Hero (37 page)

“Where’d you go?” he whispers hotly, my face in his hands. He looks into my eyes for so long, I think he’s counting the flecks of grey.

“Take me home,” I tell him.

We walk the five blocks to my building in silence. When we arrive, I take his hand and lead him up the stairs, our only contact the tips of our fingers. As I unlock the door to my apartment, he stands so close that I feel his nose against the back of my head.

The door slams shut behind him. I leave the lights out and walk to the bedroom knowing he’ll follow. The moonlight flooding the room reminds me of the mansion, the way it turns the comforter into rolling hills of light and shade. I never close the blinds.

At the foot of the bed, he gathers my hair in a fist and inhales. “You,” he says. “Your smell.” He turns me around and spreads his hands over my scalp.

His kiss is like a drug, feeding me, quenching my thirst, my never-ending thirst, my infinite void, and planting himself inside me again. He pulls my dress over my shoulders and strips it away so I’m in my bra and panties. We fall back on the bed where he covers my body with his. His lips leave shining circles of saliva over my collarbone and the mounds of my breasts. He stops in the valley between them and taunts me with the tip of his tongue. My back arches to meet his mouth when he sucks my nipples through my bra. He splays his hand over my belly, skating it down over the lace, the only kind of panties I wear now. He grabs my pussy as if to possess it and lets it go just as quickly.

His body slides down the bed to explore my hipbone. I’m already trembling, imagining how it will be when I blissfully smash into pieces underneath him. He always knew how to touch me.

“What’s this?” he breathes. His finger is inches below my panty line, at the very tops of my thighs. I don’t need to read it for him, but I do anyway.

He traces the cursive ink as I say, “You’ll always be—”

His finger falls away, reappearing on the inside of my upper left thigh and swiping across it.

“—my superhero,” I finish.

He stops. The ceiling I’m staring at becomes blurry, and I know he’s watching me.

“Oh, God,” he whispers into the air. “And this?”

His touch on the small, careful scars below the words is the only thing I can feel in this moment. “That,” I say, “is so I know I’m still alive.”

“No,” he says.

I nod. “You protected me from everything, Calvin. Everything but myself.”

He buries his face between my legs, his hands spread to grip the outsides of my thighs. “Cataline,” he says over and over into my pussy. His nose pushes into my clit, his weighty words vibrate deep in my stomach. My body is convulsing in silent sobs, heat knotting deep and low, desperate for release as he whispers, “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

———

It feels like hours later when I rise onto my elbows, but it’s only been minutes. Calvin lifts his head to look at me, so differently than he used to. I reach and gently pull his hair, sifting the silky brown strands through my fingers. My hand runs down his cheek, and his eyes close when my thumb touches the corner of his lips. “I want this,” I say.

His eyes are still closed when he says, “I can’t. Look what I’ve done. I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

“Then why did you come here?”

My eardrums threaten to explode from the quiet that follows.

“I don’t know,” he says finally. “But I think I need you.”

I sit up all the way and he does too so we’re facing each other, cross-legged on the bed. I lean over to my nightstand for a blunt and a lighter. Even in the dark I feel the heat of his stare as I sit up, spark it, and put it to my lips. I take a drag and close it up inside myself, letting it work its magic. When I open my mouth, he distorts behind the smoke.

“It numbs,” I explain. “But you know that.”

“I don’t want you smoking that shit, Cataline.”

“What are you going to do? Forbid it? Tie me to the bed so I can’t?”

He inhales loudly and asks, “Do you want me to tie you to the bed?” His rumbling voice is so thick that it fills the space between us, and for a moment, I think I can touch it, put it in my hands, and roll it around.

“No,” I lie. The truth is, since he walked into the gallery, I’ve been aching all over, gaping like a wound I want him to Band-Aid himself over. I cut my skin because I haven’t felt anything real since the last time I felt him. Because the only thing that makes it better is watching the pain bleed out. I want him on top of me, inside of me—I want him to make himself a part of me again. But instead we sit in silence, the smoldering orange embers of my blunt the only sign of life as I take another hit, blowing more smoke in his direction.

The cloud surrounding us is pungent, thick, and elucidating. What Cataline’s numbing should be healed by now. “You’re not ready for this,” I say.

Her eyes close as she sinks deeper. She’s more assured than I’ve ever seen her, as if very little truly matters to her. I might as well be watching her from outside the window.

She sighs, coaxing her hair over her shoulder. “I’ll never be ready,” she says. “But I don’t want you to go.”

Leaving her to find peace would be the right thing to do. But I can’t convince myself, after tonight, that she’s better off without me. I might be the piece that’s missing. I’m definitely the reason that piece is gone.

Time is slow as she brings the orange light to her lips. Her eyes are lidded, and she’s peering at me over the joint, sucking and watching. After a beat, smoke leaks from one corner of her mouth. “I haven’t been properly fucked since the last time you were inside me.”

“Christ, Cataline,” I say, standing from the bed. The image of her body flush against the dining room floor as she took every inch of me is burned into my brain. I could do it again right now, take her just as hard. But another part of me, a new part, wants to remove every article of her clothing and touch her everywhere at once, slowly and as fast as possible. I haven’t felt out of control this way in years.

“Where are you going?” she asks as I back away.

“I don’t trust myself.”

She sets the joint in an ashtray on her nightstand and just looks at me. When enough time has passed that I think she’s going to let me go without a word, she blinks. “Why did you come here? To screw with me some more?”

“You know that’s not what I want.”

“Just get out. I didn’t even know until tonight that I’ve been
waiting
for you. How fucked up is that? And now that you’re here, you’re leaving? Have you been hiding in the shadows, waiting until I’d put some parts of myself back together?”

“That isn’t fair,” I say, crossing my arms to allay my reaction. “This is new for me too. I didn’t come here to hurt you.”

“Goddamn it. I’m so tired. If you’re going to shatter me, then be a fucking man and do it already.”

“That’s not—”

“Do it, and get out.”

“I don’t want to break you. I want to heal you.”

“You’re not a healer,” she seethes. “You are everything that’s wrong with me, but I still love you. Is that what you want to hear? I love you, even though you’re the worst part of me.”

I push the heels of my hands into my eyes. “I know I am. I know.”

“Finish what you started. Break me for good. Tell me you don’t love me and that you never will.”

My heart pounds inhumanly hard. I want to throw her on the bed, hit her, fuck her, and make love to her all at the same time. “I can’t tell you that,” I say, “when the truth is that I do.”

“No, you don’t,” she says through her teeth. “You want to control me. That’s not the same thing.”

“You’re right. I want to control you. I want to make you love me, own you from the inside out. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you too.”

She stands up and walks straight for me. Two tiny palms connect with my chest as she shoves me backward. “You’re a liar. You don’t love me. Say it. Say you don’t love me.”

I catch her wrists in my hands. “I can’t.”

“God,” she cries up at the ceiling. “Just finish me off. All these years I’ve been clinging to the memory of you, and I can’t do it anymore. I—”

“I can’t take back what I did!” I explode. “You have to deal with it. Wake the fuck up. Deal with the pain, and move on.”

“Get out,” she shrieks, ripping her arms from my grip. I jump out of the way when she picks up a stiletto and launches it in my direction. She sits on the bed and sobs into her hands, and every wounded mewl is an incision in my black heart. I want to go to her, but I know I can’t. Not until I know I can stay as long as she needs me to.

The next day, the wound I’ve torn open is throbbing with need for Cataline. She’s the only thing on my mind. Seeing her again is the first time I’ve felt anything since she left. And I never stopped worrying about her, but today the worry is like an extra limb. She cut herself when I wasn’t there to stop her, to take the pain for her. When I think of another man failing to heal her, I’m indignant at the intrusion on our life.

The smooth control of being in the driver’s seat calms me, so I drive until it’s after midnight and I’m outside Cataline’s apartment. I climb her fire escape, remembering how breeze lifted the white curtains the night before.

Through her open window, moonlight makes her an angel in the dark. Her naked body is outlined by a thin white sheet that drapes over her curves as she lies coiled into herself. She sleeps alone, but even if she didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Her boyfriend will be debris from the explosion of us soon enough.

I whip my t-shirt off and drop it on the floor. My shoes and everything but my briefs follow. I’m so hard for her it hurts. Only her. From the moment I met the little girl whose life had just been irrevocably changed, Cataline and I were permanently interwoven. I press my front to her back so only the sheet separates me from her warmth.

She awakes with a start, jerking away immediately. When she flips on her back with her hands in fists, I grab her wrists and force them down against her chest. “Shh,” I say. “It’s me. Calvin.”

Her heart beats up against her ribcage, and there’s terror in her eyes. “Calvin,” she repeats as she blinks rapidly.

“I’m here.”

“I didn’t mean what I said,” she whispers suddenly. “You’re not the worst part of me. And you are a healer. You healed everybody but me.” I can barely hear her next words through her cracking voice. “Can you just hold me?”

I release her, and she shifts back onto her side. My arms surround her in a tight embrace, and my face buries in her hair. My leg links with hers over the sheet like it belongs there. I wait to fall asleep until her breathing evens out.

In the morning, she’s in a chair by the window wearing nothing but a white, satin nightie and scrunched wool socks. Her feet are crossed at the ankles as she stares out the window.

I sit up and wait until she looks over at me. “You’re really here.” Absentmindedly, she pulls on the thin strap at her shoulder. She turns her head back, looking at the window. “But I guess you always have been,” she murmurs, “watching me, protecting me.” She sighs. “Why didn’t you tell me what everyone was saying about Hero?”

“There was nothing either of us could do about it.”

“Some called you a freak. They put a huge bounty on your head. People were scared, Calvin. Couldn’t you have prevented it?”

“Maybe. But it was time to give up my title. I’m not anyone’s hero, I just do what I have to do.”

She looks back at me. “You’re a wanted man.”

“Hero is, yes.”

“But there are still Hero sightings.”

“I couldn’t stop. I just had to learn to be even more careful.”

“If I’d known . . .” She pauses, and I watch her fingers glide back and forth along her forearm. “Maybe I would’ve stayed.”

“I wouldn’t have let you stay out of pity.”

She frowns. “Why’d you come back here?”

“Part of me wishes you would move on and be happy with someone else.”

“I have someone else.”

“He can’t put you back together like I can.”

She just stares at me, her expression tired. “No. He can’t.”

“I don’t deserve you, but I won’t let you go. I’m back for what’s mine, what’s always been mine.”

“I don’t want Hero. I want Calvin.”

“You have Calvin.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t be with two different people. It almost killed me the first time.” She looks at her hands, and I get up from the bed. “New Rhone was never your problem,” she says, her eyebrows gathering. “What your parents did to you was unfair.” Her eyes drift up to mine again. “They put the world on your shoulders and left it there when they died. Nobody ever helped you carry it. I’m sorry your childhood was stolen like mine.”

“I wish it were the truth that I do it for them, but it’s not,” I say. “I thrive on it. It’s ingrained in me.”

“What is?”

“All of it. The instinct to kill. The desire to protect innocent people. I don’t just do it because I promised my parents I would. It’s in my blood.”

“You put it in your blood with a syringe. None of this is your responsibility. You can be happy without it. You deserve that.”

“What are you saying?”