Like so many times before, she tried to imagine him dressed in black, head to toe, picking a lock, cutting wires, whispering to Eric that everything was going as planned. This image was more of an annoying shadow than her thoughts of Brad.
“You have to tell me,” she whispered, breaking the silence.
“Tell you what?”
“Why do you steal jewelry? Are Steve and Eric making you do all of that?”
He sat up, the hard look in his eyes again. “How do you know about the jewelry?”
She cringed at the change in him. “Well, I ....”
This was exactly the part of him she didn’t know, the darkness she sensed beneath everything else. She was too afraid to admit that a part of her was drawn to it, craved it, maybe even turned on by it. He was dangerous, but he controlled that danger, and she knew he was the type of person who would never let it harm her. It made him strong and powerful and mysterious, and that was something she had always wanted. She hurried to answer him. “Eric let a few things slip a long time ago. I figured it out.”
His bare chest rose up and down with heated breaths. “You don’t need to worry about it. It’s going to end. All of it. That’s some of the shit I’m trying to change about myself.” Moving off her, he grabbed his shirt. It was clear he didn’t want her anymore. She had destroyed the moment.
Suddenly cold, she wrapped her arms around her ribs. It was January. She would have been in college by now, probably wherever Brad was because she would have followed him anywhere. Harvard? Forget it. She wasn’t capable of standing on her own two feet. It was almost laughable. She stared at Jesse with pleading eyes.
“What’s all this about?” he asked, getting off the bed. He glared at her, his expression darker than she had ever seen it. “You’re not thinking about trying to leave, are you?”
Sensing the anger in his voice, she chewed on her bottom lip and stared at
The Great Gatsby
on the desk.
“Naomi, forget it. You belong here. I’ve told you before—there’s too much at stake and Eric will kill you. That’s not even a question in my mind.” He pulled his shirt over his head. “You know, you’re the hardest person I’ve ever tried to read. You’re like a box I can’t open, and it’s driving me crazy. I’ve tried everything with you. I’ve been patient, but I can only go so far.” He curled his hands into fists.
She cringed. A box he couldn’t open? If he felt that way, maybe she was mistaken about her own emotions. She thought of Brad’s fists, a bonfire, Damien’s glasses, then her journal and the countless pages filled with thoughts of her mother—things she never would have remembered otherwise. She remembered
The Awakening
on her nightstand, of the dragons she never dreamed about anymore.
“I don’t know if I belong here,” she said softly, turning away. “Sometimes I can’t stop thinking about her. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve made the right decision.”
There was a long silence.
“I should have known,” he said, his voice sharp. “I thought you wanted to be here with me. I thought I was the reason you haven’t tried to leave—not because of your mother. Your mother thinks you’re dead. Everybody thinks you’re dead. Why the hell would you want to go back?”
She turned to look at him as he left the room. She stared at the open doorway, confused. Everything about him confused her. She wanted to be with him, but at the same time she wondered how much of that had to do with her situation. If she had met him in college, would she have been attracted to him? A part of her knew the answer was no. She was smart enough to know that, but her heart was oblivious to it. No matter how hard she tried to move her emotions to a normal space, they resisted. She could barely recall freedom from the walls of a house, from rules set up by someone else. The worst part was it didn’t feel any different from before she had come here.
It only seemed like yesterday that she had put her hand in the tide pool to straighten out the starfish. She was like that starfish. She needed a rock to cling to, a protected space where she could live. Brad had been these things, and now there was Jesse. He had twisted her in directions she was too weak to resist.
Putting a hand to her head, she sat up and held her breath. She was half naked. She needed her shirt, but she couldn’t see it anywhere. Everything was blurry behind her tears. Jesse had left her because he thought she might try to escape again. He didn’t think she cared about him, but she hadn’t tried to escape once the entire time she had been here. What more did he want her to do?
She shivered. Glancing at the stack of books on the desk made her think of the painting in her mother’s room—a white magnolia opening to the sun. She remembered one of the times she had been in her mother’s room. It was a large space with huge windows overlooking the ocean. There was white carpet and billowy curtains and seashells on the walls. Her mother leaned down and smiled.
“Can you pull up my zipper, honey?”
She nodded and took the zipper in her fingers. She must have been nine or ten. As she pulled it up her mother’s back, she looked at the painting on the wall. She thought of her mother as a flower in her smooth, white gown and honeysuckle perfume.
Years later she saw that painting again. It had started with Brad. The morning after she had first slept with him she stared at the ceiling in his room, clutching the sheets to her body as she asked herself a million questions about what she had done. Was her body supposed to hurt? Should she sleep with him again even if it scared her? It was normal and healthy to have sex. All the popular girls at school slept with their boyfriends. It was crazy she had waited so long.
Still, questions nagged at the back of her mind. Her mother might get angry with her if she knew what had happened, but a part of her desperately wanted to talk to her about it.
Finally, three days later, she knocked on her mother’s bedroom door. When it opened she saw the painting on the wall and felt sick inside. That was when she remembered her mother was raised in a time and place where having sex before marriage wasn’t talked about, let alone done with any amount of approval from others. Her mother was as pure and clean as that flower. She would never understand.
“Never mind,” Naomi had muttered and walked away.
She looked up just as Eric entered the bedroom, his eyes growing wide when he spotted her half naked on the bed. She covered herself. She still hadn’t found her shirt. Jesse had tossed it somewhere.
“Where the hell is Jesse?” He looked around the room. “I heard you crying. What happened?”
She touched her face and felt tears. How loudly had she been crying? “Nothing happened,” she whimpered. “I just need to find my shirt.”
He bent down and picked it up from a dark corner, then held it out to her as she wiped away more tears. She was a complete mess. She couldn’t look him in the eyes.
“Get dressed,” he said softly. “I’ll be right back.”
As soon as she pulled on her shirt she heard yelling from the kitchen. She slid off the bed and crept down the hallway, her entire body trembling with fear and adrenaline. She peered around the corner just as Eric slammed a fist into Jesse’s face. She jumped back as if it had been her who was hit.
They were both standing by the refrigerator. Eric’s back was to her. Jesse stumbled and cupped a hand to his nose. “You told me—”
“Get the hell out of here. Get your bags and leave right now.”
Jesse tensed his shoulders. “This makes no sense. You told me to do this with her!”
Her breath stopped in her throat. She wrapped her hands around the corner of the wall, heat swelling in her chest. Eric had told him to seduce her? It was something she had suspected, but kept pushing away. It couldn’t be true.
“If it made her happy,” Eric growled. “That’s not what I saw. If you’ve hurt her, I swear I’ll knock your damn head off.”
“Hurt her? I will never hurt her.”
“Then why the hell is she so upset?”
She wanted to step around the corner and tell Eric her tears were mostly over her mother, but how could she explain that? If she said anything of the sort he might freak out on her instead.
“Because she’s changed her—I mean—hell, I don’t know. I didn’t hurt her. I swear to you I would never hurt her. I told you that already.” He placed his hand to his nose again. It was starting to bleed. “You know me better than that.”
Eric’s shoulders slumped and then tensed again. “I thought I did, but you’ve forgotten what I told you before. I don’t want anybody harming her. Ever.”
Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t hurt her.” He leaned forward, squaring his shoulders. “Ask her.”
“I don’t need to ask her.” Eric squared his own shoulders, towering over Jesse who still stood his ground. Blood streamed from Jesse’s nose and down his lips, but he didn’t move a centimeter away from Eric. They stared each other down until Naomi thought their faces might break.
Finally, Eric grabbed Jesse’s collar and pulled him close. “I saw her face, and that’s enough to convince me. You’re supposed to make her happy, and if you’ve got her crying like that the first day you’re back, she needs more time. Now get out.”
Naomi held her breath. He couldn’t leave! He had barely gotten home. The heat in her chest burned hotter. Jesse grabbed Eric’s hand and ripped it away from his shirt. “You know, if it weren’t for Evelyn, I wouldn’t put up with any of your shit. I’d punch a hole right through your face.”
Eric glared. “It’s a good thing you haven’t tried. Now I told you—get out.”
“Fine. When the hell do you want me to come back?”
“When I call you and tell you to come back. Don’t even think about disappearing. I want to hear from you at least once a day.”
“Whatever you want.” He brushed past him and headed toward the stairs where Naomi stood, Eric right on his heels. They both stopped when they saw her. Jesse’s eyes went wide. “Naomi!”
She glared at him. “You’ve been doing all of this with me because Eric told you to?”
“What? No, it’s not like that.” He turned to Eric. “Tell her.”
Eric glared at him, his face bright red with anger as he reached out to grab Naomi. She backed away.
“Go up to your room,” he ordered. “Now!”
She remembered how fast he could hurt her, how his anger might spiral out of control. She sucked in her breath and raced up the stairs to her room. Ten minutes later she stood at her window and watched Jesse drive away into the darkness.
XXIII
SHE HARDLY SLEPT THAT NIGHT. WAKING from a light doze, she saw dark clouds outside her window. That was perfect. She needed a nice gloomy day to finish off her misery. As far as she knew, she wouldn’t see Jesse for weeks. She didn’t care that Eric had told him to play with her emotions. All she wanted to do was talk to him and figure out how he really felt. Whatever had happened between them wasn’t all an act. It was too real, gone on for too long. Brad’s affections for her felt more forced than Jesse’s ever had.
A knock on her door made her jump. She groaned when Evelyn undid the locks and stepped inside. It was Saturday, and that meant she could eat breakfast downstairs with the others. She usually enjoyed that far more than eating alone in her room. Today was different.
“I’m not hungry,” she said when Evelyn approached the bed.
“I didn’t ask if you were hungry.”
She rolled over to see Evelyn dressed in her yoga clothes. Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. She wore no makeup, and the scar down her face was bright pink. For the five-billionth time Naomi wondered how it had happened, if her father had given it to her or if it had been Eric.
“I don’t want to do yoga, either.”
Evelyn put her hands on her hips and glared. “You’re the one who begged me to start exercising with you.” She patted her own thigh. “All your sitting around is going to ruin your figure. Don’t you want to look great in Italy?”
Naomi rolled her eyes and covered her face with the blankets. “I don’t
care.
Jesse won’t be coming anyway. Eric kicked him out. Didn’t you hear?”
“Yes, I did. He’ll come back. They’ll work it out.”
“That’s not it at all.” She clenched her teeth and breathed heavily against the blankets. Her breath smelled of garlic from yesterday’s dinner. “We were in his room last night,” she mumbled. “We were on his bed. I thought we might finally, you know ... but I ruined it and Eric thought it was because Jesse hurt me and I need more time away from him. He didn’t hurt me. He would never hurt me.”
“You almost slept with Jesse?” Her voice was edged with surprise.
Naomi pulled the covers down. “Eric didn’t tell you that?”
“No.” She folded her arms and twisted her expression into disapproval. “You should have told me things were going that far.”
“I thought you wanted me to be with him like that. Isn’t that what Eric wants?”
“What on earth gave you that idea?”
“Jesse said so when they were arguing last night. I know why, but it doesn’t matter.” She turned her back to Evelyn and heaved a deep breath into her pillow. “You want me to fall in love with him so I’ll never leave.”
The room fell silent. Evelyn sat on the edge of the bed and started pulling her fingers through Naomi’s hair. It was soothing, and she didn’t move away. She analyzed the weight of what she had just told Evelyn. They were words she could never have said to her mother, or anybody else for that matter. That made her heart sink lower than it already was, and as Evelyn combed through her hair she thought about when Damien had kissed her wrist and looked into her eyes. That small, intimate gesture had been one of the most memorable moments of her life. Damien had reached a part of her she hadn’t known existed—a part constantly reaching out for a connection nobody else had tried to grasp until she had come here. It was lame that she loved and hated it here at the same time. It left her in no-man’s land, a place where she avoided making any sort of firm decision. She just wanted to ride things out and see where they went on their own.