11. Chapter 11
Chapter 11
DECLAN
I start my car with the remote starter from the inside of the building. Vivian is moving slow, and I want to pick her up and carry her there, but I know this would be a bad move. She is an odd woman. I have never met anyone like her. She is determined. She doesn’t want to argue; she just wants to do her thing. By herself. She is fiercely independent. I totally get it.
Normally I would have just respected that and let her go. She is an adult for Christ’s sake. She is more than capable of making her own decisions. But I just couldn’t. This is different; she is different. And the thought of just sending her out to wait in the cold or fucking walk in it, even healthy—never mind sick like she currently is—makes me nauseous, and heated, and straight-out pissed.
I open the passenger door when we get to my car and I am glad to feel warmth come pouring out of it. I wait for Vivian to get inside and seated and gently close the door, making my way to my side. I place her backpack in the back with a thud, and get into my seat.
I get out my phone and open my GPS app. “What’s your address?” I ask her.
“Why?”
I glance up at her. “So I can take you home,” I remind her evenly.
“Oh, right,” she says and rattles off a street name and number in the city that I know is in a particularly shitty area, but I keep that information to myself. I punch the address into my phone, and as soon as it is loaded, I drive but of the parking lot.
I have the radio off and we sit in silence as I follow the automated directions. After a couple of minutes, I look over and see that Vivian has her eyes shut and her forehead resting against the window. She’s asleep, and I relax seeing her at ease.
It doesn’t take me longer than ten minutes to get to the address Vivian has given me, and I am more disgusted than I thought I would be. The building has more pieces of the siding missing than it has intact. There are windows broken and still others boarded up. I can see some lights on inside the interior, but there is a lot of darkness.
“Vivian?” I call softly to her, but she doesn’t move. I reach to tap her on the shoulder and instead find myself pushing a random strand of hair behind her ear. I can’t help myself—that glossy black mane has beckoned to me since the first day I saw it. It is so soft, just as soft as I imagined.
I gather myself and refocus my attempt to rouse her, tapping her shoulder. “Vivian?” I say, louder this time.
She stays still but her eyes snap open, the same way they had earlier in the classroom. I had been loud when I found her there. I hadn’t even considered anything other than making sure she was okay when I had found her in there, alone, with her head on the desk. I had been so afraid something was really wrong, I had called out to her harshly. I hope my tone now is not as tense.
Vivian gathers herself and sits up, looking out the window. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know we were here,” she says and moves to grab her bag from the back seat.
I stop her, as her body turns toward me. “This is where you live?”
She looks at me for a beat, then glances out the window and then back to me. “Yes,” she replies quietly. I get the feeling she’s embarrassed to admit this to me.
I want to say it isn’t safe, that it’s a bad neighborhood, but she knows all that, I am sure. And really, is it my place? “Let me walk you in, just to make sure you get in there okay,” I add on quickly.
She hesitates, but then finally says, “Okay.”
I turn off the car and come around to the passenger side, grabbing the door from her as she opens it. I wait for her to get out, and when she doesn’t after a second or two, I look around the door and find her with her head between her knees.
“You good?” I ask her, and in response all I get is a quick shake of her head. I come around the door and crouch before her. “What’s wrong?” I demand. I want to be gentle with her, to be soft and kind, but I am concerned. I clearly don’t handle things well when I am concerned, since I just barked out my question at her. I am unfamiliar with this. I just want to get to the problem, so I can fix it for her.
“I don’t feel good,” she whimpers, and I hear her sniffle.
Oh God, is she crying? Fuck. I am immobilized; what the fuck do I do now? And why is she crying?
“Uh, okay, we can get you inside and get you more comfortable, okay?” I say.
She shakes her head again. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she says in a whisper, with more sniffling.
“That’s okay,” I tell her gruffly. “We can just get you inside and you can—”
“I can’t move,” she cuts in. “If I move I’m going to throw up.”
I have to do something. She is sitting out in the cold, crying, and I am just watching her like a weird voyeur. What the fuck is wrong with me?
I make a decision. “Vivian, I’m going to pick you up and take you inside,” I tell her.
“No,” she sobs out. I feel so helpless as she sits there and cries.
Talking things out has never been my strong suit. I’m more comfortable with action. So I reach down and do what I do best—I act. I put my hands under her legs and around her back, and as I move to stand with Vivian in my arms, she promptly covers me in vomit.
Then she is really crying. “I’m so sorry,” she says between sobs.
“Vivian, it’s okay,” I say, working hard to make my words come out gently. Because I am not mad at her. I am mad at myself for not listening to her and for making her throw up. “I’m sorry I made you sick.”
But she just turns away, with tears streaming down her face.
“How do we get in?” I ask her, and she points to a door that I feel belongs in a horror movie about an abandoned house. I kick my car door shut and shoulder easily through the doorway Vivian has pointed to.
It brings me to the bottom of a steel staircase. “Third floor,” she says softly. “I can walk.”
I ignore her and start up the two flights of stairs with her in my arms. I get to the third floor and she points to a doorway at the end of the hall. It has a snowman wreath on it—the only sign of humanity in the entire building.
As we move slowly down the hall, TVs and voices can be heard clearly despite closed doors. I get to her door and set her down so she can unlock it. Once the door is open, Vivian runs full speed inside and slams a door shut. I stand in the shabby hallway, confused until I hear her retching behind the door. I look down at the mess on my hoodie and cautiously remove it as I enter Vivian’s apartment, shutting the door and going to the sink in the kitchen area. I turn the water on and rinse off my sweatshirt, then hang it over the side of the sink.
I go to the door Vivian ran through and listen, not hearing her retching any longer. I knock lightly. “Vivian?” I say, but there is no response, which worries me, so I open the door a crack and peek in. The bathroom has a cracked window with what looks like plastic wrap taped over it, and still you can feel the cold biting through it into the room. Vivian is sitting on the floor of the tiny room with her back against the wall, her head resting on her arm over the side of the toilet. The space is minuscule and looks overcrowded with all the fixtures crammed in it. My fucking hot water tank is bigger than this entire room. God, I hate this building more by the minute.
“Vivian?” I say again, softly.
She rolls her head and looks up at me. “I’m okay,” she croaks out.
It is laughable that she even says that. Nothing about this situation is okay. Nothing about a beautiful young woman living in an apartment that is worse than a lot of crack dens is okay. Nothing about her being sick and alone in this shithole apartment is okay. Everything about this is the polar opposite of okay.
But I don’t say any of that, and I keep my face in the same neutral position it’s always in. “Do you live alone?” I ask her instead.
She shakes her head, and it makes my own stomach lurch. Does she have someone? The thought of it makes me hot with anger, but why? It isn’t like she is mine. It isn’t like we are anything to each other. She is just a classmate.
A classmate who fills my thoughts morning, noon, and night.
“When are they coming home?” I ask tensely.
Vivian clears her throat before she speaks. “My roommate is working overnight; she’ll be home in the morning,” she replies.
The answer brings me more joy than I care to admit, even to myself. But then the realization that she would be alone all night, while sick, knocks me back into reality.
“You can’t stay alone all night,” I say, letting my thoughts out.
“I’ll be okay,” Vivian says feebly. She looks wiped out. There’s a good chance she’ll just sleep it off and be fine. But what if she doesn’t and she’s alone trying to deal with it all?
“Let’s get you to bed,” I say and scoop her up before she can argue. I go to the only bedroom in the apartment and find a mattress and box spring, resting on the floor, neatly made. I set Vivian down on the side of the mattress, and without thinking I start to remove her jacket. Vivian helps the best she can, shrugging the jacket down her arms. I help her lie back on the bed, then pull off her shoes, tossing them to the side.
I leave the room as Vivian moves under the blankets and return with a cup of water, an empty glass, and some mouthwash.
“Here, rinse your mouth,” I say to Vivian, and she struggles to sit up. I put my arm behind her and hold her in position so she can clean her mouth. I take the cups from her and help her lie back down.
I go to get rid of the cups when Vivian calls out to me softly, “Declan?”
I turn back and look at her. Even sick, Vivian is gorgeous, with her silky black hair fanned out messily on her pillow. She is like a dark fantasy overheating my circuits.
“Yeah,” I answer her.
“Thank you, and I’m sorry I puked on you,” she says as she closes her eyes with a frown covering her face.
I set the cups down on a dresser near the door and go back to her, crouching down. I stroke her hair back which causes her to open her eyes in surprise. “No need to apologize,” I tell her, my voice barely above a whisper.
We stay there looking at each other, and I feel my heart hammer in my chest. When is the last time I’d been excited about being this close to a woman while we were both fully clothed?
I stand up quickly, shocked by my response, and turn to clean up the cups. I go to the kitchen area and move my sweatshirt out of the way and turn on the hot water. I let it run as I look under the sink and find some soap and a sponge.
I reach up and still find the water ice-cold. I fiddle with the other knob and wait another couple of minutes but never get any warmth from the stream. So I wash the cups with the cold water, dry them, and put them back where I’d found them.
I check on Vivian and find her asleep, breathing evenly. I move the small trash can in the room to her bedside, and then go back to just watching her. She is okay—probably just needs to sleep. She’ll be fine. I am still having a hard time walking away from her.
You don’t belong here, I tell myself.
I turn away from Vivian and grab my sweatshirt, heading to the door. I put my hand on the knob and freeze. It feels wrong. I have a bad gut feeling about leaving, and instead feel the intense need to stay. I stand at the door, with my hand on the doorknob, as indecision eats at me. I give the knob in my hand a squeeze as I wrestle with my thoughts and feel a looseness to it. I pull back on the knob, and it comes away from the door in my hand. Its mechanisms are completely rusted, and there is no way this thing is workable.
Well, I can’t leave Vivian with a broken door, I realize.
I stride back to check on Vivian again, who is still fast asleep. I grab my phone and dial Axel who answers before the first ring finishes.
“I’m busy tonight. Can you cover for me?”
“Yup. Meeting in the morning, right?”
“Yeah, Persey’s at eight.”
And then Axel disconnects without another word. He is a poet, my brother.
I return my sweatshirt to the sink to dry more and then sit on the futon in the living space and look for a TV, but realize there isn’t one. Once I sit down, I realize how tired I am myself. I’d had a late night the evening before. My brothers and I had swept all of the bars, making sure there was no “merchandise” left behind. We’d found a few at the bar where we had taken those two fools down, but that was all. We’d all made it home just as Roman was getting ready to head off to school. My Dad had rushed out the door with him, once again avoiding me and my pending questions.
Slade, Axel, and I had also fanned out across the city this afternoon before I went to see if Vivian was maybe at the library. We’d gone to talk to some of our street contacts to see if we could piece together why Eddie had been trying to make it look like we were in the middle of a drug war. I’d had about three hours of sleep, and I was feeling it. So I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I would stay here and rest in case Vivian needed anything.
But only because I broke her door.