Make Me Sin (23 page)

W
e spend the first evening together in almost total silence.

After I decided to stay, A.J. made me those pancakes. They weren’t “shit,” as he so eloquently described them; they were amazing. Even more amazing was his insistence on feeding them to me, forkful by fluffy forkful. It seemed really odd at first, but, in the spirit of “thou shalt follow my commandments” that we’d agreed on, I let him. Then I let him run me a hot bath in the giant claw-foot bathtub, put me in it, and wash my hair, along with every other part of my body. He was serious as he did it, a little detached, his hands gentle, missing nothing, yet I could tell his touch wasn’t meant to be arousing.

Of course it
was
arousing, but I didn’t let on. Well, there was that one little groan that slipped out when he ran the bar of soap between my legs, but we both pretended I hadn’t made it. We also pretended not to notice the enormous bulge straining the fly in his jeans.

He dried me. He dressed me in one of his T-shirts and a pair of his sweats, rolled up at the ankles. He combed out my hair and put Neosporin on my cheek, then he kissed me softly and put me back into bed. When he went to the kitchen to make me tea, I took off the clothes he’d just put on and acted innocent when he came back and stopped short, frowning.

My ploy didn’t work. He ignored my nudity, ordered me to drink the tea, and got in bed beside me without taking off his jeans.

Apparently if and when we finally had sex was his decision as well. We fell asleep in our usual spooned embrace.

In the morning, there were more pancakes. After an inspection of the stitches, there was more Neosporin for my cheek. Then, because I was feeling a little more secure and thought I could be alone, A.J. went to my place to get my clothes and a few other things I’d asked for, and went shopping for food, while I busied myself snooping around his room, trying to find anything that would give me a clue about him.

Here’s what I found: zilch.

His closet holds only identical pairs of jeans, boots, jackets, and hoodies, most of the items are black except for the jeans and a brown leather bomber. His dresser contains socks, underwear, and T-shirts, folded neatly in stacks. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom is like anyone else’s. There is no junk drawer in the kitchenette, no photo albums in a bookcase, no mementos from trips taken, no receipts, no mail, no phone book, and of course no telephone or computer for me to try to hack into.

He could be anyone, or no one. It’s as if he’s a ghost.

The only thing of any interest is his CD collection. He has every genre of music, from opera to reggae, country to jazz, classic rock to punk and heavy metal, organized in sections and alphabetized by artist. Opera is by far the biggest section, followed by jazz. Bands and musicians I’ve never heard of make up a good chunk. I think about introducing him to an iPod so he can take his music on the go, but then wonder if he even has a credit card to buy music with. I doubt he’d be interested in anything that tracks his spending and purchase history.

I’m totally off the grid
, he told my father. Looking around his place really drives that point home.

My detective work abruptly ends when he returns, arms full with my suitcase, a bag of groceries, and a bouquet of store-bought red roses wrapped in cellophane. He leaves my suitcase next to the bed, drops the grocery bag on the kitchenette counter, and, after kissing me lightly on the lips, presents me with the bouquet of roses.

I’m shocked, and pleased. I can’t remember the last time a man brought me flowers. Eric once told me that buying a florist flowers would be like buying a jeweler a diamond ring, or a winemaker a bottle of someone else’s wine. He thought it was bad manners.

“No one ever buys me flowers!”

“That’s what I figured. Which is exactly why I did.” A.J. smiles at me, and my heart melts. He seems happy, almost carefree, which makes me happy, too.

“Do you have a vase?” I look around the kitchenette, but see nothing that would be a likely candidate.

“Oh. No.” He’s momentarily crestfallen, but then brightens. “Maybe in the downstairs kitchens, though. There are all sorts of containers there. Or in the concierge closet, or one of the storage rooms. This place is full of stuff the prior owners left behind.”

Whistling to himself, he starts to unpack the bag of groceries. It’s a little thrilling, and a lot scary, how this domestic side of him turns me on. Though it’s weird, it’s also comforting, and comfortable. We could be just any other couple in their apartment on a Saturday morning, looking forward to spending the rest of their lives together.

And not just their final week.

I push that nasty thought aside, and busy myself with filling the small sink with water. I submerge the stems of the roses so they can drink until we can find a more appropriate container. I want desperately to ask questions, but know I can’t, so instead I mount what I hope is a subtle fishing expedition.

“Speaking of this place, did you ever see
The Grand Budapest Hote
l
? It totally reminds me of that.”

“Hmm.”

Okay, not exactly the explanation of how he’d come to live here that I hoped for. I try again. “Was it empty a long time before you bought it?”

“Years. It was originally built as a resort hotel but never made it. Too far from the beach I guess. Then it was bought by some religious sect. They had it for a few decades before the leader committed suicide and it went on the market again. Then a corporation bought it, tried to make it into an exclusive rehab center for rich drug addicts. Don’t know what happened there, but it wasn’t successful, so a private investor bought it, tried to fix it up and flip it, but the economy took a shit and he lost everything. The IRS repossessed it to cover his unpaid taxes. Then some old eccentric guy bought it at auction and lived here with his nurse until he died. It’s been empty ever since.”

That this poor, abandoned hotel that A.J. bought, because it looks like he feels, has had such a string of failures in its past makes me unreasonably depressed. I try not to think it might be jinxed, but of course I start to obsess over exactly that.

“Weird that it has such a checkered past,” I mutter, staring out the window to the view of the hills.

From behind, A.J. snakes his arms around my waist. He kisses the back of my neck, nosing aside my hair to gain access. “That’s one of the reasons it makes me feel at home.”

His confession is so unexpected I blurt, “Because you have a checkered past, too?”

He doesn’t growl or freeze me out, as I expect him to. He simply rests his chin on my shoulder and stares out the window. “Exactly, Princess. Birds of a feather.”

He kills me when he’s like this. His self-loathing is so deep. I wish I could take it away.

Without turning, I softly say, “If I found a magic lamp and a genie came out and said he’d grant me three wishes, they’d all be for you to be able to forget whatever bad things happened to you, and for you to be happy forever.”

I can tell he’s moved by my words, because a little tremor goes through him. He turns his face to my neck. “Not everything bad in my past happened
to
me, angel. Some of them were bad things I did to other people.”

My heart beats faster. “Whatever you did, I know it was because you had to. I know it was because you didn’t have a choice. You’re a good man, A.J. I know that.”

His arms tighten around me. “You believe that because
you’re
good.
You see the best in people. But we always have choices, angel. Even if they’re hard, or shitty, every decision we make involves a choice.” His
voice drops even lower. “And you’re wrong about me being a good
man. I made every bad choice with my eyes wide open . . . even the
ones that hurt other people. I always knew exactly what I was doing. There’s no excuse for the things I’ve done.”

Without hesitating, and with a vehemence I wasn’t intending, I say, “I don’t care what you’ve done. I don’t care if you’re Jesus or Hitler or something in between. None of that matters to me.”

With his hands on my shoulders, A.J. turns me around. He stares down at me, his eyes devouring. “It should.”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t. And it never will, no matter what happens. No matter what you say to try to convince me, no matter what I find out.”

“You can’t mean that. Not if you don’t know the facts.”

I don’t know how we got here so quickly, when all I was trying for was a few random tidbits to fill in my knowledge about how he came to own the hotel, but here we are. I’m not missing the opportunity. “Tell me then. Try me out.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

His lips part. His eyes burn. “Because I’m not ready to lose you just yet.”

“I promise you won’t lose me.”

His smile is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. “No.”

“A.J.—”

“No,” he repeats, more firmly.

Question-and-answer time is over. To underscore that, he withdraws from me, and finishes unpacking the bag of groceries. I watch him in miserable silence. The final thing he takes from the brown paper bag is a disposable cell phone. Without meeting my eyes, he hands it to me.

“I brought your purse but left your cell phone at your apartment.” He adds, “This one can’t be tracked.”

Eric. Here he comes again, intruding with his jealousy and all the awful memories he’s gifted me. “You think Eric might try to track me with my phone?”

“I think he’s capable of anything, and I’m not taking chances, so you’re using a burner from now on.”

“What, forever?”

In his gaze is something dark and dangerous. “Until I know you’re safe.”

I’m about to ask more questions, but am seized by the irresistible urge to sneeze. I do—violently—jerking with the unexpected force of it. Thankfully I had time to cover my mouth and nose, or A.J. might have gotten doused with snot. “Ugh. Sorry,” I say sheepishly.

Then I sneeze again. And again.

“Was it something I said?”

A.J.’s being funny, but all at once a wave of heat flashes over me, and I break out in a cold sweat. “Whoa.”

“What’s wrong?” Worried, A.J. steps closer.

“I’m not feeling so good all of a sudden.” Warmth creeps up my neck, spreading over my face. My cheeks flush.

With a hand under my elbow, he marches me over to the leather couch, and directs, “Sit.”

Feeling strangely weak, I do.

He goes into the bathroom and returns with a thermometer. “Open,” is his next command, which I follow, allowing him to insert the slender glass tube under my tongue. In thirty seconds he removes it, looks at it, and frowns.

“Hundred and two.”

Within minutes, my head is pounding. A.J. feeds me two aspirin. After an hour lying on the couch, sneezing, feverish, wracked with chills, I can no longer deny the obvious.

I’ve come down with the flu.

Is this the universe’s way of trying to tell me something?

F
or five days, I’m completely out of it. I haven’t been this sick since I had strep throat when I was twelve and had to miss ten days of school. Other than calling my father and the girls daily to check in, I sleep most of the time, restlessly tossing, dreaming unsettling dreams of waking to find A.J. gone, or of Eric chasing me down a dark alley, his fingers grasping for my neck. When I’m not sleeping I’m groggy, my head pounds, my body is clammy and clumsy. The only time I get out of bed on my own is to shuffle to the bathroom like a zombie to use the toilet.

What does A.J. do with himself while I’m so ill?

The broody, moody, badass drummer turns into Florence Nightingale.

He gently wipes my sweaty forehead with cold cloths. He buys me every available type of cold and flu medication. He frets over me, fluffing pillows and smoothing blankets and worrying about every sneeze and sniffle. When I’m too weak to sit up to feed myself, he props me against his chest and spoon-feeds me chicken soup or organic ice cream he bought from the health store.

He even reads to me. There’s a moldering library on the first floor, and in it he finds a copy of
The Princess Bride
. He spends hours sitting next to me on the bed, reading out loud, doing all the different parts in different voices.

I’ve never been this well looked after, not even by my mother when I was twelve. I feel cocooned. Though I’m terribly sick, I feel spoiled. Bella’s even learned to love snuggling with me, on the pillow by my head during the day, at our feet at night while A.J. and I sleep.

And every morning when I awake, there’s a new origami bird on the pillow beside my head. Today, my sixth at A.J.’s place, it’s the most elaborate creation so far: a black-and-teal peacock, complete with a plume of real feathers for a tail.

I pick it up and stare at it in total disbelief. It’s so perfect, so detailed, it looks manufactured by a machine.

I hear A.J. moving around in the bathroom, and call out, “How did you learn origami?”

He sticks his head out of the door. “Good morning! You’re up!”

I can tell he’s happy to see me talking. I think the most I’ve said to him over the past six days has been a series of grunts in answer to his questions or commands. To be honest, it’s all a little blurry. I’m still weak, but at least my head is no longer pounding, and the chills are finally gone.

“If you can call this up.”

I touch my hair. It’s a nest of knots. A.J. has bathed me in the tub when I have the energy to sit up, but my hair has only been washed once, and it feels like dirty straw. I wonder if I have dreadlocks.

He strolls out of the bathroom, looking ridiculously hot in his little black nylon boxing shorts and nothing else. I can’t resist ogling him as he moves toward me. I love looking at his tattoos when he moves; it’s almost as if they’re alive, dancing atop his muscles.

I decide I’m going to ask him what every one means. If I’ve only got one day left, I’m going to grill him about everything since I’ve missed so many opportunities to talk to him.

My heart sinks. I’ve only got one day of my week left. Or is today the last day? I’ve lost count.

A.J. drops to his knees on the mattress beside me. I hold out the bird.

“So? How did you learn to do this?”

He sits back on his heels, a smile quirking his mouth. “You like it?”

“Like it? No, I don’t like it. I
love
it. It’s
amazing
. Where did you get the tiny little feathers for the tail?”

“A shop called Mother Plucker. They have every kind of feather you can buy. Kenji introduced me to it.”

He runs a hand through his long hair. The move is so blatantly sexual it looks like something out of a porn movie. With his naked chest and biceps on display, his muscular thighs open, I’m having a little trouble concentrating on what he’s saying.

Because I know he’s not wearing anything under those shorts.

Apparently my libido has recovered much more quickly than the rest of me.

“So was Kenji the one who taught you origami, too?” It seems entirely possible, though I’m probably just racially profiling because Kenji is Japanese.

A.J. says quietly, “No. I learned it from a Japanese whore.”

And suddenly I hate this peacock in my hand with a passion that borders on violence. I want to crush it. I want to tear it to pieces with my teeth.

A.J. leans over and takes my chin in his hand. I wish I didn’t like it so much when he does this, because I’m seriously ticked off right now.

“It wasn’t like that. She was a friend.”

I don’t say anything. I just keep my gaze trained on the peacock. I imagine it’s smirking at me.

“I was fifteen, angel. She was almost thirty years older than me. She was just a friend.”

Scowling, aggravated, I look up at him. My mind is sharper than it’s been in nearly a week, and what he’s said makes absolutely no sense to me. “What’s a fifteen-year-old kid doing hanging out with a middle-aged Japanese whore?”

The first thing out of his mouth is a hard “I was never a kid.” Then, as if regretting his tone he adds more gently, “And for a long time, whores were the only friends I had.”

I’m astonished. What’s the correct reply to those two gems?

He sighs, releases my chin, and runs his hand through his hair again. “Yeah. I know it sounds weird.”

“No, not at all! That sounds totally reasonable, A.J.! Doesn’t every teenage boy surround himself with whores? I mean, I can’t imagine they make the best choices for the soccer or football teams because of the stilettos, but I’m sure they’re really great at wrestling!”

Head cocked, he looks at me intently, undisturbed by my sarcastic outburst. “Are you . . . jealous?”

My face flushes. I look down at the bird in my hand. Maybe it’s because I don’t have the strength for evasion at the moment, but I tell him the truth. “All those girls or women you call friends probably know a lot more about you than I ever will. So yes, I’m jealous. I’m so jealous if you cut me open I’d bleed green.”

There’s a moment of tense silence. A.J. finally breaks it by saying flatly, “Don’t be. Every single one of them is dead.”

The bird falls from my hand.

I think of the white roses he sent to the cemetery in Saint Petersburg. I think of the flower tattoo on his knuckle, the petals with the twelve initials of everyone he’s “lost.” I think about how he told my father he had a few tricks up his sleeve, and if Eric ever found out where I was and showed up here, he’d never be seen again. I think of how A.J. said he’d done terrible, unforgiveable things.

I think of how I told him I didn’t care.

I’m shaking. I feel like I might throw up. When I look at him, he’s watching me with narrowed eyes.

“What’s going on in your head right now, Chloe?”

What’s going on is chaos. The bells of intuition clang loud and insistent against the lazy, comforting reluctance of denial, and all I hear is ringing and buzzing, a relentless, rising noise, like a swarm of angry bees.

I swallow. My mouth is as dry as bone. “You’re not from Las Vegas,
are you.”

It’s not a question. He holds my gaze for what feels like forever. I’m not sure he’ll answer, but then, slowly, he shakes his head.

Starting at my spine and working its way outward, coldness runs through my body. I can’t move. I can barely breathe. “And your parents, the homemaker and the pastor? Were they a lie, too?”

I expect a denial or silence, but he answers immediately. “No.” Then he closes his eyes. “And yes, sort of. They weren’t my birth parents, but they raised me, gave me a new name, a new life. They adopted me.” He opens his eyes. In them I see nothing but darkness.

“When you were a baby?”

Once again, he answers without hesitation. “When I came to this country when I was sixteen.”

The noise in my head grows louder. The stitches in my cheek throb. I want to scratch at them. I want to rip them out. “From where?”

He’s still as stone. He whispers, “You already know.”

He’s right; I do. Maybe I’ve known it all along. “Russia.”

When he nods, relief overwhelms me.
At last
. I close my eyes. The terrible noise subsides, until there’s only silence, clear and cold. “And your birth mother’s name is Aleksandra Zimnyokov.”

When I look at him again, A.J.’s face is a study in misery. His eyes glitter with tears. “She died when I was ten.” His voice cracks. “She was a prostitute.”

Oh God. Everything I’ve been missing begins to knit together with a swift, effortless clarity, like fingers interlocking. All the questions I have, all the mysteries about the man kneeling in front of me, hover around us, whispering, weighting the air.

With surprising strength in my voice I demand, “Tell me your real name.”

A.J.’s face crumples. It’s like watching a building burn to the ground.

“Alexei. My name is Alexei Janic Zimnyokov.” A sob breaks from his chest. “I haven’t said that out loud in twelve years.”

My heart is going to burst. I can feel it, expanding inside my chest, stretching so wide it will explode and kill me.

Then he shoots to his feet and bolts from the room.