A Brutal Tenderness

by Marata Eros

  “Hop in, Carlie,” Luke Adams says from the driver’s side, giving a chin jerk at the reporters.

  Jewell turns, and I forget that she doesn’t know Adams as anyone but Brock.

  “Ah!” Jewell yells and begins to scramble awkwardly out of the car.

  Fuck, the reporters are here, looking from Jewell to me to Luke Adams.

  “Time. To. Go!” Carlie says.

  “No,” Jewell says in a low, frightened voice.

  “He’s an agent, Mackey,” she answers.

  Jewell gives Luke Adams a suspicious look, and I sigh, taking her out of the front and telling Carlie, “You sit in front with Luke.”

  The cameras never stop clicking, the shutters sounding like rattlesnake tails in motion.

  “Yeah, baby,” Carlie says, winking at Luke, who shifts nervously in his seat.

  “Agent Steel, tell us about the relationship between you and Miss MacLeod . . .”

  I look at the reporters, their mikes front and center.

  “I think I made that abundantly clear earlier.” More than I meant to.

  “Yeah!” Carlie says loudly, “a picture’s worth a thousand words. Why don’t ya go write them?” She cocks a brow, and Adams covers his guffaw with a hand.

  Damage control.

  I position Jewell in the backseat as gently as possible, poke the mike that prevents closing the door out of the way, and shut the door.

  Luke pulls out, Carlie riding shotgun with a constant stream of words.

  “Those frickin’ reporters. Can’t they see they’re intruding? Ugh!” Carlie huffs, folding her arms across her chest and slouching in the front seat. Luke’s eyes flit to mine in the rearview mirror.

  “Uh, no. No silent guy-eye communication. Spill it or else,” Carlie says.

  “Excuse me?” Jewell says from the backseat.

  I lift our laced hands and raise them, kissing the back of her wrist. Her eyes rise to meet mine, dilating, the ebony of her pupil eating the green, and my breaths come quicker just from her look.

  Jewell’s next words chase the heat, leaving me cold.

  “That’s quite a show you put on, Agent Steel,” Jewell says, taking her hand out of mine.

  I shake my head, Carlie’s eyes meeting mine as she turns in her seat.

  Jewell moves farther away from my body.

  What the fuck is this?

  “Jewell . . .” Carlie begins, but Jewell looks at her in anger.

  “Here’s the thing.” She levels us with a stare. “I can hardly walk. I have one of my attackers driving this car. And Cas decides now that I’m well ‘enough’”—Jewell quotes with her fingers—“he’ll take me on as an actual girlfriend?” Jewell laughs, the brittle sound of it like broken glass in the confines of the car. “No. Where were you when I was lying in that bed for almost a month, so despondent they had to give me something so I couldn’t cry?” Her eyes meet mine and there’s heat in them.

  Not the exciting kind.

  The pissed-off, accusatory, I-want-to-grind-my-stilettointo-your-heart kind. Not the reception I’d hoped for.

  I open my mouth, but Carlie interjects before I can say anything. “Luke Adams is an FBI agent, Mackey.”

  Jewell folds her arms, looking out the window. She begins in a low voice, “I know now that he isn’t Brock.” She swipes at a tear and I reach to wipe her face. “Don’t, Cas,” she says, and my hand freezes.

  The surprise I have for her in my pocket hangs like a frozen lump against my chest, the warm circle of symbolism now feeling like a noose.

  I drop my hand to my lap. I want to punch something. Finally I’m able to act on my feelings for Jewell only to be held up by her distrust.

  “You lied to me, Cas,” she says, turning away from the window. Her eyes nail me to the spot, the tears rolling out of them. “I know, I know”—she looks from me to Carlie—“he was doing a job. Catching the bad guys.” Jewell’s eyes flick to mine again. “And I’m thankful you caught them before . . . before . . .” She covers her mouth as a sob erupts.

  I move against her.

  “No,” she says, trying to push me away.

  “Yes,” I whisper, ignoring her as I hold her and the sobs come. Harsh sounds of a shattered heart, the pieces floating away with the wetness of her sorrow.

  “Oh, Mackey,” Carlie says, crying along with her.

  Luke stops the car outside Carlie’s house, his fingers bleeding to white with the grip on the steering wheel. He’s the driver, he’s my partner.

  Witness to my unraveling. To the end of a successful case that leaves behind broken bits that might not ever be repaired.

  I’ve envisioned this scenario a hundred times in the last month, and I never saw it coming to pass like this. I feel like my fucking heart’s being pulverized inside my chest.

  I hold Jewell against me, stroking her hair. Her body feels so right against me it’s like a part of my own.

  Jewell scoots away and I let her, even though it feels like an amputation. I swallow as our eyes meet, and my throat convulses painfully over the lump that’s there.

  “I need time . . . Cas,” Jewell says, rolling her full lower lip inside her mouth, nervously nibbling at it. And even with all the emotional turmoil inside the vehicle, my body responds to her unconscious gesture. Seduction without intent.

  She sees my reaction and breathes out a shaky exhale, a loop of chemistry come full circle. We’re hopeless against the pull of each other. Even after all that we’ve been through.

  I turn to Carlie, who gives a subtle shake of her head.

  “Okay,” I mutter, my chest giving that same pulse of tightness. I sweep my hand over my skull trim, taking a deep breath, trying to calm myself.

  Then I take both of her hands in mine, my eyes locked with hers. “But if you think I’m giving up on you for one second, then you don’t know me.”

  Jewell looks at me. “That’s the thing, Cas . . . I don’t. Know. You.”

  Of course she doesn’t, I think, she’s only got part of the story. It’s so clear to me because I’ve always had both sides, but Jewell only knows the side I show her.

  “How old are you? What’s your favorite color? Do you have a family?” She asks rhetorically. Jewell doesn’t want those answers right then, she wants to make a point.

  I’m an intimate stranger.

  “Twenty-six,” I say, adding, “black.” I laugh, that’s almost too easy. My eyes darken, and Jewell watches the cloud pass over my expression. The other question she asks isn’t easy. Finally I answer.

  “Faith.”

  Jewell’s eyes snap to mine, the other people in the car forgotten as the wheels of her mind turn in front of me, the gears transparent to me.

  “Blaine . . .” Jewell whispers.

  “Yes.”

  “The Blaine,” Jewell asks, though I think she knows.

  I nod.

  Carlie looks from one to the other of us. “What the fuck, Mackey? What is it?”

  Jewell looks an accusation at me, then faces Carlie. I take another deep breath as Jewell recounts what I already know she put together. “Faith . . .” Jewell swallows, casting her eyes down at her knotted fingers.

  Carlie leans between the two seats in the front, reaching forward and squeezing Jewell’s shoulder. Jewell speaks softly, but her damning words carry perfectly in the small space. “Faith wanted me to meet her cousin—”

  “Like a blind date thing?” Carlie asks in clarification.

  Jewell nods, swiping the first tear away, and I hold my breath. “She said he was perfect for me—perfect.” She looks at me and sees whatever’s in my face, and her gaze shifts to Carlie. “We were going to get together with her boyfriend . . . and Blaine.” Jewell looks down at her hands again, and I watch the teardrops spatter on her fingers. I take a deep breath to stop from dragging her into my arms again. “But we never got the chance.”

  Jewell looks at me. “She said you’d help her . . . me.”

  I nod. “I wa
s supposed to,” I say with quiet remorse.

  “Why didn’t you come, Cas? Why did . . . why did Faith die?”

  She left off the words: because of you.

  I open my mouth to give my shameful excuse, then close it. It’s in that moment when I become aware that it’s never been Jewell’s fault. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. My subconscious has been circling this truth for a very long time. It’s Jewell who’s brought the realization full circle. There’s a rap on the window that makes us all jump.

  Jewell sees who it is and gives a squeal as she punches open the door, my hand reaching for the back of her shirt as Agent Clearwater rounds the front of the car, opening the door as she slides out and scooping her up against himself.

  “Brad!” Jewell says breathlessly, and his smile is genuine, the scar at his throat a jagged and healing angry red swath like a rippling twisted rope.

  “It’s good to see you, Jewell,” Dec says, letting her down gently. Jewell hangs onto his forearms as she searches his face. Jewell begins at his head, then her eyes skitter to a stop at the wound at his throat.

  “What? Brad . . .”

  “It’s Decatur Clearwater, Jewell.”

  Jewell removes her hands from his arms as if burned, her eyes instantly on guard.

  Fuck. This just keeps getting better and better.

  “Is anyone who he says he is?” Jewell asks softly, her voice holding an edge of hysteria.

  “Jewell . . .” I begin.

  “No.” She holds up a finger. “Don’t talk to me. This whole thing is part of some . . . game.” Her eyes bounce from Luke Adams, aka Brock, then land unnervingly on Dec, aka Biker Brad. They fall on me last, with bruising intensity.

  I don’t flinch under her scrutiny.

  “A lot of time,” Jewell adds in a low voice that is thick with her retrospection, her eyes on mine.

  My stomach knots with those words.

  “Come on, Mackey,” Carlie says, sliding her arm around Jewell’s waist.

  They hobble together toward the condo that Carlie Stanton’s parents have for a weekend play place. Jewell’s temporary home.

  I move to follow, but Luke stops me with a hand on my arm. “No, man, just . . . let her go for now. This is a lot to take in.”

  I feel that small bulge in my pocket. A sudden urge to chuck it in Elliott Bay grabs me. I stifle it.

  There might still be hope. Jewell says she needs time.

  The grief of that time away from her crushes in on me from all sides. If someone told me before this whole thing happened that another human being would have a hold on my life like Jewell does, I’d have laughed in his face.

  I’m not fucking laughing now.

  I wait at the curb, the SUV running behind us, Luke and Dec flanking me as I watch Jewell’s slow progress up the steep steps of the building. I ache to help her, hold her. But she’s set her limits with me.

  It’s a rare bright and clear day. Late January weather bites at our faces as the wind from nearby Elliott Bay kicks up. It stings my neck and I welcome the minor discomfort as I watch the former ballet dancer disappear inside Carlie’s first-floor accommodation.

  I hold my breath for a sign, anything that will give me that spark of hope.

  Jewell turns at the last moment, her eyes steady on mine. Then she looks away, doing a slow pivot as Carlie helps her through the door. The glass swallows the women as they move deeper inside the gaping mouth of the building.

  I know that look.

  I want to erase it from Jewell’s face. It’s the same one I see every day in the mirror.

  Condemnation.

  22

  “Come on, Cas,” Adams says, pulling me away from the curb.

  I tear my arm away and stomp to the car, Clearwater trailing behind.

  We get in the SUV.

  I hit the dash with my fist. “Fuck!” Thwack. “Fuck . . . motherfuck!”

  “You sound like O’Rourke,” Dec says mildly at my temper tantrum.

  I shift my eyes to his. “I’d kick your ass if you weren’t in the land of the wounded,” I say in a sour voice.

  Adams sighs as Dec palms the ragged scar at his throat.

  Dec regards me from the backseat. The exhaust curling in a lazy spiral, carried by the wind, drives the opaque white fumes around the car like a ministorm. Our eyes lock in the rearview mirror as we sit outside Jewell’s temporary house.

  Adams pulls away from the curb and my eyes flick to the protection across the street, the local boys in blue working cooperatively.

  But how long will that last? Cops hate feds.

  Feds hate cops.

  “Everything is brute strength for you, my friend,” Dec says, his hand dropping from the wound inflicted by Ben Miller just a month ago.

  “Yeah,” I agree easily, my eyes drifting to Carlie’s condo until it falls out of sight.

  “Love doesn’t work that way,” Dec says.

  Adams snorts from the front seat. “You’re an expert? Like you’re what . . . a ripe old twenty-three?” Adams asks, and Dec frowns.

  “Experience is not a number,” Dec says, his eyes shifting back to mine. My brooding silence fills the car. Clearly, I don’t have answers. “I know Jewell in another capacity, and she’s a cautious girl,” Clearwater expounds, his lips curling in a small smile.

  Wiseass.

  “And I’m not? Is that what you’re saying?” I ask, my hands curling unconsciously into fists.

  “Not even close,” he says, and Adams laughs, adding, “girl.”

  I throw a scowl his way.

  “You’re like a powder keg, Cas,” Luke clarifies as he pulls into the temp headquarters.

  “What is Jewell, then?” I ask them both.

  “The flame,” Dec says, all-knowing.

  “Great news, asses.” I roll my eyes in their direction, stepping out of the vehicle, my hand on the window rim. “Why don’t you Zen assholes give me something I can actually work with?”

  I slam the door, beginning to walk away. I don’t expect an answer.

  “Protection is not just physical,” Dec says in his quiet way from behind me.

  I turn, the cold late winter sun blasting into my eyes, and I shield them with my hand. Luke jams his hands in his pockets, head down, shuffling his weight as the wind swoops in, cold and fast, frosting Dec’s words.

  “No one protected her. Every person who should have . . . didn’t.”

  I feel one brow cock. “I know, Dec,” I say. “I’ll protect her . . . if she’ll give me the goddamn chance. Hell, even if she won’t.

  Dec shakes his head. “Any one of us would go to the ground for her. For most women . . .”

  “But not all,” Luke says and laughs.

  I frown. “Shut up, ass clown. You hit Jewell,” I say in a low voice, tapping my temple, my elephant’s memory kicking up.

  Adams shuts up.

  I swivel my head and meet Dec’s stare again.

  “Show her that you’ll protect all of her.”

  “Emotional shit?” I ask, nonplussed.

  “It’s what women are, Cas . . . fuck,” Clearwater says in irritation.

  “He’s such a player,” Adams mutters.

  “Fuck off, Adams,” Clearwater says.

  Luke scowls.

  “Jewell MacLeod will have to reunite with what’s left of her family. She has months of rehabilitation ahead of her. She may not dance again. She flunked half her classes from first semester and missed the first month of second semester. Yeah,” Clearwater says, giving me a level look with eyes that are blacker than my own, “I’d say her emotional health is pretty fragile.”

  I’m quiet, thinking about Jewell. Before, it’d been simple: I love her, I want to keep her safe, I want to be with only her, possess her. Now it’s more complicated. I don’t know how easily I can navigate the emotional minefield of what remains inside her psyche. All I know is I would rather try than lose her.

  “I’m not good with this shit,” I fin
ally say.

  Clearwater nods. “We know, man.”

  Luke grunts in agreement as he approaches me. “We’re here for you, like you were here for me.”

  I look at Luke for a heartbeat. “This doesn’t mean you want to take long warm showers with me, right?”

  Clearwater barks out a laugh.

  “No.” Adams claps me on the back. “Come on, Cas . . . you’ll live.”

  I nod, my mind already mapping out what I need to do. It’ll take all my strategic skills.

  They’ve worked so well in the field. Can that same skill set transfer to love? Relationships?

  It can’t be that hard.

  It’s more difficult than I can foresee.

  I swipe my cell to hibernate, shoving it in the front pocket of my jeans as I pace back and forth. I’m thinking about the text I’ve just received from Jewell.

  Let’s talk

  My return text is just as brief:

  I’ll be right over Playing hard to get is for guys who have never been in love. The lucky fuckers. I don’t even try to fool myself. It’s been two months since I blew the brains out of two serial killers all over the woman I love. I saved Jewell but lived a lie to do it.

  Could Jewell come to terms with what I did? What I had to do?

  I’d do it again.

  I holster my weapon, the familiar weight a comfort, its absence for the month that I was suspended weighing on my mind.

  It’s standard procedure, but somehow still feels like a betrayal from the only family I have. That’s what the Bureau is, a family.

  My pseudobrothers are a part Navajo Indian who’s wise beyond his years and my partner of three years and childhood friend, Luke Adams, who believes in too much realism but gets the job done.

  I don’t know what I would have done without their patchwork camaraderie in the dark months of waiting for Jewell to respond, to think.

  To feel.

  It looks like that dry hiatus, a special slice of bereft, might be coming to an end.

  However, I don’t allow any hope to wash over me. Life’s taught me that.

  I shut the Harley down, the low drone of the engine softly muffles in a resounding pop as it follows the command of the flick of my wrist. I sit on the leather seat, the hot engine ticking as it cools. I scan my surroundings. This time of year in Seattle is a dicey mix of spring wanting to begin and winter hanging on.