Say My Name

by J. Kenner

"You have a star," he says, dragging his foot up so that he can rub his toes along my ankle and the small tattoo that has been there since high school. "And a lovely crescent moon."

  "Starlight Girls' Academy," I say.

  "I've heard of it. Beverly Hills, right?"

  "I managed to get a scholarship," I say. "I went there for my sophomore, junior, and senior years."

  "Boarding school," he says, and I hear the understanding in his voice.

  Starlight Girls' Academy is one of the most prestigious prep schools in Southern California, and the moment I learned that it offered full scholarships--with room and board--I'd killed myself to ace the entrance exams. My high school counselor had been astounded when I'd done well enough to be offered an interview--I'd nailed middle school, but I'd checked out my freshman year, doing only enough to get by and not making any close friends. But I'd been highly motivated, and I'd been bright and perky and social and witty during the interview.

  I'd been accepted, and I'd kicked academic ass in order to maintain my GPA and stay in the program.

  "I couldn't stay in my parents' house any longer," I admit, after I've told him the story. "So the tattoo was like a celebration. Me marking the transition. But the truth is I didn't fit in at Starlight, either." We wore uniforms during school hours, but had a great deal of freedom on weekends and holidays. Fashion and boys were the thing, and I wasn't interested in either. Instead, I hid behind boring clothes, never dated, and used to lie about having a skin condition so that I wouldn't have to wear makeup.

  "And your parents? They didn't realize what was going on?"

  "They had their hands full with my brother," I said. "I think they were a little relieved I wasn't in the house anymore. He was finally recovering and they didn't have to feel guilty about focusing all their parental attention on him." Not exactly the truth, but close enough.

  "And the rape? That was over? Or did it end when you went away to school?" I hear the tight control in his voice, so taut it is like a rubber band stretched almost to the breaking point.

  "Summer before my freshman year," I say. "It stopped then." I don't say why, and he doesn't ask. But I do pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders, then glance at his face only to find him looking back at me with a fierce intensity.

  "What?"

  "You're cold."

  "I'm fine."

  He shifts to a sitting position, then stands. I raise a brow. "More wine?"

  "No." He bends, then slides an arm under my legs and puts the other behind my back. I gasp as he lifts me, then cradles me against his chest.

  "Jackson, I'm fine. I like it out here."

  "I'll find you a castle with your starlight view," he says. "Right now you're cold."

  "I'm not," I say. "I have a blanket. I have you. I--" I stop, because I have tilted my head back and I see his face, and an odd mixture of ferocity and helplessness that makes my heart twist almost painfully. "Jackson?"

  "Please," he says. "Let me take care of you."

  I think of all that I have lived with--all that I have survived. I've had a lifetime to get used to it, and yet it still knocks me sideways. I just dumped it on him, and not even all of it. On a man who, despite everything, cares about me. And, despite my assurance to the contrary, fears that he somehow made it worse for me.

  "Yes," I say as I close my eyes and lean my cheek against his chest. "I am a little cold."

  He takes me back into the condo and through to the bedroom. Then very gently, he places me on the bed. "Under," he says, lifting the covers.

  I look over at him. Naked. Semi-erect. And in that moment I can think only that he is perfection come to life.

  I shake my head. "Nope. You wanted me warm, I think it's only fair that you warm me up, not pawn the job off on some blanket."

  He chuckles. "Do you? Well, I'm all about fairness." With his eyes never leaving mine, he crawls onto the bed, straddling me, then he kisses me long and hard and deep.

  "I think I like warming you up," he says as he sits up, kneeling over my waist so that his cock rests enticingly on my belly.

  I glance down, then lift my brow in question. "Do you want?"

  "Do I want what?"

  He knows what I'm offering, I'm certain of it. He just wants to hear me say it.

  "Do you want me to suck your cock?"

  His brow lifts, as if in surprise at my boldness. "Desperately," he says, as he reaches down to stroke my skin in a lazy pattern. "But right now, I just want to bury myself in you."

  "Oh," I say as he sweetly--so deliciously sweetly--eases inside me. I gasp in welcome and surprise, then move with him. Our movements are slow and sensual, but there is nothing gentle about my reaction. I'm rising up, buoyed by a web of dancing sparks and wild colors. He's taking me to the edge, bringing me to the pinnacle. And as my body clenches tight around him, drawing him in deeper, silently begging him to take me further, I once again find release in the arms of this man I have always wanted, and so desperately missed.

  When I feel as if I can move again, I roll sideways and glance at the clock. It is almost five. "We've stayed up the entire night."

  "Complaining?" He brushes a kiss over my lips, then sits up and stretches.

  "Nope." I move as well, but I don't sit up. Instead I raise my arms above my head and stretch luxuriously all the way from my fingers to my toes.

  "Hold that thought," he says as he trails a fingertip lightly up my leg. "I barely got started."

  "Started?"

  He traces a finger over the ribbon tattoo, then along the edge of the lock. And then, with the muscles of my belly tightening as he finger-walks up my torso, he bends to gently kiss the new flame that lights my breast. "I can't help but think I'm following a path. These. The moon on your ankle. All the rest."

  He's right, of course. And yet I say nothing.

  "Is this what you do?" he asks. "Your own kind of therapy?"

  "What?"

  "That's what you said," he reminds me. "I said you needed help. You said you had your own kind of therapy. Am I looking at it?"

  I lick my lips. He knows--obviously he understands--so why am I still so hesitant to admit it to him? "Why do you think that?" I swing my legs off the bed, then stand. My robe is still on the floor from the last time I wore it, and I bend to pick it up. I shove my arms through the sleeves and tie the sash tight around my waist.

  "I understand the concept of self-medicating," he says.

  I turn as he gets off the bed and walks to me, completely naked and not the least bit self-conscious. "How?" I ask, then realize I already know the answer. I brush my fingertip lightly over his knuckles as he reaches for the sash on my robe.

  "Jackson ..."

  "Yes," he says, but whether he's referring to my unspoken question or the unfastening of my robe, I do not know. He lifts his hands, then eases the robe off my shoulders so it falls to the floor and I am standing naked before him.

  Slowly, almost reverently, he looks over my front. His fingertip grazes the two tattoos on the swell of my right breast. The new flame and a much older female symbol twined with a rose. Then he moves lower, gently running his fingertip along the red ribbon design that has been there since before Atlanta.

  "You told me this was just a random design," Jackson says. "Now tell me the truth."

  The truth.

  The thought makes me shiver, and I know that I am not ready to go there yet. Not completely. And yet I don't want to run from the question or the man. On the contrary, I want to move in closer. I want to feel his arms around me, and I want to get lost, safe in the warmth that is Jackson.

  And so I tell him. The core of it, at least. "They're triumphs," I say. "Reminders, anyway."

  "I see." He steps closer, then slides his hand around my waist until his palm is pressed flat over the intertwined J and S that are inked on my lower back. "And this? Does this mark a triumph, too?"

  "No." The word is raw, pushed out past a wall of emotion. "No," I say, "that one is a memory
." I draw in a breath for courage and then meet his eyes. "It's the only part of you I could take with me, and I didn't want to ever be without it."

  For a moment, he just looks at me. Then he pulls me close and kisses me hard. He scoops me up and carries me back to the bed, then gathers me close. "I found you curled up in the bathroom, and you wouldn't let me help you."

  "I'm sorry." My voice is small, and I hate that I did that to him. Because he's right. I'd been freaked and scared and I'd wanted only to get out of there.

  "You wouldn't tell me anything. You just said that I had to do something for you. You said it was important."

  I swallow. "It was." I blink, wishing desperately that I could cry. "I had to ask you to leave. It couldn't be me who left. You would have followed me."

  A muscle in his cheek twitches. "Christ, Syl. We've wasted a lot of time."

  "No," I say, and I can see the surprise on his face. "I had to make you leave. I couldn't handle it." I draw in a shaky breath as I try to gather my courage. "I'm scared, Jackson. This," I say, gesturing between the two of us. "What if it is a mistake?"

  "It's not."

  "You don't know that. No," I say when I see that he is about to interrupt. "I let myself go with you once, and I regretted it. I lost control when I shouldn't have lost control. I was overwhelmed. There was--is--this intensity between us, and it was too much, because it just got all tied up with everything."

  I'm talking fast, the words spilling out, and I'm not sure he understands because I'm not sure I understand myself. "I felt unanchored, and then I felt stupid because I knew I shouldn't have opened that door in the first place. I should have never left the pandas. And then it built and built until the nightmares came. The nightmares. The fears. All the goddamn memories, and--"

  I cut myself off, biting down hard on my lower lip and looking away because I don't know how to say this. I don't know how to say that maybe this moment between us that felt so incredible is wrong. Is bad. Is a mistake that's just going to rip us apart all over again. "I couldn't handle it," I finally say. "And I'm scared I won't be able to handle it again."

  "What did you regret?" His voice is soft and gentle, in sharp contrast to my tone of rising hysteria.

  I shake my head. "I don't know what you mean."

  "You said earlier that you let yourself go with me, and that you regretted it. So did you regret the nightmares? Or did you regret leaving?"

  "I--" My breath hitches, and I look away.

  "No," he says gently. "Talk to me, Syl. I can't help if you don't talk to me."

  "I'm not asking for help."

  "No, you're not. But you'll have it anyway."

  I close my eyes and take his hand, then close my fingers tight around his. "Leaving." I take a breath, then open my eyes and look at him. "I regretted leaving every single day. And at the same time, I didn't. Because staying would have destroyed me."

  "Oh, baby." He pulls me close against him and presses a kiss to the top of my head. "I don't know what's hiding in your nightmares, but I will help you fight them."

  "I thought you were an architect, not a shrink."

  "I know a thing or two about the lingering scars of childhood," he says. "My childhood was nothing like yours. But it still qualified as shit."

  I look at him, this man I'd always seen as so strong, and the vulnerability I see makes my heart twist. "Will you tell me?"

  "I'm a bastard." He shrugs. "That's pretty much the sum total of it. And I mean that in the original sense of the word. My mother had an affair with a married man. Got pregnant. Had me."

  "So you never knew your dad?" As much as I often wished I'd never known my father, that still wasn't a fate I'd want for a child. "Oh, no. I knew him. Knew my father. Knew all about his other family. I was two when my half-brother was born, and I knew every goddamn thing about him, and I wasn't allowed to say a single word."

  "My god." I'm trying to imagine what that would be like and failing. "My god," I say again.

  "Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. You could say it pissed me off, especially when I could see so plainly how much of my father's attention my brother was getting, and how very little of his time was spent with me. I got angry. Very angry. The kind that explodes out. The kind that's dangerous."

  I can't help the way my gaze darts to the cut on his cheek.

  He sees and flashes a rueful grin. "I turned anger into fights."

  "Jackson ..."

  He takes my hand, then kisses my palm. "And I channeled control into sex."

  I lift a brow. "Did you? I hadn't noticed."

  "I guess I'll have to try to be more obvious." He gently strokes the hand he still holds. "My point is that when I realized I couldn't fight all the shit that was in my past--in my head--I embraced it instead. You need to do the same."

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "I think you do. Fight back. You have nightmares? Don't run from them. Battle them. You're strong, Sylvia. Strong enough not to be defeated by your own head."

  "It's not my head," I say. "It's my history."

  "And what is history but a memory, and usually a false one at that? What's that saying? That history is written by the victor? Write your own history, Sylvia. And when you do, make yourself the hero."

  I don't answer, because I'm not sure I want to talk about it, much less think about it.

  Instead, I deflect by reaching up to trace my finger across the scar that runs from his brow to his hairline. I'd noticed it at the premiere, and had yet to ask him about it. Now that he's mentioned his fights, I can't help but wonder what flash of anger translated into this injury.

  "When?" I say nothing more. I know he will understand my question.

  "About twelve hours after you told me to walk away."

  I only nod, not trusting myself to speak as my fingers drift down to gently touch his cheek. "This one is new."

  "After I met your friend Louis," he says, confirming what I already suspected.

  "Does the other guy look worse?"

  "I assure you, he does."

  I meet his eyes. "Maybe you need help, too. You can't just go on beating people up."

  The corner of his mouth quirks up. "I promise you I'm not accosting random tourists on the street. I belong to a gym. There's a boxing club. And no, I'm not talking about the kind of gym that has a smoothie bar and twenty-eight elliptical machines. Heavy bags, speed bags, free weights."

  He strokes my cheek. "I'm doing just fine."

  I picture the kind of dirty, grimy gym you see in so many movies, where guys are getting their faces smashed in. It's not a picture I like. I lift my hand to cover his so that I feel the warmth of his skin on my face. "I don't want you to get hurt."

  "Oh, baby. They can't hurt me. Don't you know that you're the only one who's ever managed to tear me to shreds?"

  fifteen

  I wake with a jolt, my heart pounding in defense against the lingering clutch of fear.

  I reach out, groping for Jackson, and as I do, I realize that it is not the cold fingers of a nightmare that cling to me, but the fear that Jackson has left.

  "Now there's a lovely picture," he says, and his voice sends unexpected waves of relief coursing through me.

  He hasn't left--and I didn't have a nightmare.

  Thank god, thank god, thank god.

  I realize that I've been lying stretched across the bed, my hip and thigh uncovered. I sit up, pulling the sheet over my breasts for modesty, which is ridiculous considering how thoroughly he explored every inch of me. I lean against the headboard and sigh in pleasure as I watch him move toward me, barefoot and shirtless in only his jeans, the top button open to reveal just a hint of the hair that arrows down toward a very enticing bulge.

  I'm enjoying the view so much that a full second passes before I realize that he's holding out a cup of coffee. I take it gratefully, then smile when I realize there's already cream in it. "You remembered."

  "I remember a lot of things." He gestures for me to
slide over, then gets in beside me when I do. "For one thing, I remember that we're supposed to be at your boss's house in two hours, and it's a half-hour drive with no traffic. Which means that it's always an hour drive."

  "We didn't get much sleep."

  "And yet I feel surprisingly energized," he says, then brushes his hand over my hair.

  I sigh and lean against him, amazed at how quickly things have shifted between us. This feels like it did in Atlanta. It feels like we fit. And even though I'm still scared, this time I don't want to run. Instead, I want to cling tighter.

  "Can I ask you something?"

  "Anything," he says.

  "You came after me last night. When I took off for Mulholland, I mean. But you didn't come after me in Atlanta."

  "That was different. You told me to leave, you didn't run out. And you made me promise."

  "Yes," I say. "I did."

  "Did you want me to break my word?"

  "No--I couldn't have handled it."

  "But?"

  I shake my head, both amazed and a little irritated at how easily he reads me.

  "But you wish that I had anyway, just so that you would have known that I cared?" His words hang soft and fragile between us.

  "It's stupid, I know." But I cannot deny that it's true.

  "I would have," he says, moving away from me to stand up. He moves to the far wall and the window that now glows with the light of morning. "The truth is that back then I would have said fuck the promise and gone after you." He turns to face me. "But you'd gone to him."

  "Dammit, Jackson. I was never with Damien that way. If you don't believe me--"

  "I do. You told me earlier, and I do. I believe you. But back then I thought otherwise."

  I consider what he says as I slide out of the bed and walk naked to him. "Was that why you said no? To the resort here and in the Bahamas? You thought I was Damien's mistress or something?"

  "Partly, but there was more to it than that."

  "The land deals."

  He cocks his head. "Let's just say that outside of the context of the Cortez resort, Stark and I are at cross-purposes."

  "I don't understand."

  "You know what? It doesn't matter." He lets his gaze drift slowly over me, so that the heat from his inspection seems to touch every part of my body, firing every molecule and making me forget just what the hell we were talking about, anyway. "I'm about to invite you into the shower with me. Which means that the last thing I want to be discussing is Damien Stark."