by Skye Warren
It’s pure instinct to deny it to him right now, even with Holly’s arm tight around my waist and the question hanging freely between us. No is on the tip of my tongue. But Liam didn’t ask me if I felt worthy of the job, of my place in the family. In some ways I still don’t. In some ways I never will. He asked me if I wanted it.
Not just for me, but so that I can be good enough for Holly. She followed her sister to France out of love. She’s not the type of woman who wants a life on the run.
“Yes,” I tell Liam.
He nods. “Okay. Call me when you’re ready to start.”
Then he leaves, pausing only to clap me on the shoulder. It hurts like a motherfucker. It also feels fucking amazing. We aren’t exactly huggers. Our family didn’t grow up with love and cookies. We had sucker punches and dark wells, but this feels like a start. It feels like a home.
Silence pulls itself over the apartment like a clean sheet. Holly traces the inside of my wrist with her fingertips and takes my hand in hers. The radiator kicks on.
It’s the most normal thing I think I’ve ever experienced with Holly. In another life we could be coming back from a fundraiser that we went to because we wanted to help people, not because she was trying to save me from the clutches of a corrupt government. She’d look just as beautiful in that dress, and I’d look less like a torture victim. It wouldn’t hurt to think about taking off my suit jacket. It wouldn’t hurt at all.
That other life is like a ghost, visible from the corner of my eye but only real so long as I don’t look straight at it.
Another realization dawns, slowly, easily, like a sunrise over a lake.
The ghost life I’ve never allowed myself to want isn’t real yet.
It could be real.
Holly killed some of my demons and Liam just propped open the door to another world.
She squeezes my hand. “Are you okay?”
In some ways it’s easier to know that all hope is lost, and any dream you ever have is a survival mechanism meant to keep you from throwing yourself in front of the next available bullet. I’ve tried that, again and again, and kept on living. Now, to dream and live deliberately, with the whole world in my hands?
It’s goddamn terrifying.
I swallow hard and look into Holly’s eyes. She’s tired, but she still glows, fresh color in her cheeks. It’s because of me that she looks that way instead of pale and resigned, the way she was in the parking garage. “Will you marry me?”
In the ghost life I have a ring with an enormous rock and a catered picnic on some French lakeside. In the ghost life I’ve prepared for this moment for weeks, choosing the perfect day and the perfect moment to ask her. In the ghost life I don’t have a half-broken body and I’m not desperate for a bed.
It doesn’t matter. Ghost life, this life—I want her in all of them.
Holly’s smile chases all the shadows from her face. She lets go of my hand, soft and tentative, and slides both palms up the front of my jacket to my face. She kisses me, the fresh, clean taste of her the only thing I want in every life. “Yes,” she says. “I will.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
London
Working at the coffee shop isn’t all bad.
For one thing, it leaves me a lot of time outside my head.
I lose myself in the steam wand and hot milk and stirring. The rhythm of brewing and pouring and replacing cups. Sweeping. Replacing fat muffins in the pastry case. It makes it possible, for long stretches of time, to stop thinking about Adam.
He’s never far out of mind. It’s the internal clock that’s slowly ticking me to death.
When I’m at work, my brain eventually quits replaying the night of the fundraiser. It focuses on the drink recipes and the difficult customers and the orders so complicated they should require a degree.
He’s been gone for three weeks, four days, and eleven hours.
He never came back after the fundraiser.
I waited up for him.
Not too late, he said. Adam promised me they wouldn’t be late, and I believed him. I told Elijah I’d never talk to him again. It was a lie. I knew in my heart that if Adam came back, I would fight with him, and then I’d fuck him, and then we would talk.
I brew a new dark roast and let the thoughts fade into the background. Holly’s okay, at least. Elijah came for her, at least. It’s right that she has a happy ending while I don’t. That fits. She’s the happy ending sister. I’m the work as a barista while recovering from a coke habit sister.
The line stretches out for the morning rush. God bless these caffeine addicts. The morning rush is usually a hectic parade of pissed-off people. Bring them all to me today.
Eventually the crowd thins out, the way it always does. There’ll be another rush at lunch with people impatient to get back to the office or trying to extend their break, and then I’ll leave, back to the apartment where Adam is not.
There’s always a moment when I hesitate before I open the door. It’s not that I’m hoping for another catastrophic injury, another emergency Google session. It’s more that the couch seems empty without him. The whole space seems empty without him. I take a series of orders from a line of anonymous men and suits. Their faces don’t stand out from one another. The last one orders a black coffee. I have two hours left in my shift.
I pump the coffee from the carafe, slide a sleeve onto the cup, and push it back across the counter. “It’s one seventy-five,” I say, tapping the order into the register.
He drops something onto the counter.
The sound is all wrong for coins.
I take a deep breath and put on a smile, prepared to deliver my jokey yet firm speech about how we don’t accept anything but cash or credit for payment. Not bus tokens, not pressed pennies…
…not diamonds.
The words die on my tongue.
Someone has put diamonds on the counter.
I draw my hand back from the coffee cup and look up at his face.
Adam looks different. He’s had a haircut and shaved, and that’s why I didn’t notice him before—he’s blending in. He stood in line at the coffee shop like all of those other guys. But he is different, as much as he tries to hide it. The slacks and shirt don’t hide anything from me, now that I’m looking. His overcoat looks expensive. Something he’d wear if he worked for one of the fancy law firms downtown.
Maybe he does. I don’t know anything about him now. Not that I knew much before, except—
“It was all for you,” he says. “It was always for you.”
The door opens and two teenage girls walk in, heads close together, giggling about something. They toss their backpacks into one of the booths along the side of the shop and slide in. It reminds me of me and Holly.
I don’t dare touch the diamonds.
“We—” My mouth has gone dry. “We only accept cash and credit for payment.”
Adam puts a palm over the diamonds, hiding them from view, and slides them across the counter to me. When he lifts his hand I half-expect the diamonds to be gone. A trick.
They’re not a trick.
“I wouldn’t leave them out, if I were you.”
If there’s anything I’ve learned since I flew to France, it’s that touching diamonds is dangerous.
Then again, so is leaving them out on a counter where anyone could walk up and snatch them.
This feels like the moment in the fairy tale just before the girl pricks her finger on the spindle. Before she bites into the poisoned apple. Before the fairy godmother brings her wand down and transforms her into a princess.
“You left,” I say. “And you didn’t come back. I waited up. For days, I waited up.” I take the diamonds in my hands. It’s easy enough to slip them into my pocket, out of sight.
Adam reaches into his own pocket and puts a few dollar bills on the counter. “I’m sorry. I was dealing with some shit.” He gives a small smile. “Family drama.”
I make his change. Family drama. That’s an u
nderstatement. The actions of Lieutenant Colonel Mark Jefferson have been all over the news. Adam’s popped up in a few of the articles. He enlisted, like his father and grandfather before him. And he was discharged dishonorably when he tried to bring his father’s crimes to light. That decision is being revisited, along with a lot of other shit that’s been swept under the carpet for so long.
The diamonds burn a hole in my pocket. I can feel them there, vibrating with possibility and fire, and that’s the thing—it feels good.
It feels right.
It feels dangerous and exhilarating and right.
When I look up from the cash register Adam is at the door. The sight of him on the threshold, about to disappear, turns me into a human scream. I’ve never unknotted the coffee shop apron so fast in my life.
“Are you leaving?” My coworker, a girl whose name I can never remember, looks at me with wide eyes. She’s been in the back doing inventory for the last hour, which is code for playing Animal Crossing on her phone. “It’s not the end of your shift yet.”
“Yeah, about that—I quit.” I lay the apron gently on the counter and sprint for the door.
Adam’s tall, with long legs and an even stride, and he’s halfway down the block already. I bite back the urge to shout his name. I don’t want people watching us right now. What I want—what I want—
I run instead of shouting. I run fast. He pauses at the corner and I put on a burst of speed. I swear to god, if I get there and he’s not real, if none of this is real…
My fingers sink into the wool of his coat. His muscles are tensed underneath from holding his coffee cup. He grabbed a lid on the way out.
He smiles and my heart stops.
I can’t let go of his sleeve.
“Where are you going?” I sound breathless and hopeful and slightly scared. “I quit my job.”
“Anywhere,” he says. “Everywhere. Want to come?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Elijah
Holly is thinking.
She does this sometimes, after we’ve fucked—she just lays there in the bed next to me, her hair spread out on the pillow, looking up at the ceiling with a thoughtful expression.
I can’t keep my hands off her.
I trace a path over her collarbone and down her shoulder to the delicate skin of her wrist. “I should leave you alone.” Her eyes meet mine, a sharp reply on her lips. “But I won’t, because if you tried to run away from me, I’d just kidnap you again.”
“Good.” Holly laughs, then kisses me, then rolls away. Not far enough that I can’t touch her. Just far enough to reach the notebook she keeps on the bedside table. She uncaps her pen with her teeth and props herself up on one elbow to write in it while I absorb myself with the curve of her hip under the sheet. It seems like a shame to leave her skin covered, so I slide the sheet down until it’s highlighting her ass. She shivers but keeps writing.
“What is it?”
“What is what?” Her pen moves quickly over the page. I always assumed she wrote everything on a computer, but Holly, I’ve learned, likes to hand write most of her notes like she’s an author from the forties.
“That’s a new notebook, isn’t it?” She always keeps one close to hand, but this one is green. The color of reeds over water. The old one was a dusky purple.
She twists to look at me over her shoulder, and the grin on her face isn’t sheepish or shy. It’s proud. “Our story.” Holly turns back over and keeps writing.
I don’t know how she does it. The story of me and Holly is a long one. All the individual threads of us reach years into the past. There are sisters and brothers and parents. If she wanted the full picture, she’d have to ask her parents about how they got together. Might be a touchy subject. Who knows? This is why she’s the writer, not me. “Where does it start?”
“A woman near an ocean,” she says absently.
“A mermaid?”
She throws me a look over her shoulder, and honestly, it makes me want to throw the book out the window and fuck her. “Am I a mermaid, Elijah?”
“Maybe.” I bite her on the shoulder, and she wriggles against my body, all warm and willing woman, making me hard again. She makes me endlessly hard.
“I’m writing, you know.” I bite her again, and Holly twists in my arms and sinks her teeth into my shoulder. “Is this what you wanted?”
Her eyes are bright, wicked, and I pull her on top of me. Holly takes this for the challenge that it is and tries for my wrists. I let her think she’s won. I let her pin me so that she can kiss me, her hair falling around our faces like a curtain. She opens her mouth for me and I taste her again, a long stroke of my tongue that makes her forget she’s trying to wrestle with me.
Her mistake.
Now she’s pinned, arms behind her back, both wrists trapped in one of mine. It arches her for me. Holly tips her head back and groans. “This isn’t fair.”
“What’s not fair?” I stroke two fingers between her legs. She’s wet there already and sensitive. This isn’t the first round of the morning. I push those fingers inside her. “This?”
Her thighs are already shaking. “It’s not fair,” she complains. “I was writing.”
“You think you’ll write about this?” I’m finger-fucking her now, slow, deliberate strokes. I give her a taste of my thumb on her clit and take it away. This wouldn’t be her first orgasm of the morning, either, but she still makes a disappointed noise. “Or this, maybe?”
“No, I wouldn’t.” She lies through clenched teeth. “I wouldn’t write about it unless you stopped being so mean.”
“But you like it best this way.”
“I don’t.”
I take my fingers out and circle one of her nipples with her own wetness. “You’re not a good liar, sweetheart.”
Holly rocks her hips downward, her desperation clear in her red cheeks. “Why are we talking anyway? We could be fucking.”
“Good point.”
I roll her off me so fast she yelps and bend her over the nearest pillow. It’s tied for my favorite position for so many reasons. One of those reasons is that Holly loves it. It makes her red-faced and embarrassed and extremely wet.
She fights me on it because that’s what she always does. It’s a game of a protest and I always win.
“Not fair,” she pants. “Not fair, Elijah—”
I cover her mouth with my hand, line myself up with her waiting pussy, and thrust home.
The rest of the world does not exist. There’s only Holly moaning into my palm and clenching around my cock. Fucking her this way clears my head, and it does something better to Holly. She scrapes her nails down the sheet, trying to reach behind her, and I lean down and pin her wrist to the bed.
She shudders underneath me, a full-body shiver, and her pussy gets hotter. Tighter. Wetter.
One time, in the middle of the night, she woke up from a dead sleep and told me that the white van haunts her dreams. That every time she sees a white van, her heart stutters. And then she pulled me on top of her and demanded that I pretend.
So I did.
The difference now, obviously, is that there is no white van. It’s just me. And whatever fucked-up feelings we both have about all the fucked-up things that happened, it doesn’t change the fact that we both have our fantasies.
This is Holly’s.
Thank God.
She comes hard, no warning, and opens her mouth to bite the skin between my finger and thumb. I pull my hand back but only so I can turn her face another quarter inch and kiss the side of her lips. “You’re mine. My little captive. There’s nowhere for you to go, nothing to do but take what I give you, your sweet little cunt wrapped tight around my dick.”
“Again,” she says.
I put a hand between her legs and haul her closer so I can fuck her harder. This means she has to work for it, angling her hips for maximum contact. When she comes again it’s with her face buried in the pillow and both hands clenched into fists. Holl
y throws her head back, saying something, but I can’t make out the words. I’m too lost in the electric tension of taking her. Using her. Wringing out all her orgasms and making her feel mine, too.
Which I do.
It shouldn’t be possible to come this hard so many times in one morning, but I manage. I let her have it. I fuck her all the way through. By the time I’m finished with her she’s got both hands braced against the headboard. At the bitter end I drop my head down onto her back and rest there until she pushes me away, laughing.
Until she rolls onto her back and throws an arm over her eyes. It takes a while for her breathing to settle, and I indulge myself in the pleasure of watching it.
I think she might fall asleep, but no.
I’ve barely caught my breath and she’s already propped over her notebook again.
“It starts with a woman on a plane.” Holly pauses, tapping her pen against her cheekbone. “Maybe it starts before that. The Mona Lisa….” She trails off, scribbling more notes.
“Does it have a name?”
She laughs, a short, musical sound that makes her shoulders shake. “I was thinking of calling it Diamond in the Rough.”
“Diamond in the Rough?”
“That’s what you are. Diamond in the Rough by Holly Frank. Though it’ll have to be sexier than my other stuff. Maybe I’ll use a pen name. What do you think?” Holly rolls over onto her back, abandoning the notebook, and threads her arms around my neck.
“Some of that shit is still classified, you know.”
“Well,” she says, “I can probably change some of the details. It is fiction, after all. To be honest if I wrote everything as it happened, some people wouldn’t believe it.”
“Sometimes I don’t believe it, and I lived through it.”
“We went through all that shit, but there’s a silver lining after all. There’s this.”
My lips quirk in a smile. “A book?”
“No.” Her eyes glisten. “You. Us. We’re the silver lining.”
“I love it,” I say, my voice hoarse. “And I love you.”
Her eyes melt. Her whole body melts against me. And of course I’m fucking hard again. It never stops with her, and I never want it to. “I love you, too,” she whispers.