Cold Hearted

by Winter Renshaw

  “Mrs. Snodgrass,” I say. “Hi.”

  The smell of warm chocolate chip cookies floods the small space between us, and I glance down to see the tray of milk and cookies in her hands. Her eyes flick over my shoulders and into the room, landing on a half-naked Cristiano.

  Her fingers clutch the sides of the tray and her lips form a hard line. “I’m here for the turndown service.”

  My jaw hangs. “It’s not what it looks like . . . we’re just . . . he was grabbing something . . .”

  There’s nothing I can say or do in this moment to ease the shock Mrs. Snodgrass is feeling right now. I can only hope she’s not going to have a heart attack in the next sixty seconds.

  Shoving the tray into my arms, she lifts her nose in the air. “I want you two out by dawn. Leave the money under the lamp on the fireplace mantle.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I say.

  Quick footsteps carry her away, and I shut the door softly behind her.

  “She hates us,” I say, carrying the cookies to a small table and chair set by the bay window on the far wall. “And now she’s definitely going to murder us in our sleep tonight.”

  Cristiano shoves a melted, gooey cookie in his mouth. “I’d like to see her try.”

  He heads back to the bathroom, shutting the door only halfway behind him, and emerges fully dressed in sweats and a t-shirt and smelling like spearmint. I take my turn after him, and when I come out, the room is pitch black save for the bright screen of his phone illuminating his face.

  Heart racing slightly, I tiptoe across the wood floor and climb into bed beside him. There’s at least a good eight inches between us, which says a lot since this is a full-sized bed and I’m on the very edge, teetering on the verge of falling off because I don’t want to seem presumptive. And I don’t want to make him think my intention was to try to get a reprise of last night’s events.

  His screen darkens and I hear the click of the screen as it lands on the nightstand. The bed shifts and he moves closer, slipping his arm underneath me and pulling me into him like I’m no heavier than a rag doll.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, heart beating harder and faster than ever. My mouth is dry and my tongue grazes my lips just in case he decides to plant one on me in the coming seconds.

  “Protecting you from the dolls,” he says. He yawns before burying his face in my hair, his chin resting on the back of my shoulder.

  His body forms to mine.

  We’re spooning.

  But at least the dolls can’t get me tonight.

  My lips form a wide smile in the dark, one that he can’t see. I can’t help but laugh about all of this. Never thought I’d find myself holed up in some Victorian bed and breakfast, surrounded by creepy dolls, and wrapped in the arms of one of the most attractive men I’ve ever laid eyes on.

  Just another priceless moment, I suppose . . .

  9

  Cristiano

  “If you could have one super power, what would it be?” Daphne asks, her knees on the dash. She licks the tip of her pointer finger and turns a page in some stupid book she insisted on buying from the gas station when we fueled up this morning. She thought it’d be a fun way to pass the time since we’ve got another thirteen-hour day ahead of us, but I’m pretty sure I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty fork.

  “I don’t know.” I squint at the sun as we head east, feeling around for the five-dollar sunglasses I picked up yesterday at one of our stops. Sliding the cheap aviators over my eyes, I say, “I guess maybe the ability to heal people? Just touch them and then, boom, they’re good to go.”

  “Aw, that’s cute,” she says, paging through the book and scanning the pages for another question. “I was expecting you to say x-ray vision or something that could be used for perverted stuff.”

  “You think I’m a pervert?”

  “You’re a twenty-something-year-old guy, so . . . yeah.” She fights a smile and then punches my arm. “I’m kidding. Okay. Next question. Best childhood memory?”

  “My eighth birthday,” I say. “Money was tight. We’d just moved to Jersey. Mom was working two jobs, doing it all on her own. My oldest brothers, Alessio and Matteo, pooled their money so they could throw me a birthday party. The five of us went to Chuck E. Cheese. Played for hours. My brothers, most of them were too old for that place, but they knew I wanted to be there, so they made sure we had a good time.”

  “That’s really sweet.” She flicks another page, her voice soft. “They sound like good guys.”

  “They are.”

  “What’s your biggest secret?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I take my eyes off the road for a second so I can shoot her a look. “You can’t just go from like, ‘what superpower would you want’ to ‘what’s your biggest secret.’”

  “Why not?”

  “Several reasons, but for starters, I hardly know you.”

  “You know me well enough to jump in my car and drive across the country with me.”

  “I’m not telling you any secrets.”

  “Why not? It’s not like we’ll ever see each other again after this. As long as you’re not confessing to, like, murdering anyone, I’m not going to kick you out of the car.”

  I drag in a ragged breath and focus on the dotted white lines on the road ahead. Two semis are crowding the lanes, blocking the flow of traffic as we head up a hill. We’re not even halfway home and this drive is taking for-ev-er.

  “Fine. You go first. Tell me your deepest, darkest secret, and then I’ll tell you mine,” I say.

  “We didn’t say deepest, darkest,” she says. “Only biggest.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Of course.”

  “All right, what’s your biggest secret?” I ask.

  I watch her from my periphery, her mouth twisting in one corner as she stares off to the side.

  “I’m waiting,” I say after what feels like a solid minute.

  “I’m thinking, hold on.” She waves me away before closing the book in her lap. “Okay, when I was a senior in high school, I hooked up with my art teacher. Nobody knows. Not even my friends at the time. It was a one-time thing. I was at his house, dropping off some supplies that I’d borrowed from him – things we didn’t have access to at school – and he invited me in. We were talking, and then he took me to his in-home studio to show me some of his paintings. There was this one of this girl . . . she looked like me . . . and she was nude. It was weird but oddly flattering, and I don’t even know what happened after that. Everything got dark and blurry and then we were kissing, and it was over before I knew it.”

  “Jesus, Daphne.” I exhale, searching her face for signs of distress. “Were you upset? Did you tell anyone?”

  “No.” She glances down to her lap, her fingers knitting. “At the time, I sort of had a little crush on him. I was glad it happened. He moved that summer. Took a non-teaching job in another state. Never did find out where he went. His name was John Smith. It doesn’t get any harder to find than that.”

  “What an asshole.”

  She chuckles. “I know, right? Looking back, yeah. It was wrong. But you couldn’t tell eighteen-year-old me anything.”

  “I have a feeling not much has changed in that regard.”

  “Anyway,” she exhales, sitting up straight and tugging her shirt into place. “Your turn. What’s your biggest secret?”

  “I have two,” I say. “I’m not sure which one to tell you. They’re both pretty big.”

  “Two?” She leans closer, her lips drawn wide. “I get two? This is amazing. Spill it!”

  “First one.” I draw in a long breath. “Nobody knows this about me. Not my mother . . . not my brothers . . .”

  She’s quiet, which I take as a sign that she’s all ears.

  “I never graduated from law school. Everyone thinks I did. I was screwing some girl who worked in the registrar’s office, and I convinced her to put me on the list for the ceremony. They give out that fak
e diploma anyway, so it didn’t matter. It was all for show. I just wanted to make my mom proud.”

  “Damn.”

  “I just want to explore the world, as cheesy as that sounds. I realized halfway through law school that I didn’t want to practice law. I didn’t want to sit in an office all day, putting in fifty, sixty-hour weeks, hoping someday someone would make me partner. So I quit after a year and traveled on my own for a bit. Went back to campus to clear out my apartment, ran into that girl, and it all sort of came together. It was her idea actually, but I gave her the green light. I feel horrible for lying though. One of these days I’ll come clean, especially to my mother, but when I look at her and see the pride in her eyes . . . I’m just not ready to let her down yet.”

  “People drop out of school every day,” Daphne says. “There’s no shame.”

  “I realize that now. If I could do it over again, I wouldn’t have done that.” I run my fingers through my hair, tugging on the ends. “God, I’m a fucking asshole.”

  “No.” Daphne shakes her head. “You made a mistake. We all make mistakes. Learn and move on. Dwelling on them doesn’t do a damn bit of good. Now what’s your next secret?”

  My lips curl up in one corner. There’s a slight heat in my cheeks. I’m getting all flushed and second-guessing my decision to reveal this one, but in my defense, my intention was for it to be a bit of comedic relief.

  Because it’s fucking hilarious.

  Drawing in another breath, I change lanes. “All right. Secret number two has to do with my source of income.”

  Daphne’s eyes squeeze tight. “Please, please, please don’t tell me you’re a drug mule.”

  “God, no. Guess again. You’re cold. Very, very cold.”

  “Hitman?” She winces.

  “No.”

  “Stripper?”

  “Nope.”

  “Porn star?”

  “Not . . . quite.”

  “I don’t know?” Her eyes squint as she looks me up and down, sticking the tip of her thumbnail between her top and bottom teeth.

  “I pose for romance book covers,” I say the words I’ve never spoken out loud to anyone in my life.

  Her face is washed in relief and she clutches at her chest. “You scared me for a second. I was assuming something really, really bad. But you’re a model. That’s respectable.”

  “Not just any model,” I say, fighting a ridiculous smirk because I know how lame I’m about to sound. “I’m Jax Diesel.”

  “Jax Diesel?” She wrinkles her nose, just like I expected her to.

  “It’s like a stage name,” I say. “I didn’t want to use my real name, for obvious reasons, so in the romance world, my face is associated with that name. I even have a Facebook page with about fifty thousand likes.”

  “Damn. I’m going to look it up now.”

  “Please . . . don’t. I don’t want to . . . turn you on.”

  She laughs, tossing her book aside and grabbing her phone. I suppose if she wasn’t going to do it now, she’d be doing it later.

  “Holy . . .” she says, her thumb gliding across her phone screen in rapid succession. “These pictures . . . um . . . wow.”

  “Okay, enough,” I say.

  “How much does one of these fetch? If you don’t mind my asking?”

  “About fifteen hundred.”

  “Dollars?!”

  “Yes.”

  “For one photo.”

  “Yes.”

  Her hands fall in her lap, the phone nearly sliding onto the floor. “That is insane.”

  “That’s how I pay the bills. And travel the world.”

  “And nobody knows?”

  “Nope. Not a soul.”

  “Why haven’t you told anyone? I’d think your mother would be proud. You’re a success, Jax Diesel.”

  “My mother will never see these photos.” I cringe at the thought of her seeing smoldering, sexy photos of her half-naked fourth son.

  She’s grinning from ear to ear as she reaches for her phone. Within seconds, she’s thumbing through another photo album.

  “Oh my god, this is awesome. Never knew I’d someday be in the company of an Internet celebrity.”

  “I’m not an Internet celebrity.”

  “Eh, I beg to differ on that, Jax. If people want your autograph, you’re basically famous.” She holds up a photo of me at a book convention signing autographs behind an eight-foot banner with my half-nude likeness on it. Ladies are lined up by the dozen. Smiling. Grinning. Patiently waiting for a chance to take a picture with me or have me sign their unmentionables.

  Rolling my eyes, I swat her phone from her hand, grabbing it and placing it in the door on my side of the car.

  “Enough,” I say. “Now kindly un-see what you’ve just seen.”

  “Never.” She reaches for her stupid book and flips to a page in the middle. “This is really fun. I’m so glad I bought this. Okay, next question. Where do you see yourself in five years?”

  “Next,” I say.

  “What?”

  “This isn’t a fucking job interview. That question is lame. Give me something better.”

  “Most embarrassing moment?”

  “I don’t get embarrassed.”

  “Bullshit,” she coughs. “You’ve got to have something.”

  Pressing my lips together, I debate whether or not I want to tell her the one and only most mortifying moment of my life.

  “You so have something,” she says, nudging me with her elbow. “Come on.”

  “Fine.” I clear my throat. “When I was twelve, one of my friends dared me to try to fit into one of those baby swings at a nearby park. I was a pretty skinny kid. A confident kid, too. So I took the dare.”

  Her hand clasps over her mouth, her eyes wide. “You got stuck, didn’t you?”

  I nod. “Mm hm. Got stuck and while my friend ran off for help, a family came up with their baby. Put their baby in the swing beside me. Stared a bit but didn’t say much until they finally asked if I needed help. By then a firetruck was pulling up and my friend was running my way. They had to cut me out of it.”

  Daphne snorts, her hands covering her face. “That’s freaking hilarious, Cristiano.”

  “No, it was fucking mortifying. The whole neighborhood came to watch. Everyone saw the firetruck and decided it was a good time to stand on the corner and gawk. Including the girl I had a major crush on that summer.”

  She’s still laughing, only this time she has tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . it’s just, I can picture it so clearly . . . and . . . I’m sorry it happened to you . . .”

  “All right, all right. Get it out of your system.” I motion for her to wrap it up. “Next question. That is, if you still want to play this stupid game.”

  She fights her smile, stifling her laughter, and pages through her book to find another question.

  “Okay,” she says, “Have you ever had your heart broken?”

  Exhaling hard, I don’t respond. “You sure know how to pick ‘em. There’s no finesse to your line of questioning. We need to work our way to these big questions.”

  “Most of the questions in here are superficial,” she says in all seriousness. “I’m not much into superficial conversation. I could give two shits what your favorite color or season is. I don’t care what your favorite basketball team is or your favorite movie. Those kinds of things never make for good conversation. We’ve got a lot of miles to cover, Amato. Let’s make ‘em count.”

  “Next question.”

  “No,” she says. “Answer it. Has anyone ever broken your heart before?”

  “Of course. Next.”

  “Elaborate, pretty please.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Fine. I’ll go first.” She situates herself in the passenger seat and shuts the book in her lap. “I’ve had my heart broken a few different times. The first was my high school boyfriend. The second was that artist in Paris, the one you’ve never heard of. The
last was Weston – a professional football player I met one summer. It was one of those whirlwind things. You know, the ones where you’re obsessed with each other. Everything clicks. You can’t get enough of each other. Your family loves them. There’s never been anyone more perfect for you. You see forever when you look at them . . . and then it’s over just as fast as it started. Ever have one of those?”

  “Nope.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “I’d hardly call me lucky.”

  “Then who was it, Cristiano? Who broke your heart?”

  “Just a girl.”

  Daphne scoffs. “I highly doubt she was just a girl.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s all she was. Just a girl who lived next door to me. Didn’t feel the same way I felt. She wanted to be with someone else. I let her go. The end.”

  “The end?” Daphne twists her body toward me. “That’s all you’re going to give me?”

  “Yep.”

  “She’s the only one who’s ever broken your heart?”

  “Yep.”

  Daphne slinks back in her seat, hopefully sensing my reluctance to speak more on this subject, but I have no interest in revisiting anything remotely as painful as that experience was.

  “Cristiano?” she asks a moment later. We’re coming into some thicker traffic, so I’m hoping her question-and-answer session is coming to a halt.

  “Yeah?”

  “I just want to say that,” her voice is light, “you’re not so bad when you’re not being a pompous, overly protective know-it-all.”

  “You’re not so bad when you’re not pretending to be something you’re not,” I zing back.

  “I beg your pardon?” Daphne sits straight, her hand over her heart and her jaw slack. She’s approaching the verge of offended, but I’m only messing with her.

  Kind of.

  “Yeah,” I say, “you try to act like you’re this free-spirited, adventurous type, but you’re actually a Type A control freak.”

  “I. Am. Not.”

  “I saw the way you rearranged the soap in the bathroom this morning.”