Shadowboxer

by Cari Quinn

  After fighting wasn’t something I wanted to discuss. The here and now held all my interest. “I’ve been taking interior design classes online. Just one or two a year when I can afford them.” Which wasn’t often.

  “So you could redesign this place?”

  “Redesign it? Why?”

  He shrugged and reached for the bag of marshmallows again. He’d be in a diabetic coma soon if he kept up his current pace. Evidently he’d completely thrown off the shackles of his training diet. Though I wasn’t much better, and I had a fight tomorrow.

  “I don’t know. It’s boring. It doesn’t feel like me.”

  “So you want, what, naked girly pics on the wall? Maybe a set of monkey bars you can hang upside down on, since you’re so fond of the pull up bars at the gym?”

  “Yes. And yes. You are clearly the designer of my dreams.” Without warning, he tossed aside the bag of marshmallows and hauled me onto his lap, leaning back lengthwise on the log so that I sprawled against his chest. “The everything of my dreams,” he added, much more softly, his fingers winding through my hair.

  I snuggled in. I couldn’t help it. Yes, we were on borrowed time. This couldn’t last forever. Kizzy was right. I had plans with my sister, and thinking they could include him was a path to madness. Even if I’d been reconsidering leaving the area, my Aunt Patty was right. Carly needed a safer environment. One far away from men like Giovanni Costas.

  So where did that leave Tray and me? Nowhere.

  Sure, he might think he was up for traveling with us, but he had a pretty great life in the city. He was enrolling at NYU. Why should he have to telecommute when his family was right here? His friends. His world. I was just one tiny, impermanent part of it. Easily forgettable.

  God, I wanted to pretend for a little while longer.

  “You might not say that if you knew everything about me.” I tried to keep it light, to stay playful. But I hated keeping my past from him, and one day I’d have to stop. Soon.

  “And vice versa.”

  I lifted my head and laughed. “What could you possibly be hiding? How many women you’ve slept with? You’re not hiding it if everyone knows.”

  He brushed my hair off my shoulders, his thumbs skimming my skin and setting off a round of goose bumps. “You’re not the only one who has done things you aren’t proud of. Who keeps doing them every day.”

  Something trembled in my chest. I had no right to ask. But I couldn’t not, when he’d given me an opening like that. “Like what?”

  “Lots of things.”

  His evasion struck me wrong. Way wrong. “Give me an example.”

  He clenched his jaw. “Don’t do this tonight. Please.”

  I sat up and frowned, the warmth from the fire and being in his arms dissipating in a cold rush of fear. “Tell me. Now.”

  “You have to promise me something.”

  I shook my head. Kept shaking it when he gripped my shoulders. “No. Tell me.”

  “Promise me, Mia, or this stops here. Promise me you won’t run without telling me. That no matter what is said tonight, no matter what happens, you won’t leave without telling me you’re going.”

  The anguish in his voice made my eyes smart. With no idea why I was agreeing, I forced out the reply he was waiting for. “Yes. I promise.”

  “I can’t pretend any more. I can’t look in your eyes and pretend I don’t know.” He stared into the fire before finally directing his attention to my face. “I looked up your name, weeks ago. Near the beginning. Mia, I know.” He smoothed his fingers over my cheek, the tenderness in his tone breaking me. “I know.”

  My heart stuttered and stopped. I tried to breathe and gasped instead. No. He couldn’t mean what I thought. That night on his bar, when he’d made me come and I’d started to cry, I’d seen something in his eyes. Something that had cut to the deepest part of who I was. The real me, the one buried beneath bravado and lies and a veil of normalcy. I’d run because I couldn’t face the possibility. Then he’d gotten hurt, and I’d pushed it all aside. He couldn’t know anything about Amelia Anderson’s past in Georgia. Seven years had passed.

  Seven minutes in my head. Seven minutes in my gut. Seven minutes in a place not nearly as mystical as my soul, but way down deep at the very heart of me. Where I was still that crazed animal who didn’t care about anything but survival. I’d killed for it once.

  And he knew.

  He knew.

  I stumbled back, falling off his lap to the pile of sand. It got all over me, clinging to skin still misty with sweat, and I couldn’t get it off. I scrabbled backward, crab walking like some crazed sea creature.

  I’d ended a man’s life to make sure I didn’t die. What would I do now to ensure the me I’d created, this falsified version that fooled no one—that hadn’t fooled Tray—would live?

  This time I would kill us. Him and me. Done. Over. Dead. Just like Darren.

  We weren’t real. We weren’t anything but a joke. I was his charity case. Because he knew. He knew.

  “Mia. Baby. Come here.” He fell to his knees and reached out for me, the tips of his fingers brushing my knees, my calves. I slapped him away as if he were a spiderweb sticking to my flesh. Binding me in an intricate, nearly invisible web.

  He’d been so clever. All the lines he’d used. The way he’d made me laugh. How he’d spanked me tonight and dislodged that block of congealed glue in my chest that contained all my emotions. I’d opened myself up to him in every possible manner.

  The only thing I’d held back was the truth. I hadn’t given that to him, because I didn’t want to be Amelia Anderson, broken girl any longer. I wanted to fall in love. To be normal.

  Just…normal.

  But everything between us was a lie. Especially me. The girl I’d become in his arms was already disappearing, shriveling into the shell she’d come from. I was a fake. A pretender. Scarred and battered and unclean.

  Unwanted by everyone, even myself.

  “Let me explain. Please. I didn’t mean to find out. It was an accident that I even searched, just based on a hunch. I had no idea I’d find…that.”

  My life distilled to one word, uttered in horror. That.

  I didn’t speak as I rose to my knees. I’d get up and get dressed, just walk out the door. My mind was already putting up a wall, layering bricks that wouldn’t let him in again. He was a stranger. A liar. He’d betrayed me in the worst way possible. He’d pretended to believe I was a regular person. I could be someone to love. When all along, he’d known that wasn’t true.

  The wave of sickness spread through me so swiftly that all I could do was clutch my arms around my stomach and moan.

  “Mia. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck, my shoulders, my back. Frantically. As if he were trying to pin me in place, to hold me here when he sensed part of me was already gone. I might’ve felt sorry for him, if I hadn’t been more sorry for myself.

  “Don’t leave. Don’t go.” He sounded like he was choking. Running out of air.

  I could barely hear him over my keening moans.

  “We’ll get through this together. I don’t know how to fix you, but I’ll try. God, I’ll do anything.”

  “I knew you weren’t happy, Amelia. I saved you.”

  “You think you know? You think you understand?” The question came from way down deep, echoing out like we were in an empty, drafty room.

  He said nothing, but his breath sawed out from between his parted lips. It blew hot over my back, creating more goose bumps. I would’ve shivered, if I’d still been connected to my body. I was floating above. Separate from myself. From him.

  “I walked home the same way every day. Two miles from the door of my school to home. But one day, I changed the route.” I sounded completely detached from the story I was telling. My own twisted fairy tale. “I went down another street, because I wanted to see something new. For the longest time, I blamed myself for p
icking another road. Thinking I could’ve changed it. I didn’t know then that he’d been watching my sister and me for weeks. Picking his moment. If she’d been with me that day, he would’ve taken her too.” I tightened my grip on my stomach. “I convinced him he didn’t want her. Only me. I would be everything he needed.”

  Rocking, I stared sightlessly at the torch blazing above my head. Instead seeing my face as I’d been that day, the curls I’d put in my hair before school, the carefully applied forest green mascara. By that night, the curls had been tangles and the mascara had turned into glittery tears.

  “She doesn’t know he wanted her too. I never told. I didn’t want her to be afraid, like I was.” I made another one of those wrenching sounds, half moan, half scream, helpless to stop it. “Like I am.”

  “I’m here.” His liquid voice trembled beside my ear. More wet than my eyes. His arms came around me, banding so tight. “I’m here.”

  “He didn’t look like a monster. He looked normal. Even…attractive. I didn’t fight when he touched me. I just…let him. I barely even cried. I wasn’t even there anymore. Like how you go into auto-pilot when you fight, reacting without thought. I did what he wanted, so he wouldn’t think about Carly.” I rubbed my nose with the inside of my wrist, scarcely aware tears trickled down my cheeks. “I always kept her safe. He couldn’t have my baby sister.”

  Heat at my back, enveloping me. Strength without words. He gulped back his own tears, as if from a great distance away. I couldn’t comfort him. Nothing left inside me to give.

  “He’d bring me the paper and show me the articles about my disappearance. At first there were a lot. Then time passed, and they got shorter. There was no news. I’d vanished without a trace. They started to forget me. I was just…gone. But I wasn’t. I was still alive, just barely, a prisoner in a gorgeous house with a…with a handsome man, who let me sleep in his bed and took me shopping like I was his wife. My child-bride, he’d joke to the saleswomen, and they’d laugh. He let me walk free, because he trusted me. He knew I wouldn’t run, I wouldn’t tell. Because if I did, even if I got away, he knew where to find my sister.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, felt tears force their way through. “I had orgasms with him, several times. I didn’t want to, but my body did things I couldn’t control. And he used that as proof he wasn’t a bad person. After a while, I realized I was just as bad. I’d wanted to leave home, to stop being responsible for Carly and my dad, and I’d willed him into taking me. He was twice my age, more than, and I’d sold myself for pretty dresses and a fancy house. He saved me.” I bowed my head, my shoulders shaking from the sobs trapped in my throat. “Just like you.”

  He reared back. That warmth retreating, leaving me alone. Cold. So cold. But by then it didn’t matter, because the tape in my mind wouldn’t stop playing.

  “I was in that house three months. After a while, the time didn’t matter anymore. They stopped printing stories. He told me they’d all moved on. That my family didn’t care about me. I almost believed him.” Bitterness filled my mouth and I swallowed, tasting blood. I’d bit my lip again. “I started keeping track of when he came and went. Then, one day he went to lunch with someone. A woman. Some sick part of me was jealous. He’d become my lifeline to the world. I tried to run, but he came back. It had all been a setup. He tested me and I failed.”

  My name sounded in my ears, over and over. It tethered me to earth. To the sand digging into my knees, to the strong, solid body at my back. He was still here. I’d pushed him back, and he hadn’t left.

  “I killed him,” I whispered, rocking so hard that I wasn’t completely aware of the arms coming around me again, tighter than before. The damp lips pressed to my neck, the soft, crooning words of comfort. “There was a trial, and I was acquitted. They called it self-defense.”

  “You were fighting for your life,” Tray murmured.

  “No.” I shook my head, over and over. “Amelia Anderson died that day with Darren. I killed him and I killed myself.”

  He didn’t say anything. Any words between us eventually burned out like the fire. Flickering, dying to embers. Leaving only ash behind.

  Lifetimes passed in our silence. It pressed against my skin, a cold, brittle reminder of how transient we were. We’d been a brief moment in time, already over.

  Now I needed to walk away.

  I pushed to my feet, my bones creaking like an old woman. I’d aged since I’d strolled into his apartment hours ago. My body hurt almost as much as my heart. What was left of it.

  “Leave it.” His voice stopped me as I reached for my bra. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Something in his tone raked over my already raw nerve endings. I’d thought I’d gone numb, but obviously not. “Excuse me?”

  “You promised me a whole night.”

  I turned back, slowly. “Don’t go there.”

  He stood and stared at me, his jaw harder than the log we’d sat on what felt like forever ago. “You owe me several more hours.”

  “Owe you?” My temper flared, rage cracking through the ice. It wasn’t fair, goddammit. None of this was fair. “That was before—”

  “This is now.” He gripped my chin, his eyes glittering. “We’re going to bed.” Barbed wires of heat wrapped around the vague threat in his statement.

  Either come to bed with me on your own or I’ll make sure you do anyway.

  “I’m going home.” I reached for my bra again, getting as far as holding it to my chest. Then he spun me back, his hand roughly curving around the back of my neck.

  “My fucking bed. That’s where you’re going.” Before I could argue, he hauled me up and carted me down the hall, ignoring my demands and my fists. Impervious to both.

  “How dare you? I don’t want this.” I spat the words. “Don’t want you.”

  He tossed me on the mattress and crawled over me, pinning me down with his naked body. Trapping me in his iron-backed warmth. “Fight me, Mia.” He clamped his fingers around my wrists, holding them in place near my shoulders.

  I struggled but I couldn’t get free. He was strong. So much stronger than I was.

  “Make me bleed. Make me hurt like you.”

  I didn’t understand what he was saying. What it meant. But I fought like the wild animal I was, bucking my hips and lifting my shoulders from the mattress again and again. Jerking and twisting, gyrating under him until I got my leg free and brought my knee up. Connecting with his ribs, his gut. His surprise at the ferocity of my attack gave me the opportunity to yank my hand free and I scratched his back, his arms. Rearing up, I bit and clawed at his skin. Bruising him like I was bruised, making us the same.

  He tried to hold me down, his power all the more incredible because he kept it leashed. He never struck out. Never used his fists or his teeth or his cock to injure me further, to take more than I’d consented to give.

  Never frightened me, even when his body blanketed mine. And when I started to cry, he did too.

  My sobs racked my chest, ripping from me with a force that I’d never known before. I couldn’t get the pain out. It was eating me up, tearing through internal organs. Carving into soft tissue until only the agony remained. For the first time I let it consume me, scarcely aware of the body on top of me. Holding me. Crying with me.

  “Let it out. I’m here. I’m here.”

  His mouth found mine, clung. I tasted his tears as they smeared over my skin. Felt his heart slamming beat for beat with mine.

  His fingers binding, my hips rising. Seeking. His descending, pressing close. Opening to him, him filling me. Sobbing through it, my tears slowing only as the pleasure built, a blind need that was more than thought, more than desire. Giving myself over to something beyond hurt and desperation.

  And through it all, knowing I wasn’t alone. Never alone.

  The release poured through me, overwhelming in its intensity. Drenching me like the surf at high tide, washing away everything that had come before and leaving behind what matter
ed. Him and I, together.

  Me, still alive. Still fighting to be whole. Still breathing.

  “I love you, Mia,” he gasped as his own release took him. “I’m not letting you go.”

  I wrapped my arms around him, tighter than I’d ever held anyone, and breathed in deep as he shuddered in my arms. He was stronger than I’d ever dreamed, but somehow he was weak for me.

  And this time, he’d come inside me. Not like last time when he’d gone off on my stomach. He really did trust me.

  Maybe he really loved me too.

  Tears drenched my eyes but I could still make out his features in the dark. They were imprinted on my heart. “Don’t let me go. Please.”

  “I won’t.” He breathed the promise against my lips. “I won’t let go.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Tray

  The fly woke me.

  Buzzing near my ear, tiny wings fluttering over my cheek. I slapped at it, mumbling curses, rolling over in bed to grab the soft, warm body I’d cleaved to in the night.

  She wasn’t there.

  My eyes flew open and I sat up in bed, a sound leaving my throat that verged on a snarl. I was already praying like hell when I scrambled up. Nearly crashing to the floor as my foot caught in the sheet, oblivious to anything but finding her. I bumped the nightstand and my alarm clock fell, shattering into pieces. Hunk of fricking junk. I kicked it aside and stumbled to the bathroom, pushing my way inside and pivoting around to look in every corner as if she could cram herself into spaces as tight as the fly.

  Not a trace of her anywhere.

  Grabbing a towel, I hitched it around my waist and lurched back into my room. Hands already fisted. The sheets hung off the bed, tangled and spattered with blood. She’d scratched welts in me that opened up again as I stalked down the hall, straining to see with my one good eye. I already knew she wouldn’t be there. My place felt empty. Like the breaths rattling from my chest as I struggled not to lose it completely were echoing in an old, abandoned tomb.