by Kendall Duke
“I think you should stick to letting me do my laundry here. Very occasionally. In case I meet any more of your stalkers.” He shot me a sardonic look. “Might not be so nice next time.”
“Does that mean you’re not staying?” I put my fork down and wiped my mouth; I’d asked without meaning to, really, without even thinking about it. Eric slowly stopped chewing and watched me from under his eyelashes. “I don’t have a room-mate. Rent’s due in a week. And you seem like you’re pretty handy to have around.”
“I can’t stay here,” Eric said flatly, meeting my gaze.
“Because…?” I waved my hand in the air. “I keep waiting for the mother of your three children to show up and try to fight me, or for you to turn into as bad a guy as you keep telling me you are. But you’re not even a good liar.” Eric didn’t smile this time, although I could tell from the tiny wrinkle at the corner of his mouth that this amused him. “Is there a good reason for you not to stay here?”
“You’re bad at reading people, Trinity,” he said softly.
“Yeah. I am. But you’re not,” I pointed out, “and so far you’ve saved my butt in about a dozen different ways.”
“And I also keep telling you: I am not—”
“I disagree.” I threw my hands up and ignored the simmering glare he shot my way, then dug into my bacon so that I had to cover my mouth when I was moved to speak again. I didn’t need to punctuate my point with bits of flying breakfast. “Let’s just get it out there. I’m tired of hearing you say it, the way you got tired of hearing me apologize. I disagree! I don’t care. I don’t know anything about you, but no one—no one—has done for me what you have, in years. Years! So I don’t want to hear it any more. I know you just got out of prison, I know—yes, even I can tell—that you’ve got some anger management issues, some trust issues, probably a couple glitches here and there where you might screw up and act like a normal human would. But seriously, Eric, I can’t think of one time you’ve let me down. And I barely know you. So drop it.”
See? My dad was correct, as usual. The conditions were right; maybe I was a wallflower, like Kenny always used to say, but—
Damn it.
Eric watched all of these thoughts roll across my face in succession, catching the last painful drop in my mood so obviously that I wondered if I was just exceptionally easy to read or if he really was kind of psychic. “Never take up poker,” he told me, dead-pan, and I burst out laughing, thankful to him for ending the awkward moment. When I recovered, he had that lovely little half-smile on his lips, the one that I was beginning to realize meant he understood me a little too well. “So? Were you also thinking, ‘damn, I’m bossy too?’
“No,” I said, laughing again. “No I was not—no, I am not. I was thinking…” Uh-oh. Didn’t want to tell him that.
I wished I was a good liar, suddenly. I wished I was something besides—
“Stop,” he said, his voice smashing through my inner monologue. “Whatever the hell this is, just stop.” His voice wasn’t even, any more; his face wasn’t indifferent. Eric was watching me with a palpable kindness that made my heart ache. It was so… Unfamiliar. “Trinity?” He stood up and came over to me, and this time his hands were moving of their own accord; he watched them as if he didn’t know what they were going to do, and then I saw him surrender to their momentum when his eyes met mine again. I felt his fingers slip under my jaw, one strong, lean hand on either side, and angle my face up towards his. “What’s going on? You alright?”
“I have anxiety,” I said, staring up at him. I couldn’t believe this was the man standing in my kitchen right now. This man, the one with the perfect face, the one with eyes like discs of honey, so bright and lush in the half light from the sunset that it literally took my breath away to look at him this close up. I could smell the scent of his sweat, we were so near one another, and… I liked it. It smelled like discipline, like protection—like a man. Eric might be a wolf at heart, but he was also a nearly perfect man. Whether he knew it or not.
“There you are,” he whispered, still watching me, and then he let me go and sat down on the seat next to me. I felt the disconnect like someone pulled a plug in my chest, a broken electric charge, as if my body was begging for him to touch me again. “Where’d you go?”
“Anxiety kind of… Takes over,” I said, wishing with all my heart I didn’t have to have this conversation. But the truth was that if he was going to stay here, he needed to know. “It puts my head in a whirl, makes me think… Things I’d rather not. And they just keep coming, even when I try to steer clear of whatever it was that spun me out.”
“You get a little lost in it, huh?” I wasn’t expecting the simple acceptance in his voice.
“You could say that, yeah,” I mumbled, and wrapped my arms around myself, my heart still pounding away in my chest.
“That’s what happens to me when I get angry,” he said, meeting my eyes. “I get lost.”
“Yeah, but I don’t go around beating people up.” I raised an eyebrow at him and he raised one right back.
“I think you should,” he said, not caring at all about the lack of social niceties regarding this particular judgment. I snorted and he shot me another defiant glance. “I bet I could think of a few more people to beat up on your behalf, if you like.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I told him, and he just shrugged.
“I’m just saying,” Eric said, then slid another sideways look my way. “What are you anxious about? Besides hanging out with an ex-con and the fact that your future is probably packed with parking tickets?”
“Those are no big deal, actually,” I said, rocking in to his shoulder. He looked down at the counter, but I could still see his half-smile. I stilled on my seat and folded my hands on the tabletop. “It’s more… Stuff from the past.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Can I ask you a question?” It was my turn to give him a side-ways look; I didn’t think I could handle seeing his expression straight on. “Why do you care?”
“Who says I do?”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, spluttering, but when I turned towards him his smile was wide now. It took my breath away for a minute, like I was seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, but the look on my own face immediately erased the one on his as that psychic connection kicked in and he grew uncomfortable. “Eric, come on. Seriously.”
“I want to make sure you’re okay,” he said, surprising me. Eric stared at the counter-top, not wanting any more direct eye contact, I guessed. “I… I told you already. You deserve better.”
“Better than what?” I frowned at him.
“Better than whatever is making you anxious. Or whoever,” he said pointedly, his voice dropping into a deadlier register.
It took me a long time to answer the unspoken question. “My ex-boyfriend used to live here with me.” The memory stung; my throat suddenly ached, as if I were filling up with saltwater from within. “Ex-fiancé, actually. His name is Kenny. He and my best friend, Jenna, we hung out all the time in high school. He and I were going to get married when he finished college.” Okay. Here came the hard part. “Kenny and I were… Waiting for marriage. Except that… He didn’t. He and Jenna slept together the whole time we dated, and once he finished college they went off and married each other instead.”
I heard Eric suck in a breath. We sat very still for a very long time.
“You’re a virgin?” The question took me completely by surprise. I was ready to be angry but the sincerely baffled expression on Eric’s face tempered my response.
“That’s what you took away from my sob story? The fact that I’m a virgin?”
“To me, that’s the most important part,” he said, the usual glimmer of mischief reappearing in his eye.
“Oh, really,” I said, frowning at him. He shrugged in that way that was starting to drive me slowly crazy—with rage or lust, I honestly couldn’t tell the difference.
“That guy? Not only
a piece of shit, but a fucking idiot. Was he blind, by any chance?” I gawked at him, but he turned the other way and dragged his plate over, taking a deliberately slow bite before continuing. “I mean, I’m just wondering. Blindness wouldn’t be an excuse, but it could maybe be a reason, if you know what I’m saying—”
“No, Eric,” I snapped, not sure if I wanted to slap him or kiss him. “No, I do not know what you’re saying.”
“You are absolutely fucking beautiful,” he said, looking me full in the face. The blood rushed to my skin. “So a blind guy who’s not getting laid, I can kinda see him thinking maybe it was a good idea—”
“Eric!” I shrieked, I was so astonished by both his compliment and his casual acceptance of my ex-fiance’s infidelity that I couldn’t even stop myself. “What the—”
“I mean, even if he was blind, he would still be a grade-A piece of shit, and I will happily make a couple calls to send him to hell a little early if you like…” He didn’t even move when I slapped his shoulder, staring at him in mock horror. “If you like, I said,” he continued, still eating bites of pancake and bacon between his musings on my love life, “but blindness is the only reason in the world I could think of that might make a man consider choosing anything other than you.”
“He was not blind,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Then he did you a favor,” he told me, and this time my shock was genuine, and I slapped him a lot harder. He was unfazed. “I’m sorry he wasted your time. And I’m sorry he hurt you. But fuck him, Trinity,” Eric said, and now he raised his eyes to mine and locked that hypnotic stare on me. “The man is a goddamn fool. You don’t need to spend your life saddled to an idiot.” And then he mumbled something about virgins under his breath that made me hit him a third time, and in spite of his penchant for violence in nearly every other circumstance, he seemed genuinely unbothered when I repeatedly slugged his shoulder.
Of course, I couldn’t be hurting him very much. It felt like I was punching a wall.
“I want to hate you, a lot, right now,” I finally said, and he looked up from his almost empty plate with genuine surprise. “But I appreciate you saying I’m beautiful.” Not a word Kenny had ever used, not once. I’d chosen the wrong people. I just wasn’t…
“A statement of fact,” Eric said, and when I glanced at him I could tell he was reading me like a book. “And I thought we agreed that you would stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“He doesn’t get to do that, Trinity,” Eric said, and his anger did flare then. I could see it behind the sweetness of the honey—fire, a heat that could consume me whole. “Don’t let him live in your head. This anxiety you have… I’m sure it’s more complicated than that, but this motherfucker needs to move out. He’s done.”
“These are the house rules, huh?” I glared at him. “No apologizing. No dwelling on the past. No admitting—”
“No regrets,” he said emphatically. “No beating yourself up because other people wasted your time. No feeling bad for being a better person than they were.”
“Do these rules apply to you too?” His nostrils flared. “I’m serious. No regrets, then; no apologies. No guilt, either, if you recall.” He did. The fire in Eric’s eyes was so bright now I imagined his skin would be hot to the touch. “I’m supposed to be above all of this, but what about you?”
“No,” he said, and started to stand up. I grabbed his hand, and he looked down at it like he wanted to jerk away from me; instead, he held still, but when those blazing eyes landed on mine, I suddenly remembered that Eric was genuinely dangerous.
And then I realized I didn’t care.
“You’re going to stay here, with me,” I told him, and now we were both standing up. “You’re going to live here, and you’re going to follow the same rules you made for me, Eric: no guilt, no apologizing for who you are, no regretting the past.”
“I can’t do that,” he said, his voice a warning growl.
“Why?”
“Because unlike you, I have things to regret. I have to apologize for myself, because I hurt people. I have to feel the guilt of what I’ve done every day, and I have to be alone,” he said suddenly, taking a step backward, “because of it. That’s the reality—that’s the difference between us, Trinity. That’s why I know a bad guy when I see one—because I am one.”
“Bullshit,” I snapped. It was happening again. My dad would be proud. I followed him as he walked away from me, stoking my temper further. “You are not a bad guy, Eric. You are not.”
“Yes. I am.” He turned and put his plate in the sink.
“Because of prison? That’s not a good enough reason—”
“Because they’re dead,” he said, his voice cold and hard and brutal as the snap of a wolf’s jaws. “My father ran a ring, nothing big. We lived a decent life. But my brother and I—” He stopped and stared out of the window. The sun was gone now; twilight settled in the air around us, brisk and cool. “I drove, they went in. It was no big deal. But the last job… My father’s partner changed his mind, I guess. He waited until we were driving back to our place and pulled out a gun and…” Eric swallowed. “I tried to keep driving, but he got me in the shoulder. Doc said I should’ve died, and he was right.”
I remembered the scar shaped like a bullet hole on his back; it took me a minute to realize he had an elaborate tattoo on his chest that must be inked over the exit wound. “Your… Your family? Did they…?”
“Dad died from a gunshot. Brother died in the crash.” Eric stared down at the sink and started methodically washing the dishes. “Everybody died in the end, I guess, except me. And the Feds seized everything—ill gotten goods and all that—so I got locked up for two years and now here I am.”
I couldn’t believe it.
I couldn’t believe he was still standing upright. I couldn’t believe he was doing the dishes. “Eric…”
“I regret a lot,” he said, still looking down at the sink full of soapy water, the grey light surrounding us dreamy and quiet, the whole world grinding to a halt as I stood there and thought about the pain he must live with. The suffering. “I have a lot to be sorry for. And I feel guilty as hell, and I always will. So those house rules don’t apply to me, Trinity—or I guess they do, and I can’t follow them, which is another good reason to leave.”
“No,” I said, and this time I startled him for a change. His eyes snapped towards me in the reflection of the window. “No, I don’t think so.”
He stopped what he was doing and turned towards me, his eyes blazing once more. “Listen, girl—”
“Nope.” I shook my head, then threw a towel at him. His nostrils flared; he caught it in mid-air and narrowed his eyes at me. Flames erupted behind them. “I am really sorry that happened. That is… Awful. Absolutely awful. I can’t imagine how you must feel.”
“Then—”
“But I also can’t look at the guy who’s saved my life—who’s fixed my life, in the space of one day—and see someone who doesn’t ever deserve happiness, or respect, or compassion. I don’t look at you and see a bad guy. I get that you lived a different kind of life, Eric, one I’m sure I can’t imagine. And I also can’t imagine how frightening that night was, how sad and just… I can’t. But none of that, none of it, actually means you’re a bad guy. You didn’t kill anybody. You didn’t betray anyone. And you seem pretty cool with doing time for the crimes you actually committed, which all just leads me back to my original point: you’re not a bad guy. You might feel regret, and shame, and hurt—fair enough. But you need to get that thought out of your head. Move that one out, and move in here,” I said, and this time I put my hands on his face, my palms sliding along his razor sharp jawline, my fingertips slipping into the silky strands of black hair framing those eyes as they bore down on me. “Stay with me, Eric.”
“You need to stop touching me,” he snarled softly, his lips just inches from mine.
“Why?” I did no such thing. We stood there, me cradling his
face, his hackles raised.
“Because I don’t want you to lose your virginity on a kitchen floor,” he growled as his hands suddenly clasped my wrists, his grip tightening as he stared into my eyes. I felt something in my body begin to hum, as if his touch activated that electric charge again. I didn’t move an inch.
It was him. This wasn’t the worst birthday I’d ever had… I’d been looking at everything all wrong. There was a really good chance that this would be my best birthday. Ever.
“You don’t get to decide that for me,” I whispered, and somehow, that was permission enough. His grip was like iron, encircling my wrists as his lips found mine.
My back hit the floor.
And then everything was Eric. Just Eric.
~~~
Eric
The only thing I took with me when I went in was my painting kit. It was just a wooden box with a handle, about a foot long, foot wide; my brother said it looked like a case for some kind of instrument, which, in a way, it is. He was perceptive like that.
I left my easels, my drop-cloths; I took the brushes that were small enough to fit and a litte bottle of turpentine, but I had to leave my canvas. All of it. Cost a damn fortune. The cops were waiting, and the one who let me go was especially kind. Older guy, smart. He was pretty sure I was going to die from that bullet wound, although I hadn’t told them about it yet. They found me lurching towards the house after the roll-over in the driveway, and he waved the rest of them away from me. He just saw the blood, and he knew. Every cop there had been watching our family for months, maybe years; I had nowhere to go, and my whole family was gone. My uncle was on the Most Wanted list for a while. My dad said he was an idiot, and sure enough, he got caught first. He died in prison. But my dad died in the backseat, his partner holding the gun, so I guess idiocy runs in our family.
My brother, my best friend, died in the wreck.
I didn’t care that Benny died when the car crashed; he killed my dad, and didn’t have the sense not to shoot the driver next. But it was my fault my brother died.