And my voice seems to act like a spell, waking Grim up from her motionless state. She moves her mouth to mine, and she kisses me again, gently—too gently. I don’t want it like this. What is she afraid of? That I’ll break? She’s strong, sure, but I’m not a fragile doll that can break if you touch me the wrong way.
I'm confused; I don’t understand why Grim is being so careful, but I try to tell her in every way that I can, in every gesture of my body, that I need this, that I want this, as much as she does. She told me, “You must,” and there was unmistakable longing in those two words.
I sigh in frustration as she kisses my neck chastely, her lips wet but her mouth closed.
She's sealing herself off to me again, walling herself away, just like she does whenever she tells me something personal. I get one tiny moment of her, one small hint of what makes Grim...Grim, and then it’s over, gone, and I can only wonder if I imagined the moment of intimacy.
“Stay,” I whisper, and I wrap my arms around her shoulders, nestle my head against her shoulder, breathe in the scent of her. I put my mouth to her neck, taste the sweetness of her skin there, and then trace my tongue down to her collarbone. “Come back to me,” I murmur against her.
“What?” Her body stiffens further, and then Grim is backing away from me—but only a little, only enough to stare down at me in the darkness. We’re wrapped up in one another, my legs loosely gripping her waist, her arms curved around my body. Our faces are only inches apart.
“What did you say?” she asks, her voice tight.
I inhale a shallow breath. “I asked you to come back. You...go somewhere. Sometimes. You close yourself off. I wish you would let me in.” My words are a jumbled mess, emotion making my voice thick, but I don't regret speaking. How can I be intimate with someone who’s walled herself away in a place I can never go?
I know so little about Grim. I know something in her past hurt her; something must have hurt her, because she’s so deliberate in her interactions.
For a long moment, I wonder if we’re done here. I wonder if I asked too much of her. She’s so stiff against me, so unyielding, and though I ache, though desire still roars through my body, I feel our connection fading...
“I have to be careful,” Grim whispers. “People can hurt you.”
People can hurt you.
She's talking about herself, about herself being hurt.
By me.
I gaze up at her in the dark, and though I can hardly see her, I feel the heat of her body, feel her. The brokenness of those words, the brokenness of her being, is so obvious in that moment. She was hurt, and terribly, and she’s walled herself away so that her heart never gets wounded again.
I can understand that. After my mother died, I did the same thing. I never wanted to feel that level of loss again. To let people into your heart means that they can hurt you, hurt you so deeply, even if they don't mean to.
Love means pain, eventually.
But love is worth it.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Grim.”
She's watching me, I know, but it’s too dark to make out the expression on her face. I can hardly see anything.
All I can do is feel.
“I won’t hurt you,” I promise her. “I just want to know you.”
“You can’t,” she responds quickly, simply. “If you knew me, if you knew the real me...you’d agree with your friend. That I’m a beast.” The words are quiet but bitter, cold. I flinch a little, but I don’t let go of her.
“There is not an atom of me that believes that. You are not that. I’m sorry—Pam can be a jerk sometimes. She’s wrong. She doesn’t know you at all.” My words are harsh, too, in the darkness, rough and raw with emotion. “You said that you trusted me. You told me that you think I can keep a secret.” I draw a deep breath into my lungs. “I can.”
I've run out of things to say, so I close my eyes, listen to her breathing. The scent of her is all around me; she's close, so close... I’m touching her, my body pressed against hers, but I know, in this heartbeat, that she’s miles and miles away.
“And you know me, Bella?” she whispers, with a hint of sarcasm.
Inwardly, I wince. “Not as well as I'd like to.” I swallow a golf ball-sized lump in my throat. “I want to. I want to know you...” I can only hope that she hears the sincerity in my voice. “Grim,” I whisper, and when she doesn’t respond, I breathe, “Mel.”
With that name, she comes back, wakes up. “Bella,” she croons in the dark, and the heat in that single word makes my entire body shiver; she moves her mouth to my neck, to the hollow between my collarbones, pressing her lips there. “You want to know me?”
“Yes,” I say, gasping as her teeth find my skin, scraping lightly. My eyes roll back, my head hits the wall, and I groan as she bites my neck, as her tongue laves my skin.
And then—before I can fully exhale—she's gone.
I feel as if I've been plunged into icy water. One moment, her mouth, her heat is pressed against me, and the next, she’s stepping back, letting me go. My feet have no choice but to find the floor. The front of the robe had come undone; my body had been pressed against her hot length...
Now there’s only the cold.
Grim stands about three feet away from me. She’s agitated, raking her fingers back through her hair, pacing back and forth like the tigers at the zoo. Like she’s cooped up. Like she’s wild.
Like she needs to be free.
“Grim, what’s wrong?” I ask, frustrated, drawing the robe closed.
“You don’t want to know the real me, Bella,” she says, her voice strained but hushed. There’s a groan in the words, a groan of pain. “If you knew—”
“Knew what? Grim, what is it? Are you... I don't know. I mean, what? Please...please talk to me.”
I reach out across the distance between us.
And she growls.
She growls like an animal.
At the same moment, with another flash of lightning, I see that her lips are drawn up over her pointed teeth, and her eyes are as dark as pitch. I stand perfectly still, my hands held out to her, but my body reacts to that sound. I can’t help it, this instinct to shiver when I hear the wild, feral growl.
Grim sees me shiver, and she groans—as if wounded—in the silence that falls heavily between us.
But the silence doesn’t last for long. Beyond the window, thunder cracks the sky in half.
“I can’t tell you,” she whispers.
I let my hands drop. I start breathing again.
It seems like the storm is moving away. The lightning is more intermittent now. It’s not as bright, not as powerful.
“I wish you would,” I reply hoarsely.
She takes a step back, and then another. “I’ll...I’ll stay in another room tonight. You can sleep here. It’s too late to go home.”
Grim doesn’t glance back as she lopes toward the bedroom door, disappearing into the darkened hallway.
Yeah...
It’s too late for a lot of things.
I sink down to the too-white carpet, and I wrap my arms tightly around my knees.
I can’t make myself small enough to ease the pain in my heart.
Chapter 14: The Second Secret
When I wake up, I have a terrible crick in my neck, and my eyes are salty, practically glued together from all of the stupid tears I shed.
I feel like crap.
Still, I roll out of bed, massaging my neck with the pads of my fingers, wincing at the bright morning light streaming through the sheer curtains in Grim’s bedroom.
God...yesterday.
Last night.
That was rough.
Stumbling, I make my way into the bathroom, feeling around for the light switch. Honestly, I’m a little surprised that the overhead light actually comes on. When the power goes out in Paris, it’s usually a two-day affair getting everything set to rights again; we’re just not important enough to the electric company, I guess.
I’m not really in any mood for celebrating, though.
After I use the toilet and wash my red, tired-looking face, I cross the bedroom and pause beside the large bookcase positioned against the wall. All of its shelves are full, and my eyes skim lazily over the book titles. One shelf is dedicated to the real estate industry, but the rest of the books are familiar novels: Jane Eyre, Carmilla, Dracula, Frankenstein. I tug out a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales—a childhood favorite—and sink down onto what would have been a very comfortable mattress...if I’d been a little less miserable when I fell asleep—a sad, dejected pile of limbs—last night.
I cried myself to sleep, something I haven’t done in...a very long time. Maybe too long. Maybe my body just needed a good, long cry to empty itself of a buildup of sadness. Or something.
Anyway, I really hope it got its fill, because I can hardly see; my eyes are so sore. I try, in vain, to read one of the fairy tales in the book, but I don't get much farther than Once upon a time before my vision goes blurry. So I take a deep breath, reach for the phone, and stare at the receiver in my hands for a long moment, gathering my strength. Then I shrug my shoulders, trying to work out the crick in my neck, and dial Betty’s number.
She doesn’t pick up. The call goes straight to voicemail. I sigh and set the receiver back in its cradle. For a long moment, I do nothing but bite at my lip and tap the top of the phone’s plastic case with a finger. Okay. The thing is...as much as I’m uncomfortable with giving Pam a call right now, she’s the only other person who might be able to get in touch with Betty.
I put aside my pride and dial her number, pressing the phone hard against my ear.
But Pam doesn’t pick up, either. Granted, I’m calling her from a phone number she wouldn't recognize, and she rarely answers calls from unknown numbers. To make matters worse, I don’t know the phone number I’m calling from, so I can’t leave it for her in a voicemail message.
After I hang up and realize that the number would have been saved to her phone automatically...well, I just feel foolish.
It doesn't matter. Even if I left her a message, I can't stay in Grim's bedroom all day long, waiting for her to call me back.
Son of a biscuit.
I let out a long sigh and blow an errant wisp of hair out of my face. I’ve got to get to the bottom of this myself. I need to make sure that Betty and her kids are okay.
Besides, concentrating on that will take my mind off of last night.
Off of Grim.
I head back into the bathroom and take a quick—and very hot—shower. Grim left my pile of wet clothes on the floor last night. We were a little too preoccupied; she forgot to toss them into the dryer as promised, and they smell slightly mildewy, but there’s no help for it. I put them on, and I wince a little. They’re still damp, adding insult to injury. I’m all chafey, stinky, and look as rumpled as a used tissue.
I don't want to use Grim’s brush, because in order to find it, I’d have to go searching through her things...and I get the feeling she wouldn’t like that. So by the time I let myself out into the corridor, I’m in a pretty rotten mood. My neck is killing me, last night sure as hell didn’t go any way I thought it would, my hair is dripping and tangled in knots, and I look a little like a piece of flotsam that just washed up on shore.
I don’t want anyone to see me. Like, anyone. But I’m sure you’re aware of the universal law that, when you look and feel your worst, you always run into people that you don’t want to see...
And this terrible universal law seems to be in fine working order this morning, because, of course, Jordan is walking down the hall at the exact same moment as me.
He'd been swaggering along with his hands in the pockets of his low-riding jeans, whistling something (one of his own hit songs, I assume). But he notices me and pauses, and then he raises a single brow, scanning me up and down with a wry expression, as if he’s just spotted something spectacularly funny. By the time his eyeballs find mine, he’s smirking in this really unattractive, I’m-so-much-better-than-you kind of way.
I promise you, I’m not the punching sort, but I sort of want to slug him right now.
He looks indecently smug.
“Rough night?” he asks mildly, and I nod with a long sigh. I don’t want to get into a conversation with him, but there’s no avoiding it now, because he just glanced past me, taking in the door I came out of, and a look of surprise erases the smugness from his face. For half a heartbeat, anyway.
His eyes narrow. “Where’s Grim?”
“I don’t know. She...let me sleep in her room last night.” I mumble this last part, and Jordan lifts his other brow.
“She let you sleep in her room. But she didn’t sleep with you.”
I stare at him, frowning, and after a moment, he shrugs with a practiced nonchalance.
“I mean, no shame if she was sleeping with you. I didn’t figure she was the sort to hire on help for an easy lay, but—”
“That’s not what this is about,” I say quickly, hotly, but he knows he touched a nerve, and now a slow grins spreads across his face. He isn't being malicious; he was just obviously bored, and it’s fun, to him, to rile me. That much is abundantly clear.
“Whatever,” he says, and another shrug rolls off of him. “Anyway, can you launder the clothes in my room?”
I gape. I’m not sure what’s more insulting: that he just suggested Grim hired me for an “easy lay,” or that he assumes I’m some sort of indentured servant. “I’m not a maid—” I begin, but Jordan isn't even listening to me. He’s already ambling down the hall, waving at me over his shoulder.
“My room’s the third door on the right. Thanks, Belinda!”
“Bella.” I draw in a deep breath and let it out of my nose, counting to ten.
“And can you keep an eye on Rex for me? I’m going for a walk.”
Wait—watch the kid? No, this is absolutely not what I signed up for.
“What about his mother?” I call, flustered. “Lucile?”
“Oh, she...went for a walk, too.” He peers at me around the corner before he ducks out of sight. “Thank you, bye!”
The word bye stretches out for so long that I wince.
I don’t even know where Rex is. But now, apparently, I’m babysitting.
If this is the way my day is gonna go...I just have to embrace it. Resisting bad days always, always, always makes them infinitely worse. If you go with the flow, things have a way of working out by themselves. At least, that's what my dad always tells me. I think he started that mantra when I was a teenager, and he was a little tired of my flip-flopping moods. But, whatever the reason, the advice kind of works, and I’ve followed it ever since.
So I straighten my shoulders and prepare myself to confront whatever challenges I'm presented with today.
First order of business: finding Rex. This building is pretty huge; he could be anywhere.
“Rex?” I call out into the stillness—without one iota of hope for an answer.
“Hi, Pretty!” he says brightly, right behind my back.
I whirl around in surprise and stare down at the kid. He's grinning up at me, his pet mouse clutched tightly in his hand. Rex is wearing different clothes than he was yesterday, but somehow, he looks even grubbier than before.
“It’s not nice to sneak up on people, buddy,” I chuckle.
“I’m practicing my stalking.” Rex pets Mr. Cheese gently between the ears with a dirty thumb. “Ants says I’m not good at it, and she wants me to try to get better.”
“Stalking?” I stare at him, amused. I can never predict what's going to come out of his mouth next...
“You know? What wolves do, to get close to their prey before they chomp.” He rattles off this explanation quickly, as if I should already know it. “So, do you think I did a good job? If you were a deer, Pretty, do you think I could have chomped you?”
“Um...s
ure, buddy.”
When kids ask these kinds of questions, you're supposed to agree with them, right?
Yeah, it’s probably a good thing I’m not a mother.
I shake my head and chuckle again. “Anyway, speaking of chomping.” I smile down at boy and mouse. “Do you want some breakfast?”
“No, thanks. I already ate candy. And Mr. Cheese ate, like, half of a chocolate bar, so I think he’s full.” Rex stares at the mouse affectionately, and then places him on his shoulder. The mouse scurries up the boy’s neck and into his hair, gripping handfuls of it to remain secure on the kid’s head.
It’s a weird sight, let me tell you.
I frown at Rex. “You had candy for breakfast.”
He nods enthusiastically. “Yeah. Anyway, see ya later!” He waves at me, and then he dashes past.
“Wait!” I jog to follow after him. “Bud, where are you headed?”
“Going for a walk.”
This family sure as hell likes the great outdoors.
“You can’t go outside by yourself, Rex. I’m sorry,” I tell him, and he stops on a dime, staring up at me with wide amber eyes. “I mean, walks are great,” I add hastily, “but you can’t go for one by yourself at your age.”
He processes this for a handful of seconds, and then he resumes his nodding. “Okay, you can come with me!”
I'm suddenly gripped with anxiety. The last time I babysat children was in high school. The children didn’t die...but that’s not saying much.
“Hoo, boy,” I sigh, and then I glance down at myself. My clothes are starting to dry, but I’m still not a sight fit to be seen. “Where do you want to walk to, Rex?” I ask him.
He glances sidelong at me, surprised. “My friends’ house,” he says, as if this should have been obvious. I’m beginning to realize that Rex says a lot of things as if they are obvious. And almost none of them are.
“Okay. Is the house very far away?”
“Nah. It’s pretty close. Mr. Cheese can only eat half a slice of cheese on the way there.”
Beauty and the Wolf Page 14
