Leave Me Breathless: The Black Rose Collection

by Dakota Willink

  She sighs loudly and rubs at the center of her forehead.

  I get the sense she’s not particularly happy about me voicing her fear, but both of us know there’s more to it.

  “I need to find the person Kace is looking for.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think he can help me.”

  “He who?” The numbers on my scorecard float, showing me an average of 2.4 and marking her as an ideal candidate.

  “The killer … The Bullet Man.”

  Her words cut through my thought process like a knife. They are working on my case? “How do you think the Bullet Man can help you?”

  “He solves cases no one else can.” She holds my gaze, as if she knows it’s me.

  I freeze, moving only to jot something down and hide my face from her. Attentive or not, detectors always perceive, they just don’t process when they don’t want to. “I’m not sure how to respond to that,” I say to distract her. “It’s not every day one of my patients comes in here, seeking out a serial killer.”

  “He’s not a serial killer,” she corrects me. “He’s a proxy killer. He convinces other people to murder, but doesn’t show any evidence of interfering himself, which may mean he’s not after the kill.”

  “Still dangerous,” I point out. Though I didn’t exactly consider myself dangerous. Part of being an ideal candidate is being a client, or one of the anonymous people at one of the free sessions at the university. I need access to their well-being so I can track each case study. My primary goal is to help them and deliver the name of the killer at the opportune time—at a crucial, pivotal moment in their life.

  “I don’t care if he kills me. He brings justice to their families.”

  I do not murder people. “Then why does he not help the police?” I pretend like the Bullet Man and I are two distinct entities.

  “Because sometimes the police can’t do shit.”

  She’s right. “Are you close to finding him?”

  “No,” she says sadly. “I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about this but fuck it. He’s careful, and we don’t know how he solves the cases.”

  I lean forward and rest my elbows on my thighs. “I work with a lot of people on the force. I’m usually referred when they want to keep cops on the force and not have them on permanent leave.”

  Her nostrils flare at the thought of being fired.

  “Rest assured, I will not betray your trust and divulge personal information. If and when they ask for an update, which they already have, I’ll simply state whether or not you are ready to go back to work in an official capacity, and my reasoning behind it. No specific details, especially since most of these vengeful thoughts are part of working through a process.”

  The gleam in her eye tells me it is definitely not part of her grieving process, but I pretend not to notice.

  “Maybe I can help you with that.” Or I can throw them off a little.

  Her whole body is at attention. “You can?”

  “I came across someone who received a bullet from the Bullet Man. His wife’s case had been cold for eight years.”

  “Which case was that? I’ve studied all of them.”

  “Perhaps you only studied the ones which provided a body. It seems to me this is more about the replies than the actual messages.”

  “How so?”

  “When you don’t want to talk about something, what do you do?” Evasion through redirection and ignoring.

  She smashes her lips together, exactly as I expected. I wait for her to realize the silence between us is the answer, but she switches to the next thought. “What would be the purpose of giving messages to someone if not for the goal of killing?”

  “See. You ignore what you don’t want to talk about. Maybe others do as well.”

  She flares her nostrils and blinks rapidly, forcing out a smile as acknowledgment. Whatever thoughts are running in her head are swallowed and disolved.

  “To answer your question, perhaps the object is not the kill, but the closure.”

  “Hmm … I remember there being talk about a bullet or two being turned in. This man, was it three years ago?”

  “I don’t know the specific dates, but I remember hearing—not in the confidence of this room—that he turned it into the police.”

  She may be baiting me. This may all be a way of setting me up, but even if they had the counseling connection, I am ninety-nine percent certain they can’t connect me to these people, not enough to get a warrant. “This is a big city. Does he work around a specific location?”

  “No. Bodies pop up all around the city. Some don’t even fall under our jurisdiction. Cops chase down nothings—because that’s all we basically have—and I’m no closer to finding him.” She smooths her hair and chews on her lower lip before absentmindedly adding, “I just keep getting closer to Kace, and it makes it harder to do what needs to be done.”

  Had the police pinpointed me as the Bullet Man, or is she here to trick me into a confession? The thought disturbs me, and I study her. “Our hour is almost up, so for your third assignment, write about would you would say to the Bullet Man.”

  “Another one? I’m still distributing sticky notes.”

  “Good, keep doing that.”

  She grumbles miserably and walks for the door. “See you on Friday, Doc.”

  She leaves me alone to think about her case and the pivotal moment in her recovery process, not to mention I’d need leverage.

  Guess we just put a rush order in on Tyler Dalton. Tracking me would take more than the time I would need to solve her case, and then, we could come to a mutual agreement. She wouldn’t turn me in if I didn’t turn her in.

  8

  Blinks

  Eleanor Devero

  “What are you writing?” Kace walks in on me, sitting on the couch.

  “Nothing.” I shut my notebook and glance up at his shirtless figure. Nolan’s words whirl around in my head, and I tear my glance away before I heed my desolate heart.

  “You need a pen to write nothing?”

  I peek up again and mumble, “You got more muscles.”

  He cracks a smile and swooshes into the living room, taking a seat on the edge of his desk. “I’ve had a lot of energy to expend.” The tone in his voice dips low, and his gaze lingers on my bare legs.

  Instead of covering up, I flip the switch on the conversation and my lady parts. “What are you doing up?”

  “Do you have to ask?”

  I roll my eyes at the stupid pad of sticky notes in his hand. “Those things are driving me nuts.”

  “There are a few things I got out of the garage if you’re feeling up to reminiscing about life.”

  It beats writing to the Bullet Man. “What things?”

  “Come on, I have the box in the bedroom.”

  My heart pangs at the location. I haven’t been in there since the day I agreed to the undercover mission.

  “Do you want me to get it?” he asks, picking up on my hesitation.

  “No.” I drop the pen inside the notebook and shut it before tossing it on the crumpled-up blanket beside me. “Let’s go sticky some things.”

  “Don’t you need that to log them?” He dips his head toward the cursed black book from country music hell.

  “Swiping it in my arms, I follow him down the small hallway full of picture frames on the wall, hung with no particular design. It’s beautiful. Our whole life is here. The picture from the precinct calls to me—the one where our cheeks touched, and the symmetrical smiles on both our faces came from the instant click between kindred hearts.

  “First day we met … I told you we’d be forever, and you knew I wasn’t lying.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. There’s a reason why I’ve barely stepped foot in this hall, and it’s not because Tyler’s room neighbored ours. It’s this Romance Hall of Fame—a museum of our history, filled with artifacts describing our beginning and nestled in front of our present.

  Kace taps on
the glass of a larger picture of me, looking like a wet dog and wrapped in a thermal blanket. Kace snapped that shot after I fell through thin ice during a Christmas get-a-way in Vermont, right before he purchased the pink neon hoodie. “You had never skated on a frozen lake.”

  “And I’ll never skate on one again. I was sick for two weeks.”

  “But I took care of you.”

  I lean over and snatch the sticky notes from his hand.

  “Don’t even think about slapping one of those on each of these. That’s cheating.”

  He knows me too well. “How so?”

  “The works already done for you. The point is to remember the moment.”

  “I wasn’t going to anyway. Just on this one.” Maybe, I could get away with two or three here. “And this one.” I point to the picture of the first time he told me he loved me. “My first time at an Indian restaurant.” Another one followed by a very long stint in the bathroom of my apartment back then. The picture is of him, sleeping on the floor just outside the door.

  I stick my final note for the hall on the picture of us on Halloween. Our first, and weirdest, Halloween together at Frank’s house. The party was food-themed, so everyone dressed up as something edible-ish, lots of creative liberties were taken, like Cool Whip bikinis and valentine candy. Kace and I went as a cupcake. He, the cup, wore a T-shirt with an empty glass, and I wore a cake one, with frosting on my face … which he later licked off, but that was a dangerous road to go down.

  “We take way too many pictures.” I turn around to face him.

  “Not lately,” he reminds me.

  “So, you have more memory lane things?” I don’t know how much more of us I could take tonight.

  He clears his throat, a tad annoyed with my evasion tactics. If flat-out ignoring topics I don’t want to deal with is considered a tactic. “It’s just the stuff your mom brought when we moved. You never got to go through it.”

  We had bought this house after getting engaged; I was about five months pregnant with Tyler. We decorated together but never finished. We always ended up cuddled together, watching TV and relaxing. So, a lot of the stuff is still in storage containers in our garage.

  I enter the room; the scent of his cologne fills the air. It’s tidier than the rest of the house, which makes sense, considering he doesn’t spend a lot of time in here. Minus the last week, he mostly just came home to sleep and check on me.

  Since it’s been his room longer than it’s been mine, I wait for him to set the tone. For a moment, it feels like we had traveled back in time, to the first night I slept in his apartment. I felt out of place, as I do know.

  He carries the box out from his closet and puts it between the TV and the bed. I take a seat on the floor next to it and place my notebook beside it.

  “We never got the bench thing you wanted for the foot of the bed,” he says randomly.

  That’s because we had put it on the wedding registry. The thought weighs down my heart and anchors it to the pit of my stomach. I avoid his scrutiny by opening the box and retrieving the first item: a ragged doll that didn’t even belong to me.

  The next was a leather-bound book of my favorite childhood story about an ant in the snow. I tag it with a sticky note as my dad’s voice plays out in my head.

  It still soothes me.

  “You’re smiling,” Kace points out.

  “This is my favorite book.” I know the story by heart and imagined reading it to my children one day—the same children I’ll never have. “Want to see?” I hold the faded hard-cover book, with worn binding, out to him.

  He takes it and gently opens the old pages. Taking a seat on the floor beside me, he reads the book while I explore the box, pulling out an old Santa note my father wrote. I release a sad laugh, catching Kace’s attention.

  His furrowed brow beseeches an explanation, so I hand him the framed letter. “This was one of my most valuable possessions as a kid. I had Santa’s signature.”

  Kace chuckles as he reads the short four-line note, written on regular loose-leaf paper. “He spelled his own name wrong.”

  “Nah, everyone else just wasn’t spelling it right. For three years, I spelled his name like that, and when my teacher corrected me, I very adamantly protested her errors, because Santa himself told me how to spell it.”

  “Bet that went down well.”

  “I had to stay after school and write his name five-hundred times, the right way.”

  “She landed herself on the naughty list.” Kace holds it up. “Let’s put this up in the hall.”

  That’s precisely where it belongs, but did I belong here, with him? Plucking another item from the box camouflages my trembling fingers. The fuzzy material, which once lulled me to sleep as a child, feels like sandpaper, rubbing at the skin on the palm of my hand. “I was going to give this to Tyler.”

  My words bring on the silence. I clutch the white teddy bear to my chest and hear my heart snap.

  Sharply—like a splintered tree in the wake of a lightning bolt—before it splits in two.

  If I were a tree, struck at the center and sliced open by a ray of light, I’d likely die from the impact. But I’m unfairly human, and that I know of, broken hearts don’t yet hold the power to end misery.

  Every minute I lived without Tyler—from the start of my existence—turns into drops of liquid, accumulating in the corners of my eyes. I expel a lifetime of loneliness in the shape of tears, crying time out, as if the salt-laced water provides in its depths a miraculous power to heal.

  And maybe it does.

  Or maybe it’s the connection between Kace and I. The closeness. The undeniable science between two people who took love and created life from something so basic. Love-crazed scientists, mixing the breath of life with the kiss of death, and catalyzing alphabetic molecules to flip on their axis. M to W. Me to We.

  He hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me onto his lap, my back flush against his bare chest. With both arms tightly wrapped around me, he lowers his forehead to my shoulder, and after a few minutes, the material of my over-sized shirt dampens.

  Cradled in his arms, I long for nothing more than to be we. Because, in his presence, I hate being me, alone.

  “I read your letter.” His soft voice carries the power to blow through multiple layers of brick walls around my heart.

  Through blurry eyes, I glance at the black notebook. The letter to the Bullet Man, evidence of my dark thoughts, but did it have to be one or the other? “I can explain. Nolan told me to write it.”

  “I figured.”

  “It wouldn’t be so bad, would it? I’m not saying to escape—”

  He shuffles me around, so my legs are on either side of his waist, sitting me on his thighs. At eye-level, it’s hard to avoid the sadness in the ebony pools circled by his irises. They don’t sparkle anymore. They probably haven’t for a long time.

  “Kace, I’m sorry if the letter—”

  He drops a quick kiss to the tip of my nose, deafening my apology. “I want you to know, life without you doesn’t make sense. What I said at the hospital? I meant it. Please, don’t think I’ll be able to recuperate if you leave me, because I won’t. You keep me together. You think I’m strong because I surpassed Tyler’s death?”

  He read the suicide note.

  “You said I was strong, but I’m only strong because you make me that way. Every day I breathe knowing my son doesn’t. You confined me to this room … Do you think it’s easy to be here, in this room, where we laid on that bed, every morning and every night, planning for a future with a baby?

  “That wall outside, the stuff in my office, it reminds me of why I need to suck up my pain every fucking morning and walk out there. For you. It’s always been for you.”

  I hold onto him, drawing nothing from him. Instead, I keep my secrets deep inside, and for right now, because he needs me, I lead us both to the bed.

  Between the cotton sheets, I become the girl in those photos. The one from the shr
ine in his office and the one who once shared the joys of a future, but now, also shares the burden of our present.

  I wake up wanting to stay.

  I almost forget the last few months. It feels too good—a good I don’t deserve. There’s too much hope in the little space between us, and the two seconds, between the twenty blinks a minute, threaten it.

  He’s on the mend, defining his love without words and meaning every soft caress.

  But there are too many definitions—too many promises.

  Too many blinks.

  Twenty opportunities to leave, each one tempting the goodbye that should’ve come five thousand blinks ago. We lie on our sides, facing each other, the crumpled sheets between us the only veil covering the surface of our skins. If he touches me again, I won’t resist, but I hate staying here and watching the dangerous thoughts whirl in his irises. With his guard down, those hopeful thoughts swarm around like fireflies at dusk, lighting the dark grooves of his chocolate eyes.

  Luminescence. His love combines with his hope, illuminating the golden specks of his gaze. He waits for my fireflies to light up my eyes, and they’re there, but it’s hard to glow when submerged within so much darkness.

  His hand cups my cheek, brushing my hair back and gently urging me forward, closer to him and his lips. Tears well in my eyes. Like a current propelled by wind, I blink and blink, forcing the salty waves to crash on the shore of my eye line. They trickle down my cheek, seeping into the grains of my pores and dampening my skin.

  “Hey,” Kace says softly with his husky voice. The pad of his thumb soaks the uprush.

  When the palm of his hand curves around my cheek and tilts it up to look at him, my body sighs. He begs to be let in, to deep dive into the perilous depths of my despair, and save me from the sadness crashing in on me. But the current is too strong, and I can’t risk losing him also.

  In a trembling voice, I beg him, “Don’t…” My words die when they hit the air. Even I don’t know what I don’t want him to do. With eyes tight, I brace myself for his retreat, but the warmth of his body closes in on me, and before I know it, his breaths fall on my tear-laced lips, heating them with his exhales. My whole body shivers when the air recoils into his lungs. Out of instinct, or survival—I don’t know—my eyes gaze up at his to find the softest expression staring back at me.