Текст книги "Hero"

Автор книги: Leighton Del Mia

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

49
Calvin

It’s the click of Cataline’s closing door that jars me from staring at the floor where she just was. Anger riots through me for allowing her to drive me to the edge. I wanted to be better. But I’m still her own personal brand of fear, the creator of the demons inside her, the shadow blocking any light. I lost control, and she got the confirmation she was looking for: I can’t be anything other than this. Do I love her? I don’t know what else to call this way she’s consumed me.

Before I know it, my fist is through the wall, my face burning as I overturn the table. Food, pitchers, dishes clatter to the ground. Fuck all of this. Fuck my parents for putting this life on me. Fuck Cataline for not being able to protect herself from me. Fuck me for not being good enough.

* * *

Nerves are unfamiliar to me. After staring hard at Cataline’s door for some minutes, I inhale deeply and rap twice. She makes me wait.

“Come in,” she says eventually.

The room is orange from the flood of late afternoon sunlight. Under the comforter, she’s in bed, curled onto her side. Her heavy lids and dull, red-rimmed eyes tell me she’s been sleeping. She looks at me expectantly, so I clear my throat and close the door behind me.

“You’ve been up here a while,” I say, sitting tentatively on the edge of the bed. “Thought I’d check on you.”

She shrugs. “I’ve been thinking.”

“This whole time?”

“I also took a catnap.”

“Catnap?” I repeat.

She raises her eyebrows and smiles. “You’ve never heard of a catnap?”

I shake my head.

“It’s just a nap but quicker, I guess.”

“I see. A nap for pussycat.”

“No,” she says, smiling wider. “It’s just catnap. No pussy.”

“Is there such a thing as a pussynap?”

She giggles and hides her face under the covers.

“I, for one, think it’s a great idea,” I say.

She peers over the blanket, and I can see by her eyes that she’s still smiling. “I’m sure you do.”

I take the comforter from her hands and slide it over her bare shoulder. “Just out of curiosity, are these catnaps done naked?” I run my fingers over her skin, watching the trail of bumps they leave behind.

“Sometimes,” she says.

“And this time? Do I have your permission to find out?”

“Do you need it?”

“No. I’d like it, though.”

She swallows and nods, so I slip my hand just under the covers and take her soft breast in my hand. It fits perfectly into my palm, and when I squeeze, she moans softly.

“Just one touch, and I’m hard. Nobody else does what you do to me.”

“Calvin,” she whispers. I pinch her nipple, and she bites her lip. “You can move it lower.”

I want to. But this morning is fresh in my mind, so I release her reluctantly. “I didn’t come in here to feel you up. I actually came to invite you somewhere tonight.”

She pulls the cover back over her shoulder. “Oh. Where?”

“I’m on the Board of Directors for an organization that focuses on fighting poverty in the city. We implement programs in the East Side to develop services for families in need.”

“The East Side is in such bad shape.”

“I know. Trust me, I know. That’s why they need us.”

She sits up against the headboard, clutching the comforter to her.

“It’s formal attire,” I tell her, “but you should have plenty to choose from.”

She looks down at a spot between us and tucks hair behind her ear. “Are you ordering me to go?”

“What?”

“Do I have to?”

“No. I meant what I said. You’re not my prisoner anymore.”

“Why would I go?”

“Because I want you there.”

The hair falls back into her eyes when she nods. “Okay.”

I reach out and run my finger under her jaw. “We leave in two hours. I’ll send Rosa in to help you get ready.”

I’m thankful that she’s willingly agreed to accompany me. Cataline will be the first guest I’ve ever brought to a function, although she won’t be the first I leave with. I’ve found that the graver the charity these functions benefit, the easier it is to find women. Somehow, that seems inconsequential now, as though it were a lifetime ago.

That evening, I wait for her downstairs, pulling at the bowtie that strangles me. When she reaches the top of the staircase, I’m certain I’ve never felt anything like this. For so long I’ve watched her, but I have yet to see her this way. She’s dressed to perfection with no trace of the little girl I met sixteen years ago. She’s an adult, striking and confident. Her dark crimson dress is the color of ripe blood and that she chose it isn’t lost on me. It reminds me of holding Riviera’s still-beating heart in my fist, his life dripping over my knuckles in red rivulets. For her, I pulled that heart out, and just to know she’s safe, I’d do it again.

Her bare shoulders and chest beg for my hands, but I shove them in my pockets. Her breasts are pushed up and plump. I want to slide my dick between them and come all over her long, slender neck. I blow out a breath as she descends the stairs and try to find a spot where I don’t see the slit traveling up her thigh or the slight bouncing of her tits. She’s incredibly stunning. I think about how nothing will stop me from getting my hands on her later until I reach her steely eyes.

“Calvin?”

I blink slowly. “Yeah?”

She’s standing a foot from me now, her head inclined toward her shoulder. “Are you just going to stare at me, or should we go?”

“You look . . .”

Her cheeks tint pink as I grasp for the right word. “Beautiful” doesn’t begin to describe the creature in front of me with a pound of dark hair piled on her head and eyes rimmed in charcoal.

“You look nice too,” she says. She leans in, and I’m sure my cock will break right through my pants if she touches me, but she reaches behind me to take something from the foyer’s table. “You forgot your glasses.”

I’m rigidly still as she takes two tiny steps into my body, infiltrating my space with a fresh scent that seems to scrub away everything bad inside me. She lifts both hands and slides the glasses on my face. After adjusting them, she steps back again, leaving me in her dissipating cloud. “There. Now you’re ready.”

Ready. What she means is that I’m back in one of my disguises, a person she can catalogue in her mind as good or bad. I still haven’t figured out which version she thinks I am now, though. I’m not sure I know myself.

When we walk through the doors of the event, Cataline can’t hear the low whistle of one man or see the way he nudges his friend and nods in her direction. But I can. What he doesn’t know is that her date can snap his neck without batting an eye. “Stay close to me tonight,” I say.

“You’d tell me if there were danger, right?” she asks. “Please, Calvin, don’t keep me in the dark anymore.”

“There’s no danger,” I reassure her. “But I want you close anyway.”

“Are you afraid I’ll say something I shouldn’t?”

“I wouldn’t have invited you if that were the case. However, I’d advise you to be careful. I’m trusting you.” Her fingers compress around my bicep as she nods. “What’s your poison?” I ask.

She scans the room up to the second floor balcony and over the crown molding along the ceiling. “They’re even richer than you.”

“Helpful when it comes to charity functions.”

She looks back at me while biting the inside of her bottom lip. “I was never much of a drinker. Can you order for me?”

“Gladly.” I get her a glass of red wine and keep her close as I roam the party and make my presence known. In the wake of this week’s headlines, it’s important as ever to maintain a sense of normalcy. Cataline’s Hero fell days ago, so I haven’t bothered sharing the news with her. When the story broke, not even my own publications could skirt publishing the photos.

Cataline shows me someone new at the party. She’s the woman in the crimson dress: sophisticated, sexy, restrained. Hardly the same girl I kidnapped months ago. I don’t know how to feel about it. Mostly she’s composed, smiling and nodding at the right times, but I note how her fingers curl in and out of little fists. Finally, mid-conversation with two other couples, I still her hand with mine. She blinks up at me as I lace our fingers together. Her mouth opens slightly, and she squeezes my hand. I wonder how it would be to kiss her here, claiming her in front of all these people.

I only break our gaze when the mention of Hero draws me back into the conversation. The mayor and his wife have joined the group, so I bend my mouth to Cataline’s ear. “Will you refresh our drinks?”

She nods and leaves with my glass.

The mayor shakes his head, talking to the man next to me. “I know as much as you do. Nobody suspected he was anything more than a vigilante—trained fighter or soldier, something like that. Chief Strong’s been working around the clock, looking for an answer.”

“We were shocked,” says one of the women. “Brian insists it’s something extraterrestrial, but I told him that’s absurd.”

“Whatever it is, it can’t be good,” says the mayor. “We’ve been fielding phone calls all week from concerned citizens. I don’t even want to know what the force is dealing with, what with the FBI all over them.”

His wife shudders. “What if one day he suddenly turns on us? Can you imagine that, a man who can’t be killed? I do hope he’ll just go away, and leave us alone. What’s your take, Calvin?”

I’m struggling for an answer when something across the room catches my eye. “I think Brian’s onto something,” I tell her. “It was only a matter of time before the aliens found us. If you’ll excuse me.”

I step away from the group and just out of Cataline’s sight as she accepts two drinks from the bartender. A man I don’t recognize won’t stop smiling at her. I’m not in the habit of listening in on people’s conversations, mostly because there’s nothing worth hearing. Now, though, I’m rapt as he leans in and speaks.

“You look familiar,” he says, “but I can’t put my finger on it. Have I seen you at one of these before?”

She glances around the room so quickly that it’s almost imperceptible. “It’s my first time. I’m a guest.”

“Of?”

“Calvin Parish.”

“Aha. I wasn’t aware he had guests.”

“Meaning?”

“He never brings anyone to these things.” The man grins and whispers loudly, “He’s a bit uptight if you haven’t noticed.”

She smiles at the floor but answers clearly and loudly, probably for my benefit. “Oh, I definitely have.”

“Rob,” he says, sticking out his hand.

She hesitates a moment, unmistakable fear in her eyes. I can see her newfound wariness fighting with her innate politeness. That a strange man scares her doesn’t surprise me. “I should really get this to Calvin.”

“Oh, come on, chat with me for a minute. You’re the only other person in the room under thirty. What’s your name?”

“Cataline.”

“Nice to meet you, Cataline.” He cocks his head. “You do seem a little young for such a stuffy event. And much too pretty.”

Her forehead bows to the ground again as she smiles a little. I can see that it radiates warmth, even though it’s not directed at me. Suddenly I’m too far from her, and this man is too close.

“Thank you,” she says.

An unusually long silence stretches between them as her eyes travel up to meet his again. His eyebrows lower, joining in the middle as he studies her. Something about the way he’s looking at her propels me out of the shadows and briskly forward.

“Hang on. I think I do recognize you,” he says. “Aren’t you the girl who was kidnapped?”

Her eyes widen instantly. “What?”

“I’ve seen flyers downtown with your picture.”

“My picture?”

“Are you?” he asks. “Are you the girl who was kidnapped?”

My heart is racing as I approach her from behind, restraining myself from clamping my hand over her mouth.

“No,” she says, and I almost stop in my tracks. “It must’ve been someone else.”

“Shit, are you okay? You don’t look so good.” He touches her arm. If I react how I want, I’ll draw unwanted attention. “Should I call someone?”

“Cataline.”

She whirls around at my voice and immediately huddles into my chest. My arms instinctively surround her trembling shoulders. “Is there a problem here?” I ask the man.

“I’m sorry, no—”

“What’d you say to her?”

“I thought—I’m sorry. Nothing.”

“You’ve clearly upset my girlfriend. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t level you.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Parish. I was mistaken.”

I lean over her head and glare at him. “Stay the fuck away. She’s with me, got that?”

Cataline’s fingers curl into my shirt as I watch him leave.

“Shh,” I say into her hair. “It’s okay, Sparrow. I’m here.”

“Flyers?” she whispers.

“Frida, I think. She’s the only person I know of who’s never given up looking for you.”

“Oh, God,” she says into my chest. “Poor Frida.”

I roll my eyes. “Yes. Poor Frida.”

Her hands still clutch me, and I fucking love it. I love that for once she needs me. In this moment, I am her solace; I’m good Calvin to her. I take a chance and stroke her back, running my hand up her neck. I kiss the top of her head, careful not to disturb her nest of hair.

She doesn’t respond at first. We stand that way until she says, “You called me your girlfriend.”

“I know.”

She looks up at me finally, our eyes locking together. “I’m sorry for this morning,” she says. “I know you were trying.”

“You pushed me. You wanted me to lose control.”

“Ever since I found out about Hero—about you . . . I feel numb. Different. Everything is turned inside out.”

As she’s talking, her eyes grow warm and alive again. The eyes she used to stare at me with in the office, like she might love me in some weird way. Eyes I’ve seen here and there over the past few months, but not since the night she learned the truth.

I can’t help myself. She’s a magnetic force field, and I’m a man without a chance. I lower my head, hungry to gobble up that bottom lip of hers that’s quivering, begging for me. Doing what I do, being who I am, I’m never unprepared. But that’s exactly what I am when she shoves me away.

“I can’t,” she says, and I’m left open-mouthed with empty arms. “This isn’t what we are. I don’t want you. I don’t love you. And whatever this is, I can’t do it.”

50

My last promise to Cataline was that I’d let her be, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I’m leaning against a brick wall near her apartment, impatiently waiting until a black town car pulls up. Cataline gets out with a small duffel bag and nothing more.

Norman’s right behind her, watching while she puts the bag at the doorstep of her apartment building. People pass them by, oblivious. The look she gives Norman makes my throat constrict. All I got in the car on the way home from the charity event was a cold shoulder and no explanation.

“I don’t know what to say,” she says to Norman. “It feels wrong to say thank you or I’ll miss you, but that’s what I want to say.”

He nods, and I’m sure the sentimental old man has tears in his eyes. “I want you to know, if you ever need anything, you can come to me.”

They hug, and she kisses him on the cheek. Then he’s gone, and she’s alone. Since he doesn’t take her upstairs, I know he knows I’m here. She approaches the building’s entrance and pushes the button to her apartment with an unsteady finger. She’s biting on her thumbnail when a voice comes through the speaker.

“Yeah?” Cataline just stares. “Hello?”

“Frida?” A silent beat. “It’s me, Cat.”

I realize I’m holding my breath until Frida says, “I . . . I’ll be right down.”

Cataline sighs and closes her eyes, and I have to remind myself why this is right. I want to bolt across the street and take her in my arms, crush her in a hug that reminds her I’m not just a bad memory but a real person who needs her, who no longer knows anything without her.

Frida bursts through the door and almost knocks Cataline over with the force of her hug. They cling to each other like they’re in danger of drowning in their own tears.

“Oh my God,” Frida chokes out. “Where have you been? What happened?”

I justify spying because I need to know what she’ll say. In fact, I wouldn’t care if she went to the police and told them everything. Exposed me as Hero. She deserves that kind of justice.

“You wouldn’t believe any of it,” Cataline says, gripping her friend by the shoulders.

“Was it the Cartel?” Frida asks.

Her answer is immediate. “Yes.”

“I knew it,” Frida says tearfully. “I knew you didn’t run away. I never gave up.”

“It’s over now. It’s over. He saved me.”

“Who?”

“Hero.”

Frida’s mouth falls open. “Hero? Were you afraid?”

“Afraid?” Cataline asks. “Of Hero?”

Frida shakes her head quickly. “One thing at a time. Come upstairs. Tell me everything.”

There’s supposed to be this moment where she feels my eyes on her and pauses to turn around, but she only follows Frida inside. I leave before I’m tempted to listen to the whole fucked-up fairytale.

51
Cataline

3 Years Later.

“I’ve got this, Melinda,” I say. “Go home to your boys.”

“You sure?” she asks.

“I’ll close up tonight.”

She winks at me. “You’re a good boss, Cat. See you Monday.”

“Monday,” I agree.

I lock the door behind her. The sun has just set through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and the room is darkening quickly. I flip on two yellow lights, just enough to finish my paperwork. My eyes wander around the gallery. Do you see? I want to cry out. I’ve done it. I’ve done it without any of you. Without your money or your support. I’m speaking to all of them—those who left me with nothing, those who never gave me anything, and those who took everything away. It’s my gallery, with my signature on the checks, my sweat in the floorboards, my brushstrokes on the walls. I was there every step, building from nothing. Do you see?

Instead of pride, I feel my usual, inexplicable defeat. My arms are heavy at my sides. This feeling never seems to leave, but it’s been months since it weighed this much. As if on cue, my phone rings. I rub my eyes and return to my desk.

“Hey, babe.” Grant’s voice puts me at ease. “How’s it going?”

“As of today, my exhibit is officially the gallery’s best yet.”

“Wow,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “You’re a star.” He smiles because he’s proud and he loves me, fissures and all. He’s patient; he’s sweet. He worships my body when we make love. He is not Calvin. “Coming over for dinner?” he asks.

“Actually, I have some things to wrap up. Can we hang tomorrow?”

“You know, if you lived here, I could see you tonight.”

I nod, familiar with his teasing. “So you keep saying.”

“I know you’ve got a lot on your plate and that moving would be a pain in the ass, but . . . once it’s done, things will get easier. Not just financially.”

“I know, honey. I promise it’s on my mind. Along with a lot of other things.”

“Okay. As long as you’re considering it. Did you lock the gallery door?”

“Yes.”

“I worry about you there by yourself. I don't like that you’re so close to the East Side.”

“I’ll be careful. Love you.”

“You too. Call you in the morning.”

I hang up and stare at the phone for a minute before setting my face in my open palms. I do this most nights without meaning to—take a moment to myself once I’m completely alone. Sometimes to remind myself that I’m doing what I love. Sometimes to think about my parents. Sometimes I wonder about Guy Fowler and why he set the Cartel leaders up knowing Hero would knock them down one by one.

But tonight I don’t think about any of those things. Like most nights, I only think about Calvin. Not Hero, and not my captor. Just Calvin.

I replay the look on his face when I told him I couldn’t do it. Three years later, it’s just as clear. It’s seared into my heart because I’d never seen him look like that before. I’d seen anger, domination, frustration, maybe even remorse in his eyes. But this was something else—pain that came from the depths of a man I never got to meet.

Nobody ever knew my soul like Calvin, even if it was a forced entry. Not before then, not since then. That’s what I’m thinking when I hear a noise and look up. Calvin stands in the doorway, one shoulder against the doorframe as he watches me.

My heart’s in my throat in an instant. Some slivered-off piece of relief floods my system, like part of me was afraid I’d never see him again. I guess that part was wrong.

“Cataline.”

“Calvin?” My elbows are still on the desk, my hands frozen where my forehead had been. “What are you doing here?”

His eyes scan the walls, lingering over my photographs. “I had to see with my own eyes,” he says quietly. “Why now?”

I follow his gaze. The exhibit took me this long to present, but it still threatened to reverse the progress I’ve made the last few years. My hell, plastered in color, black and white, and sepia against eggshell walls. Yet, in being surrounded by photographs taken in the mansion, I’ve also found comfort because they take me back to him.

“Why are you sitting there, your head in your hands, looking miserable?” Calvin asks. “You of all people know what misery is. It’s not this.”

“I think I should be the one asking the questions.”

He glides a hand through the air, an invitation.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“I read about the exhibit.”

“So?”

“I watched you take some of these photos. I know what they mean to you.”

“That’s it?”

He sighs and after a moment, walks further into the room. “Tell me one thing.”

My hands drop into my lap. I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s just broken into my gallery after three years and is demanding answers from me.

“Are you happy?” he asks.

Years ago, I would’ve asked him what he cared if I was happy, or why it mattered to him. I would’ve asked him what right he had to know that about me. But all this time away from him, missing him, has loosened the angry knot that replaced my heart when I left. “I don’t know, Calvin. I don’t think I know how to be happy.”

“Do you still not love me?”

“That’s two things.”

His lip twitches into a half-smile. “Do you?”

The question dangles in silence as I look at him. He absentmindedly slicks hair away from his forehead and then burrows his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He’s not wearing his glasses, only a dark, pullover sweater with pushed up sleeves and he’s just Calvin.

“You broke me,” I say just above a whisper. “And nobody can put me back together but you.”

He inhales a deep breath.

The confusion I’ve always felt since the mansion throbs in my veins, heightened by his presence. “Why are you here? To torment me?”

“Because I love you. And I’m not a strong enough man to bow out like I should. After three years, that love hasn’t waned. Because I’ve always loved you, since you were a little girl, I just didn’t know I was allowed to.”

“Who says you are now? Who says you’re allowed to love me? After everything we’ve been through, how could we possibly be anything but what we were in the mansion?”

“I want to set you free. Let me heal what hurts.”

“You hurt,” I say, tearing up as I place my hand over my heart. “Here. You put the wounds here, and now you want to heal them. You’re the captor who wants to set me free.” I ask him the questions I haven’t stopped asking myself since the night I learned the truth. “How can you be evil and good? How can I love and hate you? How can you be both my savior and my enemy? How can I want both punishment and forgiveness for you?”

He latches onto the word immediately. “Forgiveness?”

“I forgive you,” I say.

“For what I did to you?”

“No. I forgive you for my parents.”

Unfiltered pain crosses his face in a way that I know he couldn’t have hidden if he tried. “How could you forgive me for that?”

I rise and walk from the desk to where he stands. “Because it was never your fault,” I say, holding his gaze. “You’re not responsible for their death, for my childhood, or for me.”

“I am,” he says. “I’ve failed you, over and over.”

I flatten my hands against his chest. “It’s not your fault,” I say with an unsteady voice. “But I know you need to hear that I forgive you.”

His hands circle my wrists, and he brings my palms to his lips to kiss each one. There is wetness at the corner of his eyes, and I wipe it away. “You’re so good,” he says.

“I don’t know why, but your pain is my pain. I’m impossibly connected with you.” When hope appears on his face, I wrest my arms from his grip. “But I have a life now, and a boyfriend who loves me.”

“A boyfriend you love?”

“I don’t know what love is either. I’ve been stripped of it too many times.”

“I’ll teach you how again.”

I can’t believe that here, surrounded by photographs of my hell and my sanctuary, the enemy is asking me to love him.

He touches my face so gently I’m sure I’m imagining it. My lids fall shut as he brushes his thumb along my cheekbone. “I’m nobody without you to care for.”

“Don’t do this,” I say. “Don’t you dare kiss me.”

The heat of his mouth is near my cheek, his body inching closer until it’s pressed up against me. It’s familiar in the best way. He kisses my forehead, the bridge of my nose, the corner of my mouth. My lips are parted to grasp at small breaths, and suddenly, silently, there’s nothing to breathe but each other. His arms circle around to pull me as close as I can get.

I touch the sides of his face, and our mouths meet. He tastes like Calvin, a taste I’ve wanted since the day I laid eyes on him. What I’ve been starving for since I left. My hands feel him, my lips touch his, yet I still ache for him.

His tongue is a warm plea, licking along the inside of my bottom lip, and then back across the edges of my teeth. Finally it connects with my tongue, and my arms squeeze around his neck, trying to pull him deeper, because I want us to fade into each other, merge into one. His fingers dig into my back, his erection into my stomach. Calvin my captor isn’t altogether gone.

He walks us backward until I hit the edge of my desk. He pulls his head away to watch as he slides his hands in my top, feeling me everywhere. They are calloused, memories burned into his palms, his fingertips brash as he runs them over my body. I’m panting up at the ceiling while his thumbs glide up the length of my throat and under my chin. He puts his mouth to my ear and whispers. My moans are soft with his hands around my throat, his teeth sharpening themselves along my jaw.

“Can you?” he asks.

“I already said I do,” I respond in a short breath.

My heart beats in my ears and between my legs. He touches the tip of his nose to mine. “For everything? Can I have your forgiveness?”

I see the word in the air, letters flashing in front of me like they’re spelled out in fire. They break off and fade all at once, and the room is spinning. The hairline cracks inside of me are shifting and widening, my blood spilling through them, turning everything red.

His touch is disappearing.

Was he ever here?

Forgiveness?

There’s complete silence, and it’s possible I’ve dreamed the whole thing. But I jerk back to reality where the world is a blur, and all I hear is, “No, no, no, no, no . . .”

“Cataline.”

Calvin’s back, and there’s fierceness in his green eyes. His features are sharp enough to scrape my skin open like shards of glass, and that’s what I want. I want to cut myself open with Calvin.

“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.