by Katy Kaylee
“Hi Jake.”
I braced myself as I looked up at Zoe but it didn’t prepare me for the shock to my system. Nothing could have prepared me.
Her long, glossy black hair was pulled up in a messy bun on top of her head but tendrils had come loose to tease around her slender neck. Her heart shaped face was pale. Too pale. Her forest colored eyes wide and intent and unblinking on mine. I could see the breath moving too quickly in and out of her pale pink lips. Not the bright vibrant scarlet I’d grown used to seeing.
All of my emotions rose to the surface in a violent explosion and I had to gasp in my own breath to hold them all inside.
“Hi, Zoe.” My voice came out rougher than I intended when I could finally force out the words. “Can I come in?”
She nodded, neither of us saying another word as she turned, and I followed her inside. I felt like a giant compared to the cramped motel room and I looked around for a long moment. The inside was even less inspiring than the outside.
There was a twin sized bed that took up the majority of the space. A small chair was shoved into one corner and I debated sitting in it for a moment but doubted it would hold my weight and besides, I wasn’t exactly sure what the darker stains were that marred the floral pattern and I didn’t really want to know either.
There was a door at the back of the room that opened up to a bathroom crammed with the toilet, small porcelain sink and a shower stall I didn’t think I’d even be able to fit into.
The carpet was a dark maroon color that was more brown than red with more mysterious stains that I didn’t want to look too closely at. This is where she’d stayed last night? This is where she’d been living all those months ago?
“Zoe, I–.”
“Wait, Jake.” She interrupted me, staring at me earnestly, pleading with me, “Let me talk first, okay? I owe you that.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I acted like an asshole.”
“Please, Jake. Just…Just let me tell you,” Zoe paused, drawing a deep breath, “Just let me tell you the truth. Okay?”
I nodded, looking around for a place to sit and decided on the edge of the bed. I sat as gingerly as I could. Zoe waited until I was settled to start talking, and even then I could see how hard it was for her.
She paced around the small space of empty carpet, obviously searching for the words. Finally, she turned to me with a soft, humorless laugh.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Her head dropped and all I wanted to do was rush to her, to wrap her up in my arms and tell her that it didn’t matter. But then she started talking again and all I could do was sit there in absolute shock and listen.
“When I was a kid, my life was…it wasn’t easy. My mom was a single parent. My dad bailed when I was really young. And my mom, she just, snapped. She couldn’t handle it. Started drinking. Started using drugs. Couldn’t hold down a job. She would bring home ‘clients’ she called them.” Zoe stopped, shaking her head, her green eyes distant as she relived her past.
“Anyway, she would kick me out of the apartment when she brought the men over. We had an nice elderly neighbor who would let me stay in her place. She would give me odd jobs, clean up, get her groceries, that sort of thing. Anything to get me out of that place when my mom was working.”
I tried to imagine that sort of childhood and failed. My own had been idyllic, spent growing up on the ranch, roaming wild and untamed, playing on the land. It seemed like the total opposite of her existence.
“Mrs. Magney. She was this sixty year old woman, which seemed ancient to me at the time, who had four cats that she would always chase around with this old fashioned feather duster.” Zoe paused for a moment, a small, sad smile curving her lips and I wanted to kiss it away. To tell her to stop, that it didn’t matter. But it did. To me, and I could see it on her face, to Zoe. She needed to tell her story just as much as I needed to hear it.
“She also had this old upright piano. It was out of tune and the lower D key was broken but I didn’t care. It was magical to me. She taught me how to play, brought me all her old piano primer books and I absorbed them all.”
Zoe leaned against the small dresser, crossing her arms as she remembered.
“Music saved me. I know it did. It became my life from that day forward. I went over to Mrs. Magney’s apartment every day and I would play for hours. She helped me apply to my first music scholarship. That’s the only way I got out of there, got to go to college. I got a full ride scholarship to study music. I started playing bigger and bigger shows, I started making more and more money, travelling the world to perform. It was like a fairy tale.”
I could easily picture it in my mind as she spoke. Just like some sort of Cinderella story, the lost, lonely girl gets saved by the fairy godmother and all her dreams come true. Even down to prince charming.
“I met Elliot in college. He was older than me. So much more mature, I thought. We dated for years. I had my music and he had his corporate job. He finally asked me to marry him. I’d practically begged him to. We were engaged for nearly two years and he kept putting the wedding off. I should have known then that something was wrong.”
“Is that…did he…?” I couldn’t get the question out, still trying to sort fact from fiction, but Zoe understood.
“No, Elliot never hit me. He never abused me. He hurt me, but not…never physically. No, that was…that was something else.”
“Something?”
“My monster.” Zoe whispered the words and chills shot down my spine. That fear was back in her eyes. The same fear that she had carried around like a dark cloud when she’d first started working at the ranch.
“Your what?”
“My monster. That’s what I called them. I don’t know who it was, who it is…” She trailed off, wrapping her arms around herself and my heart broke for her, “I’m sorry, Jake. I’m sorry for letting you believe the lies but I didn’t know how to tell you the truth. I haven’t told anyone about this. I haven’t even spoken about it in over a year.”
Zoe looked over her shoulder as if just saying the words would somehow conjure her nightmare.
“It’s okay, Zoe. You can trust me with anything.”
“Almost two years ago now, someone started stalking me. The police said it was probably just an over eager fan, at first. It started off innocent enough. Flowers, small gifts. But then I started getting phone calls with heavy breathing on the other end. I started getting…other presents.” She swallowed hard, her face going pale white, “He would send me dead animals. Birds. Squirrels. A cat. And then the photos started. He took photos of me at rehearsals, photos of me in my back yard. In my home!”
I stood and started to go to her, but she waved me back.
“No, I need to tell you everything. I’m so tired of carrying this around inside me and you…you deserve to know.”
I nodded and Zoe waited until I sat back down on the edge of the bed before starting her terrible tale once more.
“I went to the police again and again and they kept telling me there was nothing they could do. No fingerprints. No trace of where they were coming from. For a year this went on and I tried to pretend that I was fine, that everything was normal, but it wasn’t. One night, I was playing a concert, sold out show. It was intermission, right before I was going to go back on and one of the stage hands handed me a package. He didn’t know what it was, it had been left for me. I opened it. there was…so much blood inside I couldn’t tell what it was. And a photograph, like a polaroid. Of me, up on that stage. Wearing the same dress. The same concert. He’d sat there, watching me…” She paused, gasping in a sharp breath before she could talk again, “I wanted to move, but Elliot refused. He told me that he had worked too hard to get where he was at his job and he couldn’t just pick up and leave because of a fan. A fan!”
“I knew if I didn’t leave, he was going to hurt me. Or kill me. Or worse. So I packed my suitcase and left.”
“And that’s when you came here?”<
br />
Zoe gave a bitter laugh at my question.
“No. That’s when I started running. Over a year ago.”
“You’ve been running for over a year? Why?”
“After I left Elliot, I stayed with a friend for a few weeks. It was fine, for a while. Things settled down and I thought…I thought I was going to be safe. But just like before the presents started showing up. Somehow, he knew where I was. He could track me.”
She drew in another shaky breath.
“I finally figured out that he could trace my credit cards, somehow. I don’t…I don’t understand it. But it was the only connection I had to my old life. No car. New phone, and I was always careful to get the prepaid kind. Somehow, he could trace my bank account. So I took all the cash I had saved up, and I left for good. I stayed in motels, I took trains and buses, however I could travel. Payed for everything in cash.”
She gave a little laugh and my heart broke all over again, for everything this woman had gone through, for the horror she had been forced to survive.
“I was totally broke when I landed here. I was trying to pawn the only thing I had left of any real value when your sister saved me.”
“What were you trying to sell?”
“Elliot’s engagement ring,” She shrugged, looking away, “I don’t know why I kept it as long as I had. It was the only reminder of the life I’d had before, I guess. My only connection to normal. Does that make sense?”
“Honestly? None of this makes sense,” I stood and wrapped my arms around her, ignoring her weak protest, “I’m so sorry, Zoe. I’m so sorry you had to go through this, are still going through this. I’m sorry you had to lie to me, and I’m sorry that you couldn’t tell me the truth. I’m just…so sorry.”
It didn’t make sense. Who would do such a thing to her? Who could ever hurt her like that? It made me want to find whoever was responsible and wring them out with my bare hands. Make them hurt the way they had hurt Zoe.
But as she’d spoken, other things had fallen into place. The jumpiness. The way she’d always looked over her shoulder when she first started working. I could still feel where she’d decked me and given me that black I when I’d snuck up on her, startling her. I was just lucky I hadn’t gotten worse.
And the other things. Her being so scared about the threats the Calhoun idiots had left scrawled on the fence. It had probably reminded her of the stalker and what she had been trying to leave in the past.
“There’s more, Jake.” Her soft voice interrupted my thoughts but I didn’t let her go. I just held her even tighter.
“What’s that, sweetheart?”
“I...I don’t know how to say this, to be honest. Somehow it seems like the craziest thing out of all of it, but…” I felt her deep inhale and deeper exhale, “I’m…I think I’m…pregnant.”
“I know.”
“What?” This time it was Zoe who pulled back, staring up at me in shock.
“Beth came by today. She gave me this,” I handed her the paper from the doctor’s office, “She said you left it behind on accident. She thought I knew about the baby. She thought that’s what we’d fought about.”
“Not much of a fight.” She murmured under her breath and I swear I nearly blushed as guilt filled me.
“Listen Zoe. I am so sorry. I am sorry for what I said. I am sorry for pushing you away. I’m sorry I didn’t give you a chance to tell your side of the story. I just jumped to worst sort of conclusion and I’m just…”
“Sorry?” She grinned up at me, and suddenly my world was right once more, “Yeah, I got that.” Her grin slowly faded. “I’m sorry too, Jake. For not telling you the truth. I did it to protect myself but I never meant to hurt you. I need you to know that.”
“I do.”
“I also need you to know that I’m not your ex. I won’t cheat on you. Not ever. I’m not saying we won’t fight or that things will always be perfect but I swear, I will never betray you like that. You have to trust me.”
“I do,” As I spoke the words, I realized they were true. He did know, deep down, that she wasn’t anything like Valerie. “I know that. It just, it’s going to take some time. I’ve gotten so used to not trusting women, it’s like a bad habit.”
“I’ll help you break it.” she looked up at me, her green eyes darkening with emotion, “So…you know about the baby.”
It wasn’t a question but I answered anyway.
“Yes, I know.”
“And, you’re not upset?”
“Upset?” I stared down at her in shock, “Why would I be upset? Zoe, I…honestly I think I’m still in shock a little bit, but…I’m happy.” I was surprised to hear the word come out of my mouth, and even more surprised to realize it was true. I was still shocked as hell, but underneath that, the idea of Zoe having my child, of raising a baby with her, filled me with so much joy I wanted to shout it out from the rooftops.
“Really? You mean that?”
“Yes, I really do.” I laughed, still surprised but feeling lighter than I had in a long time. I pulled her into my arms again, cradling her close. I hated the way I reacted, that gut instinct to push her away before I could get hurt again. I knew it was something that would take time to break, and I knew we had a lot of healing to do but more than anything else I was filled with the urge to protect her. To keep her and our baby safe.
“The stalker, did the cops ever catch him?”
I felt her shake her head against my chest.
“Not that I know of. One of the officers used to call me and keep me updated but I haven’t talked to him since I stopped using my cell. I haven’t received any more presents since I came here. I haven’t even used my credit card until I went to the doctor’s office to get the pregnancy test. I think he’s finally given up.”
I nodded, but felt a kernel of unease deep in the pit of my stomach. It made me hold on to her even harder.
“I love you, Zoe Brown.” I let out a soft laugh, “I guess I should call you Zoe Carlyle.”
“You can call me anything you want as long you say it again.”
I smiled down at her, drinking in the sight of her, and it healed the ache inside me.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too. I love you so much.”
I couldn’t put into words all the emotions that were rushing through me. All I could do was lean down, and press my lips to hers in a kiss that seared me to my bones.
30
Zoe
Jake’s kiss filled me up, like I was drinking honey. Slow and sweet and so tender that it made my chest ache with it, my breath coming in hard, fast pants. I didn’t care. I just wanted more of him. I wanted to get drunk on the taste of him.
I felt it echo all the way through me, sending shivers of joy racing down my spine. My body was already wet and ready for him. All he needed to do was touch me and I melted into a puddle at his feet.
I was glad of his arms wrapped around me and holding me tight as my knees suddenly went weak and I dropped against him, sinking into him, into his kiss. I knew he wouldn’t drop me.
Still moving so slowly it drove me nearly insane, Jake’s hands started to move across my body, searching out any bit of bare skin that his fingers could reach and every touch sent shock waves of pleasure arching through me like electricity.
I loved the way he moved me, pulling me even closer into his body, hips pressed against hip as if he couldn’t get enough of me.
As he kissed me, his fingers worked under the hem of my t-shirt and he slowly stripped it from my body. He threw it to the floor of the motel room, already forgotten as he moved on to his next quest.
My bra went next, and then the jean shorts I was wearing, thrown to land on the lamp by the bed. I didn’t notice.
All I could focus on was him, his touch, his kiss. His tongue moving slowly against mine in a dance that heated my blood and had might heart pounding out a hard, unsteady rhythm in my chest.
I was completely naked and he was still f
ully dressed when he picked me up and carried me to the bed. For a moment I was worried that it would be too small for the both of us, but then he kissed me again and all other thoughts flew from my mind.
Jake laid me down on the bed like I was made of porcelain, like I was the most precious thing in the world to him.
His lips moved from mine and I murmured in protest, but he trailed them across my jaw, my cheek, down the sensitive line of my neck until it met my shoulder. He laid a kiss on every inch of my exposed skin, stopping only to tongue my nipple into hard peaks as his fingers worked the other.
I gasped, arching off the bed, but he didn’t rush or go faster, just kept trailing those slow, exquisite kisses across my skin, worshiping my body and soul until it brought tears to my eyes.
“Hey, don’t cry.” His voice was deep and rough with desire but his grey eyes were full of concern as I blinked mine open and stared up into his, “Don’t be sad.”
“I’m not sad. I’m so far away from sad.” I said with a watery laugh, “I am happy, Jake. You make me happy.”
“Good. That’s what I want to hear.” He kissed away my tears one by one, banishing them as if they were never there and I felt another deep pull of desire. A heaviness settled deep inside me and I hated the empty feeling that filled me.
“I think you could make me even happier, though.” I told him with a small smile and he grinned up at me.
“Oh, is that so?”
“Yes, it most definitely is.”
“And how exactly could I make you happier?” Jake’s voice dropped impossibly lower and I could feel every breath, every word shudder through me as he rasped them against my skin. “If I kissed you here?” He pressed his lips against my rib cage, making me suck in a sharp breath.
“What about here?” He trailed his fingers down the dip of my stomach in teasing, sweeping caresses before following with his mouth.
“Getting warmer,” I gasped. He chuckled, a rumble of sound that filled me with joy and need, before nipping my skin. I yelped at the sudden, sharp feeling but he soothed it with his tongue before moving down to the ridge of my hip bone.