Savage Delight (19 page)

The hot water is a luxurious relief, and helps with the shaking, and the fancy shampoo and soap smells like milky almonds. The adrenaline of my escape winds down, and when I exit and tie the robe around myself I feel like a new person. A person who's not-me. And that'd be nice right now. Any other girl wouldn't shake. Any other girl wouldn't be panicking that I have to walk out there in only a robe. There's another knock on the door.

"What?" I snap.

"I've got clothes for you. They aren't yours, but they're better than a robe. And there’s a box of bandaids."

"Just drop them outside."

I peek out and pull them in quick. It's a soft skirt, long and shimmery and black, and a white dress shirt. The shirt is obviously Jack's - it smells like him. And there's a pink lip imprint on the collar. I roll my eyes. No wonder he has a lady's skirt on him, and he's holed up in the Hilton. I put a band-aid on my cut and walk out of the bathroom.

"Just got done working, huh?" I ask. He looks up from the laptop briefly, pauses as his eyes find the shirt and skirt, and nods.

"Yes. For the last time."

"You mean - your last appointment? Ever?"

He nods.

"That's great!" I clap my hands. "Jesus that's - that's really great. Congratulations on not being a sex-slave anymore!"

He curls his lip. "Oh, be quiet."

"How's it feel? To be free and all?"

"It's riotous fun," he deadpans.

"Ah! You're distracting me!" I point at him. "Listen, some guys were looking around the woods where Tallie is. I overheard them talking, and they were looking for a body. Not Tallie's. An adult's body."

Jack closes the laptop. "What did they look like?"

"Two guys in black suits, lackeys obviously, and one huge guy in a tweed suit. He had like, white hair and a really buttheaded presence, like he owned the place. Super rich watch. Super rich in general."

"Did he say who he was? Any hint at all?"

"No. Just that you were going off to Harvard and he wanted to recruit you for his company before all the other scouts. And he called you brilliant and ruthless and some other such nonsense but I forget most of everything after that because I always tend to start zoning out when people start complimenting you." 

"What happened after you overheard them?"

"Well, they overheard
me.
Specifically, my feet on the noisy ground. So I ran. Threw one guy down a hill and kicked the other in the balls. Not a bad night, if I may say so myself."

"And you just...got in your car and came here right after?"

I hold up the faintly warm bag of fries. "Refueled."

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Damnit."

"Something wrong?
I mean, other than the corporate dudes after your neck? Protect your neck, by the way. That's a Wu-Tang song. Also it's a mildly good neck. I've stared at it many times while considering choking it."

He chuckles. I cross my arms over my chest.

"What's so funny?"

He shakes his head, a bit of his stupid hair glancing across his stupid eyes. His bruises are faint, but still there, like inky imprints of a harder time.

"It's nice. Having the old you back."

"Oh."

"I missed it," he continues. His eyes are softer, but all at once they become hard. "Nevermind. Forget I said that."

There's a silence, and suddenly I'm blindsided by a headache. It throbs, sending lances of white-hot electricity up and down my spine. It's the same pain I felt in Mernich's office. Shit, shit shit. Not now, brain, not now -

I've worn his shirt before. The smell is the same. He gave it to me to wear for bed, because my Halloween costume was too tight, and I was drunk, and the room had pictures of the sea on it and smelled like lavender, and I was happy, for a few seconds he was leaning over me and kissing me and I was happy. Reality and my memories blur together. I'm in the hotel room but I'm in the seashore room all at once. The shirt is soft. The smell of him is the same. Except the Jack now is sitting at his computer, staring at me with concerned eyes, and the Jack of the past is leaning over me, his lips on every part of my neck, my collarbone, my mouth and the corner of my mouth, and -

"Isis, are you alright?" Hotel-Jack asks. "Forget what I said. I'm trying to let the past go. Sometimes it's difficult, and I say ridiculous things. You're not a part of my life anymore, just like you wanted. I've blocked you off. I promise."

'I like you.'

Something painful and monstrous opens up in my chest, like a massive, shadowy venus flytrap. The two me's reach for his hand at the same time.

"I remember," I whisper. His fingers are long and delicate, but I can feel the strength in them. "I remember the Halloween party. I said I liked you. You - You kissed me. We - "

Sophia's words reverberate in my head.

'That’s why he kissed you. That’s why he even bothered getting to know you. Because you’re exactly like me. Hopeless like me.'

I drop his hand like it's burned me.

"I'm sorry. Shit - I'm sorry."

"For what?"
Jack murmurs.

"I'm assuming things! My memories are back but I know the full story, now, too, so I'm sorry for even bringing it up!"

"Your memories are back?" His voice is strangled, but he clears it. "That's - that's good. You don't have to be sorry for -"

"I just mean that wasn't - obviously that night wasn't a real, uh, kiss thing. I mean, we were both pretty drunk! You didn't really mean it, you were just being weirdly nice like you sometimes are once in a blue-ass moon, and I was super drunk, so when I said I liked you I just meant as a nemesis, you know? As a friend I could fight with verbally and stuff! Yeah. I really did like you. As a nemesis. Man, fighting you was fun!"

I laugh, but it sounds hollow even to my own ears.

"And, you know. I remind you of Sophia. We are kind of similar, deep down, so it makes sense you'd get confused and kiss me! Totally cool. Totally understandable. Man, I'm just sorry I drunkenly forced myself on you like that, and then did a total 180 and got scared like a little bitch. Like, wow, nobody deserves that ever, you feel me? I'm really sorry you had to go through that." 

***

I've wanted to hold her for months. It's a need I've tamped down, a carefully-controlled fire kept locked in the center of an iceberg. And she's unknowingly tested me, over and over; she's prodded and poked and sometimes taken a chainsaw to the ice, but she's never gotten through because I am Jack Hunter, and I am in control of myself at all times.

Except that one time, in the seashore room.
The time she thinks was false. The time she is heaping piles of guilt on herself for. Guilt that's coming from her past, and from Will Cavanaugh. If I don't stop this now, she'll hurt herself with it. The cycle of Will's damage will only dig its thorns deeper into her.

"I don't want to scare you," I say finally. She looks up, warm cinnamon eyes surprised.

"What?"

"I don't want to hurt you. And I don't want to make you uncomfortable - "

"Um -"

" -
but you are nothing like Sophia. You are Isis Blake - stubborn and ridiculous and kind and strong. You are exactly you. And that's why I kissed you that night - because I wanted to kiss Isis Blake. And I did. And it was hasty of me, and uncalled for. You had every right to stop, and every right to pull away. You were afraid, and I exacerbated that fear by trying to kiss you, and it is my fault. Not yours."

Her face goes blank with shock, and she's silent for once in her life.

"Yes, we were drunk," I continue. "You were, more specifically, and I was a little. So I'm the one who should have known better, and I apologize. I went too far, too fast. I was excited," I chuckle darkly. "For once in my life, I was excited. It's no excuse, but I hope it helps you understand my actions that night."

Her shell-shocked expression doesn't change.

"I'm sorry," I smile. "It won't happen again."

She doesn't say anything. I have to break the tension. I get up and stretch, cracking my neck and wrists.

"You should go. It's getting late, and I'm sure you're tired. You need to get some rest. Thank you for telling me about the men. I'll look into them -"

Something crashes into me from behind, and it takes me a second to realize it's her, wrapping her arms around my stomach and pulling my spine to rest against her chest. She buries her face in my back.

"I want it," she whispers. "I...I want it to h-happen again."

The web of anxiety in me snaps, thread by thread, and every muscle in my body relaxes. It is relief, pure and bright, coursing through me. I'm not the only one who wants it.
I am not the only one
, and my skin warms and my breathing comes easier as that knowledge sinks in with each passing second of silence. What she said that night in the seashore room wasn't just a drunk babble. She likes me. And I soak in that realization for as long as I can, before she rubs her face against my shirt like an animal, something wild and used to marking others with its scent.

"I want to show you something," she says.

"Alright."
I keep my voice carefully even and low.

She puts her arms out on either side of me, and pulls up the shirt on her right arm. She's always,
always
kept that arm covered. She's never worn short sleeved t-shirts, and even when I saw her in that blouse, she kept the sleeve carefully covering it and her arm faced downward. It's almost a reflex with her, to keep the arm out of sight.

My breath catches.

There, on the delicate underside of her wrist, are the marks. Round, puckered white scars. Dozens of them. They molt her skin, the pockmarks overlapping like a dappled pond. Cigarette burns. 

"How -" I stop myself, even though I know the answer already. "I'm sorry. It's not my place to ask."

Her arms tremble as she speaks. "Nameless."

I close my eyes. Hearing the confirmation from her is more infuriating, more heartbreaking than any conclusion I reached on my own.

"It's ugly, I know," she laughs shakily. "Sorry, I didn't mean to gross you out -"

I turn and lace my arms around her, careful not to put too much pressure or squeeze tight to the point she'd feel trapped. Her mouth against my chest makes me shiver, but I suppress it at the last second. I can see her scar on the top of her still-wet head. She smells like almonds and forest pine.

"There is nothing about it that is ugly," I say. "May I?"

She hesitates, and nods. I reach around and bring her wrist up, gently running my fingers over the marks. The raised ridges are rough, but in other parts, silky. I trace around each circle with my thumb.

"It looks like a galaxy," I say. "Full of stars and supernovas and conductive cryogeysers and a lot of wonderful science things I could go on to list that would probably bore the hell out of you."

She laughs, the sound vibrating in my ribs.

"I have another one." She gestures to her head. "It's not as ugly, but it's a lot bigger. Just call me Scarface. Head. Cranium. ScarCranium is definitely a Swedish death metal band."

I lean in and kiss the top of her head, the scar smooth under my lips.

"We'll have to listen to them someday," I say. She makes a sound halfway between a squeak and a sigh. "Something wrong?"

"N-No. Just...having someone - kiss - um - having someone...doing that - um -"

"You don't like it?"

"No! I - I do. It's really - um, just really, it's nice. It feels nice. Um." She buries her face in my shirt like she's trying to disappear, but I can see the red flush creeping up her forehead.

***

I feel like I'm melting. My insides are warm, and I'm all weirdly relaxed. And I don't ever want it to stop.

I feel safe.

For the first time in a long time, I feel really, really safe. Like nothing can get to me. Like, for once, Nameless can't reach his fingers in and get to me through my memories.

"I was scared," I murmur. "When I was running from those guys. And I'm scared they saw my car."

"You can stay here, if you want," Jack offers. "I can take the couch."

"That'd be rad."

"Alright.
I've got work to finish, but feel free to take the bed." He grabs his laptop and sits on the couch. I'm almost sorry for the loss of his warmth, but then I remember he's a nerd. I spot the empty plate of what looks like soy sauce, and my stomach makes a noise like a dying cow. Jack raises an eyebrow, smirking.

"Hungry? Or is that one of the lovely noises your brain makes as it tries so very hard to think?"

"Shut up," I flush. "I've got my fries."

"Those are embalming you from the inside out," he says, and picks up the phone. "Let's get something that doesn't survive radioactive deterioration, shall we?"

I dive under the blankets and try not to think about the fact Jack had sex with some old lady in them. They smell more like him than her, so that's something. And it's so fluffy I might as well be lying on my own flabby belly. 

"Hello, yes, this is for Room 1106. I’d like the salmon parmesan, with the spinach salad, and an order of the crème brulee. Yes. Yes, thank you.”

When he hangs up, I raise an eyebrow.

“Yeah?
Suddenly rolling in cash?”

“My final client is paying for the room. We could order a dozen lobsters and she’d have to pay it.”

“Ah, the perks of sex-work.”
I flop into the pillows. He doesn’t answer, absorbed in his laptop. “Hey, who was that tweed-guy, anyway?”

Jack shrugs. “Going by your description, I think I’ve met him.”

“Oh yeah?
Where, at a gay club?”

“A bar.
Where he beat the shit out of me.”

“That’s where you got the beaten-hamburger look?”

Jack nods. “He’s good. Trained, probably. Karate, if I had to guess by his forms and strikes.”

“And you’re just trained in bat, right? Not the billionaire playboy vigilante kind, but the baseball kind.”

“I took taekwondo until high school. He’s much better than me.”

“Someone sent me a picture,” I say. “Of your hand on a baseball bat, and a body –”