by Ella James
Shortly after I got there, when things first got twisted…
I bite my cheek and drop my head down. I’d like to rub my face, but…yeah. My hands hurt like a motherfucker.
They hurt worse as I wonder how much glass was in them. I laugh a little, a crazy fucking laugh, because I think I must have broken every mirror in the bathroom. Probably scared the shit out of Leah.
Shame again. My stomach churns.
My eyes lift briefly to the camera before I pull them down. I have what I think is a memory—rather than a dream—of Leah coming in here sometime recently with a baby monitor in her hand. Has she stopped watching me?
I raise my hands slowly, just to see how they feel. I need to take a piss. Both hands throb, but it’s manageable. I rock my hips and scoot on my ass over to the side of the bed, where I hang my legs off.
That’s when I notice the print on the wall in front of me. Blue is the Color of Love. I bought the reproduction years ago.
A glance around the room confirms that. The bed I’m on is queen-sized, a Victorian, walnut piece made in 1862. Which means I’m in the downstairs guest room. My heart trips. I don’t remember being here.
But so much worse than that: If I’m at my house, Leah is gone.
I bring my right arm up to my head and rest my forehead in my elbow. My lungs feel rusty when I draw deep breaths. My hands begin to throb, but the pain is blunted by whatever was in my IV.
I slide off the bed, and immediately sink down to the rug.
I’m breathing hard. I try to think around my panic. There’s a bathroom on the other side of the tall, wood door behind the blue chair a few feet away.
I think of bathrooms; mirrors; blood.
I use my arms for balance as I get to my feet, stunned not that they hurt, but that I hate it.
I like pain. It usually makes me feel more in control, but as I stand here in my guest room, hungering for Leah, all I feel is empty. So goddamned cold and empty.
I grit my teeth as I move slowly toward the bathroom door. What did I tell her? I confessed some things; that must be it. I told her some of my truths, and it scared her off. That’s good, I try to tell myself.
“Luke?”
Her voice is like an arrow to my heart. For a whole second, I swear it stops beating. I turn, naked and struggling for air.
Leah is standing in the doorway. The first thing I notice, other than how much I love her face, is her shirt: it’s a Pace University sweatshirt, and it’s mine. My blood warms.
“Nice sweatshirt.”
I fucking love the way it hugs her breasts. I look her over, appreciating her ragged out jeans and her fuzzy-looking yellow socks.
She brought her things to my house…
Fuck.
Her mouth makes a little “o”, which turns into a bashful smile. “I hope you don’t mind too much. Hally likes it colder than I do.”
Heat winds through me, from my chest down to my toes. Leah has met Hally. Which means she has met Echo. My usual obsession with my privacy evaporates in an instant. I want to ask her everything. I want to beg her to bring Echo to me.
Instead, I try to ration my shallow breaths and mask my runaway feelings.
I return her small smile with one of my own. “That she does. That’s why I leave the sweatshirt in the family room.”
She’s looking at me in the best possible way, with her head tilted a little to one side and her mouth curved with satisfaction. “You’re a showman, Edgar. I’m surprised.”
I shrug, hurting my hands. My knees start to quiver.
Leah hurries over to me. She takes my elbow in her hand as if she’s used to touching me however she likes. “You look a little pale. I can help you to the bathroom. I won’t stay or anything.”
No fucking way.
It’s what I should say.
I don’t need her help. I’m not an invalid.
And yet…I find myself leaning on her.
I should be embarrassed, I think as she steps into the small half bath with me. I acted like a fucking whack job in front of her. I have auditory memories of me crying out her name. Not because I had my dick inside her. Because I needed her. Shit, I’ve been so strung out these last…
“How long have I been out?” I ask.
“About two days now.” I widen my eyes, and she leans her head against my upper arm. “You were sleeping. The surgeon who operated on your left hand said you’d need a pretty strong painkiller. So many little shards of…well, just that you would.”
I look down at her, trying to get an idea of her feelings for me at this moment. Is she trying to shelter me? Why would she do that?
“Do you want me to go?” she asks.
“Um, yeah.” But it’s a lie. Even as she slides her hand out of my arm, I ache to grab her back. I’d like nothing more than to have her holding onto me—even in here. She gives a little wave and says, “I’ll be right outside.”
I straddle the toilet, so I don’t have to reach down and aim myself.
I don’t look at any of the mirrors as I use my foot to flush and take slow, small steps back over to the door. I’m fucking weak as shit.
I’m going for the doorknob with my right hand when it opens. Leah is right there, smiling that small, kind, knowing smile she has and offering her hand.
“I know you might not need it, but it makes me feel useful,” she tells me as we head back toward the bed.
Her wrist, tucked between my bicep and my forearm, seems to burn my skin.
We get to the bed, and she produces a small, plastic stool. “Step up on this, and I’ll help you get back in.”
I frown. “Have we done this before?”
Her cheeks color. “Yeah. Once, yesterday. I know you don’t remember it.”
“You know that, do you?” I ask, stepping up onto the stool and dropping my ass onto the side of the bed. “How do you know that?”
The pink stain on her cheeks darkens. “Just a hunch.”
She steps closer to me, grabs my forearm, and tries to lift my legs onto the bed. I don’t need her help, but I don’t bother to correct her. I brace some of my weight against her as I work my way back against the pillows. She props a few up under my hands, and all the while, I watch her—wanting her so damn much my chest aches.
My cock stirs underneath the sheets. My hand twitches, already thinking of stroking one out, and the twitch sends pain up my arm.
I slide my eyes to hers. “What’s up with my hands? How bad?” I ask quietly.
I see the hesitation on her face. Nervousness. I hate putting her through this bullshit. My bullshit. “Come on, hit me with it. They’re just hands.” I smirk, even though my head has started pounding like a fucker.
She catches her lower lip between her teeth, and I shift my hips, hoping my boner will go down.
“Your right hand had a bunch of small fragments of…glass in it. They had to use this special machine to see where they were, and then a surgeon had to take them out. You’ve got eighty-two stitches, mostly in the top of your hand, and in the knuckles.” She lets a soft sigh out. “You broke three of them, and a finger, but they were able to be re-set without surgery.”
I let out a low whistle. Jesus. “And the left?”
She looks uncomfortable. Or just sad? She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and meets my eyes. “There were lots of pieces in it, too. One knuckle was shattered. There’s a little plate in it.” She takes a deep breath. “Also, Luke—there was a long shard of glass in your wrist. The doctor said that it was…pushed there. Really deep. That’s what happened when I tried to get you to the car. It nicked an artery. It bled so much.” Her face pales, and she licks her lips. “It also…hurt some of your nerves.”
“What do you mean?”
“They aren’t sure if it will heal…the way it was.” She takes a tiny breath. “Are you a writer, Luke? Because someone called, and—”
“What?” I squeeze my eyes shut.
“They just said did you have
the manuscript ready. Are you a writer?”
I inhale. “I’m a ghost writer.”
“You write ghost stories?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I help people write their stories, and sometimes I write books for famous authors. When they don’t have time.” I write my own stuff, too—mostly mysteries—but I don’t want to tell her that just yet.
I scrutinize her face, waiting for the surprised, impressed expression I’m usually met with. Instead, her features tense.
“Do you write with a pencil?” she asks.
I scoff. “No. Hell no. That would take forever.”
Tears gleam in her eyes, and I feel a sinking sensation in my gut. “It’s your thumb, Luke. Your thumb…and your forefinger on that hand. Where the glass was…”
I shut my eyes, trying to imagine that reflective fragment. Why I would have pushed it into my own wrist.
“Where the glass was,” she tries one more time, “they say you might have lost the use of those fingers.”
When I open my eyes and look at her, I find her cheeks are wet with tears. For me. I who took her virginity and disappeared. I who used her as a talisman for years to fill the voids inside me. I who treated her like shit after she found me at the club. I who forced her into hurting me so I could fuck her. I who put her through what must have been terror at Mother’s house.
“I don’t deserve your tears, Leah.”
She wipes her eyes. “Why do you say that?” she asks wetly.
And with that one question, I can tell she knows.
CHAPTER SIX
Leah
He isn’t undeserving of my tears—far from it—but when I open my mouth, that affirmation doesn’t tumble out. Because some part of me doubts its truth? Because of what I suspect about the story of Shelly?
Because I’m selfish, and my question pries.
I know enough about this man to know if I don’t pry, I won’t get any answers. And if there’s one thing I can’t leave Nevada without, it’s answers.
I need to know the truth about who Shelly is to Luke. I need to hear it from his lips.
He sits up in the bed, flexing his shoulders and wincing just a little. I have the urge to rub them, but it’s not the time or place.
He’s eyeing me like he knows what I’ve been thinking. And maybe he does. Maybe he remembers telling me that it was “his fault” I was taken. I can’t believe that’s true, but I need to know.
I stand frozen by the bed while he looks at me. Finally, in a low voice, he says, “I told you, didn’t I?”
“Told me what?” I whisper.
“Told you that it’s my fault.” His gaze dips down to his lap. I watch his shoulders slacken, so his head hangs down a little. He rubs his chapped lips together. Pulls a deep breath in. “It was my fault she took you, Leah. And that’s because I knew you. I knew of you before.”
There’s a Victorian-style, claw-footed chair a few feet away from his bed. I’ve never used it, because I usually sit on the bed beside him. Now I drag it over. I can feel him watching me closely: waiting for me to leave, waiting for any reaction.
I can’t give him one. Because I don’t know how I feel. Because I haven’t heard his story. And the truth is, I’m an optimist at heart. I have to believe he has some way of explaining this—if it’s what I fear it is. And what I fear it is, is horrible.
I watch him slouch, with his bandaged hands in his lap and his dark head down. My heart pumps hard and fast.
“How did you know me?” I whisper as I sit.
It’s such a simple question. But he doesn’t lift his head to answer. And I’m glad. Seconds flit past us, and I’m glad he isn’t looking at me. I don’t want to see his eyes. Maybe I don’t want to know after all.
He looks up at me, and he looks so pale and tired and…weighted. I don’t move a muscle as he takes a deep breath. Then he shifts his hips and butt, moving so he’s facing me.
His mouth opens, but it’s a second before his words come out. He rasps, “I knew your aunt.”
Blood roars between my ears as I nod slowly. “Aunt Shelly.”
His eyes are hesitant and scared. He looks away, then back at me. “You know this story, don’t you?”
I nod quickly.
“The papers called me L.”
I wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t. He leans over his lap and puts an arm over his head, and I can see his shoulders rising and falling with deep breaths.
“She was my social worker,” he says, muffled. “She adopted me because I— couldn’t ever find a home.”
My heart rips as the last word trembles.
“Before she…” He presses his lips flat. His Adam’s apple bobs along the column of his throat as he tries to control himself. “One night.” He breathes deeply. “I…didn’t know. I didn’t know what he planned,” he whispers, looking at his lap.
“You don’t need to tell me.” I lean closer to the bed, wanting to touch him. But he’s not even looking at me. His eyes are closed tightly, as if he’s trying to unsee things.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “You need to know,” he murmurs.
“I remember.”
“You remember it was me?” His words are sharp, like a fire and brimstone preacher. His face writhes, pain twisting the features. “It was me, Leah. I killed Shelly. She was killed because of me.”
I’m going to point out that when he went inside the bathroom at the warehouse, my aunt was already dead. One of the other gangbangers had killed her.
I’m going to say something, but he twists his shoulders and rocks his hips, and after a few seconds of work, he’s turned his back to me. His abs tremble as he lowers himself down onto his side without using his hands for support. His back curves a little as he curls into himself.
No words.
It doesn’t surprise me that he has no words about what happened that night. I was barely in middle school when we lost Aunt Shel, and we lived in Boulder while Shel lived in Vegas. My parents tried to shield us from the details. But the crime was on the national news—how her newly adopted son had lured her to her death in such a brutal fashion. Years later, after I returned from being held captive, I looked up the details of my aunt’s last hours one day when I was feeling dark.
A New York Times story spelled the ordeal out in sick detail, working it into a larger story about the issues people sometimes deal with when they adopt a child who’s been in the foster system for a long time. At the time, I remembered thinking Aunt Shelly had made a horrible mistake.
Now, as I watch Luke’s chest rise and fall with his shallow breaths, I want to cry.
“I don’t know everything that happened, but I know you didn’t do that, Luke. You didn’t know. I know you didn’t…”
He doesn’t move, just lies there on his side, breathing awful, shallow breaths, and I can’t stay away from him. I climb up on the bed, trying, as I move, to reconcile my sweet Hansel with the juvenile delinquent he’d been just a year or two before.
He’s neither of them now.
I settle behind him, so he can hide his face from me if he’d like privacy. I lower my hand down onto his warm, smooth back and start to stroke him gently, like one might a wounded jungle cat. He flinches underneath my touch, and shifts a little ways away.
“Please…” he rasps.
“Please let me,” I whisper.
He tucks his head and stiffens underneath my hand. I stop stroking as tears fill my eyes.
“I hate that this is your story,” I say. “I’d do anything to change it.”
His muscles stiffen.
“It isn’t true,” I whisper. “What you said about your scar. You said you ‘got tired.’”
“I should have said…” his back shudders, “I killed my mother.”
He sits up without using his hands, and his eyes on mine blaze, even though they’re also wide and damp.
“You looked just like her,” he whispers. “
All of you. And I remembered you. I guess I must have talked about you. Years later, Mother wanted to know… She wanted a Gretel. She told me if I helped her…” He shakes his head, his jaw clenching. “But I didn’t. She told me she would let you in my room with me. But I didn’t think…” He shakes his head again. His mouth trembles. “The night she brought you, I was…hungry. I was tired and… I tried to get you from her, Leah. I tried, and I just couldn’t hold onto you.”
Tears slide down my face.
“I never would have talked about you if I knew.” He exhales a shaky breath.
“It’s her fault,” I say. “The way you are…with pain.”
He looks away, then meets my eyes. “She took me to her room, and she put me in her bed, and…she took care of me,” he rasps. “She made me eat and gave me liquor. She would lie beside me. We would both get high off pills and…she would… Sometimes she would feel me up.
“I didn’t care at first,” he tells me now. “I never knew what was going on, and when I did, I wasn’t arguing. But…things went bad. She liked to…hurt. She would get me…almost there. And then…” He shakes his head.
“It started with my arm.” His gaze meets mine before dropping to the bed. “I couldn’t stand to have it touched…and she would squeeze it. She would squeeze it, and she would…suck my dick. It took a long time to heal. knew once she hurt me, I could get off then. The pain was…it meant pleasure was coming.
“We would talk in the bathroom. She would be in the bath, and I would be drunk. Then she found Boy Blue, and she got rid of me. She put me in that room. Before you came. But, she would always…bring me out. She would fuck me in the bathroom. He would be in her bed. And then, back to my room. She didn’t want me.” He laughs, a hoarse, sad sound. “I didn’t either. When she came to me, talking about a Gretel…I had mentioned you before and she had looked you up. I was…desperate.”
*
Lucas
I throw my arms around her. Pull her flush against me. “God, Leah, I’m so fucking sorry.”
I cling to her as I swallow back my sobs. My body starts to shake.
She strokes my neck. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Can I ask you something, Luke?” She pulls away a little, looking up at me with wide eyes.
