Cut Too Deep

by Marissa Farrar

  “I told you, I was just trying to show everyone a YouTube clip.”

  “Yeah, well, that clip just cost you a day’s suspension.”

  Ryker sat forward, his hands gripped around the steering wheel. Tension radiated from him. His lips were clamped together, his knuckles white, as he brooded. Jenna almost wanted to cower away.

  Suddenly, he let go of the steering wheel and spun back around. “Do you want family services to come and take you away? Because, you know what, if you keep pulling this kind of shit, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. Don’t think for a moment that those teachers aren’t looking to me and thinking I’m not a good enough role model for you.”

  “You acted up when you were a teenager, too,” Mikey said, but his shoulders had slumped, his tone more subdued.

  “Yeah, I did. I was pissed because Mom left us. So you’re right, I did some stupid stuff, but we still had Dad then. They wouldn’t have taken me away from him unless I did some really stupid stuff. With you and me, it’s different. It’s amazing they let us stay together at all after Dad died. They’ll be looking for any excuse to take you away, and you’re playing right into their hands.”

  Jenna’s gaze shifted uncomfortably between them. She lifted her hand to her mouth and nibbled on her nails. She’d only met Ryker a couple of hours ago, and now she was privy to a private conversation. She guessed Ryker had been trying to hold it all in until they got home, but just hadn’t been able to help himself.

  Ryker must have sensed her awkwardness. “Sorry,” he said, turning to her. “I should have saved that for later.”

  She lifted both hands. “Hey, no problem. I was a teenager once too.” Though I barely left my room, never mind did anything bad, she thought but didn’t say.

  “I’ll get you to the motel now. Sorry it’s taken so long.”

  She smiled. “I just appreciate the ride.”

  Ryker started up the truck again, pulled away from the school, and headed farther into town. They passed through Main Street, which was lined with independent restaurants with seating outside, a clock tower, and a couple of stores. Tubs of flowers bordered the sidewalk. Though small, the town appeared pleasant enough. It was the sort of place people could live their lives without fear of crime or anything changing too much.

  “The motel is another couple of blocks south from Main Street,” Ryker told her as he drove. “It’s the only one in town. I don’t know why we don’t have more hotels, but we only get visitors when there’s an event going on in town. I guess there isn’t much call for extra accommodation.”

  He drove the short distance, Jenna peering out of the passenger window as the town went by. Within five minutes, Ryker pulled into the parking lot of a simple, single story motel.

  “Wait in the car,” Ryker told Mikey as he climbed from the truck.

  Mikey didn’t even respond, but continued to play on his phone.

  Ryker slammed the door and went around to the back to get her bags.

  “Good to meet you, Mikey,” Jenna said, as she got out after Ryker. But the boy only lifted his chin to acknowledge she’d spoken, and didn’t bother to reply.

  Together, Jenna and Ryker headed in to reception.

  An older man in his fifties sat at the desk, watching a football game on a portable television behind the counter. He looked up at them as they walked in, and gave them a smile.

  “Afternoon, folks. You two after a room? Double, is it?”

  “Err, it’s just me, actually,” said Jenna. “I’ll need a single room for a night or two.”

  The man’s eyes flicked over to Ryker, perhaps wondering what the deal was between the two of them. “Well, I can do the next two nights, but after that we got a coach tour coming in.”

  “No problem. I’ll be out of here by then.” She turned to Ryker. “I will, won’t I?”

  He gave a non-committal shrug. “Should be, as long as all the parts come in on time.”

  “They’d better, or I’ll be sleeping in the car while you work around me.” She sighed and turned back to the clerk. “Do you have Wi-Fi?”

  “Nah, sorry. We’re not that well equipped.”

  Damn. She’d need to log on via her mobile provider, and doing so always made her nervous. Still, it wasn’t like she had a whole heap of choices. “I’ll take the room, thanks.”

  “I’ll need some ID and a credit card.”

  “Can I pay cash?” Jenna didn’t like using her credit card. While she had it for emergencies, she was always aware of minimizing ways of her being tracked down.

  “You can, but I still need a credit card in case of damages.”

  The winding thread of unease worked its way into her guts. Panic began to claw its way up her throat. “Can I just give you some extra cash? How much damage can be done in a room, anyway?”

  His eyes narrowed and she sensed Ryker standing behind her, unasked questions radiating from them both.

  The clerk shrugged. “Okay, call it an extra two hundred bucks. I’ll refund you when you check out.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

  Jenna filled in the form with her details and paid for the room for two nights, plus the deposit. It was most of her cash gone. She’d need to pay a visit to the bank before she received Ryker’s bill for the car as well. She hoped she’d been paid for the last lot of work she’d done.

  The clerk handed her the room key, and she turned and leaned down to get her bags.

  Jenna’s hand closed around the handle right before Ryker’s hand closed over the top of hers. She froze, her heart skipping, as she stared down at the strong, male hand covering hers. He was so close to her, only inches separating them, and she could smell the combination of the musky deodorant he must have used that morning, combined with oil and the more overwhelming scent that was simply masculine.

  Ryker removed his hand and she was able to breathe again. “Sorry, I was going to get that for you.”

  She shook her head. “It’s okay. I’ve got it.”

  No man had made that much physical contact with her in such a long time. Her nerve endings still fired with the sensation of his skin touching hers. She was torn between wanting to wash her hand until it was raw, and never washing it again.

  Ryker cleared his throat and she realized she’d been standing there, staring at her hand around the bag.

  She forced a smile and straightened, lifting her bag with her.

  “Turn left and it’s twelve rooms along,” the clerk called after them as they walked from reception.

  They found her room quickly enough. Jenna unlocked the door and walked in, dumping her bag on the floor at the end of the bed. Ryker put the other bag down to join it.

  The room was like any of the hundreds of other motel rooms she’d stayed in over the past year. A double bed, with a large print of a vase of flowers hanging above the headboard. Two shelves on either side of the bed held a small lamp each. A desk opposite the bed had an old box-style television that looked as if it would struggle to pick up any reception, and beside it sat a telephone. A couple of doors were on the opposite wall. One, she assumed, would lead to the closet, the other, the bathroom.

  She turned back to Ryker. Now she was in the room, she had work to do.

  “Well, thanks for all your help,” she said. “I guess you need to be getting back to your brother.”

  “Oh, right.” He seemed surprised that he’d been dismissed. “Yeah. I guess I do.” But he hesitated, ran a hand through his messy dark hair, and added, “I wondered if you might like to have dinner with me tonight?”

  She stared at him. “Why would you want to do that?”

  He frowned. “Because I thought it might be nice.” He gave a shrug, his lips quirked up in one corner. “I mean, you do eat don’t you?”

  She was only too aware of her size. “Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?” she snapped, heat rising to her cheeks.

  An expression of genuine confusion clouded his features.
“No, of course not. I was only trying to ask you on a date.”

  Jenna’s eyebrows lifted and she peered around his shoulder. “A date? Yeah, right. Who put you up to this? Did your brother dare you to ask the big girl out?”

  “Seriously, Jenna. I was just asking you out to dinner. And you’re not big, you’re curvy, and kind of beautiful, actually, but if you’re going to be a bitch about it …”

  That word made her temper rise, fury exploding inside her. “A bitch? Yeah, that’s what all you guys think, isn’t it? You meet a girl who can speak for herself and right away she’s a bitch?”

  Ryker held up both hands and began to back away. “Just forget it.”

  “What about my car?” she yelled after him.

  “Come back to the garage tomorrow.”

  She was breathing too hard, her ample chest rising and falling. Her head was a mess, such a mixture of emotions. She was angry, confused, flattered, and irritated. Had he really been asking her out? No, guys like Ryker didn’t ask girls like her out. Hot, tattooed men liked the skinny, blonde, cheerleader types.

  Everything she was not.

  Chapter Four

  Furious with herself, Jenna shut the motel room door on Ryker’s retreating back, and turned to face the room. Frustrated energy coursed through her body, making her want to shout and punch things. But instead she would put her anger to good use and take her pent up energy out on the room. Her eyes scoured every surface, mentally working out the order in which she needed to start cleaning things. Germs from higher surfaces would float down onto lower surfaces when she wiped them, so she always started higher.

  Bending to one of her bags, she pulled open the zipper and took out a couple of large plastic bags, similar to those favored by dry-cleaners. The bags contained her bed sheets, and she got to work, pulling the motel supplied sheets off the bed, checking the mattress for any stomach-turning stains, and then remaking the bed with her own bedding. She even carried her own pillow with her, unable to bring herself to sleep with her face on something so many others must have breathed and drooled into.

  With the bed made, she got to work on the surfaces, cleaning the shelves, the lamp stands, the television remote, and the telephone—though she doubted she’d ever need to use the thing. Her antibacterial wipes found every surface she would touch, including the door handles and the light switches. Finally, she wiped everything down in the basic, but otherwise clean, bathroom.

  She disposed of the empty packet of antibacterial wipes, together with all the used wipes, in the trash.

  And then she allowed herself to rest, but not for long. Her whole body would be covered in the germs from the day, and she needed to wash.

  Jenna undressed, leaving her clothes in a pile on the floor, and went naked into the bathroom. She reached around the old shower curtain, wishing she’d been able to do a better job of it than just wiping it down, and switched on the faucet. The water quickly warmed, and she climbed beneath it. Using her own toiletries, she soaped down every inch of skin and then shampooed her hair. She had her own towels, though they were starting to get a little threadbare from all the use they got, but even so, she rinsed herself off, and used one towel to create a turban around her long hair, and the other to wrap around her body.

  She rubbed herself dry and went to stand in front of the full length mirror. This was her obsession, her regime, which she conducted at least once a day, if not more if the situation allowed.

  Jenna let the towel drop to the floor and stood, staring at her body in the mirror. Her face was okay, she didn’t mind her face—even if it did cause people to make comments along the lines of ‘you’d be so pretty if you lost a bit of weight,’ and, ‘you have such a pretty face,’ as if highlighting that the rest of her looked like crap would make her feel any better.

  Maybe she could lose some weight if she really tried. But what was the point? It wasn’t just the weight she had to deal with. The weight wasn’t the main thing making her body ugly. Anyway, she didn’t have much else in her life now except the few small comforts of the food she enjoyed, wine, and chocolate.

  She assumed most women who hated their bodies avoided mirrors at all costs, but she used the mirror as a form of punishment.

  Jenna studied every inch of herself. She cupped her large, heavy breasts in her hands, lifting them up to imagine what they would look like if they were round and perky like the women in the magazines men seemed to love. She sucked in her stomach as best she could, then let it out again with a huff. She grabbed the folds of flesh around her middle, pinching the rolls as if she could cut them off with pretend scissor fingers. She twisted to look over her shoulder, at the further folds mid-way down her back, and the expanse of her backside, at the thickness of her thighs and the dimples that covered them.

  Once her inspection of her fat was complete, her gaze moved to the huge, twisted scar that ran from the mid-point of one side of her back, right around her waist, to just above her groin. The doctors had done the best they could to stitch her back together, but the scar still appeared like a giant red and white welt, as if she’d literally been cut in two. That wasn’t far from the truth. The metal of the passenger door had folded upon the truck’s impact and sliced into her torso. She’d barely survived. Several days of surgeries had followed, during which she’d lost three liters of blood, together with one of her kidneys and her spleen. She’s also lost one of her ovaries. The doctors had told her she would still go on to live a full life, as long as she was careful to avoid infection and didn’t put her one remaining kidney under too much stress. They’d also told her she should consider not waiting too long before having children. Only having one ovary, plus the other stresses her body was under, meant getting pregnant and staying pregnant would be harder for her.

  Jenna figured pregnancy would be the least of her worries. She didn’t want another guy coming anywhere near her. She’d been twenty-four at the time of the accident, and was twenty-five now. But there was no way she could bring a child into the mess that was her life, even in the unlikely event someone could tolerate her for long enough to do the act that would create one.

  Self pity swelled up inside her, but she pressed her lips together and closed her eyes against her reflection. She’d cried too many tears over the last year. Recently, she’d had a better handle on her emotions, but with the approaching date, she found she was starting to struggle again.

  She let out a sigh and turned from the mirror. Bending to her bags, she pulled out her clothes—her usual outfit of leggings, a smock-top, together with a fresh set of underwear—and got dressed. At least fully clothed she could pretend she was just like everyone else.

  Jenna took her laptop from her bag and settled herself on her bed. In places that didn’t have Wi-Fi, she used a USB dongle to connect to the internet. She topped up her credit as she needed it, not wanting to add a contract to the list of things she could be traced by, but even using the pay-as-you-go version made her nervous. It was still registered in her name, after all, and in her head she could see all the internet beams pointing down at her position like neon flashing signs.

  Still, she had no choice. Even being on the move, she still had to work to pay for all the things she needed, same as everyone else—a roof over her head, food, her car—and so she needed to work.

  Jenna checked her email. She had a couple of requests from people wanting her to write advertising copy for various items. Most of the time, she was able to write the pieces simply from the description the company provided her with, or from clips she could watch online, but on occasion items needed to be sent to her. On those occasions, she’d needed to provide the company with the address of the motel where she’d been currently staying so they could send her the product. Though she didn’t like to stay in one place for long, she needed to work, so she stayed until the item arrived. The company never asked for them to be sent back.

  As always, when she was working, the time flew by, and by the time she lifted her head fr
om her laptop, dusk had fallen, the world outside her window coated in a deepening purple hue.

  A sharp knock on her door made her jump. Her heart leapt in her chest, instantly banging against her ribcage, while every muscle in her body tensed, her ears straining for the next sound. Who the hell would be knocking on her door? Was it him?

  No, he wouldn’t bother to knock.

  The realization made her calm down, and the knock came again.

  Jenna got up and went to the door. She stood on tiptoes and peered out of the spy hole. A man stood outside, positioned side on to the door. She caught sight of dark hair, a serious, strong face, a glint of a ring in his ear and a dark swirl of tattoos reaching up his broad throat.

  Her heart leapt again, but for a different reason. Ryker! What the hell was he doing here?

  Quickly, she yanked her hair from the ponytail she’d pulled it into after her shower. She ran to the mirror and checked under her eyes for any smudges of mascara. She fluffed her hair and grabbed a lip balm, smearing some over her lips, before rushing back to the door. She took a calming breath and then slowly opened the door.

  Ryker had just started to walk away, but turned back when he heard the door open. The sight of him made her breathless. The thick fringe of eyelashes highlighted the blue of his eyes. The fullness of his mouth made her want to bite his lower lip. The tattoos and piercings gave him a hint of danger.

  “Oh, hey,” he said. “I’d almost given up on you.”

  “Sorry. I was working. I tend to block out the outside world when I’m lost in a project.” She glanced down at the paper bag in his hands. Tantalizing scents wafted from the opening. “What are you doing here?”

  He lifted the bag up as explanation. “I figured if you didn’t want to go out to dinner, I would bring dinner to you.”

  She blinked in surprise. “You did?”

  He approached, and his form suddenly seemed imposing. “I want to have dinner with you. I don’t usually take no for answer.”