. A laugh burst from my lips at a witty dialogue and I turned the page.
Her hand slammed down, open and splayed on top of the page. “You only got one.”
“You wouldn’t give me more?” I let her take her notebook. “Not for a dare but because I asked?”
Her gaze flirted on then away from me. She put the notebook in the drawer and picked up the chatterbox. “It’s your turn.”
“Green.”
She made the five movements. “Choose.”
“One.”
She lifted the flap. “Truth. What’s your favorite smell?”
“Pardon?”
“What’s your favorite smell?” she read out again.
That’s the question? She wanted to play for questions so trivial? But then maybe she hoped I
’d get the dare. That I’d show her my unseen thing I would not be willing to reveal.
“I don’t have one.”
“Bullshit, everyone has one.” She threw the chatterbox down. “I did mine, now you do yours.”
My mouth curled down. “Pick another. I don’t have one.”
“You have to answer.” She shuffled closer and put a hand on each of my shoulders. “When you close your eyes, what’s the one thing you want to breathe in?” She squeezed. “Shut your eyes.”
I did. And what filled me was her—her scent. Clean and uncontrived. Shampoo and soap and a faint underlying sweetness of woman.
“Stop smelling me.”
My eyes slit open.
She raised a brow. “You leaned closer.”
“This is a ridiculous game.” I shut my eyes.
She squeezed my shoulders. “Think about what you want to be there.”
Memories plowed through me. A catalog of scents. Then one, just one, pushed through the rest. One I’d lay down my life to have again.
“What is it?”
My throat closed. “Rosewater.”
“Like perfume?”
Pain drove into my ribs. “No, like Turkish Delight.”
Rosewater in my mother’s kitchen. The sweets she made for me. Home. Her voice when she sang at the sink. Not off-key—not through the ears of the man who’d last seen her. Not the man who never appreciated anything the way he should until it was gone. I heard her through the love-drenched ears of a child.
Something brushed my cheek.
I jerked back, eyes open and a burn behind them—one I also had not experienced in years. And there were her eyes, fixed on mine.
“Are you all right?”
She asked as though she hadn’t seen. As though the truth were not on her face. As though she did not possess those same wants enough to have caught what I must’ve revealed. Family—love—life. So near, like the memory I still tasted.
