Heat

by Lis Lucassen

  32

  Dan

  She’d been crying. He could see it in the circles around her eyes. He recognized the red marks. Automatically, his arm went up and his fingers caressed her cheek. Lightly. The touch shivered through his body like high voltage. He knew he was holding on to an electric fence, but he refused to let go.

  What should he tell her? The truth? The realization that he actually wanted to tell her the truth about him was the next thing that was shocking him.

  “I…” She kept staring up at him expectantly, her cheeks slightly red, the freckles on her nose like errant strokes on an otherwise untouched canvas. Once more, he could feel the lock on his emotions clicking shut, and the explanation he was about to give lodging in his dry throat. The one thing he knew was that he had to break that lock, no matter how painful it would be. His fingers tangled in her long, unbraided hair, and he pulled her in. The moment their lips met, Lynn let out a soft sigh. The sound took away any doubt he’d harbored. She wanted this, too.

  She wanted him too.

  Before he lost himself in painful memories of Ella again, he let his tongue dart into her mouth to taste her. He wanted her.

  Just after the accident, he’d felt nothing at all. Everything seemed to have been scorched away. And later on, when he and Ella had tried making love for the first time after the event… the abhorrence in her eyes had made him freeze up completely.

  Now Lynn was making his body function like it had before the accident. The way it was supposed to react. The natural way. The illusion of normality was as painful as it was hopeful. And God, he wanted this to happen so badly. Lynn shifted underneath him and before she could slip her hands onto his shoulders, he broke away from their kiss. His fingers caught in her hair and he pulled some loose in his panic to get away from her.

  “Ouch!” Lynn’s hand went up to cradle her head and he stared at the few long brown hairs between his fingers. The apology was already on his lips, but he refused to say sorry to her yet again. He’d done that so often that it was starting to lose meaning.

  It was probably best to keep his distance.

  But why did the thought of staying away cause his stomach to twist?

  Apparently, his face was an open book to Lynn, because she didn’t say anything about him clumsily pulling out her hair like that. Her blue eyes seemed so sad, and he wanted nothing more than to take her pain away. That’s why he’d come here, right?

  Before he could speak, Lynn leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

  “I’m happy you’re here.”

  He knew by saying ‘here’ she meant more than just her hotel room. His breathing sped up and he felt hopeful. He felt something else besides the usual emptiness and anger.

  “What are you afraid of?” he wanted to know.

  “Of the truth. Of what I should have done, but didn’t do.”

  The words dripped off her lips like drops of blood from an open wound. He kissed her gently. Ran his tongue along her bottom lip. “What happened?”

  “I can’t…”

  His lips trailed down her jaw line, then up to the most sensitive spot behind her ear. “What happened?”

  Before she could rest her hands on his upper legs, he took her wrists. Gently, carefully. The panic was less insistent now, but it was still there. Slumbering beneath the surface. Invisible, but always present.

  “You can’t touch me.”

  Lynn pulled loose and shifted backward. “Why not?”

  “You sure like your open questions, don’t you? Why this, why that. My little brother is less nosy than you.” He sat on his knees and studied Lynn. Her long hair shone in the light of the small lamp next to the bed, her blue eyes were wide and dark as they stared up at him. Her bottom lip jutted out slightly, but it didn’t make her look pouty. And those freckles on her nose – she had similar ones on her shoulders and between her breasts, he knew from experience. And the butterfly on her abdomen – it beckoned him to go back there. Back to the way things had been, to the way he had been before. At the private beach, it had been like that for a while. After she’d surrendered herself to him and had given him her trust. It had been like before just for a while, and yet it had been very different.

  How he missed the sensation of a simple touch from someone. His longing to be touched burned almost as badly as the scars on his skin.

  33

  Lynn

  “Give me your hand.” Dan held out his arm, palm upturned. She hesitated, feeling uncomfortable because of the urgent way he was asking her. “Give me your hand,” he repeated. Lynn conceded and rested her fingers in his hand.

  Dan pulled her forward, his move so unexpected that she tumbled forward and stuck out her other hand to regain her balance. He took the other hand too and pulled her up so she was sitting on her knees too, facing him. Without speaking, he put her one hand on his left shoulder, then the other against his right cheek. He’d been holding his breath, because he was now letting it escape with a hissing sound.

  “Now you’re touching me.”

  “Yes.” It sounded like a sigh.

  “Enough?”

  She bit her lip and shook her hand.

  “Enough,” he decided before taking her hands and moving away from her. “So what happened?”

  “Esmee.” Suddenly, she wanted to tell him everything. Him alone. Because he’d given her something that had obviously taken so much out of him. “He… it was a hit-and-run. He didn’t even slow down. He just kept driving. And Esmee was just there, unmoving. And all the blood. There was blood everywhere. And I know who he is. He…”

  “He’s not here. Whoever it is, he’s not here.”

  It seemed so simple. Her heart hammered against her ribs as though she’d been running a marathon. “He is everywhere. In my nightmares. In my life. And I can’t say it out loud because it will make everything real but it’s already too real not to dream about it. Not to think about it. I always carry it inside me, as though it’s a part of my body. Like a blemish on my skin. Like something – something ugly.” Before she could stop herself, she ran her hands up and down her arms, scratching at the invisible scabs of her mental wounds.

  Dan frowned, a pained expression crossing his face.

  She rested her hands in her lap, took a deep breath, and then told Dan everything. About Rodney, who had controlled Esmee’s life, meaning he’d controlled hers as well. About the fights and his jealousy and the daily phone calls. About him always checking her. And the drinking. The heavy, heavy drinking.

  “Whenever I tried to talk to her about it she wouldn’t listen. And when she was with him I couldn’t even bring it up, of course. Rodney was like a shadow. In the sense that he was wherever Esmee went, but also because he absorbed all her light like a dark stain.”

  She sighed and tried to rub the tiredness from her eyes. It didn’t work. What time was it now? Suddenly, her eyes refused to stay open.

  “We’ll talk more tomorrow.” Dan’s voice sounded resolute. She nodded and stretched out on the bed. Tomorrow. In a few hours. After she’d slept. For hours and hours. The last thing she felt were Dan’s lips touching her forehead.

  Of course, she slept in the next morning. Her talk with Dan had knocked her so completely off-kilter that it almost felt weird not to have any visible bruises on her body. Sometimes, words and memories didn’t just hurt – they could also leave scars behind.

  Steve had already taken the kids to the pool. In her mad rush to join him, she knocked over a traffic cone positioned near the edge of the swimming pool because Steve had apparently come up with a new variant of dodgeball. It evoked a demonstrative sigh from one of the German boys, who scrambled out of the pool to put it upright again.

  “Hey.” Lynn sat down on the edge of the pool, took off her slippers and dangled her feet in the water.

  “Hi.” Steve swam up to her and looked at her expectantly.

  “About yesterday…” She worried her lip. She was already up to her neck in tro
uble. She really didn’t want anything else on her plate right now. “Shall we just pretend yesterday never happened?”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” A relieved grin pulled at the downturned corners of Steve’s mouth. “I, uhm…”

  Lynn raised her hands. “Let’s not discuss yesterday anymore.”

  “Let’s not,” Steve repeated. He pulled himself up and climbed out of the pool to sit next to her. “I have some good news. The casino night is happening. On Friday.”

  “This Friday?” Relieved with Steve’s reaction and the fact that she could focus on something else – and potentially very entertaining at that – Lynn shot him a curious look. Steve nodded. “Okay, but how are we going to arrange everything at such short notice? You only have five days.”

  He shrugged nonchalantly. “Easy. I ask the Facility guys to assist me.” He slipped back down into the water. “Delegating is what they call it.”

  Lynn watched him as he swam over to Ellis with a few mighty strokes and a lot of waterdrops flying everywhere before throwing her off her airbed. A veritable water fight erupted, much to the dismay of some other guests sitting near the edge of the pool who got the brunt of the unexpected shower of chlorine water. Lynn stood up and apologized to the sunbathers before picking up the younger kids, who had dutifully waited for her.

  Halfway through the afternoon, it started to rain. According to Emmanuel, this would be the last shower of the season. He said it with so much conviction that Lynn had no choice but to believe him. She was in the TV room together with Cherry and the twins from Holland. The three girls were entertaining themselves with coloring pencils and books with pictures of sunny beaches. Lynn helped Cherry with coloring a giant beach ball. Pink and yellow – she alternately filled in the bands with the bright colors. She found no hint of them within herself. Tiredness had caught up with her and she felt unenergetic. Her lethargy seemed to affect her brain too, which thankfully slowed it down enough not to mull over every single detail of her conversation with Dan anymore.

  “Wow, you colored well within the lines.”

  Dan lined up beside her. She hadn’t heard him come in.

  “Hey, you’re the boy who wasn’t wearing swimming trunks at the pool,” Suzy pedantically remarked.

  “You’re right.” He tapped the girl’s coloring picture. “Don’t forget to color in your spade.” He picked up an orange pencil and leaned over. Within a few seconds, the spade was bright orange. “There you go. It’s your lucky day. I usually color outside the lines, you know.”

  Lynn bit down on her lip. The shade of rebelliousness coloring his words wasn’t lost on her, even more so because he was looking at her as he said them. He was coloring her right now, his eyes trailing up and down the red in her neck and on her cheeks.

  “What time are you off?” Dan’s brown eyes danced across the flush in her cheeks and her neck, plunging down the neckline of her itchy polo shirt. “You think you can make it to the lobby by seven?” he went on without waiting for the answer to his first question.

  “Wh…”

  “And I know that you’re about to use your favorite interrogative pronoun, but it’s a closed question. Yes or no?”

  She nodded owlishly, feeling relieved that he didn’t bring up any of the more serious business they’d discussed yesterday. But of course she shouldn’t have worried about that, she realized. Dan would never bring up things they’d discussed in private in front of these kids.

  “Good. See you tonight, then.” He turned around and Suzy looked up at him with wide, admiring eyes. Lynn wondered if maybe she looked just like the toddler, with the same idiotic, googly-eyed expression on her own face. Dan patted Suzy’s head, then winked at her and slipped his hands in his pants pockets as he sauntered out the door.

  “Did he ask you out? On a date?” Cherry wanted to know after the conversation in Dutch was over. “My sisters go out sometimes. With boys. Boys are yucky, they pick their noses.” She folded her little arms across her chest and looked up at Lynn seriously. “Do you like boys?”

  The whirlwind of butterflies in her stomach had climbed up to her heart and was doing a swirly dance there. She smiled and as she gave Cherry her honest answer, she didn’t know who was more surprised at the words that came out – the little British girl, or Lynn herself.

  “I like this boy.”

  34

  Dan

  Rain was beating down on his umbrella. Dan was the only one out on the boulevard. The smell of the rain was different here. Maybe it was the lack of green around the concrete of the avenue alongside the sea, or maybe it was simply because the rain in Holland was different. Out here, showers were short and violent. More like a sprint than a marathon. By now, he could count the days left of his vacation on one hand, and it frightened him – the thought of having to go back. Especially after the escalated argument he’d had with his parents and the underlying tension that still clung to their interactions now like bitter syrup. He knew he should work things out with them, but he had absolutely no idea where to start.

  In a way, he did understand where his father was coming from. His high school years hadn’t exactly been uneventful. All the parties, all the keg parties after basketball season was over and he could enjoy a few weeks of no training. Drugs hadn’t been on the menu, though. Not because he wasn’t curious, but because he knew his coach would kick him off the team if he tested positive at the beginning of the season. The risk was too high. It had always been his dream to play professionally in the US, and the fact that he’d been good at his game had always been his ticket there.

  He’d loved all the attention. He loved knowing that he looked so good he could get any girl he wanted if he made the slightest effort. And he never even had to make an effort because they all lined up for him.

  Ella hadn’t, however. He’d really had to fight to get her. And now he was doing the same thing for Lynn. He wanted to fight for Lynn. Yet, the two girls couldn’t be more different. Ella had played hard to get. She’d mastered the game of reeling him in and pushing him away to perfection – if they handed out college degrees for such things, she’d done a minor at the very least.

  “Nah, sorry. I can’t.” Ella looked him straight in the eye. He’d just asked her out, fully convinced she’d say yes. Everyone always said yes.

  “Why not?” It sounded painfully incredulous and disgruntled, which was exactly what he felt like. Ella and he had been flirting with each other for months, ever since they’d taken classes together. It had only taken her a week to become a part of his clique. And then that one time, just before spring break when she knew he was still in the locker room and she’d stepped inside wearing just her gym shirt and panties, hastily apologizing for entering the men’s room. He knew when a girl was interested in him. He just knew.

  “Because I can’t make it.” She shrugged and casually put her hand on his cheek. “You need to shave. Or, no – scratch that. It’s pretty sexy, actually.”

  During study hall, she sat in his lap and turned left and right, grinding into him and giving him a hard-on which she had to feel, but she didn’t get up. She kept giving him a covert lap dance. She laughed, she bent forward to hear what was being said, then sat back against his chest to listen to Timo’s response. She didn’t comment as he put his hands on her upper legs, didn’t stop him when he slipped them just under her skirt as it rode up. His fingers trailed the hem. And still, she said nothing.

  “You coming?”

  He gave her a questioning look. She’d refused him before, but then she’d used his lap for a chair. And now Ella shot him a meaningful glance, beckoning him with her finger and curving her red lips up in a seductive smile. He got up and followed her, suppressing the tension humming through his body when she looked left and right and over her shoulder once more before ducking into the teachers’ restroom. He entered after her and locked the door behind him before he pushed her up against the wall, his knee between her legs.

  Ella put her hand on h
is chest and his thumbs slid up to caress her breasts, turning her nipples hard through the fabric of her tight top.

  “You won’t go out with me, but you’re game for a bit of making out in the lavatories?” He kissed her neck, blazing a trail toward her mouth with his lips.

  “I never said I don’t want to go out with you. I just said I can’t make it tonight,” she responded before pressing her lips to his and driving him wild with her tongue.

  That weekend after she’d dragged him into the restroom, he’d lost control because all he could think of was her. He was suspended from the game because he’d committed too many fouls, and that night on the town he’d drunk himself into a coma since he knew he was banned from playing for the next three weeks anyway. He’d woken up in the hospital, where he and Timo had stolen an entire box of surgical gloves which they’d then inflated like balloons to stuff into the history teacher’s classroom. That Tuesday, history had been canceled all day. And he and Ella had spent the hour in the teacher’s lavatories again. That’s when he’d felt they were really an item. There was so much spark and fire between them – in bed as well as out of it.

  The rain swelled to a torrent. Fortunately, he’d reached his destination. Dan descended the stairs and relished the overwhelming ambiance of the restaurant’s special dining room. Being here still took his breath away.

  “Can I help you?” A waitress put her pile of menus on the counter and turned toward him. “We’re not open yet. You can come back at five.” She studied him, her facial expression bored and indifferent.

  “I’m looking for Hernando. Could you tell him Dan is here to see him?” Dan had barely uttered the owner’s name before the man popped up from behind the bar.

  “Danny?”

  Dan grinned. So Hernando still knew who he was. The gigantic man walked around the counter and barreled toward him. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and started laughing. The sound filled the entire room. The bored waitress observed them both, her face now taking on a look of interest. The so-called Mertens effect.