“Fuck,” he mutters this time, padding away from me at a fast clip. I watch as his sun-kissed skin and toned body leaves. He returns in uniform, his black shirt perfectly ironed, fingers buttoning their way up, shirttails untucked.
“Who irons your shirts for you?” I ask as I pass him on my way to the bathroom.
He answers by grabbing me around the waist. This time, there’s no kiss on the forehead. The lush contours of his lips, tongue and mouth make my knees weak. I know it’s a cliché, but clichés can be real. My legs buckle and he holds me upright, passion and desire flowing between us.
By the time he pulls away I’ve forgotten my own name.
I’m completely nude and he’s fully dressed. The rasp of cloth against my bare skin is uniquely sensual, making me gently rub up and down against him as he caresses my cheek. He’s careful to avoid the bruised spot where I hit the concrete last night.
His eyes light up with amusement as he realizes what I’m doing.
Bzzz.
“Fuck!” he snaps.
“You already said that. And we already did,” I joke.
“We didn’t fuck.”
“Yes, we did.”
“Carrie, that wasn’t fucking. That was lovemaking.” His voice deepens, going serious.
Oh, God. As if I need this. As if I need to want him even more.
“Yes,” I say, my voice tremoring. “Yes, it was.”
He kisses me, soft and sweet. “And I want more of that. Fucking is nice, too, though,” he banters, eyes twinkling. “We’ll have to try both and see which one we like better.”
I smack his chest and laugh. “I’m slowing you down for work.”
He slaps my ass and turns away to finish dressing, then he reaches for me. His warm arms ground me, making me feel good again.
“Some delays are better than others,” he declares. He’s hard against my thigh. Desire plumes through me. Again? How can I feel so much lust in one long, rolling line of arousal?
A cold wave of shame smacks into my knees. I shouldn’t feel any of this right now. Minnie, Amy….it’s too much.
He can tell.
Mark gives me a touching look, then moves his hands to my shoulders. “I’m being inappropriate, aren’t I? I shouldn’t make passes at you, or joke at a time like this.” He lets out a small sigh, then looks out the window. Sunlight highlights the shiny blonde in his waves.
“It’s gruesome. But when you work with gruesome stuff all day, the weeks and months and years go by and it all becomes part of life. If I can’t compartmentalize and put the violence and death into a locked room in my head, then I’ll go crazy.”
His words make me reconsider everything I know.
“I understand,” I whisper. My stomach still burns with horror.
“I don’t think you do, Carrie.” I look up at him with wide eyes. “And that’s okay,” he says hurriedly. “No one understands it right away.” He swallows, hard. “My mom and grandfather thought they were removing me from a life filled with violence when they got me away from my biological father.” He grunts, the sound dismissive and filled with pain. “Didn’t really do much, now, did it? Took me years to realize I’m not a depraved human if I don’t fall apart every time I see a dead body, or have to interrogate an injured victim.”
“You can’t,” I say simply. “You couldn’t do your job if you fell apart all the time.”
His eyes flash with surprise. “Yes. Exactly. You do get it.”
“Try keeping yourself together while video cameras record your every move, the media waiting for the big drug dealer’s daughter to fall apart on camera at his sentencing,” I reply, my voice so full of bitterness I could bottle and sell it in grocery stores. “I understand, all right. You can’t break down. If you do, it helps no one.” Least of all yourself, I think.
“I wish you didn’t understand,” he murmurs, eyes troubled. “I wish…well, there are a lot of things I wish. But I don’t have a time machine.”
“If you did, my dad would be alive. And that poor woman, the one who they just found.” I shiver. “You’re sure it’s not Amy?”
“The chief says no.”
“Thank God.”
Mark’s eyes fill with a kind of darkness I can’t name. “I’m glad I don’t have to call Minnie and tell her we found her daughter, dead. But that phone call has to be made to a different mother, Carrie.”
He gives me a quick peck on the lips.
“Someone,” he says over his shoulder as he walks out the front door, “is about to find out that their daughter is dead. And I probably have to make that phone call.”
The front door opens. My head is spinning like an overturned car with wheels still in motion.
“Lock the doors after me. Lock the door to your trailer when you go to it. Text me before you go anywhere. Keep your cell phone battery charged at all times,” he orders. The demands come out like a list in his head.
“Yes, sir,” I whisper. No sarcasm. I’m terrified. Men stealing women my age, including my best friend, and dismembering them has that effect on me.
“Where are you going today?” he asks.
“Cindy texted me. Needs help at the shelter now that Minnie’s in the hospital. I thought I’d go there.”
He nods. “Just stay the hell away from Eric and Claudia. Don’t go to the coffee shop today. Stick to the no-kill shelter. That’s probably the safest place you can be today, honey.”
And with that, the front door slams.
Honey.
He called me honey.
I smile in spite of the somber topic we just discussed. How can I be happy when there’s a serial kidnapper who just turned into a killer and he chopped that poor woman’s arms and legs off?
And the same guy has my best friend?
The same best friend I would be on the phone with right this very second if she weren’t gone.
I finally did it. Mark and I made love. We’re back together.
I’m a woman now.
I snort as I think that last sentence. I’m a woman now was part of a longstanding joke Amy and I had together, for years. When we were teens we were watching television at my house one day and a tampon commercial came on.
The daughter said to her mother, “Does this mean I’m a woman now?” and my dad happened to walk in at that exact moment. He turned a shade of red found mostly on traffic lights.
Amy and I had spent the better part of a decade making fun of everything under the sun by saying I’m a woman now.
And yet…it feels true. Mark makes me feel more womanly.
The door opens again and he’s jogging down the hall toward me.
My heart freezes.
“Is everything okay—”
His mouth takes mine in a fevered kiss that shatters all thought. I’m splintered and floating, his mouth taking liberties I can imagine him taking with his hands. Lower.
He pulls back, worry etched on his face.
“I couldn’t just leave,” he says, panting.
I kiss his neck. Then I lick his collarbone.
Bzzzz.
He growls and stands, breaking the embrace. “Tonight?” he calls back over his shoulder as I watch his perfect ass walk away.
“Tonight what?”
“Tonight. You. Me. Dinner.” He waves a hand in the air. “This.”
“This what?”
“Sex. Lots of it. I want to hear you scream my name like you did last night.” And with that, he comes back, gives me a quick, hard kiss and storms out, leaving me breathless and aroused.
My thighs tingle.
Maybe I should have jumped in the shower with him, after all.
My turn to growl.
With a deep sigh, I walk into the tiny bathroom. The shower is about three feet by three feet. He wasn’t kidding when he said there might be room for two.
Might.
As I get under the hot water, the first wave of unreality really hits me. The water washes away the evidence of last night and this morning. I’m not a virgin any more. I slept with Mark. We made love—twice!—and I feel transformed.
It’s as if there has been this secret dimension right in front of my face all these years. One I never knew existed. A grounded feeling fills me. I’m warm and calm. I shouldn’t be. Amy’s been kidnapped. My dad was framed and died in prison. I’ve come home to a giant mess.
And yet I am calm. Focused.
Happy?
I thought it would take years and years to finally be able to say that. I’m happy. I’m happy right now, even in the face of so much tragedy.
Weeds can grow and flower in a tiny crack in the sidewalk. I guess I can find a tiny sliver of happiness in the middle of so much pain.