Demanding Ransom

by Megan Squires

  “Nice to meet you, Ransom.” She bats her false eyelashes and purses her lips. “You look old enough to drink—would you like a drink?”

  “No thank you, Ma’am.” See, now that is the appropriate use of the word ma’am. “Thank you for having us up for the weekend.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she mutters and it’s not a ‘you’re welcome,’ but I think it’s the closest thing we’ll get to one. “Dinner is at 5:00. Cocktails at 4:00.”

  “Cocktails? Isn’t it just you, Sterling, and the kids?” I ask.

  My mom swivels her hips around and heads toward the door. “No, we have some friends from the country club that will come over to join us tonight for dinner. Wear something nice. We’ll see you downstairs at 5:00.”

  And then she shuts the door behind her.

  “What was that about?” I gape, slumping onto the corner of the bed. “Do you think all of her children are tucked away behind the other bedroom doors? Is that what this is? Some kind of holding cell until we are allowed to come out and show our faces?”

  “I honestly have no clue.” Without asking, Ran unzips my bag and begins to unpack my belongings, placing them into the dresser along the wall. He shoves my sweaters, jeans, and pajamas into one drawer and then reaches out to pull the remaining contents when his hands find it. “Maggie, what’s this?” His eyes are huge on his face and he runs his free hand nervously through his perfectly tousled hair. “What is this, Maggie?”

  “Nothing.” I jump from my seat and launch toward him, but he stretches up on toe, his arm extended to its full length like he’s playing keep away. My triangle bikini top dangles overhead. “Give that back.”

  “Oh Maggie, this is not good.”

  “Give it back, Ran!” I demand, but he fends me off with his left forearm.

  “Do you realize what you’re doing to me with this?”

  “It’s not even mine,” I defend. “It’s Cora’s.”

  Ran looks up at the hot pink strip of fabric and glances back my direction. “I owe Cora a huge thank you.”

  “Shut it, Ran! Just give it back to me.”

  He shoots me a grin that makes me melt, even though I’m still pretending to be furious with him. It really isn’t fair how he does that. “I’ll give it back to you on one condition.”

  “And that would be?” I plant my hands firmly on my hips and summon my most intimidating snarl, but I know I’m not pulling it off in the slightest.

  “That I get to see you in it.”

  I stomp a foot to add drama to my mini tantrum. “I don’t even know if they have a hot tub.”

  “Oh don’t worry, we’ll find a hot tub.”

  “Fine,” I mutter.

  “What was that? I couldn’t really hear you.” He waves my swimsuit like a taunting flag.

  “I said fine!” I swat at the strap and he drops it into my hands. I immediately yank open the dresser drawer and bury it under the rest of my clothes.

  “You got anything else in there?” Ran angles his head and squints one eye toward my suitcase.

  “Don’t you have some unpacking to do?”

  “Nothing in my luggage is anywhere near that exciting.” He drags his finger over the zipper to my luggage again. “You sure there isn’t anything else?”

  “Go unpack.”

  “Alright.” Ran backs away from me and pulls on the handle to the door. “I think I’m actually going to go lie down before dinner. Too many late shifts this week.”

  “I’ll wake you in time,” I say as he walks toward the door. “And Ran?

  “Yeah?” He turns around to face me.

  “Thank you, I think. I don’t hold much hope for this weekend, but thank you for making me at least try to do this.”

  “You’re welcome, Maggie,” Ran says. He traces the outline of his swirled tattoo etched across his arm. “And this weekend will be fine. New memories to replace the old, remember?”

  Dinner was an event. Not just an event, a spectacle. Ran and I opted to skip “cocktail hour” and played a game of gin in the bonus room instead, while Kinsey and Jefferson, who didn’t look up once from their handheld electronic devices, occupied the other two chairs in the room. From our position on the couch we had a bird’s eye view of the pre-party downstairs, and by 5:00 p.m. all guests had consumed more alcohol than I would expect to see at a college frat party. But what was more disturbing than the copious amounts of liquor in their systems was the fact that no one seemed even the slightest bit buzzed, as though their tolerance was unusually high from many past nights similar to this one.

  We ate at a long, wood planked banquet table and I was sure to snag the chair furthest from my mother in an effort to avoid any possible interaction. But apparently that wasn’t even necessary. I think my mother must be one of those drunks that gets really quiet as opposed to loud and obnoxious, because she just sat in her seat next to Sterling the entire evening, smiling when appropriate, nodding her head where needed, and engaging in polite conversation when she was spoken to.

  The mix of country club friends was an odd one. Two couples could have easily been swapped out for one another and no one would have known the difference: both consisted of men in their 50’s with silver as opposed to gray hair, both with a distinguished, handsome charm about them, and their much younger, much blonder, counterparts could have been clones of each other. The other couple looked a lot like my mom and Sterling and made mention a few times of their three children back at their chalet with the babysitter, so something about them seemed warmer than the others, though I’m not sure why. Mom and Sterling currently have five children in their mountain home, dining at the same table, but nothing about this family situation feels warm.

  After dinner Ran offered to help with the dishes, but Sterling waved him off, saying something about a housekeeper that would arrive before dawn to clean up the aftermath. So instead we hid out in my room, waiting for the chatter downstairs to die off as today turned into tomorrow. But by midnight, the extra couples were still present and the party was still going. It felt like an extravagant scene out of The Great Gatsby more than a Friday evening dinner.

  “How are you?” Ran asks, sitting cross-legged in front of me on the bed.

  “How am I?” I play with the hem on my black yoga pants and roll it over and under my fingers. “I’m fine.”

  “She’s not a good mom, Maggie.” The moonlight and the reflected white of the snow outside filters through the upstairs window and skims across Ran’s face. His strong features look more pronounced when the light hits the chiseled curves of it and I find it hard not to stare at him, because as silly as it sounds, he looks like a work of art.

  “Great job cracking the case on that one, Detective.”

  “I’m not joking. I never doubted you, but now that I’ve seen it for myself, I totally agree. I hope that helps a little.”

  I look straight at him. “How is that supposed to help?”

  “Because now you have some outside confirmation that it’s her, not you. So you can stop second guessing yourself.” Ran walks his fingers across the bed and pulls my hand from its mindless pant-leg fiddling. He delicately rubs the back of it, tracing over the ridge of knuckles with his index finger. “She didn’t leave your family because she didn’t want to be your mother anymore, Maggie. Hell, she doesn’t want to be their mother, either.”

  I arch my head back and push out the air that’s been trapped inside my chest all evening. The air that’s ironically been suffocating me, hardening my lungs, and making it impossible to breathe. “And you know how that makes me feel?” I ask, my voice erratic and uneven. “Seeing my mom just as uninterested in her current family as she was in ours—do you know how that makes me feel?”

  “No.” His finger continues to glide across the back of my hand.

  “It makes me feel good. It makes me feel good, Ran.”

  He doesn’t break his gaze and doesn’t offer me any sort of readable emotion on his stoic face. “Okay.”

 
; “Damn it, Ran! It makes me feel good, and then it makes me feel absolutely horrible.”

  “Right, because it makes you feel guilty.”

  I throw my hands in the air and rip at the roots of my hair, completely disheveling the ponytail that held it all securely there. “Yes. It makes me feel incredibly guilty. Just like with the accident, just like with the cancer—knowing that my mom is just as miserable now as she was back then makes me feel guilty, because it makes me feel good. Because somehow, just like in those other scenarios, I’m getting something out of it. Like I’m benefiting from someone else’s pain.”

  “Stop.” It’s just one word, yet it cuts at me more than anything he’s ever said.

  I battle with the water that laces around my eyes by blinking rapidly until I win and they stay put. “I can’t.”

  My gaze is drawn to the shadows that slip across the wall and indicate the party downstairs might finally be wrapping up. The way the headlights slide over the furniture as a vehicle backs out of the driveway streaks white lines across my room.

  “Yes, you can.” Ran’s tone is controlled.

  I bite down so hard on my cheek that I taste the tinge of blood that seeps out of it. “I don’t know that I want to.” Shaking my head, I say, “It’s like I deserve it. It’s like the guilt is my punishment.”

  Ran looks at me with worried eyes and then does the very last thing I’d expect when he crosses his arms over his body, grasps the hem of his shirt, and swiftly lifts it over his head. His upper half is exposed; his tattoos are dark against the fair hue of his skin, the contrast only intensified from the window light.

  Taking my hand within his, Ran pulls out my index finger from my balled up fist and runs it over his chest slowly—deliberately—like a pen inscribing a word on a paper. My breath shakes out of me and I know my hand is trembling because I feel the effects of it radiating up my arm to my elbow, pulling the hairs up right along with it. But Ran just clamps down harder and doesn’t remove his eyes from mine. It’s one of the most intense things I’ve ever done, and at the same time, the most terrifying.

  “Ransomed.” He says the word as a whisper, and my finger follows along like it’s aiding in his pronunciation of it. “You know when I got this?”

  Feeling his bare chest on my skin, even though it’s just under the surface of such a small patch of it, makes me unbearably lightheaded. Ran keeps his hand coiled around my finger, and if he weren’t doing so, I’d have the compulsion to press my entire hand upon his chest. To press myself to him completely.

  “I don’t know,” I say with more nerves than I can contain. “When you got the others you drew back in high school?”

  “No, Maggie. That’s not when.” Ran shakes his head and his dark hair falls across his forehead. “I got it when I finally gave up the guilt I had for being glad that my parents OD’d.”

  My finger slips from his hand and I don’t know if it’s because I’ve drawn it back, or if he’s loosened his grip. “Oh.”

  “I found out they were dead when I was fifteen. Evidently, they were on some three-day binge or something.” Ran threads his fingers behind his neck and wrings it back and forth. “You know how I celebrated? I went to a party and got drunk and hooked up with a random girl.”

  “And was that the night you…?” I start to ask.

  “I needed to escape from it, Maggie. Not just from the fact that they were dead, but from the irrational way it made me feel to hear the news. I needed to find something to replace all of the conflicting emotions.” He lifts his shirt from its crumpled position on the comforter and slides it back over his head. “But then all those escapes led to more guilt, because I was using one hurt to cover up another. I started hating myself just as much as I hated them.”

  The depth in his eyes, the vulnerability in his voice—I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life. I’d always thought that crying was something you did over things that were sad. But the urge to burst into tears right now over this beautiful man and his story tears at my insides, twisting me, wrenching me. I want to weep—for him, for his past, and for what it’s done to him. But not because it’s just sad, but because it’s turned him into the breathtaking person that’s sitting right in front of me. I can’t breathe. I can’t form a sentence. I can only sit, staring at him as he exposes every part of himself to me.

  “I hated them,” Ran repeats, and I hear a sniff at the end of his sentence. Oh no, I think he’s crying. I don’t know how I hadn’t seen it, how the water collecting in his eyes wasn’t clearly visible, but the tear that slips down his cheek pulls one down my own face. “I had so much hate. I had so much guilt. I always thought healing was only about forgiving them, Maggie.” I reach my hand out to his face and cup it on his cheek, brushing the lone tear with my thumb. He leans into my palm and closes his eyes and I pull myself over the bed closer to him, settling onto his lap slowly. Ran slinks his arms around my waist and presses his chest against me. His heart doesn’t race, but keeps a steady, controlled tempo. “Forgiving them was just part of it. But I had to learn to accept that same forgiveness. We’re not meant to live this life clinging to guilt because in some twisted way we think it’s our payment and punishment for what we’ve done.”

  Ran runs his palm over the top of my head like he’s soothing me. He sighs into my hair. “Forgiving them was the patch. Allowing myself to accept that same forgiveness was my ransom.”

  He stops talking and just looks at me.

  “I’m scared, Ran,” I murmur into his chest.

  “It’s scary, Maggie. I told you I’m good at patching things up—I can help you with your mom. But I can’t completely fix you—that’s going to come from within. I can’t do that for you.”

  “No, that’s not what I’m scared of, as frightening as all that sounds.” I tilt my chin up. I can’t get over how beautiful he is. “I’m scared of what I feel.” My heart thunders in my ears. “I’m scared of you, Ran.”

  “I’m not trying to scare you.” He shakes his head. “I just want you to know who I am and how I’ve gotten here. How I’m not bound by my guilt, my mistakes, or even their mistakes anymore.”

  “That’s what scares me. Who you are. You’re this incredible, unimaginable person that’s had more crap in their life than any one human deserves, and I’m terrified by you.” I pull back to reach his eyes, to try to share a piece of myself by allowing him to see my vulnerability, to stare it straight in the eye. “I’m terrified by you, because you’ve somehow figured it out and you’re living the life I want to live—one where you don’t feel the need to punish yourself anymore. I’m terrified by you, Ran.” I swallow so hard I’m sure he hears it. “I’m terrified by you because I think I’m falling for you.” I swallow once more. “And that scares the hell out of me.”

  “Maggie,” Ran utters, his brow pulled taut, almost like he’s in agony.

  “I am, Ran,” I say again while I still have courage, before I realize just what I’m doing and try to slink back into my shell again like I always do. “I haven’t allowed myself to love for so long. And it scares me because you’re not safe. Nothing about you feels safe, Ran. Everything about you is terrifying, because you’re turning me into the girl I’ve been running from for these past ten years.”

  “But I’ve been searching for that girl for all those years, too.” Ran lifts me off of his lap and presses me backward onto the bed, slowly, gently, with his hand at the low curve of my back as my head meets the mattress. “You have to stop running from her, Maggie. I need her just as much as you do.”

  “I’m done running. From her, from you, from it all.” Something flickers in Ran’s eyes and he uses his weight to push me down so I’m completely underneath him, his elbows propped on either side of my body. The fabric of the comforter is cold against my skin. Ran’s fingers twist in my hair to slip the knot out of my ponytail, and he brushes his thumbs on either side of my cheeks. “I’m falling for you, Ran.”

  “I’m right there with
you,” he says, and when he lowers his mouth just over mine, all sensation in my body intensifies. I wait for him to lessen the gap and finally kiss me—to finally do what I’ve daydreamed about since the moment we met—but he scoots down and skims his warm lips across my jaw, trailing lightly down my neck, and over to my collar bone. My lips ache and I have to pin them between my teeth to provide some kind of relief. My body alternates between a fevered flush and deep chills and it’s an incredibly dizzying feeling, but one that I never want to go away.

  “Maggie,” he mumbles across my neck.

  I tug at his hair and bury his head into my hair that spills around my shoulders, and his mouth pushes harder against my jaw. Why won’t he just kiss me? After all that I know he’s done in his past, how is he able to exercise so much restraint when it comes to me?

  I decide to take things into my own hands and begin pressing my lips to his cheek, starting just above his jaw by his earlobe, inching closer to his mouth each time I draw back and reposition my mouth on his skin. Ran backs off of me, raising up to look into my eyes. I can’t get over how blue they are. Even in the dark shade of the room, they’re so clear. His thick lashes drape across them and his mouth is that same mouth I remember from our first encounter. I’d wondered what it would feel like on my own back then, but then it was just a mouth—a perfectly shaped one—but it was all physical. Now I’ve heard what those lips are capable of saying, what that mouth is capable of confessing, and it’s like I need to feel it on my own to make everything complete.

  I sweep my lips back across that same path again and bring my mouth close to the curvature of his ear and whisper quietly, “I want you to kiss me.” My heart is about to rip through my chest and I’m sure Ran can feel it throbbing through my shirt and hear it rattling out in my breathing. It would be so easy to just do it, to plant my mouth on his and press into him with a kiss. But the only thing that makes it easy is our close proximity to one another, because actually doing it—actually summoning the courage to kiss Ran—feels impossible, like it’s both the scariest, and most exhilarating, thing I’ve ever contemplated doing.