“She was important, huh?” Frankie said, sensing the emotion that welled up inside me.
“Yeah, she was,” I replied. My sister meant everything to me. “So I started boxing. I got beat up a lot the first couple years. It seemed I always had some sort of injury—a black eye, a busted rib. But I didn’t give up. I kept fighting. I liked it. I think I got all the anger my mother never seemed to carry. After a couple years, I started winning. You got a lot more money for winning than you did for losing. The night I died, I was fighting for the championship title. A title that could have made me over ten thousand dollars. I was naive to think someone wouldn’t kill to keep their title.”
“You took the job, you became an Escort for your family, didn’t you?”
“Without me, without my income, they would have ended up in poverty or my mother would have married herself off to someone that didn’t deserve her. So, yeah, I took the job. I killed and I sent almost all the money I made to my mother and my sister anonymously.”
“Thank you for telling me. I probably would have done the exact same thing in your shoes.”
She thought that was all there was to my story. That the killing machine I was today was solely based on the fact my family needed to survive. It definitely was what made me an Escort… but the emotionless killer… that took something else entirely to create.
“Is your sister a Death Escort too?”
“
No
,” I denied. The thought of my sister, of someone so pure as her doing what I do made me sick.
“Well, that day at the café when you said you saw her… wouldn’t she be…?” Her words trailed away.
“Dead. Sarah is dead.”
“But you said you saw her…”
“The Reaper has her body. I have no idea how he got it or why, but he does and he was using it to throw me off, to mess with my head.”
“You said before he doesn’t want you to complete this job.”
“He wants me gone. For good. If I don’t do this job, he’s going to use it as an excuse to Recall me.”
Her arms tightened around me, and her face buried against my neck. “I’ve been trying to mess it up for you too.”
“You didn’t know any better,” I soothed, rubbing my hand over her back.
“I don’t want you to get Recalled.”
“That’s not going to happen. I have a plan.”
“What kind of plan?”
I shook my head. “The less you know the better. I don’t want you involved in this.”
“Charming?”
“Hmmm?”
“If your sister’s body looks as young as it does, then…”
I swallowed against the memory of that day. Of the day I killed my sister. “She died a couple years after I became an Escort. She was barely eighteen.”
I felt the breath she sucked in, but I was so lost in the memory of that day that I didn’t hear if she said anything.
“After I died, the boys started coming around. And I say boys because none of the guys that showed interest in my sister were man enough to have her. It drove me crazy, seeing her with guys that didn’t deserve her, that couldn’t give her the life I wanted her to have. But once I was gone…”
“She was trying to find someone to fill the hole you left behind.”
Yeah. Maybe. “She and my mother cried for weeks after I died,” I recalled softly.
“We don’t have to talk about this if it’s too hard.”
“No. I want you to know.” I blew out a breath and finished the story. “Sarah got serious with this guy. When he wasn’t around her, he gambled, he drank… he cheated. I couldn’t just knock on the front door and warn her away. I mean, she didn’t even know me. One night he showed up at the house after he’d been at the bar. Sarah told him she didn’t like his drinking. He hit her.”
I clenched my fist at the memory. I could still hear the slap against her skin. I could hear her cry.
“I killed him.”
“You were protecting your sister.”
“Yes, I was. But killing him is no different from killing anyone else. Except he wasn’t a Target. One of the Reaper’s rules is to never kill anyone but a Target. I walked around for days, terrified he would find out, that he would Recall me. But he never did. He never said a word. And so I went on killing and sending the money to my family.”
“And then Sarah died.”
“She didn’t just die. She killed herself.”
Frankie sucked in a breath. “But why?”
“Because I killed her boyfriend. I heard my mother talking to one of her friend’s right after the funeral. Seems that losing me and then losing the only other man she ever loved sent her over the edge.” Why she loved that jerk was beyond me. I thought she had better taste than that. Maybe I didn’t know her as well as I thought. I was silent for a few minutes. “Because of me, my sister killed herself.”
Frankie pushed up against my chest to stare down into my eyes. “You are not responsible for what your sister did.”
There was no point in arguing what I knew to be true. “After that, I stopped caring. I figured out a way to shut down my feelings and just focus on my job. On death.”
“What about your mother?”
“I sent money every week right up until the day she died at age eighty-five.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, stroking my cheek. I liked when she touched me.
“Don’t be sorry. Everyone dies sooner or later. My mother lived longer than most.” I wasn’t about to let this conversation turn to pity. I wanted Frankie to know my story, but I didn’t want her to pity me for it. I realized my life hadn’t been easy, but it certainly could be worse.
“Come on, love,” I said, reaching down and patting the side of her ass. “We’re naked and you’re cold. Why don’t we take this conversation to the kitchen where the coffee is?”
She made no attempt to get up.
“Frankie?”
“I’m afraid the minute we step out of this ring that Olly is going to disappear. That Charming is going to come back.”
Her words caused something inside me to tighten. “A part of me is always going to be Charming. I’ve spent more time as him than I ever spent as Olly.”
“I know,” she said softly, “and I’m sure you’re going to drive me insane.” She flashed her teeth at me. “Just promise me you won’t let Olly run away from Charming.”
I laughed and got to my feet, pulling her up alongside me.
“I’ll make you a deal. You walk around naked all the time, and I’ll forget Charming ever existed.”
“Spoken like a true man,” she said with a sigh. “I need coffee. With sugar.”
I jumped out of the ring first, landing like a cat, and held open the ropes for her to step through, and then I lifted her off the platform, letting her body slide down mine. Just before her feet hit the ground, I caught her and captured her lips with mine.
She had full lips and she kissed like she did everything else, with passion and attitude.
It turned me on.
Her laugh caused me to break away and look down.
“You keep kissing me like that and we’re never gonna leave this room.”
I growled and bit her bottom lip. She returned the bite with one of her own.
I sat her down and grabbed her hand. “C’mon.” I held the door open and she went ahead of me into the hall. Before stepping through, I looked back.
Our clothing and my gloves still lay scattered in the ring.
I lost my life in a ring a lot like that one.
“Gone -
being away from a place; absent or having departed.”
Frankie
My legs were still trembling and every other part of me tingled with pleasure. The butterflies in my belly were still fluttering wildly, but now their wings no longer felt sharp. I knew sex with him would be amazing. My body practically screamed out for him whenever he was near, but I had no idea it would be like
that
. If I never had sex with Olly again, I would spend my entire life trying to find someone who would make me feel the way he did.
And I would fail.
There was no one else on this earth like him (which probably was a good thing).
I groaned and stuck my head under the insanely large waterfall showerhead that was raining water from the ceiling. I was in so much trouble.
He was completely maddening. He was selfish, spoiled, looked like a Ken doll, didn’t like sugar, and constantly had to have his way. Not to mention he worked for the Grim Reaper, killed for a living, and kidnapped my best friend at gunpoint. He was practically the poster guy for guys a girl shouldn’t bring home to Mom.
I grabbed the shampoo (which smelled insanely good and probably cost a hundred dollars a bottle) and started washing my hair.
He was all of those bad things and more. But there were other parts too.
Parts that he hid from most of the world because they made him vulnerable. Parts of him that if he allowed out would slowly kill him. I had a feeling that when Olly hurt, he didn’t just hurt. He bled. If he allowed himself to feel everything that everyone else felt, his entire world would come crashing down. A Death Escort couldn’t afford to feel—to
live
.
He made my heart race. He made me feel challenged, like every day wouldn’t just be the same as the last. And he confided in me.
He told me things about his life, his family, that he hadn’t told anyone. I realized that he could be lying, but I didn’t think he was. It would have been easier to make up something simple or to say nothing at all. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to die and then trap himself into a job that would never end to be able to take care of the women he left behind. And his sister… God, he’d walked around for years and years thinking she died because of something he did. And if that wasn’t enough, the Reaper was using her against him, bringing it all back up, taunting him.
Not to mention he was completely loaded and kissed me like there was no tomorrow. I guess when you see death constantly, you learn to realize maybe there won’t be a tomorrow.
Hell.
I didn’t hate him.
I didn’t just kind of like him.
I freaking loved him.
Like, no holds barred, give up donuts forever kind of love.
I hurried to finish my shower, partially bummed that he hadn’t come to join me, and shut off the water. I wanted to see him. I wanted to know if he would look any different to me now that I admitted to myself how in love with him I really was. Mostly I wanted to assure myself that he was still Olly, still the same guy I left in the kitchen making coffee.
Once dried, I quickly blow-dried my hair, leaving it straight because he didn’t pack my curling iron (he probably didn’t even know what that was). When it was straight like this, it was longer than it usually appeared and it hung past my chin, falling into a messy bob. When I left the bathroom and entered my room, I smiled because there was a pile of clean clothes lying across my bed. They were Olly’s. They were more casual than the other things I’d seen him wear—a pair of dark-gray Nike gym shorts and a white T-shirt with the Nike logo across the front. I picked up the shirt because it appeared well worn. It smelled like him. Like the expensive designer cologne he always wore.
I pulled on my bra, a tank top, another pair of lace panties and then stole his tee, sweeping it over my head. I wasn’t a small girl, but his shirt was still big. I didn’t bother with a pair of shorts and went off in search of Olly.
I looked in his room, his adjoining bathroom, and his office at the end of the hall. On the way downstairs, I looked in the family room, the library, and then finally wandered into the kitchen. The rich smell of coffee had me groaning.
“Want me to make some eggs?” I asked, expecting to see him at the table.
He wasn’t there.
“Olly?” I turned, looking toward the fridge and then wandered into the giant pantry.
He wasn’t anywhere.
I went the last place I thought he would be… downstairs in the ring. I smiled thinking of a repeat of this morning.
He wasn’t there either, but our clothes still were.
A feeling of dread enveloped me as I made my way back to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee. I staved it off as best as I could, but every second, every minute that passed without him bounding into the room to annoy me made the facts harder to ignore.
By the time my second cup of coffee was drained, the razorblades were back in my belly. He wasn’t here. He left. He literally made it impossible not to love him and then he did the one thing he said he wasn’t going to do: he let Olly run away.
Where he went I didn’t know.