37. Staunch the Wound
37
Staunch the Wound
Teenagers loitered in our store on a regular basis. I figured it was because their parents wouldn’t let them buy our brand. Sometimes they were desperate enough to commit petty theft. The creep-o’s were the ones who tried to hold us hostage in conversation:
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“I bet you’d like to use these chains on me.”
“If I buy you $100 worth of underwear, will you send me the used pairs for another $50?”
No. Fucking psychos. Some of them liked it when we got mad. Dominatrix vibes, I guessed. But if we picked up the phone to call security (and our fake boyfriends), they’d scurry away with their tails between their legs.
One word from Victor should’ve been enough to scare off Sam. Victor said he’d warned him. For what? Something must’ve tipped my Spider-Man over the edge.
Was it the question about other girls?
If I’d asked a fling if they were seeing other people, they’d have admitted it, broken things off (since I’d gotten too attached), or casually denied it. Victor obviously cared more than them. So why wouldn’t he have warned me about a legitimate threat like a stalker?
After my shift, I marched down to the theater, half-expecting carnage. Instead, I found the place swept up and sectioned off, but fully operational. The chipped, bent railings on the staircase added a seasonal ambiance. Broken connective cables hung like black licorice instead of sparking snakes. All in all, the cineplex crew must’ve worked quickly. The spider carcass had been dragged to a far wall. Poor girl was lopsided now. Still impressive.
A lady in a black baseball cap with oversized, blue-tinted glasses knelt in front of the widow with a toolbox. Her hair poked out the back of her hat in a loose bun. Victor glowered beside her in the shadows, his arms crossed and his jaw clenched.
A woman in a power chair held up her scanner to stop me from walking right to him. “Ticket?”
“Oh, I’m just here to talk to Victor," I said.
She sucked in a sharp breath and eyed my outfit. “Right. My mistake. Go ahead.”
“Thanks.” Did she recognize me, or did I fit the profile of one of Victor’s cinema sluts? Either way, at least I didn’t have to pay. One of the many benefits of sleeping with management.
I wiped the sweat off my palms as I walked over.
“This didn’t have to happen, and especially not like this,” he ranted to the woman in the baseball cap.
The baseball cap babe poked the widow’s insides. “It’s fine. She’ll be fine.”
“She is not fine,” he hissed.
“Look, I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but it’s not my fault—”
“It’s not your fault.” He glared at the broken rafters.
“It isn’t,” she said tersely.
“Well, far be it from me to question your calculations. It’s not like you put us in danger or anything.”
She gripped her tools tighter. “Victor…”
“You programmed the widow to be a battle bot, and now, it’s practicing bodily injury. I’m so lucky I can rely on your diagnoses,” he seethed. “You’re a genius. You can fix anything—not that we need it. You’re fine. She’s fine. I suppose you’d say I’m fine, too. Well, I’m not. And I won’t be just to ease your conscience.”
His voice dripped with acid and pain. Raw resentment brewed behind his beautiful face. But we did get hit, and this lady clearly had something to do with the animatronic. So, maybe he needed a little venom. A little vulnerability. By the looks of things, he wasn’t in the right state to talk to me.
I pivoted away, but Victor’s Kat-senses must have tingled, because his hawk eyes snapped in my direction.
He uncrossed his arms and stood straighter. “Kat. You’re back.”
I faked a smile. “Yeah, but if you’re busy—”
“It’s fine.” He pushed a hand through his hair and glanced away. His eyes were rimmed with red.
A tremor barreled through my chest with the urge to comfort him. But he’d been more forthright about his feelings with this girl in the baseball cap. I curled my fist around my cross. “How’s the widow? I see you got an emergency vet.”
The girl tugged her hat firmly down. “I’m her creator. I’m the engineer, mechanic, and tech for this arachnid.”
Victor rolled his eyes and vaguely gestured. “Kat, this is—”
“Zero,” she clipped.
After years of working in an anti-establishment brand, weird names didn’t faze me. The palpable tension between them via glares and furrowed brows did. Clearly, these two had history beyond the widow’s maintenance.
I feigned a smile. “Hi, Zero. I’m Kat.” The wife, I almost added. “Please do your best with the widow,” I said. “She’s a fan fave. I would’ve brought her a get-well bouquet, but she’d probably prefer bugs. Maybe she was hungry, and that’s why she—"
“She’s not a sentient being,” Zero said, slipping her screwdriver under black fur. “She’s not capable of feeling hungry.”
I blinked. “Right. I was just joking because I know when I get hangry, I leap onto unsuspecting people, thrash around, then roll down stairs, and curl up in a ball afterwards.”
Victor chuckled under his breath and hung his head.
Zero ignored me in favor of adjusting the widow’s innards.
So much for trying to lighten the mood. How exactly did they know each other prior to the widow commission?
I played with my cross and turned. “Victor, can I speak with you privately?”
Zero eyed us.
“I’ll be right down the hall,” he muttered.
Instead of guiding me with his hand on my back, he shoved his fists into his pockets as we walked toward the parking lot exit. “I’m guessing you’re not here to revisit theater thirteen,” he said quietly.
“No.” My throat tightened. Could I only stop by for sex? “How’s your back doing?”
“Fine.” He flexed and glanced down the hall.
Why was he so cagey?
I rolled my cross around my finger. “I wanted to talk about what happened earlier.”
“What about it?”
Was he going to be like this the whole time?
“I need you to open up to me,” I said. “It’s not fair to keep me guessing. I have no idea where you’re coming from or where we’re at or even where this is going.”
“No idea?” He closed in and met my gaze, his eyes swimming with fury. “I’m crazy about you, darling, with emphasis on the crazy.”
He was putting on another act.
I raised my chin. “You don’t scare me.”
“Then why’d you stop me from confessing? Why’d you run away?” His voice broke, and so did my heart.
Maybe that’s why I told him the truth: “I don’t know what’s real with you.”
He paled and reeled back. “You think I’d lie to you?”
“No. I don’t—I don’t know.” I frowned. “I don’t know you, Victor, no matter how much I think I do. No matter how much I want to.”
“You know enough. You should know I’d never cheat on you,” he glowered.
“You don’t get to decide what’s ‘enough’ for me. I had no idea if we were dating or fucking around with seasonal themes,” I said.
He ticked his jaw. “What about my courtship screamed ‘casual’ to you? From the first day you walked in here, I’ve doted on you. I think about you all the time. I plan dates you’d like. I call you my wife.”
“As a joke,” I reminded him, quickly moving on before he could do more than open his mouth. “I love the thoughtful gestures. But I’ve never had stuff like that. Guys have love bombed me so they could get laid, though.”
“So, you were keeping your expectations low, and I still managed to fail them?” he asked dryly.
“No.” I huffed. “I don’t believe you were fucking other girls while we were together.” I didn’t, in retrospect. “But was it possible you’d put similar moves on them?” I shrugged. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know if I was different, or if you felt as strong as I did, or if I’d scare you off by feeling this intense so fast. I was trying to talk to you about it. Instead, you focused all your energy on Sam.”
He scoffed. “I needed to take care of him.”
“Not at that second. And not like that,” I reasoned.
He clawed his chest. “I was trying to protect you.”
I held my hands out to him. “From what? A kid with a crush? What did he do?”
“He followed you,” he growled.
“When? When he was looking for you? When he was shopping for a Halloween costume?”
“Are those not enough?” His nostrils flared. “He was in the parking lot, waiting for you. You saw him too. The red car.”
Cold fear pumped through my veins. “That was his?”
“Yes,” he snapped.
I hugged myself. Was this kid creeping around actually dangerous?
Even Victor’s graveled voice couldn’t soothe me. “I’ve seen firsthand what stalkers can do,” he said, “and I wasn’t going to spend one more second risking he could hurt you.”
I trembled and shook my head. “When did you deal with stalkers?”
He glanced down the hall and twisted his hair. “It’s not that important.”
It was important. “Why won’t you tell me? Why don’t you tell me anything?”
“Because I don’t want to burden you. I want to be with you.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.
We stood there in fuming silence: being. Together. It wasn’t pretty. It didn’t have to be. But I still needed the raw honesty.
“I want the scary, hard stuff too. I want all of you,” I pleaded, blinking back tears.
“You say that, but the second someone challenged us, the second you saw a darker side of me…” He shook his head.
A lump grew in the back of my throat. I wanted to scream. I wanted to punch something. I wanted to rip our hearts out and eat them so this would stop hurting, or at least so I’d stop caring.
“Listen, Victor, I’ve tried to be open about everything. I’m not judging—with the exception of wanting to know why you’d throw down with a teen,” I admitted.
“I hope I’ve explained that sufficiently.” He flexed his back and gave me that blank predator stare reserved for obnoxious customers.
“Mostly. But there are other things.” I lured him closer with a desperate smile. “I think you’re smart, charming, and funny. We have off-the-charts chemistry. I’m doing everything I can to keep this from being a fling. I come here constantly. I talk to you as much as I can while trying to keep things spicy. I introduced you to my sister. I took you to my place. I let you into my bed and my heart. You held my cat, for crying out loud. I don’t even let my parents do that.”
They always did it wrong. But Victor barely blinked in acknowledgment of all the guts I was spilling.
“I gave you every fucking piece of me,” I confessed. “Ugly and sexy. So, you don’t get to sit there and pretend it’s a burden when you’re choosing to hide things. Of course I’m insecure. It’s like you’re rigging the relationship against me.”
He turned his head. “I shouldn’t have to give you everything just for you to trust me.”
“But isn’t that what falling in love is supposed to be? Taking a leap? Trusting somebody?” I was trying.
A sad smile ghosted across his face. “Perhaps you’ve seen too many movies.”