A Brutal Tenderness

by Marata Eros

  It’s all for Jewell, every bullet, every drop of sweat. The night lightens, morning bringing an eerie end to the

  torture of the past two years.

  The future is as uncertain as a coming storm.

  I know every nurse and every doctor from every shift who cares for Jewell. I stay by her for ten hours. I don’t leave her side even

  to take a piss.

  When my bladder is shrieking with indignity and my

  stomach is digesting my goddamned spine, I finally leave her.

  My feelings for her stretch between us like a rubber band. I leave her hospital room without looking back.

  I know if I do, I never will. I’ll use her bathroom, I won’t eat. But Jewell still needs me. More now than ever, and I won’t

  abandon her by wasting away. One of us needs strength to give

  to the other.

  Luke stands up in the waiting room when he sees me,

  raising a bag of slow death, and I smile.

  Thank Christ. I give him a wan smile.

  He hands it over and I take a bite of the cheeseburger that

  leaves me with half.

  “Holy shit . . . hungry?” he asks as I gulp the Coke through

  a straw.

  I nod, famished, more like.

  Adams gives me a look that makes me slow in the hall, the

  bathroom door a tantalizing ten paces away. My heart speeds at

  that look as I cram in another bite. “Spill it, Adams.” “Do you want the good news or bad first?”

  “That’s easy, bad.”

  Adams doesn’t talk for a few seconds. I suck another pull

  from the straw, watching him.

  “Fuck me, I hate being the bearer of this.”

  I can feel my brows drop over my eyes.

  Adams throws his hands up. “Okay, okay . . . O’Rourke has

  come down with the hammer. No subject contact until she’s

  released from the hospital.”

  I stand in stupefied silence, my greasy meal forgotten.

  After a few seconds, I find my voice. “You’ve got to be fucking

  kidding me.”

  Luke shakes his head. “No, man, the press is crawling all

  over this place. If they get wind that you and she . . .” He can’t

  finish, but I know what he’s going to say.

  Ethics. This is about a clean kill of two sickos without the

  collusion of me mixing it up with Jewell.

  I breathe in and out with smooth deliberation.

  Finally, I give the food to Adams. “I’ve got to piss like a

  Russian racehorse.”

  “Seriously?” Adams asks, looking comical holding my halfconsumed food.

  “Yeah.”

  I use the facilities and exit the bathroom, grab the food, and

  sit down.

  “You’re taking this pretty calmly, Steel.” Luke glances at me

  with suspicion while I cram fries in my mouth.

  I nod.

  “Shit. I know that look . . .”

  I grin. “O’Rourke thinks I’m going to not see Jewell for

  what?” My brows raise in question.

  “They’re saying three weeks, maybe a month. They’re

  putting her knee in traction.”

  I think of Jewell dancing, and make a low sound of despair in my throat that Luke is perceptive enough to hear and clever

  enough not to comment on.

  “What are you going to do?” Luke asks, searching my face. “People take a lot of rest when they’re healing,” I comment

  neutrally.

  I let Adams piece it together.

  “Shit,” he says with awe, giving me a look of pure guy pride.

  “That’s smart as hell.”

  “Yeah.”

  Adams leans forward on the cheap plastic waiting room

  chair. “She won’t know that you’re here, Cas.”

  “She doesn’t have to . . . I’ll know. I’ll watch over Jewell

  when she sleeps.”

  Adams smirks, leans back in his chair, crosses his ankles,

  and begins to grin at me.

  “What’s the good news?”

  Luke jerks up in his seat and I go on the alert, scanning the

  hospital. Seeing no threat, I say, “Hey ass jack, way to start shit.” “Clearwater made it,” he lays on me.

  I set down my half-drunk pop. “No way.” A cloud of sorrow

  I didn’t know was there begins to lift.

  “Way,” he says with a grin, giving me the one-finger salute. I stand. Clearwater’s alive! “Where is he?”

  “ICU, man.”

  Adams’s face grows serious. “That fuck, Ben Miller, he

  nicked an artery . . . the jugular. It was a near fucking thing,

  Cas.”

  “Let’s go,” I say, dumping my trash in the nearest can. We fly up the three flights of stairs, taking two steps at a time. ICU is on the fourth floor, and it feels like some kind of

  wonderful to be back in motion.

  They suit me up in a smock and I wash my hands to the

  elbows, keeping my hands above my waist.

  Dec is a pale shadow on a pillow that matches his pallor.

  His inky hair flows around him like displaced black water. My

  eyes travel, landing on the open gash, closed with Frankensteinlike stitches.

  “Good fuck . . .” I breathe out, and Adams nods beside me. “They say it’s a miracle he survived. If the nick had been a

  millimeter deeper, he’d have bled out in minutes.”

  We look at each other, the ventilator like an accordion,

  breathing for Dec, and I shudder. Jewell in a hospital room

  three floors down, and my fellow agent, and good friend,

  clinging to life by a thread.

  We stand by Dec’s bed, his body being manipulated by

  machinery so he might live. And maybe, by some slim miracle,

  he can survive and live to fight another day.

  Two Weeks Later As I’m leaving the hospital, I see Carlie. I’ve been working up the correct words to say . . . and I still don’t have them. I’m not a talker, I’m a doer, and I find my personal silence swell with every step that brings her nearer.

  Carlie stops in front of me, her eyes swollen from the tears she’s shed.

  Jewell has cried beside her. I know from Jewell’s personal doctor that they’ve given her something to dry up her tear ducts.

  How many tears does a human being cry before she can no longer open her eyes?

  “You fucker,” Carlie lights into me without preamble.

  This is going to get ugly.

  “Let’s take this somewhere more private, Miss Stanton.”

  Carlie crosses her arms. “I call bullshit, Cas . . . or whatever fucked-up name you have this week.” She glares at me. “We are, by God, on a first-name basis, I think.”

  We look at each other.

  “Listen, it isn’t what you think—”

  “Yeah, probably worse than I can imagine.”

  I get pissed, leaning in. “Listen to me. Do you think I want this for Jewell?” I seethe through my teeth, and Jewell’s fearless friend stays where she is, completely unintimidated.

  “No, I think you’re a natural dickhead. It’s automatic.” She smirks, tapping her foot.

  Carlie’s going to make me work for it.

  My silence in response is so long she turns to leave.

  “Wait,” I call softly. “I need your help.”

  “Ha!” she exclaims in disbelief. “Fuck off. Twice.” Carlie nods quickly. “Yeah . . . uh-huh,” she says, agreeing with her own sentiment. She begins to walk away again, and I tell her. I say the words out loud for the first time.

  “I love her.”

  Carlie stops in her tracks, her back to me.

  Slowly, she turns. Her eyes narrow, sweeping over my face, judging my sinc
erity. Finally, she asks, “How much?”

  I don’t take time to think it through. Instead, I reply quietly, “I don’t want to take a breath unless she’s in it.”

  Carlie’s dark eyes widen, the expression on my face a raw wound of reluctant truth, my eyes steady on hers.

  “Oh, my God . . . that’s so . . .”Then Carlie bursts into tears, covering her eyes. I move to where she stands and watch her cry. Finally, she lifts her head. “Why didn’t you tell her . . . Cas.”

  “My name is Cas,” I say, and Carlie nods, waiting.

  “I couldn’t . . . I didn’t know . . .”

  “If she would survive,” she intuits.

  I give one stiff, miserable nod.

  Carlie takes a shaky breath. “Wow, that’s the fuck of fucking clusterfucks.”

  I grin with nervous relief and she does too, the tension climbing down a notch.

  “Now what?”

  I give a sly smile as I tell her.

  “Oh, my God, Mackey’s gonna crap a Granny Smith when you show up.”

  “I want to surprise her,” I say to Carlie. “I want her to know it’s over. But for us . . . it’s just beginning.”

  Carlie looks at me, and my breath burns inside my chest that’s grown too tight, my heartbeat thudding inside me like a drum.

  I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Do you think there’s a chance?”

  Carlie searches my face, then gives a rare and gentle smile. She slowly nods. “Oh, yeah. There’s always a chance.”

  I put my hands on my hips, cautious hope rooting where doubt has been, feeling light-headed. “So you’ll help me?”

  Carlie grins and my lips twitch. “Hell, yeah, I’m all over this sneaky spy shit.”

  I laugh and Carlie winks as she walks off.

  My mind is on our coconspiracy, and as the elevator opens, she turns. “And Castile?”

  “It’s just Cas,” I reply, and she shrugs.

  “Don’t get the ring without me.”

  I incline my head.

  “Because size matters, stud.”

  I bark out a laugh as the elevator doors whoosh shut behind her, my heart rate slowing. A plan that will secure Jewell’s happiness takes shape. It’s been a shadow before, and it now becomes a certainty, like sunlight chasing away the shadows of indecision and doubt.

  I drop the newspaper on top of the long dining table in the communal cafeteria of our staged headquarters. There are a few days left here, but it’s already in the early stages of being dismantled. They’ll have it broken down easily, like the circus leaving town. The case is closed. Adams sits across from me, drinking the sludge from the coffeepot like a lifeline.

  He’s a natural Seattleite. They drink day-old shit out of the microwave.

  “How’d it go?” he asks, his eyes meeting mine over the rim.

  I nod. “Good, I’ve enlisted the help of Carlie . . .”

  Adams whistles. “Wow . . . brave.”

  “No shit.” We laugh.

  “But she knows Jewell, and O’Rourke’s got me by the gonads with that mandate. I don’t want to do shit halfway. I want to be able to be with her—permanently. I don’t want a case, O’Rourke, or anyone else coming against us.”

  Adams looks down at the spoon he uses to stir the powdered cream into the coffee. His eyes rise, locking with mine briefly. “You hear about Senator MacLeod?”

  “Yeah,” I say in terse answer.

  “He has a right to see her . . .”

  I lean forward. “Not after what I know, Luke.” We look at each other. “He’s got some fucked-up DNA, pal.”

  “He can’t explain that away. Figure the odds.”

  “On them being brothers?” I ask rhetorically.

  The silence fills the room as Adams thinks, then he says, “Brothers by a different mother.”

  “The same father, though . . . the same father.”

  “Both of them raised apart . . .”

  “Both serials.”

  We give each other the nod.

  Senator MacLeod had catted around years ago on his former wife, Thad’s mother. He stepped out on her, got a trashy chick pregnant, and paid her hush money when she threatened to talk. Later bearing Benjamin Miller.

  “Just think, they never would have found each other if MacLeod had less of a guilty conscience,” Luke remarks speculatively, taking another sip and giving a grimace. He rises, walks across the room, and stuffs the cup of coffee into the microwave, setting the timer.

  I watch the mug spin atop the glass carousel, thinking about MacLeod putting his two biological children together at the same camp for rich kids.

  Would they have become what they did without each other?

  The timer beeps, and Adams retrieves the cup, blowing on the liquid.

  “I don’t think it was about guilt,” I say slowly, my eyes moving to his.

  “I guess we’ll never know, Cas. His presidential bid is over.”

  It sure is. The follow-up story just broke. I pick up the dogeared newspaper that every agent on this case has fingered.

  Killing Partners related: Benjamin miller illegitimate son of senator macleod MacLeod won’t recover from this revelation, it’s simply too damaging.

  I can’t recover from his negligence of Jewell that left her unprotected in his own home.

  It’s what he deserves. Terrible deeds returned to their owner.

  Justice prevails.

  21

  I can feel the small lump in the pocket of my leather jacket. The weight is negligible, the symbolism is weighty. I’m taking the biggest gamble of my life. An unlikely supporter stands forty feet away, ready to do her small part, play her small role. On the exterior I appear calm, collected, in control. On the inside I’m a bundle of tangled nerves

  What if Jewell doesn’t feel as I do? What if I’m wrong and she rejects me?

  I slant my head in Carlie’s direction, and she flips me the bird and grins.

  I grin back. That’s Carlie communication—contrary.

  The fruit of our labor lies in my breast interior pocket, the small velvet box above my heart. The steady drumming of it moves the tiny package in time with my pulse.

  When Jewell exits, it takes all that I am not to jog to her as she struggles with a nurse on one side, a crutch under her arm, steadying a body that is accustomed to grace.

  The reporters swarm around her, and when she spots Carlie, who waves like a princess on a float, Jewell gives a tentative smile as microphones jam up underneath her nose.

  I frown. Fucking vultures, they don’t care about a woman traumatized, just what kind of story they can write to exploit her for their gain.

  Timing is everything, and I notice the nurse take the crutch as Jewell stands awkwardly without it.

  Wait.

  She answers a question or two, distracted.

  Wait.

  I straighten from my slouch against the government-issue SUV as Jewell’s eyes fall on me. We stop breathing as we regard each other.

  My eyes narrow down on Jewell, the sun setting ablaze hair that’s been changed back to her natural shade, the highlights like spun copper, caught in the sunlight of the morning.

  I make my way to the bottom of the flight of concrete steps, taking her in like a forbidden fine wine, her emerald eyes without a bit of indifference, all for me.

  For us.

  Jewell’s hair flows around a deep green puffy jacket, her simple black top and yoga pants, missing a leg, provide a glimpse at her toes peeking out from the soft cast she wears to keep her knee stationary.

  My eyes travel back up to her face.

  I get nothing. Her face, once an open book to me, looks shell-shocked, closed, unreadable.

  I hesitate. Maybe I’ve lost my money on this gamble.

  Then she cocks her head to the side and the sunlight that had backlit her moments before catches her just right, and I see the same thing on her face that I know rides on mine. I take off my sunglasses, puttin
g them in my front pocket, and charge up the steps. The reporters go silent, one lone photographer keeps his video camera rolling, the whine of it is all I can hear as they split in the middle, allowing me to pass.

  Not that I need permission.

  The nurse at her elbow moves away, a knowing smile on her face. My eyes slide to hers in subtle thanks, then move back to Jewell.

  “Agent Steel! Agent Steel!” a woman reporter trumpets beside me, and I ignore her so completely she moves back. Undeterred, she steps forward again. “Tell us what plan the FBI has for Miss MacLeod.”

  The question blindsides me; the Bureau is the farthest thing from my mind in those few moments as I approach Jewell. They lean forward to capture my quiet statement. “I don’t know,” I reply honestly. Finally, I reach for Jewell and cup her face, and as if she anticipated the move, she leans her cheek into my caress and a little sound escapes me before I can hold it in. I use my other hand to cage that face I love, dream about, hope for. My large hands capture Jewell within them.

  I never want to let go.

  I never want to look anywhere else.

  Jewell’s brought me to this point, where brutality and tenderness meet.

  Her green eyes open and I answer her. The reporters hear and I don’t care . . . I don’t care.

  “My plan is to love her.”

  Jewell’s tears shimmer, her eyes the swimming green of summer grass as she rises up on tiptoe. I release her face and lift her from the ground, wrapping my arms around her waist as her casted leg dangles. I slowly consume the lips she offers, taking everything that’s mine with savage possession, a love so deep it borders on pain as she returns everything back to me.

  I feel the heat from the camera bulbs that flash and sear, our embrace immortalized.

  Our love.

  I can’t get enough of her. I know I’ve gone overboard as I scoop Jewell up in my arms, bride-over-the-threshold style, and retrace my steps down those broad concrete steps.

  Carlie waits at the SUV, opening the door as I approach, tears cascading down her mocha skin, those dark eyes not looking like twin orbs of hate anymore.

  Now they hold gratitude and, possibly, friendship. “You bitch,” Jewell whispers from my arms, and Carlie and I grin at each other as I slide Jewell into the front seat.

  “Guilty,” Carlie says, raising her hand as the reporters take after us, beginning to swarm the car. She smirks. “I’m not gonna lie, it was fun as hell to have this surprise waiting for you.”