“Now you want to hit right around here.”
He tilted he head back, to reveal the long stripe of his suddenly vulnerable looking throat. But she didn’t think about any of that. She didn’t think about anything aside from the work they were doing.
“See where my Adam’s apple is? Go below that, but when you do make sure you’re aiming up. Hit from the elbow, so you’re disguising that shoulder move. Like we talked about with the handshake, remember?” he said, and she listened. She took the information in.
There was nothing more going on here. Nothing.
“I remember. I have no idea if I can do what you’re asking, but I remember.”
“You can do it. You just have to get the technique right, and then practice.”
“Technique and then practice. Got it. Sort of. Maybe.”
“Here then, I can show you. Can I touch your arms?”
As soon as he said the words, she kind of wanted to tell him not to.
But the problem was: what reason could she possibly give? She didn’t want him to think she was frightened, because amazingly there was no fear in her. And there was no way she was going to tell him about the conversation with Letty. She wasn’t even sure why it was relevant or what made her think of it.
It was just there in her head, the moment he asked.
She had to shake it off, so she could give him her yes.
And she succeeded, too. She didn’t think of anything, when he curled those big, strong hands around her biceps. Her mind was a total blank as he guided her into position, voice as soft as butter, manner so careful it sent her insides her singing. Really, she had no idea why everything started to feel sort of slow—like she’d fallen into syrup, thick and warm and sweet. All she knew was that it happened. That she went to raise her gaze to his as he guided her into position, but couldn’t do it at normal speed.
Then their eyes met, and everything got even weirder.
Suddenly, she was dizzy and way too warm—and that feeling only intensified as he instructed her how to punch. “You do it from the elbow not the shoulder,” he said, and then he moved her arm. He showed her exactly how and where and all the while he was talking about taking time to build up her strength and practicing until she was slick with sweat.
Why did he have to say slick? Why did he have to say sweat?
The words sounded innocuous. But they didn’t feel it.
They felt like she had the first time she’d seen him: Queasy and weird—and almost desperate to change the subject. Crack a joke, her mind hissed at her, but it wasn’t until he suggested she would soon be able to hit him that she found the right words.
“Somehow, I think actually hitting you is going to take way more than a few weeks of practice punching. Might have to hold on until the year three thousand when mankind invents time travel. Then I can go back to the second before you move and still fucking miss you,” she said—and it worked, too.
Especially when he dead panned in return. “I promise you, I cannot get around time travel.”
“Fuck—you sound like someone trying to cover up a lie.”
“No honestly. I swear. I am unable to contravene the laws of space time.”
“Oh my god, that one was even worse. Tell me honestly, have you come here from the distant future?”
“If I had, I doubt I would be here trying to teach you how to protect yourself. I could just tell you with all certainty how to be completely safe from here on in.”
“Screw the self-defense. Can we just do that one instead?”
“Sure. Just close your eyes, and I’ll be right back.”
He said the words very casually. Almost off hand, as if he was talking about the weather. So, it was weird that they hit her so hard. For a second, it actually felt as though he’d gut checked her. And even worse: that queasy feeling was back.
She had to jam a laugh into her voice just to push it back.
“God, do you have to say such awesome things?”
“Well, I could take it back if you like. Replace it with something less devastating.”
“Oh honestly, I’m not devastated. Devastation is something that happens to other people, in movies, after something ridiculously traumatic happens. Like, a doctor coming out to tell Julia Roberts that her whole family has cancer all at the same time.”
Go with the joke, she willed him.
Go with it, go with it, go with it.
Then he did, and yet, somehow, it wasn’t the relief she was expecting.
None of the conversation that followed was the relief she was expecting.
“Probably after she escapes her abusive husband on a bus,” he said, tone just a little different to anything she’d heard before. It was warmer and looser, in a way she suddenly wanted to resist. But somehow, she just couldn’t.
Not when he was actually making up crazy movies with her.
“That will explode if it goes below fifty miles an hour.”
“During an earthquake caused by Robert Duvall.”
“I would have gone with Christopher Walken.”
“Nah, Walken is the red herring in act one.”
“Ah. So, Duvall is the friendly police chief who secretly did it all.”
“He wanted to destabilize the government so he coul—”
She cut him off before he could finish. She had to.
Somehow, joking like this was worse than him saying sweet things.
It made her think of crazy words, like banter and flirting.
Even though they weren’t. She wasn’t. She couldn’t.
“I should probably get going,” she said.
And sagged when he just accepted it.
Everything was going to be fine. It was all fine. She could go home and cool off, and come to the next meet up in the right frame of mind. A calm, reasonable state of mind, with no ideas of flirting he wasn’t doing or concerns about feelings she wasn’t having.
Or so she thought. But then he suddenly said: “You want a ride?”
And though she wanted to say no…
Somehow a yes came out instead.
Chapter Six
She just knew his car would be too cool for her to handle. But by god, nothing could have prepared her for how cool. In her head, she pictured muscle cars he’d restored himself from scratch and things with flames down the side, but he’d gone way above and beyond that. In fact, she could barely suppress her glee when he went to unlock the only car she wouldn’t have predicted.
He had a Mini Cooper.
A worn down and somewhat ramshackle old blue thing that protested when he tried to open the passenger door for her and wouldn’t start on the first try. He had to let it rest for a while before going again—and oh, that was really not good for her. It gave her way too much time to look over the insides of his car, and uncover brand new things about him. And, of course, all of the things were amazing.
Like the smell that hung thick in the air, sharp with leather and sweet with cinnamon. His smell, she thought, then immediately tried to wipe the idea from her brain. It was too weird that she was making that connection. Or even worse—that she had made that connection before now. As if she’d been surreptitiously sniffing him during their sessions, instead of focusing on the stuff he was saying.
Even though she was certain she had never done the former.
Why would she have cared?
She didn’t. She couldn’t.
But damn it, she did care when she saw the books.
There was a big jumble of them scattered over the backseat, most of them obviously well-read and much loved. Even in this semi-darkness, she could make out the cracked spines and the curling pages. One of them was so worn, she could barely read the title—though in truth, she didn’t need to see it to know.
She recognized the picture on the cover.
That swirling purple dress; the rearing horse.
Some long-haired guy holding his sword in a suggestive way.
It was a romance novel. A
ll of them were romance novels. Isaac Morales, guy who probably knew how to kill someone with one blow, read romance novels. Though still, she couldn’t quite believe it. She found herself turning in her seat, straining to get a better view. And even after she read one of the titles clearly—The Scoundrel and the Lady—it wouldn’t sink in. Not until she realized he was watching her, with a look on his face best described as fuck. In fact, it was so obviously fuck, she was kind of amazed by it.
He didn’t usually let his expressions show whatever he was thinking.
But, for one brief moment, they weren’t tied down. Something had cut them loose.
She even saw a flash of regret cross his features—then all at once, she understood.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You weren’t prying. I invited you in.”
“Yeah, but you invited me so I could get home. Not so my googly eyes could roam all over the secret details of your private inner life.”
“I have no private inner life.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“My mind is a dull blank.”
“That definitely seems true to me.”
“There’s nothing to share.”
“I just bet there isn’t.”
She didn’t mean that last one. It leant too much towards teasing, even though she really didn’t want to tease him about this. Things were already going in weird directions—what she needed was to put on the brakes. To pull back before she felt dizzy again or accidentally started flirting, or both of them descended into that awkwardness she barely understood.
But, apparently, he didn’t entirely agree.
His next words weren’t a subject change.
“God, you’re good at this,” he said.
And lord help her—she had to ask.
“Good at what?”
“Making me want to share things.”
“But all I did was agree that there was nothing to share.”
“Exactly. Now, all I can think of is how little I want you to believe that.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort: I don’t. Not really. I just want you to be comfortable.”
“I am. This is comfortable, for me.” He paused, gaze on the road he had just started towards, but mind clearly turning over his next words. Weighing them, she thought. Measuring them out. “I know it doesn’t seem like it.”
“It seems lovely. All of this is amazingly lovely.”
“And by all of this you mean the lessons.”
“By all of this I mean all of this. This conversation, your car, the smell of leather and cinnamon, the books you have on the backseat, the—”
She only just managed to pull back, before the rest came out.
Though, really it didn’t matter that she had.
He might not know what she had wanted to say.
But she did. She knew it now. It was still there on the tip of her tongue:
The way you look in the moonlight. The way you look all the time.
He was handsome, she realized, in the same way people suddenly become aware of how beautiful a sunrise is, after spending their whole lives sleeping through it. I slept through my own attraction to him, she thought, and as crazy as it sounded, it also seemed true. She could see him now, as clear as anything. That thick black hair, as glossy as the leaves on rubber trees. The jaw like an underline beneath a gorgeous sentence; those heavy-lidded eyes; his mouth forever promising a kiss he probably never thought of giving.
Likely as not, he didn’t even know he was attractive.
Though the idea seemed silly until he spoke.
“I don’t think any of that is evidence of loveliness,” he said.
As if nothing about him could ever be.
“Maybe not. But those romance novels sure are nice to see.”
“They pass the time, when I need it to be passed.”
“Yeah, I can imagine they do.”
“Was that innuendo?”
He asked the question with a certain lightness.
But god, she cringed to hear it.
She hadn’t meant it that way.
She was sure she hadn’t.
“No, of course not,” she said.
Then wished it sounded more convincing.
“I don’t read them for the sex.”
“Honestly, that was the last thing I thought.”
“So, you think I read them for the love, then.”
“Well, everything about you suggests not,” she said, then tried to laugh. Only somehow, he wasn’t having any of it. His eyes stayed on the road, and his voice remained neutral, but his words were still insistent.
“But something else suggests I do.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I can feel you thinking it.’
“And how exactly do my thoughts feel?”
“Like a huge furnace on the side of my face.”
She paused, then. Partly because she had to catch her breath.
But mostly because he was the one who’d just pushed it out of her.
Had he really just admitted something was affecting him?
He couldn’t have, her mind tried to tell her.
But she knew her mind was lying.
And she answered accordingly. “Maybe I should look away then.”
“No. I don’t need you to do that.”
“But you’d like me to.”
“If you could, just for a second.”
In truth, she was glad to turn her gaze to the passenger window.
The glass radiated cold—and there was nothing out there to really see.
No impossibly gorgeous man, no furnace blasting them both to death.
Just darkness. Just soothing, simple darkness.
It was all going to be fine, she told herself.
But her voice still wavered when she asked, “Is that better?”
And his reply was twice as tight as any of his previous ones.
“I really wish it was.”
“But somehow, it isn’t.”
“God, no. If anything, it seems worse.”
“Maybe it would help if we put some music on.”
“No, don’t, don’t do th—”
She clicked the stereo on before his protest fully sunk in.
Then really wished she’d slowed down.
The music was even more revealing than the books. It sounded like the soundtrack to some lost eighties movie about doomed love—so full of haunting notes and synthesised sighs that it almost made her do something very weird. Her heart was suddenly thumping. Her eyes were stinging. In fact, the only reason she didn’t give in was because he dragged her back down to earth. He turned the music back down before she could completely lose it.
And spoke in a nearly convincingly casual tone.
“I just like the band.”
“Well, the band is amazing.”
“They have a great sound.”
“Absolutely they do,” she said, and tried to do it firmly.
But now the singer was moaning on about slowly drifting to someone, and oh god, it was just getting worse and worse. Now, he actively looked uncomfortable. He was actually shifting in his seat. His hands kept flexing on the wheel.
Even though he was supposed to be impervious.
He was impervious. Where was his imperviousness?
You fucked it to hell, her mind said.
And his next question backed that up.
“Can we talk about something else?”
“We can talk about anything you like.”
“I was thinking maybe something about you.”
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
“Anything. Anything at all.”
She immediately tried to ransack her brain for possible options. But the problem was: everything seemed bad. She couldn’t talk about the attack. Not talking about it was the thing she liked best about their relationship. And her family weren’t a good topic either, because they were all just so int
o sharing everything. It would have been like describing an alien species to him. So, my mom calls me twice a day to make sure I’m working through my feelings, she imagined saying. Followed by even worse:
But I never talk about you. I can’t talk about you.
You’re my secret weapon in the fight against despair.
You’re my dirty habit that I just don’t want to kick.
Emphasis on the dirty, her mind added.
And she truly hated it for that.
It only made it harder to come up with something good.
In fact, in the end he had to do it for her.
“How about something to do with college—what you’re studying, why you’re studying it. That kind of thing,” he asked.
And only then was it easier.
“I majored in psychology—mainly because I wanted to be a shrink.”
“Wanted to be one? Or still want to be one?”
“Lately, I’ve been having some doubts.”
“Well, you’re young. You don’t have to decide now.”
“Yeah, I don’t think youth is really the problem.”
“Then what is?”
“I just stopped thinking that talking was the answer to problems.”
“Could be that it still is. But, maybe sometimes, people just need something extra to take them the rest of the way. Maybe they need to feel like they’re doing something, too.” He paused, and this time she knew his word measuring was all for her. All of this was all for her. “Or possibly, they just need to see with their own eyes that the world isn’t always as cruel as it often seems. That you can trust in something, and not have it let you down.”
He means himself, she thought. He means that he’s the something.
Then had to swallow the lump in her throat.
“I think I have seen that. I think I do see that.”
“Good. Because the world wants you to.”
“I know. The world is kinder than I ever imagined anyone could be.”
He fell silent then—though, she couldn’t tell why. It seemed like he hadn’t realized the subtext of the conversation. Like he didn’t know it sounded as if he was talking about him. Or, at the very least, he hadn’t been prepared for her to agree like that.
But she couldn’t say for sure.
In fact, that was the other problem with her dreams of one day being shrink.
Never Better: A Dark Obsession Novel Page 6