He looked around, trying to assess the situation, reminding me of that pathetic dog from the commercials. He tried to raise himself up, and upon discovering that he could, looked even more dumbfounded. More so when he raised his hand to the level of his eyes and moved his fingers. He looked like he'd never seen them do such a weird and wacky thing.
His mouth opened, wanting to speak, but that was too much for him. He fell back onto the blanket I'd laid out for him, curling his fingers at the edges again and again, fighting against the weight of his eyelids to keep them open.
“You're on the honor system, Maddy. And since I'm sure you don't know what that means, let me explain. One false fucking move from you? I'll gut you like a fish.”
This wasn't exactly a lie, but not necessarily the truth, either. The boa was next to the smoldering ashes of the fire. It was a few feet out of reach, but I could get to it in a millisecond if necessary. Once I'd finished with the aloe, I'd go and grab it.
“So, we have a common denominator between us,” I said, spreading the salve on his chest. I took my time with the process, rubbing it slowly over his shoulders, down his torso, up to his neck again. “I mean, sort of. I didn't kill anyone from your family. We can't say the same for you.”
His breath was deep, no longer rattling, but I don't think the rapidity had anything to do with sex. He looked like he couldn't trust me.
“You can’t,” I said, drawing my fingers toward his waist, to the edge of one of the survival blankets. I'd covered him last night. It was pretty chilly.
I wiped my hands on my thighs, and poured him a cup of the aspirin water. I'd tasted it last night, and it was bitter as hell. A squirt of papaya made it a little more palatable, though. Now that he was awake, he could drink it his own damn self.
I handed it to him.
He propped himself back up on his elbow – the act of which took the better part of a minute – and finally took the cup from me and brought it to his lips.
“...poisoned…?” he asked.
“For me to know and you to find out.”
He gulped it down in two swallows, handed the cup back to me, and collapsed back to the ground.
“That's terrible,” he coughed.
“So are you.”
Maddox placed his hand on his chest, running his fingers along the salve that coated his flesh.
“What is this?” He brought his hand up to his eyes, rubbed his fingertips together, the salve smooshing between them. I watched with vested interest when he saw what the cuffs had done to his wrists. Black and blue bracelets, with a smattering of red scratches and cuts.
“Aloe.”
Maddox's attention was on the skin of his wrists – swollen and tender to the touch. He smeared some of the aloe on one, trying to hide a wince from me.
“Hurts like fuck,” I said. I should know.
His arms fell back to his sides, and he looked up through the fawns of the palm trees, our little protective canopy. He turned his head and put his eyes on mine. For the first time, there wasn't any lurid ogling, no hint of testosteronean drool dripping from the sides of his mouth.
“I'm sorry,” he said, never taking his eyes away. “About your niece. About Rebecca.”
“Okay, first of all, I'm not cool with her name coming out of your stupid face. Got it? And second,” I grabbed one of the remaining Arrowheads, and took a big draw. “My niece's name was Leslie.” I forced the water down. It always hurt so, so much to say 'Leslie'.
“Can I ask what happened?” he asked, and for the life of me, I detected sincerity. The problem was Maddox's type wasn't capable of sincerity. He had to know I knew that.
I glared at him. While it was entirely true that he could not trust me, I could not trust him triple fold.
“You can ask all you want. Doesn't mean I have to answer.”
“Fair.”
“No. No, that's where you're wrong. Again. It wasn't fair. Nothing about it was fair, it was all bullshit, and it was all. Your. Fault. You big, stupid prick. That's the trouble with corporate fuck heads like yourself. You sign a piece of paper, you make some executive decision, never giving a tinker's fuck about the trickle down effect. You want to know what happened? You ripped the rug out from under us. You claimed we were a liability, and presto change-o, you get to eat five hundred dollar steak, we get to lose our health insurance.”
Maddox's expression didn't change. That fucking sincerity was plastered all over him. He looked sheepish. Dare I say ashamed, like he really didn't have a single clue there were consequences to his actions. Was he that good of an actor? No. Not even DeNiro was that good of an actor.
“Was Rebec- was your sister sick?”
“What do you care? And no, she wasn't sick. You're the sick one, Maddox. Sick and fucked in the head. And I hate your god damn guts.”
“Was… was it your niece?”
He had no right to know. No right at all.
I threw the water down, scrambled to my smoldering fire, and snatched up the knife. Turned back to him, and he didn't move. Not even a twitch. The funny part, hah-hah, was that he could. He was perfectly capable. Perfectly free to go. Sure, he was stiff and achy, but he was at liberty to take his leave.
“Enough about me,” I seethed, growing angrier as I watched him watching me as if he felt sorry for me. As if he was able to elicit compassion or empathy or anything similar. That's what I saw. And I never wanted to run this blade through his heart more than I did right now. “How fast was he going?”
“What?”
“Your brother. How fast was he driving when he ran his Porsche, or BMW, or Bentley, whatever the fuck he was driving into a pole? Oh, hey. Did he take out some pedestrians, too? Some innocent bystanders? Like brother like brother, huh?”
Maddox didn't say anything, just looked back down at his wrists and touched one of the more severe abrasions.
“Wow, Maddy. I'm surprised I never heard anything about it on the news. I guess the Petersen fortune can cover up anything. Money doesn't just talk, it screams like a banshee. It silences, too, I guess.”
“He overdosed.”
“Ah. Well, typical.” I tapped the tip of the boa on my chin. “Frat party? Like, at Harvard? Notre Dame? Wherever rich boys go to pretend to get an education.” I smiled and pointed the knife toward him, like a professor encouraging a student to answer a hypothetical. “Meth? Heroin? Mmm, nah. Those are too street. Too lower class. Golly, I can't think of anything he may have used. Why don't you enlighten me, Maddy?”
I think it was the word 'Maddy' that struck the proverbial chord. He'd always hated when I called him that, and now was no different Except he wasn't griping this time. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear he looked as though he was going to cry.
“It… he started with codeine. Graduated to fentanyl then worked his way up to methadone. It was his shoulder,” he said.
“Too many golf swings?”
It was his turn to glare at me. “Football. Star quarterback. Do you find that typical, too?”
I took a moment before I replied. “Well... yeah.”
“Then you'll love this. We were in Hawaii, and he'd just come off his second surgery. I told him surfing was a bad idea. And of course he didn't listen and of course he comes off the board and slams his fucking shoulder into a rock. He swallowed a whole bottle that night. Housekeeping found him. Not the call you'd ever expect from the front desk.”
I had approximately three hundred snarky things to say. Major, unequivocal sarcasm, locked and loaded and ready to unload. I kept them chambered.
“I don't know about your parents, Ramona, but when mine buried my brother...?” He stopped himself, still staring at his wrists. “If they didn't hate me before, after Josh died...”
“They hated you more.”
He nodded. “I lived,” he shrugged. “The bad son lived. The fucked up one. The pervert. The deviant. My dad threw the company at me just to keep me the hell away from him. And my mom… My parents walked
away from the life they knew, because the one without Josh meant I was the life they had left.”
Maddox pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezed his eyes shut so tightly it looked like it hurt.
“Josh called you Maddy?”
“All the fucking time.”
I jabbed the tip of the knife into the sand, and started drawing lines with it. “My parents are dead,” I said, tracing a stick figure.
“I didn't kill them, too, did I?”
I shook my head. Disgusted with him, and disgusted with me. I wasn't supposed to be talking to an asshole like this. Like we had things to say to each other.
I wanted to keep hating him, like his parents did.
“No. You didn't kill them, too. Dick head,” I said, and looked over to where he lay. He was scratching at the cut on his cheek. “Don't do that. You'll make the infection worse.”
“It itches.”
“Tough shit.”
Maddox took his hand away, and laid it on his belly. I watched his stomach rise and fall, thinking it shouldn't be. I had the perfect opportunity to let him die, and I blew it.
There was a shovel in the survival kit, I could have used that to dig one hell of a hole, dump his stupid body into it, and no one would ever know. Even if the Coast Guard or whoever did show up, I'd be able to tell them he died of natural causes – so to speak – and that would be that. No one could blame me for burying him.
A brand new slew of regrets washed over me. I had no idea who I was, what I wanted, or where to go from here.
A few days ago it was all so clear. Shoot the shit head, go to jail and/or kill myself, the end. So what happens? I get kidnapped and marooned on an island. Turn the tables on my captor, and the worst case scenario come to fruition; turns out the soulless prick isn't as soulless as I once believed.
“Ramona?”
“I'm busy.”
“I just wanted to say I'm sorry.”
“You've already said that.”
“I know.” He maneuvered his elbow beneath him, and pushed himself up into an almost sitting position. It looked like it took everything he had left to do so, yet he was determined. A flutter of nerves stabbed my gut, and my grip on the knife instinctively tightened. “But, I think I should keep saying it. Because I mean it.”
“That will get repetitive and annoying. So, don't.”
He nodded, slightly, and started messing with his cheek again. “You got me pretty good.”
“And no one deserved it more,” I said, keeping myself laser focused.
The slightest little suspicious move from this asshole, and I'd cut him like a tuna. If I could be quick enough, that is. He was weak, a bit off his game, but he outweighed me by at least eighty pounds. He could retake the upper hand any fucking time he wanted. If he wanted. Another regret joined in with my previous slew. I'd made a horrible mistake. Again.
“How do you know how to do all this?” he asked, pointing to my campsite. The fire, my lean-to, two neatly stacked inventories of supplies.
“Girl Scouts and family camping trips and if you're trying to distract me by making bullshit small talk, knock it the fuck off because I'm not falling for it.”
“I just wanted to know. I can barely light a match, let alone keep a fire burning for… for... how long have we been here?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“Could I ask one more?”
“You just did,” I said, and got up. First, to get away from him. Second, to check on the aforementioned supplies.
There were a couple of protein bars left, and half the chocolate Sex toys we were good on. Food, not so much.
My stomach growled as I plucked out the fishing line, and checked the knot on the hook. All set and ready to go. There was one problem, though. I couldn't exactly leave him here alone.
I looked over to him, to find he was thinking that same thing. His resolved expression gave him away. He was easy to read, actually. He probably sucked at poker.
“It would be remiss of me to say you can trust me,” he said.
“Oh, no. I think it would be a fabulous idea. I go down to the beach, snag a couple of fish, and come back to find you've set the table and poured the wine. What could possibly go wrong?”
“Everything,” he replied, and made a move I could never have seen coming. He scooted himself backward, trying to hide a wince, and keeping the blanket around his waist, put his back against the tree. Indisputable pain contorted his face as he put his hands behind its trunk. “'Kay,” he said.
I sheathed the knife, stuck it in the waist band of my skirt, and fetched the handcuffs. Keeping a careful distance, like someone sidestepping a rattlesnake, I opened the manacles and stepped behind the tree, knelt down, and took his wrist. The last time I'd seen such a shade of purple was in an art gallery. An exhibit called Sunsets.
“You want me to do this,” I said.
“No.”
I held the cuff open, ready to slap it on. Gaping, metal jaws ready to bite. How much that would hurt I couldn't fathom to guess.
“What was the other question,” I said, watching how his knuckles were turning white as he increased the grip on himself.
“Can… can you forgive me?”
His words were stalled. Hard to talk when you're subjecting yourself to epic discomfort. Voluntarily, no less.
I closed the manacle on itself and chucked the cuffs into the brush.
The jingle jangle of the chain echoed as the irons landed somewhere in the foliage.
Maddox's hands fell away from themselves, and he turned to me with a look I couldn't define. Not this time. Maybe not ever.
“I can't trust you. I can't forgive you, either. But the thing is, Maddox? I'm tired of this shit. These fucking games.”
I took in a deep breath, and shuddered. I don't know why I did. Maybe I was so tired, so fed up, with everything and everyone, especially the douche bag sitting in front of me, rubbing his wrists and wondering what the hell I was going to do now.
“So what's going to happen is this – I'm going to go down to the beach and hopefully catch some dinner. I'm going to leave you here, and you can do whatever the hell you want. Drug my water. Set a trap, although I don't think you'd know how, throw my ass onto the ground and rape me if that's what floats your boat.”
“I'd never – “
“Like hell! Like asshole fucking hell! But I don't care anymore, you got it?”
“Ramona...”
“You killed her. You killed her, and you killed Leslie, too. You took everything away from me, you were the one responsible, and you didn't give a shit. Fuck, you didn't even know!”
“I didn't. I honestly didn't,” his voice was barely above a whisper.
“You're god damn right you didn't. And that's what makes you beyond pathetic. That's what makes me even worse, because I can't do it. I've had eight hundred chances to off your fucking ass, and I can't fucking do it.”
“Ramona, yeah you can. Sure, you can. That night, when you came to my office...? If I hadn't pulled the gun away, you would have shot me. No doubt you would have pulled that trigger.”
“Is that supposed to be encouraging?”
“Yeah, I think so. In a way. A weird way, sure, but… well, just look at us.”
I didn't want to look at us. I didn't want to think of us. I wasn't capable, anyway. I felt like a spiral, a mishmash of emotions and vortexing insanity and all I wanted to do was go down to the beach, and catch a damn fish. Ground myself. Stop looking at him.
I vaguely remember telling him to fuck himself before I gathered my fishing line, and headed down to the shore. The fish liked to gather in the pool at this time of day, when the tide was low. There were some Langoustine lobsters, too, down at the bottom. They were sort of a cross between a prawn and a hermit crab. Wee little nuggets of tasty love.
In hindsight, I should have left the Langoustines alone. Bass or haddock would have been just fine. Easy. Caught in the outcropping of rocks, I could just dr
op the line in and wait for them to bite. Also, I didn't have any means to carry the lobsters back if I'd caught them, but they were too appealing to me. Tempting, and I couldn't resist. Didn't want to resist. Snagging one or two of them was somehow symbolic, as if I was in control. Right now, I felt so out of control, I needed to prove to a couple of crustaceans who was boss.
I crawled across a jagged boulder, slick with moss of the sea. Last time I fished here, I remembered thinking how sleek it was, almost oily. Dangerous, but it did offer the fastest way to the flat ledge where I could catch some dinner.
I don't know what the fuck my hurry was. Maybe I thought the less time I was away from camp, the less likely Maddox was to pull some shit. I didn't know what sort of shit that may be, and an image of him waiting by the fire with two glasses of wine was right in line with those Langoustine.
Now who's the dumbass? I thought, unable to shake the absurdity of all this. For fuck’s sake, I got hot when I wrapped myself around him in a pond of fifty degree water. That was the primal part. Hearing about his brother, this Josh, seeing the sincerity in his eyes and knowing we had a common denominator – as bizarre as it was…
“Knock it off, shit head,” I admonished myself, just as my right foot slipped out from under me.
I windmilled my arms, a desperate, awkward gesture to regain my balance. I brought my eyes up, because as Coach Roberts taught us, the body goes where the eyes are looking, and slowly, surely retained my equilibrium.
I straightened at the waist, a tightrope walker without the rope, and when I was upright again I felt like pulling off a victory pose. Even though my gymnastic days were long behind me, I still had reflexes. Cat like agility, albeit in a slightly older cat. Unfortunately, I also had my trick knee.
It was the very next step I took, four fucking inches away from the fishing ledge, when my meniscus froze like a seizing piston, and no amount of feline gracefulness would prevent me from tumbling off the boulder.
So much for dinner.
I landed straight on my hip, scattering the fish and pissing off the Langoustine. They scurried under little shelves in the rocks, vanishing, as a bolt of white-hot pain shot through my leg. The first thing I thought was that my femur had snapped in half. And wouldn't that be a fine kettle of fish.
Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance Page 20
