15. Jenna #2
I have to work tomorrow. I cannot afford to get kidnapped.
I hold my breath as the bike roars past.
As I stand up, I hear it slow, hear its tires screech as it turns somewhere in the dark behind me.
I throw myself to the ground again as it slows down, headlamp illuminating the grass in front of me. My heart’s beating fast, and my toes sink into the mud.
The bike draws up next to me and idles.
“I know you’re here,” a deep voice calls, muffled by the helmet. “Stop hiding from me.”
I raise my face, the rain sluicing off the mud on my cheek, and squint in the light.
The figure in black lifts his helmet.
“McCarthy?” I choke out. Scrambling upright, I wince and stumble when I step on a particularly sharp rock.
McCarthy’s off the bike in one fluid motion.
“Cupcake.”
“Oh, hell no. I am not dealing with you right now.” Gritting my teeth against the pain in my feet, I resume my march toward the city.
McCarthy curses when he realizes I’m not stopping. His boots are heavy on the pavement.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” The gloves are rough on my bruised arms .
“Walking.”
“To fucking where?”
I whirl around.
“You have some nerve.” I sound hoarse and shrieky. “Showing up here, stalking me on a motorcycle, of all things! You’re not supposed to be riding that thing. You lost your license. You will go to jail if you get caught.”
“This bike goes so fast the police won’t be able to catch me.” He shrugs a massive shoulder that’s even bigger in the padded motorcycle jacket.
“Well, you can go home now. I’m fine.”
“You’re barefoot in the middle of nowhere. You’re not fine. Get on.”
“No.”
“You can wear my helmet.”
“I can walk.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“It was one of your fiancés, wasn’t it?”
“No.”
“Yes. You’re lying. I see it on your face.”
I will the tears not to start.
Sure, this is a low point, but I don’t want it to go completely in the ditch by admitting to McCarthy that he was right and I was wrong.
“Stop pretending like everything is fine, Jenna.” It’s the first time he’s used my name, the first time he’s called me something other than “princess” or “cupcake.”
In the light from the bike’s headlamp, his face looks drawn, his gray eyes dark.
“Was it Brock? That fucker with the time-share?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. ”
“Nathan?” The word comes out with a twist of his mouth. “Did you and Nathan have a fight? Did he admit he was cheating?”
“ I said I don’t want to talk about it! ” I scream at him.
We stand there in the rain, facing each other, breathing hard, our breath mingling in a silver cloud between us.
McCarthy works his jaw then finally says, “I’m taking you home with me.”
“I don’t need a savior. I don’t need some man to come and rescue me.”
I yelp when McCarthy crouches down slightly and, in one fluid motion, grabs me around the legs and throws me over his shoulder.
“I could,” he says as I beat my numb hands on his jacket, leaving muddy prints, “give you a lecture about how you are so in over your head, Cupcake. I could tell you that it’s dangerous for a girl with no shoes and torn clothes to be wandering along a country road.
But we both know that even though I’m right, even though I’ve been right this entire time, you’d rather keep the last shreds of your ego intact instead of being rational and accepting my help. ”
“Your help comes with conditions,” I sputter, red-faced, as he sets me onto the back of his bike.
He leans in, his glove brushing the side of my face as he swipes the muddy hair out of my face and picks a twig out of my snarled hair.
“Most people would accept admitting you’re wrong as an acceptable condition of surrender. It’s therapist approved.” He tugs a piece of my muddy hair then works off his gloves.
Heat wafts off the engine of the bike, sending feeling into my numb, torn-up feet. I shiver with the temperature change .
McCarthy twists out of his jacket, pries my dead phone out of my grip, then picks up my arm and works it through the sleeve.
“Your jacket’s getting dirty.”
“That’s why I have staff,” he says simply, taking my other arm.
He slips my phone into the bike’s saddlebag, then he slides his glove onto my hand.
“What are you going to wear?” My teeth chatter.
His fingers brush my stomach as he works the zipper of the too-big protective jacket up. It’s misty, and he’s wearing only a thin black T-shirt. Dewy drops collect on his skin.
“My boots.” He points. “I don’t really want you riding with bare feet, but they’ll just fall off. I guess it’s going to be beneath you to tell me what the hell happened to your shoes?”
I shrug, my mouth clamped shut. I never should have gotten in the car with Nathan. I should have called a rideshare, should have taken the bus, should have done anything other than get in Nathan’s car.
I don’t need McCarthy to crow about what a dumb girl I am.
Warm fingers brush my neck as he smooths my hair, twisting it and tucking it beneath the jacket collar then slipping the helmet too gently on my head.
My mom had a number of motorcycle-riding boyfriends. She’d send them to pick me up from school or gymnastics practice or swim lessons, and yes, it was as creepy and as weird as it sounds.
Not as strange as hiking up my ruined skirt so I can straddle the bike, wrapping my arms around McCarthy’s torso with the washboard abs that feel like they were carved from granite. I can make out the ridges of muscle even through the thick jacket sleeves.
His bike is way higher-end than the exhaust-spewing pieces of junk Mom’s boyfriends would drive. This thing purrs, and it goes fast.
When he seems satisfied that I know how to lean with him on the curves and keep tight to his center of mass, McCarthy speeds up until we’re flying toward the city, trying to beat the incoming storm.
His lungs expand, and I can feel his heart beat as I cling to him, my breath fogging up the slightly too-big helmet.
I probably should be praying to the goddess that we don’t crash, but I don’t actually feel all that scared. Just numb.
What am I going to do? I have no clothes, my dog is gone, my phone doesn’t work, and I’m an idiot who does not have her friends’ or family’s phone numbers memorized, so I can’t even call one of them.
I cling to McCarthy as the tears come hot on my cold skin.
The sky opens up when we’re a block away from McCarthy’s building, and we’re drenched as he swipes a fob at the metal gate.
“Don’t cry, Cupcake,” he says when he works off the helmet. “I didn’t drive that fast.”
“Go to hell.” I wince when my ruined feet hit the cold concrete of the parking deck.
McCarthy’s mouth is a slash of anger. Then he picks me up, muddy clothes and all, easily, like I weigh nothing, and carries me to the elevator.
“You don’t have to— ”
“It’s garbage day tomorrow, so I’m happy to dump you outside on the trash bag heap,” he says coldly, “if my hospitality is against your moral code.”
Thunder rattles, and the lights flicker.
I inadvertently squeeze him tighter in surprise and can feel the vibrations when he gives a smug chuckle.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Asshole.”
It’s easier to focus on how much I hate McCarthy than it is to think about how Nathan fucked me over, how I’d trusted a man again and he’d screwed me over again .
McCarthy’s penthouse is dim and chilly when he carries me inside. He sets me down on the plush carpet in the foyer to unlace his boots while I stand there self-consciously dripping on his carpet, which I am sure cost more than all my worldly possessions.
His fingers are an unexpected weight against my chest as he unzips the jacket, slowly works the wet sleeves off my arms, then hanging it up.
Then I’m back in his arms, being carried upstairs.
I hate this, this helpless feeling. Even though when I was younger, I’d swoon over fairy-tale romances—being the princess, being rescued, being taken care of.
But the reality is just that I feel like a failure, like I’m a dumb child who needs an adult to come save her because she can’t handle life.
I’m glad his shirt is wet so he doesn’t notice the tears I quickly wipe on his shirt as he carries me into a bedroom.
I sit on the edge of a swimming-pool-sized tub as McCarthy opens a cabinet then kneels in front of me with a first aid kit .
He hisses when he sees my feet then proceeds to carefully pick out all the rocks and bits of gravel.
“I don’t think it’s too bad, right?” I warble. “I mean, you saw I grew up on a commune. I never wore shoes. Mom didn’t believe in them.”
The antiseptic stings.
“If you’re not going to tell me what happened and who I can kill, then don’t waste my time making chitchat” is the frosty response.
I look up to see my reflection in the vanity mirror flanked by white marble. I look like a ghost.
McCarthy looks amazing in the more utilitarian motorcycle gear as he stands up.
The tub faucet gives a slight squeak, then steaming hot water is rushing to fill the tub.
“I’ll bandage them after you take a hot bath,” he says as he starts trying to comb the mud and leaves out of my hair.
“I can do it.” I snatch the comb from him, not looking at his stony face in the mirror.
This isn’t the start of our great love story or even a friendship. I don’t know why McCarthy even bothered to help me. Maybe it’s like when someone finds a half-dead possum on the side of the road and decides to nurse it back to health for the internet karma.
A sob escapes my throat as I peel off my ruined clothes and step into the hot bath, almost passing out from how good it feels.
The water’s cloudy and filthy as I wash my hair, scrub at my skin, and scrape under my nails.
I don’t know what to do. I’m stuck in my client’s house. He’s mildly insane, definitely, and prone to violence. He has also heated up dinner. A plate sits on a tray on the bed when I tiptoe into the bedroom, oversized robe wrapped around me.
“Er…”
“Your feet.” He holds up bandages.
I hesitate then sit in the chair, not on the bed.
McCarthy has to move all the stuff, but I think sitting on the bed while your boss touches your feet is not an acceptable client activity according to the Prism PR employee handbook.
I scarf down the plate of food he brought me.
“Did you cook this?” I ask, feeling anxious.
“What did I say about chitchat? And no, I don’t cook.” He holds out a hand.
I look up at him. The bath, the food, the fact that McCarthy was touching my feet—I need to lie down.
The hand is unmoving. I give him the plate.
He turns on his heel.
I crawl into the enormous bed. It smells like McCarthy—salty sea-foam and evergreen trees.
I’m delusional. There’s no way he took me to his room.
I need to make a plan. Except I don’t have my notebook or my dotted graph paper or my markers or my special pens or my rulers. They’re all in Nathan’s car, which is now at his town house, with my dog.
I’m fighting off sleep when, in the dark, McCarthy’s face appears, his eyes a demonic silver in the moonlight through the windows.
“Cupcake.”
“Oh shit.”
“Where is your little dog?”