by Amy Faye
She'd already looked down enough to see the bulge in his jeans, one that looked like he could club a baby seal with, and the metaphor had stuck with her. No fault of his, she knew. He wore thick glasses and looked like the kind of guy who was 'sensitive,' whether it was a ploy or not.
The way that his tee-shirt fit around his upper arms, and the way that those arms had such carefully-defined slabs of muscle painted on them, seemed to suggest that sensitivity was one of the last things on his mind. She looked up at him sourly and forced herself to think rationally for a minute, which was the last thing that she had any interest in at all.
"Can I help you?"
He smiled down at her and she decided to change her assessment of him. He looked less like a sensitive urbanite kid and more like a gentle giant, when he smiled like that. The high cheekbones, the drawn cheeks, had fooled her for a minute, but even after two glasses of tequila, she wasn't fooled for long.
"No," she said. The big man leaned against the bar beside her and looked her in the eyes. It must have been hard because he had almost a foot on her, and she was slouching over a drink that she was pretending she didn't want refilled.
"You want me to leave you alone?"
She didn't want to be left alone, but she wanted him to leave her alone, and she wasn't about to try to unpack the reasons why in her mind. "Yeah," she answered. "I do."
He gave her a thumbs up, called the bartender to refill her drink on him, and said his name, which she ignored. The bartender did fill her drink, though, even as the guy who probably had a name walked away. She'd already forgotten that he was there by the time that she turned back to her now refilled drink.
She took a drink of it and soured. She'd made a mistake coming here, that was sure. She didn't know why she had even bothered. There was so much else that she ought to have been worrying about tonight, but she wasn't thinking about any of it.
The problem was that she should also have been distracted by something else. Instead, she was drinking in public with the intention to get drunk, and not the kind of fun drunk that she'd driven over thinking about.
She took another swallow and set the cup down, vowing not to touch another drop. There would only be trouble if she did, she knew, and she wasn't looking for any trouble. Not that kind, and not any other kind.
That was the third already. There were others, of course, who didn't even make the list. Men who hadn't bothered to come talk to her, or men who took the hint when she'd told them to buzz off.
But some of them seemed to recognize some weakness inside her, some part of her that she knew, and they knew, was hoping for someone to come and talk to her.
Those types were exactly who she wanted to be talking to her in the first place. Men with the sort of confident swagger that she was hoping to hell she could forget about as quickly as possible. Instead, they had all fallen flat.
Why did she want this in the first place? She should have been home, trying to sleep. Tomorrow was a day off and she should have been at home to appreciate it before the evening classes began.
Instead she was here, and she couldn't even bring herself to let a guy pick her up which was an embarrassment and a half all by itself. She wasn't that bad, was she?
A voice made her turn before she could have a chance at recognizing it. He looked down at her with an expression she couldn't place. Shannen shouldn't have been in a place like this at all.
"What are you doing here?"
She frowned at him, drank deeply from her glass and stood up.
"You're not in charge of me, you son of a bitch."
He looked over at the bartender. "And how were you planning on paying for your tab without this?"
He held up a long, slender leather wallet. One that she immediately recognized, but she opened her purse anyways, dug inside, and the surprise hit her hard.
"How did you get that?"
"I think you ought to be asking why you don't have it, instead."
"Did you take it from me?"
He rolled his eyes and wrapped one arm around her shoulder. She didn't fail to notice the man standing there watching the two of them; he was only a foot away, and he made no secret of looking at her as she was led away from the bar.
"Sal, you want to take care of this? I can get you back tomorrow."
The man shrugged. "I can make an exception for you, sure."
Shannen smiled at him and Caroline pushed the big fighter back away. "You're not my Dad. You don't get to tell me what to do."
"Caroline, you need to leave now."
"What, you think you're so fuckin' great," she started, and didn't finish.
The anger that burned in his eyes was hot enough to light up more than just the room. Her skin crawled under it, caught between desire and fear, not sure where one ended and the other began.
"You're going home now," he growled. She didn't argue this time, and he pulled her through the crowd.
She was drunker than she thought, she realized. At first she'd thought that it was going to be a couple of quick drinks; then it was more than that, but she'd been paying attention to the amount of drink, at least.
"What are you doing here?"
Shannen didn't answer her question until they were out the door, and he'd slid her into the passenger seat. Her feet didn't want to move right, and lifting them up even the few inches to get them into his low-slung coupe was a struggle.
He eased himself into the car and the engine started with a growl that sent her skin aflame again. He pulled out, and she turned to him. She was awfully tired all of a sudden, without the pulse-pounding music to guide her to new heights of energy.
"Wha-how did you foll-follow me?" Her brain wasn't working right, the words kept coming out wrong, and it was the best she could do to try and get it back on track. One of these times she was going to make a wrong guess at the right word and just roll with it.
The effort of trying to train her eyes on him was too much.
"You shouldn't drink alone," he said, his voice flat, whatever judgment that was inside him held to nothing audible, but she could see it in his eyes nonetheless. Seeing it made her angrier than maybe it should have.
"You're not my Dad. It's none of your business what I do."
"You're right, but you're under my protection now, aren't you?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He swore and said something about her not remembering the conversation in the morning. He was right: she forgot what he'd said a moment later.
"What were you even drinking?"
"Uh. Tequila," she offered. "But I'm a little tired."
He swore again. "You kept an eye on your drink, right? Nobody slipped you anything?"
It wasn't like that really happened, in the real world, she said. At least, she thought it. The words didn't really come out except as a mumble. She'd mostly looked at it, but it wasn't like she'd been obsessive about it. There was no reason to do it, anyways.
"What… doing there?"
He looked down at her hard for a moment before turning his eyes back on the road. She knew she was fading fast. It was hard to believe that someone might have put something in her drink, but some clinical part of her had to admit that the symptoms did seem to fit surprisingly well, considering that it pretty much never happened.
Then he let out a long breath. "I guess it doesn't much matter. You're so far out of it, you won't remember your own name in the morning. I had business with the owner."
"Oh," she answered, though none of it made a whole lot of sense. She was tired, and she had to sleep. If she didn't, well… that wasn't a choice. She was so tired. Keeping her eyes open even as long as she had was an incredible strain, and she wasn't sure that she could keep it up.
But she wasn't going to let him win, and she wasn't about to admit that he might have saved her from a dangerous situation.
If she fell asleep, he'd think it was because he was her savior. That he was protecting her. But he wasn't protecting her from any
thing except himself, and she wasn't ready for that.
Her body did feel heavy, though. Her eyes stung so bad, and she wasn't sure that she could keep her eyes open if she wanted to. She was right, but she wasn't conscious to realize it, because Caroline was asleep before they even turned onto her street.
20
Caroline's head was pounding and there was nothing more than snippets of memory from the night before. She'd gone out drinking, wearing clothes that would have humiliated her if she weren't drunk on jealousy and being far, far too upset to make rational decisions.
Then, after that, she started into her cups, and some time in the night she got home. Some part of the nurse vaguely recalled having been taken home by Shannen. She didn't know what had happened between getting in his car and getting into bed, but one hint screamed out at her right away.
Her clothes, what little of them she had been wearing, were nowhere to be found. She slept in her underwear, underwear that she had selected to be as enticing as possible in case she had a chance to show it off.
She didn't have to wonder who had undressed her. The list was too short, and the list of people who could have undressed her and left her sleeping in her own bed was shorter. The only thing she had to wonder about was whether or not she'd done something she was going to regret while she was out of it. That, of course, and whether or not he had been enticed if she hadn't.
Her conscience gave her a mental slap on the wrist, but it was lost in the screaming headache. She needed water, and she needed it immediately. The rest of her thoughts could wait.
She poured a glass of water, drank it entirely in a few short gulps, and then poured out another, went hunting for the ibuprofen and took a small fistful of them.
In a few hours, maybe the headache would go away, and she could go about her day. But right now it was so cripplingly bad that she was afraid she would have trouble if she tried something as complicated and unpleasant as trying to make it to the far wall and open the blinds.
The lights were off in the apartment, and the only light that illuminated the room came in at the edge of the closed blinds, but it was still too much. She squinted into the dim light and tried to remind herself that it was just photo sensitivity from the long night she'd had the night before.
It was true, but somehow Caroline didn't feel much better as a result of it.
Instead, she forced herself to ignore the pain as much as she possibly could and crossed the room, her eyes searching the books until she came across the one she was supposed to be studying for her classes that evening.
The thump it made as she laid it down was a hundred times too loud. She let out a long breath and resigned herself to only moving very slowly, looking away from the window, and waiting for the pain to subside, which it would have to do eventually if she had anything to say about it.
The hours passed slowly, and just as slowly she felt the throbbing in her head go away. She could afford the day off of school, she told herself, so she stayed there and by the time that she was supposed to leave, the throbbing in her temple stopped.
Shannen should have been home by now, she told herself. But the fact was that he wasn't, and she didn't know what to make of it. Caroline told herself to ignore it, but she didn't. She couldn't afford to.
Her gut told her that things were going to be trouble if she let herself ignore his absence. She fished her phone out from under her pillow, where it had found itself some time in the black space where last night was in her mind.
It had no charge, and beeped at her angrily that it was going to shut itself off any moment. Her headache threatened to come back if she didn't shut it up five minutes ago. Her eyes shut and she hurried herself across the room, plugged it in. There was a message from Shannen.
It told her that he'd be home in an hour, if she wanted to talk about dinner. It also was sent two hours ago. She pressed the button to call him and waited while the phone rang in her hands.
When he didn't pick up, she could have taken the hint, she knew. She could have waited for him to call her back, since he was probably absolutely fine and had been held back for something. That was the reasonable part of her brain talking, but the reasonable part of her brain had been beaten on by a screaming headache that lasted until she was past ready for dinner. She pressed the button to redial.
The phone went to voicemail again, and at that point, right or wrong, Caroline could feel herself upgrading the entire issue from 'nothing to worry about' to 'quite a bit of worry on the menu.'
Her stomach twisted up and she forced herself to take a breath. She looked outside, as if that were going to change something. Sure enough, his car hadn't pulled up to its usual spot, in the street in front of the house. She pinched her face into a frown, went back over to the phone and typed out a message with her hands.
'Where are you?'
She didn't know why she thought there was any chance of getting a response, but she forced herself to believe it in spite of everything. There wasn't any other choice.
A minute passed in excruciatingly slowness, and she knew that in a minute she was going to start to panic again. She held that part of her back. He was delayed by something, and she was worrying for no reason. She called the phone again.
The first ring was nothing. He wouldn't answer before the phone rang, she knew, but even then she ticked it off on her fingers as if it represented something to worry about, and she knew that in spite of herself it did worry her that he hadn't picked up the phone.
The second ring was nothing, as well. It was rare that someone picked up the phone on the second ring. She ticked it off. Only someone sitting by the phone waiting for the call could pick up after one ring, and two meant that they were unusually prepared.
The third ring had her worrying again. She ticked it off and rapped her fingernails against the counter hard, the loud 'click' resounding through the kitchen. It stung but she ignored the pain. It was nothing compared to the worry that was starting to build up in her stomach, after all.
When the phone rang a fourth time she tried to swallow her worries, but it didn't work. She ticked off number four on her hand. In two more rings the phone would transfer to voicemail and she'd have to accept that whatever was holding him up, it was also preventing her tenant, her roommate, and very nearly the man she'd falling into bed with from answering.
"Answer, God damn it," she said out loud. The phone clicked and the sound of a phone being shuffled around answered her.
"Shannen?"
If he were there, he didn't respond. She said his name again, and waited for a response.
"Hey," he said finally. He sounded wrong, in so many ways that she couldn't begin to start counting them off. "I'm almost home."
The attempt he made, however feeble, to pretend that he was fine, didn't work. Not even a little bit. Caroline's jaw set and she rapped her fingernail against the counter top again.
"What happened?"
"I don't really want to talk about it," he answered. That sounded less wrong, at least. He never wanted to talk about anything, and the more important that it was that he tell her what was going on, the less likely it was that he would talk to her about it.
But his voice still sounded wrong. He sounded tired, he sounded distance, and worst of all, he sounded hurt. She forced herself into work mode as she heard the sound of his car growling loudly down the street. She hung up the phone and was out the door in time to see him pull up at a crawl, ease the car into its place, and draw up to a stop.
The car cut off pathetically, and he eased himself off the seat and out of the car. Caroline made her way across the lawn in time to see him stumble and fall forward towards the street. His eyes failed to focus on her as he turned to regard her coming towards him, but he did manage to catch himself on the hood and slump forward.
The black opalescent paint job failed to show whatever it was that he was leaving behind with his hand prints. His skin, on the other hand, didn't have any problem showing the bright re
d that covered his hands.
Everything with Shannen, she thought, was hard. He made it hard for her, apparently savoring the entire hunt with her. This, on the other hand, was easy. She'd been practicing for a scenario like this since she got out of high school. Finally, Shannen had found something that was easy for her, and he'd only had to lose a quart of blood to do it.
21
Shannen laid up on the couch and Caroline stared at him warily.
"You should be in a hospital."
He shook his head. "I'm not going to a hospital," he told her. His voice was hard. "I'm fine."
She took a deep breath and reminded herself that he wasn't entirely wrong. There was blood, no doubt, and he had to have been in a lot of pain. But he was at least managing it alright, and she couldn't tell if there was any breakage in his bones.
He swallowed hard and she could see the pain shoot through him as he did it.
"Do you want to talk about what happened?"
"No," he answered. "I want to get something to eat. I haven't eaten all day. Can you get me something to eat?"
She looked at him with an exasperated expression that she knew she should have already been past. It was entirely in his character, she knew, and it shouldn't have been any kind of surprise. It wasn't, but she couldn't deny the frustration that had build up in her.
"I can get you something to eat if you'll go to the hospital."
"Why? I've got the best nurse in the world right here."
"I can't get you a blood transfusion, for one."
He shrugged and smiled. The blood that had dried in his mouth made it a ghoulish sight, but compared to how he'd looked twenty minutes ago he looked as healthy as a newborn baby. "Doesn't the body do that all on its own?"
"You want to keep training, right?"
He shrugged. "That's not going to be a problem."
She took a deep breath and shut her eyes. The headache that had been plaguing her the entire day, it seemed, was nothing more than preparation for the much greater, much more worrying headaches that were to come.
"You shouldn't be doing anything at all, Shannen. I should have you tied down to a bed for two weeks."
