Chapter 2
2010 Words
2
Quinn
I roll over, pulling the covers up to my neck, burying my pounding head into my pillow. The pressure is like a steaming pot rattling the lid.
Flipping back over, I stare up at my ceiling. I focus on the fan above me, circling around and around. My body shivers from my fever and I can barely form a coherent thought, my head is so heavy with congestion.
From the bedside table my phone dings, no doubt my agent asking where the hell my book is. The lies are going to catch up to me now. Now that I can’t sit in front of my computer for the next twenty hours straight to get her a shitty draft.
Bang.
I pop up in bed, my heart squeezing while the room spins.
Bang. Clank.
I throw the covers off me, swinging my feet over the side of the bed. Staying as still as I can, I wait. Maybe it was Toby, the cat next door, snooping in the trashcans again. Or the mailman dropping a package by the front door. But it sounded like it was inside.
“Fuck.”
I freeze at the male voice that’s not coming from outside my windows, but inside my house. I look over at my nightstand to grab my phone and that’s when I remember…I left it downstairs on my kitchen table. s**t. Slowly, I pull the drawer open, grabbing the heavy-duty flashlight my dad gave me as a housewarming present.
My socks slide on the hardwood floors as I inch closer to my bedroom door, waiting for another sound.
Bang.
Clank.
Water runs.
“What?” the intruder asks, and my hair whips in my face as I spin around the door frame into the hall, half expecting to see him or his partner. s**t. There could be two of them. I find nothing.
“You’re a smart girl, you can handle it on your own. I’ll be in at noon.” The water turns on again and the man’s voice triggers something inside of me. Familiarity courses through me, but I remind myself I only know two people in this city and only one of them has a key. The other one wrote me out of his life more than a decade ago.
I tiptoe down the stairs, my hand sliding down the railing, my other hand raised with the flashlight in my grip. Adrenaline gives me the strength I didn’t have minutes ago to get out of bed.
The loud noises increase, coming from the kitchen, so I don’t have to worry about my approach. I round the end of my stairs, walk past my bookshelves and, grabbing every ounce of my Wonder Woman strength, I run forward and hit the man over the head.
He spins immediately. “Whoa!” His hands move up to block me, but I continue hammering away at him. Over and over again until he loses his footing on the floor and falls to his ass, his hands criss-crossed in front of his face. “What the f**k?” he screams.
Dropping the flashlight, I dart over to the counter and yank open a drawer, plucking a butcher knife out, holding it out toward him.
His arms slowly lower and the knife trembles in my hands, thudding to the floor. In my haze of recognition, he slides his leg out and kicks the knife away.
“Jagger?” My voice is like a scared mouse in front of a cat.
Confusion is etched in every line of his still-handsome face. “Belle?”
Rage over the nickname he used to call me because of my love for reading lights a fire in my belly. “Don’t call me that!” I imagine patting myself on the back. In my head, I’m bouncing from toe to toe like a boxer preparing to pummel her opponent. But my exhilaration slows as I really see him now.
Fourteen years later and he still has the ability to steal my breath away. He rounds to all fours and his large frame rolls up until he towers over me. At one point, I loved that about him. The way my head fit perfectly under his chin. The way his long arms encompassed my entire body, warming me like a blanket. The way his lips would brush along the top of my head, silently telling me no one would hurt me as long as I was in his arms.
His movements pause, and his gaze fixates on me. Too quickly, that look of surprise vanishes. “Let’s not continue with the dramatics, okay?” He raises his hands in front of him in a placating gesture. Condescending and arrogant—a side to him that once turned me on.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
His gaze inspects my body like he’s trying to figure out what I look like under my pajama pants, t-shirt and sweater.
Fuck. I grab my stringy brown hair and pull it to the side, hoping to God I don’t look like I feel, which is beaten and left for dead on the side of the road.
The right side of his lips tip up like he’s enjoying what he’s thinking in that mind of his.
I crisscross the sides of my cardigan to cover myself. He can masturbate his d**k off before he’ll ever get a look at me again.
Without a word he walks over to the counter, picks up a card and hands it to me.
Clean Queen.
“You hired this service?” He c***s an eyebrow.
In the haze of my illness, I never cancelled.
“I did.” I look him up and down. He’s wearing a white button-down tucked into tailored suit pants, rolled at the bottom. The watch adorning his wrist probably cost more than my car. No wedding band—no surprise there, and not that I care. A suit jacket is draped over my kitchen chair with a pair of wingtips and black socks tucked inside. “You’re the Clean Queen?”
Did Bernie Madoff bankrupt the Kale family or is this all a hallucination brought on by my fever?
He laughs, a look of ‘get a life’ splashed across his face. The same look from that night. The night that tore me to shreds.
Anger snaps like a twig inside of me.
“No. You remember Marisol, my nanny?”
I nod. Isa flickers to mind. I meant to reach out when I landed in L.A. a few months ago, but deadlines and the fact that I had a feeling she might still be in touch with the man in front of me stopped me.
“She owns it. You didn’t know?” Again, his gaze traces a path down my body.
I grip my cardigan tighter, sidling up behind the counter to hide myself from him. Of course, when I finally come face to face with the asshole from my past I have to be one dose of Nyquil away from poisoning myself, haven’t showered in two days, and probably have dried snot under my nose. Just f*****g great.
“No. I didn’t.” I place the card on the counter. “I wouldn’t have called if I had.”
“She’s sick, so she asked me to take over today. She was afraid you’d fire her if no one showed.” He leans his body weight on the counter behind him, his arms crossed. My fingers itch to reach out, to find out if his once-teenage flat stomach is rippled with abs now, but I shove them in my Kleenex-filled pockets.
“Nice. Well, you can go.” I stand up straighter, squaring my shoulders. I might look like I’ve been run over by a truck, but this time our reunion is going to end on my terms.
“You’re sick?” he asks, not adjusting his casual stance.
“What clued you in? My Rudolph nose, or did you think I’ve been a mess like this for fourteen years, pining away for you?”
He smirks, the devil-made-me-do-it one that used to get me to straddle him on those lawn chairs out on his family’s patio. “Sounds like someone’s still hung up on the past.”
Stay calm, Quinn. This is Jagger testing limits. Don’t give him the satisfaction of engaging.
“Please go,” I say like the dignified woman I am not.
“You look pale.”
The chills creep up my body and I tug the sweater tighter, wishing it was a wool blanket. Then, without warning, my stomach rumbles and extra saliva pools inside my mouth.
“Go, Jagger.” I point to the back door, swallowing down the bile that’s burning my throat.
“Nah.” He pushes off the counter, walking toward me.
Unable to hold back the spasms wracking my stomach, I place my hand out and run to the sink, throwing up water and the few crackers I ate late last night. The convulsions continue, my back rising and falling. I grab the faucet, turning it on and hoping like hell when I pick my head up from this sink, he’s gone.
“Man, I just cleaned that,” he says from next to me. I pick up my head, pushing on the counter to hold myself up. “Let’s go.” He nods toward the doorway.
“Jagger, please just go.” There’s barely any fight left in my voice.
After fourteen years—fourteen years of imagining what I’d look like when I saw him again—this was not what I had envisioned. In my imagination I’d been in a red dress, make-up done, the ten pounds I’ve gained through the years gone, and a gorgeous man on my arm. One more gorgeous than him, even if I had to buy him for the night, because truth is, Jagger Kale could be a GQ model, a Playmate, a Chippendale dancer, a Calvin Klein model.
That wasn’t what I loved about him, though. It wasn’t his chiseled jaw, or his cocoa eyes that felt like they could see into me. And it wasn’t how his hair was light brown, but sometimes, depending on the way the sun hit it, it looked more like dark blond because of his natural highlights. Not his olive skin tone or six-foot-three stature covered with lean muscle. Under the facade of a rich boy who gets what he wants, there’s a lost boy I found once upon a time. Too bad he disappeared from me just as fast.
He scoops me up, carrying me over his shoulder.
I slap his back. “Put me down.”
“I’d like to put you in the shower, but it’s bedtime. Sad to say I won’t be joining you.”
“You’re not invited!” I scream, my fists balling.
He carries me up the stairs, not rushed in any way, as if he has all the time in the world. I turn my head, smelling myself. Yep, epic fail on the next time I see him.
“Since you’re sick, I’ll let you believe that—for now.” His hand runs over my ass.
“Stop that.” I wiggle in his arms, hating myself for loving the feel of his hands on me.
“Still a great ass.” He smacks it lightly.
“Thanks for the molestation.”
He lowers me to the bed, lifting the covers.
“You can go now, creep.”
“I’ll be downstairs.” He points to me, ignoring my comments. “You sleep.”
“You’re not staying.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re not.” I go to move, but the nauseated feeling begins again and I still.
He tosses something on the bed. “Remind me to get you some Mace or some s**t. Beating an intruder with a dildo isn’t the most effective way to protect yourself.” Then he walks out of the room.
I glance down to the comforter and see my Unicorn c**k vibrator. My insides scream like I’m in a dark tunnel, Nooo! As if this situation wasn’t bad enough.
He peeks his head back into the bedroom. “Don’t blush. Once you’re better, I’ll be happy to take its place.” He winks and then his footsteps sound on the stairs.
My back falls to the bed and I glance around. I am still in L.A., right? I’m not in the land of Oz or on some reality television show?
Then I hear his voice again from downstairs and I know that this is really and truly happening. “Vic, I’m out for the day. Only anything important.” A short pause. “Don’t worry about where I am.” Another pause. “I have to go clean a sink now.” Another pause. “No, Vic, I have not been kidnapped. Bye.”
The water starts running and the sound causes my eyes to lose the fight and close as I drift off to sleep.
- Writer
