Chapter Twenty-Five

In my mind’s eye, I saw the cold, starkly white room of the morgue.

No! I tried to scream at myself. Don’t go in!

I knew I had to be unconscious, and I begged myself to wake up. I didn’t want to relive what was on the other side of that big, silver door. But I couldn’t stop the memory/dream from moving forward.

Blair had her hand on my shoulder.

Where was Dean?

Blair wondered, too, and said so.

I shook my head at her. Blair and Dean and Jeannette hadn’t overlapped in the real world. They were more like different chapters in the book of life that made up me. Jeannette had been before. Dean had come after. And Blair was my now.

I tried to make myself say that to the dream-Blair, but she was just waiting for me to answer, a quizzical look affixed on her face.

I don’t know, I saw myself mouth.

Blair frowned her displeasure and pushed the door open.

I stared at the body down on the table, and it was surreal both in that moment and in my memory.

You two are enough alike to be twins, people always said to us.

And there she was, eyes closed and peaceful, looking just like me. I wanted to touch her, but I didn’t let myself.

It’s her.

The coroner—if that’s what she was—nodded at me and covered my sister’s face with a finality that made me burst into tears.

Blair touched my shoulder again. I wanted to shrug her away. She wasn’t supposed to be there. She hadn’t been there. No one had. But her hand stayed, forcing me to turn and face her.

It will be okay, Cass, I saw my friend tell me. She was so unhappy.

Was she? I asked.

Yes, of course she was.

The drinking. The men. The moodiness. I could remember when it had started—I could almost pinpoint it even, though I never understood why it had happened the way it did.

“Drink a bit, smoke a bit, live a lot,” my sister used to tease.

I wished she’d been able to take her own advice. Maybe she would have stayed happy.

I’d turned around for a second as Blair tried to lead me out, and that’s when I saw the tattoo. The sheet fell away from her upper body, exposing her shoulder. Small and black, laced with green. A tiny snake. It happened the same way in real life, too. And I wanted to examine it closely. To commit it memory.

I pulled away from Blair and walked over to my sister’s body.

How funny, I said. I never knew she had this.

Then Blair dragged me outside, where it was raining.

I woke up crying. I wasn’t sure what I’d been dreaming about, but my mind went instantly to John.

John’s brother, I concluded. Colin.

The pain he tried to hide as he told me about his brother’s murder made me hurt, too. I knew that kind of pain, and it made it easier for me to understand his anger, and his inability to see himself as a hero.

When I put my hand up to my face, I could feel wet tears there. I exhaled softly, and even in the dark, I saw my breath. I pulled the blanket up to my chin and rolled over. I tried to go back to sleep, but whatever sadness I had experienced in my dream lingered.

Sighing, I got up and padded over to the bedroom door with the blanket still wrapped around my body. I looked out, and saw the fire was burning low. John was lying on the upright futon, and I gazed at the outline of his body for just a moment, admiring him. He was unmoving, except for the rise and fall of his chest.

“You asleep?” I whispered.

His answer was immediate. “No.”

I stepped over to the futon and sat—almost but not quite—on his feet.

“You worried?” I asked.

“Not any more than usual,” John replied, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

“It’s cold in my room,” I told him.

“Do you need another blanket?”

“I’d rather just sit here with you for a minute,” I admitted.

“All right,” John said, sounding pleased. “Are you worried?”

“Surprisingly…not much.”

John chuckled. “What is it you do in your other life that makes you laugh in the face of death?”

I grinned. “I work with deaf and hard-of-hearing children. I teach sign language.”

“Sounds terrifying,” John joked.

“Well…Not so much,” I said. “But that must make you happy, since it means your analysis of me was so close to true.”

“What analysis is that?” he asked.

“Your complete breakdown of my life and personality. The one you made on the day you kidnapped slash saved me,” I reminded him. “Satisfying but low-paying job, remember?”

“Ah, yes. Anything else I was right about?” he wanted to know.

“Some,” I admitted. “My mom passed away when I was young, and my father disappeared shortly after that. I am quiet, mostly. And reserved. At least I am now. I like to think that I’m smart…Or at least that I’ve smartened up.”

“And your heart?” John asked in a quietly teasing voice. “Did some bad man break it?”

“You’re the only bad man I know,” I replied lightly.

He laughed. “Is that right?”

“Besides,” I added, “It wasn’t a man who broke my heart anyway. It was a woman.”

“Oh?”

“Not like that,” I said quickly. “My sister died suddenly six years ago.”

I paused after I spoke the words, and closed my eyes. The memory was still so painful. John placed his hand on my knee and squeezed reassuringly.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

“No.”

“Okay,” John said easily. “Why don’t you tell me what you’d be doing right now if you were at home?”

“Sleeping,” I replied immediately. “Isn’t it, like, three in the morning?”

“More like four,” John corrected.

He smiled at me, and for the first time ever, in the soft glow of the firelight with this big, dangerous man, I did want to talk about Jeanette.

“She was my half-sister, and my best friend,” I told him abruptly. “My mom had her when she was only sixteen, and we were nine years apart. Jeanette was the coolest person in the world. She never treated me like the pain in the ass little sister I’m sure I was. When she was nineteen and I was ten, our mom died of cancer. My dad couldn’t handle it. He took off, and left me with my sister. For five years it was all right most of the time, and great at some moments. We shared a studio apartment in the city. She was a waitress, and an office assistant, and even a dog groomer at one point.”

I smiled at the memory of her coming home, covered in dog hair and soap, and telling me that at least the dogs didn’t complain about the way she served their kibble.

“It’s funny isn’t it? How you took care of your brother, and my sister took care of me...But somehow I just can’t picture you cutting doggy toenails,” I said to John.

He grinned. “I’ve done worse jobs.”

“I’ll bet,” I replied, and took a breath before continuing in a soft voice. “But when I was fifteen, Jeanette died, too, and I was alone.”

John squeezed my leg again, and I fought back the tears that were coming. I didn’t want to tell him the whole story, not because I didn’t trust him with it, but because it was just too hard for me to talk about it. I did it anyway.

“She was so full of life,” I said. “I know you hear that about people sometimes, but with Jeanette it was really true. She was thankful for every bit of money that came in. She bought me a cake for each A I brought home from school. Everything was a celebration for her. Then one day it just…wasn’t. She went away for the weekend and left me with some friends. When she came home, she was depressed. She never said what happened—maybe she thought I was too young to understand whatever it was. Then she was gone every weekend. And then for a week at a time. And even when she was home, it was like she wasn’t really there.”

I stopped for a minute and closed my eyes. It was hard to explain the change that happened. Harder still, because I had never understood it. She’d gone from a fun, vibrant individual to a tormented soul in what seemed like moments. I’d tried so hard to keep her in the world with me, and I had failed.

I swallowed thickly and moved on.

“She ODed on something. Cocaine? Heroine? I don’t even know. The police told me later it probably wasn’t accidental. Without Jeanette, my life was empty. I went crazy, trying to live without her. I kept expecting to wake up and find her there, you know? So I ran away. For six months, I was completely on my own. I squatted in a few apartments. I slept in shelters, or on the street. Anything to keep me out of foster care. I celebrated my sixteenth birthday between two garbage bins behind a fast food restaurant.”

I stopped again, thinking about it. I couldn’t even picture myself doing any of those things. But back then, I slept in places I wouldn’t even walk through now.

“Social services caught up to me just after I turned sixteen, and they bounced me from foster home to foster home. I don’t think they knew what to do with me. I didn’t drink or cause trouble. But I wouldn’t talk to the shrink they sent me to, either. I was trying to grieve, and no one would let me,” I said. “They finally placed me in a group home. Then I met Dean Sternlight. I thought we were alike. His family was alive, but they had been useless at raising kids. He was in the system for a long time, and he’d been bounced around, too. I didn’t know it then, but it was mostly because he was ripping off his foster parents. Some people won’t report it, you know? They think they’re doing the kids a favour by not turning them in. And Dean was…charismatic. Charming. And God awful manipulative. He was older, and working as a volunteer for the group home.”

John had an irritated scowl on his face, and it made me smile a little. As much as he claimed not to be a hero, he was clearly interested in protecting me.

“Go on,” he told me in a growl.

“He treated me all right,” I said, and John’s face got even darker. “Or at least he was content to let me just be instead of trying to force me to deal with my issues. It was such a relief. When I was almost eighteen, Dean proposed, and it seemed to make sense.”

“Is that right?” John asked too quietly.

I brushed off his expression with a shrug.

“You’ve looked into my financials, so you already know how it turned out,” I told him. “Two months in I knew it was a mistake, even though I hadn’t found out yet about the credit cards or the loans. Three years had gone by since I’d lost my sister, and I was ready to start the healing process. But I stuck with him anyway. I kept telling myself I wasn’t going to be like my dad and just run out when the going got tough. A whole year of married life went by, and I thought things weren’t so bad. Then the creditors started calling. Our car was repossessed. We had to move to a terrible apartment in a crappy part of town, and Dean couldn’t keep a job. We separated after that. It took me two whole years to get the annulment finalized, and another to really start getting past it. That was what I was working on when you… found me. I was celebrating the first anniversary of my freedom.”

“I can’t picture it,” John said. “You don’t seem like the type to let herself be taken advantage of.”

“I’m not,” I replied. “Not anymore. Dean had been fine for the sad, brokenhearted Cass. But the Cass who was ready to move on and grow up—the rebuilt me—could never love a man like him.”

“Who could the rebuilt you love?” John asked softly.

The air in the room changed.

John’s hand was still on my calf, and he sat up without taking it off. He slid it up gently until it was just above my knee.

I looked over at him, and the blanket he’d been using slipped down, revealing his bare chest. The tattoos on his arms spiralled across his shoulders and torso. I noticed again how the images blended together with the lettering. The word EYE twisted to form a delicate, gray iris and a blacker than black pupil gazed out at me. The letters that formed the word OCEAN were sprawled in lazy, circling waves. The mix was overwhelming and heady.

“They’re poems,” John breathed as he followed my stare.

“Poems?”

He nodded almost imperceptibly. His hand was on my thigh now, and I could feel the pulse in his thumb, thrumming against my skin. The steady beat of it was almost as distracting as the nearness of his face to mine.

How did he get so close, so fast?

“It’s a whole book of poetry,” John murmured.

His lips were inches from my own, and I was torn between watching them move and soaking in the intensity of his gaze.

I leaned back against the futon, and he shifted so that one of his legs was pressed between mine

“What kind of poetry?” I asked, trying to make myself focus on anything other than the feel of his body against me.

He moved his hand from my thigh to my waist, and slid it up my side. I tingled in response, and my breathing quickened. His fingers trailed up the underside of my arm, forcing it above my head. He pinned it there, and stared down at me.

“They’re my words,” John said, “My poems.”

His admission just about undid me.

“John.” His name came out as an incomprehensible mumble.

Dear God.

His lips came down, hovering just above mine.

His phone rang. I willed him not to answer it.

It rang again, sounding more insistent, and he groaned regretfully.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and peeled himself away from me to grab the phone from the table.

“Seever,” he greeted. “Hi, Billy. Shitty timing.”

I watched his face darken.

“Fine. No.”

He paused again, then grabbed his jeans from the floor. He slipped them over his hips.

“Yes, we’ll be ready.”

John turned back to me with a mixed expression on his face—partly apologetic, partly amused. And very annoyed.

“Billy found Monato holed up at one of his trashy apartments,” he told me. “I’m going after him before we lose him again.”

“What about me?”

“Billy will be here in twenty minutes. He’ll take you somewhere safe.”

“Again?”

John nodded. “Let’s get packing.”

He turned away, and whatever moment we’d had was lost.