BLACK WIDOW (Book #1 of The Black Widow Series)

by Jenni Moen

  HIM

  I was tangled up in her. Her hair. Her arms. Her legs. There wasn't a part of me that wasn't co-mingled with a part of her.

  Celeste's head was nestled in the crook of my arm, her hair spread across my shoulder. One arm and one leg were flung across my body so that the entirety of her lay flush against me. It was the most intimate moment we’d had yet, but I didn’t mind that she’d slept through it and I could keep it for myself.

  A slant of light snuck in through the gap between the heavy curtains. I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept past sunrise. I extracted myself from Celeste's grip in slow measured movements, careful not to wake her. As I slipped away from her, she rolled onto her side and curled into a ball.

  With the slightest touch, I brushed the hair away from her face. Long eyelashes feathered across her high cheekbones. I studied the gentle slope of her nose and the curve of her full lips. She was angelic in her sleep. No sign of the vixen from the night before.

  I eased off the bed and headed to the bathroom to finish the shower I'd started the night before. I took my time since my roommates were all asleep and let the hot water pour over me. When I turned off the water and pulled the shower curtain open, I had company again.

  Celeste met my eyes in the mirror over the sink. I was getting used to her barging in on me while I was naked. I’d discovered that not all women and all bathrooms were a bad combination.

  I wrapped a towel around my waist, enjoying the familiarity of her smile in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. Her hair was a crazy, wavy mess that she hadn’t bothered to tame. Her usually wide eyes were still heavy with sleep. It felt as if we'd been doing this for months or years instead of just days.

  "Want to go get some breakfast?" I asked.

  She spat toothpaste into the sink and finished rinsing out her mouth. "Sounds good. Let me shower real quick."

  I moved to the side and watched as she peeled the tank top she'd slept in over her head and tossed it on the floor. With almost a shy look in her eyes, she hitched her thumbs into the waistband of her sleep shorts and pulled them down her legs. Then she kicked them to the side and stepped into the shower. I shook my head as she pulled the shower curtain closed.

  The water turned on, and I took a step toward the bathtub just as a groan came from the other room.

  "Why are you people awake?" Luke's voice was muffled through the closed door.

  I dressed quickly before marching into the bedroom and flinging the drapes open. He was still a trespasser after all.

  Twenty minutes later, we sat in the dining room of the lodge. Plates piled with breakfast food, we were planning our day. Our waitress had warned us that a rainstorm was coming, and we should plan on being stuck inside all afternoon.

  Celeste's only request for the day was to see the waterfall before the storm hit. Luke and Sierra were already dressed in their swimsuits to go kayaking. While the three of them chattered about what they hoped to see, I scoped out the room. A creature of habit, I roved my eyes around the restaurant, taking inventory of the people in it.

  At a nearby table, a mother wrestled two small children while her husband sipped his coffee, a newspaper pulled in front of his face. He appeared to be oblivious to the chaos around him until one of his kids let out a bloodcurdling scream, and he winced right along with everyone else in the restaurant.

  An elderly couple sat at a table next to a window. A chair had been removed so that the woman's wheelchair could be pulled up next to his regular one. One side of her face was slacker than the other was, and he fed her small bites of food from a fork. The scene would have saddened me if it weren’t for the smile on his face. As he pointed outside at the nearby mountains, the light in her eyes was reflected in his own.

  My gaze skipped to another table where a man decked out in hiking gear sat alone. He was a swirl of khaki from head to toe. He’d pulled his bucket hat low so it covered his eyes, and he ate his breakfast on autopilot as he studied one of the trail maps from the front desk.

  That had been me only a few days ago. Sitting alone at a breakfast table, I would plan my day, which would inevitably include more alone time. Grocery shopping alone. Going to the post office alone. Occasionally, I’d go to happy hour with some of the guys after work, but every day ended the same, with me always going home alone.

  I'd gotten used to the solitude of my life. I'd even come to a point where I thought I preferred it. Now, I looked at the three people sharing breakfast with me … my brother … my quirky apartment agent … and Celeste. And I found comfort in the sound of their voices even though I couldn’t tell you what they were talking about.

  Celeste said something to Sierra, and the women doubled over in laughter.

  Luke leaned back and put his arm around the back of Sierra's chair, rubbing his full stomach.

  Under the table, Celeste slid her hand onto my leg and gave me a smile.

  A deep sense of satisfaction fell over me as I came to a realization. The trip wasn’t about some silly bet about whether I could make Celeste fall in love in a week. Or even whether or not she would push me away at the end. It was a lesson on what I was missing in life.

  I didn't want to be the hiker anymore, trekking through life by myself. I didn't want to end up only half of the equation of the older couple. I didn't want to be the mom, trying to do everything myself. I was tired of being alone.

  I placed my hand over Celeste’s and squeezed it.

  HER

  "It's the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen."

  Scott, who had his back to me as he took in the massive waterfall, turned and smiled at me, his dimples on full display. "So you like it?"

  I nodded. "The waterfall is nice, too."

  He rolled his eyes, but the smile didn't waver. "Silly girl. You're supposed to be taking in the sights."

  "I was, and it's quite lovely."

  He reached for my hand. "Come here."

  He bent his head down to brush his lips over mine. It wasn't a heated, let's-see-how-fast-I-can-get-your-clothes-off kiss, but there was the underlying current of the possibility of one beneath it.

  We'd decided we had come as high as we could on the trail without risking being stranded in the rain. The clouds were already rolling in overhead. They were dark and flat bottom but extended upward into big fluffy piles of cotton balls. Every few minutes, Scott would look up at the sky, and a crease would form between his eyebrows.

  "We'd better start heading back down, or you're going to get your pretty head wet." He pulled my ponytail before turning back to the path.

  "Wait." I grabbed his arm and pulled him back. "I just wanted to say thank you. I love it here."

  “I thought you would, and you’re handling roughing it rather well."

  "I hardly think any hotel room with a bathroom and running water is roughing it, even if it was decorated in the eighties."

  His eyes darkened. "I bet our new room is ready. We'll go by the front desk and ask when we get down the mountain."

  My stomach knotted in anticipation as I looked forward to an entire afternoon of being trapped inside our room. If I had my way, it would rain the rest of the day. Maybe the rest of the trip. It had been too long since I’d been touched, and the small taste I’d had of him wasn’t nearly enough.

  "Come on. If we hurry, we can stop at the most romantic spot on earth on the way down," he said, teasing me about the name I'd given to a small ledge we'd passed earlier. The ledge jutted off the path, and the canopy of trees over it formed a window that was almost a perfect heart, providing an ideal viewing spot for the waterfall.

  We started back down the steep path. Just like our trip up, we took turns lobbing questions at each other.

  What kind of movies did we like? I preferred romantic comedies while his favorites were action flicks with lots of gunfire and adventure.

  Favorite foods? He described the texture and taste of his mother’s meatballs with a reverence that made my mouth water. I told him about
my favorite Thai restaurant in Highland Park, a place I hadn’t visited in more than a year.

  The conversation turned to our childhoods. He described loud holiday dinners and his mom's always real and always lopsided Christmas tree. He told me about his sister's kids and the ornaments they made for it every year, boasting about them as if they were his own. I wouldn’t allow myself to wonder if he wanted his own.

  Then I told him about my parents, our quiet holidays, and the artificial Christmas trees my mother placed in every room, each one coordinated with the color scheme of the space. They were show trees, just like everything else in our lives. A perfect fit for a house where, for as long as I could remember, holidays had been treated with dismal disregard.

  Scott looked surprised when I admitted we didn’t celebrate birthdays.

  “My mother would die before she would let that happen. No one has a birth day at my house. It's more of a birth week. In my sister's case, it's more like a birth month because she's a spoiled brat. It requires weeks of planning. The actual day is reserved for family, but the weekend after, my mom cooks a ton of food and invites practically everyone we know to the house. It's loud and obnoxious, and when it's over, you feel like you've aged another year."

  "Last Christmas, I went to Mexico," I said, shocking myself with the admission.

  "By yourself?" he asked, coming to a sudden stop.

  "Yeah, I needed to get away from life for a bit.”

  "Sounds lonely but I suppose it was more relaxing than what I endured.”

  We walked for a while in silence, and then I changed the subject. "Tell me about your first kiss." We were nearing the most romantic spot on earth.

  "Her name was Daniela." I could tell she’d meant something to him by the way he said her name, and I felt a stab of jealousy.

  "How old were you?" I asked.

  "We were ten." His head was down, watching the ground as he carefully considered his next step. "I married her sister.”

  "Ohhhh. Well, then. I'm sure that was an awkward transition, getting from point A to point B."

  He stopped and looked at me. With the overcast sky, his usually vibrant blue eyes looked darker than usual. "I didn’t really have a choice."

  He sighed and then kept walking. "Daniela was the pretty one. Elena was the cute one. They were our next-door neighbors and a year apart just like Luke and I were. Dawn to dusk, we ran the streets together, like the heathen kids we were."

  "My ma adored those two girls. I swear she was planning our double wedding before I was six. Luke and Elena. Me and Daniela. That was the plan. Until it wasn’t anymore."

  His head was down, and his feet sounded heavier on the dirt path, if that was possible.

  “So how come the switch from Daniela to Elena?” I sensed, based on the slight hitch in his voice each time he said her name, that she was an even bigger regret than his ex-wife was. Something told me if he'd married her instead, I wouldn't be walking with him now.

  “Somebody snatched Daniela when we were eleven.”

  My feet stopped with my heart. “Oh, Scott.”

  He turned to face me. “We were hanging in front of the girls’ house one day after school, like we always did. Elena had already gone inside to do her homework when our Ma called us in for dinner. We left Daniela out there by herself, skipping rope. We didn’t think it was any big deal. We’d done that same thing a thousand times before, but when her mom went out to get her for dinner, she was … just gone.”

  I reached for his arm. “I’m so sorry, Scott. And they didn’t find her?”

  He looked away from me into the dense trees that ran alongside the path. “They found her body four years later, in a wooded area a few blocks away from our houses. She hadn’t been dead for more than forty-eight hours.”

  I slid my hand down his arm and squeezed his fingers. “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

  I’m sorry. It’s such a benign statement and—I knew from experience—of terrifically little value. If I had a dollar for every time someone had told me they were sorry, I could’ve funded a small third-world country. But sometimes there was really nothing else to say.

  He shook his head once and then met my eyes. “They caught him. His house was just a block away from ours. All that time, she was right there—right under our noses—and we had no idea. Luke and I walked by there practically every day. There was a tiny window, and afterward I would sit and just stare at it. I couldn’t help but wonder if she could hear the cars going by outside. Or us bouncing a basketball down the street when we were on our way to the community center. I wonder if she recognized our voices out there and wondered why we hadn’t come to rescue her.”

  You hear about the atrocities that happen to children in the news, and it’s human nature to wonder about the people directly affected. To put yourself in the place of the parents, the siblings, the friends who feel the loss. Or to imagine such a horror in your own life and how you would deal with it. In my experience, though, fewer people could actually bear to imagine themselves in the place of the one who’d actually had to endure the suffering. But, as Scott squeezed his eyes shut, I sensed he he’d transported himself back to Brooklyn, and he was sitting on a stoop staring at a frosty window and imagining himself on the wrong side of it. Then again, sometimes it’s easy to confuse empathy with blame and guilt.

  “Is that why you’re a cop?” I asked.

  His brows furrowed. “Luke would tell you it’s why I do everything I do, but I was always going to be a cop. Even before Daniela.” He looked up at the sky, which seemed to have gotten more ominous with his story. “We should probably get going. It looks like it’s going to pour on us soon.”

  We walked for quite a while in silence. Scott, who’d been so relaxed before, suddenly seemed on alert. His back was rigid, and occasionally, he looked over his shoulder, not at me, but beyond me as if he sensed some sort of danger lurking in the woods around us.

  "How about your first kiss?" he asked. “How old were you?”

  I’d thought we desperately needed a change of subject, but apparently, he still had first kisses on his mind. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  The air had changed abruptly, becoming crisper and more electric with the impending storm. I looked up as I answered the question. “Nine.”

  “That’s pretty young for a first kiss.”

  I laughed. “Only one year younger than you.” I sighed. “He was a beautiful boy from the wrong side of the tracks. My father didn’t approve of him, so kissing him served dual purposes. And much to my father’s dismay, I actually did go on to marry him.”

  I nearly stopped in my tracks when I realized it hadn’t hurt. In the past, there’d been no casual mention of Chase. Even the vaguest of references to him had felt like rubbing salt in a gaping wound. Apparently, Scott had helped me across some imaginary bridge that allowed me to finally talk about Chase with ease.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and I looked up at the sky with a smile. Scott looked over and asked what I was grinning about since we were about to get rain dumped on us. I shook my head, not wanting to spoil the moment.

  "Tell me," he insisted.

  "I’d better not."

  "Well, now I really want to know. Don't make me slip into interrogation mode."

  I laughed. "We don’t want that. Okay, well … sometimes, I think Chase controls the weather."

  He arched an eyebrow at me. "Come again?"

  "On the day of his funeral, it poured buckets. I swear it was the gloomiest day of the year. The cemetery was a muddy mess. I had to switch out of my heels and into rain boots in the car. We all stood around his plot as the sky pelted fat, angry raindrops at us. Then when we lowered his coffin into the ground, it just stopped. By the time we got back to the cars, the sun was shining. I let myself believe it was Chase telling me it was going to be okay. It got me through."

  Scott nodded at the sky just as it rumbled again. "So what do you suppose this is about? Is he pissed off and growl
ing at me?"

  "I’m not sure. Maybe he’s laughing at us. I think he would've liked you.”

  Our conversation died off after that, and we walked silently, each lost in our own thoughts. I watched the clouds tumble and roll. Even as the sky darkened, it didn’t feel oppressive to me. Quite the opposite, I was looking forward to the rain, hoping it could wash away any remaining doubts I had.

  It wasn't long until Scott stopped on the path. "The most romantic place on earth," he said, gesturing to the opening in the trees.

  It was only three or four steps off the path. I stepped onto the ledge and looked up at the sky at the exact moment that the first fat raindrop fell on my face. I raised my hands in front of me to catch a few.

  I was incredibly aware of Scott’s presence behind me. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do it, yet here I was, losing little pieces of my heart to him. Bit by bit, I was handing them over, each one wrapped in a story from my past.

  Slowly but surely, I was falling.

  I was so sure of it. When I felt the push that sent me over the edge, I wasn’t sure if it was a dream. But as I tumbled toward the rocky cliffside below, it was reality that hit me first.

  HIM

  I heard the boots clomping along the path before I saw him. A blur of khaki came around the turn at an impressive pace. His hat was pulled low over his head, protecting him from the rain that had just started to fall.

  Just as he reached us, he looked up and met my eyes, and it was then I recognized him. Not only as the man who'd been having breakfast in the lodge but also as the man in the blue car at the convenience store in Utica.

  He veered off the path, and I saw the determination in his eyes before I could register what it meant. Shoulder first, he barreled into me.

  "Hey," I hollered as I stumbled backward into Celeste.

  I twisted and reached for her. Her arms shot out, but with her back to me, I was left only with the material of her shirt to grab. The soft fabric slipped through my fingers, and she tumbled over the side. I watched her body break and bend as she crumpled into a ball and slid down the rocky cliff. Her scream ended when a tree finally stopped her fall.