I can’t catch my breath and for a dizzying instant I think maybe he was right. Maybe I should have been resting instead of trying to fuck him like a crazy person.
But he’s here, too. He’s rocking his hips up to meet mine again. He’s pushing himself up on one elbow so he can kiss me while he also braces me with his body.
I didn’t know I could feel the wound until he does this, and then it’s too late to feel anything but his release.
It takes him over. His thighs bunch underneath mine and he tips his head back, looking up toward salvation or just the ceiling. I graze my teeth over the line of his jaw and he turns into the touch. I’m still so hot for him, so wet I can hear it. Hear the low, soft grunts he makes as he comes. Hear the relief in his voice that he’s worked so hard to hide from me.
When it’s over he puts a hand to the back of my head and folds me into his shoulder, easing us both down to the cot. My skin hums. I could be in a field of bees, only I’m not, I’m in the basement of an abandoned church with one Elijah North taking up all the room on this narrow bed. Fine with me. Fine. His hard body feels like it’s keeping the blood inside my skin. The bullet wound hurts, but it’s a faraway pain, like it can’t quite touch me.
Elijah reaches for the table next to the bed and something drops onto the floor with a plastic clatter. He doesn’t move away from me to pick it up, only reaches for another bottle.
Those damned painkillers.
I’m too high from the sex to argue with him when he puts one on my tongue. I’m too high to do anything but sip water from the bottle he offers.
It kicks in fast. I have just enough time to sling an arm over his chest.
Stay, I mean to tell him. There are other things I want to tell him, too, so much I have to say.
Too late.
Sleep closes in.
8
Adam
London’s apartment raises more questions than it answers.
Questions are easy to come by, here on the couch, listening to the unsteady rumble of traffic out on the street.
Most people’s apartments—or houses or dungeons—give away lots of information about them. People tell their whole life story in what they keep and what they throw away. But I find I have a particular interest in my surroundings. This is because of my particular interest in London Frank. Particular interest is an understatement of the kind that makes me laugh out loud, even when I’m alone in a silent apartment.
And I am alone in a silent apartment. Her silent apartment.
It’s been days. Long enough for London to go running to her authority of choice and tell them that I, Adam Bisset, have taken up residence on the hand-me-down couch in her one-bedroom apartment. It’s an option that’s open to her. Then again, it would implicate her, too.
And London Frank can’t afford to be implicated.
If I were a good man, I would disappear right now, before she returns from her shopping. I would disappear and I would lose myself on the opposite side of the planet.
Naturally, disappearing comes with its own set of risks. If I disappear, there will be no one here when they come for her. Someone will always come for London Frank.
How could they not?
I couldn’t help myself. I knew damn well that I shouldn’t come here, and yet I did.
And there is the thing I can hardly admit even in the privacy of my own thoughts.
I don’t want to disappear.
I’ve spent a lifetime in the shadowy spaces between where real people eat and fuck and get married. London lives in the light. If it were possible to be there with her...
London has been gone fifteen minutes when I tire of lying on the couch, staring up at the old plastered ceiling. The bullet that tried for my life didn’t hit anything too important, and I took it out before any major infection set in. It would have been more dramatic to die. Ah, well. Now I have the opportunity to go through her things.
The main room is a kitchen and living room in one. It’s not terrible, for New York City real estate—close but not cramped. The appliances are old but scrubbed clean.
Either she cares a lot about kitchen maintenance or she barely eats here.
The refrigerator speaks to the latter. London has three bottles of strawberry-infused water, half a bag of baby carrots, and a takeout container of unknown origin.
She came home the other night smelling like a coffee shop, so she must eat there—or somewhere else. I can picture her a hundred places in the city, feet wrapped around the rungs of a barstool, neon lights in her hair.
I can’t picture her standing over the stove, stirring a pot of noodles. She does have noodles, two boxes in a slim cupboard above the fridge.
Oh—traveling. She would have been traveling before for her work as an influencer.
But she’s not traveling now. How could she, really? Posting her face all over a public profile would bring the NSA running faster than she could count to ten.
So could my presence here.
It’s a toss-up.
The living room doesn’t offer much in the way of new things to look at. There’s the couch and the crocheted blanket I’ve been sleeping under. A television on an IKEA stand, with a fake potted plant perched nearby. I’ve been in here for days. I know every leaf on that plant.
I pass by the bathroom in the narrow hall separating Holly’s bedroom from the rest of the space. Her medicine cabinet is practically bare. A bottle of Tylenol—that’s it. No prescriptions. I searched the medicine cabinet the last time she went shopping, hoping for something stronger.
Nothing.
The one place I haven’t been is London’s bedroom.
The door’s open when I get there. Open wide. It’s almost flat against the inner wall, so I can lean against the doorframe and look in. I’ve assessed hundreds of rooms over the course of my career. None of them have made my hair stand on end. Not like this.
At first glance there’s nothing out of the ordinary. A full-size mattress with a rumpled white comforter sits close to one wall, with just enough room on the side for a person of London’s size to squeeze past. A slim end table holds up a nondescript lamp. The closet space isn’t anything to write home about—a long closet set into one wall. Shallow. So shallow it can’t hold all of London’s clothes, which are stacked on the floor, bursting at the seams. This is the first hint of her former influencer life.
She has a wardrobe.
But it doesn’t look like it’s recently been in use. The hamper wedged into a corner of the closet only has a few items at the bottom. She hasn’t been changing in and out of various looks for photoshoots. I would be shocked to discover she’s been sneaking out to take photos. It wouldn’t be much of a travel shoot for London.
So there are the clothes.
And then there is the shelf.
It’s one shelf, also IKEA-chic, snugged up in a space below the narrow window at the front of the room. The window looks down over a New York City street as nondescript as anywhere else. That doesn’t mean it’s safe. That doesn’t mean they won’t find us. But that’s old information. What interests me is the contents of the shelf.
The top two squares are filled with records.
Records leaning against each other in a tilted slope toward the left side. On top of the shelf, in a place of prominence, is a blush pink record player. This, at least, looks perfect for an Instagram shoot. Something sent to her by a company that wanted her influence, no doubt. Women like London get this kind of thing all the time. That’s why they go into careers on social media, or at least side jobs there.