“And nothing more,” she says firmly. “Especially since they only paid me attention when I was fat and a source of ridicule and an easy target, or when I was in shape and a source of lust. I couldn’t trust them.”
I tuck her head into my neck, kiss her temple, and murmur, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“What I said to you in the hospital. How I acted like what to do about a pregnancy was my choice, not yours.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Thank you.”
“Fuck, don’t thank me. I’m an idiot.”
A seagull flies low over the waves, his wingtips skimming the water. Another one makes a wide, lazy circle overhead, crying a lonely seabird cry.
Watching them, it dawns on me what a terrible thing I’ve done by bringing Sloane here. By making her my captive, then earning her trust. I’m like one of those clueless conservationists who think keeping a tiger in captivity is safer for it than living out in the wild.
A cage is no place for a wild thing, no matter how gilded the bars.
To make things worse, I keep demanding she tell me I can trust her. Like she really wants to make some fucked-up pledge of allegiance to the man who snatched her from a parking garage. Like that would make any kind of bloody sense!
How am I only just realizing this?
My voice rough, I say, “You told me you didn’t want me to keep you too long. Do you still feel that way?”
In her silence, I feel her attention sharpen. “Why?”
I have to swallow several times before I can force the words out. “I’ll take you home if you want me to.”
Her voice rises. “Take me home?”
“Let you go. Today, if that’s what you want.”
She exhales a hard little breath, full of disappointment. “See, I knew I shouldn’t have told you that story.”
“I’m not saying that because of the story. Ah, fuck, maybe I am. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I want you to know you always have a choice with me. A choice in everything. I haven’t demonstrated that so far. I don’t want to be like all the other men in your life. Taking. Hurting you. Letting you down.”
“No one’s hurt me in a long time,” she says quietly, her breath warm against my chest.
But you could.
She doesn’t say it, but I hear it all the same. She’s already told me as much. I’m caught again between wanting to do the right thing and wanting to do the selfish thing, which is keeping her by my side forever, no matter what she has to say about it.
I wish that last tiny shred of humanity inside me would just fucking die already. Things would be so much easier.
But I meant what I said. She has a choice. I’m a soulless Neanderthal, but for her, I’ll make an exception.
“I’ll take you back to New York if—”
“Say another word and lose your testicles.”
The anger’s back. I hear it in her voice, feel it in the new tension in her body. I like my balls where they are, so I only kiss her temple again and remain silent.
She does box breathing for a while. Eventually, the tension drains from her limbs. We lie together silently until I think she’s about to drift off to sleep.
Then my cell rings. It’s on the bathroom counter.
Sloane lifts her head and looks at me with big eyes. “Is that him?”
“I doubt Kazimir would call this soon. Stay here.”
I roll out of bed and cross to the bathroom. When I pick up the phone and look at the readout, it’s Kieran’s number I see.
I poke my head out the bathroom door, look at Sloane sitting up in bed, her eyes worried, and shake my head.
She collapses back against the mattress, releasing a big gust of air.
I answer Kieran’s call, then listen to him absently as I take a piss. He’s got logistics to go over. Plans that have to be made. A hundred different decisions await me, and it isn’t even seven a.m. yet.
Wanting to get back to bed as quickly as possible, I give him ten minutes of my time. I hang up, splash water on my face, brush my teeth, then head back into the bedroom, stopping short when I see the empty bed.
Sloane’s gone.
35
Sloane
I have no idea how long Declan will be on the phone. I can’t tell what he’s saying, either, because it’s all in Gaelic. So I decide I need some fresh air and get dressed.
When I walk out the bedroom door, he’s still in the bathroom, talking.
Ignoring my rumbling stomach as I pass through the kitchen, I pull open the glass door of the breakfast room and step outside. The air is brisk and fresh. Cold on my face, but not cold enough to send me back in. Wrapping my arms around myself, I walk over the patio and across the wide expanse of lawn until it gives way to sand.
At the end of the yard by the tall hedge of privets, Spider stands sentry.
Our eyes meet.
I raise a hand in greeting, then look away.
I haven’t spoken to him since the incident in the kitchen. I haven’t spoken to any of the men who prowl the grounds, not even when Declan was gone. I’ve stayed inside, locked out of sight, feeling foolish and angry with myself for what happened. That I risked their jobs and their pinkies like that. That I made them disobey orders because I was bored.
I wish it wasn’t in my nature to play with fire. I know the only thing that happens is that someone gets burned.
The sun is a distant ball on the horizon, shimmering pale as it rises above a restless sea. The ocean is choppy this morning. Dark and white-capped from the stiff onshore breeze.
I head straight toward the water.
I want to feel it on my toes. Feel how different it might be from the crystalline water of Lake Tahoe, the water I spent all my summers in from the time I learned how to swim at five years old. Water so pure, I could see all the way down to the bottom as I peered over the side of my dad’s little fishing boat.
Hopefully, the sea air will blow through my head and erase all these memories that are rising like ghosts from their graves since I told Declan my story.
The origin story of a warrior who doesn’t feel so strong anymore.
Is this what love is? Weakness? I felt so much more powerful before I ever set eyes on Declan’s face. Now I feel as raw and unsteady as a newborn foal.
Like I used to, all those years ago before I remade myself into something harder.
There’s a yacht moored far offshore. A sleek white thing, glinting in the sun like a newly minted coin. Several other smaller craft bob on the water down the coastline. A trio of sailboats flit over the waves to the south. North? I’m not sure which direction I’m facing. Now that I think of it, how do I know I’m really on Martha’s Vineyard at all?
My entire reality is based on what Declan has told me since he ripped me away from safe moorings in New York.
You could be anywhere. He drugged you, remember? You could be hallucinating all of this. You could be on the moon.
Exhausted, my heart as heavy as my legs, I walk over the rolling dunes down to where the sand is damp and firm underfoot. The sneakers I plucked from the closet are too nice to get wet, so I take them off and hold them as I meander down the beach. I dodge incoming waves as they crash and reach frothy fingers toward my feet.