THIRTY-ONE The Truth About That Tattoo
J ACKSON
When Elle simply blinks at me, I can tell that we’ve screeched our brakes right at the crux of the situation. This woman is in charge of everything. She calls all the shots. She’s the leader while I’m the follower. As well as serving as her occasional sex bot. Not that I don’t live for that shit. And not that she’s ever made me feel anything close to used or degraded.
She could’ve made me feel like a side of beef if she chose, and she hasn’t. Yet her bringing up the contract out of left field like this falls on me like a ton of bricks. I feel so much affection for her. Far more than I’d like to, to tell the truth. I’m in no hurry for any of this to reach its inevitable conclusion. I’m good here. Content.
Even though that hasn’t been the case for me in ages.
Not that I can’t portray an outward appearance of happiness. I’m an expert actor when it comes to that. I’ve had to be. Because the only significant other who knew the real me was Rosie, and I lost her.
I can’t go through that again.
Hell, I can’t even discuss it with my gramps, though he knows the gist. Against my will my memory takes me back to when the only woman I’ve ever loved was still alive.
She’d been so gleeful and full of sunshine. Every single day. And she’d had the added allure of being a few months older than me. We had all sorts of adventures together. Then, she’d been gone. Deceased at the ripe old age of twenty.
How many times had we raced on those damn jet skis at Oxon Cove? Or swam from one point on the shore to another? How many times had she won? She sliced through that water like a fish, as if she had fins and gills, and to this day, her dying how she did will always haunt me.
The previous afternoon she’d been laughing beside me at the movie theater, one hand deep in the bucket of popcorn while her other teased me beneath it until I grew hard.
Afterward, we made love for the umpteenth time in our favorite spot, in a fake cabin on the paintball field owned by her family. We’d wait until it was closed and sneak in there. Since it’d been fake it had only a partial roof, and we could peer up at the stars.
She’d been my first everything. First kiss. First sex. First love. We’d met in the fifth grade and had been together as a couple since the summer before our senior year of high school.
Yet the next day, she’d gone on those same jet skis with her family up to the Finger Lakes. She’d both been looking forward to it and wishing she didn’t have to leave me behind. But Monroe had set up an interview he’d required me to attend, believing that I would be a good boy and follow in his professional footsteps.
I hadn’t wanted to go, but I’d surrendered to him.
Meanwhile a few states away, Rosie had been riding her jet ski. Her family told me one minute she’d been bounding along the waves and the next she’d tumbled off. They’d retrieved her immediately from under the surface. She hadn’t even been down long. They did CPR and rushed her to the nearest hospital.
Yet, she’d been dead on arrival.
A brain aneurysm. It’s still ludicrous to me well over a decade later. She’d been out doing exactly what she loved only to be ripped off the planet without warning.
I’d been waiting for the perfect time to propose but kept putting it off. Nowhere seemed quite right or quite good enough.
Then, it was too late.
Four years after that, I’d been part of a group of musicians playing along the Potomac. I figured out that the closer I came to the riverbank, the more dread I felt. This is when the first signs of my phobia took root. I haven’t been capable of being near most bodies of water since, as I proved so heroically— not —during our recent outing.
And as if all that isn’t enough, Elle probably has some legit psychopath stalking her, and she’s choosing now to discuss the end of the contract.
Really ?
What’s left of me may not be a complete enough human being to be in love with Elliana, but I thought I knew her better than this. I thought she felt more for me—for the three of us—than this. I also never imagined her kicking me to the curb like Monroe once did. Maybe I’m being na?ve. Or willfully obtuse. I know what day of the month it is.
I know the contract only has six or seven weeks remaining now that it’s December. I check the calendar on my phone. Six weeks. Christ. Yet I intentionally haven’t been thinking about it. I didn’t want to think about it. But ultimately, I’m right and she knows it.
Whatever happens or doesn’t is totally up to her.
“Oh, well... Okay.” She sounds flustered, and I shouldn’t feel glad about that. I do, though. She can offer to extend our contracts if she wishes. Only if she does that will the ball be in our courts instead.
I break free of her and get dressed. Still, I don’t abandon her in that workshop. I know she doesn’t want me to no matter what unfortunate can of worms she just opened. She’s frightened, more frightened than I’ve ever seen her. And if whoever’s doing this card bullshit thinks he can just waltz in here and torment her, he’ll have me to deal with instead.
Late in the afternoon, Detective Ruiz drops by the shop. Finally. An update on this case is way the fuck overdue.
He glances at me with a narrowed gaze, and I don’t like it. Who the hell is he to look at me like that?
“Jackson can hear anything I can,” Elle informs him, and it’s almost a reprimand. There’s my feisty firecracker. If I were a peacock, I might just fluff out my feathers in defiance.
Maybe my serving as her protector has her realizing that she shouldn’t entertain the idea of doing without me. Not ever.
“We’ve established some findings about the blood on the most recent card. It’s fake. The kind stores sell around Halloween. But there’s no DNA in the fake blood. We didn’t find fingerprints or other evidence that would allow us to determine the culprit’s identity. This means our subject knows to wear gloves and possibly something to restrain their hair, so it isn’t left behind.”
“You mean whoever came in that day had to have been wearing gloves and a hairnet?” Elle asks. “Wouldn’t that stick out like a sore thumb?”
“It doesn’t have to be a hairnet. Most are donning their gloves and hoods or caps with this frigid snap we’re having. Some are continuing to wear Covid masks, too. That’s unlikely to set off any red flags with your staff, either. We’re thinking that this person is likely to be of above-average intelligence and careful. They may be good at blending in and not drawing attention to themselves. They may have done something like this before.”
After this insightful look into the department’s profiling skills—let’s just say I’m not impressed—Elle helps her two part-time employees close, and we go home. There’s this air of frostiness between us that I can’t quite let thaw.
Nothing feels stable. Not her workplace safety, not the police’s ability to keep this from escalating, and come mid-January, not even my place in her life.