by Jane Lark
I took my hand from his and he looked up, his gaze caught on my breasts then lifted.
See, a man, he couldn’t help but look.
He met my gaze, and I knew he knew I’d seen him look. There was color in his cheeks. It made me want to laugh. He didn’t look like he’d had that many women when he blushed, but he was gorgeous, surely he must have had a few.
His brown gaze held mine. “Okay, no hospital.”
I gave him my hand again.
His touch was really gentle for a man. I bent up my knees in the tub and wrapped my other arm about them, watching him. He had some antiseptic in a cup and dunked cotton-wool pads into it, then wiped the blood from my hand, while he rested the back of it on his knee.
I couldn’t remember anyone ever paying so much attention to one of my hurts. “Did your mom do this for you when you were a boy; is that how you learned to treat wounds?”
His brown eyes looked up and said he didn’t appreciate the comment.
“Have you got a big family then, back in the hills?”
“The hills?” His eyebrows lifted, and then he answered in a dry tone. “Very funny… I didn’t grow up in the middle of nowhere, you know. It’s a small town, not a shack.”
“With a small town society and small town views–”
“And moms who teach you how to clean a wound if you get injured… What’s so bad about that?”
“Nothing…”
His brown eyes looked hard at me for a moment. But those eyes were easy to look at, and he had long dark, almost feminine, eyelashes.
“Right. So just let me get on with it, Rachel…” His gaze fell to my hand again, then after a moment he glanced back up. “Do you have a family somewhere?”
Yes, but not that I cared to speak of. I felt my lips compress.
His eyes hovered on mine for a moment, asking unspoken questions, before they dropped to look at my hand once more.
His touch was caring, as well as gentle.
He looked up and saw me watching, then smiled, suddenly. He had a nice smile too, a really open-hearted smile.
This was a genuine guy. Someone like Declan would eat him alive. “So you don’t like your job?”
“I don’t know. There’s so much frigging office politics, I can’t keep up with it. I think I need to be a bit more cutthroat, but I’m not that type. I can’t be bothered with all the backstabbing, and I have an asshole for a boss. So I spent three years in college, and now I’m the office nobody.”
Yeah, Declan would definitely eat him alive.
“Talk to me about it. I can teach you backstabbing…” I shouldn’t have said that, the image and sound of the mirror splintering pierced my mind, and I felt the shard gripped in my hand as it sank into Declan’s flesh.
I felt sick. I let my forehead drop onto my knees, while my hand still rested in Jason Macinlay’s secure grip, and my arm hung outstretched to him. My other hugged my knees.
“Where do you come from, Rachel…?” he prodded a moment later, as though he was sweeping the previous topic under a rug and moving on.
His hesitation asked my last name, I’d give him that, but nothing more. “Shears. My name is Rachel Shears.” I looked up again, as my lips compressed.
His brown eyes looked hard into mine, but he didn’t push for more.
He looked down at my hand. “It’s clean. I’ll bandage it up.”
When he let it go, I left my hand lying on his knee. His legs were parted and his sweatpants were loose, but his top was tight, it hugged his abs and the pectoral muscles of his chest as he leaned to the side and picked up a bandage from the first-aid box.
He was beautiful, but unlike Declan there seemed to be beauty inside him too, it wasn’t just a surface thing. He was helping me.
I wanted to turn my hand and grip his thigh. But that would be the wrong thing to do. I knew that. But I was really good at doing wrong things.
Voices inside me encouraged me to do it. I didn’t. The cocaine was still clouding my view.
He straightened and his fingers gripped the back of my hand more firmly. It sent tremors running up the nerves in my arm.
His other hand laid the bandage over my palm and his thumb pressed down on the dressing he’d used to cover my cut, securing it, then he began winding the bandage round my hand.
I shut my eyes.
His touch was doing stuff in my belly, making it clasp with need. I wanted sex. I hadn’t wanted it with Declan anymore, but I wanted it with Jason Macinlay. Sex was the best escape from the things going on in my head. It had never even really mattered who I did it with. I just liked it, and I’d always found a guy who’d give me a place to stay in return for it. They just generally weren’t the right guys.
I’d never even liked Declan. And the feeling had been mutual. But we’d connected in bed. He liked things wild, and wild played to my crazy. God, had I really done that stuff with him? I needed something better now.
I opened my eyes and watched Jason Macinlay concentrating. He wound the bandage round and round, pulling it tight to stop the blood; watching what he was doing, not watching me.
I felt hot, and the tingle in my tummy slid to the point between my legs. I was sitting naked in a tub beside this guy. When had I decided to undress? I didn’t know him. Really, my head was stupid.
Yes I did, he was Jason Macinlay, from Oregon, and he’d already given me more respect than Declan had done in the last year.
“How old are you?” I asked.
His brown eyes lifted and met my gaze again.
He was feeling more relaxed, I could tell, his breathing seemed more normal and his muscles less tense.
“Twenty-two. You?”
“Twenty-one.”
“That’s too young to want to end your life, Rachel Shears.”
I shrugged, my lips compressing.
Of course he wanted to know why I’d been there, but I didn’t want to talk and I couldn’t remember half of it anyway. His eyes said, ‘what happened?’ I didn’t answer.
He smiled, not his stunning smile of a few moments ago, but a closed lip smile that said, okay, so you don’t wanna talk, I understand.
No one understood me. I’d learned that the hard way.
Mom would’ve said she did, when I was a kid. She didn’t, and I hadn’t even seen her in years. I didn’t even know why I was thinking of her today. I hadn’t thought of her in months. I hadn’t spoken to her since I was fifteen.
Maybe I was thinking of her because I wished she’d been a proper mom and had taught me how to clean a wound like Jason Macinlay.
“Drink your coffee, and don’t get that in the water.” He stood up, letting my hand go.
I reached for the mug of coffee with my good hand. It was already lukewarm, like the water. I started to feel cold again, and shivered.
“Run some more hot water. I’ll leave you to it.”
He walked out then, and left me, shutting the door behind him.
I used my bandaged hand to turn the water on.
The bandage was neat and tight.
I lay back in the water, and let the heat seep into me. But it wasn’t just the warmth of the water which was penetrating my body. I could fall for this guy, Jason Macinlay. That was another thing I was good at, jumping from one guy to another. It was what I did best.
~
“Hey,”
“Yeah, I know it’s late. I’m sorry, I…”
I woke in bed, hearing Jason Macinlay whispering in the room next door.
He’d changed the covers on the mattress while I’d bathed. The sheet and duvet cover smelt fresh and felt crisp.
I’d rather he’d left the old sheets on, it would have felt more comforting. I’d missed his scent from his sweatshirt. He’d thrown that in the washer, too, like I’d marked it and he needed to wash me off it.
Declan must have washed all the blood off by now, mine and his. I was gone from his life. That poisonous relationship was over.
“Somethi
ng happened, Lindy. I couldn’t call earlier. But I’m calling now.”
The door was shut between the bedroom and the living space.
“Yeah, I know.”
I rolled over and listened more intently, I could even hear him breathing between the words.
He sounded defensive.
“Look…” The pitch of his voice dropped. “I found a girl on Manhattan Bridge, Lind. She was trying to jump. I couldn’t just leave her.”
There was silence for a moment as he breathed. I imagined this Lindy speaking at the other end.
“I brought her home.”
Silence.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Lindy, leave it, she’s no risk.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, honest, I’ll take care. I can look out for myself.”
“I know this is New York.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Look, I’m going to go. I don’t want to wake her.”
“She’s sleeping in my bed. I’m sleeping on the floor.”
“She won’t.”
“I won’t.”
“Look Lindy, I’ll call you tomorrow, normal time. I’m going to go now, and don’t worry.”
“Yeah, I love you, too.”
“Yeah, tomorrow.” He sighed, like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
I needed a drink. I threw the covers back and got up, then knocked on the door leading back into the living space.
He didn’t answer; he couldn’t have heard, but I didn’t like to just walk in. I knocked more loudly.
“Yeah?”
“You decent?”
He laughed. It was low and heavy. “Yeah.”
I opened the door.
He was sitting on the floor, gilded by the moonlight streaming through a floor to ceiling window which lit his living room. His arms were about his knees as one hand still gripped his cell and his head was bent a little forward.
He looked defeated.
“Sorry.” I didn’t even know why I apologized, I just felt as if I was intruding.
“It’s alright. Did I wake you? Sorry.”
“I want some water.” I moved to the kitchen counter and watched him as I ran it, waiting for it to run cool. He was wearing a loose t-shirt now, with boxers. His forearms and his shins were dusted with dark hair. I could see it even in the blue-black light in the room.
The clock on the TV flashed eleven-thirty. I didn’t feel as though I’d get back to sleep, and my hand was hurting like hell now; it was throbbing with the beat of my heart.
“Is she your girlfriend?”
“Lindy? Yeah.”
“She’s back in Oregon?”
“Yeah.”
“Bet she feels small town, now you’ve gone all big city.”
“Ha. Ha.” His pitch was dismissive. Life clearly wasn’t all roses between them.
“I suppose you’ve been with her forever. What was she, the head of the cheerleaders while you captained the football team?”
“You think you know me so well, don’t you…”
He had been captain of the football team.
I bet they were best looking girl and best looking boy in their year, and they’d gotten together because it was what everyone expected.
“I was the kid who sat in the corner and never had friends…” I didn’t know why I told him that, I just thought it might make him feel better.
“And now?”
My lips compressed.
Turning away, I opened a cupboard and found a glass. “Do you want a drink?”
“No thanks.”
I filled the glass and drank, as again the images of the mirror breaking disturbed my thoughts.
I pushed the memory away. I was starting over and forgetting that.
I moved about the counter, and leaned back against it, facing him. “So what’s wrong between you?”
“Tonight? You. She thinks you’re going to either jump me in my sleep, or steal all my stuff, like I have anything worth stealing.” His hand lifted and swept forward indicating the virtually empty room.
“She might be right, though?” I did feel like jumping him in his sleep. It would be a great way to escape the blackness which kept threatening to swamp me.
His gaze focused up at me as he scanned my face. “She could be right, yes…”
Well, he didn’t know me, and I’d said nothing about myself, bar my name and my age. “She isn’t. You’re safe.”
“Phew, thank fuck for that.”
I laughed. He was a nice guy. There weren’t many of those in the world. I wasn’t used to them.
My eyes shifted to the white pillow on the hard floor behind him. Then I looked at him again.
“So anyway, seeing as I’ve promised not to jump you in your sleep, why don’t you share the mattress? If you’re safe, it seems silly you trying to sleep out here.” I’d be good. He deserved for me to be good. He’d been kind to me.
He looked at me for a long moment. I didn’t move, holding out against his assessment.
I wasn’t blind. I knew he liked what he saw. I was wearing his t-shirt, my legs were bare, and I’d nothing on underneath. It would be so easy to be bad. His gaze ran up my legs and my body then came to my face. But he wasn’t that sort of guy.
All men looked. It didn’t mean all men let themselves touch.
“Yeah, okay, I won’t get any sleep here anyway.”
He picked up his pillow and stood, then lifted the pillow indicating for me to walk ahead.
I went into the bathroom, while he lay down on the mattress, under the covers.
When I came back in, he was watching me, one arm behind his head.
I said nothing, walked to the other side and got in.
He probably wouldn’t mind if I jumped him, but he’d have a hell of a conscience the next day when he spoke to his Lindy.
I turned my back to him and felt him roll onto his stomach. My body was intensely aware of his, and all I could hear was his breathing as he drifted into sleep, while all I could smell was his shampoo, because he’d showered after I’d bathed.
This had been a weird day, I’d finally left Declan and within hours I’d acquired a stranger. My brain wasn’t on the same page as where my life had gotten to. I’d walked out on the life of rich egotistical playboys, and into an opposite extreme.
An ex had once called me a parasite–maybe I was. But maybe I didn’t want to be anymore.
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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014
Copyright © Jane Lark 2014
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