“Lily,” Madison called, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Lily was not someone I would like to be left alone with.
Madison stood at the edge of the reception area, her hands folded over her chest. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing. Talking about candy. You missed out on our scintillating conversation.”
“Are you sure that’s the right word?”
Madison and Lily narrowed their eyes at each other with Lily chuckling at the end. Madison broke her stare and looked at me, our gazes colliding over the length of the room. Her dark brows were arched, her dense eyelashes casting shadows on her pale yet slightly ruby-tinged cheeks. I was still amazed by how rounded and innocent her face appeared, how young.
And I had almost hurt her yesterday. I had grown up with a mother who always taught me to respect women, and I was this close to doing something drastic. I didn’t know what, but something hurtful. It still called to me, that aggression, the urge to charge over and bite into her skin. Her vulnerability messed with my already crazy head. My cock hardened.
Ashamed of myself, I pocketed my hands, thumbing the edge of the piece of glass.
“Hey, Madison!” Katie ran up to her. “Where were you yesterday? We looked everywhere for you. I drew my camping trip for Mommy.” Katie held her drawing sheet up to Madison.
“Wow, this looks amazing. I’m jealous,” Madison commented, thumbing the contour of the picture. A sense of pride was laced in her voice, something I was not expecting to hear from her, something that echoed my own sentiments for Katie. A warmth spread in my chest.
Madison looked up at me, arching her brows. “I didn’t know you missed me so much that you looked for me everywhere. If it’s any consolation, I missed you, too. So. Much.” She pouted.
Oblivious to Madison’s innuendo, Katie said, “Daddy and I spent the whole day drawing. It was so much fun.”
“Really?” Still looking at me, Madison narrowed her eyes. “Daddy sure is talented, isn’t he? Impressive.”
Katie tugged on the hem of her shorts. “Will you draw with me today? Please? Pleeeease!”
Madison frowned as her taunting expression vanished. “I…I don’t—”
Cutting her off, I said to Katie, “I think she can. Why don’t you run and find a spot for you guys? I’ll see what I can do to persuade her.”
“Okay,” Katie chimed and took off running down the hallway.
Now alone, Madison smiled at me, walking backward, like she knew something I did not. Watching her with suspicion, I followed her as she turned around and stepped into the hallway, away from the reception area. She stopped, leaned against the beige wall by the picture of the lake, and craned her neck to look up at me, still smiling.
“What?” I asked.
Her smile grew wider as she shook her head. “You don’t have a clue, do you?”
“About what?”
She sighed. “Do you know what flirting is, James?”
“Of course I know what flirting is.”
“If you say so.” She nodded her head, though I did not think she believed me. “Lily was doing it with you. The flirting.”
“That’s…well, that’s preposterous.” The back of my neck prickled with heat.
“‘Preposterous?’” She raised her eyebrows, then wrinkled her nose in disgust. “No wonder you didn’t know. Who says preposterous when you can say fucked up?”
“The English language is more than fuck and shit and damn, Madison,” I said. “There are a plethora of words you can use to describe a situation without having to curse.”
“Plethora?” Her nose wrinkled even more. “What are you, an encyclopedia?”
“No, Merriam-Webster.” When she gaped at me, I explained, “The dictionary. With words, or rather, the meanings of words. They also have pictures.”
“Really? That’s unheard of,” Madison gasped. “Do they also teach you how to spot flirting?”
I studied her face, traced the lines of her pursed mouth and narrowed eyes. “Are you…are you jealous?”
“Of what? Of Lily?” she scoffed. “Now, that’s preposterous and fucked up.”
Without volition, my lips smiled. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this light.
“I’m not,” she bristled, causing me to smile broader. “Aren’t you forgetting something? I love Julia. I don’t care what you do.”
I thumbed the edge of the glass in my pocket, feeling oddly elated. “Does she know?”
“Does she know what?”
“That you do care. That I was the reason you kissed her the other day. Does she know that while you were kissing her, you were thinking about me?”
She blinked for a second before snapping, “Keep telling yourself that. Keep fucking lying. It’s what you do best, anyway.”
Her jab, as always, hit home, but it was not as cutting as I should have expected it to be. It was more…frustrating. We kept having the same conversation over and over. She kept pushing, and I kept straddling the precarious line of control and chaos.
I bent toward her, perhaps trying to do something differently this time. Her eyes flared. It was a moment of transparency, the fabric of time turned translucent, a moment that showed her vulnerability, heat…need.
“You remind me…of Stella,” I observed, my mind finally catching on to something important, vital.
As soon as the words left my mouth, Madison gathered herself, the vulnerability gone from her expression. “I’d say that’s sweet. But your obsession with me is getting out of hand, James. Stop. Thinking. About. Me.”
“Stella is a cat.”
“A cat.”
Her perturbed expression made me smile once again. The stretch of my lips It was…strange, to say the least. “Yes, and I hated her. She was annoying. But I used to watch her for our neighbor, Mrs. Jackson. I’d do my homework, and Stella would run around. Sometimes, she’d break things or jump on the coffee table, send my books flying. I thought she hated me, too. Then one day, I realized she did it all to get my attention. She didn’t like it when I was engrossed in something else. She wanted me to look at her, see her, play with her. Stella was just a lonely, angry cat.”
I pointed my eyebrows at her, hoping to communicate the importance of this story.
“So are you telling me that you’re the male version of the crazy cat lady?”
Ducking my head, I smiled—wide and free. I watched her through my lashes. “I’m surprised it works on people. That ever-present smirk and snarky attitude. Perhaps they just don’t know what to look for.”
That drew her spine straight and wiped any semblance of playfulness from her face. “There’s nothing to look for. This is what I am.”
“And what is that?”
“Dead. I’m dead. A ghost, Cruella. Call me whatever you want. In fact, call me all the bad names you know. It turns me on.”
Unable to stop myself, I stepped closer to her, so close that I was filled with her smell—tart citrus. Somehow, the constellation of freckles on her upper cheek and the bridge of her small nose seemed even more pronounced. I couldn’t remember when it happened, but my fingers managed to find their way out of my pocket to rest on her collarbone, over her fluttering pulse.
“Do you feel that?” I whispered and paused for her to feel her own pulse echoing on my skin. “It’s not dead. It’s beating. Hard and fast. It’s very much alive, Madison. Like me, maybe you’re lying about certain things, too.”
She shivered, but her voice remained resolute and somehow belligerent. “A beating heart doesn’t mean that I’m alive.”
“No, it only means you want to be. It’s the nature of all living things. They want to live, break free. They want a miracle. It’s called hope. Hope that one day something will transform our life, transform us as we know it.”
She swallowed, looking away. I could tell this affected her. “Yeah, then what do you want to transform into?”
“Human. I’m tired of not being one.”
“Well, then
I hate to break it to you, but you’ve already accomplished that. You are human. Flawed and broken. People think it’s the monsters who do bad things, but it’s not. It’s people like us. All the monsters ever do is live in storybooks. Or in closets. It’s the humans who destroy things. Life isn’t black and white, James. It’s all fucking gray.”
It was my turn to look away. “Katie wants to play with you. I trust you to not say anything to her.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to play with her.”
“I don’t. But I can’t refuse her anything.”
Except the truth. Suddenly, my shoulders sagged, drained of energy. I turned to leave, but Madison’s voice stopped me. “She’s crazy about you.”
I stared at her, frowning.
“Katie, I mean.” She swallowed, an unknown emotion passing through her eyes. “I don’t think she can…ever hate you. No matter what you do.”
With a sigh, she walked past me down the hallway, and I stood there, wondering if that was sort of an apology for the things she had said yesterday.
Chapter Seven
Madison
It had been two days since James had asked me not to say anything to Katie. As if I would have. I wasn’t going to lie and say that I didn’t want to. In fact, I did want to. Numerous times. Especially when Katie told me stories about her mom, about what she’d do when she came back. How they’d resume their Sunday tradition of going to the park, feeding the ducks, and then going for brunch together. It all made me sad and seething at the same time. Fucking James. Fuck him for being a liar. And fucking fuck him for being guilty and conflicted about it.
I wondered how he slept at night. Oh, wait. I knew how he did it. He got raging drunk and passed out. To be honest though, I hadn’t seen any signs of his drinking in the past couple of days. Either he was too good at hiding it, or he hadn’t been drinking. I suspected it was the latter. It made me breathe easier somehow, which in turn made me want to scratch his eyes out. Or touch his hot skin.
James spent his mornings boxing at the gym. He was rippling muscles, flying sweat and labored breaths. He’d started using the boxing tape instead of the gloves. As if he was trying to feel every excruciating blow. He had gotten quite good at it, too. That bald man helped him a lot. At the end of his session, he would bloody the pearly white tape and make me pity that swaying non-living thing.
I’d alternate between concentrating on Katie and her drawings and watching James’ fierceness. I’d caught him staring at me, too, and every time he did it, I couldn’t stop myself from pouting my lips. It worked him up even more.
Today was the third day of our staring contest, and I’d just finished coloring with Katie. We made the house and the street they lived on back in New York. It made me want to see it for myself—the brown brick houses, the tree-lined streets, the stone steps and railings. I kissed Katie goodbye, all the while watching James through the thick glass. His jaw clenched as the sweat dripped off his forehead, and his chest hitched with panted breaths.
I turned the corner, entering the reception area, and jerked to a stop. Lily stood behind the reception desk, her hand resting over her mountainous belly as she argued with a dark haired man, her husband, Josh.
His hands flew as he spoke in agitated tones. “I can’t believe you’d do that to me. If I can’t trust you, then who can I trust?”
Lily stepped closer and placed her hand on his arm. “Josh, baby, you can trust me. I’m sorry, but you have to understand I don’t have any. I promise I don’t. Why don’t you go home, and we’ll talk later when I get back from work.”
Josh pushed her hand away, fisting his own, ready to punch her. But at the last minute, he stopped himself. “Don’t do this, Lily. Don’t you bring this on yourself only to blame me later. Don’t lie to me. Give me the money.”
Lily shook her head, her lips trembling. “I don’t have any. I promise, Josh. I’m not lying. Please listen to me. Go home. We’ll talk later.”
I watched them argue, with Lily playing the peacemaker, her body shrunken in, and Josh the aggressor, with his chest puffed out and broad. The scene was so familiar, so intimately carved inside my brain that I lost my breath for a few moments. Thrown back into the time when I was still a child with new, innocent eyes, watching Mom fight with her boyfriends over nothing and everything. Fucking Prince Charming.
Finally, Josh snapped, and his fist connected with Lily’s jaw. She shrieked, stumbling back. The trance I was in broke, and I lunged forward.
“Hey, get away from her!” I strode over and pushed him aside, helping Lily stand up. “Are you okay?” I asked, lowering her onto the chair. Her lip was busted open, bleeding, and her eyes were wet with tears. She opened her mouth to say something, but Josh shouted from behind me.
“Who the fuck are you?”
I straightened, furious, my heart beating faster with every breath. I had to save Lily. I simply had to. There was no other option. “What did I just tell you? Get away from her.”
“And I asked you who the fuck you are. That’s my wife.”
“Yeah, she’s your wife and pregnant with your child, and you just punched her. So again, get the fuck away from her.”
Josh took a step closer, somehow growing taller, meaner. His dark hair and burly frame reminded me so much of Scott that goosebumps woke up on my skin.
“Listen…” His dark eyes travelled down to the ID card sitting between my breasts and vomit lurched up my throat. “Madison. This is none of your business. I don’t want to hurt your pretty face so get lost.”
Lily gripped my elbow from behind. “Madison…” she said in a hoarse voice. “Leave, please. I can handle this.”
The same thing that my mom used to say. I can handle this. I can take care of myself. If it was true, she wouldn’t be lying dead, six feet underground. It made me even more furious, bursting-with-lava furious.
Ignoring Lily, I spoke to Josh. “You think I’m pretty? What else do you think?”
Josh smiled, looking me up and down, making my skin crawl. “I think I can do a lot with a pretty face. A whole hell of a lot.”
Lily stiffened behind me. I heard her sharp indrawn breath.
“I can do a lot of things, too,” I murmured, looking him up and down.
Josh stepped closer, shooting my revulsion sky-high. A distinct smell of sickly sweetness wafted over to my nose. Was Josh drunk? Maybe not totally drunk, but he’d had a few. Seriously, what was with men and alcohol? And why did I end up being the one suffering through it?
Josh’s smirk grew the closer he got to me. He was so close that I could see the lint on the navy blue T-shirt he wore. I looked into his eyes—dark and filled with lust even when his wife was watching everything.
I clenched my fists and twisted them, trying to warm up to something. Bracing myself, I swung my fist up and hooked Josh beneath the chin. He growled as he fell back against the desk, toppling the computer screen to the side. The shattering of glass on the ground followed.
Whoa! That was something. Fucking awesome, actually. Why hadn’t I done something like this sooner? Like beating the shit out of every man crossing my path. A twisted vigilante with step-daddy/mommy issues, squashing men like bugs.
Lily cleared her throat from behind me. I turned around to find her with lips pressed together, embarrassment clear on her face. Her secret was out now. Not that it was a secret from me, but still. I grew even angrier, but before I could do anything, the asshole gathered himself and jumped at me.
“You fucking bitch!” He gripped my hair, yanking my bun.
He threw me on the wall, and I fell on my arm. A sharp pain reverberated in my skull, making me cringe. I wanted to scream, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Lily shouted. I could hardly make out what she said, since Josh yanked my hair again and pulled me off the wall.
Okay, let’s pause here a second. Why the hair pulling, goddammit? It hurt. Why was it so appealing for men to pull a woman’s hair all the time? Yanking my arm would
’ve worked just as well. Motherfucking douchebag.
Josh pressed me against the desk, throwing his entire weight on me. Somehow, I elbowed his stomach, making him yelp.
“Who do you think you are?” Josh seethed, grabbing hold of my elbow and digging his fingers in. “You’ll fucking regret this.”
My eyes watered and my ears rang. Footsteps thumped in the background. Distant voices pierced through the bubble of my pain, giving me strength to fight back. Opening my eyes, staring at the blurred world before me, I thrashed against his hold. I kicked him in the shins to dislodge him. But he held on.
Until people swarmed into the reception area, running, looking shocked. James stood in the front, displaying a fierce frown. He took one look at me struggling against Josh before charging in.
“Let go of her!” he lashed out, his voice sharp and cutting. Through all the pain and panic, James made me shiver.
Josh threw me forward, and I arced toward the ground, landing on my hands and knees. I groaned, feeling the crunch of my knees hitting the floor. Then Lily was there with me, pulling me up from the ground with her hands around my arms.
“Are you okay? Oh my God! You’re bleeding.” She touched my forehead, her fingers slipping in the blood oozing out of my wound. Now that I knew it was there, the cut fucking burned. I didn’t care about it though.
“Are you okay?” I asked Lily, and she nodded, her eyes still on my forehead.
The commotion behind us made both of us turn back. Somehow, Josh and James ended up in a tangle of arms, grabbing around their necks, pulling on collars. Josh took a swing at James, but he ducked, grabbing Josh’s fist in his hand and taking a swing of his own. He caught Josh on the nose, snapping his head to the side. He fell on his ass with James standing over him, his legs braced apart. Josh tried to get up, cursing at him, but several men were upon him before he could even straighten his legs. After that, it was a series of shouts and rustling of clothes as men overpowered Josh and held him away from James.
I felt Julia approach before I saw her. She hurried in, looking frazzled. In the crowd, her eyes found mine where I stood behind the reception desk. Then she took in the surrounding chaos—the haphazard circle of people and shattered glass on the floor, Josh pressed up against the wall, struggling to break free of the men subduing him, and lastly, James glaring at Josh.
A War Like Ours Page 9
