I’m on another plane. It’s a one-engine Cessna, not as luxurious as the helicopter from Robert’s friend’s yacht—in fact it smells kind of like french fries. The pilot, Bill, is only an arm’s length away. I could reach over his seat and tickle his ears. He owns this little thing. It’s not tall enough to stand up in and barely wide enough for Blue and me to sit side by side. But it was all we could get on such short notice. And I like it. I like the scent, the sound, and the pilot.
“How you doing back there?” he asks me.
“Great!” I yell over the drone of the propeller.
It’s practically morning now. Robert and I waited in our suite while his team cleared the island. He spent most of that time on his phone, texting and occasionally taking calls in foreign languages while I changed back into my own clothing and demolished the non-alcoholic half of the mini-bar.
Blue enjoyed the beef jerky, but we are both still hungry. “How much longer?” I ask, glancing at my phone. It’s almost out of battery.
“Only about forty-five minutes,” Bill says, turning his head slightly to address me.
Probably in his sixties, Bill has a ring of gray hair and a full beard in salt and pepper. His belly extends almost to his controls but at about an inch shorter than me he fits in the small craft perfectly.
He’s taking me to the Cook Islands where a Joyful Justice member will meet me and take me to the island. I’m exhausted and starving. “Think I’ll be able to get anything to eat there?”
“Sorry, not at this hour.”
“Fair enough,” I say, sitting back into my seat and letting my gaze wander out the window at the sea not all that far below us.
When I left, Robert kissed me. It didn’t feel new anymore. It felt…not normal either. But…I close my eyes, trying to not think about it and failing.
Robert’s hand at my waist, his fingers in my hair, his lips on mine, our bodies pressed together. Fuck, I am totally going to sleep with him. Unless he gets killed first. Vibration from my bag pulls me from my thoughts.
“What the?” I ask, looking at my phone in my hand as though it may have an answer as to how a phone is also vibrating in my bag. Putting it down, I unzip the duffel and follow the sensation to a black handset with a little knobby antenna on top. A satellite phone. Robert snuck a fucking phone into my bag. The screen is illuminated with just a number, no name or image attached.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Sydney,” Robert’s voice comes over the line.
“You put a phone in my bag?” I ask.
“Dan doesn’t need to know everything we discuss, Sydney. We are husband and wife.”
“You know I’m not bringing this thing to the island with me, right? I may think the internet is a bunch of pneumatic tubes shooting information around the globe, but I also understand that phones can be tracked. Dan has drilled that into my head.”
“If I wanted to know the location of the island that badly, Syd, I wouldn’t have called you on this phone. I would have just placed a tracking device in your bag.”
“How do I know you didn’t do that?” He sighs, as if I’m tiresome. “You just expect me to trust you. Why? Why would that make sense for me?”
“Well, Sydney, it would make your life a lot easier.” His voice isn’t harsh but it’s on the road to pissed. But I’m tired and I’m hungry and I’m confused about what I feel when he kisses me. So fuck Robert Maxim and the sat phone he snuck in my bag.
“You’re an overbearing, arrogant, toxic fuck!” I yell louder than I mean to. Bill glances over his shoulder at me, his eyes kind and worried. He raises his brows, questioning if I’m okay.
I shake my head to silently communicate that I’m fine. I’m fucking fine.
Robert chuckles over the line. Chuckles. “You’re upset about what happened. Regretting how you feel for me, Sydney, is almost as much of a waste of time as not trusting me.”
My blood boils. “You don’t get to have everything you want, Robert.”
“Why not?” he asks.
“Because I won’t let you.”
“Why not?” he asks again. “Why can’t we have everything we want? What’s wrong with that?”
“I didn’t say we, Robert, I said you.”
He chuckles again and I grind my teeth. “But Sydney, we want the same things—we want each other. You want to trust me and I want you to. You want to fuck me, and I really want you to.”
“I want to burn it all down,” I say, my voice low and dangerous.
“I will pour the gasoline, my love.” I cough a laugh. “But if you want to strike that match, you’re going to have to recognize what you actually want first. What kind of a feminist denies herself what she wants? Are you afraid of being a slut?”
“No,” I say, far too quickly.
“Then you’re afraid I’ll hurt you. Which implies I have the power to do so.”
“No,” I say again, slower this time. “You can’t hurt me,” I affirm, for myself as much as for him.
There are voices in the background and Robert says something muffled. “I have to go,” he says.
“Are you going to interview the…crew mate,” I say leaving out the word captive. Bill doesn’t need to know about that—he already knows enough about my personal life, no need to fill him in on the criminal elements of said life.
“Yes,” Robert says. “Want me to call you with an update?”
Oh what a tricky question. He knows I want to know—those fuckers tried to kill me. They shot at Blue! But if I say yes, then it’s implying I care if he gets killed. Which I guess he already knows…since I admitted my feelings to him. How can I be in love with a man I don’t trust? What the fuck is this crazy emotion?
“Not on this phone,” I answer. “I’m trashing it as soon as we land.”
“As you wish, my love.”
Before I can tell him not to call me that, Robert hangs up. I roll my lips and stare down at the handset for a long moment before shoving it back in my bag.
“Everything okay?” Bill asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah,” I say again, nodding to myself. Everything is fine.
The plane drones on. I close my eyes and drift between sleep and awareness of the noise and vibrations of the small craft.
“Joy,” James’s voice reaches into my mind. The scene coalesces into his backyard in Brooklyn. The small round table holds a pitcher of margaritas—tonight’s are yellow, so probably passion fruit—and I’m in the rickety chair I sat in when we were both alive, young, and I’d never killed anyone.
“Hey,” I say, smiling. “Good to see you.”
He grins. “I made your favorite.” He gestures to a plate of appetizers and I lean forward, grabbing a pig in a blanket, my mouth watering. I pop it in my mouth—the salty hot dog and the sweet pastry dance on my tongue.
“You’re too good to me,” I say through my chewing.
“I know.” James acknowledges his own amazingness with a shrug. “You need to take better care of yourself,” he admonishes me. “I suggest you start carrying snacks.” He smiles. “You’re going to have to for the kid anyway.”
I roll my eyes. “What do you know about having kids?”
“I helped raise you, remember.”
“True,” I admit. James pours me a margarita and tops off his own glass. I pick up my cup and hold it up. James clinks his against mine.
“To your son,” James says.
“Drinking margaritas to the baby growing inside of me…” I laugh.
“It’s just a dream, Joy. You can do whatever you want without consequence.” He emphasizes that last part, hinting at the consequences on the other side of this dream.
“Meaning what?” I ask, knowing what he’s going to say.
“You’re in love with both of them.” James starts to recap my life in the way he always could—laying out facts as if they were not attached to feelings. “Robert seems fine with that. Understanding, even. He may want other lovers too.”
I roll my eyes. “Did you just say lovers?”
“Are you jealous?” James raises a brow and sips his margarita.
“No,” I grab another pig in a blanket and fill my mouth before I can say more. But James is too good for that trick and he just sits there, half smirk in place, waiting for me to spill my guts. “I’m not,” I say around the food, not capable of holding out even for the length of time it takes to swallow a mini hot dog.
James blinks and waits. I sigh. “It’s not jealousy, I don’t think. I just. It’s so complicated.”
“What is? Actually getting what you want?”
I frown at him. “Mulberry isn’t on board.”
“That’s true. He is not willing to give you what you want and Robert is…yet you only feel good about sleeping with one of them.” James sips his margarita again. “What’s that about? Why do you only want to sleep with the man who doesn’t want to give you what you want?”
“Robert only wants to give me what I want so that he gets what he wants,” I answer.
“Isn’t that how the world works?” James asks. “Certainly, you wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with someone who was only thinking of your needs. It’s a two-way street, takes two to tango, and all those clichés.” James twirls his hand in a circle as if to encompass all clichés that imply we must give to receive and vice versa.
“He’s controlling.”
James tilts his head. “You kind of like it, don’t you?”
“No!”
James laughs. “He never actually controls you. And don’t you like the game? Just a little?” He shrugs. “It’s playful almost.”
“Almost,” I mutter. “He forced me into marriage—“
“To save you from prison…” James sips his margarita, waiting for my next argument.
“Robert is…I mean, James, he has tried to kill me!”
“That’s old news, Sydney. You’ve tried to kill him.”
“You don’t like him, do you?” I ask, shock in my voice.
“Like him?” James looks up, thinking. “It’s not about like, it’s about what works for you. It’s about you acknowledging what you want and getting it.”
I snort-cough on a sip of margarita. “I don’t know what works for me.”
“And you never will unless you try it on. I mean, what’s the worst thing that could happen if you sleep with him? If you try to give your relationship a chance.”
“I’ll hate myself.” The words come out fast and sure.
“Oh?” James says. “Now we are getting somewhere. Why would you hate yourself?”
“I’m not some prize, and that’s how he treats me. If I sleep with him then he will have won me.”
“Hmmm, is that true?”
“I think so.” I sip my margarita again, the sweetness of the passion fruit mixed with the bite of tequila relaxing me. “Besides, he’s a predator, James. If I sleep with him, he’ll probably lose interest.”
“Wouldn’t that be good then?” James asks. “Look.” He leans forward, putting his empty glass on the table and reaching for the pitcher to refill it. String lights twinkle in the tree above us. The back sections of brownstones rise up on either side, their windows lit—people inside living lives. “If he got bored with you then it would be over. You’d figure out a way to live separate lives—”
“Or he’d kill me,” I interrupt to point out.
“He never killed his other wives, Sydney, don’t be dramatic. Even if finally catching you bores him, then at least the game will be over.”
“But he will have won, again! Why does he always get to win? Why do the Robert Maxims of the world always win!” My breathing is heavy and my cheeks are flushed.
James sits back and sips from his freshly filled glass. “I don’t know.”
A jolt wakes me, the seatbelt cutting into my thighs. My heart kicks into high gear, flooding me with adrenaline before I realize we are on the ground, the plane bumping along on the runway. “You all right back there?” Bill asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. Fine. Thanks.”
Except for this damn existential crisis. Can I blame this shit on pregnancy hormones?