The Pleasure of Panic

by JA Huss

  Death.

  Because I’m going to kill that motherfucker and I’m going to make it hurt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - ISSY

  I regret the words the moment they leave my mouth. I want to take them back. Eat them up. Swallow them down and keep that shit buried deep, deep inside me.

  But I can’t. There is no such thing as rewind in real life.

  “Caleb?” he asks.

  I just enjoy things as I nod. The view. The sunset over the mountains off in the west. The room. His body. What we just did. How I feel about him.

  “He… how?”

  I hear the anger inside him building. I hear the fear too. And there’s a part of me that wants to say, Just kidding. Nothing happened. But there’s no rewind. And fuck it, right? So I say, “My mom had me when she was fifteen.” And then I glance up at him, kind of afraid to see the pain on his face, but used to it. I’ve told the story before. Probably a dozen times to various people over the years. So it’s not like this is something new.

  “OK,” he says. I can hear his heartbeat in his voice. You know how a person’s voice shakes a little when they’re angry, or afraid, or frustrated to the point of tears?

  He’s definitely the first one. Angry.

  I take a deep breath and begin on the exhale. “She was fifteen, kinda wild, kinda remarkable. The kind of teenage girl who gets attention. Not because she’s bad, or beautiful, or smart. But because she was just born… special. You ever know someone like that?”

  He’s just staring at me when I glance up again. “Yeah,” he says. “You. You are that special someone, Issy. You’re strong, and sensible, and courageous. I can’t take my eyes off you. Even if I wanted to, I can’t. You’re the only thing there is to look at. Everything else just fades into the background.”

  I press my lips together. Afraid. That he’s lying. And not even that I’m not special. Just afraid of falling into him. Losing him. Because this… this whole situation isn’t going to end with the happily ever after. It’s just not.

  So I take a deep breath and continue. “I found a photo album of her once. My grandpa had it in the attic. I lived with him in Montreal until I was eight. By then my mother was… what? Twenty-three? Jesus. She was so young.”

  “Was?” Finn asks.

  “We’re getting there,” I sigh. “So I was up in the attic one day looking for old clothes of my grandma’s. For a school presentation. I was doing a report on Viola Desmond and wanted an old-fashioned dress. I don’t know why I thought my grandma would have one of those.” I laugh. “Because she was young too, when she died. Only thirty-nine. But I was like seven then. So I had no concept of what old was. And I found a photo album. It was all about my mom. This woman I barely knew because she was twenty-two years old and wasn’t raising me. I saw her every now and again. Sometimes she’d show up on my birthday. She came by the Christmas before, I remember that. Brought me a book called How to Be a Lady.” Which makes me pause to laugh. “Ironic, since she wasn’t what I’d call a lady. More on that later.”

  I feel Finn let out a breath. A sigh comes with it.

  “My mother was… I dunno the word for a person like her. I’m not really sure what it’s called. Maybe charismatic? But that word, for whatever reason, makes me think of a man. So not that. Maybe alluring. It was in her eyes, I think. She had very dark hair, like me. And pale skin, like me. But she had these weird brown, not-brown eyes. Unlike me, because mine are blue. But it wasn’t her looks, it was her… personality? Her soul?”

  “Charming?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “She was charming, like you.”

  I shrug. “Maybe.”

  “She was… captivating?” he tries again.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes. Captivating.”

  “Like you.”

  “Maybe.”

  Which makes Finn smile. And I stop my story, all thoughts of my story, to enjoy his smile. Because he won’t be smiling much longer if I keep going.

  “Go on,” he says, after his smile fades and I stay quiet. Still trying to burn that smile into my memory. One day I might need that smile. One day I might have nothing left but that smile. So I like to keep things like that tucked away for future use. “I want to hear the rest.”

  He really doesn’t. What he really means is that he needs to hear the rest.

  Which I get. So I do. Go on.

  “So when my mom was twenty-three and I was eight, she showed up at my grandpa’s house with this guy. Her new husband.”

  “No,” Finn says, jumping ahead.

  I nod. “That was Caleb Kelly. He was a little older than her, but still very young. Like twenty-five, I guess. And there was a lot of yelling, and a lot of crying, and a lot of threats. From both sides. My grandpa, who already had lawyers in place for this, kept his head. I do remember that much. All the drama came from them. He knew this visit would come eventually and he was well-prepared. But she was married now, her life was in order, and her record was clean. So… what’s a judge to do? Right?”

  “Fuck,” Finn whispers.

  “It took three years of legal battles, but she won. Mostly because my grandpa was really sick by that time. He died shortly after I was sent to live with her in Philadelphia. And then my new life began as the daughter of a Mob… well, what was he back then? I dunno. Not a boss yet. But he was making a name for himself.”

  “Caleb Kelly is…”

  “One of you,” I finish for him. Because that’s just the truth.

  The silence that ensues is painful.

  I burn that into my brain as well. Because one day there might be a time when I’m happy. When I’m satisfied. When I feel safe. And then I’ll take this moment out and turn it around in my hand, looking at it from all angles with detached acceptance. And it’ll bring reality crashing back into focus.

  “And then… and then he started touching me. Pretty much almost immediately.”

  There’s this low rumble that fills the room. It takes several full seconds to realize that it’s Finn. Some deep, animalistic growl emerging from his chest.

  I go on, because this story isn’t even close to over yet. “I started taking kid karate when I was six. You know those classes, right? Fifty small children in a room wearing white gi and white belts. Screaming and punching and kicking the air like kids do. Well, I took that seriously. I dunno why, I just did. I had passed the kids’ black belt test by the time I went to live with my mom, and even though he’d have never encouraged me to continue if he knew what I’d eventually become, Caleb let me continue. Used to parade me around his gang, I guess, if you want to call them that. It might’ve been more of a cartel by then though. Make me fight them. He used them to scare me, and then he used me to scare them. And I just kept going to the dojo, kept getting better, because it got me out of the house. It was all I had back then. The fight was all I had.”

  “So that’s how you won that world championship?”

  “Yup,” I say. “That’s how I did it.”

  “Did he rape you?”

  “More times than I can count.”

  Finn’s body was stiff before, but now it’s rigid. Like death.

  “Until I came back from winning that world championship. I was seventeen then. And he came at me, drunk. I was riding high. Feeling powerful, and angry, and… So I took him out. Kicked his fucking ass. Broke all his fingers for touching me. Kicked him in the balls until he was writhing in pain on the floor, unable to even move. And then I called the cops, filed a report and, well, the rest you can figure out. My mother cried, begged me to…”

  Finn waits. But this is the hardest part for me to say. I can tell him I was raped, no problem. But what came after… that’s the part that hurts. “Begged you to what?”

  I shrug. “Stay quiet, what else? She said they’d come after me. After her.”

  “Did they?”

  “Of course they did. They killed her two days after he was found guilty and sent to prison.”

&
nbsp; “And you? What did they do to you?”

  “They tried to do things to me, but…” I smile. Because that’s a moment I take out often. That memory of that has gotten me through so many, many hard times. “Well, I’m still here.”

  “So Declan…”

  “I dunno, Finn.”

  “Do you… know me?”

  It would be a strange question coming from anyone else. But it’s not coming from him. He is Irish Mob. I am too. By default, but still. That connection is there.

  “Murphy,” I say, thinking about his last name. “No, I don’t think so. I was already back in Montreal the day the indictment came down for Kelly in Philadelphia. When my grandpa died he left me a key to a storage unit back near our old house. I went there to gather up the lost pieces of my life, and then I just… disappeared. Because he didn’t just leave me money, he left me a new ID. A new name, a new past, a new everything.”

  “So your sealed juvenile file?”

  “It’s not me. None of that is real.”

  “What was your old name?”

  “Izett Gery.”

  “Izett,” he says, trying it out. “It fits you.”

  “I know it’s stupid to keep my same first initials. And I was fully aware that my new last name is an anagram of my old one, but it’s what I had. It’s what my grandpa left me. So I took the gift, left Canada, and started over as Issy.”

  He thinks about this for a while. “You’re not surprised that Caleb found you, are you?”

  I shrug again, then decide to just admit it. Why not? Why not embrace the truth? It gives you power over your fears. So I say, “In a way… I think I’ve been waiting for this day.”

  “And you still want to run?”

  “Well.” I huff out something that might be a laugh. “I’m not stupid. I know he’s going to win, especially now that he’s out of prison and he’s found me. So running makes sense. Staying?” I say. “Fighting? That’s a death wish.”

  “Yeah,” he agrees, hugging me tighter. “I get it. Revenge isn’t worth it sometimes.”

  “Besides,” I say. “I think I already got my revenge.”

  “By sending him to prison?”

  “No. That wasn’t me. That was the government. I got my revenge when I became the person I was meant to be. When Izett Gery finally became Issy Grey. When I wrote my book it had a story in there, kinda like this one, but not this one. And people responded to it. They saw strength in me. Which made me believe in myself. Made me take on the role of helper. So I started those courses and began speaking. And that’s the best I can do, right? Just be me, the way I was meant to be me. And go on. So I think success is my revenge.”

  “If you leave tomorrow, I want to go with you.”

  “Why?” I ask. “I mean, we’ve known each other one day, Finn. One. Day.”

  “I don’t care,” he says. “You make all the sense to me, Issy. It’s like… all the questions I have about my life, what I’m doing, where I’m headed, why I’m here… they were like a cloud. A mist. Something intangible, like an obscure haze that had no definition. And then you come into my life and suddenly, all those stray particles coalesced and became something real.”

  We both think about that for a little bit. I picture him in my head. Standing in something that looks like a cloud slowly moving around at his feet. And then it begins to move quicker, spin faster, until I appear—an apparition made of water molecules or some other life-giving element—and become his reality.

  It’s a beautiful vision, even I have to admit that. Like a line of poetry.

  But there’s this little nagging question in the back of my head. This feeling that something is wrong here. Not him. I believe him when he says we have this connection.

  But what of the mist that wasn’t me? All those particles still left behind?

  What of that?

  “If you leave with me you’ll be on the run too.”

  “I’ve been on the run since the moment my father handed me that box on graduation day, I just didn’t realize it.”

  “Will they come looking for you?”

  “Who is they?” he asks.

  “Them, the Bureau. Them, the Mob. Whoever. Who’ll miss you if you run, Finn? I guess that’s the question I’m asking.”

  He thinks about this for a long time. A long time. And then he says, “You know what I hate about stories?”

  I’m more than a little confused at the topic change, but that’s overridden by my own curiosity at where this might be going. “Stories as in books?”

  “Or movies,” he says.

  “What?” I ask. “What do you hate?”

  “The endings.” He pulls me tight against his chest and I take him in. His scent, the curve of his biceps as I trace my finger down the length of his arm. His large hands. “I never get the endings.”

  “What do you mean? You don’t like them?”

  “No, I like a good ending as much as anyone. But I don’t get them. Because there’s no end to a story. Just because you run out of pages doesn’t make it the end. So I get to the end of a movie or a book and I think… I feel like I was cheated, ya know?”

  “OK. I’ve read some good endings. Seen a few movies that leave me satisfied when they’re over. But I get what you’re saying. And I guess the author or movie director just wants people to make that part up.”

  “Right,” he says, playing with my hair, twisting the dark strands around in his fingers, looking at me thoughtfully as he does this. “Just make it up. That’s my whole point. We’re making all this up, Issy. Every second of our lives we’re creating our own reality.”

  “What’s that got to do with people missing you if you leave?”

  “Those people don’t count unless I let them count. So yeah, I guess the Bureau might wonder where the fuck I went. In fact”—he laughs—“I know they will. And I guess the Mob will be more than a little interested, if only because they want to know what my future looks like as it pertains to them. But that story is over now. They’re at the end and there’s no more pages, there’s no more film to see. Because this is my story, not theirs.”

  “It’s deep,” I say, after giving his answer some consideration. “But not what I was looking for, exactly. So I’ll rephrase the question. What will those people do if you disappear with me?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - FINN

  I know what she’s asking.

  And she knows I’m evading.

  So it comes down to this. Do I give her what she’s looking for and scare her away? Or do I let it ride and see how far we get?

  I’m still trying to decide when she says, “You know what Jordan told me? Last night when we were discussing the game?”

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to talk about it?”

  “Well, fuck that NDA. I’ll take my chances. Because he knows more about this shit than he’s saying. I might not know everything, but I know when someone’s feeding me bullshit to evade the topic.”

  “What?” I ask, smiling down at her. Looking into her blue eyes. Soul to soul. Because she knows I’m doing the same thing. “What did he tell you?”

  She looks at me, but doesn’t smile. “He said… some people like a panic game. That’s what my friend signed me up for. A panic game. And that could mean a lot of things. Strangulation was one of them.”

  “Jesus.” I laugh. “Do you like that shit?”

  “Um…” She giggles. “I mean, maybe. It was pretty hot when you had your hand around my throat, but that’s not the point. It was just one option of the panic game.”

  “OK, so what were the other options?”

  “Submission, because I’m a control freak. So he said some women like me crave submission. But that’s not what we settled on when all was said and done. We settled on chaos. The kind of panic that comes with chaos because I’m so rigid, I guess. So controlling. So orderly. I need everything to go a certain way because that’s what keeps me sane. It was just a guess, and he happened to guess right.
But it was only a guess until I thought about it more. Jordan Wells might think he knows me, but he doesn’t. Me, or at least the real me, was never written down in a file somewhere. They’re not locked away in some sealed juvenile record, they’re not on any social media, and there’s no photo album to find in an attic one day by accident. The most important parts of me, the things that make me me, are all in my head. They’re memories. So all the things that make you you, they’re up here, Finn.”

  She taps my head with her finger.

  “They’re not what you did. They’re not what you’re doing. And they’re certainly not where you’re going, because that hasn’t happened yet. They’re just… a stack of memories and nothing else.”

  I nod, getting it.

  “So forget about what life looks like if you come with me and tell me what life looks like now.”

  And here it is, the moment of truth. Because she has now spelled it out for me. And I have a choice. I can tell her or not. But if I don’t tell her, then she’s not gonna stick around. That’s the part I get.

  “They’re gonna miss me,” I admit.

  “Why? Because you’re an invaluable FBI agent?”

  I almost snort.

  “Because you know too much about the Mob?”

  I shake my head. “No. Neither of those things. I hate being an FBI agent. I mean it was the only thing I wanted to be until my father gave me that phone. But every moment after that one was tainted by corruption. So I’m not some integral part of their team. I’m a fucked-up partner, I have no good insight into their mission, and I have no promising future with them. Even if things go my way out here in Denver, it’s over. It’s been over since the day it started.”

  I know she’s got lots of questions about that, but she’s patient with me and lets it go.

  “And no, I’m not part of the Mob, either. I have ties, for sure. But they can’t trust me. No one trusts me, Issy. No one until you, and that’s probably just me making a lot of assumptions.” I’m still looking at her. I search her eyes for some kind of sign of what she’s thinking, but find nothing.