by Anne Malcom
Most people weren’t prepared enough to have comprehensive first aid kits. That was only in the movies. But then again, most people weren’t me.
So that meant I had implements to treat everything up to a bullet wound in my bathroom.
I nodded.
He leaned forward and kissed my head. I closed my eyes to hide the tears that welled up at the gesture.
Then I watched him stand, eye me for the longest moment, turn, step over the dead body beside my bed and walk toward my bathroom.
The way he did that, stepped over that body without a glance, while wearing his uniform, something about that hit me. Sent me plummeting back to reality.
“You should go,” I blurted, awkwardly and painfully getting up.
Luke didn’t hesitate in turning and glaring at me. “No. You’re not doin’ this shit,” he growled.
I frowned. “What shit, Luke? I’m doing you a favor. I’m not going to make you do this, break more laws for me tonight. I can’t.” I choked out the last two words. “I’ve got people, family more accustomed to dumping dead bodies where people like the law can’t find them. That’s their life, for better or for worse. They’re used to bloodstains. I’m not letting you become used to them too. Not for me.”
He stepped forward purposefully, stopping at the edge of the pool of blood originating from Kevin’s head. “Clue in, Rosie. I’m plannin’ on doing everything for you. Anything,” he declared. “I’ve got a lot of time to make up for. A lot of mistakes to make up for.”
I fought against the impact those words had, almost pushing me off my feet. But I had to fight.
Not for me.
For him.
“See, I think you’ve got some image of me, some little fucking made-up version of Rosie in your mind. The sweet girl who lost the genetic lottery and was raised by wolves. The little princess who you’ve now noticed needs saving and have taken the job of doing so.” I pointed my gun to the body on the floor. “In case you haven’t noticed, princesses don’t murder men right in front of the police officer they just happen to….” I caught myself before I said “they just happen to love.” Then I continued, like the stutter in my speech and the hole in my shield hadn’t been revealed. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a wolf too. And I’m not ashamed of that. I’ve never been ashamed of who I am. Until you look at me like that. And despite how much I love my family, how I’ve learned to love myself, this little evil, fucked-up part of me hates all of that. Everything that makes me me, because that’s exactly what stops you wanting me. And that fills me with so much self-loathing I can’t even breathe around it. Around you.”
His face contorted in pain at my words. Real pain, like I’d taken the broken edges of myself, made them tangible and sliced through his chest with them.
“Rosie. I—”
I held up my hand, both to silence him and to physically stop his advance. I needed the distance between us right then, nothing else holding me together but the empty ear that pressed against me with our separation.
“No,” I snapped. “I’m not done.” And I wasn’t. I was on a roll. It happened now and then when I was really excited or really pissed off. Or, as I was quickly discovering, when I was really fucking heartbroken.
“This Rosie, you’ve made her by taking the real me, warts and all, and smashing me into little pieces. And you’ve scooped up the things you like about me, the things that are convenient about me, glued them all together and made a little mosaic of me. The broken pieces that are unused are the things that are inconvenient to you. Things that don’t work for you. My little transgressions, both by purpose of identity and accident of biology.” I sucked in a painful breath. “You see, those things that you’ve left out of your little mosaic, left to be swept up and discarded? Those are the integral things that make me me. And despite what I want from you, despite the fact that I want—” I stuttered on the word I almost said. Everything. I wanted everything. I straightened my shoulders. “Despite the fact that I want something different than the situation we find ourselves in, I won’t break myself in order to make that happen. I won’t let you break me to do that either.”
It was a lie, that last part. He’d already broken me. At five years old, I was split in two with the love for exactly who I was and that ugly and secret yearning to be anybody else as long as it was someone Luke could see.
Luke waited a long time after I’d spoken the last word. Presumably for me to decide I wanted to say something else. Not that I could; I’d yanked out every single word from its hiding place in those soft parts of me and flung them at him like bullets.
The chamber was empty.
I watched him and came to the conclusion that he wasn’t just waiting. He was inspecting my words like he might the statement of a criminal, testing them for inauthenticity, to see if he could find the lie.
“You think I want to break you?” he said finally, voice clear and even, eyes granite.
I fought to mimic the blank look on his face. “No, I don’t think you want to.”
He continued to stare, mulling over my harsh words with lack of elaboration. “You may be right, Rosie,” he murmured, the coolness gone from his voice as vulnerability snaked in. “Despite me wanting to rip off my own arm before I let hurt come to you, before I hurt you myself. You’re right and you’re wrong. It’s not the things that are… inconvenient”—he frowned using my word, as if it tasted bitter—“about you that I want to discard. It’s the things about myself. Those things I want to rip out but can’t, because they’re like fucking barnacles clinging to the inside of me. I can’t fucking get them off.”
He stared at me, his gaze juxtaposing the desperation in his voice. “But I’m not the only one who wants to leave broken pieces at my feet. You’re making your own mosaic too, babe, no matter which way you look at it. You’re focusing on all the things that are part of you keeping us apart. But you’ve made your own version of me, out of the broken pieces you’ve chipped off. The ones that are too shiny, too much of a mirror to show you a little piece of reality. The reality that you’ve been using excuses and your love of your family to forsake your happiness.”
I stared at him. For a long time. Under normal circumstances, it would’ve been a long time; when I was dirtied, inside and out, beaten, and smelling the pungent aroma of death that circled around the room, originating from the body on the floor, it was a lifetime.
Maybe more than one of them.
Maybe it was all the lifetimes I could’ve had, that we could’ve had if we’d made different decisions, if we were different people.
But no matter how many times I changed my hair color or my wardrobe, I was always going to be the same person.
So was Luke.
And our decisions, like his to pull that trigger minutes before, they were as lasting as a scar. They were there in the flesh of our past, were obscuring the growth of something new for the future. Obscuring it altogether.
“My happiness?” I repeated. “And what would you know about that?”
Luke watched me, his face struggling with different emotions. By the way he held his chin, I knew he was frustrated, even beyond that, at the fact that we were standing there having that conversation while I was hurt. We were having that conversation before he could help me.
He couldn’t.
His face also showed something else. Tenderness, but something intense as well, a full glimpse at what he’d only hinted at through the years.
His feelings for me.
Perhaps his love for me.
The thing I’d wanted him to show my entire life. To acknowledge. You always think you want your dreams and fantasies to come true, but then when they enter the realm of reality, they’re tainted, blackened, and tarred by that reality.
It didn’t matter. I realized that. We could both want each other, but we couldn’t have each other.
He stepped forward, though he couldn’t completely, considering there was a dead body between us and all.
“I’ll admit that I don’t know much about your happiness,” he rasped. “About being the reason for it. For making it. But I’m gonna learn, babe. I want to learn. I’ve wanted to learn my whole fuckin’ life, Rosie. I was just too fucked up.”
“I’m fucked up too,” I whispered.
He eyed me. “So let’s be fucked up together.” It was an invitation, that look, those words, the fact that he’d stepped over the body he’d created to get to me instead of stepping away from it to call it in.
It was that pivotal moment.
And I knew what I needed to do.
But I wasn’t strong enough to do it then. I was going to treat my broken and battered self to a taste of the fantasy.
“Okay,” I whispered.
He patched up all of my outward bruises, his face hard, eyes soft. His hands moving over me so lightly it was like they almost didn’t touch me at all. At the same time, his touch felt heavy, grounding, like without it I’d float away.
And I’d let him.
Do all of that.
Take care of me.
I didn’t rattle on about how I could do it, about feminism, about how strong I was, about my lineage and ability to handle such situations.
Because if I said any of those things, I would’ve lied.
I was done lying to Luke.
So I let him take care of me.
He didn’t say a word while he did so, maybe sensing that I couldn’t speak, that all of my energy was going toward trying to patch up my insides as well as my outsides. He didn’t demand answers as to how it happened, why. Didn’t order me to call it in. In fact, he very purposefully ripped off his badge and set it on my nightstand.
It was a gesture.
A big one.
Huge.
One I couldn’t do anything with, couldn’t even process.
That didn’t mean I didn’t stare at that shiny piece of metal lying against the lipsticks and body creams on my nightstand.
That didn’t mean I didn’t feel it stare back at me.
“Rosie?”
I jerked my head up.
Luke stood at the edge of my bed, white shirt stained with blood, hands stained with blood.
Soul stained with blood, a voice I didn’t recognize told me. Because of you.
I looked behind him. To where the dead body used to lay. To where a puddle of blood had stained my rug, seeped onto my polished hardwood floors.
The body was gone.
Same with the rug.
And the blood.
I wondered where he put him. Why he didn’t call it in. How much time had passed.
I didn’t ask any of those questions.
I met his eyes. “Have you ever killed someone before?” I asked, my voice flat.
He flinched, though I wasn’t sure if it was at my question or at the unfamiliar tenor of my voice. There was a long silence as he stared at me. Very long.
“No,” he said finally.
I hid my flinch.
“Neither had I,” I whispered. “Well, technically I have, I guess. But today was the first time up close and personal.” I laughed without humor. It was ugly and empty and I hated it. “Guess I popped both our cherries today.”
Luke’s stiff body moved, as if he couldn’t hold himself away anymore. He knelt at the bed. Then, not taking his eyes off me, he slowly moved his hands, making a point of showing me his intention, giving me the chance to stop him.
I didn’t.
He gently cupped my face. “I’ve got a lot of regrets in my life, Rosie,” he said. “A lot. Fair few of them involve the beautiful woman I’m lookin’ at right now.”
I flinched. And I didn’t hide it that time.
His brow narrowed. “Don’t you come to your own wrong conclusions hearin’ that,” he ordered. “None of them are because of you,” he said firmly. “They’re ’cause of me. ’Cause of the wrong things I did, the right things I failed to do. ’Cause of my fuckin’ archaic views of what constituted right and wrong. Of all the things I regret in this life, pulling that trigger will never be one. Never.” He pulled my head slightly toward him. “You’re not gonna try and put it on you, tell yourself the fault lies with you for what I did. Because that’s bullshit. There are some good things I’ve done in my life, and I hate to say there’s not enough that involve you. I intend on changin’ that. But if there’s one truly good thing I did, it was murder that piece of shit. My conscience is clear on that count.”
I blinked at him. And then stared at him for a long time. There was a lot to process in that monologue. A lot of things I could’ve said. A lot of things I wanted to say.
“The blood,” I said instead, looking between us.
“What?” Luke followed my gaze, as if he’d forgotten we were both covered in it.
Him more so.
I tried not to dwell on that.
“Shit, yeah, okay.” He stared at me. “You gonna be able to get up, Rosie?”
I didn’t answer, ignoring the pain as I sat up, swinging my legs to touch the floor that stank of ammonia.
The room was crackling with the strength of his anger, his frustration. I glanced to his fist, which was eye level. It was clenched so hard the smooth tanned skin was whitening under the power with which he was restraining himself. From helping me up.
He wanted to. More than wanted to. I guessed every inch of him needed to. It was his job, after all, protecting those people who couldn’t help themselves.
But I could help myself. I had to.
He’d already lost enough protecting me.
“Rosie,” he choked out as I pushed to my feet, grimacing against the pain.
“I’m okay,” I whispered, focusing on the floor. Putting one foot in front of the other.
The second I stumbled, I was no longer on my feet. I was in his arms.
I didn’t even try and protest. I couldn’t. Shame washed over me. Not at needing help, but at the warmth that spread through me from Luke’s tenderness. That sick little person inside my head telling me that this was what was needed to happen to get us to happen.
I needed to blacken his soul so he had no choice but to come down to the gutter with me.
He brushed my sticky hair from my face as he walked us into my bathroom. “You don’t have to be,” he murmured.
I jerked my head up to meet his gaze. “Have to what?”
He set me down next to the tub, keeping one hand on my hip to steady me, reaching over to start the shower with the other. He straightened, cupping my face carefully, avoiding the worst of the bruises. “Be okay,” he said. “Pretend you’re okay. Be strong. I already know how strong you are, baby. Spent my life learnin’ just how strong, so you don’t need to convince me of anything. Don’t need to protect me from it either. Know you live in a world where strength is part of the job description, but there’s no need for that with me, Rosie. You don’t have to do anything, be anything.” His hard jaw clenched even more. “’Specially after today. You don’t need to be fuckin’ okay.” His grip tightened, as if he momentarily forgot he needed to be handling me with care. “I’m not fuckin’ okay. That shit”—he jerked his head to my bedroom—“is gonna be burned on my brain for the rest of my life. So I’m gonna have to spend it reminding myself that it didn’t take you from this world. From me.”
I blinked at him. My body hurt. Like a motherfucker. My soul was ripped, bleeding too. But those words ruined it.
Everything. Me.
They were everything I wanted to hear. Everything I hoped for.
But too late.
He didn’t wait for me to speak, seemed to realize I couldn’t.
Luke stepped back.
“I’ll let you clean up,” he rasped.
“No,” I pleaded.
His eyes jerked upward.
“I need… I want…. I want you to
clean up too. To clean me. And I can clean you.”
I said it like it was possible. Like all I needed was soap and water to wash away the filth he’d attached to his soul. Because of me.
Luke’s eyes stayed on me, his body jerking as he understood my meaning.
I expected a protest. For him to be the good guy. Tell me I was too vulnerable, that such a thing would be taking advantage.
For him to point out that great fucking elephant in the room. The one that had always been in the room. The one that stopped him, every day, every moment, from ever doing anything that would’ve had us right here. Together.
“Okay,” he murmured.
I flinched.
I’d expected him to be the good guy. But he wasn’t anymore. I’d made him into something else.
I hated myself for being so happy about it.
“Rosie?”
He cupped my cheek that was both hard and soft at the same time.
I blinked up at him. “Yeah?” I whispered.
Again, I expected him to ask me if I was sure, if I was okay. Again, the good guy Luke remained elusive.
“Take off my clothes,” he commanded, eyes shimmering.
I didn’t hesitate to comply. Maybe because I was scared that I’d only knocked out the good guy and he’d wake up at any moment. The sick, ugly part of me hoped he’d never wake up again the moment my shaking fingers exposed the column of his neck.
The other part of me, the part that had loved Luke for who he was, was sickened at the thought of what I’d done. What I’d made him do.
But that Rosie had been in charge for twenty years. She was tired. Weak. Vulnerable.
So the evil part of me continued to undo the buttons of his shirt.
He hissed out a breath when my nails raked at his washboard abs, scoring the taut skin.
I stared at it, his exposed torso, as his shirt fluttered to the ground. Luke’s smell, his aura, engulfed me, both sweet and sour at the same time.
Both a dream and a nightmare being lived out in real time.
I was here, with Luke. Alone. He was half-naked. He wanted to be here.
“Now you,” he growled.
I didn’t even have time to properly listen, let alone answer, before his hands went to the shirt that swamped me.