by Tijan
I love you.
She said it and then took it back. She’s confused and upset. Confusion runs deep in my mind as well. For the first time since I’ve set eyes on her, I’m uncertain what to do with her.
I want to hear her tell me those words again, and to mean it. But I would never wish for a girl like her to fall for me, either.
“You can close the door, Mr. Cross,” she tells me, staring at my shoes from where she sits in the driver’s seat. The clinking of her keys is all I can hear as I stare down at her, waiting for her to look up at me. My hand is still firmly on her car door.
A gust of wind passes and I can hear Seth clear his throat in the distance. Still I don’t look away, and neither does she.
“Bethany,” I murmur her name and she hums back, a sweet sound, seemingly just fine, but still doesn’t look at me.
“What’s wrong?” My grip tightens on the door when the question leaves me. I already know and I feel like an asshole. She’s a mess. That’s all she’s been since I’ve come into her life. A mess, but a beautiful masterpiece. She’ll do more good in a week at the hospital than I’ll do in my entire life. There’s no questioning that.
“Nothing,” she answers in a whisper, then peeks up at me, toying with her keys in her hand and offering a sad smile.
“You look like you’re going to cry.”
Her voice in response is stubborn, but it also cracks. “I’m not.”
“Get out of the car, Bethany.” I give her the command and step back although I keep my grip on the door, pulling it open wider and waiting on the vacant street. I can’t help but notice our footprints on the sidewalk. Hers are so much smaller than mine, but the spacing is the same. They’re in complete rhythm and time with mine.
She clears her throat as she steps out, moving over the curb and onto the sidewalk. Toe to toe with me, she stands there, both of her hands cradling the keys. Maybe to keep them from making noise, maybe to give her something to focus on other than me.
Either way she looks me in the eyes, daring me to accuse her of being on the verge of tears again. I can see it.
Instead I tell her, “I don’t love you too.” I don’t think about it; I just say it. Feeling the restlessness sway inside of me, panicking and not knowing how she’ll react.
Her large hazel eyes widen even more, for only a moment as her lips part just slightly and other than that, there’s no response at all. No telling as to what she thinks. Until she tries to speak and the first word can’t even make it out unbroken.
Instead of carrying on with the intention of speaking, she snags her bottom lip between her teeth to keep it from trembling and stares at the window of the car door rather than at me.
I add, leaning closer to her, close enough to feel her warmth and for her hair to kiss against me with the upcoming gust, “I lied to you and you lied to me. Now we’re lying to each other.”
I hate myself in this moment, for daring to lead her into this path. But the other path is away from me. I want her close, I need her as close to me as I can have her.
Her hazel eyes swirl with a mix of emotions. Complicated and in broken disarray, the amber colors bleeding into one another, but each still visible and adding to the beauty of her gaze.
“I don’t love you.” She shakes her head as the statement leaves her. Her body consciously denying the very words she speaks.
“I don’t love you too,” I repeat.
She’s searching. Trying to figure out whether or not I’m lying to her and I don’t know what she’ll find. I don’t know if I’m even capable of loving anymore. Not the way she needs. Not the way she deserves.
Before she can find whatever truth there is, I crash my lips against hers, letting go of the door to pull her into my arms. Her soft lips melt as I deepen the kiss. Her small hands reach up to push against my chest, but instead she quickly fists my coat and pulls me in even closer.
With a swift glide of my tongue against the seam of her lips, she parts them for me and lets me in. In the middle of the empty sidewalk, I pour everything into that kiss, holding her body against mine. Letting her feel what it is that I have. Maybe she can feel what I have for her. Maybe she’ll know it better than I can.
I can feel her heart pound against her chest, maybe hating my own, maybe needing another to commiserate with.
Bethany
The quiet is uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s just my thoughts filling up the silence that are uncomfortable. Every second, I go through an entire day. Each day since Jenny’s gone missing, even worse when she was found dead, and then each day that Jase tore through the shambles of my life.
That’s what the mind does when placed in a quiet room.
His bedroom is a subdued masculinity. A calming presence that begs me to lie down and sink into the plush linens. But then… the thoughts come back. The memories. The what-ifs.
Sitting on the edge of his bed, I focus on the chaos that used to be. The Rockford Center kept me busy, kept me going. And I miss it.
I miss my patients. Marky Lindgren in particular. He always had a story to tell. Sometimes the patients are violent. Sometimes they’re vile with what they say. Sometimes all they do is cry, and I keep reminding myself of what I’d tell them when they apologized.
“You’re having a moment and you can have as many as you need.”
People mourn differently. Funny how on this side of it all, I find my own advice something to ignore. I don’t need moments; I need a way forward.
And that’s why I miss Marky. Marky’s a liar and he spins stories about the other patients to occupy his time. I remember one night he told me how the male patient at the end of the hall had slept with one of the patients that had just been admitted.
He said it so confidently, so seriously, I almost believed him.
And then he told me how she just had to break it off with her husband who was in room 3B. But the man in 3B wasn’t going to let her go without a fight and that’s what all the commotion was about. Why everyone was crying and yelling.
He said it was a love triangle and then he added… the man at the end of the hall would be fine with a threesome, but he’d never admit it to the woman. I shake my head remembering how he said it, baiting me and waiting for a response I didn’t give him.
Each time someone would walk past his room, he’d create a dialogue on what they thought of the adulteress and the sordid affair that never took place. Some of his comments made me genuinely laugh.
The first time I let the smile show on my face, he laughed and then I with him.
He would break up the time with stories that didn’t matter, stories you could get lost in. I let myself get lost in them too, because the man in 3B was always angry due to having Alzheimer’s and not knowing why he was there. And the man at the end of the hall was violent because he wanted to end it all and we had to strap him down to keep him from doing just that. All over a job he’d lost. It was just a job and just an income. But the debt was too much for him to bear.
Real life didn’t matter in Marky’s stories though, and amid the chaos, the rounds of delivering pills and checking on patients, Marky’s stories made some horrific days tolerable.
No matter how bad the days got though, going home I felt accomplished, needed, and like the chaos was worth it.
The man at the end of the hall found a way out of the hole he’d dug himself with bankruptcy. The man in 3B remembered some of the best times of his life when his family came and they’d just come two weeks ago before I was told to go on leave; it made all the difference for him.
I still don’t know about the woman who just came in. She’s not from around here and we were told to keep her “attendance” – as they called it – private.
I wasn’t even given her full name, only initials.
I miss the chaos, I miss Marky’s stories, I even miss my boss and the bullshit rotating schedule. I miss my mind being occupied.
Right now, in the quietness of Jase’s bedroom, I’d prefer
to be in the halls of the Rockford Center, wondering what everyone else’s story is and helping them with their tales, rather than having to face my own.
A creak in the hall catches my attention. A sputtering in my chest echoes to the pit of my stomach. “Jase?” I call out when the door doesn’t open.
It’s his own bedroom, so if he wanted to come in, surely he would.
But the door doesn’t open and I’m left staring at a doorknob I haven’t dared touch and wondering what the fuck I’m doing.
Neither of us spoke last night really. Which is for the best. I don’t trust the words coming out of my mouth when he’s near me.
So we didn’t speak, apart from the necessary details.
Half a bottle of zinfandel, a full dish of chicken parmesan, and a soft pillow in a quiet house, with the firm chest at my back of a man who says he’ll keep me safe… and I fell asleep. A deep sleep, one where you don’t move and you don’t dream, because your body sleeps just as heavily as your mind.
That’s the kind of sleep I had and then I woke up to a note from Jase, letting me know that he’d be back later tonight and to “make myself comfortable.”
I’ve been torn and now I’m breaking down. If I were at work right now, visitors might think I should be in one of the rooms, rather than in my scrubs holding a tray of medication to dish out.
Do I love Jase? I don’t know. It’s easy to want love when you’re hurting. It’s easy to hold on to anything that could fill the void pain has caused. I don’t know what’s real, and what’s the product of coping.
Does Jase Cross love me? No. He doesn’t. Not at all.
I think he feels bad for me. It’s all sympathy. The way he looked at me tonight said it all. He feels sorry for me.
It’s such bullshit. But at least I’m safe. All I need to be, right now, is safe.
And that’s the dichotomy I’m supposed to make myself comfortable in.
He left me two rules on the slip of paper as well:
If the door is locked, stay out.
Your handprint opens the front door and the hall door behind the stairwell. Don’t open the hall door at the moment and don’t leave. I’m trusting you.
In other words, stay right where I left you. If I didn’t feel so tired, I’d have my ass out of that front door, and walk in knee-deep snow to some shady hotel I could afford. Just to spite him.
But I’m tired. All the sleep in the world can’t help the type of tired I am.
You may be tired, Bethany Ann Fawn, you may be sad and in a shit position, but you are still a badass. You are not going to take any shit. And those rules Jase left you, those rules that sexy motherfucker thinks he can lay down while trapping you here, those rules can go fuck themselves.
My little pep talk kicks my lips up into a grin and the lyrics to a Pretty Reckless song play in my mind.
Tell them it’s good. Tell them okay, but don’t do a goddamn thing they say.
It’s been my life’s motto. Nothing’s going to change that.
My first move is to push the curtains in the bedroom as far open as I can. They’re heavy and the sky is full of white fog, not offering much light at all. I think it’s the winter that’s gotten me so down, at least it’s part of the reason. The season can take some of this blame.
With a little more light in his too-dark-even-with-the-light-on bedroom, I go drawer by drawer. I don’t find anything interesting. Socks, neatly folded in a row. Same with his ties. I let my fingers linger over them, feeling the silk and wondering how he could even choose a tie like this, given the patterns are hidden this way.
I finally find a drawer that’s mostly empty; it only houses two pairs of jeans I’m able to put in his undershirt drawer, which is filled with white and black cotton undershirts… and now two pairs of jeans.
All of my things don’t even fill the drawer: two pairs of PJs, a pair of sweats, a pair of jeans and a few tops. It’s everything that was in my clean laundry basket. I have a closet full of clothes, but I wear these garments over and over again. What can I say? I like what I like and I damn well like to be comfortable.
The toiletries are next, but there’s not a space in the medicine cabinet, nor under the sink. I’m able to clear room in the linen closet and shamelessly rearrange what was under the cabinet, putting most of it in the closet and finding a place for my own things there.
A tightness starts in my abdomen and works its way up every time I peek at the medicine cabinet. The pills are still at my house; the ones I stole from Jase. That’s the only spot available to put anything in there, but I don’t bother to touch anything else in that cabinet.
All in all, I waste about an hour. That’s all the time I could fill. Then I’m back to staring at the doorknob, wondering when Jase will be back, wondering if I should leave, if I should go. All the wondering that drives me mad.
The clouds shift behind me, as does the faint light in the room. A band of white light shines across the room until it lands on my purse. It’s only then that I realize my phone is probably dead since I haven’t charged it.
As I’m rummaging for it, I take out The Coverless Book. I have no right to feel betrayed by it, but I do. Jase’s charger on his nightstand works for my phone and once it comes to life, I stare at a blank screen. No missed calls and no missed texts.
I call the Center, keeping the phone plugged in and sitting on the edge of Jase’s side of the bed. I’m given the voicemail before the second ring occurs. They shunted me there intentionally. If they were just going to ignore me, why bother calling yesterday?
I listen to the voicemail message far too long before hanging up. I have no one right now. No one.
The only people waiting for me, are the fictional characters in The Coverless Book.
Jase
I could hardly focus on the update from Carter this morning. Romano’s planning something judging by how he’s moving storage units and Carter thinks he might take off, so we have to strike now if we want a chance at getting him before he leaves. He said Officer Walsh has members of the FBI in town, something about them being involved with Romano’s indictment. They’re all over him and watching his every move, which makes it impossible for us to do a damn thing.
I couldn’t focus on anything he was telling me in his office. All I could think about was how Bethany had wrapped her arms around me in the middle of her sleep. She clung to me without knowing, nestling her head against my chest. I could live a thousand lives in that single moment.
All I could picture was how serene she looked in her sleep. All throughout the conversation with Carter and all throughout the drive to the club.
If she knew her sister was still alive, she wouldn’t sleep like that. If she finds out I knew and I didn’t tell her, she wouldn’t cling to me like she had last night.
I only have one lead that could change the course of where this is all going. One chance, one moment, to hold on to Bethany like I want to. One lead, who’s waiting for me just beyond the glowing red lights of the sign ahead of me.
The Red Room isn’t just a cover. It’s not just for laundering and meetups. Just like the storage shed behind it isn’t exactly what it looks like. It’s inconspicuous, large and organized with wide open spaces. Everything clearly seen on first glance when you walk into the storage shed which measures forty feet on each side. I demand it be kept clean and tidy. So anyone looking for any hint of it being anything other than a place to keep the extra bottles of liquor and tables would know at first glance there’s nothing else here.
Unless they opened the safe and found the secret door in the back of it. It leads to a winding iron staircase, down to a long hall in the basement with a vault door to a room.
The skinny hallway that leads to the room reminds me of the old warehouse I’d sneak off to when I was a boy. Back when I needed to be alone and get away. It was quiet, and offered the comfort of both safety and a place to simply be alone.
The room in that basement exists for one purpose. An
d one purpose only.
The men who find themselves here aren’t feeling the security I did when I was younger and hiding in the warehouse.
No, the men who end up in this room are here to die, although they would say and do anything to believe that they’ll get out of here still breathing.
The vault door opens with a slow, plaintive cry. It’s heavy and made of thick steel. With Seth behind me, we enter the room comprised of four smooth concrete walls. It’s soundproof and the floors are made of steel grids with a drain in the center of the room.
There’s no furniture in the room, save an old iron chair bolted to the floor over the drain. I bring everything I need with me each time.
This time I’ve brought a pair of hedge clippers, the kind most people use for their gardens. They’re in my back pocket, as is my pocket knife.
The muffled screams that come from behind the balled cloth in Luke Stevens’s mouth fill the room as the two of us walk in.
His skin’s paler and almost gray in this light than it was in the video we had of him and another man talking about where Marcus wanted Jenny Parks delivered. That’s the word that came out of his mouth. Delivered. As if she were only an object to be shipped off.
The steel cuffs leave bright red marks around his wrists and ankles, along with a trail of dried blood as he wrestles with his restraints, still screaming. Like it would do him any good to fight.
My nostrils flare with the stench of piss in the damp underground as I get a few feet from him and then look to my right to ask Seth, “How long?”
“Twelve hours now.”
He stands closer to the prisoner than I do. We have a system that works. When something works, you don’t fuck it up. He knows that and he stands where he always does, just behind the subject of our interrogation, where he can’t be seen.
Crouching in front of Luke, a man who may know where Jenny is, I look into his dark eyes, taking in how dilated they are. Wondering what the hell he’s on.