Audition

by Skye Warren

  I’m seized by the powerful urge to take her hand in mine and trace the line of her palm. See? That lifeline is already longer, you pretty little fool. I’m keeping you alive. Instead I gesture toward the grand staircase. “Upstairs.”

  She follows me up each step, footfalls so soft I can barely hear them. My vision sharpens as we reach the top landing. I try not to make the baseline assumption that my home is safe. That’s the kind of complacency that will get you killed. But there’s nothing in the hall to suggest that anything is out of the ordinary.

  Only Bethany.

  I lead her toward the back of the house and into the master suite. The sitting area is quiet, peaceful. A fire burns in the grate. I have it low enough so the temperature remains comfortable. A set of wide double doors stands open, revealing a bed with white sheets and a fluffy white bedspread.

  “This is nice,” Bethany says on an exhale that almost, almost, becomes a sigh.

  “Nicer than that shithole you came from. And there’s no need to keep the windows open. They sprang for central air conditioning and everything.”

  Her glance is a slice. A little cut. “You seem personally offended by my apartment.”

  “I’m personally offended by your total disregard for your own safety. Especially while you’re getting threats. Coming here is the first good decision you’ve made.”

  She lets out a short laugh. “I wouldn’t call it a good decision.”

  “Better than staying there, where anyone can reach you. When did you start getting the letters? Why didn’t you at least call Liam when you got it?”

  Bethany blinks at the abrupt change in topic, but I need to focus on something other than the way she looks in her heather-gray hoodie and leggings. Best to focus on the job at hand. Which is not, unfortunately, stripping that hoodie off to reveal soft, brown skin. “The letters are personal,” she says flatly. “I told you that.”

  “And I told you that was bullshit.”

  A slight narrowing of her eyes. “They are personal.” The fire in her eyes burns low in my belly. “And you’re overreacting anyway. They’re nothing.”

  “I’m not sure you’re the best judge of that.”

  Bethany’s eyes flick away, her breasts rising underneath the hoodie. Her grip tightens on the bag slung over her shoulder. It’s ripped. Frayed. Ancient. “And what makes you a better judge? The fact that you got a job at North Security?”

  “The fact that I’m head of operations at North Security, more like. I’m not some grunt who needs to kiss the boss’s ass.”

  The hint of a smile chases across her lips and disappears. “Don’t pretend that protecting me is going to impress anybody else.”

  “It should, since you’re making it a damn nightmare.”

  “Have you seen the stuff Samantha gets?” she demands, referring to the world-class violinist my brother’s with. “You stand on a stage, people are going to have an opinion about that. If I was worried about what some nutjob thinks, I could never put on my ballet shoes. Is that what you want?”

  There’s a pang in my chest. It’s where a heart would be, if I had one. We go to battle every day, but we have guns and knives and armor. She has cardboard soles and silk ribbons. She goes to battle every day armed with absolutely nothing.

  Bethany stretches her arms over her head. This has the effect of making the hoodie rise until I can see a line of brown flesh. My palms ache to touch it. To run my fingertips over it. To push up the shirt underneath the hoodie until every last bit of her is open to the air. Open to me. But I don’t. Instead, I watch her fake a yawn.

  Message received. “Sleep if you want.”

  She drops her arms to her sides, eyes searching mine. “You don’t go to bed this early.”

  “If you think I’m going to bed, sweetheart, you’re sorely mistaken.”

  “Where are you going to be, then?” Her voice is shaky, as if I might crawl into bed with her. Maybe demand payment for my protection with her pretty little body.

  I gesture to the sofa. “Right here.”

  “All night?”

  “All night.” There are extra bedrooms upstairs. Sometimes Liam and Samantha use them when they visit. It’s more comfortable here than the official North Security safe house. There’s no way I’d be on a different floor from Bethany. I’m not even going to be more than fifteen feet from her. I’m right outside the door, in this parlor outside the bedroom, like an overmuscled guard dog keeping intruders away.

  She gives me a long look. I expect more arguments, so it’s a surprise when she turns to flit into the bedroom, light on her feet. My heart thrashes against my rib cage. It wants to follow her. The last blaze of the sunset burns itself out against the windowpanes, and I sit on the sofa.

  Every sound hangs against the backdrop of her, in my space. Running the water in the bathroom. On, off, on, and then off again. Is she naked? I’m imagining the strong, subtle curves of her body, sleek muscle beneath dark skin, the dusky color of her nipples and her pussy. Why can’t I stop fucking thinking about it? The soft click of the doors shutting behind me.

  A subtle creak when she climbs into bed.

  My sheets are going to smell like her. I may never wash them again, even when she leaves. Because if there’s one thing that’s certain in all this, it’s that she’ll leave. Once the letters are taken care of, once I’ve pissed her off enough.

  I listen to my own heart slowing into a steady rhythm. To the house settling on its foundation. The high call of a Mississippi kite soaring overhead outside. The air is heavy with her presence. It makes no sense. She’s too light to weigh on me this much. She probably weighs a hundred and fifteen pounds soaking wet. But every breath she takes shifts the air in the house. It’s like the tide.

  Only twenty minutes have passed when I hear the whisper of her feet on the carpet. The moon hangs in the great oak tree. Shadows cover me like a goddamn blanket.

  Bethany’s voice is tentative, as if she’s afraid to wake me. “Josh?”

  I shift my body on the sofa. “Yeah?”

  “I can’t fall asleep.” She says this in the same tone that she used to announce that she had to pee last night at her apartment. The matter-of-factness makes my heart ache. “I thought I’d sit out here. If…that’s okay.”

  “I never took you for the type to ask permission.” Christ. I could have said of course, that’s fine. Come sit here. I’ll go. I’ll stay. Whatever you need. But instead I throw my arm over the back of the sofa. “Not like I was sleeping, either.”

  The sofa bows underneath her when she sits, tucking one leg up and letting the other one dangle. Her toes brush against the carpet. The flames in the fireplace, steady and strong, are echoed in her eyes. Silence draws itself over us like a throw blanket. Bethany lets it come down. After a minute she shrugs it off with a deep breath. “I didn’t picture you living in a house like this. I thought it would be…” She searches for the next word on the ceiling. “Less nice.”

  I huff a laugh. “To match my dead, withered soul? You know better than that.” Her brother loved the finer things in life, too. In the end that’s what made him vulnerable. He wanted more than men like us could ever have.

  “I do,” she admits softly, not looking at me.

  The question fights its way past my lips in spite of every instinct screaming that to ask it is to admit to some…connection…with Bethany. Some intimacy. A past. “Why? Why did you ask me to spare him, knowing what he did?”

  Her expression looks stricken. She turns to her lap for answers. “I didn’t think we were going to talk about that. Not ever again, honestly.”

  “It would be easier that way,” I admit, turning toward her, closing the space between us on the sofa. Every breath is laced with her scent. “Sometimes I don’t pick the easy route. Sometimes I’m fucking allergic to it.”

  The flinch tells me I’ve hit a nerve. “Yeah,” she says on a sudden gust of breath. “Yeah, me too. It’s almost scary when things are too peaceful.�
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  My heart ricochets across my chest. “I know the feeling.”

  The silence stretches out and then compresses, thickening by the second. When Bethany speaks, it’s a terrible relief. “When I was six years old, my dad came home. Drunk.” The fire flickers in her brown eyes. “He came after me. He started raving about how I was just like my mom, and how I’d turn out like her, how he’d kill me before he let me do that. I was so scared and…I thought that was it. I thought I would die that night.”

  I dig my nails into my palms. Motherfucker.

  Bethany clears her throat. “Caleb was only twelve and he wasn’t—he wasn’t like he is now. Not that strong. Not that ruthless. But he stood up to our dad. He protected me. In the process…” Her voice has taken on a wooden tone. “In the process my dad fell and hit his head.”

  “What happened?” I ask the question to break the new silence before it digs in and swallows us both. And I ask it because I have the sense I know what’s coming.

  Why Bethany still loved her brother. Why she asked me to do the impossible.

  And why, for some reason, I actually did it.

  My skin hums with the electricity of anticipation. Memories, one after the other. Her face, desperate and flushed. The way she said, please. And the way I said, I wanted to fuck you. That’s it. Tears she wouldn’t let fall in the corners of her eyes.

  “It happened so fast. One minute he was hollering, and the next minute he was lying there, bleeding into the grass, not moving.”

  Fuck. “He died.”

  “You don’t understand how scared we were, that Caleb would get sent away or locked up. We didn’t know if they’d understand that he didn’t mean to kill him—or if they’d even care. No one we knew trusted the cops.”

  She’s wrong about one thing. I do understand the fear. That’s something we have in common—an abusive father. No matter how much his fists hurt, I was more scared of the system, of the paperwork and the pity, of the wild unknown. My father was pain—and we understood pain very well.

  “What did you do?”

  “We covered it up. It took both of us to drag his body to the bayou behind our house. Pushed him in and left his fishing rod tangled in the weeds. Got our stories straight so when they principal came and took us out of class, we’d act surprised.”

  “No wonder you weren’t spooked by a few letters. You grew up with a monster.”

  “We fought him together. We killed him together. We covered it up together. You can’t do that with a person without tying a piece of your soul to them.” She twines her fingers through each other and drops her hands into her lap. “I owed him my life. I still do.”

  “You don’t owe him shit.”

  “That’s why I asked you to spare him. Not because he deserved it. I know he doesn’t. There’s nothing that can excuse what he’s done, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I keep thinking—what if that was the night that changed him? He could have grown up, gotten a law degree, become a CEO or something. Instead he became… a traitor. What if that night set him on that path?”

  “Do you know how insane that sounds? You aren’t responsible for his decision to steal weapons and sell them to the highest bidder.”

  “Don’t you ever feel guilt? Or is that too human for Joshua North? You just go around doing what you want and saying what you want with no consequences.”

  That’s how it should be. That’s how I pretend to be, but the truth is I feel guilt all the damn time. Guilt for leaving my younger brother. Guilt for wanting my older one to stay. We didn’t kill our father, but we had our own nights of hell. Nights he pushed us into the well. He didn’t throw down a rope until morning. I remember how my arms felt like jelly, but I held little Elijah out of the fetid water as long as I could. I remember how Liam sobbed from the ground, begging my father to let us out. You can’t do that with a person without tying a piece of your soul to them.

  Bethany and I had our own night of violence. I came to her covered in blood. She put herself into my debt with that favor. You can’t do that with a person and walk away unscathed. A piece of her soul is tied to a piece of mine.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The first record of dancing appears in an Eqyptian tomb dated about 3300 B.C. Dance has served many purposes throughout history, including entertainment, exercise, courtship, and worship in religious ceremonies.

  Bethany, present time

  Something dark flashes in Josh’s eyes at the mention of me owing my brother anything. Like he knows what that means. He probably does, which would explain the black lightning across his emerald eyes. It feels like he’s slammed down a gate in the air between us. Subtle shifts of his body turn him away from me. “You should get your beauty sleep.”

  My eyes burn, but I’m not sure if it’s from fatigue or the whiplash of this conversation. I’ve never once expected Joshua North to be anything less than an arrogant asshole, cocky to the end. But I thought I felt him leaning into me as we spoke. Like the barbs in our words held no actual bite.

  He jerks his head over his shoulder, so handsome it cuts me to the quick. “I mean it. Rest up for tomorrow.”

  My heart beats lightly, a hummingbird trapped in a cage. “Tomorrow will be like every other day.”

  His smirk wounds as much from its hard beauty as anything else. “Tomorrow, everything changes. You’re with me now. And if you think I’m going to let you dangle yourself in front of all the fuckfaces of the world like a pretty prize, you’re kidding yourself.” With these last words he stands, his muscled frame silhouetted against the fire. He wears a white T-shirt over slacks I know are designed to conceal weapons. The pants skim the line of his hips in a sensual touch. I want to leap up and hook my hands under his elbow, using the graceful swing of my weight to pull him back down next to me. But of course I won’t do that.

  And maybe it’s only the power of suggestion, but a certain tiredness comes over my muscles now. A heaviness. I leave him standing in the sitting area and pad back to the massive bed alone. I take a deep breath, like I’m waiting in the wings for the first strains of music to pull my arms and legs, like I’m held up by string. That’s how it feels when I climb into bed, as if someone else does the heavy lifting.

  Joshua North’s sheets have to have a thread count in the thousands. They feel like silk against my skin compared to the secondhand set I got for the ratty twin mattress in my apartment. The pillowcase is very nearly silky enough to assuage my regrets about not bringing my own pillowcase, which was the one semi-expensive item of all my bedding, and absolutely necessary. I don’t have the faintest clue what the protocol is in this situation. Do I leave him a note on the bedside table? If you’re going to keep me prisoner, I need a pillowcase that won’t fuck with my hair.

  The bigger problem, of course, is that his bed smells like him. Like electricity and man and a stiff breeze.

  As much as it pains me to admit it, he’s right—I should get some sleep. But the moment my head hits the pillow, the reel of my memories begins. All of them suffused with his scent. With the ragged beating of my heart. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to guide my thoughts away from that night. I’ve tried so hard to forget it over the years, but the memory refuses to be anything less than crystal clear. That’s what I get for talking about my father again.

  He was so angry. That’s the one part I can’t get straight in my mind. What was he angry about? In the end it didn’t matter, but the scared little girl in me can’t stop wondering what I did wrong. I only knew that the way his face twisted and reddened meant something very, very bad. One foot stomped the floor, his hand slapped the kitchen counter, a macabre dance.

  Give in and it’ll be over quicker. It’s what I thought then, and here I am, doing the same thing all this time later. Squeezing my eyes shut. Hoping for it to be over. Tasting the bitter acid at the back of my throat.

  Back then I didn’t see where Caleb came from. I heard him—I heard everything. The strangled sound
he made as he threw himself between my father and me. My eyes snapped open in time to see him bury his fists in my father’s shirt. My father’s weight should have been too much for my brother, but he was drunk. Wasted. And he teetered. He leaned far to the right, swiping at Caleb. The set of my brother’s shoulders looked like a man’s, but he was young, his shoulder blades fine like a bird’s wings.

  How did it happen? It happened like this—Caleb let go of our father’s shirt. And because of the alcohol raging in our father’s veins, he didn’t fall backward, or sit down hard. His feet tangled underneath him, and he fell to the side. So many moments in our lives are decided by mere inches. A finger length can mean the difference between a solid landing and a broken ankle. Or a broken skull.

  The crack of his head against the brick has me reaching for the blankets. So many years later, and I can still hear it as clearly as if it’s happening here in the room. I pull the sheets tight without thinking. I’m covered in the scent of Josh’s skin.

  Caleb’s face, stricken in the dingy yellow light of the kitchen. His mouth in a horrified grimace. The darkness pooling beneath my father’s body.

  But this time—this time—the sheets pull me back out of the narrative and into a strange, pulsing desire.

  Because there are other memories. Memories I can’t chase away, not when I’m lying in his bed. The last thing I want is Joshua North. He’s too much like my brother—I know that. I know that. But the smell of him against my skin has heat curling through my belly. My skin tingles with the closeness of him. All that separates us is a few feet of empty air and an unlocked door. Once, he kissed the corner of my lips in a warehouse owned by my brother. His green eyes took in the lines of my body beneath my leotard, even then. Once, he bent to whisper a secret in my ear that made me feel like a grown-up instead of a child with my nose pressed to the window of a world I never wanted to be part of.

  Once, I saw him sleeping—defenseless.

  I traced the lines of his forehead and chased the dark thoughts away. He’s not sleeping now; I can feel it. Just like I can feel his skin under my fingertips still. And his mouth against mine. God, it could have gone so much further. Back then, I questioned it. I ran through scenarios in my mind. What would I do if Joshua North lowered me to the ground outside and peeled off my shorts? What would I do if my panties were next? I know the answers now. I would have let him.