by J. A. Huss
I get to the bottom of the stairs and spy Case in the open kitchen, cooking and talking at the same time.
He smiles, and continues his conversation. Like he didn’t kidnap me and hold me prisoner. Like we didn’t beat the shit out of each other last night. Like I didn’t trick him into this in the first place.
Well, I have to give him a pass on that one. He has a clue, but he’s still in the dark.
He waves me over and then says goodbye to whoever it was on the other end of the line. “Hungry?” he asks, flipping pancakes on a griddle.
I walk over to the kitchen and take in the place now that I can see it all properly. A huge, huge cabin. I know what these things cost, and I know the value of the land he’s got here, since it backs up against what I think is the Yellowstone River. Millions of dollars.
But his style is not pretentious. It’s not that fake log-cabiny feel that you see rich city people decorate in. People who aren’t really a part of this world, but want to feel like they are when they vacation in their million-dollar homes with their bazillion-dollar views.
It’s country-ish. Homey. The couches aren’t even leather, like you might expect from a man. My fingertips drag along the back of one as I step closer to the kitchen. Cotton. Soft. With throw pillows that look like he uses them to sleep, because they are all crumpled.
“Sydney?” he says, his tone a little more commanding. “Are you hungry?”
I look up at him as I make my way past the furniture. He has a nice dining table too. Rustic, but looking like it was made by hand by someone very skilled. I drag my fingertips over that as I walk as well. Polished and smooth. “Yeah,” I answer, taking a seat at the quartz-topped bar that also serves as a counter. He’s got butter and syrup out and there are two place settings with silverware.
He fills a plate with pancakes and slides it down the stone. It comes to a rest directly in front of me. “You’d make a great bartender with that slide,” I say with a smile.
“I’ve seen your slide, Syd. It’s dead on. Like getting that mug directly in front of a customer is winning a gold medal for you.” And then he turns to let me think about that.
He’s been watching me for years. So how much does he really know?
He slides a glass of orange juice next and I catch it in my hand when he overshoots. I get a shrug out of him for that.
I study his back as he flips some more pancakes. He’s hot. I didn’t want to tell him that the last time I thought about it. But there’s no denying. Merric Case gets what he wants because a) he doesn’t take no for an answer, b) he’s got the skills to back up his ‘requests,’ and c) he’s handsome.
He fills his plate, walks around the counter, and takes the barstool next to me. “Eat,” he says, pointing to my plate with a fork. A second later he’s stuffing his face.
I take a bite, then a few more before gulping some juice and coming up for air. “Mmmm. It’s good.”
“I know,” he says smugly. “I have two real talents, Sydney Channing. Killing and cooking.”
I nod and stare at my food. Right.
“So do you want me to take you to the truck?”
I take a bite of pancakes to think about this.
“Or do you want to hang out?”
“Pfft.” I look up with a laugh. “You kidnapped me.”
He shakes his head. “You came to me. I just kept you longer than you expected.”
“You drugged me. Hit me. Fucked me.”
He shrugs. “I did.”
“So now you want me to believe you want to hang out with me?”
He stabs at his breakfast. “You can if you want, that’s all I’m saying.”
“So now I get to do what I want?”
He shrugs again, but doesn’t look at me. Just chews and stares out the window at his bazillion-dollar view. “I guess I’ll take you back, then.”
“Back where? Where do I go from here? Back to Brett? The bar? How? What the hell will I tell them?”
“Most people who’ve been kidnapped, drugged, hit, and fucked by someone they hate would go right to the police.” And then he drags that heated gaze over to meet my confused one. “You can go to the police, if you want.”
“Because you’re untouchable? Because you have so many people on your debts and favors list they can’t get you? Because they’re afraid of you?”
“Come on, Syd. I’m one fucking guy.”
“One fucking guy.” I shake my head. “One dangerous, insane, out-of-control guy is more like it.”
He drops his fork on his plate with a sharp clang. “If you want to turn me in, then fucking do it. I’ve decided not to kill you, so—”
“Oh!” I laugh at that.
“—do whatever you want.”
I pour some syrup on my pancakes and we eat in silence after that. He finishes before me and leaves me sitting there as he cleans up his mess in the kitchen. “But if you stay,” he says, his muscled back moving as he wipes the griddle down, “I’ll cook you lunch too.”
He’s trying to fix the mood we have going. I give him a point for that and volley back. “What’s for lunch?”
“Well,” he says, clicking his tongue, “I don’t have much, sorry. I really didn’t expect to have you here at the house, let alone cook you actual meals. I have elk. Lots of elk. So we can have roasts or stew. But we’ve eaten that a lot lately. I have some turkey. And some frozen salmon I caught last spring when I took Sash fishing in Alaska.”
“Hmmm. I bet that was a nice trip.”
“It was. We go every year.”
“I’ll take the salmon.” But it makes me long for the dream guy in my head. He took me fishing too.
“Do you like to fish, Sydney?”
I nod. “Yeah. I do.”
“Maybe you can come with us this year?”
God, that hurts. Because now I know he’s just making this up. He doesn’t like me at all. He’s using me, just like I suspected. He’s trying a new approach. Violence, drugs, and insults didn’t work. Let’s try food and fishing.
“Something wrong?” he asks, turning back to me now that the griddle is clean.
I shake my head and it ends with a sigh. “I’d like to fish with you. That would be nice.”
“Then why do you look like I just killed your dog?”
I take a mouthful of pancakes, but they are cold now. The juice helps me wash it down and then I push my plate away. “Maybe I should just go. I really can’t take it.”
“Take what? Me being nice? You take the insults and the violence just fine, but normal? You don’t do normal, do you?”
“Not that you would know.” I fold my hands in my lap and wish I had my acorn.
He crosses his arms across his chest, flexing his muscles when he does it. I look up into his eyes to figure this out.
Do I believe this is genuine? I could fool myself into believing it, that’s for sure. It would be easy enough to just enjoy him for a little while.
But when he turns on me, that might break me up even worse.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
What am I thinking about? “This is a nice place. It feels like a home. You’re surrounded by nature. You seem to have some semblance of a normal relationship with Sasha. You—” I stop, trying to put my sadness into words. “You have so much more than me.”
“I’m just rich, that’s all. I bought the land the first year we got the windfall money. Then spent the next six years building this place.”
I huff out a laugh at that. “You built this place?”
He shrugs. “I hired people, you know. I did some of it. I helped. But no, I didn’t build it myself.”
“I really figured you were squatting here. Living in some billionaire’s summer home for the winter.”
“And I only have Sasha because of you, if you think about it. I would never have that girl in my life if that night at the cabin never happened.”
“Well,” I sigh. “You got a lot more out of that ni
ght than I did. I think I should go.” I push back from the bar and stand up. He’s right there next to me before I can take a step away.
“Look,” he says, placing his hands on my shoulders. I still have a bit of pain from where he shot me with—what was it, anyway? A tranquilizer dart, I guess—so that makes me wince internally. But I’m not about to show this man any more of my inner feelings, so I tuck it away. “I get it. This is weird.”
“Weird?” That hardly covers it.
“But you don’t have to go.”
“I don’t have a reason to stay.”
“Stay for me. Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“That’s all you want from me, isn’t it?”
“What do you want from me?”
I take a deep breath and just decide to say it. I’m leaving anyway. With any luck I can be driving away in an hour. “I want you to save me.” I look up at him, the tears I want to stop so badly welling up out of my control. “I realize that is a very sad and pathetic thing to say. To you of all people. But I wasn’t lying when I said that, Case. When I said you were the one who kept me alive all these years? In my head, telling me to go on? That you would be back? That was all I had. And now that I know you never meant it the way I tricked myself into believing, I just don’t think I can stand to be here. I’m stupid. I’m so, so stupid.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I can’t say anything right. If I tell you to go so you can figure shit out, I’m abandoning you. If I tell you to stay and help me, I’m using you. So this is up to you, Sydney. You have to decide to trust me or not.”
“I want to trust you. But I don’t. Everyone I have ever trusted has lied to me. Everyone I have ever believed in has used me and let me down. Everyone, Case. I mean, really, fishing in Alaska?”
“Why not? If you like it? Sasha’s not gonna come this year. I know it. She got into grad school—”
“Jesus Christ. She went to college? Grad school? After all that fucked-upness, she’s getting some PhD so she can live out her dream? And what did I get? That stupid bar?”
“I thought you liked the bar.”
“I wanted to go to college too. And no one ever swooped into my teenage life and saved me from my fucked-up life. No one ever came and bailed me out of shit and sent me to school. No one ever took me fishing in Alaska every spring. No one ever did this shit for me. It pisses me off.”
“So you’re jealous?”
“Fuck, yes, I’m jealous! Holy shit. You didn’t know that? Well, congratulations, Einstein. You’ve figured me out.”
“In difficult cases I win them over with recognition. I let them see themselves in me.”
– Case
She walks over towards the three-story-tall windows. The jeans I got for her are too long and they scuff on the polished hardwood floors with each step. Her arms cross, a defensive position, trying to ward away this conversation. But this all needs to be said and it needs to be said right now. I’m sure this is very uncomfortable for her, not being in her own house. Not having a place of her own to retreat to.
“Just take me to the truck.”
I walk up behind her and grab her left forearm, bringing her bandaged fingers up so I can look at her hand. “How’s it feel?”
I expect a snarky remark. Maybe something along the lines of, Like you care. Or, None of your business. But she just shrugs. “I have a high tolerance for pain. And I can’t do anything about it. It will heal.”
“I can try to make up for it, Syd. But I can’t take it back.” I repeat what I said last night in her sleep, but it makes me feel like I’m going too far. I don’t want to get attached to this girl. I don’t want to make all this shit more compacted than it already is. “All I can do is try to help you now.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says in a sad, soft whisper. “You never wanted to save me. You wanted to make money that night. I was nothing but a job. And now I’m just some kind of solution you have to tolerate.”
“I don’t need money, Sydney. I haven’t needed money in a very long time. Not that night, not that year, not that decade. I made so much money over the course of my adult life, it’s meaningless.”
“That makes it even worse.” She turns to me, her mouth drawn into a straight line. No hint of what she’s feeling. Does she feel? Can she feel? I’m not really sure of that. She’s been mindfucked for so long, she might not have much of her real self left. “Take me to the truck or just get it over with.”
I shake my head at her. “I’m not taking you back to the truck yet. And I’m not sure what you think I’m doing here.”
“Killing me, right? You brought me out here to kill me.”
I stare at her, wondering how much I should say right now. That is the reason I brought her here. And the last time I checked, it was still my goal. But it’s not going the way I planned.
“Will I die like him?”
“Who?”
“My father. You killed him back in that room? On that table?”
“He deserved it.”
“And I do too?”
It’s a loaded question. In so many ways. One I can’t answer right now. So I change the subject. “Did you love him? Your father?”
She takes a deep breath and turns back to the window. I see her crack a small smile in the reflection as she gazes out over the river. “This is the Yellowstone River?”
“Yup.”
“I did love him. He used to bring me to this river when I was very small.”
“How old were you?”
“Small. Before I ever went to school. He showed me how to hold a fishing pole once.” The hint of a smile disappears. “He’s the one who taught me how to hunt. Ducks, back then. I never shot any with him. I was too little. But he told me what to do. Explained it to me.”
Hunt. In my world it has so many meanings. But what does it mean to her?
“Who taught you how to hunt, Case?”
“The television.”
This makes her chuckle, and I get a little satisfaction from my off-the-cuff remark. “How did the TV teach you to hunt?”
“Survival Channel. Don’t leave home without it. I started watching that shit when I was a kid. It fascinated me. I grew up in Boston, one hundred percent city boy. But I never belonged there and as soon as I turned eighteen I moved west.”
“I thought you joined the army when you turned eighteen?”
“I did. But I didn’t want to be known as the guy from Boston. So I moved to Wyoming, set up camp in Cheyenne, got a month-to-month lease and an address. And once I settled in, I enlisted.”
“Why bother?” She turns to me, genuinely interested in my story. “What difference does it make? You still grew up in Boston.”
I tap a finger on her head. “It makes all the difference in the world in here, Sydney. It changed everything. Inner-city kids from a broken Boston home are a dime a dozen. I didn’t want to be that guy anymore. So I made myself into someone else.” She squints her eyes at this, like she’s thinking. That’s good. I want her to think about this stuff. I want her to think about all of it. “And it’s that easy, ya know? New town. New clothes. New music. New truck. New address. And bam, just like that I went from being Merric Case to Merc.”
She blinks up at me a few times.
“You can do it too, ya know. Just walk away. Stop being Sydney Channing and be someone else.”
“Who?”
“You.”
She shakes her head at that, not quite ready to put all the pieces together. So I turn away and walk over to the coffee table and pick up the remote. Her arms are crossed over her chest and she’s hunched into herself a little, like she’s frightened about what I might do.
I flick the TV on and punch in the number for the Survival Channel. There’s a guy talking about hunting snowshoe hares. He’s middle-age, weathered, and looks like he can kill anything that comes at him with his bare hands.
Sydney wrings her hands as she watches from across the r
oom. “I know how to hunt rabbits, thanks.”
“It’s a metaphor, Sydney. If you don’t want to live in Boston anymore, all you gotta do is teach yourself how to survive. And then just walk away.”
“See yourself as someone who survives.”
– Sydney
I feel like we’re talking in code. “It’s not even remotely similar.”
Case takes a seat on his white cotton couch and kicks his feet up on the coffee table. He watches the big screen that hangs over a large stone fireplace. I tip my gaze up as well. The guy on the Survival Channel is digging a pit trap. “What kind of skills do I need?”
Case looks up at me. “You could try…” He stops to think. Because he knows I’m right. It’s not the same. Leaving civilization and coming to the west is easy. But leaving the wild and becoming civilized is not as clear-cut.
“And I already was living in the city. I had a boyfriend, a bar, an apartment. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Going to school.” He shrugs. “Taking some college classes in… whatever.”
I huff out a small breath at that notion. “History of Western Civilization and English Lit is gonna erase my life and make a new one?”
“Do you think I became Merc by watching one guy catch rabbits on TV? I joined the army.”
“You did terrible things.”
“That was my plan. Become Merc. The army was a way to do that. But before I left for the army, those little steps made it real. I lost the accent. I lost the tough-guy attitude. I mean, almost everyone out here can survive. They might not be geniuses, but they know how to survive. So I became the guy out here. It’s just a first step.”
My gaze wanders back to the man on the TV. He’s tying a snare made out of thin copper wire.
“Look at me, Sydney.” Garrett’s eyes are blazing with anger as he fists my hair and makes me look up at him. But as soon as he lets go, my head rolls back to its original position. An electric current in my collar shocks me awake again. But only just. “You need to pay attention.”