Mirrors (Curse of Lanval Book 1)

by Dodson, Rebekah

  I dropped my arm and slid it up behind her shoulders, and she looked up at me, her face half hid in shadows by the parking lot street lights. Her short, angular face was so youthful and vibrant in the low lighting, her lips so full and perky.

  I kissed her.

  I’d kissed a lot of girls, well, not a lot, but you get the idea. Girls loved the star in the drama play at school, so I usually had my share of tail. Some great kissers, some not so much.

  At first, Selena’s lips were soft and sweet and tasted like candy. But then it went wrong, so horribly wrong.

  Damn it, brain.

  She put her hands up on my chest and pushed me away. Staggering, I caught my foot on the curb and almost fell. Oh, this time the curse let me down easy. She slapped me across the face, and I stumbled, even more, sidestepping into the parking lot. The slap echoed across the pavement, and I wished I had fallen—if only to avoid that.

  “What was that for?” I said, resisting the urge to hold my cheek like a goddamn woman. I flexed my jaw from side to side, tossing my red curls. Eh, it wasn’t the first time a girl had slapped me. But what did I do wrong? I mean, you can’t grab their ass without permission, but Selena had been leading me on all day if I wasn’t mistaken.

  “I have a boyfriend!” she shouted at me, her eyes wide.

  “You could have said that before…”

  “It’s Sam,” she interrupted. “Are you an idiot?”

  “I… um… seriously?” I thought about the beret-wearing guy. He was into women? My brain started screaming at me to kiss her again and make her forget about Beret. I told it to shut up.

  “Yes! Ugh!” She stomped her foot, pulling at her shirt again.

  “But, I thought… I mean, earlier, you winked at me, and…”

  “I wink at everyone. You seemed like a guy who needed friends,” she said, followed by another disgusted groan. “Why are men such pigs!”

  “But that outfit?”

  My brain was making this worse, yet again.

  She looked down, then at me. “So what?”

  “You didn’t wear that… for me?”

  “Of course not!” She reached out to slap me again, but I grabbed her arm.

  “I’ve got to get to work,” I told her, fighting for a calm tone even though I was seething inside. “It won’t do to show up looking freshly slapped.” I threw her hand down.

  “Pig,” she said, spitting on the sidewalk next to me. She pulled out her phone, punched in a number, and stomped off.

  “Damn,” I murmured to no one in particular since the parking lot was completely empty. I found my car, got in, and tried to shut off my brain. “You suck,” I told the review mirror, “look at all the trouble you get us into.”

  Finally, my brain was silent. How frustrating.

  My phone rang again as I started the engine. I picked it up without looking at the screen.

  “Guillaume Marcus! You asshole, I’ve been calling all night!”

  Jules. Uh-oh. She hadn’t used my middle name in like, well, three days probably, but still. “Jules, hey, sorry I didn’t answer, I was…”

  “Never mind, moron,” she said, “I’ve got bad news.”

  “What?” I pulled out of the parking lot, juggling the phone to my ear. “I’m late for work, so make it fast.”

  “Gill, Uncle Richard died.”

  Chapter Three: The Bearer of Bad News

  My shift wasn’t very much fun at first, considering the news that my sister had dropped on me. Aunt Alberta and Uncle Richard were like second parents to me, and I took Jules’ news hard. I sat in my car outside the station, reigning in my emotions. Selena’s slap and my failed Glee Club attempts were the last things on my mind as I started my shift.

  Usually, I enjoyed my work, even if a lot of it was sitting around the station house and waiting for calls. Like many large cities, Bay City had privatized their emergency services, so we were under the constant eye of Big Boss Sally, a large woman with twenty years’ experience as a retired police officer and a trained paramedic. It was a good thing for her that she was twice my age and size. Otherwise, I would have gotten myself into trouble long ago. I’ve fucked some ugly chicks with a nice rack, but even Gill has his limits. I pulled out my phone and pretended to be buried in it as I snuck past Sally’s office.

  Alice, 21, loves to paaartay and also cute puppies! My feed showed me a dark-skinned beauty with long black curls and a green string bikini. Generally, I don’t judge, but she was a bit too dark for me. Meh, I thought, swiping through the pictures on my phone, two blondes, brunettes, and one redhead. Crystal. School is my first priority, so you’ll have to be content with second base. Super pass, I groaned internally. The number thirty appeared above the envelope in the corner of my screen. Maybe my profile pic of shirtless me from last year’s annual Paramedics BBQ sent the wrong message. Or all the right ones.

  “You’re late, Lanval,” Sally yelled at me from her office as I passed. I realized I’d stopped in full view of her door accidently, still swiping left for more gorgeous girls.

  I leaned against the frame and tucked my phone in my back pocket, crossing my arms. “Looking beautiful as always, Boss,” I told her with a smile. It didn’t hurt me to lie, as I observed her eyebrows that touched in the middle of her forehead and the large mole to the left of her nose. If I were Adam and she my Eve, civilization would have ended before it had even begun.

  “What do you want, Lanval?” She eyed me over the reports on her immaculate desk.

  I dropped my arms. “Look, normally I’d stop in with one of those chocolate and acai berry candy bars, but today I don’t have the time.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “I need a few days off.”

  Sally sighed. “Who is she?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who’s the girl you need to sweep off her feet and into your, uh, dorm room, I take it?”

  I scoffed. “Sally, I…”

  She waved her hand. “I don’t even care. But you already broke Christine’s heart, and Becci’s, too. So maybe take a minute to think about how important these days off are.”

  I frowned at her. “Now, we both know Christine was distraught after that patient coded, and Becci, well, Becci…”

  Sally rolled her eyes at me. “Becci was engaged, Lanval.”

  Christine, a trainee that lasted exactly three days, until she saw her first patient code after a heart attack, had been wildly inconsolable. Of course I slept with her, she was distraught! Becci was just a bonus, an off and on fuck-buddy that I had a mutual agreement with. Then she went and got engaged to a firefighter, and I hadn’t seen her in weeks. Besides, she always called me.

  “Yeah, but Becci…”

  “Look, I don’t have time for this shit,” Sally interrupted. “Get me a time off request form, and I’ll see if I can approve it. With Becci back, I might be able to swing it.”

  “Becci’s back?”

  “I sure am.”

  I groaned and turned around. “Hi, Becci. Welcome back.”

  “Get to work, you two!” Sally yelled at us. “And shut my door on your way out!”

  Becci followed me to the locker area where I put my duffle bag to change later. She waited, her breathing heavy, and I wished she would go away. “How was the Caribbean cruise with Fred?”

  “His name is Francis,” she said.

  “Whatever, still a gay name.”

  “You didn’t text me,” she said, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “You were with your fiancé,” I smiled at her.

  She leaned in and whispered, “I meant after I got back when he flew back to Florida.”

  “Busy with college,” I shrugged. “I have shit to do, Becci, besides you.”

  “You’re such an asshole, Gill.” She turned and stomped out of the room.

  “You know you love me!” I called after her. I turned to watch her go, her tight little butt bouncing in her blue uniform.

  Even such
a wonder to behold couldn’t distract me from thinking about Uncle Richard. A heart attack, Jules said, even though he was only in his fifties and an avid runner; something about past drug use in his college days catching up with him. I slammed my locker and leaned my head against the cold, blue steel. My father, an insurance adjuster, worked long hours. Uncle Richard and Aunt Alberta moved to town just before I started high school. They took us everywhere, to every concert, amusement park, whatever we wanted. He was more a father to me than my real one. When I was fifteen, Uncle Richard bought me condoms for my first school high school dance, even though I was terrified to ask my father. I lost my virginity to a senior that night, but thank God I had protection; rumor was she gave half the football team the clap.

  So, Uncle Richard wasn’t just my father figure, he was my buddy, a true friend of the guy code. We drifted apart when I graduated, and I suppose sometimes I felt a twinge of guilt, but whatever. I was busy, I’m sure they understood. I’d been meaning to call them, but life just got in the way. It was hard to believe he was just … gone.

  I smashed my fist into the locker, wincing and shaking it off. It wasn’t fair. Why did people have to die so early? And leave us loved ones behind? It didn’t make any sense. The world sucked.

  On my way back to the common area, I filled out my time off request and slid it in the box outside Sally’s office where she was busy on the phone. I made it a point later to tell her it wasn’t for some girl, but for my uncle’s funeral next week. There was the twelve-hour flight to Paris, three days before the funeral, to spend with family and friends. My mother had already made the arrangements, as she’d be joining my sister and I. My biggest concern was missing a week of school, but this early in the term I knew I could make it up as long as I talked to my professors. Besides, Gill always got what Gill wanted – whether it was extra credit or a piece of sweet ass, it was always mine.

  “Deal you in?” Becci asked, ripping me from my thoughts. She looked at me from the wide, circular table in the middle of the common. Becci, and the two other emergency personnel, Trevor, and George, were sitting around playing Blackjack 21. It wasn’t as exciting as poker nights, but it passed the time between calls.

  Trevor was an older man, nearly Sally’s age, with a potbelly and gray hair, and a ridiculously large handlebar mustache. He mostly just groaned about how he was six months from retirement. George, a black guy a few years older than me, always reminded us he was just waiting for his papers to go through to join the military. We didn’t know if he was telling the truth; the police academy had already turned him down twice for “psychological reasons.” George loved to show us pictures of his eight-month-old baby girl, doing random boring shit like smiling, crying, and crawling. Most of the time he was just crazy as fuck, though. He was the nicest guy in the world, but had an anger switch no one should ever accidently flip.

  But Becci. Oh, Becci was a sight to behold. She had long curly hair that she always pinned up tight under her cap, but that I knew reached down to the curve of her naked ass. Her big blue eyes were framed by the longest, most seductive lashes I had ever seen. And she certainly knew her way around a…

  “Lanval!” George, who was dealing at the moment, waved a hand in front of me. “Hit or stay?”

  I looked down at my cards. A queen and a seven? What an awful hand. But what the hell. “Hit.”

  George dealt me an eight.

  I threw my cards down. “Son of a bitch!”

  “Stay,” Becci said, grinning like the cat that caught a mouse.

  “Hit,” Trevor said, groaning loudly when he didn’t get the card he needed.

  “That’s right, bitches,” Becci said, taking the pot, which consisted of a bottle of water, a package of Skittles, and some Cheez-its. We never played for money – none of us made that much. We played for snacks. Because sometimes calls took forever, and it was hard to save lives on an empty stomach.

  Before George could deal again, the blue light over Sally’s office started to clang, announcing a call. Sally threw open her door. “Lanval, Sanders, we’ve got a pediatric case, child choking, nonresponsive. You guys are the pediatric experts. Get on it.”

  “Yes, Boss,” Becci and I said at the same time. Keys in hand and coats thrown on, we raced to our vehicle. Despite our past relationship issues, we were in full work mode. Communication was minimal unless necessary. And even with everything between us, we made a good team. Usually.

  “You didn’t call,” Becci said as soon as I pulled out of the station.

  “Becci, I told you,” I started, throwing on the lights and sirens as I peeled onto the highway, “I’ve been busy with school.”

  “Two years, Gill, we’ve known each other for two years.”

  I breezed through a red light, swerving around traffic. “So what?”

  Becci swung in her seat, but I was focused on the road. “Twenty-three months of sleeping together, the least you could do is call!”

  “Becci, not now,” I said, trying to concentrate. Why couldn’t I have taken Trevor? He never talked. Even George’s phone in my face of a diaper experience would have been better.

  “We could have been good together,” she mumbled, swinging her legs to the front again, her arms crossed.

  I pulled up in front of our destination, a twelve story apartment building. Becci hopped out and grabbed the equipment while I raced through the doors and up to the sixth floor. I could hear a woman screaming, “Someone help, please! He can’t breathe!”

  I threw on a pair of blue rubber gloves as I took the stairs two and three at a time. I made it to the landing with Becci on my heels, our red emergency bag hoisted in front of her. An older woman with curly red hair was kneeling on the landing in front of the open door to apartment 603B. A child of about two years old languished on his side on her lap. His face was purple, his eyes bulging, as he clawed at his throat and whimpered. He was still breathing, but barely.

  Time was of the essence.

  “Gill, check for obstruction!” Becci yelled behind me.

  “It’s too late for that!”

  I slid to my knees and took the child, turning him over my knee, and hitting him squarely between the shoulder blades.

  He choked and coughed, but his breathing was still shallow. I hit him again, harder this time. Finally, he coughed loudly and spit out a long, small, black object.

  “Breathe, kiddo,” I said. Spittle and vomit flew all over his mother, who didn’t seem to care. Parenthood is gross.

  He looked at me, breathing heavy, then climbed into his mom’s arms. She started crying and begging him not to scare her, ever, ever again.

  “Is that…?” Becci reached around me and picked up the object covered in spit and vomit. She turned it over in her hand.

  “Yeah, it’s a Hot Wheel,” I said, snapping off my gloves and putting them in the disposal bag.

  “Gross,” Becci said. She dropped it in the bag along with my gloves.

  I pulled the paperwork out of the corner of the bag and turned to the mom. I ruffled the boy’s curly head. “You okay, champ?” He nodded, promptly sticking his thumb in his mouth. I had mom sign the papers, and after profusely thanking us for saving his life, we took our leave.

  It was a normal night after that, rife with emergencies and traumas. We had a call for not one but two ladies who thought they were having heart attacks that just turned out to be anxiety. Then, there was a young man who turned out to just be an addict who wanted pain pills. Yet it was our final call of the night that both of us would remember for a long fucking time – a young college student who had been assaulted.

  At the exit to the emergency room where we had dropped off our drug addict before our last call of the day came in, my phone beeped and I slid it out. I was excited to see a message from my social media site – and bonus, a goddamn red head. “Hello there,” I said to the phone as I began an eloquent response.

  “Shit, Gill, seriously? Girls R Us app? How low can you go?”


  “Oh, what’s this?” I said, holding my phone up as I pulled the door open to the ambulance. “Becci, 23, loves Fred and ocean cruises and screwing her ex-boyfriend?” I said in a high, sing-song voice.

  “I’ll kill you where you stand, Gillaume Lanval,” Becci said, sliding into the seat opposite me. She sat the triage bag between us and crossed her arms. “I’m so sorry I ever posted that. Asshole.”

  “It was an okay pic,” I said, pocketing my phone, “but you look better naked.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” she glared at me.

  I did, not because I wanted to, but our conversations always ended this way, me, teasing, her taking it personally. Some part of me still loved to see her so irritated.

  I hadn’t even pulled away from the curb when Becci laid into me again. “I’m still mad at you,” she said suddenly, “not even one text while I was away.”

  “Becci, enough, really. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I just got… busy. College stuff, you know.”

  “I know why we didn’t work, you and I,” she said.

  I pulled away from the curb. “Because I fucked your sister?”

  “My twin sister.”

  I shrugged. “It’s all pink down there.”

  “Gill!”

  I stopped at a light and turned to her. “What? I warned you before we got involved that this would happen.”

  “What?”

  “That we’d be like … this.” I turned back to the green light as we headed back to the station.

  “Only because you can’t be anything else.”

  It was the second rejection in less than six hours. First Selena, now Becci. Uncle Richard was dead; not that it had anything to do with my seduction skills, but a little part of me was gone, and it made me feel like less of a man. It was time to show someone who Guillaume Lanval really was. I slammed on the brakes and jerked the ambulance into a parking garage adjacent to the mall, a few blocks from the station. The yellow bar above the entrance scraped the top of the ambulance as we barreled through.