Hero (26 page)

“Why are you crying?” I ask.

“I’m not.”

I laugh, and her lower lip trembles harder. With a sigh, I walk to close the space between us. I put my arms around her but she remains unmoving, breathing in stuttering gasps against my chest.

“I know that hurt,” I say.

“Yes, but . . .” She wipes her nose and looks up at me. After a moment, she just shakes her head. “Never mind.”

I pull her closer. “It’s okay to like it, Cataline.” I rub her back and squeeze her shoulder. “Go lie face down on the bed.”

She looks defeated as she gets into position. “I can’t stop thinking about that woman.”

“Which woman?”

“The one you had in here that night. And Lyla and the prostitutes.”

I grunt and get on the bed to straddle her. “They’re worthless sluts. Don’t waste a thought on them.”

She sighs with her eyes closed as I spread lotion over her upper back. “Like me,” she says. “I like what you do to me. I’m a slut.”

I press my thumbs between her shoulder blades and run them down her back. “You’re not them,” I tell her, but I don’t think she hears. I clear hair from her back and massage her shoulders.

When she’s fallen asleep, I put her under the covers. I climb in, and she slides up next to me, pressing the length of her body against mine.

“Calvin,” she says, running her hand over my bicep.

“I’m here.”

“What happened to your parents?”

A personal question is the last thing I expect after the way I just stripped her bare. My hope that she’s dreaming aloud fades when her eyes open. Tentatively, she moves her cheek onto my shoulder. When I don’t stop her, she places her head on my chest.

“They’re dead,” I say.

“I know. Norman told me. But he didn’t say how.”

I sigh deeply and look out the window across the room. I decide it’s time to have a talk with Norman, seeing as how she has him wound around her little finger. “My dad was a chemist. They were killed in a lab explosion.”

“Oh. Your mom too?”

“She was a doctor, but they were together.”

“How old were you?”

I glance down at the top of her head. “Young.”

She’s quiet for a minute, and her fingers mindlessly trace circles in my chest hair. “I was young too.”

I swallow but don’t respond. I know exactly how old she was. Every single detail about that day is burned into my tired memory.

“I meant what I said earlier,” she says. “I have no one. I haven’t for so long. Nobody to love me, and nobody to love.”

The words are on the tip of my tongue.
You had me. I was there.
It’s only the beginning of the truth.

“Calvin?” she whispers.

I run my hand over her smooth, damp cheek in hopes of lulling her to sleep.

Calvin’s hand stopped its caress hours ago and was replaced with the equally reassuring rise and fall of his chest. I’ve grown accustomed to not sleeping, but tonight it seems impossible. It’s the first time I’ve ever admitted to being unloved, even to myself. I didn’t do it for his pity, but if the situation were reversed, I’d ask him questions about his past until the sun came up.

But what reason do I have to think he would care? He’s shown me that my opinions don’t matter by taking my voice away. Why do I crave his approval, his affection? Why do I want to hold the hand that holds me down? Kiss a mouth that calls me “slut”? And why does being his little slut excite me to the point of losing all my inhibitions? He took my body in a moment, but my mind and heart have been a subtle conquest. I’m just his prisoner, but he’s my captor, my monster, and my hope all rolled into one. I can’t sleep because all I can think about is how I can possibly be falling in love with a man I hate almost as much as I fear.

———

I know I should be alarmed. While Calvin is away on business, my thoughts are consumed by him. My routine consists of eating, sleeping, reading, and fantasizing. I’ve masturbated in the library with the door open because I’m so overcome. Each fantasy gets rougher until finally I’m just replaying memories as I make myself come: Calvin possessing my mouth, fucking my ass with a candle, whispering hot and dirty in my ear. But anything less won’t do anymore. Something dark has been shocked to life in me, and it’s slithering around, claiming things it has no right to.

I never know when Calvin will return, and this trip is no different. So when I hear his voice rumbling in the kitchen after being gone over a week, I jump up from my library chair and sprint to meet him. I don’t even make it to the doorway before colliding with him and falling at his feet.

“Christ, Cataline. Where are you running to?” Calvin asks as he gives me a hand up.

“To you,” I say, rubbing my behind. “I missed you.” I jump up, and he catches me under the ass with lightning speed. I litter kisses over his cheek until I reach his ear. “A lot.”

He repositions my body by bouncing me with his pelvis. “This is not the homecoming I was expecting.”

“Didn’t you miss me too?” My mouth seeks his, stopping just an inch away. My breathy words land directly on his lips. “Fuck me.”

“What?”

“And make it hard.”

With his heel, he slams the library door shut. “Is that a dare?” he asks, walking me backward.

“It’s a plea.”

“A plea? I think I’d like to hear it again.”

“I’m all yours, Calvin. Fuck me like you—” I gasp when my back connects hard with the bookshelf.

“Shit. Sorry. That hurt?”

I open and close my mouth, taken aback. Isn’t that what we’re doing here? Doesn’t he want that? “Um, no?” I say. He arches an eyebrow. “I mean, yes.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” I incline my head to shut him up with a kiss, but he pulls away. “Calvin, please. I need this. I need you.”

“Sparrow . . .”

I look into those green eyes, searching for the man inside. Lately I’ve been wondering if I was right all along about what he needs and who he could be.

“Whatever you’re thinking, don’t,” he says. “I can’t be that for you.”

“You’re wrong.”

He shakes his head. “You know what I am. Nothing has changed.”

“I don’t understand you,” I say. “Sometimes I think you only want to hurt me, but other times I think you could . . . maybe love me.”

His eyes drop to my collarbone, but he looks up again after a second. “This might end one day, Cataline, and it could be soon.”

“I want it to end. But not all of it. Not . . . you.”

“If it does,” he says, “you’re going to meet a normal man who would give up the world for you.”

“You wouldn’t? Give up the world for me?”

His head cocks. “That’s not my choice to make.”

“I don’t understand. Why don’t you have that choice? And why couldn’t you love me? If this is ending, what—”

“For Christ’s sake, Cataline. I haven’t even unpacked from my trip.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just here all day, thinking. Without answers. If you could just tell me something, any—”

“Fuck.” He pulls me away from the shelf and drops me roughly on my feet. “I’m trying here,” he says, adjusting his pants.

“No, you’re not. I don’t know what’s going on between us, I can’t explain it, but can’t you feel it? Can’t you, Calvin?”

“You’re pushing me. I’m beginning to think you do it on purpose.”

“I have no choice!”

“Yes, you do. You could keep your mouth shut like I’ve asked you to and do what I say. Instead you intentionally push my buttons and make me the asshole. Is that what you want? For me to play asshole so you can whine about being shut up in a mansion being catered to all day?”

“I never asked for any of this. I want—”

“What do you want? Tell me. Which Calvin suits you? Because being an asshole is a hell of a lot easier than—”

“I want you to be you and I think what you
are
is an asshole and I think I
love
you!” I clamp my hand over my mouth. The ensuing silence is excruciating as he stares at me, horror written on his face.

“You what?”

I cover my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Nothing,” I whisper. “Nothing.”

“I’ve told you, this can’t be anything other than what it is. Goddamn it, Cataline. How could you do this?”

My mouth falls open, and my hands cover my churning stomach. “
Do
this?”

“You’re acting crazy.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes,” he says, and I flinch. “I do mean it. Can’t you see how fucked up that is?”

“That’s all I see, Calvin. But
you
made me this way.”

He turns his back to me. He scrubs both hands over his head before kicking a club chair into the bookshelf. Books teeter and fall, he storms out, and then there’s nothing but silence.

———

As soon as my eyes open, my brain turns on. The library is dim, and someone, Norman, has covered me with a throw blanket. In the late hour, I’m prey for memories from earlier—my overwhelming need for Calvin, his vicious words, my artless confession. I trace the outline of a heart on the blanket as my mind wanders.

Eventually I ease out of the chair to return to my bedroom. The corridor is cold and devoid of light, but voices float down from the fourth floor. My ever-present craving for answers flares. It still outweighs everything else, including any notions of love. I know it’s dangerous. I know it has the power to destroy.

I’m climbing the stairs without another thought, making my way down the hallway to the door opposite Calvin’s room. When a floorboard groans underneath me, I freeze, waiting for my heart to calm. I approach the doorway with caution. It’s closed, and I can’t decipher anything through the bass of Calvin’s voice.

If he catches me, I can’t be sure he won’t lock me up again, but the possibility of information is worth it. I mold myself into the corner next to the door and squat down to wait. For what, I don’t know.

Calvin’s voice stops and starts, as though he’s on the phone. The door opens without warning, spilling light into the hallway.

“It’s downstairs,” Norman says. “Give me a minute.”

Norman leaves the door ajar. There’s soft clicking from the room as I stand slowly but deliberately, wrap my hand around the doorframe, and incline my head through it.

What I see causes breath to stick in my throat, zaps my saliva, leaves me bone dry. Blood drains from my muscles as the resolve to stay upright vanishes. The world undulates, flips over, is somehow upside down. The pain of my nails digging into the wood tells me this is real. Calvin holds a mask. The charcoal, pebbled rubber covering his body looks unexpectedly soft and forgiving this close. He’s dressed in a uniform I’ve seen glimpses of in the media but even if I hadn’t, I would still know it. He’s dressed exactly like Hero.

My belt locks into place, and I snatch a notepad from the desk to review the address. Not surprising that I’m called to the East Side again. I shake my head, wondering if this cycle of me versus them will ever end.

Norman’s gasp in the hallway causes me to whip around. The door is wide open, and an ashen Cataline is in the room, looking on the verge of vomiting.

There is nothing but red. She is misted with it. The room is unnaturally hot and alive with fury as I charge toward her. I barely register Norman between us, shouting at me to calm down as I shove him aside and grasp her shoulders. “What are you doing in here?”

Her entire body twitches. “Why are you wearing that?”

“Master—”

“Enough!” I yell at Norman as I give her a hard shake. “I warned you about—”

“Sneaking around?” she asks, low and even. “You gave me no choice. Answer my question. Why are you wearing that?”

“Who do you think you are demanding anything from me?”

Her expression remains eerily passive as she takes my anger. My grip is too tight on her arms, but she doesn’t even flinch.

“You have to tell her the truth,” Norman says. “Please, let go of her.”

I’m inhaling and exhaling at an unnatural pace, willing my hands to loosen, but I can’t tell if they do. Regardless, her eyes are cool and focused on mine.

“Why are you dressed like him?”

“Listen to me. Go back to bed and forget what you’ve seen. It’s for your own good. I don’t have time to deal with you right now.”