Chapter Six
Maverick .
Tension headaches plague me.
Since my flight landed on American soil and I arrived at the mausoleum I call home, they’ve been on and off.
I know what’s causing them. I no longer sleep with her in my arms and for that, I suffer.
Every morning my alarm goes off at the same time, my arm going to her side of the bed, to find it cold and empty.
I then sit up, inhale then exhale deeply, relieve myself, wash my hands, face, brush my teeth, and stretch.
After doing the mundane, I start the timer on my Keurig, and since it’s now too dark to run out in the woods by the lake, I go downstairs and begin my run on my treadmill.
No music. No Audible. Just me. Running until my sides hurt, my thighs burn, my lungs screaming for air.
Because that’s the only time the ache in my chest is something different.
That’s when I can breathe.
My coffee tastes like ash and when it burns my tongue, after I shower and get dressed, I still can hardly feel it. Hardly feel anything.
I was disciplined.
I had a routine.
I rub my temple as I drive over the snowy bridge to Rayne-Moore. Kingston, the tiny town beside Salem you usually drive past, or consider a part of Salem, where I reside, feels like a wasteland. My home feels decrepit. And I feel like I’m consistently on the verge of leaving it all behind.
I went to Paris for fucks sakes.
Henry’s words still ring in my head every fucking day since we sat on that plane over the Atlantic.
The thoughts that plague me most is could I leave it all behind? Her? If I put in my resignation now, could I find another job at a different university before the start of the new semester?
No. While RMU was only a steppingstone to get teaching under my belt, I can’t leave her behind. If anything, I’d take her with me. With or without them.
She could graduate anywhere else.
I just need time. I need… her to tell me everything. This wasn’t miscommunication. This was choosing to not tell me. Lies by omission. To keep me in the dark. Yes, she gave me the fucking binder. But there’s so much more she hasn’t told me.
I regret leaving Paris.
Regret not taking her into my arms instead of pushing her away the day I begged her to speak to me because speak, she did – a morsel of a phrase, and still, I pushed.
I used to never regret anything.
I park my Navigator in the faculty parking lot and trek my way into the large, ostentatious stone building, making it to my classroom so I can change from my boots to my shoes, taking off my beanie, scarf, gloves and coat.
I then go and wait for students to begin sliding into their seats.
I’m surprised when she walks in, still so beautiful my heart stammers in my chest, her hair cascading down past her shoulders, thick, black tights under her yellow-and-black plaid skirt.
While my cock desperately wants to reconcile and get reacquainted with her – I can’t deal yet.
So instead of the lesson I had planned for the day, I turn off the lights and play a video.
Ignoring her. Jonas. All of them. I’m not even sure I played the right video.
The one I had pre-selected for Wednesday.
I can feel her eyes on me from my podium and when I let my gaze flick over to hers, she’s sitting there like the broken little doll I love, staring at me, unblinking…
unmoving, silently beckoning me to make her move, to make her talk, to play with her.
Not once does she look at the screen, not once does her hand move over her notebook even though she holds a pen so tightly her knuckles turn white.
No, she’s just… there. I hold my composure until the end of the film and dismiss the class, unable to handle the headache forming in my temples.
I go to my office, seeking solace and comfort in the quiet, since it’s somewhat dark, the sun still hiding behind the dark, snow-heavy clouds when I feel her.
My haunting little siren. Except now, her song is quiet. Still alluring, but only a hum.
Her feet shuffle quietly, making almost no noise so when she knocks on my door jamb I don’t expect it. But it’s two small little knocks, enough for me to gather my composure and my wits so I can face her.
And when my eyes settle on my Siren, it devastates me.
She looks good, great. Healthy. Beautiful.
But there’s a sadness in her eyes I put there.
A cloud of melancholy as dark as the skies over Rayne-Moore.
The same ones that pester me. I want to drag her into my lap, keep her with me all day, smell her, kiss her, taste her, fuck her slow and raw, let my body say everything my lips can’t and that is where our impasse stays.
She can’t speak or refuses to and I don’t know how to articulate my apology. She’s not one for apologies. She’s the kind for actions. I have a gut feeling even when and if she’ll choose to actually part her lips and talk to me, she’ll revert to sign language.
Her plump lips parts, her tongue wetting them, but then something crawls over her face, an emotion like agony mixed with resignation and her mouth shuts. Shaking her head with an exhale, she turns… and walks away.
I stand immediately, urging my legs to go to her, to pull her to me, to kiss her so fiercely she knows how I feel.
That I love her. That I forgive her. That even though I want to know her past, it won’t hurt our future.
Her secrets can be hers. That I want her and what she does outside of us, is none of my concern .
But my legs won’t work and my heart pumps faster, and standing too quickly made the ache in my temples magnify and my vision blurs. I want to call out to her, to come back. That we can fix this but I sit back down, and rub at my temples again because what the fuck is going on?
Whoosh whoosh whoosh
It's as though my body feels her absence in every which way including physically and I need to fix this.
There’s another rapping at my door, louder and stronger and a piece of me believes and hopes it to be Damon so he can urge me to fix this and I can blame it on him when I’m a coward.
Instead I lift my eyes to face a somber, dark-eyed beast in a trench coat and slicked back pompadour hair. “Detective Arlo,” I greet.
Black eyes sweep around my office before they settle on me. “Professor Harrington.” He replies, taking a seat before my desk.
“How can I help you?”
He lifts an ankle and settles it on the knee part of his black trousers, inspecting a nail before meeting my gaze again and it irks me, for no reason other than he looks fucking annoyingly smug.
I know him. I used to be him. Know exactly what he’s wearing under that full length trench coat because I used to wear the same fucking cliché outfit.
Pleated trousers with long pockets. Brown belt with a gold or silver buckle.
Black turtleneck for the winter but once spring hits, it’s back to polo’s or a nice button down.
In fact, one could argue we’re wearing the exact same thing right now.
“You travel a lot, Professor?”
I arch a brow, my migraine thumping along in the vein of my temple, the room seemingly much smaller now as he pulses before me, a dark aura surrounding him.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh
“Some.” I answer.
He nods, not exactly seemingly towards anything, but like he’s contemplating how to properly word his next question. “You travel a lot with your peers? ”
I take a note from Raven's playbook and blink slowly at the detective before answering him. “I had Thanksgiving with Dr. Archer, yes.”
Again he does that stupid fucking nodding tactic to see if my anxiety will rise, to see if there will be any changes in the pitch of my voice, my features, if I’ll give some kind of sign I know anything. But I don’t really know anything, do I? In her own way my angel protected me, didn’t she?
“You… travel outside of the US a lot with Archer?”
I clear my throat. “It was… a special occasion of sorts. Am I being followed, Detective?”
He frowns like he’s Robert De Niro, and shrugs like him, too.
He moves his fingers, touching each tip to his thumb, a different initial tattooed in Old English font on each knuckle closest to his hand but they don’t spell a word.
They must mean a lot to him, these initials.
And suddenly I see it. Him. Arlo, as a young kid, growing up in the streets of some overrun, overcrowded neighborhood where you had to do some shotty things for yourself and your siblings, I eye the tattoos on his knuckles again, to get to where you need to be in life.
He knows a criminal mind because he's been a criminal.
A criminal now on the “right side” of the law.
An old gang tattoo is probably under all those layers of warm cashmere.
Probably gifts from a lover that once told him he was better than that life, and he believed it, making the amends to become better. I respect that.
Which begs the question- what side am I on?
“A special occasion, eh?”
Over the whooshing in my ears I hear the slight Puerto Rican lilt. Bronx. Something he’s done his absolute best to get rid of, that accent, and still, it remains. Subtle. But it’s there. “I was meeting the parents.” A half truth.
“Dr. Archer's parents?”
I nod once. “Damon and I are… partners .” I emphasize with a raised brow.
His eyes widen, possibly in embarrassment because it’s none of his fucking business but it’s also a full blown fucking lie and I wonder if he can see through me the same way I see through him.
“It’s gotten fairly serious,” a partial lie “over the last few weeks and so, I met his father and then we flew to Paris to meet his mother. So yes. I travel some. On special occasions.” I reiterate.
“Is HR aware?”
I fight back a grimace because I didn’t even think about that aspect of my lie.
I groan inwardly that I now have to properly speak to Damon and just pray he’ll go along with this lie of mine without too many questions.
“We have an appointment with the department tomorrow morning since we both have a late start. We didn’t want it to be anyone’s business until we both knew how we felt.
Now, if you don’t mind, I have one last class left starting in about seven minutes. ”
He rises to his feet, and sticks out his hand for me to shake. I take it. Making sure I grip it so he doesn’t think my sexuality has anything to do with my masculinity. He eyes me up and down and then offers a dimpled smirk. “Be careful of the company you keep.”
Whoosh whoosh whoosh
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means it’s a big school. Lots of rumors floating around. You know? A semblance of truth to legends and all that.” He warns.
“I’m not sure what you’re implying but I’ll keep that in mind.” It’s the oldest trick in the book: play dumb, innocent, until proven guilty. And even then, always plead non-guilty.
Which I’m not. I am innocent. Because Raven made sure I was, didn’t she?
He leaves, and my migraine leaves with him.
I stare down at my hands, the hands that always felt permanently stained with mechanic grease from my adolescence.
I turn them, trembling, expecting to see marks of old oil stains under my fingernails, and for the first time, in a very long time, they’re clean.
Whoosh… whoosh.