A More Deserving Blackness

by Wolbert, Angela

  I jump when the phone rings suddenly.

  Logan swings around in the chair and pushes to his feet, snatching the phone from the wall like it’s the most natural thing.

  “McCaffrey residence, Logan speaking.” His eyes flick to mine as he listens. “Yes, I am.” His eyes darken slightly, but he doesn’t look angry as he holds my gaze; he looks possessive. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I raise my brows at him but he says, “I intend to. Sure. Okay. Just a second.” And then he hands the phone to me.

  I have no choice but to take it.

  I already know it’s my mother, and I tap the phone with my finger to let her know I’m on the line.

  “Bree, Honey? Are you there?” An awkward pause in which I know she’s hoping to hear my voice again for the first time in over two years, and once again I have to disappoint her. “All right. I want to talk to you about this Logan who just answered the phone, but you need to turn on the news, Sweetheart. I’m sorry.”

  No. Not again.

  “They caught this man yesterday . . .” my mom continues, warily like she knows what it’s doing to me. “He’s a suspect in over ten cases across three different states. Just – just take a look, okay? We need to know if it’s him.”

  And just like that, I feel all the blood drain from my face. Logan is across the room and by my side in a second. Searching my eyes, he places his hands on my arms, whether to reassure me or to steady me I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter though and I lean into him, taking what he offers. My mom is still talking, persuading me, and I wait until she sounds like she’s done before I woodenly hand the phone back to Logan.

  With one hand he reaches behind him to hang it back up, never taking his eyes from me.

  “What happened?”

  My hands are shaking as I grip the edge of the table and push to my feet, and Logan hovers near me, like he doesn’t trust me to stand without smashing down onto my face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I can’t meet his eyes. I force myself into the living room with Logan following closely behind, force myself to grab the remote from the coffee table and flick on the TV. My arm is shaking. The screen starts and seizes, jerking through channels as I push the button. Soap operas. Infomercials. Cartoons. I pause at two different news channels, tensing and holding my breath for the sight of his face, before, on the third, I finally find the story my mom wanted me to see. There’s a picture on the screen of a balding, heavy-set white man with both ears pierced.

  “- thirty-eight year old man has been arrested on multiple charges of rape and sexual abuse that span at least three states and ten counties -”

  I turn off the TV, silencing the reporter mid-sentence.

  My whole body’s trembling and I feel vaguely nauseous as I drop the hand holding the remote to my side, squeezing my eyes shut.

  It wasn’t him.

  “Hey,” Logan says softly from somewhere to my left. Close, but not touching. “You okay?”

  I say nothing, reeling. I’d have to tell her. I’d have to tell my mom it wasn’t him, that she still had no one to blame for the obliteration of her daughter. She’d be heartbroken. Again.

  “Do you . . . know that guy?”

  I shake my head but I don’t want to look at him, don’t want to see the questions in his eyes I won’t be able to answer, so I move immediately to get my cell phone from my room. Without a sound, Logan follows me.

  The message I type to my mother is just one word. No. I press send.

  When I take a deep breath and look up at him, Logan is watching me from the doorway, his expression unreadable.

  Now that it’s over I feel drained and sick, and it’s all for nothing. It wasn’t him. It’s never him.

  “Bree?”

  I blink and Logan is standing directly in front of me, and I have no idea how he got there. Or when.

  “Hey,” he soothes, taking my hands and leading me to the bed, sitting down next to me on the mattress. “Are you okay?”

  I don’t bother hiding what he can already see. I shake my head.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Again I shake my head. No.

  Logan sounds hesitant but, “Okay,” he says, and pulls me against his chest. I resist for just a second, just one second, before I give in. I melt into the familiar feel of his arms, enfolded in the scent of him, and close my eyes.

  When I wake up the sun is setting and Logan is gone, just a note left on the bed beside me.

  “You looked exhausted so I’m letting you sleep. Call me if you need me.”

  I don’t.

  But I must’ve fallen asleep again because when I wake up for the second time it’s with a dream still licking hot tongues in my gut, pumping furiously in my veins. And it’s raining. I can hear it outside, not the static rush of a downpour, but that lazy, rhythmic tapping that meant it was just a slow, soaking rain.

  The worst kind.

  I slip out of bed, groping in the dark for my phone. Two-seventeen, the face reads. His jacket is cool and heavy when I slide my arms into the sleeves. Then I’m jogging across the road, my hands in the pockets, my shoulders hunched up around my ears. I’m staring at the wet road as I run, at Trish’s rubber rain boots I’d yanked onto my feet, so I don’t notice the dark figure on his shadowed porch before I’m already climbing the steps.

  I gasp loudly, stumbling backward and ripping my hands from the pockets, my butt slamming into the hard edge of the newly rebuilt railing behind me.

  “Hey.”

  Logan’s voice. He hasn’t moved, not really, except to put his hands up in front of him, palms out. I’m breathing hard, staring at him, my ears filled with the rain. I can feel droplets of it on my scalp, seeping, unseen, into my hair.

  He takes a single step toward me, measuring my reaction, and then another. Slowly, I notice what I hadn’t seen with my chin curled down to my chest, hiding my face from the rain. Logan had pulled two white plastic deck chairs from somewhere, and they sat next to each other on the porch. They were plain and kind of lonely looking, plopped down by themselves in the middle of his porch like that, but it was nice.

  Carefully, he reaches for my arms, rubbing up and down over the jacket. “Okay?” he asks, leading me over to one of the chairs. I sit, nodding at him, but his eyes are probing as he crouches in front of me.

  “I need to start using the light. But then it’s harder to see the stars.”

  But I’m staring at the silver wash of rain past the edge of the porch and he settles himself into the chair next to mine, propping his bare feet on the railing in front of him and clasping my hand in his. His skin is warm and dry and mine is cold and clammy.

  “Too many clouds,” he says under his breath, and I nod. He wouldn’t find a shooting star tonight.

  But when I look over at him he’s not looking at the night sky, he’s looking at me.

  Logan stills when I push to my feet, stepping to the edge of the rail and leaning out, reaching my hand into the dark, my long hair slipping over my shoulders to spill down my front. The drops splatter against my palm, tiny liquid tears gathering, trickling into the lines of my skin. Cold, but harmless.

  I hear the squeak of the plastic chair as Logan pushes to his feet and then his warmth surrounds me from behind, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me tight against his chest. He dips his head, nuzzling his chin in my neck.

  “Can you tell me?”

  I shake my head, staring at the wet on my hand. Just rain. No spinning lights, no one is screaming. Just the stretch of well-lit suburbia, yellow house lamps in an even row and the pattering of rain. Just rain.

  “Okay,” he sighs, but I can hear the disappointment in it as he gently pulls me backward, right into his lap on the chair. He combs my hair back over my shoulders and lifts the bottom edge of his shirt away from his flat stomach, painstakingly drying my hand with the fabric. I watch him before shifting, tucking my head where his shoulder meets his throat, inhaling deeply and pulling my
knees up against the side of his waist.

  “Comfortable?” Logan teases wryly, and I just nod. His chest shakes with his laughter as he presses his mouth into my hair. “Good.”

  Without either of us ever saying it, aloud or otherwise, it becomes routine. In the middle of the night, whenever I would wake up from a nightmare, which was more nights than not, I’d throw on some shoes and Logan’s coat and head over to his house. If he was on the porch when I came I’d take the seat next to him and he’d grab the fleece blanket for me and we’d watch for shooting stars, even though we never found any. Or if I knocked softly at his front door, Logan would just take my hand and lead me back to his bed, picking up his book where he’d put it down and reading out loud to me, right where he’d left off. Occasionally, when he answered the door, his eyes were red and squinting from sleep, and I’d feel guilty before he’d shake his head at me – “Stop. It’s fine.” But usually not. Usually, he’d fix me one of the many varieties of tea he’d bought for me, and he’d try to slip something else in with it, gently plying me with casual offers of food. Sometimes I’d even eat it.

  Eventually we’d fall asleep, wrapped together with nothing but a few layers of thin clothing between us, and even though on more than one occasion I could feel his attraction to me, solid against my hip or my thigh, he never kissed me again. In the morning Logan would whisper in my ear to wake me in time to jog back across the street and get ready for school before he came over to pick me up.

  And every night, he’d ask me what I dreamt about, if I wanted to talk about it, his fingers soothing through the length of my hair. I never did, but I knew eventually I would have to tell him, and I wouldn’t be able to, and it wouldn’t be enough.

  For the moment, though, he’d leave it at that, letting me take comfort in curling into him, his heartbeat under my hand.

  It felt like home.

  It’s on one of these nights that I close my eyes, safe and warm in Logan’s arms, in Logan’s bed - and open them to another man’s face above me.

  No.

  My stomach lurches.

  Nonononono.

  It’s not happening. It’s just a dream.

  I know it’s not real but I’m struggling beneath him, fear plummeting into despair, all the air squeezed from my lungs by his weight. And then I’m not; I’m just frozen, the cold barrel of the gun jammed painfully into the fleshy underside of my jaw, terror metallic on my tongue.

  No, please.

  My stomach heaves again when I feel him touching me.

  I cram my own dirty palms against my mouth and taste salt and mud and sugar from the elephant ear I’d finished, laughing and joking, only a few minutes earlier. But there are horrible, inhuman sounds inside me, battering against my hands so I bite down on my own flesh, feeling the tendons of my left wrist bend and twist under the sharp points of my teeth, jagged pain shooting up my arm.

  Tears are streaming, silent, from my eyes, the world above me a cold black canvas marred with splotches of blinking, blurry colors. The rain starts to fall, fat, lazy beads from overhead; bright colors oozing down in cold droplets that are trickling onto my face.

  When the pain tears through me, I don’t make a sound.

  It’s not until the agony fades into a fog of horror and revulsion that I release my grip on my wrist. I open my mouth and rain falls on my tongue. I take a breath, surprised when the crushing weight is suddenly gone from my chest.

  Then I scream.

  “LOGAN!”

  The sound tearing up my throat is what wakes me. I sit straight up in bed, violently sucking air, and Logan jerks upright at my side, automatically reaching for me.

  “Bree!” His hands come to my arms, twisting me so I’m facing him, his eyes wide and alarmed in the dark bedroom. “What? What is it? What’s wrong?”

  I’m shoving against him wildly, pushing at his chest, but he doesn’t budge.

  “Bree. Bree, stop. It’s me. Love, it’s me.”

  Finally my panicked thrashing gets him to release me and I wrench away, lungs heaving, starved for air. I tumble off the edge of the bed and lose my balance, slamming my shoulder into the wall. My throat hurts and my stomach is tossing and I clamp my hands over my mouth as tears pour over my fingers.

  Logan is breathing heavy and fast, still sitting on the bed, his eyes nothing but glistening black pools, fixed on me.

  I hear a whimpering sound behind my hands and push down harder, ramming it back inside. All of it. Everything foul and brutal and feral that’s threatening to splinter apart, to shred me from the inside out.

  “You talked,” Logan says, his voice low and heavy with wonder. “That was you. You screamed my name.”

  I’m breathing brokenly through my nose, staring at him. Loose strands of hair sticking to my face and neck, my hands soaked in tears. I realize I’m shaking my head and force myself to stop.

  Logan slowly pushes up from the bed. He measures my reaction with each careful movement, clearly loath to frighten me. Then he’s standing in front of me, his hands up and open in front of him.

  “Bree . . .” he breathes.

  I crumple.

  Logan drops to his knees and catches me against his chest, one arm around my back and the other cradling my head, enveloping me. “Okay,” he murmurs, his lips at my ear. “Okay. Shhh. It’s okay.”

  It’s okay. His voice from another time, my salvation. Shh. It’s okay.

  But I can feel the cracks etching over my body, webbing out from my traitorous mouth. I’m coming apart, clinging to his shoulders and weeping brokenly.

  Logan holds me as I sob, rocking me and whispering, rubbing the tears from my cheeks with the sides of his thumbs and replacing them with soft kisses. I can’t stop. Grief seeps through the fractures, pouring out of me, and I can’t breathe and I can’t make it stop.

  “God, Bree, just talk to me. Please.”

  But I can’t. All I can do is cling to him, twisting the front of his shirt in my fingers. I can’t catch my breath and I’m climbing onto his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck.

  In one swift motion, Logan tightens his hold on me and pushes to his feet, carrying me to the bed. He lies back across the covers, pulling me down next to him, half on top of his chest. And then his hands yank my hips tight against his, tangling our legs together, and he’s holding me as closely as he can, his hands so far around me they cup his opposite biceps. It’s almost painful, but I need to be closer. I need him closer.

  Logan feels me pulling at him, pressing my face into the skin at his throat and making fists in the back of his shirt, my arms straining.

  “This is as close as I can get you without cutting open my skin.” His voice is thick, the words hot against the nape of my neck. “I’m here, Love. I’m right here.”

  I push harder against him, inhaling deeply the smell of him there, just under his jaw. I’m greedy for him and I open my mouth, pressing my teeth into the thick tendon of the side of his neck, tasting his skin between unsteady breaths.

  He goes absolutely still, arms rigid around me.

  Then he slants his mouth over mine, pushing his tongue hungrily between my lips. He groans into my mouth and flips me onto my back, holding himself up on his elbows as he angles his head, deepening the kiss.

  I slide my hands down his back, pulling him down on top of me, and then cry out into his mouth when I feel his hips settle fully over mine.

  Logan pulls back, breathing heavily, his pupils dilated as he searches my face. But I can’t stand it, he’s too far away. I fist my hands in his hair and drag him back to me and then he’s kissing me fiercely, one of his hands dropping to my hip, sliding, hot, over my belly. His fingers just barely slip beneath the edge of my shirt and I shiver.

  Logan’s hips rock against mine, the soft fabric of his pajama pants hiding nothing. I moan at the feel of him against me and my hands fall to clutch at his shoulders, my body arching beneath him. Quickly he rears up, reaching back with one hand and ripping his shirt
over his head, tossing it behind him. Then he shifts over me, slipping first one knee between mine and then the other, softly nudging my legs open and settling the hot, hard weight of him between them. I strain up against him, seeking more.

  Logan shudders, once. Then his face is buried in the side of my neck and his arms wrap around me, under me, and his body bucks, grinding the hard length of him between my legs. My head snaps back and my fingertips claw into his shoulders, shocked by the pleasure it brings. Logan moves again, withdrawing slowly and then forcefully thrusting forward, and I can feel something inside me coiling, tightening with need.

  My heart is pounding and I’m gasping for air but I want him closer. I want more.

  I lift one knee, hooking my leg over his hip, and that’s all he needs. Logan’s arms tense around me and his hips move quickly, pushing against me. He’s more than ready; I can feel him, hot and hard, sliding over the most sensitive part of me. I arch my back, the ache intensifying into a desperate need, and I’m moving my hips against his, matching his rhythm, totally mindless in my need for him.

  With a low growling sound Logan reaches a hand down and grabs my other knee, hiking it up around his hips, opening me even further for him.

  God.

  His breath coming in pants, Logan’s muscles are shaking with the need for release. I can feel my own coming in the throbbing low inside me and hook my heels over the backs of his legs, straining closer. His hips are pumping, sliding the hard length of him over and over against me and I throw my head back, my body clenching as the orgasm explodes over me. With a last desperate thrust Logan stiffens, clenching his eyes shut and groaning deep in his throat as he comes, his body shuddering with the force of his release.

  He holds himself with shaking arms as we both catch our breath, and I’m trembling as the shocks work their way through my body. It is the single most extraordinary thing I’ve ever experienced, and I’m still fully clothed.