by S. L. Naeole
I looked back up at him, waiting. He simply returned stare for stare, and for a moment I found myself getting lost in his hazel gaze. I wondered what he was thinking, if he remembered that he’d called me sweetheart and held me so close to his chest that I felt his heart beating, the heat from his body combatting against the weaker, duller sun. I wondered what he’d say if he knew that I’d never let anyone hold me the way he had and that a part of me—a crazy, weird, and unrecognizable part—would’ve let him hold me again. A cough yanked me away from the refuge of his stare and I returned my gaze to the card.
Sniffing at the barest bit of information I’d been able to glean from it, I grabbed my pen case and opened it, tugging at the zipper with my teeth. I pulled out a pink character pen and carefully scribbled my insurance company’s name on the card, again with my left hand, the childish-looking scrawl barely legible. I added the policy number that I’d memorized from the last time I’d had to use it and when I was done, slid the card back to him. His hand reached for it at the same time I let go, but I wasn’t as quick with my left hand and the tips of his fingers lightly grazed mine, sending currents of sensation shooting through my fingers and down my arm.
I snatched my hand back just as he whipped the card off the table, dropping his eyes to the information I’d added over and under his name. His brows were still pulled tightly together in…frustration? Anger? Resentment? Judging by his suit he was some businessman and I was just an errand he was attempting to complete while on his lunch break or something.
“This looks like hot pink chicken scratch,” he grumbled as he looked up at me. “I can’t read this. It’s too messy.”
Clicking the pen in my left hand and sliding it back into the lilac case it shared with its similar pastel cousins, I brought the case to my teeth and pulled the zipper closed. A sharp pain rocketed from the front of my head to the back as I did so, forcing me to close my eyes for a moment before I whipped my lids open, my eyes rolling to adjust to the now suddenly bright light. Shaking off the pain and discomfort with a twitch of my neck, I tossed the bag onto the table and glared at him, a sudden burst of irritation goading me. “Was it cronyism or nepotism that got you your job,” I ask, my voice as dry as my throat.
He blinked. “What?”
I dragged my eyes up and down his suit, making sure he was aware of what I was doing before I replied, “You’re obviously not sharp enough to have earned that suit on your own, so did you get your job from your daddy or from your rich friends?”
Anger bloomed quickly across his features, and damn me for noticing that it only made him more attractive. And double damn me for feeling a shiver of something other than fear when that anger unfurled and he snapped. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Raising my right arm, I glared at him, wondering why the handsome ones were always so goddamn dumb. “My handwriting’s messy because I’m right-handed, you moron.”
His lips curled over sharp, white teeth, and his voice lowered into a grinding snarl as the card in his hand crumpled, his fingers curling into a meaty fist. “Moron? I came here to help you. I took time out of my schedule to come here, return your things, offer you help, and you call me a moron?”
The way he said “you”, with that sneer of contempt and ridicule… Oh, no. No-no-no. You’re not going to guilt trip me into feeling bad about this. Sorry, Shadow Man, but that’s not how I work.
“Yes, that’s exactly why I’m calling you a moron; because you’re trying to help me. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my right arm is broken, in a cast, and you saw me struggle with trying to open my pen case, struggle to grasp my pen, struggle—” I hissed the word “—to write. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the problem is but you…you’ve exceeded all expectations. I didn’t know someone’s IQ level could go lower than single digits but you’re just full of surprises today. First you violate my privacy—and a couple NDAs, by the way—by hacking into my phone, and then you insult me. In my own home, no less. Is that the price of your help, Shadow Man?”
Fury ignited in his eyes. He stood, shooting up from his seat like a bullet. I followed, unwilling to let him think he could just invade my privacy, come into my home, look at me and it as if it and I were beneath him. How dare he come here with his fancy suit and his expensive name cards meant for unimportant people. How dare he interrupt me taking a piss. How dare he stand in my living room looking at me as if he wanted to strangle me. And how dare he make me want to hear him speak to me so softly, caress me with his words of comfort and security. How dare he call me sweetheart and make me feel things I didn’t want to feel.
And I told him exactly that. I let the words shoot of my mouth before he even had a chance to argue. I shoved my finger into his chest, an act of bravery and provocation that was unlike me—everything about this confrontation was unlike me—but he had riled up a beast within me that didn’t want to stay hidden anymore. I didn’t care that his eyes were now wide with shock. Or maybe I did care. Maybe I cared a great deal because it meant that I was affecting him. Let him be scared of me. Let someone finally be scared of me for a change. Let someone finally find something to fear in me instead of someone to intimidate, bully, and hurt.
Let—
“Victoria. Victoria, are you alright?”
His voice floated in my ears, touching my mind with the softest hint of concern and panic.
“Victoria, you’re not making any sense. Oh, no.” His body jerked, and his arms came around me, pulling me tenderly to his chest as I felt him loosen one arm to fumble for something at his side. I was fuming and panicked, struggling in his hold as fog and thunder filled up my head and vision.
His voice filtered through the din and confusion lit up within me at his words. “Yes, operator. I need an ambulance at 625 Olivine Place, apartment number 2B. This is a medical emergency. I have a woman here who was in a car accident yesterday and I believe she has a concussion. Yes. Yes. Symptoms? She’s completely incoherent. No, I mean she’s saying things that make absolutely no sense, just a jumble of sounds and not actual words. And she’s become aggressive.”
Aggressive? I’m never aggressive.
My cast flew up and hit Shadow Man in the jaw.
“Yes, I have her. No, I don’t know if this is normal behavior for her; we just met. No, I won’t let her hurt herself, I have her in my arms right now. Yes. Please. Please hurry.”
The thud of the phone falling to the floor caused me to jerk violently and I screamed. I shouted at him to let me go, because his grip was growing tighter and tighter. Panic moved through me like acid, burning at my skin, burning my lungs and throat. Dark memories coated in blood rose up as the acid melted away the cage I’d hidden them in. I screamed, felt the raw sound of it, heard it.
And still he squeezed me tighter.
“Hold on, Victoria, sweetheart. Hold on. The ambulance is coming. Shit, I knew they shouldn’t have taken you to St. Vincent’s. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Gravity, heavy on the two of us, brought us sinking to the floor even as I kicked, desperate to get out of his embrace. My arm jetted out sharp pain after sharp pain, slashing away every fiber of calm and acceptance I’d ever had, and I struggled in desperation against him. He didn’t budge, his hold didn’t loosen, and my need to be free didn’t wane.
“Lyle, I need you. Now!”
Gone was the concern in his voice, replaced with the tone of sheer authority and power. Despite my fear, despite my panic, a shiver of excitement at that power ran through me, and my blood boiled over in a new wash of terror.
“No!” I cried out.
A loud bang struck me as heavily and as powerfully as a gunshot. “Christ! What’s happened, sir?”
The other Shadow Man. The first one. His name was Lyle. Somewhere, I pocketed that bit of information even as I heard my Shadow Man bark out a quick explanation and then orders. A tight grip fell onto my legs, and suddenly I couldn’t move anymore.
“Let me
go!” I screamed. “Let me go! Help! Help!”
The other Shadow Man—Lyle—cursed. “It’s like she’s speaking an alien language. Is this normal?”
“I don’t know, but it’s scaring the shit out of me right now.”
Wait.
My Shadow Man is scared?
Of me?
Suddenly a knock sounded and then, “Hi, Miss Oh. It’s me Lau with Holly’s order for you. She already paid over the phone so—holy shit.”
And then, with the sound of men shouting and the scent of Szechuan beef and noodles spreading on the floor, everything went blissfully quiet.
I’d probably woken up about ten times between what happened in the apartment and when I was finally allowed to go home. Most of those times were blank holes in my memory, where bursts of shattered images blinked like a strobe light. Doctors, nurses, and my friends existed in those shards. So did pain. Lots and lots of pain.
The first firm memory to take hold had been the doctor telling me that I’d had a severe concussion and that I’d experienced some swelling in my brain that had caused me to act abnormally.
“Shit yeah, she acted abnormally! She attacked someone! She touched him!”
Even in my partially delirious state, I knew the sound of Kara’s voice by heart, heard the shock and panic staining it.
I’d fallen asleep again, waking up to the sound of Vonne speaking to my boss. I turned to see them seated beside my bed, their heads bent together. Delmonico’s dark, curly hair blended almost seamlessly into Vonne’s as they discussed my schedule. “Since she has so much sick leave and vacation time accrued, there’s nothing to worry about,” Delmonico said, his voice unaffected.
“Just make sure that Gladys knows to use the sick days first because last time I had the flu she used vacation days instead and that cost me three days. I don’t want that shit happening to Ria.” Vonne was a tiger, and I smiled with pride and gratitude before closing my eyes again.
The last time I woke up, I was alone. I sat up, finally feeling strong and focused enough to look around. My room was private, I knew that immediately. It was also bigger than my bedroom at home and, as my head scanned the room slowly, widening with each fraction of movement, completely filled with flowers.
“Holy…”
Get Well balloons and bouquets sat on every available shelf, table, and chair. Tall windows had their drapes pulled back, letting in sunshine and revealing a view of the Atlantic that took my breath away. Loud beeping erupted around me and as I turned to see the machines that were hooked up to me, a nurse rushed in from behind a privacy curtain that had been pulled around the dor.
“Oh, you’re up! And you’ve come loose from some of your monitors, too,” the nurse exclaimed cheerfully before she pressed a button on one of the machines beside me. “I’m Padma, and I’ll be your nurse this shift.” Padma was beautiful, with thick black hair braided and then coiled into a but at the nape of her neck. She moved with the air of a dancer, graceful and lithe as she floated to a large whiteboard situated on the wall directly across from me and made some adjustments to the writing there. I reserved my questions until after she was done taking my vitals and checking the monitors, and then laid into her about how long I’d been unconscious, and what exactly had happened to me.
“I think I’ll let Doctor Ishikawa tell you,” she said with a smile before finishing her data entry into the computer that sat inside a beautiful wooden cabinet beside the bed. “I’ll be back in a minute with the doctor.” She disappeared around the curtain and then I was once again alone with the dozens upon dozens of flowers and balloons.
I squinted to try and make out the writing on one card, and then grinned when I saw the initials M.O.A.T. The card sat in a vase filled with lilies and peonies, which told me they were from Delmonico since they were his favorite flowers and he never did anything that wasn’t slightly about himself. On one of the balloons, someone had written “Skass” beneath the yellow “Get Well” font in black Sharpie. “Freaking Ana,” I chuckled. “Skass”, short for “skanky ass”, was the set director of MOAT’s theater wing’s favorite term of endearment. Analese Kopersky was a genius when it came to backdrops and set pieces, but when it came to tact and eloquence she was a walking cuss spittoon.
“Hello, Miss Oh,” a voice said beside me and my head turned sharply to see an older man standing at the side of my bed. His face was hidden behind large, wire-rimmed glasses and a thick, peppered beard, his bald head gleaming under the harsh glare of fluorescent lights. “I’m Doctor Ishikawa. Padme told me that you’d woken up and was a little chatterbox. How are you feeling?”
Holding up my right hand to my head, I showed the doctor my cast. “Like I was in a car accident.”
Chuckling, Doctor Ishikawa nodded. “That you were, and you had a pretty bad concussion because of it. Unfortunately, we can’t always predict when a concussion will result in massive swelling like you experienced. But, thankfully, someone was with you when you started exhibiting symptoms and you were able to get help right away.”
A groan of embarrassment left me, both arms falling into my lap as I realized who that someone was, and what those symptoms were. The doctor, understanding immediately what was wrong, patted my hand. “Don’t worry about your gentleman. He knows you well enough to recognize that you weren’t behaving normally.”
My mouth fell open, the contradiction ready to slip past my tongue, but then there he was, my Shadow Man, standing behind the doctor. He looked resplendent in a dark gray pinstriped suit, white shirt, and equally dark gray tie. Not a hair on his head was out of place, and if all I cared to notice was his aloof expression I would have thought he was already bored. But that’s not all I cared to notice. Instead, my eyes drifted to the thick line of his throat, catching the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed down whatever emotion or word had gotten stuck there. Bored he was not.
“Victoria,” he said in a steady voice that oozed control, like the slow warning rumble of a lion preparing to strike. “I’m glad to see that you’re awake.”
For most of my life I’d hated the sound of my name. Hearing it in formal settings, uttered by strangers who had no idea of my aversion to it had always made feel violated in some way, as if the very idea of my name being said out loud was an attack, an assault on my identity. And yet, when he said it every act of revulsion I’d expected to pound into me didn’t appear. Instead, I found myself relaxing into my pillows as if he’d released a band within me somehow and I was finally able to contract, all tension gone.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lachlan,” I said to him softly, the memory of my behavior, the things I’d said to him a continuous stream of consciousness that made me flush with embarrassment despite what the doctor had said. “I’m not—”
He moved quickly around the doctor and placed a large hand on mine, dwarfing it and making me feel strangely small. I froze. “Please, don’t apologize. You weren’t yourself and I’m just grateful that I was there. God, Victoria; if I hadn’t been there…”
I wanted to look at him, wanted to see into his hazel eyes and tell him that I was grateful, too, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from where our hands were touching. I couldn’t see my fingers beneath his palm, couldn’t see my wrist beneath the thick spread of his own long fingers, but I could feel every line, every whorl and arch running through his fingertips and across his palms through my suddenly supersensitive flesh. Pure unadulterated energy pulsed through him into me so sharply and vibrantly that I thought I could smell ozone wafting up from my skin.
Inhaling, I realized that what I smelled wasn’t ozone at all. Instead, it was a bright and clean scent of citrus and something darker, something that warred with the burst of light. I leaned forward, sniffing closer, until my face was mere inches away from the sleeve of Shadow Man’s suit nearing his shoulder, my eyes focused almost predatorily on his neck.
Without breathing another word, the hand above mine retreated, the sleeve pulling away, the neck drifting fu
rther away from my gaze and leaving me smelling nothing but sanitized air. Finally, my eyes moved back to his, seeing the cool and calm aloofness there that belied what I had already begun to unravel about my Shadow Man. He might pretend to be emotionless, a column of cool, unaffected steel, but I’d seen the panic in those eyes of his, heard the strain in his voice. I’d also felt the slight tremble in his hand, even if only for a moment when he’d placed it on mine. How could I not when my own expected shudder was conspicuously absent?
Straightening, I cleared my throat and then smiled. “I’m also thankful that you were there, but I still want to apologize. What I said—”
“What you said was absolutely justified,” he argued, sending rivulets of shock running through me. What I’d said was rude, uncalled for, and completely atypical for me. His anger, the pure fury that had raged in his eyes when the words left my mouth had only confirmed it. That he was now telling me that I’d been justified was just…insane. “I should have recognized your struggle as a sign that it was your dominant hand that was broken. I honestly should have realized it at the time of the accident and I am truly sorry. I was blind, a complete idiot, and I humbly ask for your forgiveness.” There it was, a flash of warmth in his eyes that took those hazel eyes of his to the land of molten gold in an emerald embrace.
Speechless, I could only stare at him, at the honesty in his eyes and the tension that pulled at his mouth. There were secrets in that mouth, things that a deep dark part of me wanted to know, wanted to taste. My body jerked at that observation and my subsequent thoughts and I blinked, my own mouth finding words at last, though what came out wasn’t what that deep dark part of me wanted to say.
