Six reached us and pointed an arm out to help her up. She slapped it away, red coloring her cheeks. “I’m fine,” she grunted. But she stayed on the ground, her hands behind her supporting her.
I turned to Six who looked between us both like he wasn’t sure what to think. A thought occurred to me. “If you’re so worried about her safety, why are you letting her go to the apartment and not me?”
Six turned his gaze to mine. “Because you’re weak.”
“Then why not one of your ‘friends’ who always seem to be at your disposal?”
Six turned his body to fully face me. “Because I don’t want this to leave us. Why do you think I had you break into the apartment the first time?”
I contemplated that. “Because I knew my way around, knew his passwords?”
Six laughed humorlessly. “If I was worried about passwords, I could have hacked into it easily.” He sounded almost insulted.
Impatience simmered. “Then why? Why did you have me do it?”
“Because,” Six said evenly. He rubbed his lips together and moved a hand over his bald head. “Because the fewer people who know about this, the fewer people involved, the less people to snitch.”
He was hiding something from me. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Snitch on what, exactly?”
Mira had stood up and was wiping the sand off of her. “Because if Six ends up killing Hawthorne, it’s best that very few people are involved.”
My jaw fell open. “Kill him?” Sure, I’d contemplated it. But doing it myself. I didn’t feel right about Six doing it. It made me uneasy. “No,” I shook my head, trying to sort my thoughts.
“I’m not saying it will happen for sure. Like I said, I need more intel.” Six looked at Mira with mild annoyance.
“Then let me do it. Mira’s trained me well.”
Mira laughed then, that loud staccato sound. “You fucked up your face last time, remember?” My hand went to the faint scar on my face from falling off the apartment balcony. “And trust me, facial scars are noticeable. That’s not something you need right now.”
I looked at her face, which was effortlessly flawless. Julian had told me once that she was the scariest kind of beautiful, and when I looked at her, her face free of makeup except for the black she rimmed her eyes with, I understood it. She may have been short and sported an unusual style, but her stance was strong, her eyes followed you like an animal watching its prey. And she narrowed her eyes enough that you never got a good look into them, never got a good read on how she felt. Along with her bluntly cut dark hair and muscularly compact body, she was a beautiful and terrifying package of woman.
“You don’t have any facial scars,” I countered.
“I don’t,” she mused. “But someone I know does. And she avoids the public as often as possible. It seems to work for her.” She looked lost in thought for a minute.
“Mira,” Six said, pulling her back to the present, to us.
She swallowed. “You would be too recognizable and besides, last time was a close call from what Six tells me.” She looked up at Six whose eyes hadn’t left her. “And I can jump from one story without difficulty,” she said, looking at me, “unlike you.”
I gritted my teeth. I was surprised I hadn’t ground them to nubs at this point. She had a point. But it still frustrated me. “I don’t want to be stuck in this house doing nothing when you go to Michigan.”
“You won’t be,” Six said, finally moving his eyes back to me. “I’ll give Mira an ear piece. You’re going to walk her through the apartment and tell her what to look for.”
I looked down at the sand, shuffled my feet a little bit. “If my only way to help is with my voice, why is Mira training my body?” I lifted my eyes and looked at them both. They looked to one another first.
“Because we don’t know what’s going to happen later on down the line,” Six finally spoke, clearing his voice. I was still unused to hearing his voice in this frequency and for more than a few word sentences. “And Mira is right. You’re weak. You spent too much time on that damn treadmill and not enough strength training.” He rubbed a hand over his head again. It seemed to be a nervous move from him, yet another perplexing development. “I’d rather be prepared for anything. Hawthorne found you in Colorado. He could find you here.” Six looked back to the beach house in thought. “I left a few cookie crumbs to throw him off. But he figured it out once.”
“It’s better to be safe than sorry,” Mira butted in. I turned to look at her. Her hand was on Six’s forearm. It seemed to settle him from whatever he worried about. I found it peculiar, but I found virtually everything about their relationship peculiar.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about Mira?” It’d been a question I’d wanted to ask a hundred times and while it wasn’t the best timing, I didn’t want to wait any longer.
“Because,” Six started. He looked at Mira, as if for confirmation. He cleared his throat before looking at me again. “Mira and I have been mostly on-and-off for the last ten years.”
My eyes bugged out of my head at that. I’d assumed they’d been together for a while, but not as long as Six had proclaimed.
Mira continued, “And I honestly didn’t have the time or patience for a mouse.”
I scrunched my eyebrows together. “A mouse?”
Mira shrugged, the movement pulling her sweater down over her shoulder. “When Six helped you escape, you were broken. Six and I were very much off then. And when we were on again,” she paused and looked to Six, “I had a busy life and by then, I had taken in my own mouse.” I tried not to be annoyed that she didn’t elaborate, but failed.
“What does that even mean?” I asked.
Mira looked at me like I was asking a stupid question. “It’s not really any of your business. None of this is. I’m only answering half-heartedly to appease you. It all boils down to me not having the time or the patience for you.”
I don’t know why it hurt, but it did. Her words shouldn’t have inflicted pain because I barely knew her. But I still felt the prick in the center of my chest. I knew I didn’t have any right to feel this way, but I did. And it pissed me off. So I did what I did best, I ran back to the house.
The following morning, I made Julian’s tea in the kitchen and waited for Mira to come in and be her annoying smug self. When she didn’t, I returned to the bedroom and climbed up on the bed next to Julian. In sleep, his features were smooth, his hair a mess of waves.
Using my free hand, I brushed the hair away from his forehead, effectively rousing him from sleep. His eyes opened slowly, focused on me before a smile lit his face. I loved this, watching him focus on me, the way his face settled and relaxed when he saw me. It made my heart thud painfully hard in my chest. “Hi,” I whispered.
“Hi,” he returned, reaching a hand up and tugging on a loose tendril. I handed him the mug of tea and he scooted up in the bed and set it on the nightstand. The next second, I was straddling him, his hands gripping my waist as if I’d weighed nothing.
“Hi,” I said again, my skin lighting up with the way he looked up at me.
His smile spread wider. “Hi.” I leaned down and pressed a kiss to his mouth, my hair covering us like a curtain. I felt his hand cup the back of my head as he deepened the kiss. “Mmm,” he murmured against my lips. I pulled back a bit and ran my fingers over the line of his jaw.
“Good morning,” I said softly.
“It certainly is.” He brushed some hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ear. “God, you are something else, you know?”
My heart skipped a beat at the way he said that, as if the words were nearly too big for his mouth. His voice was thick and gruff and I felt it all the way through my body.
I leaned down and laid my head on his shoulder, my lips at his neck. His arms came around me, securing me tightly to him and I just breathed in his scent. Cinnamon and sandalwood. Always.
“Are you okay?” he asked, rubbing shapes on my back.
&nb
sp; I thought about that for a second. Was I okay? Something felt off about today. I didn’t always have intuition, but something felt uncomfortable. Like I needed to open my eyes wider, keep my ears open. I was uneasy, restless. A lot of it had to do with my conversation the day before, with Six and Mira. But there was something else there too, something prodding at my brain.
“I’m fine,” I finally answered.
“That’s believable,” Julian answered. He turned his head and kissed my hair. “Want to go on a walk?”
I shook my head against his shoulder. “I need to do some strength training,” I said. “But I don’t have any strength training equipment.”
“Want to go to the store?”
I thought about it. “I doubt Six will let me leave.” I chewed on my lip as I looked at his profile.
“You need to get out of the house, my darling.”
I belt a laugh rumble in my chest. “Darling?” I asked.
“It’s better than Shorty.”
“It sounds old-fashioned.”
“Maybe I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.”
“Yeah, I can see that. You did order me out of bed last week to get you your morning beverage.”
Julian laughed. “It was the only way I could watch you get dressed. And what a view it was.” I watched him move one of his hands to his chest and he patted it.
I replied with a laugh and angled my head more towards him to kiss his neck. “I think Six is worried about someone recognizing me.”
“It’s just the grocery store in a sleepy town. I’m sure we’ll be okay.” Julian rolled us over on our sides.
“What if someone recognizes you?” I asked.
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you think that happens with recluse authors like me? Half of my readers don’t even know what I look like, Andra.”
“I guess that’s good they haven’t seen your face. I don’t want to fight off any competition.”
“As if there’d be any.”
I rolled my eyes but still felt warmth spread through my chest. “I’m glad I won’t be any tabloid fodder.”
“Yeah,” Julian agreed. He pushed the hair away from my face again. “They’d have to give us some shit nickname, like Juliandra.”
“Juliandra?” I couldn’t stop the belly laugh that came hearing that. “That sounds awful.”
“Just wait, one day we’re going to be one of those couples with a joint email account and that will totally be the email address.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I said, laughing as I pushed him away. “Okay. Let’s sneak out as soon as we can.”
“It can wait ten minutes,” Julian said, pulling me back towards him.
I felt the liquid heat spread through my limbs. But I shook my head. “Six will get up any second. This is my one chance to get out.”
Julian flopped back onto the pillow. “Fine. But you owe me later.”
I slid off my pajama pants. “Sure, but it’ll have to be longer than ten minutes.” I winked at him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I roamed up and down the aisles like a zoo animal exploring outside its habitat. Which was funny, because I’d only been holed up for about four months. My hand trailed across boxes and cans, over packages of discounted Halloween themed candies. The basket on my arm was half full.
Julian came around the corner, his eyes lighting up on me. “You found…” he started, peeking into my basket. “Candy. Good job. Though it might have the opposite effect that weights would.” He held out a can.
“This isn’t a weight either,” I laughed, taking it from him. “Wimpy weight.”
“You’re right, it’s not a weight.” He reached a hand forward and twisted the can so the label was up.
My eyes shot to his and I couldn’t contain the smile. “Olives.”
“I seem to remember how you behaved when I tried to steal one from you before.”
“I think you said I was violent, yes?” I laughed. “And you’re right.” I raised an eyebrow. “I hope you don’t expect me to share these.”
Julian tapped a finger on his chin. “I also seem to remember you aren’t fond of sharing.”
I shrugged, moving further down the aisle. “Only child syndrome.” I looked up, lost in thought as another memory resurfaced.
“Who’s my dad?” I was sitting on the counter, watching my mom scrape out the insides of a pumpkin. Her sleeves were rolled up past her elbows and her hair was in a bun that was slowly losing its strength.
She paused in her efforts and blew a breath, looking at me with the look of resignation. It wasn’t the first time I’d ever asked her. But it had been a while since I’d last blurted the D word.
She heaved a sigh before dropping the scooping spoon on the counter and reaching her hands in to pull out the guts. She pulled out the first handful of pumpkin membrane and let it splat on the counter.
“He was a paratrooper.”
I rolled my eyes. This was probably her least-creative response to this question. “Last time I asked, he was a circus performer,” I protested, picking out the seeds from the mess of guts.
“He was a busy guy.” She blew out a breath upwards, flicking her hair out of her eyes.
“Mom,” I said in my preteen whiny voice. “Why don’t you tell me who he is?”
My mom grunted and pulled out the last handful of pumpkin guts. She looked at me the way she’d never had. With worry.
There comes an age in every child when you begin to do things just to lessen the burden on your parents. For me, I’d unburdened my mother with the question about my father once I hit fifth grade. I could see that each time I asked, I'd splintered something in her. And though she never said anything with words, her body language said enough. I’d spent years asking before I realized that my mother wouldn’t tell me for some reason. And my repeated asking had only caused her some kind of emotional anguish.
And now that I was in middle school, having frequent sleep-overs at my friends’ homes, I’d felt a small bit of emptiness settle in my heart at their family dinners. Not that mother wasn’t enough. Because she most definitely was. But she was also only half of my DNA.
“I know it bothers you when I ask,” I started, moving my eyes to the pile of pumpkin seeds I was forming. “But why can’t you tell me something, anything, about him?”
She moved to the opposite counter, giving her back to me as she washed her hands. I watched her shoulders bunch up with tension as she pulled back and wiped her hands on the towel. The burden had returned and manifested itself into anxiety.
When she finally turned around, she was still wiping her hands on the hand towel though they were completely dry. She looked up at me and my heart thumped.
“Your father doesn’t know you exist,” she finally said, her voice soft. She put the towel aside and braced her hands on the counter behind her. “He left before I even knew you were growing.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Was he your boyfriend?”
She shook her head. “I…” she started. I could tell she was still forming her words. “Listen, Cora. You’re young. When you’re young, you make mistakes. Big ones.”
I laughed. “Was I a big mistake?”
My mother walked across the six feet that separated us and put her arm around me. “No, you only weighed five pounds. You were a tiny mistake.”
I shoved lightly against her, knowing she was only teasing me. I could speak sarcasm even better than my mom now.
She leaned against the counter beside me, helping me pick out the seeds from the guts. I watched her bent over, her dark hair falling over her eyes. Her skin was shades darker than mine, as if she lived under the sun.
She rubbed a seed between her long and delicate fingers and I looked down at my own. Clumsy, muscular. “Do I look like him?” I asked. I saw her head lift out of my peripheral vision but I kept my eyes glued on the seeds in my hand.
“No,” she said softly. “But you’re a lot like him. Introspective, smart.”
She tossed a handful of cleaned seeds in a bowl. “You’re strong like him, too.”
I looked at her like she was joking and lifted my arm. “I have zero muscle tone.” I poked a gooey finger at where a bicep would normally appear.
She laughed and looked down into the bowl of seeds, running her fingers over them. She looked like her thoughts were lost. I tossed more seeds in the bowl, and that seemed to snap her out of it. “You’re mentally very strong, that’s what I meant.”
“Why doesn’t he know I exist?”
She sighed. “Remember what I said about mistakes, Cora. I made a lot. I was ruled by emotion, by passion.” She brushed her hands on her apron and leaned her head down, so we were now staring eye to eye. “I had a boyfriend. He was good to me. But there was someone else.” She lifted a hand and pushed the hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. “And that someone else was the one for me. He was so bad and so good for me.”
I felt my chest squeeze a little, hearing my mom admit this. This was the most she’d ever revealed about my father, and I held my breath hoping she’d continue.
She looked down at the bowl again. “It was a one-time thing. I don’t regret it. Not for a second.”
I bit down to keep myself from speaking, worried that saying anything would cause her to stop the story.
But then she didn’t say anything. Not a word.
“Can I meet him?” I asked, breaking the silence.
My mom’s head lifted up rapidly. “No,” she said flatly.
I was in the grocery store, still staring at the can of olives, forgetting what had triggered the memory entirely. Julian’s eyes were on me, his eyebrows scrunched together in concern. Would he ever look at me without concern? I thought it unlikely. I needed to learn to be better at masking my emotions.
“Where are the weights?” I asked, as if nothing had just happened.
Julian looked at me for a moment longer before deciding not to push. He led me down the aisle to the other side of the store.
He Saved Me Page 7
