Near morning, it starts to rain.
I lie awake as I have been for hours. Shay slumbers peacefully beside me. I’m on my back. She’s on her side, holding me, one leg flung over mine, an arm across my chest, her head resting on my shoulder.
She knows what I am yet still she sleeps like a baby. Sleeps and holds me like I’m the one who needs protection, not the other way around.
How is it possible?
What does it mean?
She’s not mentally impaired. She’s not in denial. She’s not anything but completely accepting, and it makes not one bit of fucking sense.
Emiliano calls me the wolf.
My employees call me the Grinch.
Axel calls me the Evaporator. Bruv, British jargon for brother, when he’s feeling generous.
Other people call me by other names, none of them flattering, but Shay calls me honey and beautiful and feeds me steak from her fingertips as if I’m an injured animal she brought home to nurse back to health.
It can’t be this easy.
Things like this don’t exist between people like us.
Do they?
I turn my head and look at her, sleeping so soundly. Trusting me. Me, the man who walked in from the night with another man’s screams still echoing in his ears. She looked at me, and she knew, and she did the impossible.
She accepted me.
Again.
With rain pattering against the windows, I rise from bed, careful not to disturb her. Then I go into the closet, pull the burner from the inside pocket of my suit jacket, and call Axel.
As always, he answers after one ring. He might be the only man on earth who sleeps less than I do.
“Hullo, bruv. Everything’s green on my end. You solid?”
“No.”
I exhale and drag a hand through my hair. The most patient man I’ve ever met, he waits in tolerant silence for me to get my shit together.
“I need you to talk some sense into me.”
“About what?”
“Shay.”
This time, his silence is surprised. We’ve known each other long enough that I can tell the difference. But still he waits for me to speak first.
“I…I’m…fuck.” I blow out a hard breath and admit the truth. “I’m done for.”
His voice low, Axel says, “You can’t be serious.”
“That’s the thing. I am.”
“She’s a civ.”
“No shit. Doesn’t change anything.”
“And she works for you.”
“Still doesn’t change anything.”
“Bollocks. If you really care about her, you walk away. We don’t get the white picket fence. Not us.”
I already know, but I’m desperate enough to argue.
“Why does it have to be a white picket fence? Why can’t it be something else? Why can’t it be like some Wes Craven version of Pride and Prejudice where Mr. Darcy murders people instead of sneering at them and Elizabeth Bennett grinds up the bones and uses them to fertilize her roses?”
“Listen to yourself. I’d be laughing hysterically if I knew this wasn’t a joke.”
“You’re British. You don’t do anything hysterically. The best you can manage is a scathing comeback.”
“You say that like a good scathing comeback isn’t art.”
“Help me, Axel. I need help, and I need it now, because I’m ten seconds away from going into the other room, shaking her awake, and asking her to marry me.”
“Bloody hell. How long have you known this girl, four minutes?”
“Four minutes can be a lifetime with the right person.”
“You’re daft.”
“No, I’m in love.”
“Same thing.”
I think of Florentino from that wretched book Love in the Time of Cholera, how he spent fifty years pining over Fermina before they finally got together, and wish I’d never learned to read.
“Killian Black has a wife. Why can’t I?”
Axel’s voice turns sour. “You’re not Killian Black.”
“Nobody is. That’s my point. If the most dangerous man on the planet can put down roots, there’s hope for the rest of us.”
“You and I can’t put down roots because we’d poison the soil.”
I grimace at the phone. “We’re not that bad.”
“I disagree, lover boy, but let’s play this out. You put a ring on her finger, you move her in, you play house. What happens when she wakes up in the middle of the night and you’re gone, then you stroll through the door with blood on your hands? You think she won’t run as fast as she can? Because that’s exactly what will happen. You’re only setting everyone up for heartbreak. And prison time for you when she goes to the police.”
“She won’t run or go to the police.”
He scoffs. “That’s hope talking, not logic.”
“No, it’s experience.”
This time, his silence is stunned. “She knows?”
“No details, but enough to understand she’s not dealing with Mary Poppins.”
Another stunned silence. “You’re telling me this bird is okay with it?”
“She told me she thinks all my broken pieces are beautiful.”
“Bollocks!”
“Swear to God.”
“You’re making it up!”
“That’s what she said, Axel. Verbatim.”
He snorts in disbelief or disgust. “So she’s as daft as you are!”
“Then she fed me filet mignon from her fingers and said if my monsters ever need a home, they have one in her.”
“Christ on a cracker!”
I’m taken aback by his shouting. He never raises his voice. The closest I’ve seen him come to losing his temper is once at a coffee shop when the server gave him green tea instead of Earl Grey. His look of scorn was so savage, the poor girl nearly burst into tears.
“This is the most worked up I’ve ever heard you before.”
“I’ve never had to deal with this much insanity before. And that’s saying something, considering I worked at a psychiatric hospital for five years.”
“You worked at a psychiatric hospital?”
“Why do you sound so surprised?”
“You’re the son of nobility. What aristocrat lets his son work in an asylum?”
“Well, I didn’t ask bloody permission did I?”
“There’s no need to shout.”
There’s some indiscernible muttering, then he comes back on the line more composed. “Look. If you think you and Little Miss Sunshine have a shot, you’re off your bloody rocker, but I won’t be the one to ruin such a cheery mutual delusion. You can do that yourselves.”
Hope blossoms in my chest. “So you’re saying I should keep seeing her?”
His sigh contains centuries of British contempt for stupidity. “You’re a wanker.”
“Agreed. Before you hang up on me, I need to find someone.”
“Thank Christ, we’re back to the real world. What’s the name?”
“Don’t have a name.”
“Address?”
“Don’t have that either.”
“What’ve you got?”
“Nothing.”
“Perfect. Make my job a little harder, why don’t you?”
“You can manage it.”
“Of course I can. They don’t call me Hound Dog for nothing.”
I chuckle. “It’s hilarious that you think you got that nickname because you’re so good at tracking.”
He sounds offended. “What the hell other bloody reason would there be?”
“A hound dog is slang for a promiscuous man, idiot.”
“Pfft. I’m not promiscuous.”
“How many women have you slept with so far this year?”
After a beat, he says, “Fine. I’m promiscuous. Don’t slut shame me.”
“Nobody’s slut shaming anybody. I’m just pointing out that your nickname has more than one meaning.”
He mutters, “You Americans and your barmy slang. It’s like you’re all dead from the neck up.”
“Our slang is bad? You should listen to yourself some time. Back to the person I’m looking for. She lives in Vegas.”
“Lotta people in Vegas, mate.”
“Yes, but only one of them is Shay’s mother.”
“What’s she got to do with anything?”
“She’s got a boyfriend who needs attention.”
“Ah. So then it is true love with you and the bird.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Haven’t you read any Shakespeare? Nobody unalives their father-in-law unless it’s true love.”
“He’s not my father-in-law. He’s just some scumbag abusive boyfriend.”
“Call it what you want, tosser, if it’s your bird’s mum’s bloke, he’s your father-in-law.”
“Sometimes I have no fucking idea what you’re saying.”
“Now you know how I feel half the time when I’m talking to you. If I’d known when we met all those years ago at boarding school that you’d turn out to be such a stupid sod, I never would’ve saved you from getting your arse beat by those upperclassmen.”
“That’s a nice bit of revisionist history there, but it was me who saved you.”
“Oh, that’s just wonderful. Not only have you lost your mind over this bird of yours, you’ve lost your memory too.”
“Just get me the information, you sarcastic bastard. Shay’s last name is Sanders.”
Muttering an oath, he hangs up on me.
I set the phone on the dresser, take a moment to breathe, then go back into the bedroom and climb into bed.
I fall asleep curled around Shay’s body, debating whether or not I should water the seed of hope that germinated in my chest after my call with Axel or stomp it underfoot.
