Crowne Rules

by Reiss, CD

  “Thank you.” My eyes were drooping, and my limbs were made of cast iron. “Hey…” I added as if starting a conversation I didn’t have the energy to finish.

  “Yes, ‘hey’?” With a deft touch that almost relaxed me right into unconsciousness, he brushed a lock of hair from my forehead.

  I was too tired to object or remind myself that I wasn’t supposed to accept or give bonus affection. “The Veronica Hawkins on the tapes. Didn’t she die in an accident? In like, 2000-something?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew her son, Caleb, in high school.” And I let him break my heart repeatedly for years.

  Dante didn’t need to know that.

  “He went to Harvard-Westlake with Samantha,” I injected before he could say anything.

  “Your sister?”

  Dante had plucked my sister from the statement, leaving Veronica Hawkins’s devastated son behind.

  “My dead sister.” I added the word because if Dante wouldn’t hurt me with indifference or carelessness, I needed to do it myself, and nothing cut me deeper than Samantha’s suicide.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It was forever ago.”

  “Death is the only forever that matters.”

  “Is it?”

  He kissed my forehead. “Good night, bona.”

  When he shut off the light by the bed, the room went completely dark. I couldn’t let it go. It was better than Amanda, but I’d told him what I wanted to be called and he had picked something entirely different rather than use it.

  “What’s that mean?”

  I knew how Aileen had translated it, but that didn’t tell me what he meant.

  “It’s Latin, and it means you’re mine.”

  For a moment, that made me happy, and in the next moment, I hated how it made me feel worth no more than a second-string name, then I hated that I even cared.

  I was doing the thing I always did. I was setting a straight edge between a nickname and a point in the future where I cried over him and scoring it into my life.

  Me first. I had to decide what was important to me and score those lines instead of letting a man draw himself on my choices.

  By the time Dante clicked the desk light on, I’d decided against fighting a battle over what he said and did.

  “Whatever,” I muttered.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  He exited through the bathroom, closing the door and leaving me alone with the desk lamp on and the light patter of a rainstorm that seemed to go on forever.

  Chapter 16

  MANDY

  When the rain went from white noise to a steady pound outside, I stirred from a dream, then reentered it.

  The desk light was off.

  Samantha was in the room, post-suicide. Her clothes dripped, and she smelled of chlorine. Even though—in reality—she hadn’t been floating in the pool long enough to bloat, her skin was red and black in the creases, thinned and ready to split open. But when she smiled, she was beautiful.

  “You look good,” she said, and I believed her.

  You look terrible.

  I couldn’t actually talk in the dream.

  “You look strong as a triple stitch,” she said, recalling the days we’d sewn together.

  The sound of her dripping clothes got louder.

  “Strong as a house.”

  The drip from her sleeve went plup-plup-PLUP.

  “Strong as a man.”

  How strong is that?

  I still couldn’t talk, but she smiled as if she’d heard me. She didn’t answer, but I heard her.

  Strong enough to carry you if he’s strong enough to want to.

  Plup-plup-PLUP.

  I woke.

  The desk lamp was on.

  My sister was gone, but the dripping continued. I followed the sound to the center of the room, where a puddle had formed.

  The ceiling was leaking, forming little water crowns as the drops fell.

  Peering between the drapes, I checked the lights in Dante’s room. They were out.

  Strong enough to carry you if he’s strong enough to want to.

  She said I looked strong as a man who was strong enough to carry me if he was strong enough to want to.

  Meaning I could carry myself if I only wanted to.

  It was two in the morning. Nothing could be done, and late-night shows of vulnerability were unnecessary. I could carry myself.

  I pulled the garbage pail from under the desk, dumped the crumpled balls, and set it under the leak. The plups turned to plinks, keeping me in a half sleep for too long.

  Samantha did not reappear.

  * * *

  When I woke, the desk light was off for real. Dante must have come in to shut it off.

  The weather had turned noncommittal. Gray light filtered in through the windows, and a beam of sunlight cast a stripe of light on the wood floor. The leak plinked weakly, and when I got out of bed, the shaft of sunlight disappeared into shadow as if the clouds had decided that was quite enough of a tease.

  When I was done with the morning’s bathroom business, I peeked into Dante’s room. The bed was neatly made, and the curtains were open, but he wasn’t there. If he’d had a restless night, there was no sign of it.

  At eight in the morning, the water in the teapot was cold, so I started a fresh boil and rinsed out the press.

  As I pulled out a mug, I heard clops and thwacks and scrapes I didn’t recognize from outside. That must have been him. We’d have to talk about last night eventually, even if to reiterate that we’d had an entertaining hayride but we didn’t have to buy the hay.

  Outside, the air was misty with a bite of salt, and the ocean crashed somewhere far away. Wet branches hung overhead, and mud squished underfoot. Birds chirped like a chorus coming together after a long hiatus.

  There was another sound too, regular and rhythmic—a hup, a crack, the rustle of something falling.

  Following the sound around the bend of the driveway to where it ended just behind the house, I found the back of the property, where the bare concrete patio jutted out into spotty grass that extended to a stand of tall, dark trees.

  It was easy to imagine an awning stretching over the fully furnished patio, between the Crowne family and the summer sun—the scent of smoked meat mingling with expensive perfume, everyone drinking rosé champagne in the sunshine. A small pool was closed over, another reminder that we were alone in a place no one wanted to be in winter.

  Hup. Crack. Clop.

  Beyond the pool was a woodpile, and next to it was Dante, axe in hand, chopping logs.

  His T-shirt was sweat-soaked and clingy, half-untucked from his jeans. His face was flushed and ruddy—nothing like the buttoned-up society boy I knew in LA, always slicked into a suit, sitting behind the wheel of something shiny. Instead, he was putting all those gym-toned muscles to use—as if he knew exactly what he was doing with his body.

  Which I knew now he definitely did. I shivered…and not from the chill.

  He noticed me watching as he placed the next log on the stump, ready to be split. “It’s going to get cold tonight.”

  I took my hand off my coffee cup long enough to wave. It was cold already, and I was about to go back inside, but when he hefted the axe, I wanted to see him finish the job. His body extended, arced, and brought the force down with a thwack. The wood cleaved in two parts that spilled over each side.

  “Don’t want to waste the propane.” He leaned the axe against the stump and picked up the pieces.

  Well, good, then. At least we were on the same page about acting normal. We were just two people who’d kind of had sex with each other. No big deal.

  “I was just seeing where the noise was coming from,” I said.

  He tossed the smaller logs onto the pile. “You want to give it a try?”

  “Chopping wood?”

  “No,” he said, reaching for another big log. “Roller skating.”

  When he picked up the wood,
the muscles in his arms bulged and flexed, and I thought, I’d rather watch you do it.

  “I have work to do,” I reminded him. I didn’t need to stand around and get myself worked up for no reason. “Thanks for the offer.”

  “It can wait.”

  He motioned for me to join him. I shook my head. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself—there was no way I was strong enough—but I had to admit it was a little bit appealing, at least compared to going back to my room and spending the afternoon listening to other people’s boring conversations.

  “I’m not going to be good at it.” I put my cup on top of the wall around the patio.

  Dante stepped away from the stump as if he wasn’t going to acknowledge my refusal. I heaved a sigh and walked over to where he was standing.

  “Gotta be better at this than typing,” he said.

  “Do I get punished if I do it wrong?”

  He handed me the axe by the handle. “Do you want to be?”

  I took the axe. It was as heavy as I expected and twice as awkward. The handle’s wood was smooth, but if after fifteen minutes it didn’t cause as many blisters as cheap shoes, I’d eat the shoes and the box they came in. “This is punishment enough.”

  “Over your shoulder,” he said, tapping mine. “Then it’s halfway there.”

  I had to bend my knees a little, but I got the blade to rest on my shoulder

  “Okay.” I was resigned to failure, but I might as well do what I said I’d do.

  Dante made sure the wood was vertically stable, then stepped away. “Aim for the middle.”

  Picking the blade off my shoulder as much as I could, I heaved it forward and down, missing entirely, embedding the edge in the stump. I let go of the handle and let the blade stand straight up in the stump.

  “I did it!” I cried in victory. “I saved that helpless log!”

  Dante laughed. “Well done.”

  “High fives!” Two hands splayed and raised, I expected him to leave me hanging, but he actually returned the high ten with a smile that was so close to relaxed and normal I froze when our hands were against each other.

  Maybe the brightness of the light made him seem more approachable. Or maybe it was the night before. Or not caring what he thought.

  Maybe something had happened to make his eyes seem less cold and icy and more clear.

  Maybe all of those things, but it didn’t matter, and that wasn’t a maybe.

  I snapped my hands away, and he broke eye contact.

  “Now,” Dante said, bracing his foot against the stump to jerk the axe free. “It’s time to murder this thing.”

  He extended the handle in my direction. I didn’t take it.

  “I’m not prairie enough for this.”

  He pulled back the handle. “Let me show you.”

  No demonstration would make me strong or coordinated enough for this job, but if he wanted me to watch his body a little while longer, I could accommodate him.

  Instead of picking up the axe himself, he swung his hand for me to get back into place.

  Fine. Whatever. This was better than sitting in that uncomfortable chair, trying to work the antique typewriter and tape machine at the same time.

  He placed the blade over my shoulder, then—keeping his hand on the blade so I didn’t chop off his face—he stood behind me on the other side, pressing his body gently against mine. He was ferociously warm all over. After last night’s release, I’d hoped being around him today would be a little easier, but instead I couldn’t stop remembering how good his fingers had felt inside me, how expertly they’d manipulated me, and how I’d called myself things I never thought I would.

  “You don’t have to come up with excuses to touch me, you know,” I said.

  “As you come down, let the weight of the blade do the work.”

  “You’re making it”—I pressed my ass against him, a small thrill going through me when I felt the stir of his interest—“hard.”

  “Concentrate.”

  I looked over my shoulder. His mouth was close enough to kiss.

  “You started it.”

  “Concentrate, Amanda,” he breathed in my ear. “Commit to splitting it.”

  “Maybe I have commitment issues.”

  “The log doesn’t know that.”

  He put his hands over mine, and together we pulled the axe up, and I let it fall. The wood split with a sigh and fell. Easy, as though it was nothing.

  I stepped out of Dante’s arms. He plucked up another log and placed it on the stump.

  As far as I was concerned, he’d proved his point, and good for him. I didn’t feel any more sure of myself though. In fact, I felt rattled. I was supposed to be in charge here—but the things I felt, wrapped in his embrace, were not the kinds of things I wanted to feel for him—or anyone ever again.

  “On your own this time,” Dante said.

  I shook my head, not quite trusting my voice.

  “You’re here because you promised to do what I told you,” he reminded me. “That’s the rule. So, I’m telling you. Split it.”

  Okay. Fine. All I had to do was commit, right? Let it fall the way I had with him behind me.

  “Here’s a rule.” I got the axe up. “You can’t boss me unless your dick’s in my mouth.”

  As I brought it down, he said, “What about your ass?”

  The axe got stuck halfway through the log.

  “Not cool!”

  He shooed me aside so he could pull it out, leveraging his boot against the log and yanking the handle. “You’re hesitating.”

  “You’re cheating.” I grabbed the axe.

  “How?” He aligned the log vertically with the half-split side down.

  “Saying stuff like that while I’m trying to chop wood.”

  “‘Stuff like that’? Are you in middle school? Anal sex makes you giggle?”

  “I have the axe, Dante. Don’t fuck with me.”

  “Did Renaldo fuck you in the ass because his wife wouldn’t let him?”

  And that was the last straw. I wanted to take the axe to his head, but I’d already disgraced myself enough for one week, so instead I brought it down on the log. It split as easily as it had when Dante was wrapped around me. Each side tumbled onto the grass with a soft hush.

  I felt my cheeks turning pink and sweat prickling the edge of my hairline. I was breathing hard, but I’d done it.

  “Attagirl,” he said.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “And yes,” I admitted. “Renaldo’s wife wouldn’t let him fuck her in the ass or anywhere, if you want to know. Not that it’s an excuse for letting him fuck me, but I did, and you don’t know the whole story.”

  “I’m not judging you, Amanda.”

  “That’s. Not. My. Name.” I leaned against the axe as if I’d been at the woodpile all day. “And it’s not bona either. That’s Paula Harris’s name. My name is Mandy, and it’s fine you’re not judging me, because I’m judging myself all the time.”

  I had no guilt about coming between Renaldo and Tatiana. Falling in love with a man who couldn’t find it in himself to love me back was the cause of all my shame.

  “Okay.” He reached for the axe, and I took my weight off it. “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  He put a log on the stump and stepped back, spreading his legs before throwing the blade over his shoulder. “I was in love with a married woman.”

  He brought the blade down with a thwap and a crack, and a final sigh, collecting the pieces without looking at me. He understood being in love with a married person, not using that person as a weapon against your confidence.

  “Veronica Hawkins.”

  “Wait,” I said. “She died when we were…”

  Kids? Adolescents? Stupid?

  Too young for Caleb’s mom?

  He set up another log while I tried to make sense of the math.

  “She did.” Thwap. No crack. No sigh. He’d missed.

&n
bsp; “How old—”

  “Sixteen.”

  “—was she?”

  By the time I’d finished my sentence, his interruption had answered the same question from a different angle.

  “You can hardly be held responsible for that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “You were a kid. She was in her, what? Forties?”

  He smirked and shook his head before he reared back again, as if he was responding to a long conversation with himself.

  “Old enough to get it up,” he said before unleashing the blade. He didn’t miss this time. “Is old enough to stand down. That’s what my father said when he found out.”

  After throwing the pieces onto the growing pile, he stood pensive and still.

  “Is that what these tapes are about?” I asked.

  He snapped out of whatever reverie he’d been caught in and glanced at the sky as if he was telling the time. “You’d better get back to it.”

  I realized I’d forgotten all about the ceiling and the plink-plink in the wastebasket. “Oh shit, I meant to tell you. There’s a leak in my bedroom.”

  “Since I was there?”

  “Since you had your dick in my mouth? Yes, Dante. Time existed between then and now.”

  Like two people with the same thought, we walked back to the house together.

  “Not for me,” he said with a casual smile, as if the sentiment was normal and acceptable and not something that would shatter me if I let myself believe it.

  “I put the trash can under it,” I said when we were in the kitchen. “But obviously that’s not the same as fixing it. And before you say another word.” I stopped outside the bedroom, and he stopped with me. “What happened? With us? It was fun, and I’d do it again, but I’m not interested in a whole thing.”

  “You said that already.” He crossed his arms while a torture-slow plink-plink came from the other side of the door. “So, maybe you tell me what you mean by a ‘thing’?”

  “A thing.”

  “Use more words.”

  I knew two ways to explain what he should have understood right off the bat. The first way involved me telling him I was coming off a breakup and wasn’t interested in getting tied to anyone right now.