TAUT (2 page)

That’s what I tell myself the entire way down. But of course, when I’m a few paces from the garage door, I do look up. All the way up to the fourth floor where that dark princess is leaning over the railing, her hair spilling over and shrouding her face in a blue shadow that must be a reflection of her dress or a play of the light.

“Ford,” she whispers.

It’s so soft it stops me cold and I just stare at her. She is the most tragically beautiful creature on this entire planet. And even though I know it’s impossible to see her blue eyes in this hazy darkness and from such a distance, I see them.

“Rook,” I whisper back. “I can’t.”

I turn away and this time she yells, “Ford!”

I force myself to keep walking.

“Ford! Wait!” Her feet are flying down the stairs now, so I push through the door and walk quickly to the Bronco. The air is frigid. Steam blasts from my mouth as I breathe heavy, a cloud of evidence that betrays my rapidly beating heart and announces my agitation to the world. I walk to the far end of the parking garage and I’m shoving my key in the truck lock when she bursts through the door.

I climb in and start the engine. I haven’t been here that long, it’s only nine o’clock, so there’s no protest—it turns over immediately. Rook lifts her long skirts, her feet scurrying underneath as she frantically tries to catch me.

I wait. Because I’m weak. She makes me so fucking weak. I am nothing. I am a mess.

She knocks on the window. “Please, Ford,” she begs from the other side. “Pleases stop for a moment. Please, talk to me, please.”

I shake my head no, but she pulls on the door handle and opens the door. “No.
No, no, no. You’re not leaving like this, Ford. No.”

I can’t say anything.

I have so much to say, but I cannot say
anything
. Because if I talk to her, if I utter her name, I will break and I will take her, right here in her boyfriend’s parking garage. I’ll pick her up, slide my hands up her thighs as I lift her skirts, crash her against the cinder block wall, and fuck the shit out of her.

“Ford, please. Talk to me. Please.”

I push in the clutch and ease it into first.

“Please, Ford. Just tell me where you’re going, OK? Just don’t leave me like this.”

I ease up off the clutch and roll forward. She walks alongside, still holding the door open.

“Goddammit! Talk to me, please!”

I grab the door and try to close it but she reaches in and tries to take my keys. “No,” she says in a huff. I press on the brakes and grab her wrist, squeezing it until she squeals. “You won’t hurt me, I know you won’t hurt me.”

I squeeze tighter and she whimpers.

“I
will
hurt you, Rook,” I say evenly as I stare into her soul. “I’m hurting you right now. And it feels good. Because you’ve been hurting me since the day we met. You’re selfish. You take. That’s all you do—take. You’re a Taker, Rook. And I’ve got nothing left to give you. You took it all.”

Her jaw drops as she processes my words.

I told her. I warned her.

She yanks her wrist free and steps back, shaking her head. “You’re saying that on purpose. To make me go away. And fine. Leave, then. You
Runner
. You’re a Runner, Ford. Who’s running away now? Huh?”

I slam the door closed and she pounds on the window. I roll forward, looking out my window to make sure not to run over her feet. I tune out her pleas and press down on the accelerator, shift into second, and then blow past the parking attendants standing guard at the exit. I turn left onto Blake Street until I hit 19th, then take that all the way down to Broadway. I fully intend to go home, but when my building appears a few blocks later, I just keep driving past.

The streets have been cleared of yesterday’s snow but another storm has already arrived. The flakes are small and scattered now, but soon they will blanket the entire Front Range in white. I have a flight out to LA tomorrow afternoon but suddenly the thought of going home to my high-rise condo, with the massive four-bedroom, three-thousand-square-foot floor plan—empty save for me and all the impersonal things that came with it when the Biker Channel people rented it—it just… I just…

Can’t.

I can’t do it. I can’t live like this for another second. I can’t pretend like this is working for me. I’m…

My phone buzzes in my pants. I turn right on Colfax and check the incoming call. Ronin.

“Yes.”

“Ford, what the hell is going on? Rook is hysterical. She said you’re leaving or something.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I should’ve explained better, I suppose. I have a flight to LA, a new show. That series I told you about a few months ago. I got the call, so I’m going.”

Silence. He knows I’m lying—not about the show, I did get that show. And it’s an HBO candidate, so I’d be a fool to pass it up. But I think everyone knows that what Rook and I have, our friendship, is not all that’s going on. And really, what’s Ronin going to say? ‘My girlfriend sorta loves you, but she never wants to be with you, so she knows this is your way of leaving her behind and moving on and I think you should come back and continue this… thing you two have to make her happy?’

No, of course he’s not. Because then he’d have to admit Rook is not completely his. She is half mine.

She has always been half mine.

And maybe Ronin is content with the arrangement. I huff a little air at this. Why wouldn’t he be? He gets to sleep with her every night. He gets to share dinners with her and take her on vacation. He gets to watch her brush her hair in the morning, and mope about their apartment in her sweats, perfectly comfortable and sighing with contentment as they watch TV, or plan their fucking grocery list. Because even if a part of her belongs to me, he knows. He knows I’d never steal her. I would never do that.

“That’s all that’s going on here, Ford?”

“Of course,” I say. “Listen, it’s starting to snow pretty hard now, I’ll give you guys a call the next time I’m in town.” I end the call, turn the phone off and throw it on the seat next to me as I cross over I-25, pass the stadium and leave downtown. And I just drive.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

I just drive.

I could go home. Not my condo, but my mother’s house in Park Hill. She’s having a party like she does every year. I never go, but I
could
. I should. I should just go home and pass the night with her in all those familiar rooms, with all those familiar faces.

But then I’d just be reminded of the other person I lost. And I can’t do that tonight. Not tonight.

I’ll turn around at the next light, I tell myself. And then the next one.

But I keep going and the next thing I know, I’m getting on the I-70 in Golden, heading up towards Lookout Mountain.

But I blow past that exit too, the Bronco straining with the steep ascent that will take me up into the Rocky Mountains. It’s a long climb. Denver might be a mile up, but the altitude in these mountains is a whole other level of high.

The transmission whines at me, reminding me that it’s old and vulnerable.

But I do not care.

Where are you going, Ford?

I don’t answer the voice. Partly because I have no idea and partly because it’s not good to encourage the internal monologue. My flight out of DIA tomorrow is too far away. Tomorrow is just way too far away. I’m not going to survive the night if I stay here in Denver. I need to get out of this state right the fuck now.

The snow builds with each vertical mile, the sky nothing but white everywhere I look. No stars above and just dark forest on either side. There aren’t even many cars on the road. Hardly any coming towards me from the west, and only slightly more traveling from the east like me. Locals know when to stay off the mountain passes and not many tourists are driving on New Year’s Eve.

The snow grows thicker as I finally make it to Genesee. The perfect curtain to keep my thoughts at bay. Because they are filled with longing and aching. With self-loathing and hatred for what I am. For what I can’t be. For letting her get away. For letting Ronin take her. For wanting something I can’t have.

For caring.

And I vow to myself as I push the accelerator to the floor to make the steep grade that will pluck me from civilization and pour me out into the wilds where I can be alone with myself, I swear, I will never—ever—care for another woman for as long as I live.

I will never allow myself to be weak like this again. I will never learn their names or buy them presents or plot out a way to help them reach their full potential.

Never.

Chapter Two

The drive is more and more tedious as I move west. The climb seems endless, with a few reprieves every now and then as I reach a flat stretch of road on a summit, then plunge a little, only to be reminded there is nothing for hundreds of miles but these mountains, and begin the ascent all over again.

It’s a stupid idea to drive the Bronco up here. I’ve had this truck since high school—worked my ass off at the Science and Nature Museum for three years saving for it. I started working there—unofficially, of course—when I was twelve. My childhood neighborhood is across Colorado Boulevard from City Park, and the museum was right there all growing up. I spent so much time there I started giving tours. Except they were unauthorized and there’s just something a little intimidating about a pre-teen leading a group of tourists through the exhibits that tends to piss off the higher-ups. But they couldn’t stop me. I had a clipboard and a sign-up sheet out in back of the museum near the kids’ fountain.

It’s a public park. I was a member of the public. My prices were cheap. Five dollars a person, a family of four for fifteen dollars. It was a niche waiting to be filled, so I filled it.

And the day I turned sixteen my dad took me to buy the Bronco. Of course, we’re filthy rich so I could’ve had any car I wanted. Our house is the largest in Park Hill. It’s an old foursquare, has seven bedrooms, a brick wall, and a gated driveway. No small feat in such a congested neighborhood. But I wanted to earn my first vehicle, to make it worth something to me. I wanted to be invested in it and I didn’t want it to be perfect. I wanted it to be flawed. I wanted it to be a work in progress. I wanted to rescue it.

It was not in bad shape when I bought it, but these older cars need constant work. And this transmission is not happy with me at the moment. If I was smart I’d get off on the next exit and turn around. Go back home to my mom’s, drink a shitload of Jack, and pass out until my flight takes off tomorrow.

But I’m wounded. And, I admit, sad. I see her face in everything. Even now, I wonder what she thinks of the mountains. Ronin has a penchant for gambling, so I know they go to Black Hawk and Central City, but did he take her to see the aspens when they changed color in the fall? Does he take her skiing? I’ve never heard them talk about skiing, but I haven’t been around them on the weekends in months.

Do they go to Grand Lake? Or Granby? Or Pikes Peak?

I want to know every thought in her head.

It’s a weakness I have, this longing to understand the thoughts of others. And I had limited coping abilities as a child, so I had to assign labels to wrap my head around people’s thoughts and actions. I came up with a system. The Leaver, that’s what I called Rook last fall. But she proved me wrong. Oh, she left all right. But she didn’t
leave
. She put her life on the line to save Ronin. And then Spencer and I put our lives on the line to save her.

And then we all came back and things moved forward. It was stressful at first, watching Rook be publicly massacred by all sorts of people who judged her to be a fraud, a liar, a whore, any number of terrible things that just made me want to tuck her under my arm and never let her out of my sight.

But she’s not mine to protect.

What is she thinking now? I pick up the phone and turn it on. Seven messages. I press voice mail and her messages start.

“Ford? Please, call me back, OK?”

“Ford?”

“Ford, come on. Don’t do this to me. To us,” she corrects. And I want to correct
her
. Because there is no
us
. There is only them. Her and Ronin. “Ford.” She lowers her voice to a whisper for this part. “Please, come back. I need you.”

“I need you too,” I say softly to the snowy mountain highway. “I need you so bad.” I’d give anything to have her alone, free of Ronin’s claim, so I could tell her all the things I’ve been holding in since the day I met her. So I could get her honest answer without her guilt of wanting two men at the same time getting in the way.

So I could get the truth out of her.

She almost said it, back in the CSU stadium when I crossed her line and let her know I saw through her walls. She admitted to having feelings for me. But then she said I’d ruin her.

That’s what she thinks. That I’d suffocate her, take away all the parts I love. All the parts that make her so desirable. Because she sees me as some sick and twisted fuck who gets off on submissive woman and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I like the power, yes, because I need the control, because I cannot stand to be touched by anyone. I like to be the one who does the touching during sex, so I bind them. Hands off only. I take them from behind, I blindfold them so they can’t look at me.

But I do this because it’s the only way I know how to cope with the intimacy I want, but cannot allow myself to accept.

And Rook missed the point I was trying to make last summer. I’m not interested in a submissive woman. They’re interested in
me
because I require this control. Why deny them? I like what they offer, but only as a diversion. Why does she think I never get their names? Because I could give a fuck about those women.

I want a strong one.

I want one who will keep up, challenge me, help me reach my full potential.

And yes, I’d like to tie her up and slap her ass during sex, make her beg for me, have her submit herself fully—let me own her in private.

But Rook misunderstood me completely. Because I
want
a woman to touch me. So very, very badly. And she is the only one I’ve ever considered giving that privilege to. Ever.